The Zvi Mowshowitz Worlds Report - Day 1, Standard

** Another time I’ll hopefully get a chance to go into the preparations that went into this World Championship, and I certainly plan to have a detailed analysis of both of my constructed decks and quite possibly my draft strategy as well. Instead, the report itself gets the extremely shortened version.

It became clear quickly that in Standard we wanted to use Static Orb in some fashion. It came down to two possibilities, Blue/Green Opposition and a Skies deck with Static Orb and Tangle Wire, adopted from what the Finns played at the European Championship. It was reported for reasons that turned out to be wrong that Blue/Green didn’t meet the requirements for a deck I could play, and by the time that mistake was corrected it was basically too late: I had put a ton of work into the Skies deck and tuning had gone really well. I wasn’t turning back. A few days before the event I ended up going to Seth Burn’s house to break the Fires matchup, and while I didn’t win enough that day together the two of us and Scott Johns figured out what to do. I’ll get to that when I play against a Fires deck. Then we had to adjust and test against Blue/Green Opposition and adjust the importance of different matchups, because everyone keeps telling me Counterrebel and Fires are the big decks but when we show up that’s just not true anymore. At any rate, here’s the listing:

If I played it again (and I would) I wouldn’t change a card.

Round 1: Nitter, Eivind

Nitter is playing Counterrebels, which I basically assumed from the start given that he won the European Championships with it. We’ve tested this matchup way more than we should have, and I’m really confident. Game one is going according to plan for about two turns, and then he plays Unnatural Selection. I can’t stop it, so that’s bad. I do get a Waterfront Bouncer on the table, but the Static Orb gets stopped. Without a Static Orb, if I ever let him get the Rebel Informer out it’ll all be over. But I also have a Troublesome Spirit, which allows me to get through for damage but also keeps tapping all my lands at the end of my turn. I’m all right for a while, but Nitter keeps playing lands out. When he gets eight, there’s nothing I can do: He gets the Informer on his turn and removes the Waterfront Bouncer. Soon all my creatures are toast and I scoop to save time. The problem is that Nitter’s doing all of this v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. He says when he plays the Selection out that he doesn’t know how it works, although when the time comes he uses it just fine. It starts getting out of hand, and I call over a judge to watch for slow play. He does so, and play continues to be slow. However, the first game wraps up in about ten turns thanks to the Selection (taken from Gary Wise’s sideboard at Canadian Nationls, as he told me after the match) so there’s still about 42 minutes out of the hour left. The judge considers this sufficient reason to stop watching the match and leaves while we sideboard.

That sideboarding is where I get to have fun. Out go four Rishadan Airships, three Spiketail Hatchlings and three Tangle Wires. In go two Juntu Stakes, four Indentured Djinns (!), one Troublesome Spirit, two Alexi and a Waterfront Bouncer. That’s normally more than enough to crush the rebellion. Game two I get both Static Orb and Junta Stakes down and a Troublesome Spirit starts attacking. To keep from dying, he starts blocking, putting damage on the stack and moving on to the next chump. He Brainstorms on his main phase. None of it matters, as his creatures slowly shift down into the graveyard and his land taps faster than it untaps. With Lin Sivvi out of the picture thanks to the Stakes there’s no way out, and he eventually dies to the Spirit. We’re starting to get into time trouble a little again though.

Game three he double mulligans but still gets a rebel and plenty of land and I finally draw the fat men, and Static Orb again comes down. He gets an Unnatural Selection, but is a long way away from the Rebel Informer. I untap two lands, play a third one and cast Indentured Djinn. I announce it, and he looks at it and makes a face that seems to be asking “didn’t I just win?” and smirks back the answer “I’m not going to counter THAT.” The fool.

