Let's start with the list so you can better visualize my rounds. What's that? You've already see this deck, I'm a copy cat? You're not wrong, I went to the Star City Games Openin Atlanta May 1-2 to do GGslive.com coverage for the weekend with Rashad Miller. During that weekend Lewis Laskin won the Standard event with almost the same 60 card maindeck and Ben Stark was stopped in the tournament only by his playtest partner, mirror-match, and ultimately the champion in the Top 4. I even said during the coverage if I was playing that was the deck I would have wanted to play after seeing them bash people with Gideon Jura and Wall of Omens all day. For those of you that don't know me, I love control decks, and I love planeswalkers even more. In my first Constructed tournament I played Psychatog and never looked back. If you want to challenge yourself through the report, decide how you would sideboard each match before revealing the sideboard strategy.

 

Super Pals

 

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor 

3 Ajani Vengeant 

3 Gideon Jura 

3 Elspeth, Knight-Errant 

2 Day of Judgment 

2 Martial Coup 

3 Oblivion Ring 

4 Path to Exile 

4 Spreading Seas 

3 Divination 

 

4 Wall of Omens 

 

4 Celestial Colonnade 

4 Arid Mesa 

2 Mountain 

1 Tectonic Edge 

3 Island 

5 Plains 

3 Scalding Tarn 

4 Glacial Fortress 

 

Sideboard:

3 Kor Sanctifiers 

1 Ajani Vengeant 

1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor 

1 Tectonic Edge 

4 Negate 

2 Mind Control 

3 Spell Pierce 

 

Here are the strengths and weaknesses of the deck I picked up on after just one day of testing (thanks to the help of my three roomates Matt Hansen, Clayton Mooney, and Nick Crumpton and some other players in Ames: Tarun Yenna, Gabe Stoffa and Alex Black) on Friday, the day before the PTQ:

 

Weaknesses

 

Control decks like Cruel Control that were more geared to beat other control decks and were likely softer against creature based decks. I feared if they had a better card advantage engine, hand disruption, and counterspells that we could be in too deep.

 

Combo decks that ignored what you were doing with planewalkers and your useless creature removal. I saw Time Sieve, Howling Mine X combo, and Polymorph all seeing play in the format. You aren't always able to apply pressure quickly enough in these match-ups especially Game 1.

 

Jund is something you can't overlook in a Standard event until Bloodbraid Elf rotates out of the format. You're torn between wanting to use Spreading Seas early to attack their color-hungry manabase or to save them to use as answers to creature-lands. However, no sane person is going to slowroll their Spreading Seas in the Jund matchup passing up the chance to Time Walk them for a turn or more. /Of course, that means their creature-lands get to be more effective against you and poses some interesting obstacles for you later when you decide to cast Day of Judgment but expose your planewalkers or are maybe just taking 4-8 on the return swing. I feel like the best use of Path to Exile in this matchup is to deal with their creature-lands since it's a very helpful tempo swing and doesn't accelerate them into Siege-Gang Commander or Broodmate Dragon. I'm also ever fearful of Malakir Bloodwitch out of their sideboard.

 

Strengths

 

GWx creature-based decks. I felt that your strategy was super effective against anything running too many creatures. This makes your wrath effects and planewalkers do what they want to in a comfortable way.

 

Jund was something that this deck seemed to have solved after seeing Lewis Laskin and Ben Stark crushing it all day in Atlanta and it having an effective game plan for that matchup. It seems that Wall of Omens may have brought balance to the force. I have seen lots of sideboard hate cards in the versions of UWx control for the Jund matchup but I feel like some of those decks devote too many sideboard slots to this matchup since most of your maindeck is good against them.

 

Manabase. Two on-color fetches for color consistency and shuffling with Jace. I wanted the second Mountain in case they cast Spreading Seas in the mirror or someone got frisky with an Acidic Slime.

 

Play. This deck gives you more options than most of the other decks in Standard to choose your own adventure! To further illustrate this concept I would defer to a linear analogy: some decks have very few choices each turn of the game so they have few different lines to get to the end of the game. With Uwr, at four mana you can cast nearly everything and have to choose the best spell each turn along with the best planewalker activations for your plan which would end up making the available lines of play compounded over several turns have more branches than a family tree. The other interesting side of that effect is that the longer the game goes on with you making as many possible correct choices, it gives your opponents more opportunities to attack the wrong planeswalker, use the wrong removal spell, or play the wrong creature.

