So, I’m the last X–0 going into the fifth and final round. The other X–0 is a very close friend of mine, but if I’m being honest, I don’t really respect his game that much.

When I was young and naïve and I first set out to do this column, I laid out a few ground rules for myself.

• I’d play a different archetype every week, no shenanigans. Shenanigans include but are not limited to: changing five cards in a deck and saying it’s a different deck, conveniently “forgetting” that I already played the best deck in its first, rough inception for five weeks in a row, or some such.
• I’d never change the lists from what I found on the Internet. A lots of people at Cloud City ask why I do this; when I get some of these SCG Open decklists, I find myself asking the same thing. My contention is that I don’t trust my judgment a whole lot—if I never play some of these cards that I perceive as bad, I’ll never see them interact with other cards and be able to prove myself right or wrong. I want to play as many cards as possible, and if I suddenly started to edit the decks I was playing, they’d all start to look the same.
• I’d never split the finals or ask for a concession if my opponent was out of prize range and I wasn’t. Forty-one weeks in, it’s weird to think of someone as ranty and long-winded as myself worried about hitting word minimums, but at one point in my life, I did, and so I promised myself that I’d never split . . . so I’d have a bunch of awesome stuff to write about.

I’ve done a great job following those first two guidelines, but I broke the third rule pretty early on and never looked back. This was a pretty easy rule for me to break, especially on the weeks when I downright despised whatever deck I was playing and just wanted to play less of it. But I wanted to play out the finals last Friday—I was positive I could outplay my opponent with little to no effort on my part.

The Jupiter Games Player of the Year receives a mint condition Unlimited Black Lotus.

The match took place on camera, and during it, Eli asked Bryant if he’d like to take a prize split twice—once after Game 1 and again after Game 2.

To save you the suspense, I’ll tell you right now: Eli won Game 3.

From Bryant’s article:

I can appreciate the excitement in playing a game of Magic with that much at stake. What I can’t get past is why you’d ever want to bet on a coin flip. You’d have to love high-stakes Magic and value it very highly in order to want to take that kind of gamble; I can appreciate that line of thought even if I don’t necessarily agree with it.

Magic’s a game of variance, played out in front of us every time we shuffle our decks. The best player aren’t necessarily as skill-testing as we’d like them to be, which is a necessary evil; if the best player won every time, it’d be chess, and I’d rather fellate a hot curling iron than write about chess, let alone play it.

Bryant briefly references variance here:

I like Bryant; I really do . . . but that snippet makes my brain hurt.

On Jupiter Games’s online store, an Unlimited Black Lotus is $1,199.95. For the sake of argument, let’s just accept that as the value of an Unlimited Black Lotus. It’s probably not too far off. What Bryant did was bet $600 in guaranteed money, on two separate events, to simply double up.

I understand what risk versus reward is. I also have a vague understanding of math, which leads me to the conclusion that while betting on one event (even if it is a coin flip) at even odds is fine, if you’re into that kinda thing, betting on two events while still only getting even odds will eventually cost you lots and lots of money—gains on those types of bets just aren’t something that’s sustainable. For smaller stakes—smaller stakes being a relative term, I guess—not splitting is totally acceptable, especially if you’re trying to create an artificial way to recreate playing for big stakes. However, it’s important to be able to recognize a bad investment and realize that the big return, while considerably larger than what’s guaranteed, may still not be big enough to compensate for how much the odds are stacked against you.

That’s all easy for me to say, though. It’s like Bryant said: Hindsight is 20/20. I’ll be revisiting this.

Last week, I played the B/R Vampires deck that made Top 8 at the SCG Open in Nashville:

"B/R Vampires"

• Creatures (21)
• 2 Highborn Ghoul
• 4 Diregraf Ghoul
• 4 Falkenrath Aristocrat
• 4 Geralf's Messenger
• 4 Gravecrawler
• 3 Phyrexian Metamorph

• Spells (15)
• 1 Incinerate
• 2 Geth's Verdict
• 4 Brimstone Volley
• 4 Tragic Slip
• 1 Arc Trail
• 1 Sword of War and Peace
• 2 Mortarpod

• Lands (24)
• 10 Swamp
• 2 Mountain
• 1 Stensia Bloodhall
• 3 Cavern of Souls
• 4 Blackcleave Cliffs
• 4 Dragonskull Summit

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Nihil Spellbomb
• 2 Sword of Feast and Famine
• 3 Manic Vandal
• 3 Zealous Conscripts
• 2 Manabarbs
• 2 Sever the Bloodline

Buy This Deck

I sleeved this up on the Wednesday before FNM with resident burn kid and awesome-guy-in-a-band Al French. The entire deck was laid out on the table. He had a lot to say about it.

