November 10, 2006 FNM Report: UG Aggro

Written by aldaryn on November 12, 2006

by aldaryn

Hello. I’ve been lurking this site for a while, posting on the forums and checking out the trial results, but I don’t get around to playing here much. I thought I’d share some wisdom from my experience Friday night at FNM with you to give a little back.

Right before the tournament started I had my deck choice narrowed down to Boros and U/G aggro. I asked around what people were likely to play and heard a few people were playing Martyrtron, which I really didn’t want to play against and expected an auto-loss for Boros (even though I had spent forever working on Boros and was excited to try Giant Solifuge). So at the last minute I switched to U/G aggro. I didn’t have the cards for the Scryb & Force version, so I basically played the standard anti-control version, except I cut one Looter il-Kor for a land (I wanted 21 lands and only had three Looters anyway).

The decklist:

UG Aggro
Main Deck		Sideboard
4 Birds of Paradise 4 Llanowar Elves 4 Plaxmanta 3 Looter il-Kor 4 Call of the Herd 4 Ohran Viper 4 Psionic Blast 4 Mana Leak	4 Remand 4 Moldervine Cloak 4 Breeding Pool 3 Yavimaya Coast 1 Pendelhaven 3 Island 10 Forest	4 Trickbind 4 Repeal 2 Loaming Shaman 2 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir 3 Krosan Grip

My sideboard was mostly good to me, though I’d make a few teaks to it and main deck both – more on that at the end.

Match 1: Martyrtron! (Go figure)
I guessed correctly that I would have to face this deck. The first game he gets the tron out but can’t get past one white mana to accomplish anything. After going birds-viper-cloak I sit on counters. He gets out one Martyr of Sands in a desperation move at the end but only gets six life off of it.

At this point I’m thinking I just got lucky that game. I actually put four Trickbind in my sideboard to deal with Dragonstorm, which was not present at all, but they seemed like they’d serve their purpose here just fine. I also boarded in the two Loaming Shamans.

My opening hand has a Bird, a Viper, two lands, and a Trickbind, so I definitely kept. I go Birds into Viper, he gets off a Martyr for fifteen life and I let him have it even though I had Trickbind available. (After the Viper, I kept two lands untapped every single turn for when I would need to Trickbind.) I very luckily draw both Loaming Shamans. The first one sends a Martyr back and the next sends back two Children of Korlis. I eventually end up with a huge board of somewhere around three elephant tokens, two
Vipers, 2-3 elves and a couple cloaks out there, with him a bit above twenty life. He has a Martyr and Children on the table, I still have the Trickbind and two Psionic Blasts in hand. End of his turn I blast the Children, on my turn I swing all, he declares block with Martyr then goes to sac for fifteen, I look his hand over very thoroughly, consider every angle (I was still playing well at this point), Trickbind it, take him to three and Blast him to win.

Matches 1-0, Games 2-0

Match 2: Zoo
I’m playing against a guy that I played at a previous Extended tournament, where he’d just adapted the deck with fetchlands and Isamaru, so I know pretty much his whole deck inside out. It’s typical Zoo with Magus replacing Isamaru and the standard twenty burn.

Game one I make a fatal mistake that I am still angry over; it seems like it cost me the game, and therefore the match, and therefore top 8. He’s on the play and drops a Magus. I kept a one land hand with an Elf, hoping to draw into lands. (That may have been my first mistake.) I play an Elf and say go. He does nothing on his turn – no land drop. I do not draw a land either, and for some reason, I think that he probably wants to hold on to his Magus, when I should know from playing him previously that he’ll always make even trades. I swing with the Elf and they both die, and as soon as it happens I realize the horrible mistake I’ve made. I draw one more land and no Birds or Elves before I get beat by Lions and Apes, sitting there with a ton of 3

cc cards in my hand, kicking myself.

I board in the Repeals and take out the Remands (I honestly wasn’t sure what to take out). I’m on the play and get turn one Elf, turn two Looter il-Kor, Birds and by turn three I have a Cloaked, unblockable Looter with Mana Leak back-up and it’s over pretty quickly. If I remember correctly, he missed his one-drop which certainly didn’t help.

Game three he’s on the play which is already bad and I keep a hand with turn two plays but no Birds or Elves, and he overruns me pretty quick. I drew the Repeals this game but they were no help at all, just expensively delaying the inevitable.

I’d like to mention here that even though the unblockable Looter was good in game two, in most matches he absolutely sucked. When other aggro decks put me on defense having a measly 1/1 that couldn’t even chump block was worthless.