 

PTQ Amsterdam - Lincoln Nebraska - HobbyTown USA - 100 players

 

Looking around I see a few ringers that I wasn't expecting at the PTQ, Gerry Thompson and Brett Piazza most notably in addition to six-eight other very competent players that I recognized. With 100 players we had seven rounds of Swiss.

 

Round 1 - Landon Doty - Kansas City, MO - Jund

 

"I'm pretty new to the tournament scene and just started PTQ'ing last fall during Zendikar," Landon said after the match when I asked him about his background. He seems to play tight and playtests with Adam Boyd and Brian Boss.

 

Game one on the play goes very long which ends up favoring the control deck. I have two Spreading Seas that both land on Raging Ravines and hold wrath effects as long as I can which allowed me to get a Siege-Gang with one. (1-0)

 

Sideboarding:

+2 Mind Control +1 Tectonic Edge +1 Ajani Vengeant

-2 Path to Exile -2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

 

I always figure out what I want to board in most then decide which cards are best to take out to for my post-board plan. In this case I wanted more answers to creature-lands and Malakir Bloodwitch. Jace is easily the weakest planeswalker in this matchup since it's fragile and doesn't impact the board the turn it comes into play most games without giving up its life in the process.

 

I don't want to cast Path to Exile early on a Leech or Sprouting Thrinax as it ends up accelerating them into scarier things like Siege-Gang and Broodmate with the added drawback of countering the effects of your land disruption plan. So I'm hoping to either use Elspeth, Oblivion Ring, or Wall of Omens to buy me time rather than Pathing them into a game win. Path is still exceptional at dealing with creature-lands as I went over earlier and could be cast early in a dire straight.

 

Game two I am truly blessed when I get Duressed and he takes Elspeth when my hand is four lands, two Spreading Seas, and an Elspeth. I proceed to cast 4 Spreading Seas and this game ends up not being close. (2-0)

 

1-0

 

Round 2 - Donnie Peck - Omaha, NE - Time Sieve

 

I befriended Donnie shortly before Grand Prix-Houston after meeting him through Bill Boysen (two players from Omaha, NE), whom I tested and traveled with for the Grand Prix. Donnie and I playtested U/R Blood Moon Control (aka Pale Moon) that we were wanting to play fiercely for a couple of days before the Grand Prix tuning the decklist from a PTQ winner in Arkansas into the deck that helped me earn a 20th place finish and sadly got Donnie a 9th place finish in the PTQ Sunday after a draw with tie breakers that were not QUITE good enough.

 

I hadn't played this matchup but was certainly optimistic with Spell Pierce and Kor Sanctifiers in the sideboard for potential blowouts.

 

Game one wasn't going great with an unanswered Howling Mine powering up his board and not really helping me since my spells cost so much I could only play one a turn anyways. He was able to down several of my planeswalkers quickly with Thopter Foundry tokens. (0-1)

 

Sideboarding:

+3 Kor Sanctifiers +3 Spell Pierce +4 Negate +1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor +1 Ajani Vengeant +1 Tectonic Edge

-4 Wall of Omens -4 Spreading Seas -4 Path to Exile -1 Day of Judgment

 

The basic plan here is simple: keep their card draw engine from getting started and counter or keep them off of Open the Vaults. I think it is clear that the cards you are boarding out are next to useless in this matchup. Don't forget you can Spell Pierce Borderposts which is sometimes the way to go followed by Ajani Vengeant or Kor Sanctifiers as a mana denial route to victory. You can also bounce your Kor Sanctifiers with Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

 

The plan goes very well and I keep his relevant engine cards from getting me for the next two games. (2-1)

 

2-0

 

Round 3 – Tucker Foster - Denver, CO - Cruel Control

 

This was a MidwestGameNation.com feature match, which you can find here.

 

I knew he traveled with Brett Piazza from Denver but didn't know what he was playing.

 

Game one he started with Spreading Seas on the play; I called, he raised one Spreading Seas, and I called. This wasn't actually as even as it looked on paper since his manabase is much more fragile than mine. This disrupts him some and I get an Elspeth burned out by Staggershock and Lightning Bolt but land an Ajani followed by the remaining three planeswalkers the next three-five turns. He is kept off Cruel Ultimatum mana for a long time via Ajani Vengeant and Spreading Seas. By the time he gets there I am able to swing back the next turn with Gideon, Colonnade, and an Elspeth pump for lethal. (1-0)

 

Sideboarding:

+4 Negate +3 Spell Pierce +2 Mind Control +1 Tectonic Edge +1 Ajani Vengeant +1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

-4 Path to Exile -2 Day of Judgment -4 Wall of Omens -2 Martial Coup

 

Something you might notice is that I prefer not to board out a land when boarding in Tectonic Edge. It's not really even a full land if I'm expecting to sacrifice it often (think of it as a semi spell). Mind Control for Vampires or Sedraxis Specter is better than Day of Judgment, and Negate and Spell Pierce give you ways to battle against Cruel Ultimatum, Countersquall, and Blightning.

