Locations
One of my favorite things about life in New York City right now is the emergence of Premodern Leagues at Hex Union Square. It used to be that we'd have about one Premodern meetup a month. That rose to about two (one in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn) where the same group of gamers would battle for "the belt".
Getting the belt is glory in and of itself, and is a big deal on our local Discord server. At least it was until SWB won something like n-1 meetups for three or four months running. Premodern has really taken off here over the last year, so 20+ players showing up on a weeknight for basically no prize support (other than a WWE-style photograph and bragging rights) has become commonplace.
Enter the Leagues.
We now have a weekly three-round event that is nominally culminating in a big playoff somewhere down the line. Here's how Our Hero has done so far:
Week One: 1-0 (1-2 if you're cynical), Four-Color TerraGeddon
Week Two: 1-2, Meme Goblins
Week Three: 3-0, Full-Tilt Red
Week Four: 2-1, Mono-Blue 12/12
Week One
I had dinner plans with some former coworkers so I figured I wouldn't be able to make Leauge's opening night. They both have kids in either New Jersey or another part of the state (Buffalo) so we didn't go very late. I didn't have anything planned for the rest of the evening so I just did the New Yorker thing and enjoyed the night air, strolling leisurely from the Times Square area where we had dinner to Union Square... Just figured I'd check in with my friends and see how the first week of was looking.
Well, it turns out that I made it to Hex by the middle of the second round. If I had been more optimistic and grabbed the subway... Who knows? I might have been able to make the first round!
Anyway, Jenn the Judge let me tag in for Round Three (in part because there was an odd number of players) and I got the win with a borrowed Four-Color TerraGeddon deck, over 
Control. So you can credit me 1-0 or 1-2 at your leisure. I don't actually know League rules but I believe I got a point!
Week Two
The North American Premodern Championships had fired the previous weekend, and the great Rich Shay (reigning Old School Champion) won with Enchantress.
I figured that Enchantress might be the up-and-coming Deck to Beat so I selected Meme Goblins for my first full week of League play. Enchantress wins by getting a bunch of enchantments in play, and this Goblins deck plays Naturalize main and has access to Tranquil Domain in the sideboard. Peanut Butter and Chocolate, right?
Meme Goblins | Premodern | Mike Flores
- Creatures (34)
- 1 Goblin Sharpshooter
- 1 Goblin Tinkerer
- 2 Skirk Prospector
- 3 Gempalm Incinerator
- 3 Siege-Gang Commander
- 4 Goblin Lackey
- 4 Goblin Matron
- 4 Goblin Piledriver
- 4 Goblin Recruiter
- 4 Goblin Warchief
- 4 Mogg Fanatic
- Instants (2)
- 2 Naturalize
- Lands (24)
- 1 City of Brass
- 1 Forest
- 4 Karplusan Forest
- 1 Mossfire Valley
- 9 Mountain
- 4 Wasteland
- 4 Wooded Foothills
- Sideboard (15)
- 1 Tormod's Crypt
- 2 Pyroblast
- 2 Red Elemental Blast
- 1 Gempalm Incinerator
- 1 Goblin Sharpshooter
- 2 Naturalize
- 2 Tranquil Domain
- 4 Pyrokinesis
The rest of the deck is pretty straightforward. Goblin Lackey opens up the floodgates at 
. It is a walking Black Lotus. Wasteland is there for opposing Serra Sanctum (or whatever, keeping the opponent off their mana), and you just have big and powerful card advantage plays every turn until you bury them. This is a classic card advantage deck more than a beatdown deck. It's just that the "cards" are sometimes not at all, but are always some kind of Goblins.
That's the theory anyway!
I didn't play any Enchantress that week. I won a surprising one against an Oath of Druids deck (should be a bad matchup) but got completely manhandled by hate cards that seemed tailored just for my deck choice.
Soltari Priest - Can't block that!
Silver Knight - They sure can block you!
Engineered Plague - Five of them over Games Two and Three.
