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Having a Pro Tour right after set release is awesome.
Everyone wants to see what changes will happen in the metagame, and very often we've had Pro Tours very late in the life cycle of a set when things have already been relativity explored by the hive mind. Having in the beginning gives the pros the first crack at it, and often makes for a very exciting event as everyone wonders "who broke it" and who's going to have the best deck.
Unfortunately for Pro Tour Outlaws of Thunder Junction, I think we needed another week, as we had a lot of sweet ideas that ultimately just needed to be discarded quickly because there was so little time. Here's one of them!
Time Stamps:
04:17 - Match 1
15:47 - Match 2
39:11 - Match 3
57:58 - Match 4
Pro Tour Prep Luck | OTJ Standard | Jim Davis
- Creatures (12)
- 2 Harvester of Misery
- 2 Spinewoods Armadillo
- 2 Threefold Thunderhulk
- 2 Titan of Industry
- 4 Bramble Familiar
- Instants (2)
- 2 Cut Down
- Sorceries (6)
- 2 Deadly Cover-Up
- 4 Make Your Own Luck
- Enchantments (3)
- 3 Virtue of Persistence
- Artifacts (12)
- 1 The Irencrag
- 1 The Celestus
- 2 Ancient Cornucopia
- 4 Nexus of Becoming
- 4 Portal to Phyrexia
Export Arena
Both Make Your Own Luck as well as Nexus of Becoming are very powerful top end cards that let you play things for free, and what better to play for free than Portal to Phyrexia!
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It's obvious that casting Portal to Phyrexia early is great, but what's not obvious is that both Make Your Own Luck and Nexus of Becoming are also card advantage spells as well. Being able to draw cards and go card positive from your ramp-style cards is awesome and very good at making sure your deck isn't one-dimensional. They're both exciting and powerful cards from the new set just looking for a home.
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Aside from the expected ramp and removal, there's a lot of other awesome stuff happening here too. Threefold Thunderhulk is obviously just fine to cast, plot, or return from the graveyard, but is extra special with Nexus of Becoming because it comes in as a 3/3 with three +1/+1 counters on it and makes six tokens. Virtue of Persistence plays both sides of the ball in being a cheap spell that keeps you alive as well as a big thing to do, while Spinewoods Armadillo is a nice thing to bring back or play for free but also gains you life and fixes your mana early. Getting an Arid Archway can also help your hit your land drops when you mulligan.
I had a great run early on with this brew in testing which was promising, but it ultimately proved to not quite get there against our expected field of midrange decks with counterspells and control decks. Still, we discarded it pretty fast because of the time crunch, so I wonder if it could have been tuned more to be a contender!
