I wrote some long tournament reports about GP: Seattle. If people want me to repost them here, I'll do it - it's about 2000 words so far. Didn't want to flood the thread if no one cares, seeing as no one but me went to the event.

do eet

tl;dr

ok!

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Part One:

For the past six months that I’ve been playing Magic again, I’ve mainly focused on Standard and Booster Draft. Extended came and went, and I only played in two PTQs, simply piloting Affinity to a Top Eight and a 1-2 drop finish without much fanfare. When I found out the dates for the Grand Prix trials and the Standard for a Mox tournament, I scoured the decklists of PT: Kyoto, Magic Online PEs, and even Magic-League to pick up some inspiration on what to play. Always a blue mage, I looked and saw decklist after decklist of Faeries and Five-Color Control, all relying on nonbasic lands and tenuous counterspells to answer direct threats. Disappointed in these answers, I looked to the aggro decks and saw a sea of R/W Reveillark and Kithkin, none of which seemed all that powerful. As I perused more decklists, I ended up seeing some interesting R/B and Mono-Red aggro decks that appealed to me, particularly this one:

Blightning Beatdown
by Mark Herberholz

Main(35)
4 Boggart Ram-gang
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Goblin Outlander
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Siege-gang Commander
4 Blightning
4 Flame Javelin
3 Tarfire
4 Volcanic Fallout

Land(25)
4 Auntie’s Hovel
4 Ghitu Encampment
4 Graven Cairns
4 Reflecting Pool
4 Sulfurous Springs
5 Mountain

Sideboard(15)
3 Ashenmoor Gouger
3 Infest
3 Shriekmaw
2 Murderous Redcap
2 Vithian Stinger
1 Loxodon Warhammer
1 Guttural Response

I sleeved this deck up and playtested it a ton and loved playing it, though a few things became immediately clear:

• The deck was not aggressive enough
• Blightning was only good if ahead or your opponent was screwed anyway
• Siege-Gang Commander wasn’t all that impressive

As I looked through more and more decklists, I saw that many of the mono-red players were playing Tattermunge Maniac. I couldn’t figure out why people would not run this card, so as a reality check, I searched up some old articles by Dan Paskins and even the original Sligh article that describes the Sligh mana curve.

I put Tattermunge Maniac in the deck and built the list around the Sligh mana curve, dumping Blightning for more burn and Siege-Gang Commander for Hellspark Elemental (another card I couldn’t understand why people omitted). The results were immediate: Games were ending quicker and it was punishing any slow start from the opponent. Winning the die roll against any matchup made me feel supremely confident, and losing it didn’t matter all that much to me.

I won the Standard for a Mox tournament with the following decklist:

4 Tattermunge Maniac
4 Figure of Destiny
3 Mogg Fanatic
4 Goblin Outlander
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Boggart Ram-Gang

4 Tarfire
4 Magma Spray
4 Flame Javelin
3 Volcanic Fallout

6 Mountain
4 Ghitu Encampment
4 Auntie’s Hovel
4 Graven Cairnes
4 Sulfurous Springs

Sideboard:

4 Bitterblossom
3 Deathmark
3 Infest
2 Guttural Response
2 Wild Ricochet
1 Volcanic Fallout

As happy I was with the deck, problems immediately began to surface. 5cc decks were suddenly running Wall of Reverence + Plumeveil rather than Kitchen Finks, and my plan against white-based decks was quite inferior to begin with – siding in Infest to kill my own guys (including Goblin Outlander) didn’t make much sense.

Still, I only made minor changes to the decklist for the next tournament, a 15-person GPT in Bellingham, where I won without too much trouble (not losing a match in the process). I took out Tarfires for 3 Terrors and the 4th Volcanic Fallout, and added the then-unplayed Chaotic Backlash to my sideboard to punish white-based token strategies, pulling Bitterblossoms and Wild Ricochets for them (but leaving Infests in).

Happy with the deck and the results that I attained from playing it, I saw the spoiler list for Alara Reborn and two cards immediately jumped out at me:

Anathemancer
Jund Hackblade

My mind raced with the possibility of opening up with turn one Tattermunge Maniac, turn two Jund Hackblade, and turn three Boggart Ram-Gang, only to finish them off with Anathemancer on the fourth turn! The deck seemed extremely fast, and I was excited to share my findings with friends and forums everywhere. However, many writers and people online did not share the same excitement that I did, citing that the new Orzhoff Pontiff (Zealous Persecution) would wreck my deck, and that Jund Hackblade was flat out terrible (source: Kyle Sanchez, Starcitygames.com).

Deflected by all the criticism, I stopped posting publicly about the decklist and worked with Gerry Thompson, Max McCall, Corbett Gray, and Charles Dupont on the R/B deck. We discussed various strategies, including stripping down the Sligh build and going to a midrange R/B build with Demigod of Revenge, but in the end, I stuck with the Sligh-based plan and sleeved up the following list at Regionals:

4 Tattermunge Maniac
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Jund Hackblade
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Boggart Ram-Gang
3 Anathemancer

4 Magma Spray
4 Flame Javelin
3 Terminate
3 Volcanic Fallout

3 Ghitu Encampment
4 Auntie's Hovel
4 Sulfurous Springs
4 Graven Cairnes
8 Mountain

I can’t remember the sideboard, but it’s not really relevant – I ended up going 3-2 drop, losing to Doran and a Jund midrange deck with Makeshift Mannequin. Still, I was happy with the deck, and ended up committed to the same list for GP: Seattle.