Matches 1-1, Games 3-2

Match 3: Budget Boros

I didn’t want to be a jerk and asked the guy if he’d just started playing, but that’s the impression I got. That or he did not have money for cards (don’t get me wrong, he was a good opponent and obviously knew the rules). Anyway I actually didn’t see any burn (in fact, the only reason I knew it was R/W was the Mountain and Boros Garrison I saw), but he was running mostly time spiral white weenies – Benalish Cavalry, Cavalry Master, Celestial Crusader, etc. He couldn’t handle Moldervine Cloak and I swept him pretty quickly.

I should mention here that in my own personal playtesting the Boros match-up for this deck is actually really bad. All of your throats are easily burnable (esp. in response to a Cloak), and your conditional counters don’t do much against a deck with such low cc threats. You have to get a big Cloaked guy out there fast to overpower them.

Matches 2-1, Games 5-2

Match 4: B/G Thallids (?)
This was random and frustrating. Apparently a couple friends got together and spent some serious time working on this deck. I imagine it would just roll over to Wrath of God, but in a metagame of mostly aggro or mid-range, this guy actually ended up making top 8 and even top 4. The deck had pretty much every Thallid except Savage (even the Wall), along with Thelon of Havenwood, and typical

B/G good stuff – Putrefy, Dark Confidant, etc. It was a real nightmare for my deck, with my removal suite being a whopping four Psionic Blasts and him constantly making tokens – in particular, Deathspore Thallid was a house against my birds and elves. Side comment – Psionic Blast really sucked in the aggro matches. I always had to use it as removal, and was never very happy about shocking myself.

Both games came down to Thelon of Havenwood. First game I’m trying to race him with Cloaked il-Kor, and I actually had two more Cloaks in my hand, and if I’d survived one more turn I could have triple-Cloaked him and swung to win, but on that turn he drops Thelon and swings with suddenly much larger creatures. I boarded in Repeals, which were absolutely worthless. In game two I Psionic Blast Thelon the minute he hits the table then realized how obnoxious Thallids are to keep track of. He uses Thelon to add counters with the BG ability, which gives him enough counters to make another Saproling, giving him enough Saprolings to use Thallid Germinator to pump his Thelon to 5/5. I lose quickly afterwards.

Congrats to the guy for originality and making top 8, but it was a very frustrating loss.

Matches 2-2, Games 5-4

Match 5: U/r Snow Control
I’ve played against this deck before and it should be an auto-win for me because he has no mass removal and no removal at all really past four Skred. Thus guy is 2-1-1 (drew on time) and could easily make top 8 if I concede, and I thought about it. I asked around about my chances of top 8 and they said it depended entirely on the luck of the other 3-2’s (there were room for two in top 8) so they weren’t sure. I decide to give it a shot, for better or for worse.

Game one I keep a stupid hand he never misses a land drop with sheets. My turn two il-Kor was Spell Snared and pretty much everything after that was Skredded or countered, then he rides Ironfoot and Teferi to victory. I then board in two Teferi and three Krosan Grip for his Ironfoots, which seems kind of stupid in retrospect (I knew he had Academy Ruins so I thought more stuff might come out of the sideboard – if it did, I didn’t see it).

Game two I keep a hand with two lands, two Elves, a Bird, and a Moldervine Cloak. I’m on the play and I go land, Elf, land, Elf, Bird, and then Moldervine Cloak and dredge repeatedly until he is out of counters and Skreds and ride a Cloaked Bird all the way to victory.

Game three my opening hand has two lands, Bird, and Teferi, so I keep it. I don’t miss any land drops up to four, still with Birds out, and then during his turn he is missing land uses Sheets during his main phase, praying for a land. He doesn’t get it and has one land open (I should mention he has Ironfoot in play from turn three, and I have a Viper out from turn two). I pray for the land top-deck and get it, then play Teferi on my main phrase before he untaps. During his turn he misses his land again. He has a Sheets, a Steam Vents, and two Snow-Covered Islands. He Skreds the Viper, and I say okay. After the turn is over someone to the side points out that he could have Skredded Teferi (he forgot Ironfoot was a snow permanent). He looks pretty mad but tells them not to worry, openly admitting he has two Teferi in hand to deal with mine. I draw into Remand and he never sees his fifth land, and ends the game in pretty foul mood. I felt bad but it’s supposed to be a bad match-up for him anyway.

Matches 3-2, Games 7-5.

