Life.deck from Dutch Premodern tournament
Introduction
Hi all! I’m not much into social media (had to make a Facebook account for this post) but I received some questions/reactions from opponents while playing the Life of Brian Freeze deck I brewed for the Dutch Nationals Premodern at the Uthden Troll Cup. I also heard there were some questions here on Facebook as well. Since I loved reading deck techs, and primers and tournament reports when I first picked up the game (+- 1998), I decided to write a rundown of my background in the format, how the deck came to be, card choices for main deck and sideboard, a tournament report, overall impression of the deck and potential changes to the deck. The decklist has been posted on TC Decks (https://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=39831&iddeck=423850).
The below text has become a LOT longer than I anticipated - apologies in advance. I have included headings for each section, so you can skip the parts that don’t interest you. Think of this as a way to give back some content to all of you who are making this format grow; I hope you’ll enjoy it.
Some background
After not having played the game for close to twenty years, I learned about the Premodern format by chance three years ago was immediately drawn to it for nostalgic reasons. Another huge draw was seeing how much opportunity the format provides for theorycrafting, brewing and piloting rogue decks (I loved the second ‘spicy’ edition of the Premodern Showdown Series and had all Phil Nguyen's decks for that event assembled at some time). Also, there is a lot of quality content covering the format. Unfortunately, due to chronically being swamped at work and having young kids, I now only get to enjoy the podcasts, which I can listen to on my commute to work (Spike Colony, All Tings Considered, I’ve got ?????’s and the Premodcast). For the same reason, I don’t get to play much. In fact, the rounds at the Dutch Nationals are the only games I play each year, competitive or otherwise. This means I have zero experience with any of the regular matchups – Elves vs. Goblins, Stiflenought vs. Burn, etc. Because of this, I always play a brew/meme deck at the Dutch Nationals Premodern, as there is no point trying to pick up a known deck against people with vastly more experience playing it. Also, there is some fun in trying to surprise opponents and providing them with a unique game experience. It turned out that the deck I brewed for this year was much stronger than I expected and carried me to the top 8 quite easily.
Deck history
Since I went 0-6 with my brew last year trying to do all sorts of splashy things with high mana costs, I decided I would need a deck with a lower mana curve and early turn interaction. I therefore elected to play a deck I first conceived of when UW Dreadnought was making a splash in the tournament results (somewhat before Lobstercon). My reasoning was that a combination of Mother of Runes, Meddling Mages, Swords to Plowshares, Disenchant and Orim’s Chant would do well against Dreadnought decks and I was looking to find a shell for it.
At the same time, I was trying to find a way to trim down the Life combo so that it would not take up as much deck space. This combo works by triggering the toughness boost of Daru Spiritualist/Task Force with repeated activations of Nomads en-Kor/Shaman en-Kor and then sacrificing the pumped creature to a Worthy Cause/Starlit Sanctum to gain – say – a billion life. From there, there are multiple ways to win. Traditionally, Life decks have played (a combination of) Test of Endurance or Unspeakable Symbol (or, in more spicy brews, About Face/Transmutation plus Starlit Sanctum or another Fling effect). Test of Endurance wins the game automatically – albeit after waiting for a turn – while the other options allow you to swing in with something like a 1000-attack creature and/or chuck it at the opponent’s head.
Most Life decks run the full suite of creatures and enablers, plus a win condition, which takes up a lot of deck space. This can become cumbersome if you draw the pieces at an inconvenient time. I also disliked the fact that Life decks do not really interact much in the first few turns of the game, being busy with assembling their combo pieces. This presents the deck with 'make or break' situations, in which a lot hinges on executing the combo as quickly as possible. It dawned on me (and by that, I actually mean Michael Flores said it on one of his podcast episodes) that even ‘half’ the combo of a Daru Spiritualist plus an en-Kor creature is already very problematic for a Dreadnought player: they will need to play more Dreadnoughts than you have clerics on the table, or else they can’t attack for damage. This would require playing more clerics than the life deck usually does. I therefore wanted to put the life combo in a UW Weenie/Cleric shell. Making space for the most important cards of both decks required making a lot of cuts. From the UW Weenie deck, I cut the aggressive but non-synergistic creatures such as Savannah Lions, Silver Knight, Soltari Priest/Monk and Ramosian Sergeant/Whipcorder. From the Life deck, I cut the excess combo pieces and win conditions, such as Task Force, Shaman en-Kor, Starlit Sanctum and Test of Endurance/Unspeakable Symbol.
