I had a very busy, and Magical, week!

I play Premodern League almost every Thursday, but this past week was the League Finals; then I warmed up for my Pauper seat at Team Trios on Saturday, followed by the actual Team Trios the next day. Now it's Monday and I'm [Magically] writing an article entitled "Bridesmaid, Revisited" ... But you might already know that.

The Premodern League Finals

Jenn the Judge has done an absolutely incredible job cultivating the NYC tournament scene. She is working across at least five (?) stores, running weekly Leagues across formats people actually want to play. I don't know how your LGS is currently chugging along, but it wasn't clear we would clear the 8 players needed to fire a Standard RCQ yesterday. How many RCQ reports by me have you read on this website? The previous day we had dozens of people playing Pauper at the same store, and simultaneous to the RCQ that did actually fire at 12 players, there were many, many more traveling from out-of-state to put up their dukes in Legacy, Premodern, and Pauper.

As you might know from last week, I was once again locked at first seed for the Top 8. Last time around I think I might have over-thought it a little bit. Rich Shay (reigning North American Premodern Champion, and all-around probably the strongest player in the format) convinced me to play my beloved Mono-Red... With a twist.

If you're on the play, Black Vise is a pretty overpowered card if it's in your opening hand. Currently, Black Vise sees play as a finisher in Stasis decks, and a sometimes-inclusion in certain Blue sideboards, mostly for slow matchups... But it was actually Restricted in Standard back in its own day! Rich's theory was that Black Vise would give me "Jackal Pup" redundancy; and in fact, present a better offensive 1-drop than Jackal Pup. I leaned heavily into this and ended up playing a Red Deck that I can't recommend anyone ever copy:

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This deck has Wasteland to really try to exploit going first every round, and Flame Rift under the theory that - again because I was going first - the opponent would not have a turn (or the mana) to punish me for the card's symmetry. I ended up going 2-1 in the Season One Finals... Losing only to eventual winner Lan D. Ho and his Tinker-Fling combo deck.

This time Rich suggested I play either Enchantress (his deck from LobsterCon, and arguably the best deck in the format) or a Red Deck. I, perhaps to the surprise of no one, chose the Red Deck (again), which was maybe the worst possible choice. I made one key tweak to the list I had been playing; and that, at least, was very good:

Mono-Red | Premodern | Michael Flores

• Creatures (16)
• 4 Ball Lightning
• 4 Grim Lavamancer
• 4 Jackal Pup
• 4 Mogg Fanatic

• Instants (13)
• 1 Price of Progress
• 4 Fireblast
• 4 Incinerate
• 4 Lightning Bolt

• Enchantments (7)
• 3 Sulfuric Vortex
• 4 Seal of Fire

• Artifacts (2)
• 2 Cursed Scroll

• Lands (22)
• 10 Mountain
• 4 Bloodstained Mire
• 4 Karplusan Forest
• 4 Wooded Foothills

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Lava Dart
• 1 Red Elemental Blast
• 2 Price of Progress
• 4 Naturalize
• 2 Tranquil Domain
• 3 Call of the Herd
• 1 Forest

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I had my quarterfinals opponent, Matt M, on either Goblins or a mid-range deck. Each are decks I'm capable of beating with my Burn decks. Both my potential semifinals opponents (Chris Cruz and Bryan G) have wild ranges, so I didn't think it was worth trying to metagame against them. I thought there would be two Dreadnought decks in the Top 8... But both on the other side of the bracket; and I didn't think SWB would be either of them.

For his part, I had SWB on either his Parfait Oath deck or Enchantress. But whoever won the opposite bracket was two matches away, right?

Quarterfinals: Matt M with Mono-Black The Rack

Key Cards: Chain of Smog, Hypnotic Specter, The Rack

Matt surprised us all by switching to a completely unexpected deck: Mono-Black.

Most Red Deck players will brag that this is a lopsided matchup in favor of basic Mountain, but I've always found it super close. It's trivial for the opponent to get you to basically zero cards in hand, and then The Rack is just the world's most efficient Lightning Bolt every turn.

They're a better Cursed Scroll deck than you are; and they can keep cards in hand to operate the mid-game with much more control than you do. I do think that the Red Deck tends to win more matches overall than the Black one, but anyone who thinks that makes it a cakewalk is kidding themselves.

I assume some number of you are MMA fans, or at least know the name Don Frye. Had Frye been just a little bit younger, he might have been the best MMA fighter ever; as it is, he is a 2x UFC Champion and UFC Hall of Famer (and most of his MMA career was overseas). Frye was also a notable professional wrestler, trained by all-time great Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig!

