A week playing standard without mythics - Trials of the planes (Platinum)

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ General Discussion
1

Span and I got to talking about the difficulties new platinum players might face in trials of the planes, and we were wondering if they were afraid of getting slaughtered by mythic decks and not being able to hit their 8 wins for the lucrative max progression.

So I decided to test it out. Settling on the premise that most platinum players should have a ton of rares at the very least, I set up decks to play the whole week in the event based on the few rules:

  1. Standard cards only
  2. Only rares, uncommons and commons
  3. No cycling themed decks
  4. Only basic planewalkers

Based on the last time I seriously played with these monocoloured basic walkers, my expectations were that the matchups would look like this in terms of increasing difficulty:

  1. Lilianna
  2. Chandra
  3. Jace
  4. Gideon
  5. Nissa

Day 1 : Gideon (White)

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Since my deck is going to be weaker on average with no real card draw, I decided to build a more aggressive one, hoping to end the games early with skill 2. I added vehicles and sword of the animist to shore up mana gain disadvantages and rode the lifelink damage race to a nice 8-1 result. It was much easier than I anticipated.

Day 2 : Jace (Blue)

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No real surprises here. Jace was my favourite walker in the basic 5, and his ability to shut down opponents is still relevant. Loyalty was saved to be used only on skill 3, and I bounced to buy time till I could gain control of the board. Again vehicles were used to negate the mana gain problems(a common theme of the basic walkers), and I rode this one out to an easy 8-1 win.

Day 3 : Lilianna (Black)

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Lilianna was the most powerful of the lot back when the pool of walkers was exactly 5. Her skill 1 was somewhat overpowered, and I anticipated that I could spam skill 1 to an easy 8-0 win. Unfortunately, the black meta has shifted, and I didn’t really have an answer to the shift towards mass zombies EVERY SINGLE GAME. The idea going in was a control Lilianna that sat back and discarded cards that could be reanimated back for free while locking down the opponent’s hand. This proved to be a bad idea when immortal zombie decks started appearing, and I ended up with a strategy of having to damage race against faster reanimation decks. Without disables, the game was lost the moment prized amalgam hits the board. I dipped into the legendary node for the first time, and came out 8-2.

Day 4 : Chandra (Red)

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Chandra was easier than I expected. I faced up with 5 koths, 3 nahiris and 1 Chandra(2). And of course I dropped a game to the Chandra(2). Strategy here was pure beatdown. No finesse required. Spamming skill 1 and skill 3, the event was over quickly, and I got out of it 8-1.

Day 5 : Nissa (Green)

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Nissa was the one I dreaded the most. A look at my deck after construction told me my mono green deck hasn’t changed much in a year. My main damage dealer was still the colossus, and I threw in cultivator for extra power. I was expecting lots of gaea revenge, hydras and just plain kiora fueled monster decks. The AI did not disappoint. My original strategy of storing for skill 2 and cultivator for a 1 turn alpha strike was revealed to be useless within the first 3 games. I dropped 2 games in the first node, and changed my strategy to spamming skill 1 to get to the critical cards sooner. This worked well, and I managed to get out of this with no more losses, and close the week with a 8-2 event. I’ll be the first to admit though that half of those games literally came down to me dealing just enough damage to win a turn earlier than the AI.

Hopefully this will help any new platinum players afraid to dip their toe in the water. The event is definitely beatable without a mythic laden collection. Go try it out!

2

Would you say that you got lucky in your match ups mostly? Or did you face decks laden with mythics?

3

The most luck based color had to be black. Since I had no answer to reanimating zombies and everyone was using zombie decks, it was really luck every game to see if I could kill him before the combo was set up.

Red was the most mythic heavy color. But chandra could outrace the koths and Nahiris, no problem at all.

I would say only green would have a problem out racing the mythic decks. White required a lot of patience to set up the pieces properly, but Gideon also had the damage output to match mythic decks.

Blue… Well… No one plays rattle chains anymore, so everything gets sent back and then eventually nothing gets cast.

