*** Here’s one guest tourney report by fellow Wolf and brewer extraordinaire Laurence-B. He’ll walk you through his latest creation and experience at King of the Cage 2019 — “Arrogant Bastard” FRDT ***
Last Saturday I rode up to Quebec City with a handful of other degenerates to partake in the first gentlemanly tournament to be organized in Quebec (and possibly North America?). To wit, the exact rules to be observed consisted in the following melting pot of strange parameters:
Swedish B&R
EC reprint policy
Mana burn
Pre Vancouvert mull with 1 free allowed if hand reveal 0,1,6 or 7 lands
Gentlemen OS: Library of Alexandria and Mind Twist are banned
Around the time the tournament was announced a month or two ago, I had been tinkering with the idea of a deck based around the combination of Sylvan Library and Untamed Wilds. For those unfamiliar with the latest spoilers from Legends, Untamed Wilds is a 2G Sorcery with gorgeous artwork that lets you fetch a basic land from your Library and put it into play untapped. It is both a ramp spell and a color fixing spell and has the added bonus of letting you see 3 fresh cards off of Sylvan Library when you’re tired of renting out the same old books:
I figured the way to utilize Untamed Wilds to its full potential (or is it most fun potential?) was to make the deck 5 colors and just jam the juiciest spells in all the colors with no regards to pip requirements. Indeed, after adding 3 Untamed Wilds, 4 Birds of Paradise, 4 City of Brass and 5 Moxes to the stew, we’re already at a virtual 12 sources of each color! We’re playing sweet fatties of course, and the goal is to survive until we get to a point where we can chain these battlecruisers one after the other and they can start taking over the game. With this in mind I opted for the following summons:
4 Triskelion: the first one comes down and cleans up the mess so that the second one can start attacking.
4 Serra: Vigilance means she can start attacking right away which is not necessarily the case for other creatures if the opponent has a full board.
1 Bartel Runeaxe: the second best vigilant fatty.
1 Sol’kanar: 5/5 beats almost everything on the ground.
The motto of this deck is “go big or go home” so we might as well go straight to Control Magic and Fireball for removal! Disenchant and Swords to Plowshares round out the removal suite because we have to be at least a little bit reasonable. Putting it all together, I ended up on something like this:
(Black Lotus would be exceptional here but I do not own a copy of that particular piece of cardboard.) An attractive feature of this build is that it basically ignores all of the most common hate cards. Think City in a Bottle, Blood Moon, REB, BEB, Energy Flux, etc.; none of them seems particularly attractive to board in against us.
THE TOURNAMENT
Upon arriving at the tournament site, a restaurant where we had the whole second floor to ourselves, I ordered a pint of Goose Island IPA (5%) and only had time to chat a little bit with the locals before I was informed that I was paired with honorary wolf Christian Arcand.
Match 1 - Christian on WUB Transmute Spicy choices
Game 1
Christian has a strong start of Ancestral Recall into Demonic Tutor followed shortly after by Old School staple Glasses of Urza! After that we both do a lot of draw-go, developing our mana before we start to exchange threats in a very gentlemanly manner: his Trike for my Control Magic, my Serra for his Swords to Plowshares, his Disrupting Scepter for my Chaos Orb, etc. Bartel Runeaxe ends up sticking and manages to swings his legendary axe at Christian’s health, bringing him down to around 8 before an Icy manipulator shows up to slow down his charge. Regardless, connecting with Bartel feels like a victory on its own! Disrupting Scepter gets reconstructed but I have a more than decent trump in Braingeyser X=5. When Christian puts on his Glasses, he sees that the geyser got me Demonic Tutor, Fireball, Regrowth, Birds, City of Brass. Not a bad haul! But he won’t just roll over. Far from it, he replies with a crushing Transmute Artifact for Winter Orb and Transmute Artifact for Icy #2!! He now has all the tools he needs to lock me out of the game but it’s a tricky spot because he also is all tapped out now, save for 1 City of Brass. The combination of Bartel and the Fireball in my hand means he has to tread very lightly. He opts to let me untap a Swamp and uses Icy on Bartel. I topdeck…. Disenchant!! Incredible. I pass the turn and he whiffs on the land he needs to turn on both Icys. I untap a white source and again he taps Bartel so I get to Disenchant Winter Orb on his upkeep and Fireball him for lethal on my turn! What a game!
