Arena Championship 7

Two weekends ago I participated in Arena Championship 7, playing Gruul Aggro. 

I prepared for the event with fellow Arena Championship competitors James Zhi, Arne Huschenbeth, and Matt Saypoff, with plenty of others who weren't qualified lending a hand as well. About a month prior, Mark Jacobson organized a Discord server to discuss Standard in preparation for the November Arena Qualifier (which I played) and the Atlanta Spotlight Series event (which I won't be playing). It made sense at that point to use the group for Arena Championship prep also. 

For the Arena Qualifier (three weeks before the Arena Championship and two weeks before deck submission) I landed on Dimir Midrange, a build pioneered by Lukas Honnay and Jitse Goutbeek, which I believe was ahead of its time. It cut the big creatures (Preacher and Sheoldred) while running Mockingbirds and maxing out on Kaitos and Enduring Curiosities, essentially playing as a pure tempo deck game 1. This gave it a big leg up versus other Black Midrange lists like Golgari (maybe the most popular deck at the time) and Dimir. Meanwhile, the sideboard plan of more removal and Mazemind Tome allowed it to cut the tempo threats and turn into a control deck versus Red Aggro. 

I went 7-2 on Day 1 to make it to the second day. On Day 2 I started 2-0 before losing two straight to end the run. It was a fun tournament because the quality of opposition was extremely high, including,  just among the names I recognized, at least four players with a Pro Tour top 8 (Kyle Rose, Karl Sarap, Adam Edelson, and Max Rappaport) and at least two more Pro Tour mainstays in Adriano Moscato and Teruya Kakumae. That's quite the competition for an Arena event. 

The card we missed was Floodpits Drowner. One or two of us briefly tried the card and found it low power level, and the others (including myself) were more than willing to accept this conclusion because the card just looked weak. At the same time, I recognized the Bats were mediocre in the deck and didn't fit the theme well. The entire deck is strong against removal, with the exception of the Bat, and replacing it with Drowner would have leaned harder into the tempo plan and the "mitigating removal" plan. 

I went 3-0 against Red Aggro, each played by elite opponents, but the games were razor close and I was left wondering how good the matchup actually was. In the following days it became progressively clearer that Dimir builds were having to choose between being better pre-board against Red (Preacher and Sheoldred) or Black Midrange (cutting the big black creatures in favor of more tempo). Going into Arena Championship testing, Dimir was still one of my frontrunners, but it had become public enemy number one and the format was adapting to it. That meant people playing archetypes like Convoke that are structurally advantaged versus Dimir, and it also meant that Dimir lists were becoming quite inbred to beat the mirror. Once I started getting paired versus mirror matches running Faebloom Trick, which is amazing in the mirror but seemed too weak overall, I decided Dimir had gotten too inbred and looked elsewhere. 

I turned to Gruul. With Innkeeper's Talent and Questing Druid, Gruul grinds much better against midrange and control than Mono Red. Moreover, Gruul is an intrinsically strong deck, arguably the most powerful in the format. But it also seemed particularly well positioned for this moment:

• It was very strong against Dimir's game 1 configuration, which usually included no Preacher/Sheoldred and sometimes even cards like Saiba Cryptomancer and Faebloom Trick. Small blue creatures don't block well against big Gruul creatures.
• It was (at least slightly) favored against the decks trying to prey on Dimir, including Convoke, Simic Tempo, and Zur Domain. 
• Golgari, which I believe to be Gruul's worst matchup among the common decks, was being pushed out of the format by Dimir. 

In the final days before deck submission, Dimir started adapting a full sideboard plan against Red consisting of boarding into a bunch of Preachers and Sheoldreds, along with Gix's Command. This was scary, but we still liked Gruul's positioning overall. We tried to adapt to the big black creatures with four answers (Scorching Shot/Obliterating Bolt) in the 75. 

We realized in the final days that Convoke was likely well positioned, but it felt too late to switch. Also, Convoke is inconsistent and has extremely painful mana consisting almost entirely of painlands and fastlands. It seemed like Convoke would be the best choice if (and only if) Dimir was a huge percentage of the field, whereas Gruul was still a good choice in such a metagame and a fine choice in any other reasonably possible metagame. So Matt, Arne, and I stuck with Gruul.

James, meanwhile, played a cool Sultai Terror Tempo deck, which tried to shore up the archetype's weakness against Red Aggro with maindeck black removal, particularly Nowhere to Run. This deck seemed good to me, but I didn't have enough time to really dig into it. 

