What Are People Playing at Large In-Person Events and Spice Leagues?
What Are People Playing at Large In-Person Events and Spice Leagues?
PLUS: Wizards honors Kai Budde, my experiments with Oath of Druids and... Drakes?
Today I want to give you all a bit of Premodern sugar and spice. First, the sugar… a sweet look at the meta of the largest in-person tournaments recently. Then, the spice… an update on the Spice Paradise webcam tournament I’ve been organizing on Discord.
In recent months we’ve seen some sizable in-person events take place, including the Spanish Nationals (221 players, the largest in Premodern history), the Czech Champs (136 players), and the Duress Crew Spring Regional (68 players). All three of these wonderful events provided general metagame breakdowns, which are fairly interesting to look at to get a feel of what to expect as other large events are within view (South American Champs, Midwest Champs, and New England Summer Open in July, Universal Champs in August, and the North American Champs and Euro Champs in September). Combining the results of the three decks yields 424 decks with the following breakdown:
It’s interesting to look at these results directionally when preparing for a large event. Geographical variations will exist, of course, for example the Duress Crew Spring Regional contained zero Wx Weenie or Madness decks while those decks were about 4% of the meta apiece at the other two events.
I did my best to categorize the decks similarly across the three events. Some events were more detailed than others, such as breaking out Stiflenought variants while others grouped them together. “Black-White” is a combination of BW Control and Deadguy Ale, which while are pretty distinct decks are sometimes grouped together by accident in categorization. Similarly, Wx Weenie includes the UW Flippi deck, which has many similar components to classic Weenie decks but in plays a bit differently.
Stasis, Wx Weenie, Deadguy Ale, and Madness are decks that don’t get talked about a ton but are all relatively affordable and carries a lot of nostalgia for many players. Don’t ignore them in your preparation.
Meanwhile, Ponza Oath is a deck that is often discussed but has recently had fairly low representation. Tsabo’s Web scaring people away maybe? I do expect Replenish to continue to increase in share though after a recent streak of strong finishes.
The Other section represents nearly a third, highlighting how diverse the Premodern meta usually is. Feel free to look at the data I collected and share any other observations or corrections you have.
I also looked at the Top 8 results to see decks that placed well compared to their meta share:
Burn, Stiflenought, Replenish, Elves, Pit Rack, and Tide Control outperformed, converting more players into the Top 8 than expected. Meanwhile, Goblins, constantly appraised as one of the strongest decks in Premodern with the lowest amounts of top finishes, failed to convert based on representation.
Checking in on Spice Paradise
As mentioned in the previous issue of BANDING, I put together a webcam league organized through Discord that was intended to celebrate the culture of brewing and the existence of spicy and rogue decks. We’ve just wrapped up Week 6 with another two weeks remaining until the playoffs begin. A huge thanks to the 28 players! Your participation and enthusiasm for the league has exceeded my hopes and the decks shared so far have really been quite an inspiration. I’m going to share a couple of highlights, but you can see all the deck lists here (and some of the deck photos here). As a reminder, we generally play our games in the public video chat rooms in the Discord, feel free to spectate or discuss brewing in the Spice Paradise Discord thread.
Lace Hippos by Wanderlust (Conor A. Brown)
Oath of Fools by Samuel Leng
Life Oath by Koget
NecAssault by K-Run (Raphaël A. Caron)
RG Succession Combo by JOnions
Zombie Opposition by JayL
RW Stoic Flux by Cody
Wallflower by BrandonE
Kirkland Hermit by Chet
What I’ve Been Playing Lately
Tolaria Vise
After I played my Turbo Upheaval Lands deck in the Spring Fling, I became somewhat enamored with the idea of four Black Vise in the main (I mean, it was good enough to have been banned in the format at one point, right?). I decided to modify my old Zombie Tax Still deck from the PSS2 by removing the white cards. Here was my thought process for the deck’s design:
Turn 1 Black Vise into Turn 2 Standstill provides an alternate win condition to the typical Standstill win conditions (e.g., Decree of Justice, manlands). Cracking your own Standstill to hit an opponent with Black Vise is another remote, but plausible possibility.
I liked the idea of Zombie Infestation combined with Standstill. They don’t curve perfectly but Zombie Infestation is nominally strong against red decks, which slower control decks can struggle with.
If I’m running Zombie Infestation then I should jam in some Squee.
Squee is also good for the Forbid lock alongside Arcane Laboratory.
Arcane Laboratory has some synergy with Black Vise.
And thus we arrived full circle! I ended up going 3-3 in the May webcam monthly, defeating Mono B Clerics, UG Oath, and RG Goblins, while losing to RB Goblins, Deadguy Ale, and Pattern Rector. I also learned that Arcane Denial is a “may” trigger and had an opponent decline to draw two cards!
“Mid” Angry Hermit
I’m still experimenting with jamming Terravore into different shells and I wanted to try an Angry Hermit deck that was less all-in with some midrange gameplay. Both Oath of Druids and Hermit Druid are some of the scariest two-drops in green, so I figured either one in play would be great. Oath of Druids was a bit of a roulette of what could come out, but usually I was OK with either Terravore or Hermit Druid (less enthused if Anger came out, luckily it never did). The deck was very fun, even if I don’t think I was successful with my initial idea as the deck still felt somewhat all-in on Hermit Druid to provide the gas. Earlier iterations of the deck also fit in a Squee to provide another fun payoff for a Hermit Druid activation if I had Zombie Infestation out.