In order to somewhat guarantee being able to get the right combo piece at the right time, I included four Intuition. Then, the week before the tournament, I stumbled upon the reworded text for Martyrdom (see below) and figured having single copies of both Martyrdom and Worthy Cause in the sideboard would allow me to play Cunning Wish main deck to fetch them. Using multiple copies of Cunning Wish would increase the chances to draw/tutor the right card at the right time even further. In all, the deck virtually runs eight Daru Spiritualist (four main deck and four Intuition), eleven Nomads en-Kor (four main deck, four Intuition and three Cunning Wish for Martyrdom from the sideboard) and ten Worthy Cause (three main deck, four Intuition and three Cunning wish to grab it from the sideboard). I ran some percentages and found there would be a close to two/thirds chance of drawing all the combo pieces (or a tutor to replace them) by turn four. Since turn four is when you have enough mana to play the combo in one go, these numbers seemed viable enough. The rest of the deck is geared towards running out small but annoying creatures with synergy effects to gum up the battlefield, disrupting the opponent with Meddling Mages and cheap spells, and getting to a position where you can execute the combo to gain a billion life.
From there on, I only needed a win condition. I do not like Test of Endurance for this deck, as it forces you to tap out, allows your opponent an entire turn of interaction and turns on all their enchantment hate. It also would top the mana curve at four. I do not like Unspeakable Symbol (or Transmutation plus Starlit Sanctum or About Face plus Fling) for this deck either, because it would require the deck going into a third color. The best thing Scryfall searches would deliver for me was Brain Freeze, which conveniently can be searched for with Cunning Wish and therefore does not cost a main deck slot (which is a problem for Test of Endurance/Unspeakable Symbol, because they have almost no card text unless you have already executed the combo). It also allowed me to name the deck ‘Life of Brian Freeze’ for the two components that the deck combines, since at this point I was still in meme territory and fully expecting another 0-6 result.
A final touch on the deck was deciding to cut all sorcery speed effects from the main deck except for the creature package, meaning no sorceries, artifacts and enchantments. This allows the deck to maximize its leverage on the opponent’s turn and minimizing the opponent’s potential for interaction with your gameplan. Having only instants allows for maximum flexibility, enabling you to see what the opponent does on their turn before choosing whether to interact with their game plan or tutor for a combo piece on their end step. Running no artifacts or enchantments turns off quite a number of the opponent’s cards, since almost all decks seem to be playing some form of artifact/enchantment removal main deck.
Card choices
Main deck
4 Daru Spiritualist – One third of the combo. Also a very nice card against a lot of creature removal even if you don’t have Nomads en-Kor out; I’ve had multiple opponents try to ping my Mother of Runes with Masticore, only for them to find out that this would give her +0/+2 due to Daru Spiritualist being in play (almost all creatures in the deck are clerics to increase this synergy). If you do have Nomads en-Kor out as well, every cleric creature you play gets near infinite toughness on command. This not only allows you to block large opposing creatures (hello, Terravore), but also allows you to attack with all your creatures after having executed the life combo, since none of your creatures (except for the Meddling Mages) would die in creature combat. This acts as a different (albeit slow) win condition, as you can chip in damage in case your creature count is larger than your opponent's. Depending on the opposing deck, it is safe to play the Spiritualist onto the board if you don’t have the combo yet, or you need to keep it in hand until you can protect it (with Mother of Runes, Meddling Mage or Orim’s Chant) before going off.
4 Nomads en-Kor – One third of the combo. Not super interesting on its own, but it can sometimes act as a second blocker if you have an active Mother of Runes out, allowing you to double block together with the Mother of Runes or block two different creatures and redirect the combat damage to the self-protecting Mother. Nomads en-Kor is great in combination with a Daru Spiritualist of course (see above). If you are under pressure to put both on the board, it is often best to play the Nomads en-Kor first if you can redirect any damage the opponent would throw at it to another creature (e.g. a Mother of Runes, True Believer or – if all else fails – a Meddling Mage). This allows you to see whether the coast is clear for playing a Daru Spiritualist, since those are the the part of the combo you have the least tutors for.
3 Worthy Cause – One third of the combo and the worst part on its own, because it will rarely be used if you don’t also have Daru Spiritualist and Nomads en-Kor out. Could theoretically be played with buyback before you are able to assemble the combo to sacrifice a creature and gain some life, but this would be a rather mana-intensive use for little gain and hasn’t come up for me.
4 Mother of Runes – Underappreciated card in general and really useful in this deck. I was always very happy if I could play it on turn one. Its main function is to protect your creatures from targeted removal or (creature combat) damage. As such, I almost never attacked with it turn two (or three, or four…). Landing a turn one Mother of Runes and a turn two Meddling Mage or True Believer is a near lock against some decks. Mother of Runes also has some nice uses allowing you to interact with the opponent’s game plan in fringe scenarios (that didn’t come up for me in the tournament), such as giving an opposing creature protection to destroy any creature enchantments on it (e.g. Animate Dead vs. Reanimator or Dragon Breath vs. Angry Hermit), preventing untap effects (e.g. giving a Priest of Titania protection from green to counteract Quirion Ranger/Wirewood Symbiote shenanigans vs. Elves) or shutting off half of the Stiflenought combo (by giving the Phyrexian Dreadnought protection from blue in response to a Vision Charm). Also allows you to make your creatures unblockable after having executed the life combo, which enables you to attack through for damage. This acts as a different (albeit slow) win condition. As an added bonus, it’s a cleric, so will gain +0/+2 whenever it is targeted while Daru Spiritualist is in play, making it very hard to kill with any targeted damage effect. In a pinch, I have used the Mother of Runes’s ability with a Daru Spiritualist in play to give another creature +0/+2 even in cases where the protection clause doesn’t do anything by itself (Mishra’s Factory was the main culprit).
