Top 8 StarCityGames $1k Invitational Qualifier

At the end of the year, I drove to Columbus, OH for a last-minute Invitational Qualifier to get some testing in before the Team Modern Open in January.

The list above is the list I used to make it to the Top 8, which is the exact 75 I used to win an Invitational Qualifier in November and only 2 cards different from the 75 (-2 Blood Moon, +1 Master, +1 Champion in SB) that I played for SCG Columbus Regionals to a 6-3 record, barely missing Top 8/16 in the last round.

Moving forward, the changes I am considering are mostly in the Sideboard. In the Team Modern Open in Columbus, I am expecting every team to have at least one Tron or KCI player, which means I am wanting some number of Damping Sphere.

This would likely be over the Whipflares, as I am not expecting to run into many decks like Elves. With Bant Spirits currently as the creature deck of choice over 5C Humans, I am less keen to play this spell, as they have more Lords and also naturally have bigger butts.

At the event, I don’t believe many teams will be registering “interactive” decks, so I may end up putting the 3rd Master in the Mainboard over a Champion and putting the pair of Champions in the Sideboard. This will leave me with a 3/1 split of Master/Champion in the MB, and shores up the fair matches in the Sideboard.

My concern here is that Champion is an absolute house versus Bant Spirits, and often single-handedly can steal the game when it resolves. However, it is certainly a liability against KCI, Tron, and every matchup where I’m racing, so it is my likely cut moving forward.

Going back to the Sideboard, I am pondering a swap from Rest in Peace to Surgical Extraction. In the past, graveyard decks were worried about sheer mass in their ‘yard; Storm wants a bunch of spells to flash back, Dredge plays through Surgical frequently, and BridgeVine typically can’t win with it on the battlefield.

In today’s world, I’m actually finding the Graveyard-based decks to be abusing that heuristic, with decks like UR Phoenix relying on Thing in the Ice and Crackling Drake to sidestep Rest in Peace. Dredge tends to pack a full four Nature’s Claims, and KCI is super prepared for Rest in Peace from us. To sweeten the pot, Rest in Peace is the hate we’re “expected” to bring, and most of the answers for it also happen to answer our Plan A.

This brings me to Surgical Extraction. Often, Affinity doesn’t need to cripple the opponent, like Rest in Peace does; the deck just needs to keep the opponent off balance while it smashes in for lethal over a couple turns. I believe Surgical Extraction accomplishes this end, while also being something our opponents aren’t likely to expect or play around.

It also makes a lot of our early turns less awkward, as we aren’t forced to make mulligan decisions based on whether we want to risk having no colored mana for our hate pieces.

As for the rest of the deck, I am pretty confident about where it’s at. We’re seeing a small portion of the community test Experimental Frenzy in the deck, either in the Mainboard or the Sideboard, but it hasn’t impressed me much more than Karn has so far. I think this will ultimately prove to be a “flavor of the month” trend, and we will see people migrate back to this Traditional style.

That’s all for today — thanks for taking time out of your day to read! If you have any comments, questions, concerns, or emotional outbursts, please leave them in the comments below. Cheers!