I submitted Gruul on deck submission day, the Monday before the tournament. I tried to relax a bit the next couple days, getting in a few practice matches here and there. Upon seeing the metagame breakdown that was released Friday, the day before the event, I felt good about our choice. There was tons of Dimir, almost no Golgari, and I wasn't particularly scared of facing anything among the smattering of other decks, most of which I assume were chosen for their Dimir matchup.

With so much Dimir in the field, I decided to spend time on the last day prior to the event practicing the matchup. Across eight matches the game and match score was about even and the matchup felt about as close to 50/50 as it gets. This worried me, because our assumption had been that Gruul is favored. I think in retrospect the Dimir builds developed better sideboard plans versus Red Aggro in the final days before deck submission. Also cards that had recently become stock in Dimir, like Tishana's Tidebinder, were better against Red Aggro than I had suspected. Still, I was feeling decent: even if the Dimir matchup were close to even, the other matchups all seemed fine with the exception of Golgari, and there were only three copies of that. 

Of course, round 1 I was paired against Golgari, and not only Golgari but just about the most hateful version imaginable, with two maindeck(!) Gix's Command, tons of removal, and tons of non-Demon giant creatures (against which Pawpatch Formation doesn't work) to overload my limited removal. I got lucky to win. Game 1 I had 2 Burst Lightning for 2 Lllanowar Elves and my opponent get stuck on three lands. Game 2 I lost to removal and a slew of Sentinel of the Nameless City. Game 3 I had the perfect draw and my opponent stumbled. After the match I mentioned to my opponent that I felt I had gotten lucky and he told me he was feeling down about his deck choice. I told him there's no use worrying about that at this point; all we can do now is play the games. My opponent started 0-2 and then went 4-0 the rest of the way to qualify for Day 2. At the conclusion of Day 1 he sent me a nice message thanking me for the pep talk. 

Record: 1-0

In round 2 I was paired versus Mono Red. Game 1 is unfavored due to them having more and better removal, but after sideboard we bring in more removal and have a better late-game, so we are favored post-board. Still, games often come down to who is on the play or who casts more Scorching Nemeses. I won game 1, which had me feeling good. Then my opponent stole both post-sideboard games with Twisted Fealty, a card that I would not consider good versus Gruul, but it worked. My opponent put me to negative 1 life in game 3 with Twisted Fealty plus Mostrous Rage on the pivotal turn. I felt like I had the tools to win this game and was frustrated that I put myself dead to this combination of cards. In the moment, I was certain I had thrown the game away, and I felt my mindset spiraling. Though, thinking about it a bit more before round 3, it wasn't clear-cut what a better line would have been. (Or did I just convince myself of that to stop the spiral?)

Record: 1-1

Round 3 was against the mirror, which was actually a cross between Mono Red and Gruul. Overall I had better draws and I don't remember much else from the match other than I thought our plan for the mirror put us in a good position post-board. I had been feeling jittery the first three rounds. I think my plays were generally alright, but my focus was off and I was rushing through decisions. Each round was so individually important that I was overly stressed and it was affecting my decision-making. I was going to need outside intervention to slow down and concentrate. Luckily, that outside intervention came from an unexpected source. 

Record: 2-1

***BRIEF ASIDE***

I will now complain about several elements of this tournament that ranged from very frustrating to frankly unfair. None of this is meant as a slight against the people working the tournament, including those doing coverage, organizing the event, or judging. The tournament itself was very efficiently run and everyone was extremely nice and communicative during the event. I don't blame those in the trenches running the show for what I'm about to gripe about.

***END BRIEF ASIDE***

The first big problem with this event was the lack of communication leading up to it. I qualified in July and was not contacted by anyone for weeks. I heard that it took others months to receive any communication after qualifying. It took even longer for WOTC to announce the format or even pick a date for the event. I was supposed to book a trip in December and I wasn't able to do so until tickets were very expensive because it took so long to find out when the event would be. Those who needed to request time off from work or who were trying to make plans had no choice but to plead with WOTC to finally just pick a date for the event, but no date came until, six weeks before the event would ultimately be held, WOTC dropped the date in an update to an old web page without any announcement whatsoever. We received an email about the date a week or two later, but by then it was just about a month before the event. Less than three weeks before deck submission we were finally told the format (Standard, i.e. no draft for the first time in an Arena Championship). 