I went 4-2 in the June webcam monthly, defeating Survival Infestation, Planar Birth Combo, 5C White Weenie, and Mono U Stiflenought while falling to Pit-Rack and Deadguy Ale (my eternal nemesis).
UG Griffin Canyon
For my first two matches of Spice Paradise, I brought back an old favorite. It was actually the first deck I ever used in a webcam monthly — way back in June 2020 where I went 4-2 with it. This was also the exact deck list I utilized in the PSS2. The three-card combo remains fragile as ever, though with many redundant pieces. I defeated BR Mogg Covenant but lost to Count Chocula (Forbidden Crypt + Donate combo).
Guilty Oath
Having lost to Pit-Rack quite a few times in my Premodern career, I had always been intrigued by the concept of a green splash in the deck. I threw in Oath of Druids and Guiltfeeder (a creature that terrorized the early NYC meetups alongside Traumatize), which I thought was a nice pick because not only is it castable if needed but also works well alongside ample discard and Ensnaring Bridge. The creature has a big body, evasion, and is one of the few cards that can potentially race a Terravore. The Skeletal Scryings were a late addition… I thought they could be interesting with Oath of Druids filling up your graveyard but they don’t really work well with Ensnaring Bridge and Cursed Scroll. They should probably be The Rack or Chain of Smog.
RG Reap Combo
[No deck photo yet, but here’s the deck list. Follow my Twitter or Instagram for when the photo drops]
I’ve been pretty fascinated with combos utilizing Reap for a while. There are a few different variants but the basic concept is that you need:
Two copies of Reap, one in hand and one in the graveyard
Two copies of Lion’s Eye Diamonds, one in play and one in the graveyard
At least two black permanents controlled by your opponent
Once you’ve fulfilled these requirements you can begin looping Reap and LED by cracking your LED in response to Reap, which targets the Reap and LED in the graveyard. You’ll get three mana and a Reap and an LED back to hand. You spend two mana to repeat the process, netting infinite mana. Once you have infinite mana you can replace the LED with another card, let’s say a Lightning Bolt, a Lodestone Bauble, or a tutor/cantrip to find your win condition of choice. It’s a neat combo, but there are a ton of pieces and requirements. In the August 2021 webcam monthly I played a black-green variant that utilized Oath of Druids and Sleeper Agent, hoping to provide my opponent with black cards while shielding myself with Ensnaring Bridges, Spike Weaver, and Moment’s Peace. I think I went 1-5 with that brew, facing primarily combo decks that laughed at my main deck creature-centric elements.
This variant for Spice Paradise utilized Goblin Welder to grab Distorting Lens as needed, cosplaying as a poor Painter deck with four Pyroblasts in the main. I’ve also been interested in Oath of Druids plus Goblin Welder for some time, though this probably isn’t the best shell for it. Survival of the Fittest is the usual companion for Goblin Welder when it comes to 1G enchantments, so to beat that pairing you really need to find a deck utilizing non-creature artifacts. I ended up beating BG Enchantress Poison and falling to Mono Red Stax.
Another variant of the deck utilizes Prismatic Lace to help achieve the two black permanent requirement and can also utilize Helm of Awakening alongside Frantic Search to combo (i.e., you loop Reap and Frantic Search with Helm of Awakening out, which costs three mana total while Frantic Search untaps three lands, eventually you loot your deck and can loop cards as needed).
Mono Blue Drakes
My second time playing in the Beard Brothers Tribal Wars league (having played Birds last time) I decided to keep with the mono blue theme and play Drakes! This one is a blast to play in creature-heavy situations with Equilibrium plus Shrieking Drake providing repeatable two mana Unsummon while Gilded Drake steals the best creatures before getting bounced back to hand. I defeated Birds (who was also playing Equilibrium), Constructs, and Elves, while losing to Slivers (Crystalline Sliver single-handedly [or hookily?] wrecked me). I have one more match against Barbarians but I’m already brewing up decks for the next league.
Content
🐐 Kai Budde, who holds the record for Pro Tour Champion titles (seven times!), was honored by Wizards of the Coast as the Player of the Year trophy was renamed after him. It was also revealed that Budde’s health and battle with cancer has taken a turn for the worse. When I was a kid the only two players I knew by name were Kai Budde and Jon Finkel. He is a true legend. I’ll be making a donation to a cancer-related charity in his honor and I hope you’ll consider it too, or to a cause that is meaningful to you.
⚫️⚪️ Finance and cuisine influencer Andrea Mengucci is back with a match between BW Control and UG Madness
🐲♾️ fpawlusz takes a Pattern Rector deck for a spin, a true gem of a combo deck in the Premodern format
🏆 Premodern South American champion Kuban MTG uploaded his May MTGO Challenge win with Terrageddon
🤝💡 The Shared Discovery podcast is back with an episode covering up and coming decks, as well as Weenie variants and Replenish
🌊 Romario Vidal records a league with Mono Blue Control
❓❔ William Hirst of the I’ve Got ?????’s podcast, interviews Juan Sanz, the Stiflenought champion of the latest Spanish Nationals
⚔️ The Impulse Crew continues to upload great matches, including this one of UB Control vs. Landstill
⚡️ Lannynyny runs RW Rifter through a league to see if the time is right for the deck’s resurgence