But there is this one fight that I can never get out of my mind. Frye and his opponent Yoshiro Takayama just go at it. They punch each other relentlessly in the face repeatedly and relentlessly. Neither one makes any attempt to cover or defend himself. It's brutal and borderline moronic until one of them can't keep punching.

It's hard to describe Red Deck v. Mono-Black in any other light. Both of us make bad attacks into painful blocks. No one holds back. No one can hold back. It's the top of my deck against his The Rack in play. Pure, almost totally defenseless, race. I beat Matt by two points in Game 1; he simply would have killed me if he had gone first.

In Game 2 Matt M won by a mile (twelve life points) despite me drawing three Naturalizes, which removed two Cursed Scrolls and a copy of The Rack.

I got Game 3 when he stumbled on his third land drop. Nothing more than any of that. I had one card left on the last turn, but it was a Fireblast.

1-0

At this point there were six decks left in the tournament; Chris was on Hermit FEB (a historically good matchup for Price of Progress decks)... and the other five - two Tide Control, two Dreadnought, and SWB's Ivory Tower theme deck - were all some flavor of bad.

Well, at least I'd be going first!

Semifinals: Bryan G with Tide Control

Key Cards: Parallax Tide, Chain of Vapor, Stifle

Bryan made all of Chris's lands disappear, which removed my last good matchup from the remaining Top 8.

His deck? Tide Control is quietly the lone Tier S-1 deck of the format. "Everyone" knows that Dreadnought is just the best deck. Only Replenish is basically exactly as good as Dreadnought; with the caveat that Dreadnought is all 1-mana spells whereas Replenish is all 4-mana spells. Regardless, as much as that seems like it should matter, they have very similar win rates. Enchantress is the "secret" best deck, although it's increasingly not a secret with big wins in the hands of players like Rich Shay and SWB.

For its part, Tide Control is quite similar to Dreadnought, great against Replenish but weaker against Enchantress. I think it would be in the true S-Tier with Dreadnought &co. but not enough people play it relative to the other three so relatively few people other than Andy Levine really "get" its greatness.

In the New York local metagame, though... There are lots and lots of good players deeply influenced by Andy, so we probably index higher on Tide Control than most other areas. I know from dozens and dozens of play-test games (with the man himself) that Red Deck is badly behind in this matchup; though when we played at LobsterCon, I narrowly got him. It was a Fireblast covered by my last card in hand - a Red Elemental Blast - that closed that Round One fight [Andy, of course went on to Top 8 anyway].

Well, last Thursday Bryan and I split the first two. I missed my second land drop in Game 1, but rallied after a first-turn Jackal Pup.

In Game 2 I didn't want to over-board, so just brought in some copies of Price of Progress and my REB. Bryan hard mulliganed into Chill, and really punished me. What's the point of having actual Green removal if you're not going to bring it in against Chill?

In Game 3 I basically had it. Bryan was down to two cards in hand. So was I. He had five life and I had a Seal of Fire in play. I went to drop one of my last two cards (a Mountain)... Only what I physically did was drop my Fireblast onto the table. Oops.

I'm convinced he would have played an Impulse or something at the end of turn and I would have just killed him there; but of course, having seen the Fireblast, he didn't.

Many, many turns went by. Bryan got me from basically 20 all the way to 1 life. But I eventually got him the same way I did Andy a year ago: That Fireblast covered by my Red Elemental Blast, through one of his annoying Chills.

2-0

Finals: SWB with Parfait Oath

Key Cards: Oath of Druids, Gush, Armageddon

This one was anticlimactic. SWB got slight advantages in both games and used the "alternate" ability on Portent to annihilate me:

He'd do something like put two Mountains on top of my deck, and then play a Meddling Mage on Mogg Fanatic. Lo and behold: My third card would be a Mogg Fanatic! How did he know?

I will say SWB beat me in the sideboard war. I knew from lists he had posted online that he had Chill in his sideboard. Was this a case of actually "knowing" too much? I didn't want to get caught the way I was in Game 2 against Bryan.

He actually didn't expect any Red Decks and took out his Chills. So instead, he sided out all his enchantments (even the Oath of Druids that helped to win Game 1!) and stranded me with a useless Tranquil Domain.

Deserving Champion, of course.

2-1

So, I once again lost to the eventual Finals winner. This time I finished second, instead of third! If Finals-Finals are linear, I guess we can predict my finish a few months from now.

But my Magical week was anything from over!

Pauper and Team Trios

I had Team Trios to get ready for!

