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B Smith
United States
Boston
Massachusetts
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I usually try to center my tournament report posts around the theme of a particular lesson about the game. It gives the post some structure and helps make the lesson more memorable for myself. That structure won't work for this report, because here I see a lot of recent themes coming together. This is the tournament that inspired my recent post about the importance of play skill. It also touches on important issues in deckbuilding, about how to weigh consistency against raw power level. So I'm going to try something a little different, and tell the story chronologically—starting with opening cards.
Here's my pool for the night:
In my past few tournaments, I could easily rule out a color or two right after opening the packs. My job wasn't so simple here. Looking a little closer, green seems like the weakest color: there are a few nice cards, but not enough to recommend it. White and blue are both full of utility, with plenty of removal like Bonds of Faith and Claustrophobia, but don't offer much on the high end. Black and red have great finisher cards in Bloodline Keeper and Charmbreaker Devils, along with some removal and enough Vampire synergy to make you go "Hmmmmmmmm," but are generally weaker below that.
I felt like these pairs wanted to be played together. I considered other combinations like blue-black, but those builds seemed awkward; they would have a low creature count, weird mana curve, or lack necessary synergy. On a friend's advice, I stared out with the white-blue build with a red splash. Here's the final version of that deck:
I say "final" because this deck evolved with every game I played. Most notably, it started out running Delver of Secrets. That was a frustrating build, because both Delver and Charmbreaker Devils care about instants and sorceries. Because most of my removal spells are enchantments, I have even fewer instants and sorceries than usual. In my early games with this deck, it felt like this subtheme kept coming up more than it "should have." It was agonizing to have Delver stay 1/1 turn after turn, or have the Devils in hand representing only a vanilla 4/4, because I didn't have the support they wanted.
With this deck, I eked out a win against a newer player, and then suffered a quick loss. Frustrated at the deck's thin high end and unsupported subtheme, I decided to switch tracks completely and make the black-red build:
This deck does address the problems I had with the white-blue deck. Bloodline Keeper can be a house, and Charmbreaker Devils has more support. The deck has a stronger early game too, and a "Vampires matter" subtheme that's supported well enough. But it also went 1-1, with the win against a newer player, because it has its own weaknesses. My friend called it greedy; I might prefer the term shallow. Either way, the point is that while it has a few impressive finishers, it often needs those finishers to win. If I don't get a good early start, and can't get Manor Gargoyle, Bloodline Keeper, or Charmbreaker Devils to stick—either because I don't draw them, or they get removed one way or another—I'll typically be stuck with a bunch of marginal X/1s and little hope of victory. My wins were more thanks to aggressive starts than the extra bomb I was so eager to play.
Writing this now, with some distance from the situation and some extra post-tournament refinement and play with the white-blue deck, it seems clear that the white-blue build is better. At the time, I was so frustrated with the deck that I wanted to play something completely different. Instead, I should've made smaller adjustments to the deck I already had. While I ended up going 2-2—my baseline "at least I can keep my dignity" result—I knew from way my games played out that it wasn't a good night for me.
What can I learn from this tournament?
Play choices are important. While I couldn't articulate it at the time, I think some of my frustration with the white-blue deck arose from the fact that it's really difficult to play well. The most reliable way it can win is through midgame attackers like Battleground Geist and Thraben Sentry, which don't offer the kind of commanding presence a real bomb does. The decision about when to play removal spells like Bonds of Faith is hugely important, and requires very careful evaluation of the opponent's deck and threats. Play your removal too early, and you'll get blown out by a bomb. Play it too late, and the midgame creatures won't be able to get there for you. This is always true in Magic, and doubly so in Limited, but this deck feels like it was purpose-built to drive the point home. It's easier to figure out what to do with the black-red deck—but those plays are less effective on average.
Don't lose sight of the forest for the trees. I was right that the "instants and sorceries matter" subtheme of my early white-blue build wasn't tenable. I was right that it doesn't have a lot going for it on the high end. But switching to the black-red deck was wrong. Curtailing the subtheme was a simple matter of boarding out Delver of Secrets. The black-red deck barely does better on the high end, with just Bloodline Keeper and arguably Falkenrath Noble going for it. It's important to remember that BREAD is about evaluating cards, not decks, and a consistent deck fares better than a flashy one with a few cool tricks and no backup.
This was a very challenging pool. Every color is at a power level that's relatively consistent with the others, and not very high. Ironically, I think that's part of the reason why this tournament encouraged me to look at all my Magic skills, and not look at my games primarily through the lens of deckbuilding—because doing so helped me to understand why my white-blue deck was better, despite the fact that I had such a frustrating time with it at the tournament. I don't think I'll ever see my games the same way again.
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