Nice article! I realized the Hangarbacks in mud lists (from Rich and Paul), but I hadn't look closely to non top-8 lists. Hangarback after a nice drain (targetting a fow, or a DTT) can be huge for Ritter's list.
I found a new best friend in Hangarback. Draining into it is awesome, but the highlight all day was just grabbing it with Trinket Mage and assembling a small army to put pressure on the board and protect Dack and Jace.
Whereas a shop player wants to either be playing lock pieces or swinging really hard to the face, in my list, Hangarback was more of a deterrent. It came down with 1 or 2 counters, and played defense while growing slowly over the course of the midgame. After seeing Paul Mastriano and Brian DeMars playing their forgemaster lists at GenCon, I knew that Hangarback was powerful, but might need a better shell in general. I'm not much of a shop player, but it seemed to be a real fine Trinket Mage target in a deck that can afford to let it grow.
Nice work! As important as top-eight appearances are, to neglect decks that finished highly but outside of the top eight does a disservice to us all. I bet a lot of these decks could have finished higher with a small change in the way things went.
The Blue Moon decks are pretty cool, I wonder how well Keranos performed.
Brian DeMars and I ended up fighting for 9th place in the last round. I always try to look down the lists for anything that might be interesting because like you said, little changes in the way things worked out could have made for a very different top 8.
Keranos and Consecrated Sphinx shared the same basic slot in the list. When you need a game breaking card that provides a ton of card advantage and can help stabilize any shaky situations, 2 card slots is enough. The general Blue Moon lists don't run black for DT or VT, and no Tinker for a bot, so it was important that whatever cards I did run fit into the style of the deck:
1. Pitch to FoW
2. Are castable without needing an off color moxen or lotus
3. Are either hard to kill or provide card advantage before the opponent's first main phase.
Sphinx had been a staple of the build, but I wanted something that was easier to cast under a Blood Moon (yes, almost every game that I lost involved me not having double blue under a Blood Moon), and came out a little bit faster.
Keranos did exactly what I expected and was never a disappointment. Against shops, it snuck under thorns and went on to bolt down a whole board and draw me lands. I had a shop opponent sit there and look at his hand, questioning whether or not to call a judge. I offered the piece of wisdom that Keranos is not a creature until the correct devotion symbols are in play, and therefore cannot be Duplicanted or Metamorphed. We asked a judge anyway, but that Keranos never left play.
Against control, Keranos came down and straight up killed people. Mana Crypt rolls, Fetchland activations, pitching to FoW, getting slammed in the face by a Trinket Mage... all these points of damage add up, and more than one control player lost a game to Keranos bolts to the face with not a single removal spell for it in their entire deck or sideboard.
As things go, new and powerful tech will sometimes be just the thing you need to take an already powerful list to the next level. I don't know how much better my list was for my spice, but Hangarback and Keranos felt great all day.
- Ritter