4 Meddling Mage – A one card solution to many things you don’t want to see from your opponent’s deck. I elected to play all four main deck, since you will usually have a good idea of what the opponent is playing by seeing what lands and spells they play on turn one/two. Because you are trying to find extra time to execute the life combo, naming anything that would interact with your ability to combo or would win the game before you get to do so is a good call (examples of cards I named during the matches are Oath of Druids, Pernicious Deed, Survival of the Fittest, Swords to Plowshares). Can also be used to shut off sideboard cards your opponent might bring in in game two and/or three (Cursed Totem and Engineered Plague are especially nasty against this deck). Another option, after sideboarding, is to look through the opponent’s deck with Extract on turn one and shut off whatever answer they have boarded in with a turn two Meddling Mage. Not a cleric, so cannot be pumped with Daru Spiritualist’s effect – if it is necessary to keep a Meddling Mage on the board, keep a Mother of Runes free to protect it.
3 True Believer – These were to round out the creature package, as I felt I needed a few more creatures to be able to put up some board pressure or use as blockers, especially since it is not always safe to run out your combo pieces in the early turns. I was quite happy with how these performed. The first advantage they have is that they are clerics, so that they can act as large blockers while having Daru Spiritualist/Nomads en-Kor out. The second advantage is that they provide a creature to sacrifice to Worthy Cause that you do not need to keep around for the board state after having executed the life combo (if possible, keeping around a Daru Spiritualist and a Nomads en-Kor allows you to never lose creature combat and get through for chip damage through repeated alpha strikes). A third advantage, and the main reason to play True Believer over any of the other clerics that did not make the cut, is that it shuts off or delays a number of opposing cards and game patterns due to the shroud effect it provides. Chief among these during the tournament were Oath of Druids (the ability is targeted) and discard spells. Some combo decks are shut off if you are able to keep a True Believer on the board: Fluctuator (if they are using Drain Life/Haunting Misery rather than Twilight’s Call), Devourer, Enchantress (Words of War is negated by True Believer plus Daru Spiritualist), and, I believe (but would need to consult a judge to be sure), the Phyrexian Devourer/Triskelion combo from a FEB deck (since they need to target the True Believer with the Triskelionized Shapeshifter and have that resolve before being able to target you as a player). Other decks may struggle because they are delayed one or more turns when you play a True Believer, especially if you can protect it with Mother of Runes. Examples are Replenish (Intuition requires them to target you) and decks with direct damage, such as Burn/Sligh and Zombies running Gempalm Polluter.
4 Intuition – One of my favorite cards and the first card I bought a playset of when stumbling upon Premodern. Used to search for a missing combo piece, allowing you to run virtually four extra copies of each. In a pinch, can also be used to find a Disenchant, Swords to Plowshares or land. All main deck cards are at least three-ofs so that they can be found if needed. The fact that this is an instant allows for a lot of flexibility in crafting turns and setting up your combo. It is to be used sparingly if you feel like you cannot get the win by attacking with creatures, since every Intuition you play takes three cards out of your library.
3 Cunning Wish – Gives you three extra shots at ‘drawing’ a Worthy Cause, since you can search for the one copy in your sideboard. Allowing you to move one Worthy Cause to the sideboard frees up another slot in the main deck, which is especially helpful since Worthy Cause is the worst card in the main deck. Also gives you three extra shots at ‘drawing’ a Nomads en-Kor (in the form of Martyrdom), which did not come up for me in the tournament but would theoretically help you out in a slower game. Once you have executed the life combo, Cunning Wish allows you to find Brain Freeze to deck the opponent or to force them into conceding since there is no conceivable way for them to win. I rounded out most of the sideboard with other instant cards for situations that might come up and require a direct response. In order to do so, all these cards can be cast for 1 mana or less, so they can conceivably be cast in the same turn you tutor for them with Cunning Wish.
3 Swords to Plowshares – Best creature removal in the format, great against things like Terravore and Natural Order/reanimate targets. In some games the drawback of your opponent gaining life is negligible since you are also able to deck them. One copy has been moved to the sideboard to allow it to be tutored for with Cunning Wish (also reducing the number of main deck slots against creatureless decks).
3 Disenchant – Interaction against a wide range of cards, to be used mainly against cards that require a direct response to not let the game snowball for your opponent (Oath of Druids, Survival of the Fittest, Sylvan Library, Sphere of Resistance, Mox Diamond, etc.). Useful in games two and three if you suspect your opponent has sideboarded in cards like Cursed Totem and/or Engineered Plague. Also good against a Dreadnought.