A week before the event, I had many old friends and acquaintances staying with me – GerryT, Cedric Phillips, Matt Westfall, my brother (Kevin Boddy), and Brian Six. Instead of testing Standard and Block Constructed like intelligent men, we spent the days eating at all the fine restaurants in the Seattle area (Ezell’s Fried Chicken, Schultzy’s, Dick’s, Paseo, to name a few) and moneydrafting. The crowd that we had for drafts was great – Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa and Jed Dolbeer were in town – and a lot of fun was had, even if we did get kicked out of the University of Washington’s student center for being too loud.

After watching countless 8-4 drafts that Gerry would find himself in, I gained a newfound respect for Waveskimmer Aven and Bant Panorama, and in some strange way, feeling at peace with my deck selection. Watching Gerry’s unorthodox drafting strategies (and his subsequent wins) made me feel confident that I didn’t need (or possibly even want!) validation for every single card choice in my deck. Cedric echoed these sentiments with saying that he thought my deck sucked, but that I should “play the deck I know and win the tournament.” He was taking his own advice, as he piloted W/U Kithkin to a money finish at the Grand Prix.

In the end, I sleeved up the following list and was very happy to go to war with it:

4 Tattermunge Maniac
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Jund Hackblade
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Boggart Ram-Gang
3 Anathemancer

4 Magma Spray
4 Flame Javelin
3 Terminate
3 Volcanic Fallout

3 Ghitu Encampment
4 Auntie's Hovel
4 Sulfurous Springs
4 Graven Cairnes
8 Mountain

Sideboard:
3 Chaotic Backlash
3 Everlasting Torment
3 Pithing Needle
3 Deathmark
1 Banefire
1 Anathemancer
1 Volcanic Fallout

In Part Two of my report, I’ll go over all my matches in detail and discuss sideboarding strategies.

Nice read.

Obviously was talking about limited where giant growth effects come up all the time. Power / toughness ratios are rather irrelevant, my initial example was bad but lets say 2 2/2s blocking a 4/4 and your trick is Aggressive Urge (common situation in 10Ed)

I guess Giant growth effects aren't better always, sometimes they can be worse. Suppose the same 2 2/2s are blocking a 5/4. Now you can't save either with an Aggressive Urge when you could previously.

So, if the new rules went into effect tomorrow, what changes would happen in the format?

Would you still run fanatic in your red deck kyle?

Does the fulminator LD strat get a lot worse?

I do not run Mogg Fanatic in the first place. Fulminator Mage gets a little worse, but not really. It's basically just Stone Rain that can be Reveillark'd back and nothing changes there.

I will definitely be adding this homeslice:

Oops, only looked at the first decklist.

I'm actually going to read your TR now, sooo...

tl;dr

part 2 of his report thing is here
http://forums.starcitygames.com/view...e9c38f41a0f573

all they need to bring back is fireblast and I'm set

^^ Never ever

Awesome trip report kyleb

Also, the new changes are excellent and do make the game a lot more intuitive

elaborate pls

i thought some time about the changes and i agree that damage on the stack isnt intuitiv at all, but how is new system more intuitiv? i dont see how choosing the order of blockers is intuitiv.

Man I am so happy that Ball Lightning is coming back in M2010! My favorite ever deck had four of them and they were rather sick:

17 Mountain 4 Wasteland 2 Ghitu Encampment

4 Mogg Fanatic 4 Jackal Pup 3 Ironclaw Orc
3 Fireslinger 4 Ball Lightning 3 Viashino Cutthroat
4 Cursed Scroll 4 Shock 4 Incinerate
4 Kindle

Man those were the days, you'd never get away with playing 'Ironclaw Orcs' nowadays. I guess 'Fireslinger' would be good against Faeries except for Peppersmoke! I love red decks so much, no idea why I don't play them in Standard on MODO really.

Kyle would you ever consider playing Fulminator Mage in the deck? I know that it seems weird with Anathemancer but with so many players playing 5c either control/aggro Mage might be pretty good, maybe instead of Terminate?

where's part 3 with the sideboard strategies already?

i keep reading everything i can find about standard and still don't know what to play.

Yeah yeah writing it now at work.

Wow I remember those days.

I used to love playing that, ProsBloom and Big Blue. So sick.

Anyone else excited for Duel of the Planeswalkers? Looks like I'll finally be able to play MTG online but not have to worry about shelling out money for every card.

i run good w swans again. ppl think that faeries is the deck to beat and run heights.decs again, u cannot lose to those.
uh and the faerie mu isnt as bad as ppl think it is

It's insane on the play and horrible on the draw, and without Chrome Mox to accelerate you to it, it's not my favorite card. My deck is more of a burn deck than anything else, so I don't really want to take away from that, which Fulminator Mage does.

Terminate is a concession to the Mistbind Cliques, Plumeveils, Dorans, and Putrid Leechs of the world. I like it enough.

Just play the MTGO Free Trial.