He draws three cards. Two turns later, he’s taking a whole bunch of damage from a 4/4 flyer he can’t stop and I try to cast Troublesome Spirit. He starts thinking. Two minutes later, I call over a judge to watch the remainder of the match for slow play. Two minutes after that he starts pressuring Nitter to make a play, then he threatens that he’s going to have to give him a warning. Finally, Nitter says “OK.” The judge walks away without saying a word! So then I call over a THIRD judge and I finally get one that realizes he should be watching the entire match. My turns go by like lightning: I untap my creatures, draw a card, attack with the Djinn and Spirit and say done. He’s desperately trying to get to Rebel Informer and keeps thinking endlessly about how to make it in time, but I know he won’t have enough mana before he dies and even if he did I could just play the second Djinn and hit him for the last four. We finish what should have been a lightning fast match in nine minutes. Now don’t get me wrong: I am in no way saying that Nitter was stalling or doing anything intentionally, just playing at a pace that would not be adequate to finish three games in a more complicated match. Unfortunately, judges never do anything about such things unless we’re in serious time trouble.

Round 2: Comer, Alan (Feature Match)

Huge groans all around. Alan is staying in the same hotel room, is on my team, and is playing the same exact decklist. At this point, one huge consideration is scouting. When the team divided over which deck to play, only five of us went with Skies and Klauser’s version was significantly modified. Unlike the usual situation where everyone’s walking around the tournament between rounds one and two talking about how we’re maindecking four Crimson Acolytes, there’s actually a chance that we can avoid being scouted. So our enemy isn’t eachother: Our enemy is the clock. Game one I come out lightning fast, getting Waterfront Bouncer advantage, using a Tangle Wire to tap him down for a while and playing a bunch of other creatures. He thinks about it, says “I can’t win this” which was true and he scooped up his cards. Game two I get no mana and he utterly destroys me.

Game three is the interesting one. I start off with a third turn Chimeric Idol, he puts down a Rishadan Airship and things are looking good: I have the tempo and play a Hatchling to stop the Airship while using a Sleight of Hand to find Unnatural Selection. The problem is that he uses the only Tangle Wire left in his deck to tap down my land for a while, and I get stuck with three Foils for counters that I can’t use. So I don’t have enough mana either and have to play my Airship with his still out, and he has the Unnatural Selection and suddenly I have a very dead Legend. He then had the only Troubled Spirit which he’d cast and no one had any bounce, and his attackers had nothing in their way. He attacked for the kill while I stared at counters I couldn’t use. I really needed one of the three to be a Thwart.

Round 3: White, James

We sit down and it’s time for the opening ceremonies. Worry. It starts out fine, with the flagbearers for the various nations marching down with mostly totally blank dead expressions on their faces as the soundtrack tells us to “put the body in motion” over and over again. All right, nothing I wasn’t prepared for. Next up is a speech by the brand manager, who seems to totally misunderstand both the history and development of Magic and his own job description. Magic brand are the people who tell R&D to make another Gerrard card or that they can’t print something really cool because it doesn’t fit in the brand. It’s a permission thing, with everything having to ‘fit the Magic brand.’ They also make really bad marketing and advertising campaigns. He seems like a nice guy with good intentions though. There’s also a statement from some local guy no one’s ever heard of. So far, so livable.

Then came the Native American dancers. These were amazingly well trained performers in the traditional Native American style, going through exquisite precise motions that illustrate their old way of life with style and grace. These movements have been passed down from generation to generation as they help us to remember gentler, simpler times. I’m assuming all that, because from my point of view they were a bunch of guys dressed in a lot of feathers moving around totally at random to the sound of a drum. It didn’t take long before I’d gotten the full appreciation I could get out of everything I understood and after that it steadily got harder and harder to stand. A few times I thought it was ready to stop, but no such luck. By the end of it, I was in a daze. Now don’t get me wrong, better this than traditional Japanese drums pounding louder than can possibly be imagined while I have a gigantic headache trying to play a Yawgmoth’s Bargain deck, although not as good as last year.

