GP Atlanta Legacy Report – Esper StoneBlade

Hello everyone,

This will be my first post here on Average Joes but I have been around swearing I will write an article since the beginning of the site.  I want to share with everyone my thoughts and experience in relation to GP Atlanta as it was a great time and a very educational experience for me as a Magic player.

People know me as the brewer, the guy that can never make up his mind, the one that owns no cards due to constant selling and re-buying to enable brewing, etc.  I started the process of brewing for GP Atlanta a while back but first let me sum up my past with the Legacy format.

My experience with this format is very lackluster at best.  AdamRA4 got me into the Legacy format about 5 months ago during the SCG Open in Tampa, Florida.  At that point I had been playing Magic: The Gathering for around 8 months so the format was incredibly intimidating to me.  I ended up playing Mono-Red back then as a first time player and didn’t do too well (0-3 drop) but I did learn a whole lot about some of the many decks in Legacy and how awesome the format truly was.  I also played an old version of Hypergenesis (before Shardless Agent ) back at the SCG Open in Orlando, FL but in this case the deck was handed to me the night before and I didn’t even have time to fishbowl the deck due to me coming off a pretty exciting day of Standard where the Average Joes took a top 8 spot (Bruce Strong with Delver) and I started the day off 6-0 in a 9 round tournament with a Naya Ramp brew I designed the night before.

I brewed up a couple decks during the months prior to the GP but I didn’t have much luck with them as most of them were pure hate decks designed to have a good match up against RUG Delver and a somewhat good matchup against graveyard decks.  At the point that I brewed these up my experience in Legacy was pretty much the two tournaments I listed above.  About two weeks  before the GP is when I started taking brewing a little more seriously and started wanting to build some real decks that I thought might have a chance at the GP.

After extensive testing against Dredge, Maverick, RUG Delver, Sneak and Show, Enchantress, and some other decks that we proxied up to playtest with I came up with a brew that I thought was going to do well and got permission to borrow the cards to put it together — here is the list.  I called it Swiss Blade and you’ll see why.

Artifacts 1 Sensei’s Divining Top 1 Sword of Feast and Famine 1 Batterskull 1 Umezawa’s Jitte Creatures 4 Delver of Secrets 4 Stoneforge Mystic 3 Tarmogoyf 1 Hero of Bladehold 1 Scavenging Ooze 3 Geist of Saint Traft Spells 3 Force of Will 2 Spell Snare 2 Spell Pierce 4 Daze 3 Swords to Plowshares 4 Brainstorm 3 Ponder Lands 4 Tundra 4 Tropical Island 4 Flooded Strand 2 Misty Rainforest 1 Karakas 1 Plains 1 Island 1 Forest 1 Cavern of Souls Sideboard 2 Sensei’s Divining Top 3 Counterbalance 2 Krosan Grip 3 Surgical Extraction 2 Wrath of God 3 Tormod’s Crypt

This deck to me was very promising as I thought at the time that it had a really good matchup against alot of different decks.  I never really got to playtest it against anything aside from RUG Delver (which was like a 40% win ratio) which discouraged me from running it at the GP without tweaks.  I needed something consistent and something that I had alot of experience with.  Well, it just so happens that I was highly encouraged to play Esper Stoneblade by AdamRA4 and several other influential people.

Here is the list I ended up running at the GP:

Artifacts 1 Batterskull 1 Umezawa’s Jitte 1 Sword of Feast and Famine Creatures 3 Snapcaster Mage 4 Stoneforge Mystic 1 Vendilion Clique Spells 1 Vindicate 3 Force of Will 2 Thoughtseize 2 Inquisition of Kozilek 3 Lingering Souls 1 Intuition 4 Swords to Plowshares 3 Spell Pierce 4 Brainstorm 1 Ponder Lands 3 Tundra 3 Underground Sea 4 Flooded Strand 3 Polluted Delta 1 Plains 1 Swamp 2 Island 1 Karakas 1 Scrubland 1 Creeping Tar Pit 2 Marsh Flats Planeswalkers 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor 1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant Sideboard 1 Disenchant 1 Zealous Persecution 1 Wrath of God 2 Perish 1 Engineered Explosives 1 Thoughtseize 3 Hydroblast 4 Leyline of the Void 1 Force of Will

Going into the GP I had 1 Bye based on the Planeswalker points I had earned in Season 1 so I started the day off in a nice spot being 1-0.