The second big problem was the structure: 48 participants, six rounds of swiss, then the top 24 players make it to the elimination rounds, with the eight best records receiving a bye into the top 16. To provide some context, a lot of money was on the line ($250,000 prize pool, $30,000 for first place), plus two Worlds invites and 16 Pro Tour invites. It was a very difficult tournament to qualify for. And it was the most important tournament on the entire Arena client. So it felt unfair to reduce all of that to the tiny sample of six swiss rounds. Far worse was the fact that the number of rounds essentially maximized the effect of tiebreakers: about half of the 3-3s would make the top 24 and half would miss! (Also, a few 4-2s would finish in the top 8 and the rest would finish between 9th and 24th.) Six rounds was a wild choice because adding just one additional round would have yielded a clean (or nearly clean) cut for top 24. Moreover, this issue was entirely foreseeable; taking the number of players and chopping them in half after six rounds is obviously going to result in many players with the same record on either side of the cutoff. I flagged this to WOTC shortly after they announced the structure and received no response. Tiebreakers play a role in almost every Magic tournament, but their impact could have been significantly minimized here with some forethought. And then there was the fact that places 9-24 after the swiss rounds would play a one-match playoff for top 16, i.e. a Pro Tour qualification. Forcing 16 players to play a PTQ final for their first match of the second day is cruel. Between this and the fact tiebreakers would decide the tournament for a huge portion of the field, this was the most brutal tournament structure I've ever played. 

The third big problem was that if you were asked to participate in a feature match, you were requested Ito both stream Arena and stream a video of your face which, when coupled with how memory-intensive Arena is in the first place, led to my computer's RAM holding on for dear life. I know of at least one instance in which a player's Arena crashed during his feature match and he was forced to play the rest of the round on his phone after skipping his turn. Again, I assign absolutely zero fault to the coverage team, who were great. The fault lies with the lack of spectator mode on Arena and whoever makes the decision not to contribute resources to fixing that. 

Going into round four I still could not shake the jitters. I needed to slow down and concentrate. And then I was called to a feature match. As soon as the first game began, my computer was so overburdened that gameplay lagged to a crawl; even each turn's draw step animation seemed to take a full second. While earlier in the tournament I was playing fast and anxiously, in round 4 even if I had wanted to play faster it would have been physically impossible. From that point forward, I was focused and deliberate. I faced Dimir in round four, and then again in round five, and then yet again in round six. I was generally happy with how I played the second half of Day 1. 

In round four, game 1 my opponent kept a hand with no black mana and never drew out of it, and I was able to win the game despite drawing a land almost every single turn. I could have played a little more aggressively a couple of the turns, but it felt almost impossible to lose if I played ultra-conservatively, so I did that. It likely wasn't optimal, though. Game 2 I tried to play around Malicious Eclipse on turn 2 before deciding not to play around it once my opponent didn't play a second black on turn 3 and I was so low on resources it no longer felt worth it. The key play occurred on turn 4. Rather than cast Cut Down on his own turn while I was tapped out, my opponent decided to pass with Negate up, baiting me to cast the Monstrous Rage he knew I had on my own turn to get me to waste a mana. But I topdecked Innkeeper's Talent, which now my opponent didn't have a Negate for, and the game spiraled from there. 

Record: 3-1

I cannot remember round five because I'm writing this two weeks after the tournament. I just remember a three fairly close and fairly normal games of Magic. Gruul versus Dimir is usually close, dynamic, and interesting. 

Record: 4-1

I had now locked Day 2, i.e. the top 24 elimination rounds. But going into this event my goal was to top 16 and qualify for the Pro Tour. The next and final round was the big one. 

Round six. Win and I'm 5-1 and into the top 16; lose and I get one last PTQ final first thing tomorrow morning. In game 1 we both mulliganed to five. I was on the play and had a good curve, and it wasn't particularly close. In game 2 I played Innkeeper's Talent on turn 2 when my opponent was holding removal up to waste his mana. He didn't have a third land, but found it with a map activation, and then immediately found the fourth with another map activation. From this point forward I was on the back foot, but I was able to grind my way back to parity, with an Innkeeper's Talent ready to take over, until my opponent topdecked Enduring Curiosity. 

