Zvi and the Magic Invitational, Part 5
**If there was one format at the Invitational I wasn't worried about, it would be Standard. I had done significant work on Accelerated Blue and won a Grudge Match qualifier at Neutral Ground: New York with it, and was really happy with the deck. Aside from tuning the sideboard for my last three opponents, I didn't plan to make any other changes.
On the morning of the Standard portion, however, we saw the Inquest review of Nemesis. Inquest has a history of making amazingly stupid picks for the worst card in a set. This time they picked Rath's Edge . Rath's Edge ? That card is actually good! Certainly it's decent in Block Constructed, and while it may be a little overpriced it still has a very useful purpose. If you worry about being good in limited, Pale Moon is in the same set! If you don't there are a ton of useless creatures, as always. So in the grand tradition that dates at least back to Mark Justice , who played an Elkin Bottle in his Prison deck for the first ProTour for the same reason, although he always sideboarded it out, I decided to run Rath's Edge . I had two Blasted Landscapes in my deck, so it wasn't going to hurt me that much. They served the same purpose anyway: Land that didn't contribute to mana gluts. There always were a lot of people who got the gold bordered copy of Justice 's deck and wondered why he had that Bottle in his deck. Maybe it was his fifth Howling Mine ? Similarly, I could get everyone wondering, at least for a few days.
My last three opponents were going to be Gary Wise, Darwin Kastle and Brian Hacker. Gary Wise I knew was playing Suicide Black, but aside from the four Unsummon I already had I couldn't prepare for that; he was a teammate. Brian Hacker was a huge question mark and could have been just about anything. Darwin Kastle I suspected was Bargain , since it was the best deck and I knew that it had been demonstrated in Boston a lot. So I went with three Arcane Laboratory instead of two, and cut out the second Temporal Adept since I didn't expect a mirror matchup.
Here's the listing I ended up with:
I played Darwin first, and his first turn was Plains , Mother of Runes . Surprise! I actually thought my Rath's Edges might come in handy. As it turned out, what really came in handy was Darwin not drawing the right lands. My Powder Keg came out and blew up the Mother and a Sergeant while he still had just one Plains . Next turn he got a Gaea's Cradle . Ouch. From this point on I managed to deal with the one creature he could cast every turn until I got to seven mana and cast two Palinchrons for the win. Game two, he had the opposite problem: A huge amount of mana. He kept a six land hand without a threat that he should have mulliganed, but I made a mistake too: I didn't Dust Bowl his Dust Bowl , letting him get Bowl advantage and preventing me from wrapping up the game. However, he didn't have the Wrath of Gods from his sideboard, so when I cast two Morphlings his deck didn't have an answer, even though he had an active Lin Sivvi. He said the deck had never lost to blue before, which makes some sense: You can't keep the rebels off the table and then it only gets worse. Still, I don't think things are all that bad, and both Masticore and Morphling can be nightmares for his version of the Rebels. I do think they should have an edge, though.
Next round I played Brian Hacker, who was playing a red deck based around land destruction. These decks can be interesting matchups with the more threatening configurations, but when we looked over it afterwards he actually had almost no chance. Basically, twenty eight lands and four Grim Monolith make it very unlikely you'll run out of land before he runs out of land destruction, so you get to two mana and can use your Counterspells. Once that happens you pull out of the mana problems and your better high cost spells win the game, especially Treachery . Game one I won without much trouble. Game two he drew all three Rack and Ruin , and because I used Scrying Glass I saw them. Using Glass and Stroke to gain card advantage and lots of land, all I had to do was cover my life total; I was at six from a Keldon Vandal that came out early and I couldn't answer quickly. But I had the counter for his Earthquake and that was game.
In the last round, I played Gary Wise. I knew I had a very slim chance to make it to the finals if I won to get to 10-5, and he was already locked into last place. In addition, he had what I thought was a very bad matchup for me. I knew his maindeck but not his sideboard; as I was walking around the tournament after my matches as I usually do, he was playing practice games and kept making sure I didn't find out. What happened was that both his draws had Flesh Reaver as his beatdown creature, and Accelerated Blue has enough damage sources in it to punish a player who does that much damage to himself. Game one he put Twisted Experiment on the Reaver, and I won with a Morphling and Faerie Conclave, game two with a Masticore and a Powder Keg that took care of his Lurking Evil to clear the path.
So I ended up at 10-5, tied for second, but as expected I didn't make it to the finals. Accelerated Blue is one of the top decks in Standard, and I'll be doing an analysis of it for this site. The take home lesson for me, of course, is that you really should practice for the limited portions of an event, not just constructed. That and make sure you block the way you think you're blocking (See part 2: [Block Party](http://magic.mindripper.com/Index.cfm?ArticleID=262&SectionID=3&Show=All) .) I'm probably going to need to be voted in to make it back to the Invitational, so when the time comes, don't forget! :)
- Zvi Mowshowitz
All questions, comments, and responses welcomed at
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