3 Orim’s Chant – Some sort of WD-40 for the deck. Can be used to interrupt opposing combos by casting it in response to them executing (part of) their chain of spells; e.g. against Fluctuator (in response to them casting their Songs of the Damned), Stiflenought (in response to them casting Phyrexian Dreadnought), Aluren (in response to them playing Aluren – this will stop them from using Living Wish until the next turn), Angry Hermit (in response to them activating Hermit Druid on their upkeep), etc. It can also be used on your own turn to protect your combo if you suspect a creature removal spell (if you cast Orim’s Chant before playing out your Daru Spiritualist / Nomads en-Kor / Worthy Cause they have no chance to respond) or to ‘feel out’ whether the opponent has a counterspell ready. Against decks that go wide, such as Goblins and Elves, this can be used to stunt them for a turn, not only preventing them from casting any spells but also from attacking if you are able to pay the kicker cost, allowing you to take an extra turn to build your mana and assemble the combo. If nothing else, this is a card that you can hold onto to play the turn on which you are planning to Brain Freeze your opponent, as it provides a cheap way of increasing your storm count and preventing any interaction (ideally, you do this on your opponent’s end step after they have cast some spells of their own, since Orim’s Chant, Cunning Wish and Brain Freeze are all instants and can therefore be chained together on the end of the opponent’s turn).
4 Adarkar Wastes – You ideally want to have a manabase that allows you to have both WW and UW available on turn two, to be used for casting a Meddling Mage or True Believer, depending on the circumstances. The life loss did not really hurt in any of the matches I played. One thing going against Adarkar Wastes is that it is the only land in the deck susceptible to Wasteland, which did not end up hurting me but could be an issue if you were looking to trim the manabase down to fewer than 22 lands. In all, the mana felt quite good and I never really had issues finding the right color in time.
4 Flooded Strand – Used to find the right mana when you need it. If you have Plains in hand, play these first against any deck that you do not expect to run Stifle, as it may be advantageous not to thin your deck too much (in case the game would go to decking).
10 Plains – A healthy amount of Plains to be able to land Mother of Runes on turn one almost every time you draw it in your opening hand. With 10 Plains, you have 18 sources that can provide W on turn one. Also, executing the combo in one turn requires 1WWW for Daru Spiritualist, Nomads en-Kor and Worthy Cause, or 1WWWW if you add Orim’s Chant for protection. Having Plains in play is therefore much more important than having Islands.
4 Island – To round out the manabase and to give you 12 opportunities to pay U. The earliest you need to do so is usually on turn two for a Meddling Mage (the only time you would need U on turn one would be for a sideboarded Extract).
Sideboard
1 Abolish – To have an extra, instant-speed Disenchant effect available through Cunning Wish or after sideboarding. Abolish has two things going for it versus adding a fourth Disenchant in the sideboard: it can be played for free if you have an extra Plains in hand (useful against decks that try to lock your mana) and is not named Disenchant (useful against Meddling Mage/Cabal Therapy).
1 Annul – To be able to counter a punishing artifact or enchantment, such as Pernicious Deed, Winter Orb or (after sideboarding) Cursed Totem/Engineered Plague.
2 Brain Freeze – A win condition for games in which you cannot get through with enough creature damage and your opponent still has more cards in their deck than you do (or you want to end the game faster). Realistically, you only go for the Brain Freeze plan if you have executed the life combo, as it requires you to build up some mana and some cards in hand to achieve a good storm count. Having a number of cheap spells in the deck, such as Swords to Plowshares, Orim’s Chant and Disenchant, helps with that (upon gaining a billion life, there is normally not much need for any of these cards to be played unless you would need to break up some infinite combo on your opponent’s end). These cards can all be played at instant speed, allowing you to do so after your opponent has played one or more cards on their turn. Alternatively, you can play the cards on your own turn and also lace in some number of Nomads en-Kor and/or Mother of Runes. I ran two copies of Brain Freeze, so that I could move one to the main deck against slower decks so that there would be no absolute need to tutor for it with Cunning Wish (circumventing a counterspell on the Cunning Wish – the extra storm copies of a Brain Freeze can only be countered with a Stifle since the effect takes place even if the Brain Freeze itself is countered).
1 Daze – A flex slot in the sideboard to search for with Cunning Wish and prevent against quick combo decks going off. Also a card that you can board in against decks that, for example, do not run any creatures (rendering your main deck Swords to Plowshares useless) or any artifacts/enchantments (rendering your main deck Disenchants useless). Did not use it in the tournament.
1 Envelop – To be searched for with Cunning Wish to prevent the opponent from playing any of a number of backbreaking sorceries, such as Replenish/Armageddon/Cataclysm/Haunting Echoes/Wrath of God/Drain Life etc. Did not use it in the tournament.
