Winterhalter Thu May 06, 2010 1:47 pm
Despite playing wicked badly in T8, I still think the list I played had a lot right. Here's what I recommend going forward:
4 Putrid Leech
4 Sprouting Thrinax
4 Bloodbraid Elf
3 Siege-Gang Commander
3 Broodmate Dragon
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Terminate
4 Blightning
3 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
3 Dragonskull Summit
1 Lavaclaw Reaches
1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
4 Raging Ravine
4 Savage Lands
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Forest
3 Mountain
4 Swamp
3 Duress
3 Grim Discovery
1 Doom Blade
2 Terminate
1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Bituminous Blast
3 Malakir Bloodwitch
Some notes:
No mana ramp spells: Aside from the conventional argument about being a bad cascade, far more important is the fact that these cards are often simply irrelevant when cast. They require you to spend mana, a card, and time (in addition to a business slot, from a deck-construction perspective) doing something that often has a minimal impact on the game state. The spells into which you want to ramp are the big ones (SGC, Broodmate), and Garruk accomplishes this goal while simultaneously being able to act as a token army or Overrun in circumstances where ramping would be irrelevant. Trace of Abundance does not actually stop Ruinblaster or Seas, and simply replacing the land you lose is fine (or buying it back with Grim Discovery in post-board mirrors). Note that Trace is replaced by Garruk and a land, so that you'll either have a card that is fine at replacing lost mana when you have 4 land (more relevant vs. Seas), or simply a replacement land. The only real argument left for Trace is giving a man-land shroud vs. U/W, but I wouldn't play an aura that gave a land shroud, so I'm not willing to play Trace just for this marginal upside.
No Ruinblaster: The flip-side to this is not bothering with trying to destroy lands. While this admittedly makes you a little weaker vs. opposing man lands, this often doesn't matter as not playing him gives you more creatures and removal that actually matter (which removal can ice a manland anyway). The problem with Ruinblaster is that a 2/1 haste is simply not that impressive in any relevant standard matchup, so you're often effectively just casting Lay Waste. It's kind of like casting Mystic Snake in EDH, for those of you that play that format - when does a stupid 2/2 have any impact on the board? In the Jund mirror, Grim Discovery simply trumps Ruinblaster, and almost every other creature is better than him; vs. U/W, setting them back 1 land is simply not enough of a loss to set them back. I suspect that people playing Ruinblaster are doing things like going turn 2 Trace, turn 3 Blaster, which is admittedly very good, or remembering games where they played multiple Ruinblasters, but both of these are designing your deck with the best case scenario in mind. In short, on average, Ruinblaster often = Lay Waste, which just isn't good enough for a fast-paced format based around powerful spells.
Mulligans: I mulled a ton on Sunday, and I can firmly attest that while doing so is kinda harmful, it's not nearly as bad as keeping some of the hands I see people keep. I would suggest two things. First, for the most part, never keep a hand that needs to draw a land that produces a particular color in order to cast its relevant spells. I see a lot of people say "well, if I draw a green source, this hand is great." I think this is foolish, mathematically speaking, since the hand is often going to be only around 65% to actually do anything relevant toward winning the game. The relevant outcomes are: 65% of the time I get to play a normalish game, even though I'll probably lose some tempo to having to play my spells in a weird order due to mana constraints; 35% of the time I just straight up lose the game. This hardly seems a better gamble than a random six. Second, in some matchups, I advocate mulling very aggressively for certain cards. In particular, vs. U/W and Time Sieve, I think it is correct to mulligan moderately aggressively for turn 2 Putrid Leech (or at least turn 3 Thrinax), especially vs. Sieve, because they will give you a bunch of extra cards via Howling Mine and Jace.