The deciding game was the most exciting of the tournament. Both I and my opponent kept fantastic 7-card hands. My turn 3 was interesting from my opponent's side; they ended up just not spending their mana at all. When they didn't kill my Challenger but then the following turn killed my Nemesis, it started to seem likely they had one of their two Gix's Command. [At this point the stream crashed; it was revived at this link.] When they didn't play a creature on turn 3 or 4, it seemed highly likely they had a Command. (What I didn't realize was that they actually had two!) Therefore on my turn 5 I continued to play methodically, holding creatures and leaving up Monstrous Rage and Burst Lightning to protect my creatures from the Command. Fortunately my hand allowed me to play around Command about as well as possible, at the cost of some tempo, but again, my opponent wasn't really doing anything. A couple turns later I forced out the first Command. On my following turn my opponent was representing Cut Down and so I played around that plus second Command by once against not committing too many creatures and keeping up Monstrous Rage. This play may have been too passive, but in general it felt like the opponent's hand was extremely reactive and I had enough gas to keep grinding through the reaction. The fact my opponent still nearly stabilized after all of that made me question some of my decisions in the moment, but I'm happy with how I played the game. My opponent played really well too to maximize his Commands. In the end, my opponent played second Command plus chumper and I had a haste creature plus removal to swing for lethal, clinching top 8 after the swiss and the Pro Tour invite. 

Record: 5-1

I went to bed that night very happy to have achieved my goal. The rest of the Gruul contingent, Matt and Arne, each went 4-2, bringing the total Day 1 Gruul record to a fantastic 13-5. I had already locked top 16 and $7,500 but was excited to play for even more now that the pressure was off. It seemed like we were primed for some good runs in the elimination rounds. 

In game 1 of my own match, which was a rematch against my Round 5 opponent, I had a creature-heavy draw and my opponent didn't have early removal, which should have put me in good position, but I didn't have Talent, Druid, or Rage to pull ahead and/or finish the game. I once again played passively, though in this case it was to not run my creatures into blockers rather than to play around removal/wraths, but it ended up lining up more awkwardly than in prior matches because I did not draw any grindy cards (Manifold Mouse/Innkeeper/Druid) to take advantage of playing a longer game. Eventually I determined I didn't have a better move than to run my two Challengers into a potential Curiosity because I was dead to Curiosity anyway. They had it. Game 2 I flooded really hard, and my tournament was abruptly over. 

Day 2 did not go well for the others either. Matt (playing for a PT invite) and Arne (playing for lots of cash as he was already qualified) each also lost their first elimination round to Dimir, bringing our record on that day to 0-3 overall and 0-3 versus Dimir. At the risk of sounding reductive, I think our draws were just good Day 1 and bad Day 2. The three of us averaged more than one mulligan per game across our three Day 2 matches and we went out with a whimper. 

Despite the awkward ending I'm personally satisfied with $7,500 and a Pro Tour invite. As most of my engagement with Magic these days is through the long-shot monthly Arena qualifiers, it seemed highly plausible I'd never get to play another Pro Tour. I'm very happy this did not turn out to be the case! 

Qualifying for the Arena Championship

This past weekend I was fortunate to qualify for the Arena Championship playing a different take on Boros Energy in Historic.

(Scroll down for an exportable decklist.) 

(On day 1 I played a Phelia over the Suncleanser, but cut Phelia for day 2 since it wasn't doing much and its sizing isn't good for attacking the mirror. I also wanted to cut the Static Prison due to our lack of energy sources and how Suncleanser wrecks it, but I couldn't figure out what to cut it for.)

I hadn't been enjoying the American RCQ/RC system, so awhile back I decided to stop engaging with that system (for at least the time being) and instead cash in my limited spare time on the Arena Championship Qualifiers. These events are very difficult to spike, but they are also extremely convenient for a Magic tournament, letting players play matches on demand. Over the past seven months or so that I've been playing these events, I've been winning at a high clip but floundering on day 2, where the competition is very tough. I managed to make two day 2s under the prior system (requiring 7-1 or 7-0 on day 1), before winning a combined two matches on day 2 between those two weekends, to squander great odds at an Arena Championship via a "leaderboard invite." Fortunately, recently Wizards of the Coast changed the tournament structure to allow 7-2 to also qualify for the second day, which encouraged me to keep engaging with the system despite its difficulty. 

