David Glore’s Power Tilt

Before we get started here, allow me to introduce myself. My name is David Glore, and I have been playing Magic off and on since Beta. I wish I had some cool bad beat stories about trading a Mox away for a copy of The Hive, but I really just don’t. The fact is, I never cared much about trading my cards away for anything, and I never bought a whole lot of packs. I never really knew how widespread and popular Magic was. The kitchen table was the breadth of my knowledge.

I started playing competitively in Onslaught. I have Top 8ed countless PTQs, come in second a bunch of times in them, won one, played on the Pro Tour twice, and am the number one ranked player in Tennessee as of this publication. To put it mildly, I haven’t really accomplished anything as a Magic player until this past weekend. There is a tad bit of irony in it; my first success as a Magic player came at Tennessee States back when Mirrodin was first released (I came in second). Now, less than a month after the official return to that plane, I have achieved my first real success.
Now that introductions are out of the way, let’s get down to business.

Several years ago, there was only one possible explanation for the cards flying across the room or the draft deck in the trash can. Clearly I had gone on tilt. It was probably better just to leave me alone than risk life or limb seeking answers. I had either mulliganed into an abysmal five in game 3 or my opponent had ripped his one-outer or I had drawn six straight lands or I had forgotten my Razormane Masticore’s trigger or something like that. I was a powder keg. Once, to my absolute regret, I had told one of my opponents to go home and put a loaded gun in his mouth. I was a sore loser. I hated the feeling of missing out on the big “W,” the three points in the standings, or five extra packs of prize support. As Zac Hill once wrote, whenever things were going badly for me, a Veil of Melancholy draped over my entire demeanor. I am surprised that anyone I knew then wanted to have anything to do with me.

The 2003 State Championships provided me with my first real taste of competitive success. I was extremely proud of the deck I had built. It was a Blue-White Control deck that spawned from my unnatural love for Exalted Angel and Solemn Simulacrum, a creature I still affectionately refer to as Qui-Guy (as in a quiet man, solemn even). I honestly believed that no one at that tournament could beat that deck, and I was right. It took a sleepy head judge and my opponent’s buddy standing behind me, telegraphing my hand to deal out my first loss of the day—in the finals. Not once in that day did I tilt, but that was probably because nothing went wrong.

UW Control (from memory)
By David Glore
2nd place, 2002 Tennessee State Championships
4 Exalted Angel
3 Solemn Simulacrum
4 Eternal Dragon
2 Decree of Justice
4 Wrath of God
2 Rewind
4 Mana Leak
3 Akroma’s Vengeance
3 Wing Shards
4 Renewed Faith
27 Lands
15 Sideboard cards

I wish that I could give a more detailed recount of what I played that day, but I can’t find the decklist anywhere online or in my own files.

There are two other decks I built of which I have been extremely proud. One was Elementals. The first PTQ I won (and the only, to date) came while wielding that deck. Again, throughout the tournament, I never tilted, and again it probably had something to do with the fact that nothing went wrong. Every match I won was a total cakewalk, even when I managed to punt.

Elementals
By David Glore
1st place, PTQ for Austin
4 Bloom Tender
2 Cloudthresher
4 Flamekin Harbinger
1 Fulminator Mage
4 Horde of Notions
4 Incandescent Soulstoke
4 Mulldrifter
2 Ranger of Eos
4 Reveillark
4 Smokebraider
2 Soul Warden
1 Shriekmaw
1 Nameless Inversion
4 Ancient Ziggurat
1 Exotic Orchard
1 Forest
1 Karplusan Forest
2 Mountain
1 Plains
4 Primal Beyond
4 Reflecting Pool
4 Vivid Crag
1 Vivid Grove
Sideboard
3 Burrenton Forge-Tender
2 Cloudthresher
1 Crib Swap
1 Eyes of the Wisent
2 Fulminator Mage
3 Pithing Needle
1 Shriekmaw
1 Soul Warden
1 Wispmare

The third deck I am extremely proud of is the deck I played at this past weekend’s Star City Games 5k Nashville.

THE FURIOUS PLANT
By David Glore
3rd Place, SCG 5K Open Nashville, 10/16/2010
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Fauna Shaman
2 Frost Titan
4 Lotus Cobra
1 Molten-Tail Masticore
2 Nest Invader
3 Sea Gate Oracle
1 Sphinx of the Lost Truths
4 Vengevine
3 Garruk Wildspeaker
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Mana Leak
6 Forest
6 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Scalding Tarn
3 Tectonic Edge
4 Verdant Catacombs
Sideboard:
1 Acidic Slime
2 Flashfreeze
4 Spreading Seas
3 Obstinate Baloth
2 Sleep
1 Tajuru Preserver
2 Volition Reins

This deck looks like a pile of good stuff, and that’s exactly what it is. That being said, this deck is extremely complicated, can have very different plans from what you might expect based upon your opening hand, and can peel its way out of any seemingly unwinnable situation. It doesn’t seem very innovative or original, and it’s not really, but some of the affirmative decisions I made were significant.

