Welcome back to Modern Hero, the column where I take a budget list and slowly tweak it over time, spending $20 a week on new additions, and record the results in MTGO Leagues. If you aren’t up to date, feel free to hit the archives—
Deciding on a Deck
GB Elves Week One
GB Elves Week Two
GB Elves Week Three
GB Elves Week Four
GB Elves Week Five
GB Elves Week Six
GB Elves Week Seven
GB Elves Week Eight
GB Elves Week Nine
GB Elves Week Ten
Today I’m going to talk about GP Vegas and do my best to conclude the Modern Hero series with some spreadsheets and data points.
GP Vegas was, in a word, amazing. As so many have said before me, it felt like a Magic Convention rather than a tournament. It was amazing to get players of all formats and skill levels, cosplayers, artists, vendors, and content creators together in one place to experience all that Vegas had to offer. In terms of my experience playing at GP Vegas, it is the first event I can say I started off at 9-0—in, ah, side events. While I was happy to go undefeated in a Legacy double-up, spike a Modern Masters draft I had no business winning, and open a Force of Will in an Ice Age block draft, the actual Modern GP went pretty poorly. Here is a tournament report of woe, a Hero’s Demise if you will:
Exhibit I : The Tournament Report
ROUND ONE—BYE (1-0)
This was my first event falling off two byes. How bad could playing one extra round be?
ROUND TWO—Ryan with Counters Company (1-1)
I hadn’t had a lot of experience playing against the Devoted Druid/Vizier of Remedies combo as it’s virtually non-existent online. While generating a billion mana, gaining a billion life, and dealing a billion damage is easy to demonstrate on paper it involves an inordinate amount of clicking on MTGO. As such, I was definitely unprepared for the match-up. Game one, Ryan combo’ed out on turn four.
I searched my sideboard high and low but knew I didn’t have enough disruption to reliably stop the combo. Here was my plan:
-1 Reclamation Sage
-2 Elvish Visionary
+1 Fatal Push
+1 Thoughtseize
+1 Elvish Champion
Game two, I won off a Collected Company hitting Shaman of the Pack for exactly lethal.
Game three, Ryan played an Orzhov Pontiff that 5 for 1’ed me. I lost soon after.
ROUND THREE—Mike with Counters Company (1-2)
This match-up again? My notes show me mulliganing twice in the first game and then getting combo’ed out in game two. Nothing to see here.
ROUND FOUR—David with Bant Eldrazi (2-2)
David was playing an innovative Bant Eldrazi brew that was playing Mul Daya Channelers to help ramp into Reality Smashers or act as another giant beater. Game one, I lost when I thought I had lethal damage, swung with everything and put him to one. On the following turn, David played a Reality Smasher and killed me. Running hot folks. Games two and three, I avenged my punt by playing Ezuri and overrunning with my team.
ROUND FIVE—Johnny with Burn (3-2)
Up until this point I’ve had a 33% win percentage against Burn though I would consider it a close-ish match-up. Game one, I had an unreal start with multiple good Collected Company hits, he couldn’t burn my creatures out fast enough. Game two, I lost to a multiple creature swing with Atarka’s Command to close things out. Game three, I did my best to punt, putting myself within range of two burn spells when I didn’t actually need to play an untapped Overgrown Tomb. Luckily, Johnny didn’t draw the second burn spell. Better lucky than good I suppose.
ROUND SIX—Jeremy with UW Control (3-3)
This is a really bad match-up and one where playing a budget list without Cavern of Souls actually hurts. My notes in this match-up are that I was Supreme Verdicted to oblivion and killed by Celestial Colonnades. Game two, he had multiple Timely Reinforcements that held off my elf horde until he could find a Supreme Verdict with Elspeth, Sun’s Champion to follow.
ROUND SEVEN—Ryan with Abzan (3-4)
Game one, Heritage Druid and Nettle Sentinel helped to dump my entire hand on the board turn three. It was easy to win from there. Game two, I found out what a Liliana the Last Hope‘s emblem looks like. I was not able to overcome the million zombies that followed. Game three, Liliana the Last Hope again made an appearance and Ryan quickly drained off my resources before finishing me off with a Tarmogoyf and a Kitchen Finks.
