Stepping Up Your Game: Part 2

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jacelightning

22 December 2010

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Table of Contents

The Format
The Idea
The Deck
The test The Lessons Learned

After simulating a Scars of Mirrodin sealed pool for the thousandth time, I suddenly had a craving for a constructed PTQ season. I was tired of dealing with Hoard-Smelter Dragons as Inferno Titans , Vedalken Certarchs as Icy Manipulators, and Shatter as a poor excuse for a removal spell. So I turned my attention to preparing for the Extended PTQ season and the new Star City Games Open series. I first went to mtgmom.com and found the Star City Games Opens that are within driving distance of Columbus, OH. After despairing that the first driving distance SCG open wasn’t until February, my attention focused on those Extended PTQs and a possible trip to Grand Prix Atlanta so after working on some new Extended ideas I figured the best way I could talk about stepping up your game is to talk about playtesting and how it factors into prepping for a big tournament.

The Format

So in preparing for any tournament, the first thing you’ve got to do is to study the format. In the current standard environment for example, the metagame is defined as the ramp decks, Valakut and Eldrazi Green, the Control decks, U/B and R/U/G or B/U/G, and the agro decks, Boros, Vampires, and Kuldotha Rebirth. The best deck in the format is presently accepted to be R/U/G or B/U/G control so any deck you take to a standard tournament has to take this into consideration. In every format whether sealed or Legacy there is a current metagame and if you don’t take that into consideration your preparation is not just incomplete but inherently flawed. During Lorwyn standard, I went to a tournament with what I thought was a pretty sweet Kithkin deck sure to take down the tournament but didn’t really account for the Fairies deck and went 0-2 drop after embarrassingly facing two Fairies decks. In a given format you don’t just need to know the best deck is you need to knwo everything that is out there being played, because the best deck of a current format is only one deck. The best deck warps the entire format around itself as all other top tier decks are built with taking it down in mind. Hence the word meta meaning beyond in Greek. This indicates that a metagame approch is to think beyond and surpassing all facets of the current format.

Now a format is not just made up of the decks that are currently being seen in tournament but the card pool. In some card pools Shock is the premier burn spell, but in the current standard and extended environments Lightning Bolt is the standard for all burn spells. The decks are made up of cards from the card pool. I know that is a commonly know fact, but sometimes we can get in the middle of the rock paper scissors methodology that formats can become and not see the Forest for the trees. In a format without fetches and three sets of dual lands and a complete set of allied manlands more mono colored decks could be the way to approach it, but in a format like the current Standard and Extended with all the Fetch lands, Manlands, Dual lands, and cards like Reflecting Pool or the Vivid Lands color restriction is not going to be a problem. So that gives a deck like the current R/U/G decks the ability to run Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Inferno Titan, and Avenger of Zendikar all in the same deck. In any given format there are going to be cards that warp formats by themselves for instance at the last major standard tournament, The Kentucky Open, in the top 8 there were 28 of possible 32 copies of Jace, the Mind Sculptor. In this format we can easily point out Jace, but also other cards that do similar things are Goblin Guide for aggressive red based decks like Boros and Primeval Titan for green flavored ramp decks such as Valakut. This idea seems a little daunting as it seems to say that you have to play with these cards, but the beauty is that each of these cards lends itself to the rock paper scissors formula and that formula is just waiting for a combo deck to break it and combo decks are decks that use ok cards that accomplish something a lot bigger than the sum of their parts. For reasons like these it is essential for you to know the card pool because some card pools lend themselves to having a combo deck be the best deck ala the metagame at 2007 worlds where Dragonstorm made quite the impression.

