Introduction
I qualified for the RC Denver previously with a Beanstalk Omnath list. Amulet Titan was identified as one of the top decks during winter, so I practiced with it at weeklies. But as the event approached, Rhinos was identified as the top deck and it generally held a 60% or so winrate vs Titan, so I decided that playing a deck weak to the top dog & targeted by everyone else was not the way to go.
The matchup matrices ahead of Denver weekend suggested that 4C "control" was favored into the major decks, and I figured that Teferi + Chalice + removal is a much better deck in open decklist events.
- Nothing spicy imo.
- Test of Talents is a choice for specialized Cascade hate & applicable in other matchups. Not great especially against their plan Bs.
Rounds
- R1 Ethan King on "5C" (Naya) Creativity LL (0-1)
- R2 Logan Christiansen on Temur Rhinos WLD (0-1-1)
Opponent lined up all their interaction perfectly in G2.
They misplayed G3 and declined to concede vs a board state of Teferi + Elesh Norn + W6 on turn 5. - R3 on WB Taxes LWL (0-2-1)
Misplayed horrifically against Archon of Emeria. Fortunately didn't see their Leonin Arbiters. - R4 Joshua Lynn on Rhinos. WW (1-2-1)
Answered their rhinos in G1 and G2 landed a T2 Teferi. - R5 Jaime Gonzalez on UR Murktide WLW (2-2-1)
Cut Halflings in this matchup, but generally favored as long as I have fetches on turns 1-2. Especially important on the draw in SB matches. The tricky part is remembering that you can't cast a turn 2 W6 AND get a basic Plains. It just doesn't work like that.
Also helps when your opponent mulls to 5 in two different games.
I did Subtlety his T1 Ragavan (me OTP) in G3 with him on a mull to 5. Heads-up play from him, he bottomed it and I cast a Chalice for 1 on turn 2 - R6 vs no show (3-2-1)
- R7 Caleb Mears on Living End WW
- R8 Leonard Routh on Amulet Titan LWL
G1 and G3 he kind of just had unanswered One Ring that took over the game. G1 it was a Ring into Grazer ramp into Cultivator Colossus for roughly ten lands. G3 it was double Amulet into T2 Ring. FoV on the Amulets but no Binding ... doubt that I'm supposed to FoV singleton Amulet.
Dropped afterwards.
Thoughts
- Very happy with my deck choice and card selection.
- Very disappointed with my play in games 2 and 3.
- Woke up from Friday nap with a severe headache, combination dehydration and altitude adjustment. Would recommend overhydrating if traveling to the city in the clouds.
- Went to a fantastic steakhouse called Guard + Grace in downtown Denver on Friday night. Every course was excellent, service was fantastic even though they were clearly experiencing an super busy night. My biggest regret was not taking a seat that faced their open kitchen.
- Venue was rough. Low ceiling (20 ft) or so. Decor and amenities not really updated since the aughts. Oh, and the local city government is purchasing the property to turn into a
homeless shelter"homeless navigation campus". - Which I find to be crazy. Hypothetically, that convention center can bring in two thousand people per weekend which should be around a million dollars of economic spend. But it must not be that busy, or the homeless problem is so bad, that the city would rather spend 26MM (up-front) and way more in the future rather than have it as an economic driver for the area.
- Vendors lacked new & staple cards, as expected for Dreamhack RCs.
- More snow in Denver than Buffalo, wowee.
- Ton of sprawl, from the limited bits of the region I saw. Downtown was dense enough, but the greater metro definitely took the opportunity to spread out a bit.
- Low score, oft-tied Superbowl was intriguing.
- Superbowl ads are fascinating. Some observations:
Huh I wonder how many locations they shot in for this
Temu did a mobile gaming ad but for Chinese Amazon. I checked their website. The prices are all worse than Aliexpress, but UX is all about the 90% OFF SALE GET IT NOW OMGGGG!111
American sportsball imperialism ad. You can tell it was the NFL's because it lacks the urgency of everyone else's thirty second slots.
and then there's reverse sportsball imperialism - Since I booked my flight for Monday @ midnight and everyone else flew out in the morning, I hung out in the lobby and basically LFGd for an airport Uber. Of my erstwhile companions, one was a limited lover who had earned a grand TWENTY Festivals in a Box off the MTG Arena event, and the other dropped out of the main to play in Legacy side events, doing fairly well in those.
- So you know how online recipes start off with enormous blobs of nonsense and only provide the recipe at the end? This is that but in reverse.
- I did a learning topic on the subject at work - the problem is that SEO and the online content business model do not incentivize providing you with good recipes. Instead SEO rewards high keyword count, high engagement duration (i.e. scrolling through the whole page), and high uniqueness (a life story followed by a distinct recipe). Also, the website doesn't directly make money from you using the recipe, so they're making money from affiliate links, ad banners, and selling your data in all likelihood.
- Getting back to the RC, after spending more words discussing ancillary subjects than the event itself. This was my most successful run yet (0-3, 2-4) and the most successful of our local contingent (0-4, 1-4, 2-4).
- Thoughts on Modern. Domain Rhinos was definitely the secret sauce for the weekend.
Rhinos is probably the best deck by a little too much right now, since it has a two-turn clock and the best free interaction.
Orcish Bowmasters should exit the format, and take The One Ring with it. Bowmasters oppresses X/1s and draw spells. But as long as The One Ring is out there Bowmasters is needed to keep it in check. The other problematic part is that it's too hyper-efficient. You can remove it, yes. But you're going to be trading down on tempo and/or resources every time. The counterplay is to... not play X/1s and draw spells? - MH3 is almost guaranteed to rotate the format, as well as the Universes Beyond that will inject modern-legal cards. I hold no positive expectations for this. Who knows, maybe we'll see Gut Shot + put the top one card of your library into your hand {R/P}{1} as an answer to Bowmasters.