3 Extract – The only sorcery in the main deck and sideboard. I included these for four different purposes: 1. to break up certain combo decks that rely on having a single card in their deck (taking out e.g. Triskelion from FEB, Songs of the Damned from Fluctuator, Saprazzan Bailiff from Turtle Splash, Sutured Ghoul, Krosan Reclamation or Dragon Breath from Angry Hermit), 2. to slow down certain synergy/combo decks (e.g. removing Anger from the Elves deck or Squee from a Survival deck may delay them by one or more turns), 3. to exile any cards that would allow my opponent to prevent themselves from being decked (Gaea’s Blessings, Words of War, Volrath’s Stronghold) before going for a Brain Freeze kill and 4. to scout out my opponent’s sideboarding plan and purge hate cards in game two and three. Used this in multiple rounds to mostly satisfying effect; the card disadvantage is real though.
1 Martyrdom – Only found out a week before the tournament, while browsing Scryfall, that the wording has been changed to ‘Until end of turn, target creature you control gains “{0}: The next 1 damage that would be dealt to target creature, planeswalker, or player this turn is dealt to this creature instead.” Only you may activate this ability.’ This basically allows Martyrdom to function as a one-shot stand-in for Nomads en-Kor, because playing it on a Daru Spiritualist allows the Spiritualist to target itself repetitively to gain a billion toughness. When playing Martyrdom, it is imperative to use only the alternate art version (Alliances nr. 10b on Scryfall, Martyrdom nr. 2 on Gatherer). Since I fully expected to go 0-6 with the deck, my main goal of the day was to ramp the meme-o-meter to 11 by targeting a Daru Spiritualist with this version of Martyrdom (flavor text: "The only true immortality is in dying for a cause") and then sacrificing the pumped Spiritualist to said (Worthy) Cause. Sadly, I never was in a position to do so during the tournament.
1 Misdirection – A flex slot in the sideboard to counteract large spells aimed at my head (Drain Life, Fling, Haunting Echoes, etc.) and to have an extra way to fight counterspells (by redirecting a counterspell to the Misdirection itself). Did not use it in the tournament.
1 Orim’s Chant – An extra way to break up combos in case I do not have Islands/extra blue mana/blue cards in hand available for any of the blue counterspells. Could be boarded in against specific decks such as Stiflenought. Did not use the sideboard copy in the tournament.
1 Stifle – A way to counter all sorts of mischievousness on my opponent’s part. Mainly for one-shot large effects (such as Altar of Dementia’s sacrifice trigger, Sutured Ghoul’s come into play trigger, etc.) Came in quite handy in one of the games (read below).
1 Swords to Plowshares – See above.
1 Worthy Cause – See above.
Tournament report
Below is a short report of the rounds. I did not keep notes, since I never played a game with the deck beforehand and had not imagined doing anywhere near well. The match reports are from memory therefore, and mainly serve to show some of the play patterns that could be taken. Any error in recalling specific cards/plays are on my part. I probably made multiple suboptimal plays that I did not recognize at the time and therefore cannot reproduce here. Also, huge thanks to my opponents who were all very friendly and patient with me never having played any real tournament Magic and having to find out how mulliganing and timed rounds work.
Round 1 (2-0, 1-0 in total)
Game one. I am paired against Giulio Bedeschi, a good player from Italy, who turns out to be on PonzaOath. I am on the play and play a turn one Mother of Runes right into his Mox Diamond, land, Oath of Druids. I play a second turn True Believer to turn off his Oath and he responds by destroying one of my Lands. I Swords his Treetop Village. He proceeds to just hardcast Terravore rather than Oathing it out (after which I regret using my Swords on his Village). He gets in some damage with the Terravore and Mishra’s Factories. Since he has no removal for creatures, I can safely land Daru Spiritualist and Nomads en-Kor, to represent enough blockers for all the creatures/manlands he has in play. As I keep casting clerics at a higher rate than he draws Terravores and manlands, we shuffle up for game two. I elect not to sideboard.
Game two proceeds along similar lines, with him getting in some early damage with manlands and a Terravore slowly growing off fetchlands and lands that get discarded or destroyed. I run out some creatures for defense, including a Nomads en-Kor and eventually a Daru Spiritualist. After I show him that I can gain a billion life with the life combo, he graciously concedes.
This went better than expected! Time to shuffle up the deck again and find out who my next opponent is!
Round 2 (2-0, 2-0 in total)
…which immediately takes me back to earth, as I read ‘SlayJay’ in the Melee app used for pairings. Jens Jaeger won the tournament two times in a row, and is – obviously – a very good player. We shake hands and I joke about being honored to be allowed a place at the E.P.I.C. table, as I am seated across from Jens, Frank Roelofs is on my right and Giamma FriFlai is on my left (it turns out Giamma is playing Flippi, who would go on to win the tournament, and Frank Roelofs is playing Jasper Bongaards, who also qualifies for Top 8).
Game one Jens plays out some small creatures and it appears he is on UW Weenie. I manage to execute the life combo after a few turns and he decides to go to game two rather than wait to see how I expect to win the game sitting on a billion life. I elect not to sideboard.
