If you play Magic, you really need to read this Geordie Tait classic.

I have no idea why anyone would say “good game” at the end of a match based on principle, but people do it, and it drives me apeshit. Not only is it presumptuous, but it shows a very clear misunderstanding of what game etiquette actually looks like. The people who do this are probably the same ones who say “thank you” because they were conditioned to—not because of any gratitude they feel.

Last Friday, I finally got around to playing that five-color reanimator deck, as played by Vishaal Desai at the SCG Open in Sacramento:

"Five-Color Reanimator"

• Creatures (17)
• 2 Inferno Titan
• 2 Llanowar Elves
• 3 Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 4 Birds of Paradise
• 2 Wurmcoil Engine
• 4 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite

• Spells (20)
• 4 Faithless Looting
• 4 Lingering Souls
• 4 Mulch
• 4 Tracker's Instincts
• 4 Unburial Rites

• Lands (19)
• 1 Plains
• 6 Forest
• 1 Rootbound Crag
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 2 Darkslick Shores
• 4 Blackcleave Cliffs
• 4 Razorverge Thicket

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 4 Strangleroot Geist
• 2 Ancient Grudge
• 2 Ray of Revelation
• 3 Thrun, the Last Troll
• 2 Sever the Bloodline

Buy This Deck

The Frites deck’s always been in the back of my mind as something I’ve wanted to play for this column, and I finally got around to it.

Coincidentally, Cloud City took in a huge collection a few weeks ago, and in it was a gold-bordered copy of this deck, piloted to a first-place finish in the 1998 World Championships by Brian Selden:

"Brian Selden’s Rec-Sur"

• Creatures (24)
• 1 Cloudchaser Eagle
• 1 Man-o'-War
• 1 Orcish Settlers
• 1 Spike Weaver
• 1 Thrull Surgeon
• 1 Tradewind Rider
• 1 Verdant Force
• 2 Nekrataal
• 2 Spike Feeder
• 2 Uktabi Orangutan
• 2 Wall of Roots
• 4 Birds of Paradise
• 4 Wall of Blossoms
• 1 Spirit of the Night

• Spells (14)
• 2 Firestorm
• 2 Lobotomy
• 4 Recurring Nightmare
• 4 Survival of the Fittest
• 2 Scroll Rack

• Lands (22)
• 1 Swamp
• 8 Forest
• 1 Gemstone Mine
• 2 Karplusan Forest
• 2 Reflecting Pool
• 2 Underground River
• 2 Undiscovered Paradise
• 3 City of Brass
• 1 Volrath's Stronghold

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Pyroblast
• 4 Boil
• 2 Dread of Night
• 1 Staunch Defenders
• 2 Phyrexian Furnace
• 3 Emerald Charm
• 1 Hall of Gemstone

Buy This Deck

Years later, that one Hall of Gemstone still makes no sense to me.

If it’s slow around Cloud City and I’m early for FNM, I always pull this deck out of the drawer and ask if anyone wants to play a game of Standard. When someone bites, I whip out this bad boy. The gold borders usually send up some red flags, but when I go turn-one Forest, Birds of Paradise, their concerns wane . . . until I cast Survival of the Fittest or Scroll Rack the next turn. Then, they’re all like, “I wanted to play Standard,” and I’m all like, “You didn’t specify what era, sucka.” Then, they play some sort of Titan and I lose. Yay, power creep!

Rec-Sur and I go way back. In 2001, I traded two Mungha Wurms, a set of Psychatogs, and an Upheaval for my friend’s gold-bordered copy of Brian Selden’s Rec-Sur deck. I couldn’t play it correctly then, and I can’t play it correctly now (Tradewind Rider is hard), but I still love all the deck manipulation and durdling you get to do when piloting Rec-Sur. Frites shares both this recursion element—as well as the capacity for durdling on your turn. Both decks also share an explosiveness that is simply fun to harness. I had a blast playing Frites on Friday night.

There’s an element of Frites that’s really very thrilling, and something rare within Magic decks: You get to see a lot of your cards. Over the course of a game, you’ll see roughly two thirds of your deck. And you cycle through them fast. You don’t really have to give a shit about what your opponent’s doing—your Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite will be enough to give you the game.

I guess that’s a lot like what playing combo’s like.

Round 1 – Tom Clark

Tom is playing R/B Zombies. We split our first two games: I have a fourth-turn Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite Game 1, and he has trips Geralf's Messenger with Chandra's Phoenix (?!?!) Game 2.

In our third game, I’m able to stabilize at 3 life with a Thrun, the Last Troll, a Strangleroot Geist, and two Spirit tokens. After a Sever the Bloodline on Geralf's Messengers, he has four lands and a Mortarpod.

I attack with everything, putting him to 3 life.

Do you know where this is headed?

Tom plucks a card off the top of his deck, puts it into play (it’s a land), casts Chandra's Phoenix, attacks, equips it to Mortarpod, and sacks it to deal 1 damage to me.

Guh.

0–1

Although I lost the match, I still really like the transformative sideboard. When your opponent is drawing dead Surgical Extractions and the like, it’s pretty good for you.

Round 2 – Mark Carfagno Sr.

This isn’t the first time I’ve played against Mark; he’s a nice guy, but he still plays veeeeeeeerrrrrrrrry slllllllloooooooowwwwwwwwlyyyyyyyyyyy. He’s playing Wolf Run.

Our first game is decided very early on by Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. I’m pretty sure that card just wrecks Standard.

