Yo! MtG TAPS! #6 – Understatements

Gabriel says:

Congratulations Lloyd for winning States!

As far as Blightning vs. Cryptic Command goes I have to say Blightning is the more annoying card to play against. CC is just a super good spell and it was annoying to play against; but Blightning invalidates a lot of strategies and is a lot less fun than Cryptic.

Daniel Porter says:

You guys were talking about the judge test here the link for some. http://judge.wizards.com/exams.aspx

Brandon savage says:

I was listening to the podcast and when Lloyd was explaining his reasons for siding out double negative against jund that didn’t make sense to me. I have just started playing recently and from what I understand one of the biggest concerns for control type decks is card advantage. He said that he would rather Counter the blightning then bolt the bloodbraid. As opposed to double negative which would have gotten rid of both cards for one of your cards. Please help me explain his reasoning. I mean no disrespect but I am trying to understand the game better. Thanks

Lloyd says:

Hi, Brandon, Joe messaged me about your question.

My game plan vs Jund was as follows:
1. Use Spreading Seas to cut off Red Mana sources and slow them
down.
2. Survive until I can cast Cruel Ultimatum.
a) 13 removal spells vs creatures
b) Save Flashfreeze for Sprouting Thrinax, Blightning, and
Goblin Ruinblaster (only with Kicker)

Blightning is obvious. It’s more efficient to counter Thrinax than kill it and its saprolings. Ruinblaster is due to its LD effect. These 3 cards are the Deadly Trio of Jund’s card advantage.

The cascade of Bloodbraid Elf is also advantageous, but given the nature of cascade, the advantage is not consistent. In a typical Jund deck, aside from the 3 cards mentioned above, it can cascade into the following:

Putrid Leach
Lightning Bolt
Terminate
Maelstrom Pulse
Great Sable Stag

Leach is a creature which will can be handled by the amount of removal the deck packs.
Lightning Bolt is an acceptable loss of 3 life barring lethal of course.
Terminate – effectively dead card
Maelstrom Pulse – dead except against Planeswalkers which are a late game card.
Great Sable Stag – can’t be countered, terminated or marked for death, but I hear the stag’s antlers are really lightning rods and that Chandra Nalaar likes venison.

Double Negative is great vs cascade, but I don’t think it is a must have. For example, if you look at Pat Chapin’s deck from states and from Worlds, he only has 1 Double Negative. If you look at Wafo Grixis, Double Negative isn’t even present. Such a move would seem odd given the prevalence of Jund and having the colors to run it.

Given all this input, I concluded that Bloodbraid Elf was only dangerous when serving as an enabler for the Deadly Trio. Thus, I chose to focus my efforts on stopping the Deadly Trio rather than include their chauffeur Bloodbraid Elf.

You are correct that a concern for control decks is card advantage, but that holds most true for Weissman style control decks only. Aggro-control and combo-control decks are more apt to losing card advantage to “just win.” As Pat Chapin says in the MC2 podcast, Grixis is like a combo-control deck rather than a true control deck with the plan of ramp to Cruel Ultimatum and just win.

Then again, that’s not to say that Cruel Ultimatum isn’t card advantage by itself.