Daily 12 + videos
Played in another daily tonight. Decided I wanted to at least split my time between the 5cc deck that I’m tuning (possibly badly) and proven decks. So today I played Gaven Verhey’s Lark deck.
I don’t have much experience with it, but I played lark before when I started the blog. I got two matches in on tournament practice to try to get my legs under me, and here we go.
I went 2-2, which is my thing, losing to U/W baneslayer and Faeries. I beat some sort of white weenie with ajani and a random mono black rogues. I admit to feeling like I should 3-1 when I get to play against mono black rogues. Of course, that was once I was out of contention. I’d love to play it round 1 someday.
Faeries is supposed to be a bad matchup, but baneslayer isn’t. When I reviewed the baneslayer match, I just made a huge number of big mistakes that I could easily see. Honestly, I saw them after I did them while I was playing. It was my first match, and I must have just done dumb things from inexperience. Hopefully I’ve already learned some lessons from that match.
So here’s the match against Fae. I lost it in 2 games, but felt like I was in it for one, and maybe improved play would have stolen the game.
Game 1:
The big mistake I see is walking lark into spellstutter sprite. I am not used to seeing that card counter spells that cost 5, and it didn’t occur to me to count faeries before casting it. With that said, it’s a long game, and I’m sure there are other mistakes that need to be pointed out to me. Felt like I could have won this one.
Game 2:
Mull to oblivion. I’m including it for completeness and so that people will hopefully validate what I perceive as correct mulligan decisions. Also, I wonder if I should have let myself be cliqued in the hopes that he would incorrectly give me a shot at a land.
Game 1
0:23 Play Finks on turn three. If he doesn’t have Broken Ambitions, you’ll be doing well. Based on his mana, he could be 5c control/cascade with a weird mana draw or UBr Faeries.
Turn three Finks on the play is very good vs both those decks. Plus, if Finks resolves, you play the aggro/control role by protecting it with Cryptic and Broken.
0:30 Again play Finks, this time on turn four. With Mutavault in play, you can see that they’re probably Faeries and missing black mana. If you don’t play Finks, they can get to Cryptic mana. If you have a chance to be the beatdown, you want to be vs Faeries especially when they are missing one of their colors. Plus, you don’t want to be leaving up mana for counters if you have no pressure, since Faeries can just wear you down with flash creatures so you can’t even counter everything.
An early Finks is your chance to be the beatdown.
0:43 It looks like he didn’t have a counter for Finks so playing it back on turn three probably wins you the game pretty easily.
1:02 Bounce Sprite and draw a card so you gain tempo. He’ll activate Mutavault, but then you Path it.
1:34 Play Finks, then Evoke Muldrifter. No need to sac a land to make a 3/4 flyer when you can keep the land for the mana. The mana is relevant because you have Broken and you want the ability to cast multiple spells in one turn.
He’ll probably go +2 on Jace next turn and you don’t want to have to discard EOT b/c of too many cards.
Plus, he can’t counter Finks unless he has Essence Scatter but then you counter back with Broken Ambitions.
1:36 Counter the Sprite with Broken. You’ll still have Cryptic mana open and you keep his Faerie count down and you’ll remove a chump blocker for Jace.
2:35 Counter Scion. If you’re going to leave up counter mana, you should generally use it especially on dangerous creature like Scion. He only has two cards so he might not have a counter. And countering Scion gives him less chump blockers for Jace, which is going to kill you if left unchecked.
And he’s going to draw a card with Jace, so he might draw a counter to protect another Scion or Mistbind Clique. Both of those cards will be pretty bad for you.
3:16 I think you play Mulldrifter at full cost. You need chump blockers for his 5/5 flyers or you die. And you’d rather he counter Mulldrifter than Reveillark.
3:22 Float 6 mana, draw your two cards, hope you draw Path, and then play Reveillark and cross your fingers hoping he doesn’t have a counterspell. You’re in a bad position so you need to take a stand with Reveillark, since it’s a lot better right now than Gargoyle Castle. Plus, if you don’t play Reveillark, he’ll just keep drawing cards with Jace and eventually find a counterspell for Reveillark.