Al: [points to two Mountains] “These suck.” [points to Stensia Bloodhall] “What the fuck is this doing in there??” [points to Geth's Verdict] “Well, this card blows; you’ll never be able to cast it because you have a billion lands that can’t cast black spells. What was this kid thinking?”

Al also voiced his displeasure at the deck being devoid of the Killing Wave / Blood Artist combo. Al’s been playing that combo ever since the set came out, and it honestly just gives the deck an angle of reach and explosiveness that makes it too good to not include.

On Friday afternoon, I ran the B/R Zombies deck into W/U Delver, piloted by my friend Adam, a bunch. After confessing that Zombies was actually a terrible matchup for the Delver deck, he proceeded to crush me repeatedly.

Here’s the last game we played before I cried uncle:

Him: Seachrome Coast, Delver of Secrets, go.

Me: Cavern of Souls, Gravecrawler, go.

Him: Blind-flip Delver, revealing Mana Leak, attack with Insectile Aberration, Seachrome Coast, Delver of Secrets, go.

Me: Blackcleave Cliffs, attack with Gravecrawler (no blocks), Highborn Ghoul, go.

Him: Blind-flip Delver, revealing Ponder, attack with both Insectile Aberrations, cast Ponder, Seachrome Coast, Delver of Secrets, pass the turn with 2 mana up.

Me: ljdsnglksnjdgslkgjsnaglkhsabgaskgjlhsanaljaksns

On my way to FNM, I tweeted this:

So, yeah, my outlook was poor.

Round 1 – ‘Dre Segarra

‘Dre and I go pretty far back—he’s one of the nicest guys in our community—but often, I find myself snapping at him because he’s really loud and boisterous and I’m a jerk. Such is life.

I think ‘Dre expected me to be playing a Delver deck or something—when I start out on Swamp, Gravecrawler after winning the die roll, his next sentence says it all:

“Shhhhhhiiiit.”

Game 2 seems a lot like a bad joke at first—I have the Manic Vandal for his Sword of Feast and Famine, I have the miser’s Incinerate for his Wolfir Avenger, and I have all that on top of leading on turn-one Gravecrawler, turn-two Highborn Ghoul.

To his credit, ‘Dre keeps plugging away with his Strangleroot Geist. I’m happy to race, but I’m quickly flooded while ‘Dre isn’t, and I don’t believe that a long game ever favors the B/R deck, especially the iteration of the deck I’m playing.

For Game 3, I have the patented curve-into-Geralf's Messenger draw that, on the play, is nigh-unbeatable. I’m not sure what ‘Dre kept this game because he doesn’t really do much until a main-phased Wolfir Avenger is followed up by a Green Sun's Zenith for 1, fetching Birds of Paradise, both on the same turn. He is able to get a bit of ground presence going in phase two, but my hand is pouring with burn, and my mana allows me to finish him off before the game gets out of reach.

1–0

Round 2 – Ben Cohen

I’m not sure why, but everything that comes out of his mouth makes me laugh. I think my constant giggling is a little off-putting to him, but he just has one of those cadences that makes everything that comes out of his mouth sound hilarious to me. I can’t do it justice in print.

Ben is playing mono-black Vampires because “[his] older brother (who is sitting mere feet away) won’t let [him] borrow any of the duals. Yeah, he’s a real jerk,” he deadpans.

I offer him high roll to see who goes first. “No way, man, we’re gonna low-roll.”

Sure thing, Ben!

I roll an 8. Ben’s as ecstatic as his calm demeanor will allow him to be.

He then rolls a 10.

“Aw, man. I’m an idiot.”

Like I said, I can’t do it any justice on the page, but on Friday night, I was dying laughing.

Game 2, we both mulligan to six, and Ben mulligans to five, showing more discipline than I; my six-card hand can best be described as “the loosiest of the goosiest.” Ben curves out on his mulligan to five, complete with a Blood Artist on two, a Geralf's Messenger on turn three, and a Killing Wave on turn four for the full blowout. It’s in this game that I realize I’ve boarded incorrectly; the Tragic Slips are no longer in my deck at all because I completely forgot about Blood Artist blowouts.

I bring the Tragic Slips back in for Game 3, and after Ben mulligans to start Game 2, my double Falkenrath Aristocrat draw finishes him off despite him curving out. At the beginning of my fifth turn, the life totals are 2 to 10 in his favor, but double Falkenrath Aristocrat seals his fate. That card’s not the worst.

