Yesterday was Regionals, and this is the deck that I've been tuning:
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Qasali Pridemage
4 Gaddock Teeg
4 Woolly Thoctar
4 Dauntless Escort
2 Kitchen Finks
4 Wilt-Leaf Liege
4 Path to Exile
4 Naya Charm
4 Forest
2 Plains
1 Mountain
2 Treetop Village
2 Ancient Ziggurat
2 Wooded Bastion
2 Karplusan Forest
4 Brushland
3 Fire-Lit Thicket
Sideboard:
3 Guttural Response
3 Windborn Muse
3 Cloudthresher
2 Behemoth Sledge
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Pollen Lullaby
This originally started as an idea of how to use Bloodbraid Elf, but he's not that good unless you can hit for 3 right away and not get chumped by a stupid Spectral Procession token, or worse, trade with a buffed Spectral Procession token.
I modeled it off of the Dark Bant deck, playing Woolly Thoctar instead of Rhox War Monk and Doran. A lot of decks can't deal with a Woolly Thoctar on Turn 2. I also chose to run some of the new GW cards like Qasali Pridemage and Dauntless Escort, and Gaddock Teeg (which shuts off Spectral Procession and Ajani Goldmane among others), and then obviously ran Wilt-Leaf Liege, which is insane.
Naya Charm ended winning so many games against BW Tokens that I ran the full set. Possibly this can go down to 3, as starting with two in hand isn't that great. I also ran 4 Gaddock Teeg in the main because it shuts off Spectral Procession and Ajani Goldmane, and gives you game against Five-Color Control.
I thought a lot about the mana base, trying to figure out how best to hit Woolly Thoctar mana on turn 2 and 3, and how to hit Naya Charm mana by turn 3. Because of Naya Charm, I'm not running the full set of Ancient Ziggurats. Plus, Ziggurat is pretty awkward with the Shadowmoor lands like Wooded Bastion.
The sideboard was a little bit thrown together, and there are changes I'd definitely make. Behemoth Sledge I actually didn't like in the maindeck because it's slow and it's really bad with Ancient Ziggurat when I need to play a threat. I bring it in against Red decks. The 3rd and 4th Kitchen Finks were also kind of just a throw-in, so I'm looking to put something actually good in.
I was hoping to play a lot of Tokens and Red decks, as I thought that's what the metagame was going to be largely comprised of. What ended up showing up was a more spread field, including various Jund flavors, Doran, Five-Color Control, and Faeries. Here was my day:
Round 1 (W) Five-Color Control - Game 1 I hit turn 1 Woolly Thoctar and have double Path. Game 2 he hits Hallowed Burial and takes control. Game 3 I stick Gaddock Teeg with Dauntless Escort backup and he can't do anything.
Round 2 (W) BW Tokens - Two absolute blowout games.
At this point we took a lunch break, and I was feeling pretty confident about the deck since things were going according to plan.
Round 3 (L) BG Rock - Game 1 I get eaten by two Cloudthreshers, I take Game 2 on the back of Naya Charm, and Game 3 I cannot deal with Garruk + double Chameleon Colossus.
After this round, they announce that there will be a delay, as the computer running the tournament ran out of batteries and corrupted the back-up file, and they had to manually reconstruct the tournament from entering the players in to manually pairing and entering three rounds of swiss. James Lee is a good man, and in that two hours we did a Cube draft (outside on the beautiful lawn on a beautiful Seattle day!). Someone needs to teach me how to Cube... I thought I would get out of the funk of losing my first two in a row in what seems like my past five premier-level tournaments.
Round 4 (L) Doran - I found out that Doran > Woolly Thoctar... also similar problems with Chameleon Colossus as the last round. So much for breaking the funk...
Round 5 (L) Five-Color Control - I messed up Game 1 not thinking about getting blown out by Volcanic Fallout (it ended up being a Pyroclasm, a miser's Pyroclasm at that), and throughout the match I kept attacking into Runed Halos for no reason... Joe let me off the hook a few times for being really freaking retarded, and I did hear about it at dinner.
Round 6 (W) - Jund Rock
Round 7 (W) - BW Kitkin - This plays similar to BW Tokens except they have one-drops and Wizened Cenn, so you can get blown out if you don't hit one of your three-drops very early on.
Round 8 (L) - Faeries - I mulled to 4 in Game 1 and still didn't play that well, walking into a Broken Ambitions on the threat that I drew. Game 2 I may have been tilting and kept 4 lands, a Treetop, and 2 Noble Hierarchs and don't draw much gas for the entire game. I'm not sure if this is a poor matchup or not, but I don't want to dedicate too many board slots for it.
So most of the matches I lost I can pin to not playing very well, which is good for my deck since I like it a lot, but bad for me since it means I suck. I would definitely rather play this deck for the Grand Prix than BW Tokens.
The mana's definitely a little weird and I had to pitch a lot of hands because of bad mana. If I add more painlands, however, I take a LOT of pain because of my color-intensive spells like Wilt-Leaf Liege, Naya Charm, and Woolly Thoctar.
While I'm very good against token creature decks that play a lot of dudes, I wasn't very successful against decks that play fat like Doran, Chameleon Colossus, and Cloudthresher. Unfortunately, my colors don't let me play a lot of great removal like Terror, but I do have Condemn, which is very efficient. I'd probably replace two Kitchen Finks in the board for 2 Condemns, just as Path to Exile #5 and #6.
Guttural Response could also become Vexing Shusher or Eyes of the Wizent, but with Guttural Response being just fine and Sanity Grinding lurking, that change probably won't happen. All the other cards in the sideboard are just fine. Pollen Lullaby had to be my favorite card of the day, almost more than Naya Charm.
I'll be running this deck next weekend at First Pick's cash tournament. I would recommend trying the deck against the field, there's nothing like a turn two Woolly Thoctar or blowing people out with a Cryptic Command-like tap-your-team effect from a green deck.