Week Two was won by Lan D. Ho with an innovative Mono-Green StOmPy deck:
Week Four
I played the boogeyman of the format in Week Four... Mono-Blue 12/12:
Mono-Blue 12/12 | Premodern | Mike Flores
- Creatures (4)
- 4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
- Artifacts (2)
- 2 Powder Keg
- Instants (32)
- 2 Flash of Insight
- 3 Daze
- 3 Opt
- 4 Counterspell
- 4 Foil
- 4 Gush
- 4 Impulse
- 4 Stifle
- 4 Vision Charm
- Sorceries (4)
- 4 Portent
- Lands (18)
- 16 Island
- 2 Mishra's Factory
- Sideboard (15)
- 3 Annul
- 1 Blue Elemental Blast
- 3 Hydroblast
- 4 Accumulated Knowledge
- 3 Dominate
- 1 Misdirection
The core game plan here is pretty simple. Cast a Phyrexian Dreadnought. Use either Stifle or Vision Charm to circumvent that creature's hefty enters trigger. Bash your opponent with twelve power in trample twice.
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12/12 is widely considered the best and scariest deck in the format. That's because it is not only fast (can "go off" as early as turn two) but it also has so many Counterspells (and so many free) it can cover its combo with no untapped mana at all; or in kind of a Gear Two sense, it can just counter every threat in some matchups.
For example Enchantress is arguably the Deck to Beat after Rich's win at LobsterCon. If you let Enchantress interact with your game plan directly they are likely to bury you in cards. They wlll get your Dreadnought with a Seal of Cleansing and draw two cards along the way! But what if all you did was save every Counterspell for a small number of Opalescence and Replenish in Game 1? How exactly are they supposed to win? You can finish them off with one of the little-played "Mill" modes on Vision Charm.
Anyway, Week Four went okay. I beat two great players on two great decks... Jeff Ferris on Mono-Black Clerics and multiple time Eternal World Champion Roland Chang on GAME (Grow-a-Mystic-Enforcer). My loss was to Stasis.
I might not have approached the Stasis game perfectly, but we did get over an hour of podcast material out of discussing that.
What I really wanted to talk about this week was Week Three. When I played the Red Deck.
Full-Tilt Red
Full-Tilt Red | Premodern | Mike Flores
- Creatures (16)
- 4 Ball Lightning
- 4 Grim Lavamancer
- 4 Jackal Pup
- 4 Mogg Fanatic
- Instants (13)
- 1 Lava Dart
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- 4 Incinerate
- 4 Fireblast
- Enchantments (6)
- 2 Sulfuric Vortex
- 4 Seal of Fire
- Artifacts (5)
- 2 Cursed Scroll
- 3 Urza's Bauble
- Lands (20)
- 4 Barbarian Ring
- 4 Bloodstained Mire
- 4 Wooded Foothills
- 8 Mountain
You probably already know this about me... The Red Deck in Premodern is more-or-less my favorite deck to play. But I have been discouraged about playing it in serious events because of big, sweeping movement in the metagame.
First is the essentially unanimous agreement of Mono-Blue as the best deck in the format. When Elves was the boogeyman, Red was a great metagame choice.
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Grim Lavamancer and Lava Dart matchup really well against a deck with literally dozens of 1/1 utility creatures. But if the opponent can make a 12/12 - with trample -- on turn two... Let's just say you don't want to run a Jackal Pup into that.
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The other big thing - and I do mean "big" - is the mass adoption of Tempting Wurm across the format. Decks that had never considered a Tempting Wurm in the past, from TerraGeddon decks with lots of nonbasic lands, to discard decks, to even Oath of Druids Control deck, were all adopting Tempting Wurm technology.
I mentioned the nonbasic lands, because in the past, Red's game plan against some of these powerful strategies was to burn them out, often relying on drawing multiple copies of Price of Progress before the last turn. But if the opponent could start attacking you with a Tempting Wurm starting on turn three... That might not be a race Red could manage. Moreover, because Red's game plan would shift into so many Price of Progress out of the sideboard, it might not even have that many permanents to punish Tempting Wurm with. None of that was good contextually for Our Hero's favorite deck.
So, with tears in our eyes, Red was hot-taken to the metagame cemetery.
In other news, the other Red Deck, Goblins, has had a tremendous run since this declaration, winning multiple large events (though not in League Week Two, and not in Our Hero's hands).
So, why did I play it Week Three, and is it dead?
Well first of all, Lan's win with Mono-Green StOmPy... a deck with loads of basic Forests but no Tempting Wurms gave me a lot of hope. As you can see, Lan loaded up his sideboard for Mono-Blue. Naturalize and Crumble to destroy Dreadnoughts; Rushwood Legate and Hidden Gibbons to punish the deck's basic ability to operate. Dreadnought can't really do anything without casting an instant and really can't do anything before playing an Island.
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Maybe if the world thinks Red is Dead, then that is the opportunity for Jackal Pups to rise again!
