Quarter finals time!
Round 1: part one, part two, part three, part four.
And the schedule today:
Match 25: Dominator vs Groundbreaker
From Exodus we have Counterspell vs Stone Rain. They don’t make ‘em like this any more!
Dominator has a few more creatures, and probably nonland permanents, than a typical “draw go” style control deck of the time, but what creatures it has are evasive and resilient. The main thing the deck is lacking is card draw: a single copy of Whispers of the Muse would have doubled the amount in the deck. Treasure Trove is a decent card which only gets better the longer the game goes, but you have to find it first.
Groundbreaker wants to ensure that its opponent doesn’t get to keep more than two lands at any point: with a full playset of Stone Rain and three Rain of Tears it will be casting one on its third turn. There’s a good selection on efficient removal for any small creatures, but its own creature package is a bit of an afterthought. Your ideal turn two play, before you start blowing up lands is Duathi Slayer, which there is inexplicably only one of. The Anarchists are nice later game to rebuy any sorcery you need but more early pressure was needed.
My initial thought with this pairing is that Groundbreaker has to be favoured: control decks need a lot of mana to operate correctly and since your game plan involves getting rid of your opponent’s lands… that’s basically perfect. Especially when Dominator is wanting extra mana to take advantage of cards like Equilibrium while still holding up a counterspell.
However, if you consider that the countermagic in Dominator costs 2 or 3 mana to cast, while the land destruction in Groundbreaker costs 3 or 4: this is the key factor for me. I’d say most of the time Dominator can prevent its first Island going to the bin by at very least two turns, be it on the play or draw. This could be byT a Mana Leak followed by a counterspell, but you could also adopt a mana denial plan of your own by using Mind Games to tap down a Swamp during upkeep or even bouncing a land with Capsize. With four mana available Dominator can play a creature like Mirozel or Wayward Soul which will be extremely difficult to get rid of.
Alternatively, could the blue deck not worry too much about the land destruction aspect and simply concentrate on Groundbreaker’s creatures? 26 Islands is a fairly high percentage, and Flowstone Flood’s buyback cost is pretty steep: 3 life and a random discard. Realistically, it’s probably turn 6 before the land destruction deck can play two spells a turn. If it’d included more cheap threats along the lines of Carnophage, Jackal Pup… that’d have made a huge difference. The longer the game goes the better Dominator looks, and Groundbreaker is going to struggle to close it out fast enough.
Dominator is through to the Semi Final.
Match 26: Migraine vs Gatecrasher
Aggro discard vs aggro smash face.
The monoblack Migraine pairs cheap evasive creatures with discard to disrupt the opponent’s gameplan enough for those weenies to do their job. It can play a slower, more controlling game if needed too.
Gatecrasher is a pretty straightforward RG Beats deck. There’s a wee bit of ramp effects, but mainly in order to jump to 4 mana on the third turn where the undercosted beaters are. Primarily green; only has a relatively small red element.
The way I see this playing out is essentially Gatecrasher not having enough removal for Migraine’s shadow and fliers. Firewhip can do a lot of work, potentially, but any creature which is enchanted with it is a natural target for Death Stroke (of which there are four). Cone of Flame, at 5 mana, is very much at risk of being yoinked by Coercion or randomly discarded to Bottomless Pit.
If Gatecrasher gets a good start it can certainly put some pressure on, and the ETB card draw of Striped Bears and Arctic Wolves can counteract some of the discard. But the upkeep costs, cumulative or otherwise, can be tricky especially if you’ve had to discard land and/or ramp. Needing to return a green creature to hand for wildebeests… there’s a good chance that your planned target has to be sacrificed to an Edict, isn’t able to be replayed due to Portculus, or simply you don’t have enough cheap creatures left because of previous discard or removal.
And then there is the single copy of Creeping Mold which has eight pretty high priority targets. If this is used on a Bottomless Pit, which it probably needs to be because otherwise you’re going to eventually lose it anyway, and Migraine follows up with Ensnaring Bridge… Gatecrasher’s one out is a singleton Uktabi Orangutan.
Migraine is also through to the Semis.
Match 27: Finkel vs White Heat
Two decks that are actually quite alike in that they are focused on creatures and creature removal.
Finkel pairs high toughness black and red creatures with sweepers and targeted removal from Ice Age and Alliances.
White Heat is the third deck in the quarters from Exodus. It has quick evasive white creatures and efficient burn spells.
The big consideration here is Pyroclasm. Everything in the black red deck can survive this – or at least be regenerated or bounce itself back to hand. Meanwhile it does serious work against White Heat: all the shadow and fliers are toast. What it doesn’t kill is Paladin en-Vec. In fact, nothing in Finkel can kill the Paladin given it has pro black and pro red. Knight of Dawn can be tricky too, if there is two white open at least. Icy Manipulator needs to be reserved for dealing with any of those creatures, which it admittedly does do pretty well. WH uses Soltari Visionary instead of Disenchants, which certainly can be amazing in some matchups but that leaves only Shattering Pulse for Icy. Which is probably fine: you just play out more evasive threats and it’s Necro which you really need to deal with anyway.