Game two Jens lands a quick Meddling Mage, naming Test of Endurance (the joys of playing a rogue deck!) and I manage to execute the life combo not too long after. Since I believe Jens has fewer cards in his library than I have at this point, I ask him whether there is a way for him to still win the game. To my surprise, he says there is, so we play on. We don’t do much for a number of turns other than playing out some creatures and putting lands into play. He then plays a Standstill and attempts to break it himself by playing a Swords to Plowshares on a creature, which would force me to draw three and would reduce my library size below his library size. I respond with an Orim’s Chant, which would lead to him having to draw three. Jens activates his Mishra’s Factory and responds by Disenchanting his own Factory, which would mean that I draw three. I choose to let the entire chain of spells resolve, so that I draw three, then play another Orim’s Chant, a Cunning Wish for Brain Freeze and Brain Freeze to mill him for 28 cards. This is not quite enough to deck him yet, but Jens extends his hand and tells me how much he loves both rogue decks and UW Weenie decks. My day is already perfect at this point.
Round three (2-0, 3-0 in total)
Game one I find out my opponent is Joen Erik Kobbelhuus, a player from Norway, who is a passionate Old School player. I am on the play and lead with a Mother of Runes. He plays a first turn Llanowar Wastes, so I name ‘Pernicious Deed’ when playing a turn two Meddling Mage. He turns out to indeed be playing the Rock, but surprises me with his turn three tech of playing Natural Order for Verdant force. Luckily, I soon have a Daru Spiritualist + Nomads en-Kor which allow me to block his Verdant Force, but the saproling tokens keep amassing and he slowly chips away at my life total. A couple of turns later I find the Worthy Cause to gain a billion life, choosing to sacrifice the Mother of Runes rather than the True Believer I have in play, so as to prevent him from hitting me with discard spells. We proceed to play some fast turns in which each of us improves their board state by adding lands and creatures. There is no point in trying to reduce his life total to 0, as he has a large number of saproling tokens to block and I have only one Mother of Runes in play to give a creature protection from green, which is no use against his Mishra’s Factory. He then plays a Volrath’s Stronghold, which is potentially problematic against my plan B of using Brain Freeze to deck him. We play draw-go for a couple of turns until I have enough mana to chain a number of Orim’s Chant/Swords to Plowshares plus Cunning Wish plus Brain Freeze to mill his entire library after he uses Volrath’s Stronghold on my end step. He activates Volrath’s Stronghold again on his upkeep, but I have the mana for another Cunning Wish plus Stifle to deck him. I sideboard in two Exile for his Volrath’s Stronghold, taking out a Disenchant and an Orim’s Chant.
Game two I cast Extract early in the game to search his library for the Volrath’s Stronghold, but do not find it in his deck. Either he has boarded it out, or he has it in his hand. I manage to execute the life combo quite soon and he graciously concedes. We chat a bit about whether or not Old School is a prohibitively priced format (less than I thought, it appears).
Round four (1-1-1, 3-1-0 in total)
I am paired against Jasper Boelens, who plays an interesting UG Tradewind/Survival bounce deck and in game one manages to land a quick Tradewind Rider off a Wall of Roots. I play Meddling Mage naming Quirion Ranger in the blind, which slows him down somewhat (he told me later) but not enough after he manages to land a Survival of the Fittest. I get the life combo to go off, but he has more cards in his deck than me and he manages to start bouncing my lands to the point where I can no longer pay 2U to play a Cunning Wish for Brain Freeze, so I concede and we move on to game two. I board in two Exile and an Annul for three True Believer.
In game two, I play a turn one Mother of Runes into a turn two Meddling Mage for Survival of the Fittest, which slows him down a lot. A Daru Spiritualist protects the Mother of Runes against Masticore damage and by the time he has enough mana to kill the Meddling Mage and play a Survival of the Fittest, I have the cards in hand to execute the life combo. My use of Extract plus his Survival activations leave me with the larger deck, so we shuffle up for game three rather than play out this one.
Game three, I have another Mother of Runes into Meddling mage naming Survival of the Fittest. I manage to execute the life combo quite quickly, and we build out our board states from there. I wanted to get as much permanents as possible on the board to see if there is a way to attack through all of his walls and Tradewind Riders (there wasn’t) and to prevent him from bouncing my lands too easiliy. There is some interesting play in which he uses a Mystic Snake to counter one of my Orim’s Chants and wants to use Capsize (with buyback!) to get it back, but I have a Swords to Plowshares to prevent him from using either again. The call for last minutes of play comes (the only one for me during the day) and we both have quite a few cards left in our decks. He asks me whether I have a way to win the game within a couple of rounds and I reply that I do (he hasn’t seen my Cunning Wish for Brain Freeze plan yet). He then proceeds to play a sideboarded Zur’s Weirding, which would lead to him never drawing another card again, but would conceivably prevent me from drawing any wins that I don’t already have in hand. This forces me to use the Cunning Wish in my hand to grab Brain Freeze and use it with a storm count of three, to mill him for nine. The round ends before his deck is gone, so the last game is a draw.