         

The Idea

After studying a format and getting a feel for the best decks and the overall card pool, its time to approach actually building a deck set up to do well in that format. The first step to me is to identify the powerful cards (i.e. Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Goblin Guide, Titans etc.) and find one that you would like to build around. For my states deck of this year I wanted an aggressive deck as the format was largely new so I set about creating a mono red deck based around Goblin Guide. It wound up being a Goblin Guide, Plated Geopede, Kargan Dragonlord, Koth and some burn spells with the miser plan of playing Devastating Summons and Goblin Bushwhacker. The sideboard was prepped to bring in Mark of Mutiny to face down opposing Titans, Flame Slashes to take down the Wall of Omens, and Perilous Myr; and Ember Hauler to side in for extra creatures and sources of two points of damage. I wanted to take advantage of Goblin Guide’s quickness plus the explosiveness of Devestating Summons and Goblin Bushwhacker and the pure power of a leveled up Kargan Dragonlord plus with Koth to ramp it all up and just overpower people eventually. This was my idea for the format. There are all sorts of ideas possible in the current standard metagame and not to mention the current Extended metagame. The idea can be something as simple as I want to turn creatures with haste sideways and attack or something as complex as I want to bring the board to a stalled state and then use my overall card quality to gain advantage with every play. The important thing about the idea is not only just to have one, but also make it relevant. Don’t try to play mono red in a world where Kor Firewalker is a main deck card or don’t rely solely on reanimating creatures from your graveyard when most decks are packing graveyard hate. The idea can’t be just some crazy idea for a stack of cards to put together, but instead make it a coherent strategy to fight the metagame as it currently exists. One idea I currently have is for a land destruction deck. So many of the best decks are reliant on dual lands for mana fixing so I ask the question what if I mess with their ability to play the game by limiting what lands they have access to and the idea is that I can do that through using land destruction with just a touch of ramp. Create a little bit of tempo advantage and then knock them off their land by destroying it. I think that this idea while in the rough stages of development has the potential to be a deck to be reckoned with.

         

The Deck

I know this section seems pointless, but sometimes we can get all excitied about the idea of our deck and forget to actually make it into a playable deck. Our idea should be a card or a couple of cards that attack the format using a similar fashion, but we shouldn’t need 7 combo pieces to go off because the more pieces you need the less likely it is that the combo will be drawn and put into play. I mean I love crazy effects as much as the next guy but for a tournament deck, lets just leave those ideas for the EDH (oops I meant Commander) decks. After you’ve selected the main idea put cards around it that support and help it reach its goal and help you break the format. An idea of this is to put a card like Garruk Wildspeaker in an elf deck as another source of Overrun is never a bad thing, but it not only Overruns but also lets you accelerate mana and get an extra one drop in. It just fits the strategy. Similar ideas can be Inferno Titan with Destructive Force as it survives the five damage but with one attack after the damage can clear out other titans as needed. The best bullet in the world is just scrap metal and some gunpowder without a good gun to shoot it and only then does it become a weapon. The same is true when building the deck to propel your idea.

    

The Test

Now with an idea firmly grasped and deck firmly in hand, you step out onto the testing battlefield. First I want to Dispel a myth, everyone playtests to some degree. I mean everyone. Yes I mean THAT guy at FNM that seems to have put his deck together in about 5 minutes and has the most convoluted crazy concocotion, even he playtests. I’m not going to try and tell you that you should playtest and that’s it because that advice is not even the least bit helpful as everyone playtests. For successful playtesting, you must have a method to the madness. First off ask yourself what are you testing your deck against. If you are testing your 4 color control homebrew against your 5 color control homebrew then you really aren’t getting results that will tell you anything about what your deck will do in a tournament whose metagame is filled with aggro and ramp decks. For this you’ll need a gauntlet, or list of decks most popular in the current metagame starting with and containing the ‘Best Deck’ in the format, you should take a moment to compile decklists from the internet with places like StarCityGames.com, Tappedout are lists of decks that are in the format you are wanting to test that have proven tournament expierence. For instance the current standard environment, if you were to go to any of those sites and look up the top 8 deck lists you would find that R/U/G control and B/U/G control are definitely the best deck being represented but also find that you would need to test against decks like Boros, B/R vampires, U/B control, Valakut, Eldrazi Green, etc. This will ensure you have a basic knowledge of all the major archtypes and through testing you can ensure you’ll be ready to face expected decks for a given tournament. After you have built (in all likelihood using a sharpie and some spare sleeves unless you are far richer than I) up your gauntlet of test decks the testing begins. I recommend playing a minimum of 20 games in each matchup. Some people say ten, but for me I feel that twenty games gives you a better percentage reflection of the actual matchup. This is twenty games of Game 1. Not twenty games of sideboarded let me get my hate cards for your deck now. No this is twenty game 1’s. These games serve as the base for the sideboard you will construct as they give you valuable information about the strengths and weaknesses of your decks. Most important during testing is how you play. For effective testing you must play each game as you would at a tournament. This means you shuffle well for every game, you must not allow takebacks (but I highly recommend you take notes on misplays you make so you can refer back to it later), and most importantly mulligan and do it correctly. That last part of information might seem trivial; but, let me assure that if you don’t practice evaluating bad hands and getting rid of them then you won’t know what to keep or send back in the tournament you’re preparing for. Once finished running through the 20 games with each deck (and recording wins and losses along the way) you calculate your percentages just to give a mathematical number to each matchup. For instance lets say your deck is 11-9 againist U/B control, then you have 55% matchup with that deck and while that is favorable it takes some skill to get there and isn’t just a blowout waiting to happen so you need to actively prepare for it and get your sideboard ready.