To build and play a tournament winning deck takes work. It makes Magic feel like a job. Sometimes, it feels like there’s no point and you ought to just quit. Lord knows I swapped back and forth from WUG to RUG Fauna Shaman decks so often, I forgot which one I currently had sleeved up. And the kicker was neither one of them was doing anything very powerful. Sure, Squadron Hawk + Jace is really cute, but Jace often gets the job done by himself. Cunning Sparkmage doesn’t kill anything. Man-lands are bad in the current format. I was at my wits end. I almost gave up on it. I was going on tilt before I even went to the tournament. Instead of quitting, I made a list of problems I was having.

1. I had to mulligan hands without mana acceleration that were otherwise keepable.
2. Jace was my only way to profitably interact with my opponents. I needed more interactivity, especially against Valakut.
3. I wanted more powerful things to do.
4. I wanted more recursive threats like Vengevine.

I took a deep breath. I could do this.
The first problem was relatively easy to fix. All I had to do was play more accelerants. The hard questions were, “Which one?” and “How many?” I started with a set of Llanowar Elves, but as it turns out, a 1/1 that only produces Green mana was not too impressive. He was a woeful attacker, an even worse blocker, and to boot, I was still having mana issues. Noble Hierarch, where were you? I did a quick rundown on Gatherer (a godsend of a tool, by the way) to see what my other options were. I could have played Explore, but that seemed like it didn’t mesh well with the deck. For Explore to be really good, you have to have a land in hand and another to follow up with next turn, otherwise you have not really done anything. I discarded Explore quickly after I realized I would have to make room for six cards—the four Explores and two more lands.
Then I came across Nest Invader, essentially the only other mana accelerator that would ramp me to four mana on turn three. I was a little skeptical, but after a few games, I realized that he was tremendous. First, his accompanying Eldrazi Spawn ramps to four mana, where the benefits are clear. Second, he provides a chump blocker if need be. In one match, the fact that I could sacrifice the Spawn to stop the Lifelink on Wurmcoil Engine allowed me to kill my opponent the following turn. Third, he is eight-power worth of attackers on an Overrun. His flexibility was just the sort of thing I was looking for. If Birds and Lotus Cobra did not lead to utterly degenerate draws, I might have played more of the egg-swiping barnacle.

The second problem was where I really started considering removing the third color. I made an assertion earlier, and here I would like to defend it. Man-lands are bad in this deck—and any other Fauna Shaman deck—right now. In the last Standard, they were fantastic. Most decks were looking for ways to put pressure on their answer-heavy opponents and eke out every point of damage along the way. Man-lands like Raging Ravine did that. Once you were at a point where playing more threats into a Day of Judgment seemed unwise, you could activate the Ravine or Colonnade and get in there, taking a chunk out of your opponent and not even losing a card in the process. Those decks were slow, had tons of removal, and sought to control lots of things at sorcery speed—like Day, Maelstrom Pulse, and the like. Sure, there were Instants that were effective, but most of the time, those spells had been exhausted far before the time came to get in there with a land.

Raging Ravine and Celestial Colonnade gave creature decks reach and inevitability, something control decks were not really equipped to deal with (lest they die to all the other threats an aggro deck proposes). Sure, Spreading Seas would stop one of them. Yes, Path to Exile took them out as well. That being said, it is not wise to hold a Path for a Raging Ravine down the road when Putrid Leech is eating your lunch right now. Nor is it wise to Spreading Seas a Celestial Colonnade when you desperately need to leave mana open to counter an incoming Sovereigns of Lost Alara.

These days, decks just win. It is extremely hard to find time to activate a Colonnade or Ravine when your opponent is just one turn away from comboing you out with a Primeval Titan, Ulamog, or some other such nastiness. Four in the air is a little less impressive than six trample plus double Reap and Sow or ten plus Annihilator 4 on an Indestructible guy. For my money, I would rather just keep my opponents off of idiotic plays by limiting their mana production. As a buddy of mine sleeved up the same seventy-five on the day of the tournament, I told him to repeat after me, “Jace is three Unsummons. “Jace is three Unsummons!” I wanted more interactivity. I wanted Tectonic Edge, and because I wanted it, the third color had to go.

The third thing that I wanted, as I said, was more powerful things to do. I realized that taking a man-land out of the deck removed some of the power that I was seeking, but since that was neither interactive nor very powerful (as I just explained), I looked elsewhere. The week leading up to the 5K, a great deal of Magic authors were writing about how powerful Frost Titan was, so I decided to give him a shot. Boy howdy was I impressed. It did everything I wanted and more. It would let me lock a careless Valakut player out of his second green mana, tap an otherwise annoying blocker like Baneslayer Angel, or beat an opposing Titan. Remember, the second Frost Titan wins (assuming you have eight mana).

The fourth thing—more recursive threats—was a little harder to come by. Sure, things like Equipment can serve their purposes as recursive threats, but I was looking to do something better than that. I wanted something that was good on its own. Enter Garruk Wildspeaker.

