GP Melbourne. Played zem's list that was posted on CFB
Play number 1 of the GP: In round 5 or 6 I was losing to a UW control player, because over the course of the game I had drawn three searing bloods and a firedancer. He was stuck on lands, and he had managed to remove two mutavaults and two phoenixes. He's at 8 life, finally draw's his 6th land, and taps out for elspeth. He ticks it up, I show him my hand and he scoops.
Play number 2 of the GP: In round 10 I'm playing against a mono blue player who seems relatively inexperienced. It's game one, and he hasnt curved out perfectly but I couldn't kill his weird and never had time to kill a 1/2 cloudfin so he's managed to land a master for 4. His weird and cloudfin are tapped from attacking me, and I have a phoenix and firedancer on board, life totals are still high. I have three lands in play, draw ashley, play my 4th land and ashley and attack with both. He tanks
for a while, hovering his master over ash while I hold my head to the skies and drink my water. After two minutes he finally blocks, and I have the skullcrack for the blowout. He asked a judge to confirm that my mono red deck had just killed his prot. red creature.
Play number 3 of the GP: In round 12 I'm playing against GW aggro. This is game 3, and my opponent is on the play, and is turn 3. My side of the board is 2 lands, and his is a voice and a banisher priest with my firedancer locked under it. I draw, and play searing blood on the banisher priest. Priest dies and I get my firedancer back, then the delayed trigger of searing blood resolves, hitting him for 3 and triggering firedancer, killing the voice. I play mountain, and shock him to kill off the voice token. I asked a judge before making the play, he said no, then I explained why I thought it worked and he asked a higher level judge. This is the advantage to know the intricacies of the rules.
My thoughts on the deck: Deck is super fun to
play, and no one was prepared for it. You get many free wins from your opponent playing badly against you (control decks leaning too hard on blood baron/sphinxes rev, G/R not casting mortars on your 1/1, people siding in/keeping in mass removal because they think you're sligh, not playing around maindeck skullcrack). But on the other hand, G/R is a bad matchup and its the most popular deck right now, and mono blue is very hard, and in my own experience was 40-60 (I knows others have had better experiences). Deck also loses to random decks like BW midrange (if they play well), has a very tough time vs whip of erebos and can never beat a bow of nylea. That said, I will still play the deck because it's really fun, it's a deck that clicks with me and has a great control matchup (half my local meta is control).
Mutavault: Best card in the deck for me. The package of ashley, vault and phoenix is really what makes this deck what it is. Without them, the deck would play out much differently and I would call it
a different deck. They allow the deck to transition between playing burn and sligh. In matchups or scenarios where you want to be a burn deck, mutavault taps for colourless, and the other two are shocks that make your opponent tap out and discard a card. At times where you want to play as a slight deck, they deal 4 damage over the course of the game, which is awesome when the average card in your deck does 3. And if your WW or U or B opponent doesnt happen to have removal, they can deal the full 20 while you burn all their creatures.
Magma Jet/Scrylands: Quote zem, "Deck is unplayable without these". Jet provide so much value at so little cost, and it allows the deck to sequence and plan efficiently. The games you win are the games you cast your spells efficiently and use your mana efficiently (or at least more efficiently than your opponent is). The games you lose are the ones where you are forced to use your spells on the wrong things, such as lightning striking a mana dork instead of shock/
searing blood/jet, or not being able to save skullcrack, or getting bottlenecked on coloured mana when you need to cast charm/searing blood, or not drawing the 4th land to cast two spells/helix, or just flooding out. They allow you to apply constant pressure and force your opponent to make inefficient plays. The scrylands are insanely good, most often played turn 3 I think to either find the 4th land or to find more action. You have nothing to play on three usually, and even if you have phoenix you have so many two cost spells that it's still fine. The magma jet on your own upkeep deserves special mention for getting that extra bit of value, it actually really adds to the flexibility of the deck and is a testament to how strong it is to have your whole deck run at instant speed.
Satyr firedancer: I was fairly happy with it overall, but I did notice I was getting less and less happy with it as I got to the higher tables. The card is ridiculously powerful, but I've found that it's either too slow or too
vulnerable. There were multiple times when I had the dancer and drew no burn spells over the course of the game, but I think that is due to the sideboard plan of taking out skullcracks and boros charms to be incorrect. So that will need to be tested. Right now I still think it's powerful enough to warrant inclusion, and it's only really bad against control, it's great against G/R, U, and B. Nuts with searing blood obviously.
Shock: Early on when I tried this deck I hated shock, and sided it out against almost every matchup. As I played more I've come to be completely OK with the card, and I only sided it out vs mono black. The card is unexciting, but it's fine. Against control you don't need to race to kill them, so the 1 damage less is not as relavent. Against mono blue it kills all their 1 drops and tidebinder, and it's the one spell you don't feel bad killing a judge's familiar with. Killing mana dorks is obviously good, and teaming up with another spell to kill a monster is extremely relevant,
becuase it will always take two spells to kill a monster and being able to d it on three mana is a really big deal.
Searing blood: Nuts in every matchup but control, that needs no elaboration. It's bad against control, but they still have mutavaults and elspeth. As control players get more experience, this card probably does end up becoming blank versus them, though.
Nothing to say about the other burn spells. I'm excited to play with viashino firstblade, toil and trouble is extremely good, but sometimes was a dead topdeck. Which I'm fine with, there's scry around and one bad topdeck won't kill you against control, but the firstblade seems insane.
There are these lines between aggro, midrange, control, and lines within the categories, eg, within red aggro theres burn, sligh, saito aggro. I love the decks that are powerful and flexible enough to ride the lines between these categories, and be able to switch between them at will. This deck allows that.
James and Jacob, meeting you guys at the
GP was really, really awesome.
. One young woman runs a wierd orzhov extort deck... which might have been an interesting game. Good for me: She runs a bunch of little guys with extort. Bad for me... life gain.