More important to my decision to keep playing these events was that I found a great group of players to prep with. Starting with the Alchemy qualifier in March, I've been preparing for these events with  Lukas Honnay, Tim Schaufert, Jitse Goutbeek, and Kevin Mittertreiner for each weekend, and a number of other great folks who have joined on for one or more qualifiers. This group has the best vibes of any Magic squad I've been a part of, due to everyone being supportive, kind, and great communicators. 

I did not prep as much for this qualifier as I had for the past few, because I wasn't sure I'd even be able to play in it. Complicating matters was that the event fell on a weekend during which I'd be on a family vacation to Las Vegas. Having been raised in a family of Grateful Dead fanatics (known as "Deadheads"), I and six other members of my family converged on the Sphere in Las Vegas this past week to take in three Dead and Company shows. This meant that playing this event would require the following schedule:

• Get home from Thursday night concert at 1am (Pacific Time)
• Wake up at 6am, drink a coffee, speedrun the qualifier play-in to finish by 9am to hang out with my family
• Get home from Friday night concert at 1am
• Wake up at 6am, drink a coffee, speedrun day 1 of the qualifier to finish by 9am to hang out with my family
• Get home from Saturday night concert at 1am
• Wake up at 6am, drink two coffees, speedrun day 2 of the qualifier to finish by 9am to rush to airport for flight home

I would highly recommend seeing a Dead and Company show at the Sphere, but I would not recommend the above schedule. I would also highly recommend our Historic deck. Prior to prepping for this event I hadn't played Historic in many months, but it quickly became clear that Boros Energy was broken and going to be at least half of the field. The rest of the field mostly consisted of Jeskai Energy Control and a smattering of combo decks like Yawgmoth, Charbelcher, and Shifting Woodland. Boros Energy seemed too good not to play--it is truly a broken deck, probably at Caw-Blade/Oko levels. Within Boros Energy, there were two major sub-archetypes: Lurrus and Jegantha. We didn't like the Lurrus builds because they were often playing a lot of bad cards like Soul Warden and, even though the deck could be built without these cards (and indeed some players managed to build Lurrus decks with sacrifice synergies and other solid cards in those slots), playing so many 1- and 2-drop threats made the deck very weak to Wrath of the Skies. 

We quickly gravitated to the Jegantha builds with Fable and Phlage because they were less one-dimensional and went bigger for an advantage in the "mirror." Still, a lot of games came down to an early Guide of Souls/Ocelot Pride start snowballing out of control, at which point Fable and Phlage were too slow. The key breakthroughs were as follows (many came from Tim or Lukas, but everybody contributed):

--Amped Raptor was an unreliable play without excess energy because you could hit a 3-drop (or a dead removal spell), and had a poor body in the mirror, which isn't about attacking and blocking but very much about Goblin Bombardment. Also, cutting Raptor allowed us to cut the weakest land, Aether Hub, and barely rely on energy at all, to the point where opposing Suncleansers (one of the most popular sideboard cards for the mirror) were ineffective against us.

--Impetuous Lootmonger, on the other hand, is great in the mirror, has two toughness against Goblin Bombardment and, together with the next card mentioned, lets us play 4 Bombardment and loot away the extra copies.  

--Seasoned Pyromancer is similar to Fable, except it works much better with Bombardment and catches you up when you're behind on board. It meant giving up Jegantha, but it's worth it. And sometimes you have zero cards in hand and it's better than Fable in those spots.

--Because the mirror is so snowbally, having a bunch of 1-mana removal, particularly on the draw, is critical. Our build has an amazing late-game, it just needs to get there. Being on the draw in the mirror meant boarding in 1-mana removal and cutting Ocelots, which are bad when you're not pressing the advantage. 

I went 7-0 in the "mirror," by which I mean RW-base Goblin Bombardment decks. That includes Lurrus builds, Jegantha builds, Mardu builds, and sacrifice builds. I went 1-1 versus Strict Proctor Jeskai, which seemed like a tough matchup because Proctor itself is naturally very strong against our deck. I went 1-0 against Charbelcher (tough matchup, I got lucky, see below), 1-0 against Shifting Woodland (I think this is a good matchup because we have a bunch of graveyard hate), and 3-1 against Jeskai Control (I think this matchup is solid because we have a big sideboard for it and we can grind them out if we stop them from escaping Phlage via either Surgical Extraction or Thraben Charm). 

