Drew Levin Still Thinks My Deck Sucks :)

[KanaKaishou]

I like playing Stoneforge over Spirit in the current metagame in which Oath is becoming a little bit less popular in favor of more Shops and Fish than there was around the MVP Invitational when Craig and I last worked on Blue Angels. What did your sideboard look like? I know that was always the weakness for Craig and am wondering if you fixed that problem.

1 Moat
1 Humility
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Flusterstorm
1 Swords to Plowshares
3 Grafdiggers Cage
3 Rest in Peace
1 Steel Sabotage
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Disenchant
1 Council's Judgment

I've been happy with that general configuration. Still doesn't have a good answer to the gush decks, though.

[Mr. Type 4]

Saying something is overrated is almost always pointless because the idea of something being overrated is extremely subjective.  People who dismiss a deck like this have failed Magic 101 and don't understand that what makes a deck good is how it plays in relation to the metagame.  Failing to respect this deck will likely lead to losses because this deck will be at your next tournament.  

Thinking this deck sucks won't change your match record.

Not sure how I feel about Consecrated Sphinx that some people in the linked results are playing (I also saw them being played in Europe).  My personal Magic principles tell me to be wary of blue cards that cost more than 4 that I'm not actively trying to cheat into play somehow.  Obviously you win when you resolve it and keep it going for a while, but how reliable can it be to cast that sucker?  It seems pretty funny against Show and Tell but that's a major corner case.  Am I missing something there?

[jyuj]

Nice work on the finish Vasu!!! Dat Moat tech! I watched you cast it vs a Goblins player at the New York Open and Gee Gee! Watch out for that chalice of the void on 4. hahaha   

[Chubby Rain]

Saying something is overrated is almost always pointless because the idea of something being overrated is extremely subjective.  People who dismiss a deck like this have failed Magic 101 and don't understand that what makes a deck good is how it plays in relation to the metagame.  Failing to respect this deck will likely lead to losses because this deck will be at your next tournament.  

Thinking this deck sucks won't change your match record.

Not sure how I feel about Consecrated Sphinx that some people in the linked results are playing (I also saw them being played in Europe).  My personal Magic principles tell me to be wary of blue cards that cost more than 4 that I'm not actively trying to cheat into play somehow.  Obviously you win when you resolve it and keep it going for a while, but how reliable can it be to cast that sucker?  It seems pretty funny against Show and Tell but that's a major corner case.  Am I missing something there?

Hey Paul, I agree with you thoughts on a deck being "overrated". Regarding the Consecrated Sphinx, I have been brewing with it and have found it to be really good but you have to build your deck around it. Generally, you want a control shell with 4 x Mana Drain and Trinket Mages and/or Mana Vault. You also want a large number of basic lands. The card is very hard to deal with for certain decks like BUG Fish (dodges dismember, decay, and all non-FoW counters) and against combo decks makes it very hard for them to kill you as for each card they draw, you draw two more. I've been very happy with it in the current BUG fish infested online metagame.

[KanaKaishou]

So, I'll give an addendum to this topic based on my results from the most recent TMD Open. I finished in tenth with a record of 5-2, which was about what I deserved given some good decisions and some pretty awful ones.

My list was the same as the Top Deck version in the main, with the following changes

+1 SoFaI,-1 SoFaF (I thought delver would be much bigger than Oath and Storm combined. I was right, and Fire and Ice is obviously better there than Feast and Famine. Fire and Ice isn't awful against Oath and Storm, but you can theoretically brick while drawing cards, but you *can't* brick by putting them down to zero resources).

-1 FoF, +1 V Clique (Clique is a better interactive spell, and I've been less high on FoF than before. It's still good, but I think more interaction was needed, as FoF was a midgame turn the corner card, rather than something to get me there--and I lost a lot of games before FoF was relevant. I seriously considered on the of the alternate draw engines in this slot--Consecrated Sphinx or Magus of the Future, really)

My sideboard was as follows:

1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Steel Sabotage
1 Moat
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Humility
1 Swords to Plowshares
3 Grafdigger's Cage
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Rest in Peace
1 Council's Judgment
1 Disenchant

Two real points of note: (1) I went down on dredge hate. I think the deck is a fading part of the metagame. I'm not going to plan for a <5% of the field deck with 6 cards. I'll play 5 pieces which are good (RiP, Moat, Cage), but ultimately, only 1 of those is *for* dredge. This is the way we do it in other formats. Why not Vintage? (2) Thalia, Guardian of Thraben straight up solves the delver matchup. Props to Tom Dixon for thinking of this one. Basically, you can now be the beatdown instead of the control deck, since you have enough creatures, and Thalia makes Gush, Preordain, and company pretty embarrassing as spells.

As for a report, my results were:

bye, loss to terra nova, win vs delver, win vs Terra Nova, win vs. U/R standstill, loss vs. Martello, win vs. Espresso.

I kept some loose ones against shops and was punished, but when I won, I won incredibly big. I think I'd say if you get top going early, or you have the right cards naturally, it's effortless to win, but otherwise, you're in real trouble. This works out to a very 50/50 matchup, and I don't know if I want to dedicate more to fixing it, other than testing and learning how to play it out properly.