Round five (2-1, 4-1-0 total)
I am paired against the ominous-sounding ‘captainroot’, who turns out to be Felix Feliks playing a MUD deck with additional focus on mana denial in the form of Mox Diamond into Sphere of Resistance, Rishadan Ports, Winter Orb and Mishra’s Helix. Game one, I am able to get through the mana denial and land some creatures. His Masticore doesn’t do much damage to my board after I play a Daru Spiritualist and he ultimately ends up sacrificing it. I manage to execute the life combo and he concedes after counting decks (I believe he was up a few cards, but did not want to waste time finding out whether I had a kill condition). I think I sideboarded out three True Believer for two Extract and an Annul, but I don’t see any of those for the rest of the round.
In game two, his deck does his thing and he locks me under a Winter Orb plus Mishra’s Helix. I have one out as I have an untapped Flooded Strand that I have not used yet and need to draw a land to be able to play the disenchant I have in hand, but I don’t, so I concede.
Game three, I manage to fight his mana denial effectively enough to execute the life combo and I can keep enough creatures on the board to swing for a few points of damage each turn (my creatures all have a billion toughness so I don’t lose them when attacking into his Mishra’s factories). He concedes when he sees his life total dwindling with no way out.
Round six (1-2, 4-1-1 in total)
The final round I am matched with the only perfect record player in the Swiss, Jan Froschster. He is on OathClysm, which runs a number of cards that can be tricky for my deck: Oath of Druids, Sphere of Resistance and Cataclysm. He wins game one on the back of a large Terravore. I don’t sideboard, as I need all the cards that would normally qualify for being removed from the deck (True Believer against his Oath of Druids, Disenchant against his Oaths/Spheres/Libraries, Mother of Runes against his Swords to Plowshares and Swords to Plowshares against his Terravores).
I manage to win game two by executing the life combo and him having fewer cards in his deck as a result of cycling lands and/or Oath of Druids and/or Sylvan Library (I don’t quite remember). He is playing to give his compatriots Jens and Flippi a chance to make top 8, so we decide to also play out the last game.
Game three, he lands an early Sphere of Resistance, which forces me into tough choices of which cards to play out as I have the combo in hand but can no longer play it all in one turn. He then proceeds to Cataclysm with a Terravore in play, which turns big enough to kill me in one swing if I don’t have an answer. I have a Swords to Plowshares, a Daru Spiritualist, a Worthy Cause and a Nomads en-Kor in hand, so ponder what to do next (having one mana in play and being locked under a Sphere of Resistance). I can’t use his Oath of Druids because I already played a Nomads en-Kor (which survived the Cataclysm), so there is no chance of getting a ‘free’ Daru Spiritualist to go with the other Nomads en-Kor in case I would draw a land. The only out I have, therefore, is drawing a land to Swords his Terravore and hope to resolve the situation on another turn (either by attacking into the Terravore first and hoping he blocks my Nomads en-Kor to prevent his next Oath trigger, drawing another Swords, or drawing another land to play the Daru Spiritualist to be able to block). I draw a Mother of Runes rather than the first land I need for the Swords to Plowshares, however, so I concede.
Quarterfinals
After the rounds have been played, I find out that I made top 8 as the 3rd-placed player, despite the 4th to 9th-placed player also having a 4-1-1 round record (tiebreakers is a completely novel concept to me). It turns out that I am paired against Jens again, who is much better prepared this time. He wins the first game by choking off my combo by playing Meddling Mage naming Daru Spiritualist and slowly overwhelming me with his superior creature count. I sideboard in Extract to gain the upper hand in the sideboard/Meddling Mage subgame, taking out Disenchant.
The second game, I play a turn two Meddling Mage naming ‘Meddling Mage’ and feel pretty smart, until he responds by playing a turn two Cursed Totem (ouch!). I play an Extract to find out he has boarded in two more Cursed Totem and two Armageddon (in addition to the one he already had main deck), which will present me with a number of problems that I can only resolve through finding spells from the sideboard with Cunning Wish. We trade some creature damage. He manages to Swords to Plowshares my Meddling Mage after a few turns and plays three back-to-back Meddling Mages of his own naming Worthy Cause, Cunning Wish and some other card that I forgot but did not matter anymore as he had found a second Cursed Totem as well and was overwhelming me with his weenies, so I concede.
Overall impression and potential changes to the deck
The overall impression I had of the deck (with little to nothing to compare it to, to be honest), is that it runs quite smoothly and presents your opponents with a number of problems that they do not normally face. Mother of Runes into Meddling Mage or True Believer can be backbreaking against a number of combo/control decks and /mother f Runes and Daru Spiritualist (with or without Nomads en-Kor) can gum up the board quite nicely against creature decks. Despite the large amount of small creatures, the deck can win even after an opponent would normally have established control, due to the fact that you can gain near-infinite life from turn four onwards. Given the amount of times I was able to execute the combo, I feel that the Intuition/Cunning Wish package allows for enough ways to assemble the different combo pieces in time in most games. It became apparent to me while playing that a larger number of decks than I expected cannot kill you even without executing the entire combo, simply due to the fact that a Nomads en-Kor plus Daru Spiritualist can stop most offenses (happened a number of times against Terravore decks). This allows for extra time and extra opportunities to get in chip damage, as you can attack with your creatures whenever you have the opportunity to do so, while keeping the Worthy Cause in hand until you need the extra life.
