Locations
I play a land and pass.
Maybe get in with a Mogg Fanatic? Beatdown wasn't exactly impressive this game, this sideboarded game. But I do have... Let's see here... Five lands in play. "Pass." Did I say pass?
He taps out in that way that Control players have been using to turn the corner for twenty-six years now: "Fact or Fiction?"
What am I going to do? Pyroblast? This version has Red Elemental Blast.
"Resolves."
Ryan turns over...
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So how do you split this one?
Hold that thought. Maybe I should give you a little more context...
Tuesday
I show up to New York Pauper League... Not to play, mind you. But to practice.
I got sick in the middle of March and have missed at least six weeks of League. Tuesday Pauper nights in New York are reaching 60+ players now. If you show up every week and sustain a 66% win rate, I'm not sure if you will make the Top 16 cut any more. I've just missed too many at this point. Heck, I couldn't even defend my Premodern title.
But I'm gearing up for LobsterCon's North American Premodern Championships (this coming weekend!) and I want to test with and against Moneyball Black. It's the hot new deck and predicted to be a force at LobsterCon.
My theory, and probably every Moneyball player's theory, is that Black is going to squish Dreadnought, which will radically shift the top of the metagame. I design a new build of the Red Deck, which I hope will be able to keep pace with existing standouts Dreadnought and Enchantress...
But how good will it be against Moneyball Black?
Chris Cruz and Rich Bucey are both (like me) Pauper transplants from the Premodern side. The main difference being they're still in contention this season. Chris plays two games of Moneyball against my Red Deck.
We don't feel the need for a third game.
Wednesday
I do a podcast with Lanny Huang about LobsterCon preparation. I've been laid up for more than a month, so this is my first Spike Colony back.
I go through all the hoops as to why I am going to play the Red Deck. As if I needed to go through any hoops? I'm me. Me! I missed LobsterCon last year, but narrowly missed Top 8 the previous year with my Red Deck (in the Legendary Deckade sleeves).
No hoops necessary. But I do tell him that I think the Moneyball matchup is very favorable.
Lanny asks me if I would ever just play the best deck.
I tell him I'll play my new Red Deck at League. No promises or anything. But if I can't at least 3-0 with it at League, I probably shouldn't have it in front of me for Friday's nine rounds of Swiss in Boston.
Thursday
Here she blows:
Burn | Premodern | Mike Flores, 3-0 New York Premodern League
- Creatures (16)
- 4 Grim Lavamancer
- 4 Jackal Pup
- 4 Mogg Fanatic
- 4 Ball Lightning
- Instants (13)
- 1 Lava Dart
- 4 Incinerate
- 4 Fireblast
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- Enchantments (6)
- 2 Sulfuric Vortex
- 4 Seal of Fire
- Artifacts (3)
- 3 Cursed Scroll
- Lands (22)
- 10 Mountain
- 4 Barbarian Ring
- 4 Wooded Foothills
- 4 Bloodstained Mire
- Sideboard (15)
- 4 Red Elemental Blast
- 1 Lava Dart
- 3 Overload
- 2 Price of Progress
- 4 Blood Oath
- 1 City of Traitors
The main deck isn't a lot different from my previous LobsterCon build. I cut the Urza's Baubles and went up to 22 Lands, mostly. With the extra Land, I am turning on a third Cursed Scroll. Cursed Scroll not only gives me something to do if I start flooding out, but is going to be load-bearing here.
First of all, it's great against Moneyball, which has mostly tiny 2/1 and 2/2 Creatures. But I gutted the anti-Creature elements out of the sideboard. That third Cursed Scroll is doing work going long against Moneyball, but also making up for a lot of missing Lava Darts in the mirror match.
You'll notice I have a very expensive 23d Land in the sideboard:
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This is entirely there to support the four copies of Blood Oath, which costs four whole mana. The card lets you play a kind of combo game against Dreadnought, where you'll typically name "Instant" unless they've just Gushed. But it's also aces for Enchantress. Unless they have a Solitary Confinement in play, Blood Oath will often just be 21 damage on the spot.