Plus, you don’t want to sac a land because you could use the mana.
Ok, so, all the early finks stuff. I thought I was doing it right because I had broken. I didn’t want to run my only offense out there and hit his counter. I know he didn’t have it, but don’t I want to avoid that counter? Because I have broken I can play it on turn five and still have mana up to counter him, and that’s good, right? It did resolve, and he ended up bouncing it with cryptic.
1:02 – Jesus, I had never even considered that. What a vastly superior play. This makes me wonder if I need to learn to see these plays dynamically, or if I’m going to gain the ability to make good plays like this just from having them pointed out to me and experiencing more situations like this? I’m hoping that training can compensate for the lack of immediate talent that keeps me from seeing this play.
1:36 – So a finks and a 2 for 1 are effects worth tapping out to him? Maybe I’m not understanding my role here and trying to control him too much? Is it always better to present threats to this deck and power through counters than to try to counter them since they can play on my turn anyway? I’m not used to ever wanting to tap out when I have cryptic and anything I can do to use the mana at the end of his turn. Does this fall into “Missassignment of game role = loss?”
2:35 I had to watch this sequence a couple of times to see if I had any questions, but I have to concede that you’re just completely correct.
3:16 I was going to hardcast the 2nd drifter. I guess I should have gone the other way around. I was trying to get things into the graveyard for lark. Is this reasonable?
3:22 Did not even occur to me that I could float all that mana. I’m used to getting cliqued in my upkeep, and not being able to float for sorcery speed. Dammit. With that in mind, why did he wait?
I thought I had played this match reasonably well. I was wondering if you would be able to show me paths to victory, and there are like, 4 of them here. Good lord. It seems like a lot of it comes down to being too tentative, trying to control a deck more controlling than mine, and not playing around cards I should know are there.
You’ve certainly convinced me on the feedback thing. If I had just looked at this match myself, god knows what conclusions I would have come to. Certainly not anything that let me win the next time the Fae rolled into town.
“Ok, so, all the early finks stuff. I thought I was doing it right because I had broken. I didn’t want to run my only offense out there and hit his counter. I know he didn’t have it, but don’t I want to avoid that counter? Because I have broken I can play it on turn five and still have mana up to counter him, and that’s good, right? It did resolve, and he ended up bouncing it with cryptic.”
You can’t play around everything. You gotta take chances at good opportunities. If he doesn’t have Broken, you have a big advantage. The chances of him Broken are low enough that you go for it.
Plus, if he has Broken, you’ve got good cards in hand.
Basically, play to win not to lose. Each turn you don’t play Finks you give him a chance to draw Broken.
Sure, you could wait until turn five but what if you don’t draw a 5th land right away and makes his first six lands drops? What if your opponent does not have Broken but is also mana screwed?
One thing I noticed about LSV’s draft videos is he doesn’t play around a lot of things. Even with his controlling decks, he usually tries to kill his opponent as quickly as possible.
“1:02 – Jesus, I had never even considered that. What a vastly superior play. This makes me wonder if I need to learn to see these plays dynamically, or if I’m going to gain the ability to make good plays like this just from having them pointed out to me and experiencing more situations like this? I’m hoping that training can compensate for the lack of immediate talent that keeps me from seeing this play.”
Fortunately, it’s not so much about talent imo but just hard work and experience. Keep getting feedback and these plays will become second nature
“1:36 – So a finks and a 2 for 1 are effects worth tapping out to him? Maybe I’m not understanding my role here and trying to control him too much? Is it always better to present threats to this deck and power through counters than to try to counter them since they can play on my turn anyway? I’m not used to ever wanting to tap out when I have cryptic and anything I can do to use the mana at the end of his turn. Does this fall into “Missassignment of game role = loss?”
Biggest issue at this point is Jace. Jace will kill you unless you destroy it. If you look at the whole game, a big part of the reason you lost was because of Jace. Your opponent drew a ton of cards.
Finks is a beater to go after Jace and Muldrifter helps you keep up with Jace and gets you a 2/2 in the grave for Lark. Plus, you can leave up one mana for Path. It’s just an optimal use of mana.