         

The lessons learned

Now after long grueling playtesting sessions, you finally have your matchups with all the decks you expect to see. It’s time to put all that information you just gathered into practice. The first thing is to observe your record against the gauntlet you tested against. If you’re record against the best deck is really low (45% and lower) then it’s time to go back to the first step of the process, because the best deck is the deck that will see the most play and if you can’t beat that deck then you won’t be able to do well in the tournament. If the matchup is high (60% and higher ) then you can think a few cards that would be even better in that matchup and place those in a list for sideboard consideration and then continue to check the other matchups. Now if the matchup isn’t very low and isn’t very high then work can be done to make it better first main decks cards can be optimized to get the matchup closer to high point so you can work on making it a lock or closer to a coin flip match up secondly start thinking of sideboard card possibilities because that is your chance to change the match up a full 180 degrees. Once you’ve gone through every matchup and decided what cards are sideboard options make the complete list of all of them. It could be just a few cards or it could a lot of cards. The point is to know in each matchup what you want to sideboard and focus on unifying those lists as much as possible. Make cards on this list overlap as much as possible. I was building a R/G land destruction deck and found that my Inferno Titan was very vulnerable to Journey to Nowhere, I had Goblin Ruinblasters in my deck and that was working or so I thought when I thought of using Acidic Slime since I was playing so many ramp cards there was not a big difference between the four casting costed kicked Goblin Ruinblasters and the five mana Acidic Slime that takes care of lands, artifacts, and enchantments. In this example I maximized my main deck and gained a valuable sideboard cards because against decks like U/B control the Goblin Ruiblaster is great to knock out their Creeping Tar Pits and attacking Jace. Then once the sideboard is formed down to 15 (we’ll cover this in a later article) it’s time to test some more running 20 game 2s and games 3s and begin to test the effectiveness of the sideboard and repeat again until you’re happy with your matchups. It’s a long process and requires a lot of your ideas as they have to stand on their own merit, but its worth it in round 9 when you find yourself playing the match up that you’ve tested against for weeks and are ready to win to seal yourself that top 8.

I want to finish by sharing a story about I how learned the real application of Kargan Dragonlord. I was practicing for States and my deck kept getting clunky at the two drop slot because I would have both Plated Geopede and Kargan Dragonlord in my hand and would want to play both. It took me a while but then I looked at the Dragonlord’s level up number. It takes eight level up activations to make him an 8/8 flying trampler with firebreathing. If you play him on turn two then it takes the next three turns to level him up during which you get to only attack for 2 damage then 4 damage then 8 damage, but if you play him on turn three you get to level him up one counter so that when he attacks for the first time it’s for 4 damage then the next turn you level him up four more and you still have one mana open assuming you hit all your land drops. When I figured this out in testing, I realized that a Goblin Guide into a Plated Geopede into a Kargan Dragonlord was really the nuts draw and leads to 18 damage by turn 4 and you just need a burn spell to finish the game. This is just an example of what you find out in testing and how you can apply it to your decks to make them better, so go out and do this process and let me know how it goes. In a later article I’ll use this process to build a deck of my own and use it at FNM just to let you know how it goes.