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Main » Articles » Mike Plays Blue-White Spirits in Pioneer

Mike Plays Blue-White Spirits in Pioneer

Michael Flores
Posted on July 5, 2023
 Reddit

The Background Check

Last month a bunch of us gathered at the legendary TaoHaus for a Premodern play-test session. Our Hero did... Medium. But that's not the point.

In-between rounds, whichever Zoomer had finished his match first - Hot Dog State University's Etai Kurtzman and / or Patrick O'Halloran-Gannon - just grabbed Lan D. Ho's Pioneer Spirts deck and beat the old man up with it.

Spirits was great!

I mean, it was certainly great against cross-format cards from the mid-1990s. First-turn Mausoleum Wanderer; seemingly every copy of Curious Obsession; vicious attacks all protected by a discounted Geistlight Snare made my Selesnya deck look positively fair.

"Why did I make Mike buy me Sheoldreds?" Complained young POG. "This deck is incredible!"

It sure looked incredible. But I had already bought the Sheoldreds. In a brain fart of morbid idiocy, I forgot to submit Promo Code "Flores"! On an order of four Sheoldreds and a Wooded Foothills?

The greater bang bang was just that Spirits seemed better overall.

The RC statistics seemed to bear that out. Rakdos Mid-Range performed as "mid" as it usually does (and at a great level of popularity) whereas uw Spirits finished near the top... Especially for a deck with lots of pilots.

I borrowed Lan's deck - complete with a thirty-seven page primer and matchup-by-matchup sideboard guide - for last weekend's local RCQ.

Blue-White Spirits | Pioneer | Michael Flores

Card Display

The basic game plan of this deck is to get something on the battlefield and then protect the lead it creates with light counterspells or Slip Out the Back. Slip Out the Back is spectacular in this deck: It can hide a creature from opposing removal... Even if it is wearing an enchantment or four! Sometimes you use Slip Out the Back to remove an opposing creature for just one turn or attack. You can shorten the clock with the flying Glorious Anthem Supreme Phantom; and its primary source of card advantage - Curious Obsession - also adds power.

The Spirits deck's primary advantage is that some common matchups (in particular Abzan Greasefang and Mono-Green) are favorable in the extreme. The number of cards you have to interact directly with are relatively few, and the card Shacklegeist single-handedly overpowers most decks based on getting one big threat on the battlefield.

Spirits has other things going for it... Supreme Verdict should theoretically sweep Spirits mercilessly, but the card Spell Queller lines up nicely with its Azorius compatriot. The fact that so many Spirits fly provides another large advantage. You just race!

On the other hand, Spirits can be the victim of polarized matchups. One deck in particular can get even lower than Mausoleum Wanderer on offense; and go more effectively wide with Glorious Anthem-style effects. More on this later! I didn't have a great personal finish, but I think I did figure out something telling RE: the format.

Here's a quick rundown:

Round One: Justin with Abzan Greasefang

So around Round One I was already imagining drawing into Top 8. Greasefang, huh? One of the Azorius deck's best matchups!

Game 1 I didn't draw an overabundance of lands, so had to tap down to a single u multiple times. But typically when I did that it was to make sure I had two Spirits back for my Shacklegeist every turn.

I simply slow played, despite a Parhelion staring up at me from Justin's graveyard starting turn two. I had direct answers to two different Greasefangs... But what could realistically happen? I guess Shacklegeist could die. It didn't.

Invasion of Gobakahn // Lightshield Array was really useful in Game 2. I drew two of them! The first actually got stolen by a Thoughtseize (I would have take Mausoleum Wanderer from Justin's seat, I think). But as I had a second Invasion of Gobakhan I was able to play around Ray of Enfeeblement.

1-0

Round Two: Joey with Rakdos Midrange

I felt pretty good coming out of the gate. Somewhere around turn five I had officially flooded out; so, despite the fact that I had caught my opponent with Rattlechains, I could feel the game slipping away.

"I really hope he doesn't land Sheoldred," I thought to myself. So, of course, he played the worlds' best Erhnam Djinn and slowly ground his way into the win.

I sided like this for Game 2:

I made a misplay in Game 2 (neglected to play a Wedding Annoucement // Wedding Festivity pre-combat with Katilda in play)... But the deck's ability to wade through attrition is greatly magnified by the more mana effective Slip Out the Back; and of course the "fight fire with fire" enchantment that helps keep Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki in check in yet another format.