A reason to play the deck is that it attacks the opponent on an angle that most decks have a hard time dealing with (very few decks can deal a trillion damage to overcome you gaining a billion life) and does so using a creature package that allows you to contest the board and potentially win by attacking without having to resort to a secondary win condition. A weakness of the deck is that it is soft to the same (sideboard) cards that people already tend to run to fight Elves and Goblins, notably Cursed Totem and Engineered Plague. Use your Meddling Mages wisely and have your artifact/enchantment removal at the ready…
The deck has no ‘quick’ win condition, which did not hurt me apart from the last game in round four. I probably could have been more aggressive getting in with creatures in a number of games, but my opponents generally conceded when they found out there was no way for them to win the game. If necessary, the deck can assemble up to four Mother of Runes to get in unblockable chip damage (this might involve having to Disenchant/Swords non-colored blockers such as Mishra’s Factory).
Although there is a possibility to make the combo part of the deck more robust by adding redundancy through alternative combo parts, I don’t think there is any need to add these ‘clunkier’ alternatives (Task Force, Shaman en-Kor, Starlit Sanctum) to the deck. There were very few instances where I could not execute the combo when I wanted to; the instances where I could not execute the combo, I don’t think having had extra pieces would have changed that (all the alternatives cost more mana or land drops, so would not have helped against mana denial). I was happy not having added Starlit Sanctum in one or more of the lands slots, as there were a number of occasions on which the mana colors produced by my lands were just perfect to combo off on turn four or five (not being able to tap for colored mana would be a bummer). One thing to test would be adding a number of Weathered Wayfarer and a single Starlit Sanctum, which I decided against for the tournament due to not wanting to allow my opponent any control over whether I could search for a missing combo piece. These would probably take the slots currently held by the True Believers, which I was quite happy with having in the deck.
I did not make much use of the Cunning Wish sideboard, as the Stifle in round three was the only non-Worthy Cause / Brain Freeze card I tutored for. Although I feel the Cunning Wish plan is still very good (adding redundancy through being able to wish for Worthy Cause / Martyrdom and providing an alternative win condition through Brain Freeze), a few of the sideboard one-of instants can probably be cut. Especially the different counterspells seem redundant, looking back on it now. I had debated adding Last Breath to the sideboard but opted against it, which came back to bite me in the Meddling Mage mirror match against Jens in the quarterfinals. Another card that I think might be added to the sideboard is Reverent Mantra, as it could provide both a way to protect your creatures against removal in a pinch and add an extra win condition by allowing your team to alpha strike if your opponent is at a low enough life total.
Other sideboard options I considered for the Cunning wish package – but ended up not playing – were Abeyance, Blue Elemental Blast/Hydroblast, Chain of Vapor, Funeral Pyre, Gilded Light, Hibernation, Honor the Fallen, Humble, Hurkyl’s Recall, Pay no Heed, Prismatic Strands, Reprisal, Scars of the Veteran and Unsummon. In the end, most of these were cut for either being over 1 mana to cast or because I didn’t think they would have enough impact on the game. I don’t think including one of these would have made much of a difference in any of the matches I played, but this is of course a very small sample size and very dependent on the matchups I played.
I was very happy with Intuition most times I drew it, but was never happy to draw a second copy. I debated changing the split to 3 Intuition and 4 Cunning Wish instead of the other way around, but was afraid this would put even more pressure on drawing a Daru Spiritualist (as it is the only card there is no alternative for that can be found with Cunning Wish).
In designing the deck, I thought about adding some counterspells (Mana Leak and/or Prohibit) to the main deck to deal with any problematic cards my opponents might play, but I decided I would rather play Orim’s Chant (because it could service multiple purposes) and I could not find other cards to cut to make room. Perhaps freeing up some sideboard slots would allow the deck to bring in some all-purpose counterspells after sideboarding.
There are probably a number of further improvements that can be made to the deck, so for anyone who would be willing to pick up the deck (and has managed to read this far), I encourage you to take it for a spin and add any improvements that you may like. Feel free to add a reaction or PM me if you would want to tell me your thoughts or discuss card choices/strategies (I might at some point ask that we move the conversation to e-mail since I try to stay off social media as much as possible).
In the meantime, I can recommend everyone to sign up for next year’s Uthden Troll Cup (any and all of the formats they offer) as soon as registration opens via https://uthdentrollcup.com/, as the crew (Ron Dijkstra, Richard Boonstra, Henk de Groot and many others) put in a lot of effort and somehow manage to improve the experience every year. Good venue, good vibes, good food and always a few extras and surprises in the form of vendors, artists, raffles, and prizes. I will be brewing a deck for next year’s edition together with my brother, who has caught the Premodern virus as well. Hope to see you then!
Thomas