Why "Full-Tilt" Red?
In Premodern many players (myself included) love to collect the most rare, most expensive, or flashiest versions of cards. It is not uncommon for players to actively seek out the $200 foil Japanese version of a common.
But we are a remarkably welcoming and open community. Newer players who weren't around to walk away with Gaea's Cradles after a 1999 money draft will join and play with Dominaria United reprints or one of a thousand new art / new border takes on old favorites.
"Full-Tilt" Red is different. I tried to deliberately collect weirdo and new border versions of cards that aren't just the cheaper reprints. Like check out that Mogg Fanatic! It puts many old school players on tilt!
The crown jewel of this deck used to be a Japanese foil-etched Shock. There is no equivalent printing of the card in English. So you just kind of have to believe me that it's Shock if you've never seen it.
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But I removed Shock for Seal of Fire in this build. The meme equity of Shock was tough to give up, but Seal of Fire is so much better in the mirror. Basically if you have Seal of Fire in play you aren't going to get hit by an opposing Ball Lightning. Full Stop. Seal of Fire is a little bit worse in a deck with Urza's Bauble, but the value it gains against Ball Lightning is enough to justify the change.
I also went -1 Lava Dart +1 Sulfuric Vortex in the sideboard. Lava Dart is mostly good for the mirror (a deck that we have said many times in just this article is in decline) whereas Sulfuric Vortex has wide applications.
My matchup spread going into the 3-0 is a showcase of what the Red Deck can uniquely do if it's not being specifically targeted by the metagame.
Round One: Devourer Combo
This was one of the breakout decks of this year's North American Premodern Championship. Two players sleeved up Phyrexian Devourer; two players made Top 8!
If, as a contemporary player, you're not used to paying this much mana for a 1/1, rest assured that it doesn't stay 1/1 for very long. The goal is to pump your Devourer past its critical sacrifice point and then use Altar of Dementia or Fling to kill the opponent as early as turn two.
Which is what my opponent did in Game 1. But the Devourer deck is structurally quite poor against the Red Deck sideboarded. It has tons of nonbasic lands (including Ancient Tomb) that make it vulnerable to Price of Progress; and the Tinker you need to get your Phyrexian Devourer out lines up poorly against Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast.
This was a happy overlap for the Red Deck! Not only was it underrated (and therefore under-targeted) by reputation; one of the decks gobbling up its metagame share happens to be a good matchup.
1-0
Round Two: Replenish
This is a matchup that can go either way. I've always been a Replenish fan, going back to my own LobsterCon Top 8 a few years ago; and I do think it's essentially tied for best deck in the format with Mono-Blue.
Replenish is much more powerful than 12/12; but instead of a fast two-mana combo and tons of free spell interaction, it's full of four-mana sorcery speed plays. So, what it gains in ceiling it gives up in average mana cost. Balance, ya grok?
In this matchup Red just did Red stuff and won non-interactively. My opponent got the sick Parallax Wave combo, so I couldn't really get in with creatures... But I had burn spells to finish the games instead.
2-0
Round Three: Mono-Black Clerics
One of the other rising stars of the format is Mono-Black Clerics. It's a weird deck with a ton of Grey Ogres (2/1 and 2/2 creatures for 3 mana) but they all do cool things.
Rotlung Reanimator in particular has been called "a cheaper Call of the Herd" which is high praise for this format.
Clerics has gotten up there primarily because it's so good against Mono-Blue. Being able to actually Duress and Cabal Therapy the opponent before pointing a Smother at their Phyrexian Dreadnought makes it simply difficult to keep a killer on the battlefield. Clerics is more than fast enough to win the game before you can reassemble.
It is not, however, great against the Red Deck.
I lost Game 1, which was surprising. Read the above line "It is not, however, great against the Red Deck.") Well Rotlung on D made it look kind of great I have to say.
But Games Two and Three I was able to shift into Gear Two and win with a combination of Sulfuric Vortex and small creature defense.
3-0
So, is Red Dead in Premodern?
It wasn't that night. There was actually another 3-0 but I Peaced Out before my friends could trick me into playing for bragging rights. I have gotten three wins and even started 4-0 multiple times in the last few months but haven't bagged a meetup belt since I think last October. I was out of there!
League has only gotten more popular over the weeks. Week One there were only a handful of us (and I rolled in with only a single round to go)... But by Week Four we were at 18. Can't wait to see what the New York locals bust out for the next one.
LOVE
MIKE
