On The Stack

The past four weeks have been very enriching. Because GP Singapore is imminent, and therefore the frequency of my games intensified. The learning values were there of course, but it also offered many excruciating experiences for me, most of the time.

I received hard lessons on top-decking (or rather, not top-decking at all) when you needed it the most. Imagine having the luxury of drawing over thirty cards off the top of your library when your opponent has a massive board presence of ten lands and nothing else, simply waiting for you to make things happen.

And suddenly it seemed like I was playing this unfamiliar Twinless Exarch.

Or your opponent sneaking in a very brilliant Illness in the Ranks just before you cast your Blood Moon to screw up the land colors for his Collected/Chord of Calling. Twenty turns later I concluded that I had swapped out my one and only Repeal that I was patiently waiting to draw.

But the most important lesson this weekend, was that I finally learnt to use the golden phrase," On the stack.”

A typical combo match-up is capable of ten-minute games. You either win, or lose. Which is also the reason why I always have time for two cigarette breaks between rounds and sometimes, even a 25-minute lunch break.

And then I figured out that I have also been giving away longer coffee breaks to my opponents. I am actually giving away games far too easily.

I hold the stack a lot more nowadays. I make an increased amount of calculated moves between the stacks for better gameplays.

I used to let Abrupt Decay resolve when it targeted my Deceiver Exarch in the midst of tapping for the combo, since there was no way I could counter it and I should naturally let it go. But because I held the stack, I took a second look at my hand and realised that I have a Pestermite and I can flash it in response with Abrupt Decay on the stack, untap my Deceiver Exarch and trigger off the combo a million times before Abrupt Decay resolves.

I held an Aether Vial trigger on the stack and Repealed it before any counter can be added on it. I placed my own Serum Visions on the stack and resolved a Telling Time so that the Serum Visions would effectively draw me the second card that I needed. Sometimes I even go to the extent of flashing in a Deceiver Exarch with my opponent’s fetchland ability on the stack, just to avoid him getting a blue land source to counter my creature.

There was this recent encounter where I was playing against a Jeskai Aggro deck with Geist of Saint Trafts and flipping Delvers. We got ourselves into a midgame beatdown, his one 3/2 Insectile against my two Snapcaster Mages. With his life total at 2 (I was at 3), I had a Lightning Bolt in hand and could easily deal for lethal to his face, which some players might do. But my opponent had two untapped lands in play and I decided to pass my turn, allowing him to survive on 2.

That move proved to be crucial as my opponent took his opportunity and cast a Lightning Helix targeted at me for his own version of lethal. In response, I cast my Lightning Bolt which went on top of the stack and resolved first. State-based effects checked, opponent ends up dead first, and I won the game.

My games have gradually evolved from losing in 10 minutes to grinding out my opponent for 20 minutes and eventually finding ways to turn the tide and win that game instead.

Because when you hold spells on the stack, there is time for you to consider your options and make better decisions rather than blindly allowing spells to resolve. On-the-stack plays are excellent opportunities to catch your opponents off guard and pressurize them into making misplays that could be beneficial to your game.

Remember that once you have allowed spells to resolve, there is no way of retracting your moves.

I smoke a lot lesser now though.

Deck Preference : Jeskai Ascendancy Combo

I spent last Saturday at a local game shop for my last PPTQ of the season. My season has been a relatively short experience. I only started last October and was fleetingly unsure as to what I was landing myself in. My first six months of competitive play was fruitful. I haven’t won anything yet – the best I did was second place at a GPT with my Jeskai Ascendancy Combo deck.

I have a habit of brewing three different decks (Combo, Control and Aggro) and the frequency of game exposure is dependable on how I ranked my favorites. And since it was the last Standard PPTQ of my season I decided to play Esper Control instead of my usual favorite.

It was horrific.

Not because I dropped out of the competition with a 1-2 record, but because each match lasted an average 20 to 25 minutes. I won my last game in the nick of time, just after the judge called for the last five turns, and that was only two matches played. (I won 2-0 that particular round). What if that game was tied at 1-1? It would have been a draw game after 50 minutes of mind-grinding.

My friend who was also in the competition, told me that’s what I deserved for playing a control-based deck. Sometimes it’s either you have no time to win, or you find yourself losing after playing for an hour. ”You should have played your combo deck. What was previously a win away from Top-8 became a win away from the bottom,” he said.