SB: +3 REB, +1 Dust to Dust, +1 Artifact Blast, +1 Divine Offering, -2 Control Magic, -2 Swords to Plowshares, -2 Trike
Game 2
In this game, we again trade many land drops in the early game but I decide to Disenchant his Factory and blind Regrowth it. When I get to 5 mana the threats start pouring down: Serra? Swords. Serra? Swords. Trike? Disenchant. Trike? Counterspell. REB! Trike sticks and start beating down. He’s joined soon after by Serra and at this point Christian has to use the desperation move of Transmute for Meekstone just to incapacitate the Trike. I do not use the Disenchant because I fear this is bait for something more impactful like a Disk. He does casts an Abyss on his next turn but at this point I have 2 Birds so the math does not work out in his favor. Serra scores the win. 1-0
Match 2 - Homie Francois R. Derbas Thibodeau on UBR Guardian Beast combo (aka Beast Island)
This deck falls within the “Pet Deck” category I believe, and Francois has been playing and tuning it for the better part of the last 2 years. So I kind of know what to expect.
Game 1
This time my opponent leads with Demonic Tutor into Ancestral Recall (same cards, reversed order). He then deploys a Sage of Lat-Nam which I opt to Control Magic even though Francois has no artifacts to sacrifice at this point. This may seems weird but I have 3 reasons for making this play. First, I know that the Sage is very synergistic with his strategy and I have often regretted not dealing with the sage when I had the opportunity. Second, I know that Francois’ deck has no good target for Control Magic (only Guarding Beasts and Trikes). Third, I know (or at least I think I know) that Francois is playing a number of Copy Artifacts, so if it comes to that, I want to be able to cash in my own Trike for a card when he tries to copy it… give him a taste of his own medecine, gnomesayin’?
Regardless, after I resolve a Serra Angel, Francois is quick to Recall his Demonic Tutor, find Balance and take my Serra, Sage, Birds + 1 precious land to his nothing. I proceed to draw no more mana sources and die fast to Trike+Factory beats.
SB: -2 Control Magic, -4 Trike, +3 REB, +1 stp, +1 Artifact Blast, +1 Dust to Dust
Game 2
He laments having to mull to 6 but then proceeds to beat me down to 12 with a pair of Sages, doing nothing else. I could have deployed a Serra Angel sooner but I wanted to have REB up while doing so for any shenanigans he might have. As my life starts getting low, he decides the timing is right to take a picture of his hand. Now, don’t get me wrong I love Francois from the bottom of my heart, but he’s an arrogant bastard. So at this point I start suspecting that his hand is full of burn. Sure enough, I know I’m in trouble when he responds to my Serra by Psi Blasting me (!) whilst sporting a cocky grin. I snap use my REB on that since REB is no good against Bolts and Fireballs. Sure enough, he follows up with Bolt to face, Regrowth Psi Blast, blast my face and suicide swing his Sages into my Serra. I block and go to 4. On my turn I drop a second Serra and I answer his Fireball for 4 by exiling my own Serra in exchange for 4 life. With him at 12, I untap, swing, and Fireball him for the rest. He later confessed he felt humiliated by this turn of event and upon hearing that God saw it was good. The now infamous picture:
Game 3
Game 3 starts with the same sequence that got me in trouble in Games 1 and 3 VS Francois: Lions into Strip Mine + Swords the Bird! Again, Max has a follow up Blood Moon but this time I’m not bothered at all as I drew into Forest, Pearl and Disenchant. I proceed to Ancestral–>Regrowth–>Ancestral–>Ivory Tower and that’s all she wrote. 2-1.
Match 4 - Jessy on UB bots
Games 1
He has Turn 1 Mishra’s Workshops and comes out of the gate swinging with Su-Chi, Juggernaut and Copy Artifact on Su-Chi in quick succession. I do my best to stabilize with Control Magic and Disenchant but he has Geyser for 4 off of Mana Drain to refuel and bury me.