Don't get me wrong.
This is cheating.
This isn't Magic on the fundamentals.
It's a trick; like cross-multiplication when you don't really understand how the lowest common denominator works.
This is re-jiggering your mana base to shift gears radically. But it's a better plan against specifically Enchantress (where we didn't have a plan previously), that has some crossover against Dreadnought. I suppose we can just play 100 Blasts and Overloads and Mogg Salvages, but Enchantress won LobsterCon last year and we can't go in with "nothing" against arguably the best deck.
And anyway, we have the best Moneyball matchup starting.
Right?
I want to go 3-0, right?
Round One: ThunderDragon with 
LandStill
This is the old classic for Premodern. Burn against LandStill was literally the first matchup I ever tested for my first LobsterCon. It's when I fell in love with Premodern Burn, and started to fall in love with Premodern as a whole.
The LandStill deck is an elegant combination of cards. It's what you get when the card pool is large and the Control players are motivated to be clever.
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At some point when the opponent isn't ahead (maybe turn two) the Blue player plays Standstill. Now the game slows to a... Standstill. This is great when Blue goes first, or the opponent doesn't have a lot of one-drops. Blue can attack with Mishra's Factory or Faerie Conclave without triggering Standstill; or make a huge Decree of Justice.
Part of the reason I've always loved this matchup is that Red doesn't play along. First of all, it does have one-drops! My first ever Premodern play-test partner, Patrick O'Halloran-Gannon, tried to ignore my Mogg Fanatic. I told him I thought it would do six damage before he blew a Swords to Plowshares on it. It did seven.
Anyway, I got Game One in unexciting fashion and sided like this:
- -2 Sulfuric Vortex
- -4 Seal of Fire
- -4 Ball Lightning
- -1 Lava Dart
- +1 City of Traitors
- +4 Blood Oath
- +2 Price of Progress
- +4 Red Elemental Blast
Sulfuric Vortex is the best/worst card in the matchup. It's the best... Except if they have Circle of Protection: Red; at which point it just kills you instead of them. I used to hedge and leave them in (not everyone has the CoP). But both it and Ball Lightning are kind of pricey and inflexible.
This might seem weird since I'm siding in a Land and a more expensive card in Blood Oath. The difference is that Blood Oath is an Instant and can play opportunistically. You kind of have to tap out for Ball Lightning or Vortex, and they're just going to get answered for 1-2 mana. But the opponent might tap out for Decree or Fact or Fiction at the end of your turn, where you can punish them with Blood Oath.
Anyway, that was the theory.
ThunderDragon didn't draw Circle; so I won in ho-hum fashion. One here, two here, trade a Blast or two. Gear Three.
This one was kind of interesting in that I left ThunderDragon on two for a couple of turns while he beat me down with Decree tokens, even though I had a Barbarian Ring in play. I waited until I had two burn spells for the setup (which was also the turn he was going to kill me). In the post-match he asked me why I didn't just try to win, and it was because if he had a Swords to Plowshares, he could have killed his own Creature and won the game. I might not have "had" to play as carefully as I did, but this is the kind of game Red mages lose all the time.
1-0.
Round Two: Ryan Alexander, also with LandStill
Game One went the way it usually goes.
I've always loved this matchup because I love Burn. Three-game matches tend to be about how good the LandStill sideboard cards are, and how many they bring in. Circle of Protection: Red can beat you; but it's often not enough by itself. Some people are creative and bring in a mix of Warmth, Chill, or even Arcane Laboratory. Blasts are table stakes.
Red is advantaged but if Blue really wants to win... They can.
I sided a little differently this one:
- -2 Sulfuric Vortex
- -2 Incinerate
- -2 Seal of Fire
- -4 Ball Lightning
- -1 Lava Dart
- +1 City of Traitors
- +4 Blood Oath
- +2 Price of Progress
- +4 Red Elemental Blast
There are two things "wrong" with this switch that are ultimately correct (or I wouldn't have made the swap).