Frites’s design is pretty brilliant, and it’s centered around the conception that Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is not only the best card in Standard, but the trump card to the entire format as well. The deck has a hundred ways to not only find Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, but to put it into play as well . . . and as early as possible. Frites is also the first deck I played with a bunch of mana guys that I actually didn’t mind; since you have so many spells to dig with—and they all have flashback—you’re never going to have a trillion irrelevant mana guys in play and just be sitting on your thumb. There are mana sinks built into the deck; Tracker's Instincts and Faithless Looting are awesome. I was especially surprised with how versatile Tracker's Instincts was—it digs four deep, allows you to put the Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite into your hand in case you need to play around graveyard hate, and has flashback.

In our second game, I’m just not able to find an Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite until I’m at 7 poison. I cast the Praetor, and on my end step, Mark looks at the two cards in his hand for what feels like an eternity before he casts them. They are Galvanic Blast, Combust.

When you’re beat, you’re beat.

Game 3, he mulligans to five. He deals with my first Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite with the familiar one-two punch of Galvanic Blast, Combust, but unfortunately for Mark, Unburial Rites has flashback.

1–1

What invariably ends up happening with all the brews in Standard is that they just don’t interact with the Primeval Titan decks. I can safely say that Frites destroys Wolf Run, which makes me all the more happy to play it. The only way they can deal profitably with Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is Beast Within, and even then, you can still flash back Unburial Rites. Their graveyard hate is usually small to non-existent.

I feel like I say this a lot, but when the Titans are gone, Standard’s gonna be sick.

Round 3 – Gino Vittore

When Gino presents his deck to me to cut, I shuffle it. It’s just what I do with everyone; I try not to take FNM too seriously, but it’s good to get into good habits . . . like shuffling your opponent’s deck instead of simply cutting it. When I grab his deck to shuffle it, Gino rolls his eyes and throws up his arms slightly, as if to say, “This fuckin’ guy.”

If that’s not enough of an indicator that I’m in for a fun match, Game 1, I cast a turn-one Faithless Looting and dump Unburial Rites and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite into the graveyard, and Gino just says, “The one week I don’t pack any artifact removal.” I wait for Gino to amass a huge army of creatures before I pull the trigger on the Unburial Rites, and he can’t do a thing about it.

Game 2, I shuffle his deck again when he presents it, and he mulligans. “All your molestin’ fucked up my cards!” he says, indicating that his sleeves are facing all different directions. I apologize, and inwardly note that despite all my “molestin’,” all my sleeves are somehow facing the same direction.

I have a turn-three Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. Gino has the Doom Blade for it, but he’s also stuck on two lands, and he has nothing for when the Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite comes back down on turn five.

2–1

Round 4 – Adam Trumble

Frites’s best matchups generally come against opponents who can’t kill mana dorks. Frites is designed, unlike any other deck I’ve ever played with, to take advantage of turn-one accelerants. It’s pretty good without them, but if your turn-one Birds of Paradise lives, the deck is unparalleled in its explosiveness.

In case you couldn’t already tell, I love this deck. Sure, it’s pretty cold to a Grafdigger's Cage, but you definitely have the capacity to play around graveyard hate such as Nihil Spellbomb, Surgical Extraction, and Purify the Grave, and . . . it’s just explosive. The transformational sideboard is pretty sweet, too; if I hadn’t messed up in Round 1, I would’ve won with Thrun, the Last Troll and a bunch of Spirits, which ain’t half bad when your opponent is packed to the gills with graveyard hate.

My match against Adam is pretty lame; he’s on a G/W aggro deck. We discover pretty quickly that Oblivion Ring on Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite isn’t quite enough when she kills your team when she enters the battlefield.

3–1

Round 5 – Nick Something

I would put Nick at about fourteen years old. He’s wearing these sunglasses that have a mustache attached to them so that the mustache goes over the part of your face where a mustache would go. He insists on wearing them inside. He also insists on being on Facebook on his phone during the entire match, which is a nice touch.

Nick and I shared the following dialogue earlier in the night in between rounds:

Me: “Hey, you.”

Nick: “Yeah?”

Me: “How much did you pay for those glasses?”

Nick: “I–“

Me: “TOO MUCH.”

Nick: “But I got them for–“

Me: “TOO. MUCH.”

Naturally, I kick off Game 1 with a prompt mulligan to five.

My first play is Copperline Gorge, Birds of Paradise.

Nick: “Awwww man, you’re playing Wolf Run Ramp? C’mon, man, who plays that deck?”

I don’t say anything. Nick goes Plains, Champion of the Parish.

On my second turn, I cast Mulch, netting four lands, and then I play a land to cast Faithless Looting. Since I no longer care about tipping my hand, I pitch Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and Unburial Rites for the second time tonight.

In case you’re wondering, yes, it is a great feeling.

Nick: “Wait, are you Wolf Run or are you five-color reanimator?”

Me: “I’m not sure.”

Nick: “Oh, jeez.”

Me: “OH JEEZ, GUYS, MY OPPONENT WON’T JUST TELL ME WHAT DECK HE’S PLAYING; CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS GUY?”

Quite the rapport, no?

On his turn, Nick plays Plains, a second Champion of the Parish, and he follows it up with a Doomed Traveler. Then, his phone rings. Because he has an iPhone, I can see it’s a blocked number. Nick picks it up, and it winds up being his dad, demanding he go home.

4–1

I like to think I earned that last one. See you next week!

Jon Corpora

Pronounced Ca-pora

@feb31st