At any rate, it takes some of the wind out of my sails for a while, and I manage to make the only serious play mistake of the tournament by sideboarding incorrectly. James White and I have a really fun match, but he’s set up really well against me. He’s playing Nether-Go, which would normally be a great matchup, but he has multiple Vendetta and Misdirection maindeck. In short, he’s set up to operate extremely well under the Static Orb. Unfortunately I don’t figure this all out at the time (he didn’t show Vendetta game one, but did show Misdirection) and instead of playing it safe and taking out Static Orb which I should have done I leave them all in which was a clear mistake. It’s very possible that at the time the right move was to leave about two of the Orbs in, since I didn’t know enough about his deck yet. At any rate, game one he uses Dominate to take my Waterfront Bouncer and wrecks me with Probe and Fact or Fiction while Recoil contains the Static Orbs. Game two the Orb stays out and he kills everything capable of stopping his Nether Spirits while I look at cards my Troublesome Spirit is keeping me from casting, and it can’t attack because I’m behind on life. There’s no way out, and I lose the match.

Round 4: Hoelzel, Reinhard

He was playing Fires, a deck long past its prime. Game one I play the Static Orb down early, he plays a Blastoderm and I lock it down with a Tangle Wire. Now he’s used his one burst of free mana and left me with high double digit life, and my creatures just come down for the kill while he lacks the mana to do anything. Then I get to do what we figured out crushes Fires decks: Out come four Rishadan Airships and three Waterfront Bouncers, in come two Hibernation, one Tangle Wire and the four Indentured Djinns! What’s a Flametonge Kavu? I’m not sure. The problem this game is that while the Orb comes down I don’t really have anything besides the two Indentured Djinns, so I won’t be able to counter the Flametonge Kavu or stop him from getting the mana. Oh well. I hit him for three cards, he has the FTK. I hit him for three more, and this one does just fine. A Tangle Wire contains the situation, I find the counter for his Ice on the Orb, and an Idol comes down to deal with the Kavu while the Djinn moves in for the kill.

Round 5: Marsden, Mark

Mark is playing Black/Red, which is another one of those decks that wasn’t going to show up. The reason it did was that it’s set up very well to deal with Blue/Green, getting a number of “turn one kills” with Ritual-Plague Spitter against some teammates playing the Blue/Green deck. In our match, he plays the first Spitter and I Foil it, but then the second one comes into play. He has enough removal to kill everything I play with more than one toughness and goes in for the win. Game two is similar, except that I draw too much land, the first Spitter resolves and my next three draws are Bouncer and two Hatchlings. I boarded out the Airships to avoid this problem! I put in Alexi, the third Troublesome and the third Wire. He killed everything I put down, and once again I died. To say the least I wasn’t happy about getting three losses with this deck.

Round 6: Qvist, Thomas

Qvist starts out with a bunch of Islands and counters my early threats. The Static Orb comes out when he puts down a Star Compass. My wondering can stop when he plays a Rising Waters. I confirm with a judge that this works like I think it does, to be safe. What happens is we untap two nonland permanents then untap one land. Which translates into real game terms as sitting there while he untaps a Sky Diamond, a Star Compass and a Rishadan Port and Ports the land I untap every turn. Eventually I get four lands and I play Rishadan Airship with Daze mana up. It gets through, and he soon plays a Thieving Magpie to stop it. I get my chance there with him tapped out, knock on the deck and out pops Waterfront Bouncer. With his help the Airship goes in for the kill, with a brief pause due to a Wash Out. Game two I sideboard out the Static Orbs and go into beatdown deck mode, but I leave the Djinns out because he’ll surely have a bunch of bounce. He plays a turn three Magpie and I have the Foil for it, he Gushes in response and doesn’t find a Foil for the Foil. All he does is play two more of Compass/Sky Diamond, and I start playing out a mana curve of creatures. He has no answer for it and scoops, leaving me 3-3 on the day.

No one else playing the deck ended up worse than 4-2. So at this point, I’d used up what should have been the best day and suddenly I only had one more loss to give if I wanted to make the top eight. My plan in draft had been to prepare a way to go 4-2 without too much risk. This kind of put a damper on those plans, but Day 2 was coming regardless...

- Zvi Mowshowitz

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