Double Wedding Announcements made Joey's life difficult.

Game 3 I shipped two different one-Mutavault hands. Any mulligan to five is disheartening, but against a Duress / Thoughtseize deck?

Somehow I was able to stabilize the middle turns (I drew Wedding Announcement again)... But ended up losing to a hasty Glorybringer that Exerted my blocker on the last turn.

I looked at the top two cards of my library and was pretty sure I would have won with one more card; and certain I would have had it at seven. On the other hand, Joey cooperated by not drawing Sheoldred in Game 3. It's not like this deck is great at containing utility creatures that have already resolved.

1-1

So far matchups... Held. Greasefang is a blowout. I blew my opponent out. Rakdos is unfavorable but not overwhelmingly so... I lost a close one in three.

Round Three: Juno with Lotus Field Control

Game 1 Juno won the roll and played the first of many Strict Proctors on turn two. I had opened on a Mausoleum Wanderer; but it couldn't even get +1/+1 against the opposing 2-drop.

Strict Proctor is kind of absurd in this matchup. Like I've said already, resolved utility creatures can be problematic for Spirits, and that one turns off all our toys. Spell Queller is usually the control killer, but with Strict Proctor in play, it's just a less inflexible Cloud Elemental. Rattlechains is normally the terror of spot removal; but against a flying 1/3? The tricky 2/1 is more just "terrible."

Of course Strict Proctor's real job is just to keep Lotus Field from eating two of Juno's lands. Which it did repeatedly. I was up against three triple lands with no 187 action.

Game 1 went to the Control.

Game 2 Juno kept a two-land hand... But the second land was a Lotus Field. Heroes could have done basically anything stupid or graceless and still won by a mile.

The third game my draw was just hyper mana efficient. I was able to counter a pair of Discontinuities, which had the net result of a Lotus Field eating another Lotus Field (i.e. Juno going from four mana via two lands to three mana on one).

I'm going to count this one as matchups continuing to go the way they're supposed to go. The Proctor version of Azorius is different from regular uw Control, both because the Proctor is a good blocker and because of its specific trumps over 187s.

I think Juno got a little unlucky. The Field version has 27 lands starting and I had mana advantage in both the games I won. Still; this is kind of a deck that needs to win the lottery before it wins if that makes sense.

2-1

Round Four: Gene with White Weenie

Game 1 I got destroyed.

Game 2 I narrowly lost while under the illusion I was going to untap and win.

The reason I ended up writing this article is that Gene and I had a long conversation about how the White Weenie deck should sideboard.

First, this is what I did:

The Spirits deck wants to get lower: Therefore Portable Hole. The White Weenie deck sets up all kinds of bad trades because its 1-drops can often trade up against two- or three-mana creatures. Thalia's Lieutenant and Coppercoat Vanguard legitimize already problematic creatures; and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is essentially asymmetrical.

Gene sided in a bunch of creature interaction: Portable Holes of his own... I'm not sure how many copies of Ossification were starting, but they were all in Game 2.

I don't know that White Weenie - especially if they win Game 1 - should do anything. Think about it like this:

Taking out creatures, many of which are better combat creatures than the Spirits suite on the fundamentals, for creature interaction makes little sense. I need to do it because Portable Hole costs one mana, and I do it to get faster against a deck full of 2-power 1-drops. But when he does it, it just creates opportunity for interaction.

We had a lot of Portable Holes on Portable Holes on Ossifications if that makes any sense.

The inherent strength of White Weenie in this matchup is that almost every card both adds power and widens the offense. The cards all build on each other; and do so in two different directions (up and sideways). But removal cards don't do that. They don't make White Weenie faster. Plus, who do you really want to remove so much?

The bigger issue is this: The more you make the matchup about spells, the more cards like Spectral Sailor start to matter. In the abstract, Spectral Sailor is happy to trade with like anything. But if the game starts to be about interacting instead of overwhelming, the more card advantage starts to matter... And that's not what White Weenie wants it to be about. I think.

So, no cigar this time. I dropped and got a yogurt.

LOVE

MIKE

TAGS articles, metagame, constructed, tournament reports, analysis, tournament report, decklist, azorius, michael flores, spirits, blue-white, pioneer, 07052023, blue-white spirits, typal

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