Our team crushed day 1 to a degree I had never seen before in one of these events. Kevin, Lukas, and Matt Saypoff (another player on our team and my childhood buddy) went 7-0, while Tim ended up 5-3 after a 5-0 start. I started 5-0 also (literally our entire group started 5-0) but had to squeak into day 2 at 7-2, beating Daniel Brodie (fake-news) on a Lurrus Boros deck with sacrifice synergies in the final round. I had a nut-draw in game 3 after making a lot of tough judgment calls and losing game 2. 

I knew going into day 2 things were going to be chaotic. My lack of sleep was catching up with me and my entire family was leaving for the airport at 9am to fly home. I was extremely fortunate that I did not drop a single game until the final round, and that the final round was against Belcher, a fast matchup. If more matches went to game 3, or I lost a round, I don't think I would have finished in time. 

Whether due to lack or sleep, or rushing to finish my matches, or something else, I made multiple big blunders on day 2. In round 2 I was paired against former MPL player Lucas Esper Berthoud (bertu) on Jegantha Boros. In game 2, I was well ahead on board, but Lucas would be able to swing the game if he escaped a Phlage. I activated Ajani's 0 ability and targeted a Guide of Souls rather than a token, which put Lucas on five cards in the graveyard to almost escape Phlage. Fortunately for me Lucas did not topdeck a Vista or cheap piece of interaction to go directly to his graveyard, and I won despite my mistake. 

In the final round I was paired against Charbelcher. I think this has to be a very hard matchup because we do not have much of a sideboard versus them (really just two Disruptor Flutes) and they goldfish faster than us. I barely managed to win game 1 by racing, then game 2 I got Charbelcher'd, and then game 3 began at about 8:25am, with plans to meet my family in the hotel lobby at 8:50 and the potential to need to play another match if I lost. I had a fantastic draw of pressure and a Flute. But I made an error, casting a turn 3 Flute, which was earlier than I needed to cast it, instead of casting the front side of Phlage to Helix my opponent. I was unfamiliar with the Belcher deck and didn't know how quickly it would be able to combo. It turned out they were at least two turns away still, so I should have used my mana better and Helixed the opponent. Instead, a couple turns later I ended up in the following spot: I have an army of creatures, my opponent has three Eldrazi Spawns, and I have a Flute in play, naming Charbelcher. I alpha strike my opponent, they chump with three Spawns, sacrifice one and use a leftover red mana to Abrade my Flute, and they fall to 1 life.  I believe that if I had timed my Flute better, they would never have had the chance to Abrade it before losing to lethal damage. As things stood, though, I passed the turn to my opponent, at one life and five mana. They cast Gamble for an Irencrag Feat and then we had a coinflip to determine which of us would qualify for the Arena Championship.

https://x.com/richua__mtg/status/1812510982474011054

The coinflip: a 2/4 chance of my opponent discarding either Belcher or the Feat. They discarded the Feat, they emoted "Good Game," I attacked for lethal, and I ran down to the lobby to meet my family. 

In the end, of the five of us who played the deck, Matt and I both got to six wins and qualified for the Arena Championship, while Lukas and Kevin got to four wins and (per the new rules) get to skip straight to day 2 in the next qualifier. We won 87% of our day 1 matches and 80% of our day 2 matches. I believe we won over 90% of our mirror matches. We couldn't believe how well we performed. And it was immensely satisfying to see our effort and team camaraderie get rewarded. 

Mirror SB Guide:

OTP: -3 Galvanic Discharge-1 Static Prison +2 Portable Hole +2 Prismatic Ending, and versus Jegantha Boros also -1 Galvanic Discharge +1 Tajic, Legion's Valor

OTD: -4 Ocelot Pride -1 Static Prison +2 Portable Hole +2 Prismatic Ending +1 Tajic, Legion's Valor (maybe also -1 Galvanic Discharge +1 Tajic, Legion's Valor against Jegantha Boros)

Jeskai Control SB Guide:

-4 Galvanic Discharge -2 Portable Hole -1 Static Prison -2 Goblin Bombardment 

+2 Karlach, Raging Tiefling +3 Tajic, Legion's Valor +2 Thraben Charm +2 Surgical Extraction

[versus Proctor, I was keeping in the 4 Discharges and not bringing in Karlachs or Surgicals]

Exportable Decklist:

