Team GWS Presents: IRM, A Primer and SCG Chicago Report

[Lost In Admiration]

Here's a link to the article written by Team GWS member Philip Schmitt discussing our deck of choice for Star City Chicago, It's Raining Men.  Philip took 7th place with our list.

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=8494

[Dante]

Nice report - I liked the humor in that dry, sarcastic way....I would have thought Willbender too..

Two questions that came up:

1. Mishra's Factory - I know it won you the one game vs Manuel, but would it be better to have some Ancient Tombs mixed in to help accelerate out?

this is tied in to ...

2. Ankh of Mishra - it seems you sided them out 4/8 matches.  Were these the last 3 slots that seemed to go to Ankh sort of by default?

[Anusien]

Excellent article.  Good content and flavor.  The only thing I would have liked was to know more what cards shined and which didn't, and what sort of changes you would have made after the tournament had you known better.  Still, you won the Emerald, not me, so who am I to complain?  Good job!

[Lost In Admiration]

Factories seem amazing in here.  A lot of times one or more disruption plus any threat is hard to recover from.  Factory fits in that "any threat" category.

Honestly, every discussion of removing Ankh has went something like this:

Me: Ankh is shitty.  Why don't we replace it with something better?

Phil or Brian: It deals 4-6 every game and is THE card against control.  Everyone plays fetchlands as a bonus.

Me: I'm bad at Magic.

It gets switched out a lot, but I think it has proven it's worth many times.  Recently, however, Phil has taken my place in the abovementioned conversation and I've taken his.

EDIT: Phil can't connect to the site from school for one reason or another.  I'll try to respond for him.

[Moxlotus]

Now that I overrode a DNS or something or ever I'll be able to respond.

Ankhs are a tricky card.  They are a card that you don't really know if they are good or not.  If I have one in play, I dont know that my opponent is holding 3 fetches or not.  If I was playing in a general meta I'd play the exact same list.  If I am playing in a WS heavy environment, I'd cut them for Crucible#4, Dupe #3 and probably a Tomb.  Ankh is basically the general maindeck card that gets sided out against non-control decks.  I just opted to go with another angle of attack and make a more diverse threat base.

Factories were great.  They are wonderful against fish and provide an "oh shit" plan if you go WS-3sphere-opp Wasteland-lose.  They are also reuseable creatures with a Crucible.

Razormane Masticore is the best card in the deck.  Duplicant follows closely.  Those 2 cards are what won me almost every match.  They are, in technical words, "the nutz".  They are good against basically every top deck at the moment except combo.

Pillars are in the same boat as Ankh, but I know they are definitely staying in.  They win against Combo.  

This deck is very very good against combo decks.  I brought it predicting a combo heavy environment.  I was wrong.  I am a complete lucksack in several of those matches, but the deck is powerful.  I'd play this over Stax any day.  The lack of draw sucks, and you need to mulligan sometimes.  A few times I had "3 mountain, 4 men" and you can't keep that.  The deck needs 1 land, 1 piece of acceleration, and 1 disruption/man in the opening hand.  Lack of draw puts me at a disadvantage against 5/3 but the Razormanes and Duplicants more than make it up.  Again, Razormanes and Duplicants are what make the deck work.

I would be hesitant bringing this deck to a combo light field because that is the deck's best matchup.

This tournament convinced me that neither 3sphere nor Crucible is broken.  I play the same amount of acceleration as any other deck and like my report says-2 turn 1 trinis(1 going first) and 1 turn 4 crucible/waste lock.  Those plays did win me the game, but they don't show up that frequently.

The SB was about as good as I could get.  I only boarded in R&Rs in the quarterfinals, but I faced 0 5/3 decks.  I don't know how I could alter the SB to make it any better.

I'm glad people like the article-it was my first and Mat helped me a lot.

[AggressiveDude]

While testing the Deck I noticed a very interessting thing.
Goblin Welder was dead too often and most of the time I wanted to drop something else instead of it.And when I casted him he was killed with ease.
Also I think that this Deck is really powerfull but it has the same Problem that MUD has.It often just goes Top Deck Mode.To fix that I would cut the Welder and add 2 Gradted Skullclaps instead.You sad this Deck lacks of draw yourself and Skullcap fixes that Problem on its on.Some will say that you can only cast him in lategame but thats the reason why you should run 2.
As for the Welder Replacement 3# and 4# I would add another Crucible(Waste,Strip,Workshop,Factory and Razormane Masticore are a very good reason to run 4!) and probably a dupe.


Another thing is Tangle Wire.Have you tested it?I could imagine that it could fit perfectly in this Deck.


regards,
Aggro Dude

[Lost In Admiration]

Having no Welders is perfectly fine until you run up against Welders.  Losing to a Welder is probably not the best of plays.  I would wholly agree that Welder does seem pretty weak in other matchups, however.

Tangle Wire is the first in line for Ankh replacement as far as I'm concerned.  It was in the original list of the deck, before Phil, Brian, and other GWSers fixed it.  We've tested it a number of times and damage from the Ankh seems to fit 'what the deck is trying to do' much better.  Looking at our five color list (which was an absolute failure), you'll find a number of amazing disruption cards and large men, which is what I thought was the theme of the deck.  I think it was Philip who pointed out that the deck isn't about disruption per se, but about damage.  The disruption comes in the form of damage.  For this reason, I think Tangle Wire would seem a lot like the Chains did in the five color list, out of place.

[Moxlotus]

The Welders are not that good-but without them you LOSE horribly to any deck with Welders.  This was discovered in smaller 20 person tournaments.  The deck can't beat any welder deck unless we have our own.

[AggressiveDude]

The Welders are not that good-but without them you LOSE horribly to any deck with Welders.  This was discovered in smaller 20 person tournaments.  The deck can't beat any welder deck unless we have our own.

Well a really nice way of fighting opposing welders are just to kill them instead of swapping around.
I renember MUD using 3-4 Triskelions to comat opposing Welders.
Maybe you could run some of them because against WS.dec you need to get the Welders off the table and then you should overun them anyway.

[Moxlotus]

Welder mud ran Metalworkers to help with the mana.  If we ran trike we would have:

8 4cc creatures
3-5 cc creatures
6 6cc creatures.

This is too slow.  The deck doesnt even have a draw engine to find the workshops.  The deck would morph into Mud and I find that deck bad.