After a fashion, Garruk does all four things that I wanted. One, his power as a ramping machine is obvious. There were countless games where I cast him on turn three and followed him up with Frost Titan on turn four. Two, Garruk allowed me to keep mana open all of the time to at least bluff Mana Leak. He did not directly interact with my opponents, but he gave me more ability to interact the ways I was already. Conveniently, untapping two lands is the right amount for Mana Leak and Tectonic Edge. Third, it turns out that Overrun is a pretty powerful spell. Fourth, there isn’t a control deck on the planet post-Oblivion Ring that can deal with a 3/3 over and over again. Come to think of it, there isn’t really an aggro deck that can deal with recursive 3/3’s, either.

By the time I was done with the deck, the tilt was gone. I knew it was the best deck I could play at the 5K. It did things that I wanted to do, and I knew myself. I could draw out of just about any situation, and I felt prepared.

I felt the Veil try to slide over me as my opponent played Mountain, Goblin Guide to open game 1, match 1 on Saturday. I knew going in that the deck had a hard time with Mono-Red, but I didn’t expect to see much of it on Saturday. It was like nothing I did mattered. I played a Nest Invader turn two, blocked a Guide off the board and took 5 from a Plated Geopede. I began to twitch. I felt my face getting hot. The tournament was done. This would be how my hopes for making enough money to pay rent this weekend would end. I was depending on it. How could this happen? How could I miss-judge this format so badly? I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples, thinking about the work I had ahead of me if I was going to win this tournament, how impossible that sounded, and how disappointed my wife would be when she learned of my failure. “If I lose this game, I might not ever be able to play Magic again,” I thought.

Just then, everything went quiet. I reached for the top card of my library and saw Jace scowling at me. Just seconds before, I had kicked myself for taking five from the Geopede and not chump-blocking, but there it was, Jace! The room, still quiet in my ears, vibrated slightly as I sacrificed my token, played an Island, tapped all three lands I had and plopped Jace onto the table, pointed at the ‘Pede, and passed. With a roar of wind, I finally took a breath and resolved back-to-back Vengevines for the win.

Games two and three were totally unwinnable, and I ended up leaving the round 0-1, but even so, something inside me had changed. A year and a half ago, I would have been furious with myself for not sideboarding more to deal with Red Deck, for not winning in spite of the bad matchup, but I didn’t. Not that day. That day, I won nine straight matches. That day, I crushed anyone and everyone in front of me.

After losing game one, I mulliganed to five on the play against a Boros player. As I looked at my opener, I knew I would win the game. I laid a Cobra, untapped, cast Garruk, made a Beast, blocked a guy off of the board, and cast a turn four Sphinx of the Lost Truths with kicker. I was going to win that goddamned game. And win I did. Later, I had to Jace out a Blue-White player who had Ousted my Birds of Paradise and Spreading Seas’ed all my Forest. I didn’t flinch. He had tapped out on a crucial turn when I only had four Islands in play, I leaked his Baneslayer, then sledgehammered him with “Jace, putting one of his own on the bottom. Tectonic Edge kept him off a fifth land or second white. I gave him removal for days, but never a land or threat. In the Top 8, I drew a card, forgetting to discard to my Masticore, and had to beat my opponent three times to win the match.

Two years ago, I would have lost four matches instead of just one. There was a funeral going on in the back of my mind for the bearer of the Veil. No one attended.

One thing that kept me on keel was that I had built this deck with my sweat and tears (it’s hard to build a deck with blood unless there are a ton of paper-cuts involved), and I knew that it crushed everything in its path that was not Mono-Red. Valakut? Please. That’s my best matchup. Eldrazi Green? Volition Reins; thanks for the 10/10 with Annihilator. Elves? GO TO SLEEP! Blue White? Sometimes it might feel like the UW player is winning, but that’s only for his benefit—when he takes somewhere around 40 out of nowhere, he wonders what happened. And God forbid you went rogue. I knew what strategies were viable and which ones weren’t. That’s why I didn’t play one of those decks.

I tested more than two hundred games with various incarnations of this deck throughout the two weeks leading up to the 5K, and I knew the deck inside and out. I knew things that probably would have helped my buddy (who ran the same 75) beat Elves in the last round and make Top 8 with me. I was versed in what to tutor for, and I had perfect options based upon situational factors as well as my own preferences. Not only did I know the deck, but I knew myself and what I would want to tutor for given the chance. I put fifty hours of work into that deck, easy. And that’s just play-testing, not brewing or stewing or agonizing over the 25th land or third Nest Invader.

This deck was more than just a one-tournament wonder, a lucky 75, or a net-deck piloted by a talented player. This was a process of change, not just for the deck, but for me. The hardest decision I have ever made in Magic is to not tilt, and somewhere in these seventy-five cards, I put the Veil away. I just don’t need it anymore.

David Glore
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• author: Donnie
• date: 10/28/10
• time: 10:54pm
• comments: 1

General, Magic The Gathering, Standard