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B Smith
United States
Boston
Massachusetts
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Sometimes when I look at a sealed pool, I see at least two strategies that seem equally viable. They both have reasonable curves, creature counts, mana bases, and other solid fundamentals. When this happens, the decision to maindeck one strategy over another seems to be less about choosing a superior deck in isolation, and more about considering the metagame.
While I think there's a metagame at all levels of Magic, I think it's difficult to say what the metagame is at the sort of small local tournaments where I play. With only about twenty people in attendance any given week, the metagame can depend on factors as simple as who shows up. I think the best metagame clues you can get at tournaments like these come from the people who like to chat about what they opened while they're deckbuilding.
Still, whatever happens in the local metagame, it's always true that when you're in this sort of situation, it's often worthwhile to switch to plan B if you end up struggling with a bad matchup. That's what I did in this tournament, and it served me very well; I went 2-1 with a bye, only facing a tough loss in the tournament finals. Two decklists—and the story of their evolution—below.
Here's my original list, and complete pool:
Opening this pool was a blast. I got several Innistrad rares I wanted for my Ghave, Guru of Spores Commander deck: Mikaeus, the Lunarch, Gavony Township, and Mentor of the Meek. Then, to top that off, I found a nice money rare in Snapcaster Mage. Even before I played a single game, I knew I was going to go home happy.
Seeing those cards, I was strongly tempted to relive my Ghave experiences in Limited by building a GW "tokens with +1/+1 counters" deck. I tried to keep my mind open, though. Black was easy enough to rule out, and red has some decent cards but nothing to really suggest it. Blue gave me a much tougher problem. It has several good fliers with Moon Heron and two Battleground Geist, plus several potent counterspells keep my opponent's threats under control. And then there's Snapcaster Mage—I had my suspicions that it wouldn't be an amazing card in Limited, but it had to be good, and I was curious to play it just to see how good. After having so much luck with a synergistic deck last time, I gave the edge to the GW build, and started with this deck.
For the very first round of the tournament, I got a bye—and it drove me crazy. First and foremost, I had a fun deck, and I wasn't getting to play with it! And to top that off, I would go into the second round of the tournament without any experience playing my deck, facing off against an opponent who just won. I consoled myself by buying a few singles for Commander, using the store credit I earned from the last tournament.
My first match was against another GW deck that had more focus on evasion, with cards like Orchard Spirit and white fliers. My rares powered me through to victories. In one game, Gavony Township came online right on schedule, giving out counters to four different creatures to help overwhelm the opponent. In another, I struggled a bit with mana, but Mentor of the Meek gave me the card advantage I needed to have the edge in an otherwise scrappy game.
After that, I faced off against a UB fliers deck. It started hitting early with Vampire Interloper and Lantern Spirit, and then kept those cards effective in the midgame with buffs like Skeletal Grimace and counterspells. We raced a bit, but he won the first game without much trouble.
When it came time to sideboard, I didn't see any way to help my GW deck deal with such aggressive fliers. So I switched tracks completely, and boarded out all of my green for blue:
Suddenly, the match took on a completely different feel. Now instead of racing, I was looking to overpower him as we transitioned in the mid- to late-game. Our next two games were long slogs, but that's how they ultimately played out; the board would largely stall in the midgame until I found a way to power through. In one, Mikaeus finished things off by buffing a large army of fliers. In the other, Lost in the Mist countered his Skirsdag High Priest and bounced the Vampire Interloper enchanted with Skeletal Grimace to clear a safe opening to attack.
I decided to keep this build going into the last round, and the result was a crazy mirror match. My opponent's deck also included Mikaeus, the Lunarch and Snapcaster Mage, as well as a similar complement of counterspells. The back-and-forth was fierce; things got so stupid, I once cast Mikaeus for 0—to trigger Mentor of the Meek and kill the 3/3 Mikaeus my opponent just summoned. Usually when I make a play that's too clever by half, I end up regretting it later, but in this case I still think that was the right move. My opponent had fewer little white dorks and more fliers, so by the time we both started running out of gas, he would have one or two more fliers to keep hitting at me and take me down. I lost both games and the match that way.
Should I have brought back the GW deck for game two to try to win by racing? I still go back and forth on that, but ultimately I think the answer is no. It would've been a different matchup, but I expect the end result would've been about the same as it was against my UB opponent. Instead, given the way our games went so long, I think I should've sideboarded to play an even slower game. Doomed Traveler could probably come out in favor of the second Battleground Geist, and replacing Inquisitor's Flail with Hysterical Blindness seems like a net win in this specific matchup.
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