If you've followed any of my Pauper adventures the past couple of months, you know that I just wanted to master Mono-Red in order to contribute competently to the team:

Mike Plays Pauper

The Three Immutable Laws of Pauper Burn

A Very Costly Mistake

For the actual Trios event, I made some slight changes to my sideboard. This is what I ended up with:

Mono-Red | Pauper | Michael Flores

• Creatures (14)
• 2 Guttersnipe
• 4 Kessig Flamebreather
• 4 Sneaky Snacker
• 4 Voldaren Epicure

• Instants (16)
• 4 Fiery Temper
• 4 Fireblast
• 4 Lava Dart
• 4 Lightning Bolt

• Sorceries (12)
• 4 Faithless Looting
• 4 Grab the Prize
• 4 Highway Robbery

• Lands (18)
• 18 Mountain

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Faerie Macabre
• 1 Red Elemental Blast
• 4 Pyroblast
• 4 Searing Blaze
• 4 Smash to Smithereens

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Tormod's Crypt is great because it 1) costs zero, but 2) can trigger Guttersnipe or Kessig Flamebreather to deal a little extra damage. The downside on this card is that you have to have it in play when the opponent wants to "go off" with their graveyard combo, which by definition, gives them the opportunity to deal with it and then go off.

Faerie Macabre is both less powerful than Tormod's Crypt and doesn't trigger Guttersnipe. But it has the advantage of being a secret. The opponent doesn't know you have it, and they can't drop a Masked Vandal or something on it and combo you out anyway.

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Last time Andy and I were joined by one of Vintage's strongest players (and I'm happy to brag, one of my best friends!) David Tao. This time the Legacy seat was filled in by Magic Pro Dan Sondike. Dan did an incredible job with his Reanimator deck. By contrast I went 1-x in Legacy last time around, but my teammates were so good we were top seed in the Finals anyway.

Obviously if you have Andy Levine on your team the idea that you don't deploy him in Premodern is idiotic. I certainly wasn't going to play Legacy after last time. So that's how we got me on Pauper and Andy on Premodern.

Friday night I convinced him to play Rich's Enchantress deck from LobsterCon:

Enchantress | Premodern | Andy Levine

• Creatures (4)
• 4 Argothian Enchantress

• Instants (2)
• 2 Swords to Plowshares

• Sorceries (1)
• 1 Replenish

• Enchantments (30)
• 1 Solitary Confinement
• 1 Sylvan Library
• 3 Opalescence
• 3 Parallax Wave
• 3 Seal of Cleansing
• 3 Sterling Grove
• 4 Enchantress's Presence
• 4 Exploration
• 4 Mirri's Guile
• 4 Wild Growth

• Lands (23)
• 7 Forest
• 2 Plains
• 1 Treva's Ruins
• 1 Wooded Foothills
• 4 Brushland
• 4 Serra's Sanctum
• 4 Windswept Heath

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Aura of Silence
• 3 Carpet of Flowers
• 2 Gaea's Blessing
• 1 Replenish
• 2 Sacred Ground
• 2 Abeyance
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 3 Xantid Swarm

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We made a slight change of Solitary Confinement to Abeyance, as prompted by Rich's Top 8 compatriot Mike Packer. Abeyance isn't an "I win" card in the mirror, but it does give you some edge there... And we didn't think there would be a lot of Burn decks for Confinement in this field. Abeyance actually ended up awesome.

My thought process on the archetype was that there would be a lot of "format tourists" in the tournament. People who like WotC-supported formats like Legacy or Pauper are just bringing a friend who probably doesn't play as much Premodern as we do. In a context like that we want our best player to have the most card advantage and the lowest amount of variance. We want to lose no matches to people who are just targeting a popular deck. So, no Burn and no Dreadnought. Enchantress seemed like the best choice.

In true Andy Levine fashion, through to the Finals he never lost after the first round all day (to first-turn Sphere of Resistance in both games)... But luckily Dan and I both won that round! I was already contributing more than I did all of the previous Trios!

I hate to be anticlimactic, but after our run to the Finals... We lost again; and I personally lost again. This time it was a nightmare matchup - life gain White Weenie! The new White Weenie deck actually plays Spider-Man, Web-Slinger to great effect:

Not only can you return creatures like Thraben Inspector to rack up value with multiple "enters" effects; but in a sideboarded game, my opponent returned something-or-other with two Luminous Phantoms in play. I was trying to string together a lethal line, but those two life points made that impossible.

I was kicking myself for an on-table blunder earlier in the game... I managed to lose a Guttersnipe in combat for Burn's sake! But with so much life gain, the game might have been out of reach anyway. Not an excuse... But it would be really difficult to imagine a worse matchup for poor Mono-Red.

I don't know how unhappy you can be with two 2d place finishes in both of the tournaments I actually cared about this week. But in response my podcast co-host Lanny Huang would probably say something like "Did Reid Duke actually write How to Win a PTQ?"

Man has a point.

LOVE

MIKE