In misfortune, I try to look at the bright side. I believe I now hold the distinction for the most second-place finishes at Invitationals, which is a disappointing but humorous little tidbit I’ll carry with me until someone else manages this unfortunate feat. How did it happen, after a preparatory experience some traditionally-minded folks might call “lacking”? Well, it seems like all of my best finishes of late have come after insufficient sleep and crazy travel schedules, so maybe I’ve got this whole “take care of yourself” mantra backwards. I don’t know what else to say, so let’s just start from where we left off last week.

I had just landed in Atlanta after a whirlwind 48-hour day. Last Wednesday night was spent in Tokyo, where the clubs don’t have a last call and the trains don’t start up until 5 in the morning. As luck would have it, that was just the time my travel buddy, Jake Mondello, and I needed to get started on our trek to the airport. Synergy! A night jumping around like madmen in a crush of people who didn’t speak a lick of English turned into a morning of hurried showers and a rush to get to the airport in the rain. Surprisingly, the only casualty of the night was a single lonely Flusterstorm, placed carelessly in the splash zone of my backpack (the outermost card in the top deckbox in the outer pocket, duh!) Should have popped it in a sleeve . . . 

When Jake and I arrived at the gate a few minutes early, I promptly removed my shoes and backpacks, and lay down directly on the carpet in the airport. I told Jake, “This is going to be my last opportunity to lie down for the foreseeable future, so I’m damn well gonna take it!” Tokyo to Beijing, through security, then on a fourteen-hour marathon over the Arctic Ocean to New York City, where somehow it was the same time as it had been when we left Beijing. Time Zones, how do they work?

I splurged on an entire pizza and ate it right there at the gate to board to Atlanta, reveling in the fact that I was back in the land of 2,000 calorie meals and shameless consumption. ‘Murica!

By this time, my energy levels were starting to flag, and I spent most of the flight to Atlanta in the kind of restless sleep you can only get in a metal tube hurtling along at hundreds of miles per hour. It was nearly 10 P.M. by the time we landed and got ourselves over to Zan Syed’s house (now and forevermore known as the Zansion), our base of operations for the weekend. After still more crappy eight-dollar pizza (because there’s always room for a sixth or seventh meal in a single day!), I proceeded to dump my boxes of cards all over Zan’s floor and assemble my weapons for the weekend ahead. I knew I would need incredible luck to win, because 1: You always need incredible luck to win a large Magic tournament, and 2: I was piloting the dumbest deck in Standard, Aetherworks Marvel.

Fortunately, I had the next-level tech, making the deck even more Delirium-esque by playing three copies of Traverse the Ulvenwald in the main. Happily, this also made my deck incredibly threat-dense going long, because I was able to cut to twenty lands and four Attune with Aethers. Once turn seven or eight rolled around, I would frequently have a 25% chance or less of drawing a superfluous land. Also, keep in mind, the thinning effect of lots of land-searching effects is small, but non-negligible when it comes to increasing your probability of spiking on your Marvel spins. Casting an Attune, cracking an Evolving Wilds, and casting a Traverse the Ulvenwald before playing the Aetherworks roulette wheel can increase your odds of hitting a big Emrakul by a few percentage points, so the more land-fetching you do ahead of time, the better.

Let’s cut to the chase and take a look at my list:

R/G Aetherworks ? Kaladesh Standard| Ben Friedman

• Creatures (13)
• 1 Tireless Tracker
• 1 World Breaker
• 3 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
• 4 Emrakul, the Promised End
• 4 Servant of the Conduit

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance

• Instants (5)
• 1 Kozilek's Return
• 4 Harnessed Lightning

• Sorceries (8)
• 1 Tormenting Voice
• 3 Traverse the Ulvenwald
• 4 Attune with Aether

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Vessel of Nascency

• Artifacts (8)
• 4 Aetherworks Marvel
• 4 Woodweaver's Puzzleknot

• Lands (20)
• 2 Mountain
• 8 Forest
• 2 Evolving Wilds
• 4 Aether Hub
• 4 Game Trail

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Tireless Tracker
• 4 Galvanic Bombardment
• 2 Kozilek's Return
• 2 Natural State
• 2 Sigarda, Heron's Grace
• 1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
• 1 Plains

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Now, let's talk about the odd card choices. I'm playing one main deck Tireless Tracker as a Traverse target, one main deck Tormenting Voice, one main deck Kozilek's Return, and only two Chandra, Torch of Defiance. What gives? Moving forward (especially with Jacob Baugh's full-on Naya list increasing its market share in the coming weeks), what should be changed?

But enough about Standard. I know that everyone is gearing up for their RPTQs, and I want to throw in my advice on the fairest deck in a decidedly unfair format.

No, Bant Eldrazi will never compete on the same level of unfairness as a deck like Dredge, but it also does not fold to hate cards, and it can play a healthy number of hate cards itself. With the old technology of Talisman of Progress to help cover Blood Moon matchups, the deck is surprisingly robust against basically every matchup.