Match 1:  Bye Record 1-0

Match 2: Hightide Record 1-1

My opponent started off due to winning the dice roll and laid and Island followed by Brainstorm.  At first I put him on Stoneblade and figured he just drew his Island and was playing around Wasteland not knowing what I was playing.  He then laid down another Island and my heart sunk as I had been warned about the difficulty of this matchup.

0-2 Loss my opponent went off turn 3 both rounds.

Match 3: Sneak and Show Record 2-1

This match was by far one of the luckiest and most memorable matches of Magic I have ever played.  My opponent opened with an Island followed by Preordain.  Due to testing with Sneak and Show I immediately put him on the deck as Preordain was only in that deck during testing.  My opponent followed up the Island with a City of Traitors and cast Show and Tell with double Force of Will backup.  He put into play Sneak Attack and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn followed by another Emrakul the next turn.

Game two came down to an epic counter war ending in him resolving a Show and Tell putting into play Emrakul on around turn 9.
I put the only card left in my hand into play, that being a Vendillion Clique.
Life total is Opponent – 6, Me – 18.
He passed turn after resolving his Emrakul and me having no cards in hand.
I drew, laid down Underground Sea and passed the turn back.
My opponent draws, cracks in with Emrakul, in response to the Annihilator Trigger I crack 2 Fetchlands, thinning my deck and go down to 16.
I then sac 6 lands leaving me with 4 dual lands, Umezawa’s Jitte, and the Vendillion Clique in play.  I take 15 going down to 1 life.
My turn I draw a Lingering Souls off the top.  Crack in with Vendillion Clique taking my opponent down to 3.
Play Linger Souls getting 2 Spirit Tokens.
My opponent notices what is about to happen and says “Now let’s see if I can rip one off the top”  he draws, plays a land and cracks in again with Emrakul.
I sac 4 lands, Umezawa’s Jitte, and 1 Spirit token, then block his Emrakul with my remaining Spirit Token.
Next turn crack back in with Clique to win the game. EPIC!

Game 3 ended up going all the way to turn 5 with me having an Ensnaring Bridge in play along with 6 Lingering Souls tokens and a Snapcaster Mage beating his face in.  Myself maintaining 2 cards in hand.  My opponent didn’t concede to the Ensnaring Bridge even though he had no answers at all.  I won not by concession but by reducing him to 0 life on turn 5.

Match 4: Fish Record 3-1

Simple match for me, the deck cannot handle a Batterskull and with Umezawa’s Jitte attached.

Match 5: RUG Delver Record 3-2

I got the smack laid on me during the match.

Match 6: RUG Delver Record 4-2

I ripped Engineered Explosives and Perish to win this match, very nice.

Match 7: Reanimator Record 5-2

My opponent ran into 3 Spell Pierce with Force of Will back up and drew bad.

Match 8: Death and Taxes Record 5-3

This match up was a beating.  My opponent had turn 2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben each game and post sideboard he had  Manriki-Gusari which just shut my deck down when attached to his Thalia.

Match 9: Reanimator Record 6-3

My opponent was on tilt the entire time mulling down to 5 the first game and 4 the second.  he just conceded after I cast double Thoughtsieze game 2.

Overall I placed 244 of nearly 1,000 people at the GP, not bad at all.

Adam “The Don” went on to Day 2 glory with a record of 7-1-1 with Maverick.  Congrats to him. He truly put alot into that Maverick deck, fine tuning it to give him the best match up and most consistent draw.

The other Joes didn’t do bad either, both having winning records on Day 1.

All said and done I had one of the most memorable experiences in the time I have been playing Magic and cannot wait for the Joes to make another showing at the next big event.  I’ll most likely start playing Legacy on a more serious level after this tournament simply because it truly is a much more enjoyable and skill intensive format which I thoroughly enjoy.

Anyways thanks for reading, I’ll be back with more tournament reviews and possibly brewing in the future.  Good luck and have fun!