April 2020 Type 1.5

First Place with Emerald City Control

By Quinn

May 28, 2020

I'm a total sucker for Old School variant formats and trying to figure out the most powerful deck under the given constraints. So I jumped at the opportunity to test my skill in the Beasts of the Bay's first online "Old School Type 1.5" tournament of April-May 2020.

But it's more fun to work as a team, and for this event I joined forces with fellow Troll Shawn Sullivan (stsully) to try and break this brand new format. I think we did a pretty good job: I took first place, and Shawn placed 5th-8th, out of a field of 56 (or 53 after a few players dropped).

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. With a name calling back to the origins of Legacy, the premise of this format is that its benevolent dictator Tapan Lockwood will use aggressive bans (not restrictions) to keep gameplay fresh. The ban list for April 2020 (note: expanded immediately after the event) was:

April 2020 Type 1.5 Ban List

Conspicuously absent from the April list is Regrowth (presumably because it's not as good when you can't Regrow Ancestral or other restricted cards). Conspicuously present on the list is the only real non-basic land hate in all of Old School, Blood Moon.

We've played a little bit of "Revised 60" (that is, normal OS decks with only Revised cards) at Troll meetups, so I already knew the following fact (about OS manabases in the absence of Blood Moon): you either play mono color, or go all the way up to 4-color. The reasoning is that once you're relatively evenly split between 2 colors (let's say 4 Tundras and at least 8 each of Islands and Plains), then you can easily splash a third and fourth color "for free" by replacing 16 basics with the appropriate dual lands.

Shawn and I knew from the start that we wanted to play some kind of UW control, combining the powerful card advantage engine of Jayemdae Tome with efficient answers like Swords to Plowshares and Counterspell to grind our opponents into the dirt and then finish them off at our leisure. Like The Deck, we would additionally splash the most powerful off-color spells (like Regrowth).

Without further ado, here is the 4-color Mirrorball Keeper deck I played to 10-0 first place:

My 10-0 First Place Mirrorball Keeper Deck

And here is Shawn's nearly identical top 8 deck:

Shawn's Top 8 Mirrorball Keeper Deck

Card Choices

Sweepers (Falling Star versus Wrath of God versus Moat)

The Beasts of the Bay errata for Falling Star (adopted by the other rule sets in early 2019), is that you can rearrange any number of creatures in any non-overlapping way before flipping. So if you practice flips, it's an asymmetric three-mana sweeper. (The asymmetry didn't matter for us, but the card seems absolutely insane for creature mirrors; Star sees only moderate sideboard play in normal Old School, because that format is rarely about creatures.) My feeling was that Star plus Moat was the best combination, as Star plus Wrath is kind of redundant and hard to get value off of both, and Wrath plus Moat is too many spells at 4 mana. I think this call was mostly correct, but we should have had more Wraths in the sideboard, for the matchups where Falling Star doesn't actually kill their stuff.

Desert

This is another card is not frequently seen in normal Old School, where it is both overshadowed by better colorless lands, and subject to the dreaded Scimitar Tax, dying to City in a Bottle. With such things out of the way in Type 1.5, Desert is a fantastic choice for decks looking to survive early pressure and pour mana into JMD Tome. Like Maze of Ith in Disco Troll, Desert can force your aggressive opponent to extend multiple creatures into your sweeper. Since we have no blockers and have to kill or neutralize every single thing our opponent plays, even keeping back incidental Llanowar Elf attacks is worth a lot of life. (Do note that Pendelhaven lets a 2/3 elf run past one or two Deserts.)

Mirror Universe

The first version of our deck had Serra Angel as the finisher, and I hated it. It felt terrible to have to counter removal spells. It also sucked not to have any lifegain in our deck, with Ivory Tower banned. After some testing, I reported these complaints to Shawn, and he had the great suggestion to just switch to Mirrorball, solving both of these problems and also freeing up a couple slots in the deck. We never looked back. Type 1.5 uses mana burn (inherited from Pacific rules), so we don't need anything like Sylvan Library to reduce our life total to a low number before switching. Also, with Lightning Bolt banned, it's pretty safe to mana burn down to 3 in their endstep, then switch lives and kill them with Chain Lightning instead of Fireball. Note that The Hive, normally a decent removal-dodging control finisher, loses a lot of its luster in world where Desert is good.