There’s a lot of factors pushing me towards calling this match for Finkel: Contagion almost certainly being a two for one, the X Spells which can be amazing finishers or deal with a threat if a threat really needs to be dealt with… but I just feel like White Heat is better. It’s hard to find a way to get it into words to justify it though. Which is why even though I’ve already pushed this back a week I’m again late for my new deadline! Well: and it’s Christmas too, right? I have a lot of the deck for the next block (which will be Legacy to Apocalypse) so I might just have to take the easy way out and actually play those games.
OK: I’m just going to call this for White Heat. That’s my gut. Do tell me if I’m wrong – definitely happy to have Audience participation on this one. Will schedule the top 4 post for two weeks after I finally get this one posted so do chime in! (Again, looking forward to the next 32, I think either fortnightly or just doing two matches per week might be better).
It comes down to mana costs. White Heat can get a pretty fast start, and even if Finkel draws that Pyroclasm at the right time – there’s only two in the deck – then WH can just throw down another couple of creatures. Contagion is another effective way to slow down the assault, but pitching an extra black card to do so early is a real cost. Either way, it might be close enough to sacrifice everything in response to Bombardment, untap and point a couple Kindles at face. Even with a Dark Ritual start Finkel is going to be too slow, and high toughness creatures isn’t much consideration when they’re not blocking anyway.
White Heat is through to the Semis.
Deep Freeze vs Fiery Fury
A classic match up here! WU Control vs monored. You love to see it.
From Tempest, Deep Freeze was one of the original four theme decks. It does have a decent creature component: these are either the evasive threats which are the way the deck wins, or creatures with high toughness or useful effects that help the deck survive the early game. The other spells are a range of classic effects, often from the namesake cards. Think: Counterspell, Disenchant, Pacifism as well as various variants.
Fiery Fury is Mirage Block’s final hope in this bracket. It’s not quite a Sligh deck, the curve is a tad too high, but it’s probably the closest you could come with the deck building constraints of Theme Decks. There’s burn, there’s efficiently costed creatures with haste, and there’s… Mind Stone? Yes. That’s a bit weird. Your ideal turn two play is one of these, so you can follow up with a four drop like Lava Hounds turn 3.
I’m a big fan of a good red deck (obligatory mention of Premodern – I’m also putting together Legacy Burn for a thing next month) and so I really like Fiery Fury. But you have definitely got to respect Deep Freeze too. I think it’s close – I used the term classic for a reason. Lots of good back and forth is certainly happening here. Again, it’s hard to find a way to justify convincingly but my intuition is that Deep Freeze just edges this one out. 3 to 2 in a best of five series for sure.
The biggest issue for the control deck is the haste creatures. Well, and also Fireblast. And the other burn. And the other creatures. But Haste in particular, at least for this paragraph. I’d be almost inclined to use countermagic on these, especially in the early game. Tap down effects like Master Decoy and Puppet Strings are pretty invaluable too, though Decoy is unlikely to last long on the board. If it can survive the combat step, then Deep Freeze has a lot of good options on its turn for unwelcome creatures. Time Ebb might be the best, especially it hits one of the higher cost creatures like Hulking Cyclops, but Repentance hits everything (other than the single Pro-White creature) and the auras are ever dependable.
There’s a lot of other scenarios that are bouncing around: if the red deck sandbags a few mountains and manages to get a decent firestorm off to clear the defence for instance. Cone of Flame is going to be pretty effective there, too. The 3RR cost of that, though, is a lot more limiting especially if you wanted to follow it up with another burn spell or hasty creature. And that’s what I keep coming back to. If the red deck gets to the point where it needs to save up direct damage spells and throw them straight to the face… will enough be able to get through a counterspell or two in a single turn? Actually: is there enough of it, especially at Instant speed, to even be able to have this as an out? Maybe not.
OK. No more procrastination. Time to wrap this up.
Deep Freeze is the final semifinalist.
So there we are. The four decks left are all from Tempest Block. Which is not unexpected, even though it’s also making me second guess myself because have I really come to the most likely conclusion in each of these? Well: probably not, but then it’s not like this is super high stakes or anything.
The two matches coming up will be Dominator vs Migraine, and White Heat vs Deep Freeze. Place your bets now.
Here’s the overall summary to this point:
I’ll be aiming to get the next write up done for the weekend of the 13th/14th next month.
Later, nerds.
beats.
Beats and Skies 
Leave a comment