Deck

1 Witch Enchanter (MH3) 239

4 Ajani, Nacatl Pariah (MH3) 237

4 Impetuous Lootmonger (Y24) 12

2 Arena of Glory (MH3) 215

4 Sunbaked Canyon (MH1) 247

4 Seasoned Pyromancer (MH1) 145

4 Inspiring Vantage (OTJ) 269

4 Galvanic Discharge (MH3) 122

4 Guide of Souls (MH3) 29

2 Mountain (KTK) 256

4 Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury (MH3) 197

2 Plains (KTK) 250

4 Goblin Bombardment (WOT) 43

4 Sacred Foundry (GRN) 254

4 Ocelot Pride (MH3) 38

4 Prismatic Vista (SPG) 38

1 Suncleanser (M19) 39

2 Portable Hole (AFR) 33

1 Needleverge Pathway (ZNR) 263

1 Static Prison (MH3) 44

Sideboard

1 Karlach, Raging Tiefling (HBG) 14

2 Surgical Extraction (OTP) 19

2 Portable Hole (AFR) 33

2 Thraben Charm (MH3) 45

1 Karlach, Raging Tiefling (HBG) 14

3 Tajic, Legion's Valor (Y24) 28

2 Disruptor Flute (MH3) 209

2 Prismatic Ending (SPG) 40

When You Can't Afford to Play Around It

One of the earliest things we learn in our foray into competitive Magic is to not play around cards we cannot beat. If you are at 3 life and your opponent attacks their 2/2 into your 3/3, you always block because, if you play around a pump spell by not blocking, they cast the pump spell on their 2/2 and you lose. Another example: your aggro deck has 6 power on the board and you just attacked your control opponent to 8. If your last card in hand is a 2/2 you should play it, because if the opponent casts Wrath of God effect next turn you are losing anyway, even if you hold the 2/2.

The reason we use these examples to teach this concept is that they reduce the concept to very simple terms. In the event the opponent does have the card we’re worried about, regardless of the choice we make we clearly lose the game on the spot. Literally on the spot, in the case of the pump spell example; in the Wrath example, our win percentage is reduced to ~0% on the spot, even if the game may continue for several more turns. Both examples occur in the very late stages of the game. But to maximize our chance of winning, we can’t wait until the final turns of a game; we always need to be on the lookout for these cases. These situations occur all the time, as early as the first turn.

Example #1:

You’re playing Murktide in Modern against 4C Beanstalk Omnath. Your opponent is on the play and has kept 7 cards. You mulligan to 6. Your opponent plays a fetchland and passes (presumably to fetch a Triome on your end step). You draw for your first turn and your hand consists of lands, Ragavan, Consider, Counterspell, and Expressive Iteration. The question: whether to hold up Consider or cast turn 1  Ragavan into a possible Wrenn and Six, which, if the opponent has it, will likely win them the game on the spot.

In this situation, I cast Ragavan. If you don’t cast the Ragavan you’ll still likely lose to Wrenn if the opponent has it, and now you’ll lose to most non-Wrenn draws too. For example, what if their 2-drop is Beanstalk instead of Wrenn? Now you can’t pressure them and they’ll grind you out. Even if the opponent is around 50% to cast Wrenn and, say, 80% to win if they immediately kill your Ragavan (i.e., you’re 40% to lose the game right away if you cast the Ragavan), your win percentage is even lower if you pass the turn. It’s tempting to hold up Consider, but I don’t think this is a winning play.

Example #2:

I remember a few years ago I was prepping for one of the Arena Pro Tours, the Strixhaven Championship. Our team was pretty set on Phoenix, but in the final day or two of testing Jeskai Control emerged as a dark horse. We were interested in Jeskai in part because it had a great Phoenix matchup. It had cards like Anger of the Gods and Rest in Peace to stop the Phoenixes and plenty of cheap removal and counters for the other threats. From the Phoenix side, we were trying out Improbable Alliance as a threat that could dodge the removal of the control deck. (Spoiler alert: we determined Alliance wasn’t reliable enough and didn’t end up playing it. We also determined Phoenix was too strong in general and so we dismissed Jeskai.)

I was watching a teammate test Phoenix against Jeskai. I can’t recall the exact hands, but I remember it was the Phoenix player’s turn 2 on the draw, it was post-sideboard, and the Jeskai deck had 2 mana up, representing one of 7 counterspells they could cast here (Dovin’s Veto or Mystical Dispute). The Phoenix player played their second land and their hand was several cantrips and an Improbable Alliance. The question was: should they play the Improbable Alliance into a likely counter, thus leaving them with zero threats, or should they play around a counter by instead playing a couple of 1-mana cantrips? The player elected to cast the cantrips. I didn’t think much of the play in the moment, but I remember Matti Kuisma and Sam Rolph (two extremely strong players) butting in that they’d have cast the Alliance.