 

Keep in mind that you might be trying to play a draw-go game for the first several turns of the sideboarded games to avoid running your planewalkers into cheap counterspells. This is ok long as you keep the appropriate starting hands. For this you'll need land drops because you don't want to keep a low land count opener then miss several during the draw-go stare off. Eventually they might pull the trigger first and go for a spell you can fight over and then you'll be more likely to resolve your planewalkers. Of course this isn't always the case and there will be times when you should just run spells into them every turn. (2-0)

 

3-0

 

Round 4 - Gerry Thompson - Minneapolis, MN - Jund

 

"How is this not a feature match?" -Spectator. I knew he was running Jund but wasn't sure what kind of spicy tech he was running.

 

Game one Gerry started on the play with turn-two Putrid Leech which quickly put me to 12 life and him at 16 despite my Wall of Omens which sat idle, staring down a Sprouting Thrinax. I played a fetch-land and Elspeth going to 11; he owned my planeswalker. I cast Ajani on the next turn to take out a Bloodbraid Elf and go to 14 life. He added another Bloodbraid Elf to the board and Leech put me on 10 life to his 14. I'm put in a tough spot at 10 life and only a single blocker as any removal spell kills me, but I over think the board and talk myself out of casting Day since I want to have a follow-up to Siege-Gang Commander. I thought "He'll get three tokens and could attack me for 3-6 the next turn even with the wrath or play Siege-Gang and I would just die." So I instead cast Divination trying to hit on Path so I can keep the Day as a closer only to draw into the second maindeck Day. He kills my wall and I die a little inside. (0-1)

 

Sideboarding:

+2 Mind Control +1 Tectonic Edge +1 Ajani Vengeant

-2 Path to Exile -2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

 

Same strategy as earlier with the added threat of Sarkhan the Mad.

 

Game two Gerry mulls to six cards and has mana problems. (1-1)

 

Game three I get hit by a Leech once and get a Spreading Seas out to slow him down and answer the Leech. His draw isn't fast enough and planewalkers have enough time to win the game. (2-1)

 

4-0

 

Round 5 – Matt Rader - Kansas City, MO - Ur Owling Mine Redux

 

This was a MidwestGameNation.com feature match, which you can find here.

 

I didn't know what Matt was playing but know him from other tournaments since he's friendly and I stayed with him for Worlds in Nashville two years prior. I was getting so sleepy at this point, and it didn't help that it felt like there was probably brighter lighting in most movie theaters than in HobbyTown that weekend. Tip: avoid letting yourself get tired, lazy, or distracted during a tournament. Give your keys to someone else in the car, sleep more than three hours the night before and if you catch yourself making a mistake, tighten up.

 

Game one I win to roll and follow his turn two Howling Mine with an Oblivion Ring which causes him to miss his third land drop. This allows me to get several early active planewalkers out before he gets going. I really don't have enough pressure on him however and he gets going with a Font of Mythos and some Time Warping. I get caught up in my losing situation and forget to make a token with Elspeth, and that costs me the game. *reaches for mistake dice to place upon deck box* (The mistake dice was an old mechanism we used in playtesting where if we made enough mistakes we would scratch the game and chalk it up as a loss to encourage tighter play.) (0-1)

 

Sideboarding:

-4 Path to Exile -2 Day of Judgment -4 Spreading Seas -3 Wall of Omens

+4 Negate +3 Kor Sanctifiers +3 Spell Pierce +1 Ajani Vengeant +1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor +1 Tectonic Edge

 

I want to be able to shutdown his card draw engines since he can't burn me out very easy without them and drawing only one card a turn sucks if some of them are burn spells that aren't effective.

