One month from now, well, actually, one month from tomorrow will be the beginning of the best, most Magical weekend ever. First, as I’m sure you’re all aware, Saturday, September 23 marks the rockin’est Vintage tournament ever at the Hero Zone ($12.50 entry, Volcanic Islands as prize—see this website for more details). The following Sunday there will be Two-Headed Giant action as the main event of the Time Sprial prerelease. Not to mention that on Friday, there’s FREE Standard Magic tournaments at the Hero Zone (will be the Gamers Lounge by then) in Sandusky.
I’m going to play so much Magic that weekend my eyes’ll bleed and I’ll have calluses from shuffling. I gotta be in training from now until then. No sunlight for me until I drive home on September 22.
Seriously, though, it should be a good time, and if people want to caravan to Columbus for the prerelease, we can get food afterward.
Since I haven’t really gotten to do a lot of Magicking over the past few weeks with moving and all, I’ve only been thinking about some new decks.
I have no idea what the metagame will look like for the Gamers Lounge reopening tournament, so I might just take today’s deck to beat, PitchLong. I haven’t gotten a chance to put it together yet, but I like the look of it. Having more blue cards to pitch to both Force of Will and Misdirection seems really strong. The two-color blue and black version seems stable and strong, but I wish I had Starcity Premium Membership so I could see Menendian’s five-color proposal. I’m sure it’s got more random power in it, but I’m not sure about its “win more” properties.
Unfortunately, I don’t have PitchLong put together yet and cannot comment further on its play. The pros seem to like it, though.
The deck I’ve been putting together for possible use at the next Meandeck Open in Columbus, though, is The Jester, also known as UbaCaps. It’s a lot of fun to play, but I have to figure out the lock pieces I want for it.
The basic idea is that you have all the power of UbaStax but instead of Smokestacks (which has fallen out of favor in a lot of areas), you use Jester’s Cap to remove their win conditions. Artifact lock pieces keep your opponent in check until this happens, though it’s possible to play Cap first turn (Workshop, Lotus, Cap, you lose, homeboy!). I have a feeling this could be strong against the decks I’ve seen most often in Columbus (Tendrils combo, Gifts, and Slaver) and that I can sideboard into a good game against the less frequent showers (Fish and random).
We’ll see how it looks out, but so far I like playing the deck. Here’s the list I have now, approximately:
5x Mountain
4x Barbarian Ring
4x Wasteland
1x Strip Mine
4x Mishra’s Workshop
1x Tolarian Academy
5x Moxes
1x Black Lotus
1x Sol Ring
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
4x Bazaar of Baghdad
4x Uba Mask
4x Goblin Welder
4x Jester’s Cap
4x Crucible of Worlds
3x Tangle Wire
3x Sphere of Resistence
1x Trinisphere
2x Gorilla Shaman
1x Triskelion
1x Sundering Titan
1x Karn, Silver Golem
Right now I’m having fun with the deck. Welder-Mask and Ubazaar are awesome, and Sphere of Resistence so often makes me very happy. The biggest problem I’m having right now, in fact, is that I rarely see Jester’s Cap for some reason, so I have no idea how to judge it in actual play. I also don’t know quite what to think of Tangle Wire; I can see its uses against control, but against combo it seems to be lacking. Of course, the deck should have Chalice of the Void in its place—I keep forgetting to add it, as a playset of course.
I might drop Gorilla Shaman or one of my artifact creatures for a fourth Sphere. Even Mindslaver could work in this deck, albeit slowly and as a one-of. I could drop a Mountain for a Great Furnace or a Darksteel Citadel to help it work.
The sideboard makes me happy as well. Right now I have this:
4x Red Elemental Blast
3x Juggernaut
3x Granite Shard
3x Pyrostatic Pillar
2x Various
By various, I mean just that. There are a lot of good options available, including adding an extra of each of the three-ofs. Viashino Heretics and Shattering Spree are both good, as are Pyroblasts.
One of the things that makes UbaCaps so good is that it's very redundant, like Fish. You don't need much of a draw or selection engine because sooner or later you're bound to hit the necessary three- or four-of and be able to go to town. There's talk of adding Gamble to enhance this property, but I'm not sure about that. It does help Welder out a bit, but there's not usually one lock piece that's all that critical (except maybe Trinisphere) so the only thing it really makes better is breaking Strip Mine in half with Crucible.
That's all for this installment of What Nat's Working On Now. I'll be back in another couple of days with my other big project deck, Meandeck Gifts.
Until then, I hope you're playing more than three win conditions.
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