Regrowth

The elephant in the room, the bull in the china shop, the Green Demonic Tutor, Regrowth was a bold omission from the April ban list. I think Shawn and I put together the most obnoxious Regrowth deck; it just does everything for us. In the first couple of turns, we're usually Regrowing Swords to Plowshares to stay alive. Once we get to 4+ mana, Regrowing Counterspell is an extremely strong strong defensive play. Later on, we can Regrow destroyed Tomes; in the endgame, combo pieces. Over the course of the tournament, I Regrew almost every single unique card in the deck, lands included, as land destruction was a popular strategy.

Shivan Dragon

We pulled the classic trick of playing 0 creatures maindeck, and sometimes bringing in a big one from the sideboard if we expected our opponent to have boarded out their removal. Then there's the classic mind game of sometimes leaving it in the board if they've seen it (either in game 2 or in the public deck pic during playoff rounds), hoping they'll have some completely dead cards. Either way, it's only one card for us, so it's usually worse for the opponent to guess wrong than for us to guess wrong.

Missed Tech: Equinox

Equinox! We knew Armageddon was going to be a huge threat to our strategy (as well as popular in a world without Moxen), and we didn't really have a plan for it besides Counterspell and Power Sink. Equinox would've been a lovely bit of protection against LD (a Moat for Stone Rains), but it was completely off my radar, and Shawn only thought of it after his first match. Relatedly, we also probably should've played a few Fellwar Stones instead of the "off-color" Taigas to be slightly more robust to Armageddon and Winter Orb (while being slightly more vulnerable to Shatterstorm).

Playoff Matchups

The full top 16 decks can be seen on Tapan's Instagram (unfortunately a little cropped): seeds 9-16 seeds 1-8. Members of the private Beasts of the Bay Facebook can view the images uncropped.

Round of 16: John Sexton, WRg Thicc Bois

John Sexton's WRg Thicc Bois (Arranged Beautifully)

Apologies to my friend John, this is nearly an impossible matchup for him. I think his only hopes are that I stumble around and can't cast my spells, or maybe he lands an early Sylvan Library I can't answer. At least he blanks my 3-damage spells. I win 2-0, even boarding in a third Disenchant just in case he draws the 1 Sylvan.

Quarterfinals, Meddling Maxe, BG Nether Void

Quarterfinals, Meddling Maxe's BG Nether Void

Maxe has some pretty scary stuff against us, like the land destruction suite, Winter Orb, and the sideboard Glooms and Tsunamis. Apologies also to him though, as I had believed the playoffs were being run under the "higher seed chooses play/draw" rule, but this was not actually the case. (This rule is canon since 2012 but slow to reach full adoption in Old School). Anyway, he agrees I can take the play game 1... and I proceed to win exactly those games where I'm on the play, taking the series 2-1. When I'm on the play and can get to 2 mana, then I can fend off the LD with counters and Regrowths to eventually turn the tide. By contrast, he has Sinkhole on the play game 2, eventually makes me tap out to Falling Star a Hypnotic Specter or something, then locks me under Winter Orb plus Gloom while Erhnam kills me. This match could certainly have gone the other way if Maxe had the play.

Semifinals, Andy Baquero, Some Spicy "Mono" Red

Semifinals, Andy Baquero's Some Spicy "Mono" Red

Really enjoyed meeting Andy in this event! Unfortunately for him, I can Moat or kill all of his creatures, then Tome through my entire deck, and he can't do much about it. His Stone Giants look scary at first, but they actually can't toss any of his creatures over a Moat except Ball Lightning, nor hatch any Eggs; he explained that they were a last minute untested anti-Moat inclusion.