 

Game two I, on the play, keep a hand that looks good but has minimal disruption which is how I'm really hoping to win post board. I get to a point in the game where I have nine mana for the turn after playing a land and the relevant cards in hand are Divination and Oblivion Ring with him having only a Howling Mine going on board. He has two cards in hand and three mana untapped. So I go over my options and see if I can play around any spells effectively. If I Oblivion Ring and he has Negate I won't have enough mana to play Kor Sanctifiers that I "could" draw off of the Divination. If I Divination first he could Negate that (not likely) but if he does I can cast Oblivion Ring after and have it resolve.

 

After going through this simulation I decide I'm going to try to dig into Kor Sanctifiers to play around Negate and potentially bait out a counter. After all I could just cast it if I don't draw Kor Sanctifiers and I'm still in the same situation as before, right? So the Divination hits two blanks and I run the Oblivion Ring out there because I still don't want him drawing multiple cards a turn. What happens next makes me a little sick as he casts Spell Pierce and Twincasts it shutting out my well thought out judgment call. Had I made the second best play I'm in much better shape against those two exact cards in hand, but you have to not be results oriented and I took stock in the fact I probably made the right play at least here since he's much more likely to be holding a Negate than a Spell Pierce and a Twincast.

 

I get him to 1 life with some aggression on the part of my planewalkers but he gets going with a Font of Mythos and a Time Warp due to the multiple cards a turn. (0-2)

 

Brad Thies comes to the rescue at the end of the match with a Rockstar. I don't even like Rockstar, but start chugging happily.

 

4-1

 

Round 6 - Raine Lourie - Cruel Control

 

Need a win here.

 

Game one I think I had some Spreading Seas to slow him down and he might have had a somewhat slow draw. I don't remember which game but at some point I decided to wait a turn to get Elspeth up to eight loyalty before attacking with what would have been a lethal Gideon Jura since he could easily have been holding Terminate back for my planeswalker in the hope that I go for the kill earlier than needed. (1-0)

 

Sideboarding:

-4 Path to Exile -4 Wall of Omens -2 Martial Coup -2 Oblivion Ring

+2 Mind Control +4 Negate +3 Spell Pierce +1 Tectonic Edge +1 Ajani Vengeant +1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

 

I was fearful of Malakir Bloodwitch mostly and the counters are good for dealing with Jace's and Cruel Ultimatums.

 

Game two we both start on six cards, I stumble on mana after casting my Divination into open mana and getting it countered when I was holding Negate. He followed that up with Jace and started wrecking me. I know my play seems bad on paper but I had no land drops in hand and didn't want to get walked several turns in a row. It still may have been wrong to go for it but I made the judgment call that my opponent wasn't going to run his planewalker into my three mana open and would just develop lands until he could play Jace with counter backup while I missed land drops and discard. (1-1)

 

Game three I attack his lands early with Spreading Seas then Ajani. He adds a Sedraxis Specter to the board but I'm holding two Mind Control and just take it from him. He added Malakir to the table indicating that he baited out Mind Control first (good play) but I had the second Mind Control which was really lucky and take the match. (2-1)

 

5-1

 

Round 7 - Nicholas Richter - U/W Control

 

I got paired up to one of three players with 16 points so I draw here as it is safe.

 

5-1-1

 

Top 8 – Matt Rader - Kansas City, MO - Howling Mind

 

Top 8 decklists can be found at MidwestGameNation.com.

 

Game one he gets unlucky twice by being on the draw and missing several land drops. (1-0)

 

Sideboarding:

-4 Path to Exile -2 Day of Judgment -4 Spreading Seas -3 Wall of Omens

+4 Negate +3 Kor Sanctifiers +3 Spell Pierce +1 Ajani Vengeant +1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor +1 Tectonic Edge

 

Game two the sideboard plan goes off without a hitch. If this ends up working out you draw off the Mine effects and take them out before they get cards out of them or keep them from getting on the board at all. (2-0)

 

Top 4 – Gerry Thompson - Jund

 

This was a MidwestGameNation.com feature match, which you can find here.

 

No one said this PTQ was going to be easy. 

 

Game one I get aggro rolled even though I'm on the play. (0-1)

 

Sideboarding:

+2 Mind Control +1 Tectonic Edge +1 Ajani Vengeant

-2 Path to Exile -2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

 

Game two we both start on six cards and a Spreading Seas buys me some time to get some planeswalkers active and I try my best to conserve life while countering his board presence the best I can. (1-1)

 

Game three he chose to draw, much to my surprise, but I piece together that it could be as simple as a mulligan could be really hard for me to recover from if he has Duresses and Blightnings after sideboard. It could also minimize the effectiveness of Spreading Seas by increasing his land count slightly if he doesn't mulligan. Very rarely is it right to draw first in Constructed but when it is, it usually takes some thinking outside of the box and an insight to what's important in the matchup.