My friend was right. It just wasn’t my style to drag play, and hence my decision to end my PPTQ early. It was a six-round swiss format and I didn’t want to grind for another 3 hours playing control.

Yes. I was seriously bored playing my own deck and that is not a good sign. It was a bad decision to play something I’m so out of touch with.

I practically took a stranger to a tournament and blew my own chances.

There are times when you go on a date and realized things are not quite right and you just felt that you are wasting your partner’s time as well as your own. You might want to leave right away and not waste anybody else’s time. I didn’t do my research well enough and realized I would be much happier playing my preferred deck even if I had to lose eventually.

Deck preferences. 

It took me nearly two months of deck testing before I finally brewed my own variant of the combo. It wasn’t an easy deck to play against all the odds. People have solutions all over, and the only way I figured out to play this deck as efficiently as possible, was to replicate what card draws was to Storm decks in Modern, with the inclusion of some excellent top-decking luck.

This was Pro player Lee Shi Tian’s version which made its way to Top 4 of the Manila GP 2015:

How this deck gets to win is simple. With a Jeskai Ascendancy and a mana dork in play, a Retraction Helix would enable your mana dork to bounce either the Astral Cornucopia or Briber’s Purse back to your hand. You recast the X=0 spell again to untap your mana source which triggers the Ascendancy and you get an infinite loop to either buff up your creatures to swing for lethal or find yourself an Altar of the Brood for infinite mill.

My luck dries up whenever it comes to Commune with the Gods because I tend to mill my Retraction Helices into the graveyard, along with Altar of the Brood and Briber’s Purses. 

And so I decided to make some changes:

Since I’ve been getting played out by the bloody Communes on a regular basis, Taigam’s Scheming becomes an inevitable choice for me. It is not card advantage at first instance, but it manipulates your next five draw steps and does the filtering anyway.  The slots for Briber’s Purse and Altar of the Brood has been increased for consistency. There is now three times more of a chance that I would get these cards into my opening hand. 

I replaced Tormenting Voices, a single Voyaging Satyr and Rattleclaw Mystic with Defiant Strikes and Anticipates. The one-casting cost Defiant Strike has been crucial in my build-up.  There was this scenario where this card was particularly impressive.

It was turn three. My opponent had just tapped himself out for a Courser of Kruphix and this was a golden window for me. I had three lands tapped out for Ascendancy with an untapped Sylvan Caryatid in play. I had a pair of Defiant Strikes, one Dragon Mantle and two lands in hand.

I proceeded to trigger the Ascendancy with a string of Defiant Strikes and Dragon Mantles, generating six to seven loops and a Dig Through Time to get all my combo pieces for a third turn win. That is at least 18 cards off the top of my library in a single turn. That play would hardly be possible if I had two Tormenting Voices. Perhaps I got lucky that game, but winning a game is also about setting yourself up when you are reliant on luck to get the right draws.

The variant also features a transformative sideboard that enables the combo to convert into a control deck. The underplayed Ojutai’s Command is able to hold off Dragonlords during midgame, null Stoke the Flames and also reanimate your Caryatids at end of turn after a boardwipe by your opponent. Reprisals are cheap removal spells to get the bigger threats out of the way, while Seismic Rupture and Anger of Gods deal with the weenies.

Narset Transcendent is a surprise inclusion during sideboard testing. When the game is running in Control mode, Narset’s first ability helps the extra draws into combo pieces. And if there is an 8/8 dragonlord staring down at you, you could also cast your one and only Retraction Helix to bounce the attack and activate the second ability of Narset to rebound the Helix for the next turn and hopefully combo off with a free trigger on Ascendancy. The final ability of Narset is almost the best protection in the format for the combo.

The Jeskai Ascendancy Combo is not broken yet, but it’s the only deck at the moment that doesn’t bore me to death.

Ten Cheap Unplayed Cards In Modern

The gameplay was getting intense. Two Deceiver Exarchs on either side of the board means it was essentially a draining battle of the blue mages waiting for each other to tap out, or to simply just hold out for draw steps to fill the hand with more counter magic.

With six free lands at his disposal, it is easy to presume that a Splinter Twin can be protected with a cheap two-cost counterspell. He had just cast a Vendilion Clique to tuck my Splinter Twin under the library and knew I had nothing else but a Spell Snare, an unimaginative Manamorphose and three spare lands. He was quietly confident I suppose, even if he didn’t get his way with me he could just beat me down with his existing flyer.