2–0

Round 3 – Justin Cohen

This match goes by pretty quickly, as Justin is on G/W aggro, and that’s a pretty miserable matchup for him, even if he were to see Mirran Crusader, which he does not. Justin does, however, play turn-two Blade Splicer both games, which stalls my board a tiny bit, but I ultimately have more reach than he can deal with. Falkenrath Aristocrat in particular was a clutch performer.

I look at my board. It’s a Highborn Ghoul and a Geralf's Messenger, both of which are being pretty effectively neutralized by his Blade Splicer / Golem token combo. Then I take a peek at my hand. In it is a Phyrexian Metamorph, which I had originally intended to use as a Geralf's Messenger clone.

However, Justin’s Birthing Pod presents a much spicier line.

I cast Phyrexian Metamorph for 3, copying Birthing Pod, and then sac Geralf's Messenger to it to go grab a Falkenrath Aristocrat, totally blindsiding Justin.

The next turn, I sack the same Geralf's Messenger for another Falkenrath Aristocrat, and the game’s over.

3–0

Round 4 – Matt Brown

He’s been playing this deck for weeks. I . . . have not. On top of that, I start out by losing my first die roll of the night in a match where it’s very, very difficult to break serve.

Matt starts out on a mull to six, then to five . . . and I cruise easily to victory. He takes down the next one, and it’s on to Game 3 with me on the play.

Our draws are eerily similar—I have a turn-one Gravecrawler, he has a turn-one Diregraf Ghoul. I play two Diregraf Ghouls on turn two, and he plays a Diregraf Ghoul and a Gravecrawler. We both even have the Geralf's Messenger on turn three.

What ends up setting our draws apart? There are two short answers:

• I’m on the play to start the game, so I get to dictate the tempo of the entire game.
• I have a Falkenrath Aristocrat on turn four; he can’t deal with that kind of reach.

4–0

For whatever it’s worth, I hate Magic games like that. I realize that my having Falkenrath Aristocrat and Matt’s not having them makes the game less luck-based and more about me having the better deck, but we still didn’t really interact at all during our match. Even being on the winning side of it felt gross, and it’s not even because Matt’s my friend.

I hate decks like Zombies and Vampires before it. There is merit to the game plan the two decks share, to be sure; they’re just not the kind of Magic I like to play, I guess.

Round 5 – R.J. Fischer

R.J.’s probably scooped to me more times than any other player I’ve ever met. I don’t know why, but every time I’ve ever played him, it’s been in the last round of the tournament, and I’ve been paired down, so I always wind up asking him for the concession. Then, I beat him in the match we always play for fun anyway.

So, without knowing the prize breakdown, I bet on the parlay. What were the events I bet on?

• I would either get lucky . . . or not get unlucky.
• R.J. would get not get lucky . . . or get unlucky
• I would win the match.

That’s three events. But I’m pretty sure I’m guaranteed second place (R.J. and I are the only X–0s in the room), so I decide to not split.

We split the first two games. I’m on the draw for Game 3.

My draw for Game 3 is fast, but not too fast; it’s slow enough to totally ground to a halt by a turn-three Thrun, the Last Troll, turn-four Batterskull. Luckily for me, I have some sauce as well with my double Sword of Feast and Famine draw.

It’s the fifth turn of the game. R.J. draws a card and plops it down on the table without missing a beat—it’s a land. He attacks with just his Germ token, going from 1 to 5 . He has one card in his hand. He passes the turn to me.

He looks back at me blankly.

“Shit.” I know he’s got the Ancient Grudge. “Fuuuuuuck. Shaaaaat.”

To RJ’s credit, his face betrays nothing.

I sigh and resign myself to my fate. “I have to do this.” Equip Sword of Feast and Famine to a Diregraf Ghoul, equip another Sword of Feast and Famine to a Geralf's Messenger, attack with everyone.

R.J. calmly taps his lands.

“Ancient Grudge?”

“kljhsbfldskjbnsglhsgn fsklgjhndfkhbn dfskgj”

4–1

I did not win that game.

After a lot of complaining to anyone who would listen—to R.J., to anyone—about how he had to hit his two-outer to beat me there, I went up to the counter to find out what the prize payout was.

“$50 for first; $30 for second.”

I was pretty relieved that I’d only cost myself $10, but I’m now realizing that I totally broke my own rule by betting the $10 that I was guaranteed to take on the split on a parlay for another $10. But getting to take home $30 cash really softened the blow at that point.

I’d gotten pretty tilted at R.J. during the match, so I randomly gave him a big hug, whereupon he lifted me three feet above the ground. I am not a small human. So that was pretty fun.

See you next week!

Jon Corpora

Pronounced Ca-pora

@feb31st