Crash and Burn at SCG Minneapolis

Sometimes you can test your heart out and feel confident about your decklist going into a tournament, only to then have the wheels fall off and crash and burn. This is what happened to me this past weekend when I traveled to Minneapolis Convention Center to battle in the SCG Standard Open. If you read my previous article, you know that I have been playing Jeskai since rotation. I continued to tweak the list after SCG States, including a grueling all-day test session before the tournament. I felt very confident that I could at least cash in this event as testing had been very positive. Here is what I went to battle with:

Going into the tournament I knew that Goblin Rabblemaster and Mantis Rider were public enemy number one. Any game where they were alive for more than a turn was usually one that I was going to win. Many Jeskai lists were moving to a more controlling route with their sideboard, but I wanted to stay aggressive and attempt to use that to my advantage. With opponents thinking I would bring in more removal and wrath effects, I wanted to keep my foot on the gas pedal and continue to dial up the pressure. 

Gods Willing was basically a 1-mana counterspell for any removal while being a big boost in tempo. I was regularly burning up an opponent's entire turn and sometimes their only removal spell for 1-mana. This allowed me to have a constant source of pressure and more easily get them into burn range. Unfortunately sometimes all the testing in the world can't stop the train from derailing.

I had a good start to the tournament at 2-0, including dealing eventual winner Andrew Johnson his only loss in the swiss. Round 3 is where things started to fall apart as I was defeated by Top 4 finisher Nick Paulson and his take on Abzan Midrange. Game 1 I had some great early pressure after a mulligan to 6, but was eventually stuck on 3 mana and was blown out by his main deck Drown in Sorrow. Game 2 was similar with another mull to 6 and a pair of Wingmate Rocs sent me to 2-1. After getting steamrolled by a pair of Boss Sligh decks my tournament had come to an end with a disappointing 2-3 finish. In these games they had very aggressive starts where I saw little of my burn, and whatever creatures I could muster were destroyed with Searing Blood.

As you can probably guess I was pretty disappointed, but tournaments like this happen to all of us. Overall I think my deck was built pretty well, but I will admit that I was under-prepared for the Mono-Red Aggro matchup. In retrospect I think the Magma Sprays needed to be Anger of the Gods as it allows you to catch up after falling behind: It still provides value against Green Devotion and Temur Aggro by killing everything except Polukranos, World Eater and Savage Knuckleblade.

Jeskai is still very much a force to be reckoned with as it took home the top prize in both the SCG Open and GP Stockholm. Andrew Johnson's list and Matej Zatlkaj's are pretty dissimilar in their plans as Andrew is looking to control the board while Matej went with a beat down plan. Looking at my list compared to Matej's, I think my downfall was the lack of resilient threats. Cutting Ashcloud Phoenix from my list completely was a mistake. It may be one of the toughest threats in Standard to deal with and flying is very good right now. Hushwing Gryff does hinder a lot of problem cards for us, but it dies to a passing breeze and is miserable at blocking. Brimaz, King of Oreskos is also another threat that needs to be answered or it will get out of hand, while being a complete road block for aggro decks.

The strength in Andrew's list is the transformation it makes post sideboard. He is able to completely change gears and move to a control deck, bringing in End Hostilities and an additional Anger of the Gods. He can simply deploy a threat while getting his opponent to commit to the board. After this he can either burn them out, or push the reset button and clear the board and eventually use the power of Dig Through Time to find another threat to finish the game.

Moving forward, Jeskai continues to be the deck that impresses me the most. It is the most varied and customizable archetype in the current metagame as the two winners of the weekend have showed us. The Abzan menace didn't put up its usual dominant results, but was still very present at the top tables at SCG Minneapolis. Along with Jeskai, they continue to be the two defining decks of this format so far. This format continues to be extremely fun and diverse, and there are still plenty of other decks out there which are very competitive. Temur Aggro in particular had a very strong week. I expect that deck to only continue to increase in popularity and everyone needs to have a game plan for it. For myself, I will be taking a short break from Standard as there are a few local limited PTQ's coming up; we all know Khans Limited is one of the best formats since sliced bread. When I do come back to Standard I will continue to be riding some Mantis in hopes of victory, and will most likely continue with the aggro plan. When I do start jamming Jeskai again I will probably start off with Matej's list in testing, and Gods Willing, I'll be a little more successful this time.