I just returned from Pro Tour Avacyn Restored last Tuesday, and while I did not do as well as I hoped again (4–4 on Day 1, and 2–4 on Day 2), I learned some valuable lessons.

I chose to play the same deck (about the same seventy of seventy-five or so) as the rest of SCGBlue. Unfortunately, personal affairs prevented me from going to Roanoke for the Prerelease to test with them in real life, so I had to be satisfied with testing digitally with Jason Ford and other players.

This brings me to my first (re-learned) lesson:

If I also had played more matches, I would have realized that Borderland Ranger should have been a four-of almost certainly due to how our mana broke down. Smite the Monstrous was probably a good card to have access to boarded for mirrors (to kill Wolfir Silverheart).

The second lesson:

I violated this lesson in the Draft pod on Day 2 (after eking out a 2–1 in the first Draft, losing to Richard Bland). My deck ended up as a mess with very slow, but powerful green cards, but no early action to speak of, while splashing a third color (red for Bonfire of the Damned). If I had prioritized 2- and 3-drops higher, my deck would have been much more synergistic and not quite as clunky (Nightshade Peddler and Trusted Forcemage come to mind here).

Separately, I think the Limited format is reasonably interesting, although half of the cards are only situationally good or of low card quality, and the other half are quite strong. I would prefer to be G/U soulbond in every Draft if possible since I think it is the best pairing for Wingcrafter and Trusted Forcemages.

Looking Forward

Seeing as how I am in need of another qualification (for PT: Seattle), I’ve been looking again at Standard.

The SCG Opens make it seem as though people are somewhat complacent and therefore haven’t done enough work to actually innovate new decks or ideas besides a card here and there.

One of the newer ideas that we can look at is a G/U/W hexproof strategy similar to the one that people just played in Pro Tour: Avacyn Restored. The advantages are that you have a better mana base and mana acceleration.

"G/U/W Hexproof"

• Creatures (19)
• 1 Llanowar Elves
• 4 Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 4 Birds of Paradise
• 4 Invisible Stalker
• 2 Thrun, the Last Troll
• 4 Geist of Saint Traft

• Spells (17)
• 2 Mental Misstep
• 2 Mutagenic Growth
• 3 Negate
• 4 Increasing Savagery
• 2 Spectral Flight
• 4 Angelic Destiny

• Lands (24)
• 10 Forest
• 2 Hinterland Harbor
• 4 Razorverge Thicket
• 4 Seachrome Coast
• 4 Sunpetal Grove

Buy This Deck

Wolfir Silverheart is a card I wouldn’t mind having, especially boarded against R/G variants, but I don’t think it is worth it in the maindeck due to it being bad against Vapor Snag and black removal spells.

Another possible deck that we can derive from Block is a Miracle-based control deck that emphasizes planeswalkers and expensive sorceries. For a shell of what a long-game control deck should look like, I turned to Andrew Cuneo’s W/U control deck (from before Avacyn Restored) from Magic Online:

"Andrew Cuneo’s W/U Control"

• Creatures (3)
• 2 Snapcaster Mage
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph

• Planeswalkers (4)
• 2 Gideon Jura
• 2 Karn Liberated

• Spells (27)
• 1 Negate
• 1 Psychic Barrier
• 2 Blue Sun's Zenith
• 2 Dissipate
• 2 Mana Leak
• 4 Think Twice
• 4 Day of Judgment
• 4 Ponder
• 1 Druidic Satchel
• 2 Pristine Talisman
• 4 Ratchet Bomb

• Lands (26)
• 5 Plains
• 7 Island
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 2 Buried Ruin
• 3 Ghost Quarter
• 4 Glacial Fortress
• 4 Seachrome Coast

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Celestial Purge
• 2 Divine Offering
• 1 Elixir of Immortality
• 1 Negate
• 2 Oblivion Ring
• 2 Phantasmal Image
• 1 Stoic Rebuttal
• 1 Surgical Extraction
• 2 Timely Reinforcements

Buy This Deck

We can take quite a few lessons from this in building a miracle control deck, and we end up here:

"W/U Miracle Control"

• Planeswalkers (4)
• 1 Gideon Jura
• 1 Karn Liberated
• 2 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage

• Spells (29)
• 4 Entreat the Angels
• 1 Negate
• 2 Dissipate
• 3 Psychic Barrier
• 4 Think Twice
• 4 Thought Scour
• 1 Day of Judgment
• 4 Ponder
• 4 Terminus
• 2 Pristine Talisman

• Lands (27)
• 7 Plains
• 8 Island
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 3 Ghost Quarter
• 4 Glacial Fortress
• 4 Seachrome Coast

Buy This Deck

Mana Leak is notable by its absence here, but this deck is so ploddingly slow that all of your opponents can afford to play around Mana Leak (and might just assume you have it anyway). We turn to Psychic Barrier and Dissipate (and Negate) as hard counters to address this.

Tamiyo, the Moon Sage actually makes your Wraths better since opponents need to commit more men to get around an active Tamiyo, and it certainly synergizes very well with Gideon Jura. There is potentially another build of this deck that is more heavily based on planeswalkers rather than Entreat the Angels, but I think Entreat the Angels is just way too good to give up at the moment.

Pristine Talisman is at its best here in a long-game deck like this one. It provides mana (always welcome with our expensive spells) and life-gain to undo any damage that you might have taken early on from creatures.

Other respectable choices in Standard (as of now) are: Naya Pod (updated with Restoration Angels), G/r aggro or ramp, U/w or U/w/b Delver, and Esper Control. There’s a lot of room to play a deck that you are comfortable with and be able to win a PTQ.

Good luck to all of you who are playing this Pro Tour Qualifier season. (I know I am.)

Any constructive criticism or comments are appreciated here or on Twitter @jkyu06.

Amusing Quotes

.