SB: With only 1 shop in the format, I figure taking a controlling stance is promising so I board in all my removal and counterspells with the plan of killing him with his own creatures and large Fireballs. I keep in Sol’kanar and Bartel since they have the upper hand in combat against most of his creatures.
-4 Trike (he can copy them), -3 Serra*, +3 Counterspell, +1 Disenchant, +1 Dust to Dust, +1 Artifact Blast, +2 Swords to Plowshares
*At this point I realize that I lost a Serra from my deck!! We look around but it’s nowhere to be found.
Game 2
He powers out two early Su-Chis thanks to Mana Vault and Copy Artifact. I steal one and plow the other so it’s looking good but Jessy won’t just roll over. Three back to back Mishra’s Factory hit the table and start racing my Su-Chi. It appears that I’m gonna lose the race but Fireball once again comes to the rescue!
Game 3
This game was a pretty good joke. It starts with T1 Mishra’s Workshop–>Sol Ring–>Su-Chi into T2 Triskelion. My turn 2 sees me DT for Dust to Dust but his Turn 3 is… Gloom! *hand shake* 2-2
Match 5 - Fred on RW Tax Edge
Game 1
He does an impressive job of denying me mana with a Bolt on Bird, Detonate on Mox twice and Strip Mine (!). Did we change the tournament rules to EC at the last minute and nobody told me?! There isn’t much else to say. I’m unable to get off the ground and I get eaten alive by a combination of lion bites and thunder bolts.
SB*: +3 Ivory Tower, +2 Swords to Plowshares, -1 Bartel, -1 Trike (they too darn expensive!), -2 Control Magic
*Punt of the day!
Game 2
A very uneventful game. He’s mana screwed and my Serra takes him from 20 to 0.
Game 3
A Detonate on my Sol Ring means I’m super slow to get off the ground. Meanwhile, Fred drops 3 White Knights in 3 turns and the Mirror Universe rotting in my hand is no match for the clock they represent. It is particularly pathetic that my Demonic Tutor has nothing to get that would save me. Stella Candente would have done it but I’m dumbfounded when I realize that I left it in the sideboard(!!). 2-3
Match 6 - Yanick on UWg skies
Game 1
We’re both on slow decks so draw-go it is for a bunch of turns. He surprises me with a Land Tax while I have something like 3 more lands than him so he gets to tax out all the basics out of his deck. Then the slugfest begins. Mahamoti Djinns are sent plowing, Trikes are Disenchanted, Serras are tackled by Fireballs. Eventually he find Ancestral Recall and turns that into a combo of Mahamoti + Azure Drake, tapping all but two plains. At this point I’m sitting on Time Walk, Wheel of Fortune, Fireball. I can Fireball him for exactsies but if he has the Plow for, say, his Drake, then it can get ugly. So I choose to Fireball him for only 10, cast Time Walk then Wheel, with the plan of ripping another Fireball to finish him off. My library is pretty darn thin so I think my odds are more than excellent. I get there on the 7th card drawn! phew lol
Sideboard: +3 REB, +2 Swords to Plowshares, -1 Sol’kanar, -4 Trike (he has Moat and no weenies)
Game 2
Not a particularly exciting game. If I remember correctly I Mana Drain a Serra and pump the mana into a huge geyser. To finish things off, I Disenchant Yannick’s Moat and Bartel comes thundering down from Hammerheim to score the win. 3-3
IN THE END
In the end what do I think of the deck? I continue to believe the archetype has potential in the Swedish format, but some tweaks are required and more testing is required to determine what these exact tweaks should be. While Fireballs were the MVP, maindeck Control Magics were pretty underwhelming but not to the point that I think they’re wrong. The real problem of the deck is that the curve is too high. I overestimated the deck’s capacity for reaching 6 mana fast enough against aggro decks. So I think I would fix this by first transmuting a few of those Trikes/ Mirror into Su-Chi (maybe a fun-of Clockwork Avian? I love that card.) and second by adding a pair of Fellwar Stones into the mix. This will help with both the ramping aspect and the color fixing. Another interesting path to help with the speed is to add Channel since Channel and Fireball are pals to begin with.Thanks for reading and let me know how it goes if you decide to take this very fun deck for a spin. I recommend it!
— Laurence