First of all, you kind of want your cards to be more "same" so 2 Incinerate / 2 Seal of Fire is a little worse with Cursed Scroll, and in the face of Circle of Protection: Red, you might need every point you can get out of Cursed Scroll.
But on the point of points, I was okay giving up a little from Incinerate for Seal of Fire; which is both better with Cursed Scroll and a little better against Circle of Protection: Red. Even if you draw Seal later in the game (after they already have CoP in play), you can use it as a "Rishadan Port" to overload their mana, or at least it's better than Incinerate, which costs you two Lands and a card to tap one Land in the same situation.
This brings us to our Fact or Fiction.
At the time, I think Ryan was at about 11 and had 4-5 Lands in play. I also had 5 Lands in play (including a Barbarian Ring).
To catch you up, the Fact or Fiction pile was:
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So how do you split it?
I made the only split I could: 5-0.
The problem here is if you make any split at all with the Circle, he's likely to take the Circle pile. I asked him if I split 1-4 what he would have taken, and the answer was the one. Now a lot of things can potentially go wrong here.
I was pretty sure I was going to win, but I felt like giving him 5-0 was my best chance to end the game.
What's your play from Ryan's side?
If your opponent gives you a 5-0 split, you basically have to take the zero side.
Unsurprisingly he raised an eyebrow and took the five (which included three Lands) and I Blood Oathed him while his mana was tapped. That's nine right there, and I had a Barbarian Ring in play (not to mention more burn spells in my hand to set up).
Had he taken the zero side, we would have just kept playing. If I was ahead I wasn't that much ahead (except on life total) and the game could certainly have slipped away. Like, I assume the Circle of Protection: Red wasn't alone and Ryan had more goodies (or baddies really) out of the sideboard to ruin my day.
5-0 into 2-0, you know?
Round Three: ByerBeware with Combo Replenish
Byer is an old school player from back when I was a PTQ grinder. He grew up, happened to own the expensive cards from back in the day, fell in love with Premodern like everyone else who ever touched the format, and is now staying in our house at LobsterCon.
We played a few weeks ago, and he beat my 
version of Burn with his non-basic Lands version of Combo Replenish. Last Thursday he went with a more sedate mana base with lots of Plains and Islands... But started on a City of Brass.
I jumped all over this in Game One and... Did 19.
Nineteen.
Does it matter which pile I put the Gigapede in?
Nineteen!
The bane of all Burn players. Did I mulligan? Yes. What was the top card? Who cares? The mulligan was correct.
"I'm cheering for you Byer," I said. "I believe in you. You're up a game."
This is how I sideboarded:
- -1 Lava Dart
- -3 Cursed Scroll
- -2 Sulfuric Vortex
- +4 Red Elemental Blast
- +2 Price of Progress
Combo Replenish is faster than Burn on a goldfish. One of the saving graces of old Replenish is that even if they Tide-locked you, you could still Fireblast through it, or win with the Creatures you already had in play. Now they just Pandemonium you, either with Saproling Burst or Opalescence. If they hit four mana and one setup card (a Frantic Search or any Intuition), you're dead on the spot.
Which means: You don't have time for Cursed Scroll and Sulfuric Vortex unless something has gone woefully wrong in their game plan. The best solution is Tormod's Crypt, which is a card I didn't have in my sideboard. Otherwise, you just have to race them; or, at least Blast their Intuition/Frantic Search.
Price of Progress isn't good, but you can probably get four damage out of it. You can't/shouldn't cut Incinerates and Seals because the opponent might go Meddling Mages or especially Exalted Angels. I knew for a fact that Byer had Angels, so I wanted to be able to kill one reliably.
In Game 3 he actually drew two Angels!
Does that mean he won?
Sadly, no.
"I believed in you, Byer. Now I'm stuck playing Red Deck... again."
We traded cards. Price got four. I even landed a Ball Lightning through Plows and opposing Beta Blue Elemental Blasts.
Conclusion
Red Deck got the 3-0.
Does that mean I have to play this at LobsterCon???
I guess we'll find out this weekend.
LOVE
MIKE