 

I keep four lands, two Divination, and Elspeth on the play because I like this hand against his plan for the most part. I'm going to have a turn three-four play almost no matter what he ends up doing. Elspeth is great for giving you tons of time against Jund if it isn't answered immediately which would make the second Divination good as well. I'm pretty sure his draw ends up not being great game 3 and I draw into lots of gas. (2-1)

 

Finals - Brandon Ayers - Omaha, NE - Bant Conscription/Big Bant Theory

 

I haven't tested this matchup at this point in the tournament but figure I'm at least a slight favor based on decks alone. I do the math after speaking with the judges and I am going to try to pick up the last few Pro Points I need to qualify for Amsterdam so I decide to concede by drop to a longtime friend. Turns out that for some players it shows one more Pro Point than you actually have for the current season which means I need to pick up four Pro Points between Grand Prix DC and San Juan. Very happy to be sending Brandon to the Pro Tour and I remind him that he'll have to playtest with me for it (crossing my fingers that I'll be qualified).

 

I will go over the matchups that I didn't play against in the tournament but tested against.

 

Red Deck wins

 

Game one you get to soak up tons of damage with Wall of Omens and Gideon; unless they get a blazing fast start you will outlive the burn and usually can put them on a fast clock. I liked to save Path if I could afford to for large hasty creatures rather than using it on Goblin Guides or Plated Geopede.

 

Sideboarding:

-4 Spreading Seas -2 Martial Coup -1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

+4 Negate +1 Ajani Vengeant +2 Spell Pierce

 

Game two plays similarly but you might need to watch out for Manabarbs.

 

Eldrazi Green

 

Game one Spreading Seas is surprisingly disruptive. Try to keep there creature counts low and cast DOJ before they can Monument unless you can hang them with their own Monument.

 

Sideboarding:

-4 Spreading Seas

+4 Negate

 

Game two try to keep Nissa and Monument off the board and slow them down until mass removal spells hit with other stuff. Watch out for Acidic Slimes or potentially even Mold Shambler.

 

U/W Control

 

I didn't play this matchup much myself but saw it in action some. I'm pretty sure the goal game one is a balance between pressuring them and playing around Oblivion Rings/legend rules with your planeswalkers. Both players having DOJ is something to be very mindful of and I've heard that the person who casts theirs second wins. This is, of course, oversimplified and control on control matchups like this are extremely bogged down with tiny game altering choices. So playtest this matchup if you don't want to be clueless against other control decks.

 

Sideboarding:

-4 Wall of Omens -4 Path to Exile -2 Day of Judgment -3 Oblivion Ring

+4 Negate +3 Spell Pierce +3 Kor Sanctifiers +1 Tectonic Edge +1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor +1 Ajani Vengeant

 

I'm not certain if this is the best way to sideboard but basically you want to dump non-threats and maximize hard spells here with +2 'walkers and several counters hoping to be able to stick and keep 'walker advantage going to win the game. Game two seems easier as you should be able to answer their big x spells often enough.

 

Thanks for reading this long winded tournament report! Hopefully this is helpful for anyone thinking of running this deck for the Amsterdam PTQ season. Good luck, and keep crushing.

 

Props:

Brandon Ayers for winning his first PTQ!!!

 

HobbyTown for running another fine tournament and upping the prize payout.

 

My friends that helped me test and loaned me the mythics I was missing because I'm not made of money.

 

Lewis Laskin, Ben Stark and anyone else they came up with the deck with since they showcased the deck which quickly sold me on the power of UWr in Standard.

 

Brad Thies for keeping me awake on the drive back since he was probably terrified I was going to fall asleep at the wheel since we were once driving to a PTQ in the morning in separate cars and he swears 'til this day that I was just sleep driving and luckily going straight.

 

Slops:

Me for not sleeping as much as I should have the night before because of Alex Black's birthday party. Get your deck finished at least a day before the event and try to get six hours of sleep :D. I know it's tough when you want to play your deck as much as possible before the tournament.

 

The lighting was a little like playing with just the sunlight coming in through the basement window. If you want to prepare for this I guess just wear sunglasses while playtesting.

 

Wizards for making mythics a staple of Constructed Magic. I really get the feeling people aren't going to be able to get the cards they want to play this deck for the Nationals Qualifiers due to budget restrictions.