Last week, I played Ivory Cup VI, the first online version of the classic Stockholm Swedish event (last year was local and very small for obvious reasons, and I wasn’t there). It was quite small, and with Swedish reprint policy I didn’t expect all spikey powered decks, so I decided to try out a brew I created a year ago but never tested. It looked like this:
The results were as follow:
Round 1: 1-2 against Seb, playing BWu Party Crasher.
Round 2: 2-0 against Slanfan, playing UG vise/ankh/boomerang/stormseeker.
Round 3: 2-1 vs Mark Athey, playing R budget aggro.
Round 4: 2-1 vs Paddan, playing Bx midrange.
Round 5: 2-0 vs Spencer Cullum, playing G budget aggro.
Quarterfinals: 1-2 vs Åland, playing Twiddlevault.
Some notable achievements:
- Getting Guardian Beast + Chaos Orb going against an already mana-screwed Paddan.
- Getting a turn-2 Channel Fireball against Åland when he started on Library on the draw.
- Countering Warp Artifact with Avoid Fate.
Generally, I beat up on a bunch of low-powered aggressive decks, so not too much to gon into here. But the deck is somewhat interesting. Some observations:
- Greed was bad. I drew it way more times than I cast it, and I probably cast it more times than I activated it (I believe once or twice, total).
- Avoid Fate was mostly good. Got to counter the second bolt on my Erhnam which was awesome, as well as a Boomerang on another Erhnam cast through Mana Vault, though rarely protecting Disk and Mirror as I planned it. (Though paleing in comparison to some kind of actual Counterspell when you get a Bolt or Psionic Blast to the face, where Flash Counter would save you, or just hit by Armageddon or Mind Twist or Wheel.)
- Speaking of which, Erhnams overperformed by a lot. Should definitely have had the fourth one. Especially protected, they just race everything. I’m no big fan of transformative sideboards, like in Twiddlevault, but when you back up some creatures with factories and Fireballs, it’s a totally different thing.
- Deck is clunky as fuck. 3 disks, 3 mirrors, 2 greed, 4 fireballs is just too much, even with 3 Mana Vaults and a Fastbond.
- Mano told me to cut the Fastbond. I’m not sure, it’s good to have something to cut in almost every matchup. Once in a while, it’s also great. He also told me to add Balance, but I’m still unsure about that; I don’t really want the Pearl with disks around, and the clunkiness means I will almost surely have a full hand.
So, to summarize:
- Greed and the draw-7s aren’t great, as it seems so dangerous to pay life or give the opponent cards. Maybe some kind of card draw that only affected me and didn’t cost life would be better.
- Avoid Fate is good but actual Counterspell is better.
- Disk is a good all-purpose answer, but the curve is so high. Having something like Disenchant would help sometimes.
- Erhnam Djinn way overperformed. But it’s not usable against a lot of aggro decks if they have enough creatures. Serra Angel would be awesome out of the sideboard to truly dominate.
I don’t know. Maybe there is some value in going down this road.
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On a more serious note, this is a possible upgrade that still preserves the Disk/Mirror plan:
Don’t know when I will try this out, but I will keep it on my list. Hopefully, we can go back to smaller irl events soon. I can’t wait.
End of turn, draw a card 