Reflecting on it, I think casting Alliance was clearly the correct play. It feels very bad to slam your only threat into a likely counter, significantly reducing your chances of winning the game on the spot if they have it. But the overall situation (and the matchup) was too bad to play passively; even if the opponent was, say, 65% to have a counter, spending your early turns casting cantrips instead of trying to pressure the control opponent is a recipe for a very likely loss. Moreover, Veto is impossible to play around: it is a hard counter that you cannot interact with, even if you were to find a counter of your own. Given your hand and given the matchup, you need to try and steal this game, so you should take your ~35% shot to put a sticky threat onto the board and try to ride it to victory. In fact, while 35% sounds bad, that number gets even worse as the game progresses, as the Jeskai player sees more cards and has more chances to find a counter.

Example #3:

You’re playing Pioneer UW Spirits against Creativity. It’s post-sideboard, so the opponent will certainly have 3-4 Shark Typhoon, and they’ve boarded out their main combo pieces such that their deck is now mostly a pile of Sharks, removal, cantrips, Fable of the Mirror Breakers, and Hullbreaker Horrors. You’re on the draw. On their turn 1 they play red land and pass. You cast turn 1 Mausoleum Wanderer and it gets hit with a Spikefield Hazard. On their turn 2 they play blue land and pass. On your turn 2 you pass with counter and Rattlechains up. On your end step, they cast Impulse (it resolves). On their turn 3 they play third land and pass with five cards in hand. On their end step, you flash in Rattlechains.

You draw for your third turn and your hand is 2 Lofty Denial, Spell Queller, and lands. Your decision is whether to attack with Rattlechains into a possible Shark Typhoon. You may reason that the Shark isn’t just possible, but actively likely: the opponent didn’t cast a burn spell on your Rattlechains on their end step (which they would do to prevent you from untapping and responding to their removal with a Rattlechains or other protection spell), and they didn’t cast Fable. If you attack and the opponent has Shark Typhoon, you pretty much can no longer win the game: you will have no pressure on the board to leverage your reactive cards. But if you don’t attack, you’re ceding the pressure you do have and giving the opponent far too much time. Even if your hand were more proactive, unless it had Supreme Phantom, this situation is not getting any better. You need to be clocking the opponent to have any shot this game. Therefore, you should be attacking—

…But wait. The cost of playing around Shark is actually low! You can neglect to attack, pass the turn, see if the opponent cycles Shark on your end step, and then, if they don’t, you can start attacking on future turns. Essentially, you give up 2 damage now for the information on whether they currently have Shark.

Even if a card seems difficult or impossible to play around forever, check to see if the cost of playing around it now is actually quite low. If there are ways to draw out the card you are worried about at a relatively low cost (in this case, missing out on 2 damage), take advantage of that. Note that in Example #1, the cost of not going for the riskier line is extremely high (giving up a hit with Ragavan), while in Example #2, there is no realistic way to draw out the counters you are worried about.

How to Spot:

Spotting cases where you cannot afford to play around cards is a highly contextual risk-reward calculation. But the above situations have an important commonality: in all of them, you are in a bad spot. Often (as in the above cases), not only is the spot bad in the abstract, but the matchup is bad as a whole. Or you may be on the draw with your tempo deck, or you may have mulliganed. I.e., you will need to get lucky in order to win. When you are behind, you need to take more risks. If you feel bad about your chances of winning in a given spot, stop and think about what it would take for you to win. Often that will involve the opponent simply not having the card you are worried about.

But before you commit to making a risky play, be mindful of low-cost ways to avoid playing directly into a card before you absolutely have to. If the card CAN be played around (unlike Example #2), and the cost of doing so is relatively low (unlike Example #1), then you can, in fact, afford to play around it (like Example #3).

Conclusion:

For an advanced player, late-game situations when it is not possible or wise to play around a card are fairly easy to identify. But there are many harder to spot situations throughout games of Magic where to play around cards is to reduce your chance of winning. These situations can arise as early as turn 1. If you do not spot these cases, you will give up a significant chance of stealing games.