Finals, Pez, GW Sylvan

Pez's GW Sylvan

Battle of the Regrowths! Pez had defeated Shawn in the Top 8 with a relentless chain of Armageddon-Regrowth-Regrowth, and Sylvan Library is a real beating against our do-nothing Swords recursion plan. So I knew I was in for a tough match. Since decklists were public for playoffs and this match was important to me, I spent a few hours running two-fisted test games against Pez's deck and came out a worrying 4-6 (breaking down as 2-2 preboard, 2-4 postboard, or 3-2 on the play, 1-4 on the draw). Fellow Troll Mox Emerald Scott (a frequent Erhnamgeddon player in normal OS) also agreed to play a few test games for the match, and I believe I came out on top 3-1.

Day-of, my semifinals opponent Andy streamed and recorded the match with commentary by himself and Dave Firth Bard. It's now on the Beasts of the Bay YouTube. We didn't have a great system for Pez and I to communicate life totals back to the commentators, so the game state was slightly off for 2 and 3.

Game 1, we trade stuff 1-for-1 into the midgame, and I land a Tome (coincidentally holding up UU but I'm actually out of Counterspells), and Pez lands a Serra Angel. I feel advantaged here, but I Tome into a fistful of Regrowths and Counterspells (no Swords to get the party started), and I watch sheepishly as the Serra kills me from 20. I had mulliganned my Fireball to the bottom, which I think is generally fine, but it didn't work out great here.

Game 2 is tense. I am able to hold off his early pressure with Swords recursion on just the three lands Tundra, Savannah, Desert. Luckily, Pez doesn't have the early Sylvan, as I quickly put him up to 28 life. I don't have a Counterspell yet, so I fearfully hold a bunch of lands in hand rather than extend them into a possible Armageddon. I feel super smart when Pez pulls the trigger on Armageddon anyway (at card disadvantage), then I open the floodgates on my own lands. There's some back-and-forth, while I build up to Moat, then Dragon, then Mirror, with Counterspell backup.

Game 3, Pez has the turn 2 Sylvan and gets to untap with it for the first time in the match. I groan when he (correctly) pays 8 life (not reflected in the video). But I was extremely lucky to have the 1 sideboard Wrath of God as my recurrable removal spell, so I don't have to feed him even more cards via Swords. Pez plays a turn 4 Erhnam, and my plan is to just take 8 damage and Wrath it away on my turn 6 with Counterspell up. But Pez puts a second creature on the board turn 5 (fair enough that he doesn't want to play around my 1-of), and I figure I have to go shields down to clean them up. After all, it's not the Armageddon that kills you; it's the Armageddon plus a threat. After that turn, I do keep Counterspell up forever, Regrow Wrath a few times, say "no" to some Armageddon-Regrowth-Regrowth stuff (I almost want to let it resolve, but my hand is filling up with counters and I can't hold lands due to the 7-card limit), and I eventually Tome through my entire deck for the double Fireball kill.

What's next for June

As promised, the new season for June was announced alongside a hefty serving of new bans:

June 2020 Type 1.5 Ban List

Losing Regrowth hurts the most (as I mentioned, I think we were doing the most obnoxious stuff with it) but is completely unsurprising. Falling Star is similarly unsurprising, as it's enormously powerful against 3-toughness creatures, and IMO overemphasizes dexterity more than is appropriate for a format staple (if you've never tried flipping a Star onto 3+ creatures, it is much harder than single-permanent flips as for Chaos Orb). We also lose Moat and Fireball, but, thank the stars, we never have to worry about Armageddon again!

As I see it, the core of our deck (JMD Tome, Counterspell, and Swords to Plowshares) is very much intact, and I think UWxx Control will still be great in June, with 4 Wrath of God replacing our mix of Moats and Stars. Our scariest natural predator Armageddon is gone, and anyway we'll have Equinox this time for the lesser LD spells. Additionally, I would add a second Recall to fill in for lost Regrowths; it's pretty bad early, but fantastic late, and can be an important part of converting Tome cards into actual game wins.

Dual lands are still legal to facilitate any two splashes of choice. Disintegrate replacing Fireball for the combo finish is probably good enough on its own to justify the red splash. While it's possible to Mirror-kill with non-red damage (such as Aeolipile), it's nice to not be completely reliant on Mirror. As far as the hot new tech that determines whether we splash black or green (or just stay 3-color)... well, I'd rather surprise you with it in June!