At this point, I thought about trying to salvage a winning record out of the event but was pretty exhausted and not really enjoying the deck. It’s no secret that I didn’t love playing Elves, but after weeks of getting trounced in leagues I was ready to throw in the towel and walk right into the Hero’s Downfall.
Exhibit II: Week One Decklist and GP Vegas List
MH Elves Week One
| Creatures (35) 4 Dwynen's Elite 4 Elvish Archdruid 4 Elvish Mystic 3 Elvish Visionary 2 Ezuri, Renegade Leader 4 Heritage Druid 4 Llanowar Elves 4 Nettle Sentinel 1 Reclamation Sage 4 Shaman of the Pack 1 Sylvan Messenger Spells (7) 3 Chord of Calling 4 Collected Company | Lands (18) 4 Blooming Marsh 9 Forest 4 Llanowar Wastes 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx Sideboard (15) 2 Choke 4 Essence Warden 2 Evolutionary Leap 2 Fracturing Gust 1 Krosan Grip 2 Lead the Stampede 1 Reclamation Sage 1 Scavenging Ooze |
MH Elves GP Vegas
Over the course of ten weeks and a few hundred dollars we turned a scrappy looking Gb Elves list into an Abzan Elves list with better sideboard options. Having said that, I’m not sure our final product was objectively better than the first. Sure it’s nice to get rid of the pain lands for fetches and nice to have the increased sideboarding options provided by the white splash but I’m not sure if it was the right direction to take the deck in. We could have instead, for instance, spent the money on Cavern of Souls and a Horizon Canopy, making our mana much better, helping out or control match-ups, and having a way to reduce mana flood. The problem with this method is it would mean that for weeks at a time we would be playing the same list and I really wanted to be able to show growth on a week to week basis.
For what it’s worth, in a world where budget didn’t matter, I would play MTGO user b0xerb0y’s 5-0 list from a June 16th League. According to MTGGoldish the deck rings in at $693:
b0xerb0y Elves
Exhibit III: Win Percentage against the field
There’s a lot of data here after 50 matches in MTGO Leagues. While I was playing a sub optimal list and am admittedly not an expert Elves pilot, there are some important data points here anyway.
- Given that Elves is a fair deck with little disruption to speak of, it’s pretty bad against the combo match-ups. I went 0-5 against Gifts Storm, 1-3 against Dredge, 0-2 against Living End, and would have been trounced by Ad Nauseam if I had ever played it.
- The go wide strategy Elves employs should be reasonable against Death’s Shadow which accounts for a pretty significant portion of the metagame. In my experience I went 2-2 against Death’s Shadow variants though I don’t think there’s enough data to make a definitive statement.
- Elves was fine against other fundamentally fair decks. I went 2-1 against Affinity, 2-0 against Abzan (in leagues anyway), and ended up splitting matches against Jund.
- Eldrazi Tron is a weird match-up. Some of your hands line up great against theirs but then again sometimes they Chalice for one or play a big Walking Ballista. The match-up feels like it might be draw dependent.
Exhibit IV: The Total Cost of the Project
I ended up going over budget just about every week in hopes of making the deck better. At the end of the day, I spent $370.77 on building the Elves deck which is still much cheaper than most of the decks in Modern. According to MTGGoldfish, the top twelve decks in the Modern meta range from $200-$1,100 more than the final Modern Hero Elves deck. Even if I had played a more optimized version, Elves is still one of the cheapest decks in Modern that is still viable, even if currently exists on the lower side of Tier Two.
Conclusion
While I am glad I don’t have to pilot Elves through hostile MTGO terrain anymore, I did enjoy producing weekly video-based content. While I’m uncertain about the future of Modern Hero, or my involvement in it, I do believe that I will take up streaming and recording on a more regular basis. Recording has been a challenge for me, it’s difficult to talk consistently while being filmed, but at no point did it feel like a chore. I’m happy to follow through on this season of Modern Hero and have a little time to plot my next move. Thank you to everyone who watched the videos and followed the series.
In terms of Magic, Shawn Massak is a Modern enthusiast, with a penchant for tier two decks, counterspells, and pre Eighth Edition frames. In terms of life, Shawn lives in Brighton, MA where he works as an employment director for people with disabilities, plays guitar in an indie-pop band, and spends his free time reading comics, cursing capitalism, complaining about pro-wrestling, and wishing his apartment allowed dogs as pets.