“Splinter Twin.” He places it hesitantly on the table, edging it close to his Deceiver Exarch.

In response, I whipped out my Manamorphose, floated a color each, and topdecked a Swerve.

I slapped the Swerve down excitedly and spoke with new-found strength, “I will change the target of your Splinter Twin to MY Deceiver.”

These were some of the epic plays that I have experienced with some of the uncompetitive cards that most players think nothing of.  I know because I have often been dissuaded against giving these cards a slot in my deck. These cards, are not considered strong or useful enough to warrant play time by the more competitive players but I play these cards because it’s much cheaper than a pair of Cryptic Commands. 

In this article, I will discuss on ten of the cards in Modern that are often under-estimated and left on the sidelines but portrays immense potential to disrupt gameplay and perhaps, gives your deck a surprise element over the netdecks.

I may not be the most qualified player to comment on card plays because I was never on the Pro Tour. Yes I admit I’m not that good.

But then, I also had a couple of other players telling me that I was wasting my time hoarding Spellskites and Leyline of Sanctities two years ago because no one was playing these cards.  So let’s move on!

10. Manamorphose - $3.35 mid TCG

With either red or green to cast, it is versatile enough to be played in most deck setups for Modern. Manamorphose interestingly floats two mana of your choice when you are seeking solutions in response and tweaks your mana when you are in need of the right colors to play your spells.

9. Swerve - $0.37 mid TCG

It does what Spellskite can’t -  Shoot your opponent’s Thoughtseize or Lightning Bolt right back at his or her face. It can also be a sideboard option when you need to redirect counterspells or get your opponents to Path to Exile their own Tarmogoyfs.

8. Extirpate - $3.13 mid TCG

Split Second. As long as you are the first to play it, it becomes a combo wrecker and allows you to browse the library of your opponent with a single mana. Surgical Extraction would have done the job, but Extirpate gets the thumbs up because it is more likely to go through a pile of counterspells with its Split Second ability. The best thing that I love about this card is that it can exile copies of non-basic lands (read: shocklands and fetches) and helps to thin your opponent’s deck.

7. Ghost Quarter - $0.18 mid TCG

And that brings me to this card. Destroys almost every land in sight that Extirpate can possibly exile. Crucible of Worlds allows it to see repeated play. Wasteland is not playable in Modern. Tectonic Edge only works for fourth land or more. Helps tweak mana sources when required, either on your own land or a Darksteel Citadel.

6. Repeal - $0.25 mid TCG

Almost superb in any low cost deck and even against. Bounce an attacking cranial-plated ornithopter with one blue and draw a card, or get your Snapcaster Mage back with three at the end of turn. It can hold out for some disruptive plays, almost similar to the Time Walk feature that Remand offers. 

5. Familiar Ruse - $0.46 mid TCG

This is a cheap way of reusing creatures with Enter-The-Battlefield effects. Although situational, the raw idea of bouncing a Snapcaster Mage or a Spellstutter Faerie for triggered counter magic is interesting for the blue players.

4. Silence - $0.93 mid TCG

Half of an Orim’s Chant and playable in Modern, the card oracle doesn’t target any players and goes beyond the Leyline of Sanctity. Cast usually during the upkeep phase, it can keep your opponents quiet during their turns, and works best when you are gearing up to take the game on your turn.

3. Telling Time - $0.91 mid TCG

End-of-turn plays on this card gives you a two-card advantage in hand and put an unwanted card at the bottom. While Serum Vision and Sleight of Hand are at Sorcery speed, this is one of the few draw spells in instant mode that helps to meddle with your topdeck, stimulating a fraction of what Brainstorm does in Legacy and can be fired off in response to spells like Thought Scour. Also a telling time for Miracles.

2. Noxious Revival - $0.83 mid TCG

This is the reason why I still see Miracle decks realistically having a chance in Modern. Versatile because you can also give your opponent a dead draw for the next turn.

1. Ojutai’s Command - $2.40 mid TCG

This card could be as powerful as the decks playing it. I’ll be particularly impressed with the first choice if I’m playing Bant and up against a red deck. It might also find a place in Blue-White Faeries.  There are quite a number of pesky two-mana-or-less threats we would all like to port back to the battlefield. But it would interesting to see how far it’ll go within the next six months after Magic Origins kicks in.

Have fun decking.