Here’s where I ended up last week:

Bant Eldrazi ? Modern | Ben Friedman

• Creatures (24)
• 4 Drowner of Hope
• 4 Eldrazi Displacer
• 4 Eldrazi Skyspawner
• 4 Noble Hierarch
• 4 Reality Smasher
• 4 Thought-Knot Seer

• Instants (5)
• 1 Dismember
• 4 Path to Exile

• Sorceries (4)
• 4 Ancient Stirrings

• Artifacts (5)
• 2 Talisman of Progress
• 3 Engineered Explosives

• Lands (22)
• 1 Plains
• 2 Forest
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Sea Gate Wreckage
• 1 Temple Garden
• 2 Yavimaya Coast
• 3 Brushland
• 3 Cavern of Souls
• 4 Eldrazi Temple
• 4 Windswept Heath

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Grafdigger's Cage
• 4 Rest in Peace
• 2 Worship
• 2 Blessed Alliance
• 1 Disdainful Stroke
• 2 Natural State
• 2 Stubborn Denial

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Now, there is something subtle about this list that most people don’t see at first glance, but it’s part of a trend in Bant Eldrazi lists over the last year. What was once 24 lands has been shaved to 23, and I’ve gone so far as to cut down to only 22 in this list. What gives? Well, just like how in Standard I opted to cut lands for Traverse the Ulvenwalds in order to give me a virtual high land count with options as the game extended, in Modern I chose to rely more on Talismans to pick up the slack while providing me with Blood Moon immunity, and I chose to rely on Ancient Stirrings more as a land-finder in the spots where I need that effect. (I also chose to max out on Skyspawners for a free Lotus Petal on a 1/1 Scion, but that’s mostly because the flying body is critical against Affinity and Infect.) I also chose to have a single Sea Gate Wreckage as a specialty land, since the deck floods a decent amount and having more utility from my mana base is important. Sea Gate made the cut over Ghost Quarter, Tectonic Edge, Gavony Township, and Moorland Haunt because:

For what it’s worth, Moorland Haunt was my second choice, only edged out because I board in Rest in Peace often against midrange decks like Grixis or Jund, and I’m specifically including this specialty land for those matchups. Rest in Peace and Moorland Haunt is a non-bo, so Sea Gate Wreckage it is!

One other option is a basic Island, if you want to hedge against Blood Moon even more. This would involve changing your fetchlands to a Misty Rainforest/Windswept Heath split, but it’s an option. You can also cut a Forest for an Island, and cut two Heaths for two Rainforests if you have a lot of Blood Moons in your neck of the woods, but if that’s the case I would probably rather just have a third Talisman of Progress instead. And yes, to head off the question, you can indeed cut to a slim 21 lands in order to fit in the extra Talisman. I would personally cut the specialty land if I were doing that, because this choice would hedge more against Blood Moon by losing some of the equity against Jund/Jeskai/Grixis. Additionally, I have the sideboard Natural States in order to hedge against Blood Moon anyway, so I generally feel pretty safe playing against the various Moon decks.

The tournament started off with a lucky spin at the Roulette Aetherwheel, where I needed to hit one of three Eldrazi left in my deck in order to stabilize against B/R Aggro. Lo and behold, a tentacled friend was staring up at me when I took a look, and for the low price of six energy, my opponent was forced to pitch his whole hand to his own Bomat Courier. What a traitorous one-drop! The next three rounds were smooth sailing against a G/W Midrange deck and two Delirium decks, where sideboarded Tireless Trackers absolutely pulled their weight and then some. Modern was comparably smooth, with two Bant Eldrazi mirrors against somewhat less-experienced players. (This is by their own admission, I’m not throwing shade!) My opponents played reasonably well, but both of them admitted that they had little previous experience in navigating the Bant mirror, and I basically pushed the games in the direction I wanted them to go. To be fair, one of my opponents was manascrewed in one of the games, which meant that things were much easier for me there. But the Bant Eldrazi mirror is one thing, playing against a wily Affinity player on camera is another entirely!

I was still a little jetlagged and sleep deprived for day two, but I quickly ran through another pair of Delirium decks and Jim Davis on Esper Aggro, while picking up my only loss to Jacob Baugh’s Naya Marvel deck. At 11-1, I only needed to win one more round to soft-lock a spot on Sunday! Well, on the back end of these tournaments, you end up playing the same people in both formats, so I played against Jacob and Jim again in Modern, beating Dredge and Grixis Delver in close games. Guess my hate cards came to play, boys! I consider Jim a friend, so I decided to offer him the draw after the match, allowing him the opportunity to play two win-and-ins over the next two rounds while still locking me for the top seed.

I scooped and ID’d the next two rounds, because I was locked for the top seed and my old friend Adam Snook was looking for his first Invitational Top 8. This was shaping up to be a stacked Top 8, indeed!

Ah, the finals. I would really like to say that I played my best despite my bad luck, but we all know that’s not true. I played pretty shamefully after being kind of dejected by my repeated whiffs on the cards I needed, whether that’s Marvel whiffing on Emrakul, missing the third land off a Vessel of Nascency, or drawing a million lands after keeping a land-heavy opener. I’d prefer to let that match get consigned to the dustbin of history, but I’m not optimistic. All I can say is that I hope I can play a little better this weekend at the RPTQ!

On a brighter note, I’m finishing this article up in the airport (is this becoming a trend for me? I hope not) and I can say with confidence that the beauty of competitive Magic lies in the experiences you have with friends outside the tournament itself. What I’ll remember most from this weekend wasn’t the elation of easy victory in the Swiss rounds, nor the bitter taste of defeat at the end of the tournament, but the afterparty to celebrate a young man’s 21st birthday. If I have gotten one thing out of tournament Magic, it’s the ability to learn from those older and more experienced than me, while befriending and mentoring those younger than me. Happy Birthday to Alex Stratton, and hopefully the next tournament will see you in the winner’s circle!