Planning to go EOT Gargoyle Castle is just bad. What if he goes bounce Castle + draw EOT? He just killed a creature with a blue card, drew a card, and you Stone Rained yourself. He’ll win the control battle since he has Jace and much more mana.
Even if you wanted to go control, you can’t Stone Rain yourself when you’re behind on mana because control wars are usually decided by who has more mana.
And Missassignment of game role = loss is correct. You are the beatdown, because Faeries can outcontrol you with their eot effects and he also has Jace which definitely puts him in the control role.
“3:16 I was going to hardcast the 2nd drifter. I guess I should have gone the other way around. I was trying to get things into the graveyard for lark. Is this reasonable?”
Drifter will go to grave no matter what. If you pay full price, you chump block. If it gets countered, it goes to the grave. By paying full price, you get a 3-for-1 if he doesn’t have a counter. If he has a counter, that’s one less counter for your Lark.
“I thought I had played this match reasonably well. I was wondering if you would be able to show me paths to victory, and there are like, 4 of them here. Good lord. It seems like a lot of it comes down to being too tentative, trying to control a deck more controlling than mine, and not playing around cards I should know are there.
You’ve certainly convinced me on the feedback thing. If I had just looked at this match myself, god knows what conclusions I would have come to. Certainly not anything that let me win the next time the Fae rolled into town.”
Yeah, definitely a winnable game, but each non-optimal play gets you closer to losing the game instead of winning. But at least you’re seeing your mistakes unlike the majority of MTG players who keep wondering why they are losing
Glad to help. It’s an inexpensive way to keep my Constructed game sharp.
I’m EXHAUSTED so I’m SURE I missed a lot of stuff, but here’s what I got for you this time around:
turn 2 – play mystic gate. It lets you discard a land to an Esper Charm if he’s 5c and blasts you and still play your Finks.
Turn 4 – cast finks. Leaving Broken up for a turn where he can draw black and play Blossom or just Jace is ok, but now that he has a Mutavault we need to get Finks on board before Cryptic is online. We’re not countering anything on his turn, so there’s no point in leaving the mana up, and letting him Broken here isn’t giving him any value, as he is going to get a card with it eventually anyway (look at our hand).
Turn 5 – I would tap Castle. There’s no actual reason to, as all it represents is double Path, but there’s no reason not to tap the Colorless land.
Turn 6 – Cast Mulldrifter!!!!!!
Turn 7 – there’s no reason to play Clique there.
Turn 10 – you tapped the second worse possible way.
I stopped watching when Mistbind Clique resolved as you couldn’t win after that.
Your mulls were all correct. Essence Scatter on Vendilion Clique was correct, but I’m positive you don’t know why. It’s because he cast it on End Step after pausing in Draw. That means that he has a counter (Sprite or Broken) which means that the increased clock is a problem, whereas you would be ok with the clock being hastened with a chance to draw a land since you had double Sower.
More matches against Faeries!
So, yeah, I should be casting finks, apparently.
The vendilion clique comment seems extremely valuable.
Thanks again. I’ll do my best to draw faeries in my next daily.
[...] was able to help a fellow MTG blogger. He posted a video of him playing Lark versus Faeries. He thought he played reasonably well, but I found a good number of big misplays. He replied: [...]
Yeah, little tells like that give away so much information and no one ever picks up on them.
The other take-away from this session should be that you have a problem of just doing what you do in other match-ups in this one. What I mean is, what are you leaving counter-mana up for? What are they playing at sorcery speed after turn 3 that you are afraid of? It’s not like he has Reveillarks or Imperious Perfects that you need to counter. Cast your spells.
Yeah, like I said to Dee, I’m falling into the ‘who’s the beatdown’ thing. I’m thinking I’m the control against a deck that is more controlling than mine, and then I think I’ve played well and I’m surprised when I lose. I could probably do a lot worse than just unthinking aggression next time I play against Fae. Yeah, it’s not the ideal and it woudln’t be optimal, but it’s better than trying to out counter a deck that has twice as many counters as I have and only plays spells on my turn.