The place I played at just got a computer and is for the first time this day doing pairings and percentages on the computer. Previously they did top 8 tiebreaking by your own win percentage, but the computer (I guess official DCI rules?) does it by your opponents’ win percentages, which screws me into ninth place. It was still a fun night and I traded for some cards I really wanted, so I can’t complain.

The metagame was not what I expected. There were no blue control decks except the U/r I played against! No U/R tron,

U/W classic, Solar Flare/Pox, or anything of the sort. There were a few aggro decks (one Zoo, one Rakdos and 2-3 Boros) but the decks were primarily mid-range – 3-4 G/B/W Beach House, one R/B/W Firemane, and at least three Glare variants. The top two that split were stock Glare w/ Demonfire splash and G/W/U Blink Glare.

About the deck: I really like it, but the Looter il-Kors and Repeals sucked for me. Looter is very conditional in its worth; if you’re on the defense or late into the game he is not a good draw. I’m thinking about borrowing from Scryb & Force and replacing him with Yavimaya Dryad, as this deck can use all the mana it can get and she’s still potentially unblockable, even if she can’t cycle, and she swings for two on her own. And she can block!

The Repeals are probably going out for Carven Caryatids, as those would have been much better against Zoo, but probably not against Thallids. I was actually thinking about the now-timeshifted Prodigal Sorcerer. He eats tokens for breakfast (Elves and Birds too)! I’m open to suggestions on any way to improve the aggro match-up. Hope this was informative!
-aldaryn

Back to Magic: the Gathering Articles

by AkiraRonin on 2006-11-12 09:31 MDT

First!

by ShiK_ri on 2006-11-12 09:35 MDT

2nd!

by dboy1 on 2006-11-12 09:40 MDT

wow, fnm, must be a true champion

by Manipulation on 2006-11-12 09:40 MDT

Cheese!

Fun deck, but a lotta crappy m-u's.

by kebe on 2006-11-12 09:40 MDT

die

by Blake- on 2006-11-12 09:44 MDT

LOL @ FNM

by Notgnawy on 2006-11-12 10:27 MDT

Well written, drives me away from playing U/G.

by Streakz on 2006-11-12 12:05 MDT

Wow, no one cares how you did at a pointless FNM.

by mikeg542 on 2006-11-12 12:13 MDT

Wow, you guys should shut the hell up. He wantde to write an article, and did so. Just because the event wasn't like champs or something doesn't make it anymore less interesting/well written(which it was).
Anyways, I don't like the typical U/G build but oh well.

by Ironicus on 2006-11-12 13:49 MDT

Where are the unstable mutation? lol This deck look like a new version of sea stompy. It can be good, but you need to work a little bit more on it lol

by nephilim207 on 2006-11-12 16:27 MDT

COULD YOU JUST ALL SHUT UP! What does it matter if it was FNM? This is an article and a well written one. The deck I don't like but it was fairly well written. I wish that everyone here would actually say something productive. New concept :O!

by Craze on 2006-11-12 17:04 MDT

lol FNM....

by aldaryn on 2006-11-12 17:07 MDT

Thanks. Yes, I know it's just FNM - that wasn't the point. I just wanted to share my thoughts on U/G. Maybe if I had marked it as an article on playtesting insteaad of an "FNM Tournament Report" that would be better? I agree that I don't like the typical u/g build either, for reasons above. I'm open to suggestions, as I said.

by Royalty on 2006-11-12 20:03 MDT

lol, do you know whats funny

by Craze on 2006-11-12 19:04 EST

lol FNM....

isnt Craze the dude who made an article about a deck he played in a trial? lol.

FNM > Magic-League Trial , at least you get useful rating.

by DESTRUCTOR on 2006-11-15 20:39 MDT

nice article...but yes you should write about the testing and not about a fnm with such a weird metagame...i like UG counterbeats but i dont find it to be a good and solid deck...it has a good chance against controls wich is pretty cool but loss to most aggros wich i found to be stupid
looter il-kor is a really good drop in the first 4 turns because it helps you alot with the card adventage and after that if you draw another one you may just discard it.you need 4 looters and 4 ohran viper to draw cards and to have a chance on winning

by AvsD on 2006-11-18 09:36 MDT

by Royalty on 2006-11-13 04:03 CET

lol, do you know whats funny

by Craze on 2006-11-12 19:04 EST

lol FNM....

isnt Craze the dude who made an article about a deck he played in a trial? lol.

FNM > Magic-League Trial , at least you get useful rating.

HAHAHHHHHAHAHAHHAHA