4

I ran into your C1 last week during the TotP @Ohboy and was wondering what in the world was going on. I found it so odd that you were running her that I even took a screen shot.

Anyway, interesting results. Nice job clearing them all. I do think there is a pretty large element of luck, especially on the green and blue nodes. I have run into a lot of waterviel/hydra decks and scrapheap decks that can give my mythic heavy decks issues at times, especially in legendary mode.

Out of curiosity, did you enjoy the experience or was it painful having to play with weak PWs and less efficient cards?

5

It was actually very fun. I found myself looking forward to it everyday. I actually limited myself to those decks to play trial of zeal this weekend. They unfortunately did not fare so well lol.

I was going to go for a second run with different decks this week. Unfortunately real life caught up, so I caved and used Nahiri for a speed run today. I’ll probably run it again next week.

6

Great post–and looks like a fun challenge.

7

This is an interesting thought experiment, and I think it adds an interesting story to the discussion. However, some of those decks are half rares–I’m not sure how many newer platinum players will have those selections of rares (for the life of me I cannot get Solemn Recruit or Aethersphere Harvester, for example). Curious what you would think of restricting the number of rares in such an experiment.

8

The problem with reducing rares is that you end up with decks that rely on that single card to win, and it becomes a very niche deck that’s unrelatable to people who don’t have that particular rare.

My green deck is an example of the problem. Without colossus, the deck would play very differently.

This exercise sets out to prove it can be done, not to provide specific decks to beat the event. Go out and experiment!

9

And at the least, it shows some of the uncommons/commons that are viable in competition. Sometimes people overlook perfectly useful cards like Demolition Stomper.

10

one of the best cards in the game is uncommon !

I like the approach of this thread. I would not want to take that risk, but I do something similar on the left-over nodes after I get full progression. TotP is a very nice way to try out new combinations, and sometimes a “1 rare no mythics” challenge is quite fun.

11

Edit 7/18: Added Day 2 (blue), added spoiler tags for descriptions to reduce default post length for anyone uninterested in the exposition

Edit 7/19: Added Day 3 (black)

This is a great idea, and seems like a fun experiment; I’m going to try the challenge this week too with the same rules, except with rares excluded along with mythics, just to see how far I can get (if I hit 3-4 losses too quickly, I may wind up having to defer on certain colors).

Day 1 has already been the most fun I’ve had with this game in a while, and finally gave me an appreciation for all of the G1 stories I’ve heard about in the past but never had the chance to experience (he and J1 have always been the least-used of the base 5 for me, so it’s nice to see the game from a new angle).

I’ll try to remember to update this post with successive results for the rest of the week in case anyone happens to be interested but doesn’t want to take the risk themselves, but at the least, here’s the deck I used with white for starters:

Day 1 (white)

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Results: 8-1

Summary:

MVP: Cartouche of Solidarity (this was a surprise; I expected Cast Out to take this hands down, but only one game involved the full-board cheese lock, and in others it mostly functioned akin to either a tempo spell or a normal removal spell)

LVP: Enshrouding Mist (I expected this to help with a combat-oriented PW like G1, but only once did it prove worth casting over another creature or one of the supports, and that game I wound up losing anyway to trample damage)

There were a few very close games, but the combination of tinykitty and G1’s loyalty was enough to pull out all but one of the races in the end; the sole loss was to a Nahiri on the Supercharged node that played Emrakul and Hazoret’s Favor before I could establish a strong board, then followed those up on the next turn with Deploy the Gatewatch (fetching 3 hasty copies of Angel of Invention) and 2 copies of Uncaged Fury. Needless to say, without drawing any copies of Cast Out until my last turn, I didn’t stand a chance.

Day 2 (blue)

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Results: 8-2

Summary:

MVP: Anchor to the Aether (this was a difficult call, since I desperately wanted this slot to be Galestrike instead, and every card in the deck had its moments, but the combination of card draw and bounce in one spell was probably the most important factor overall for surviving the onslaught of stronger opponents and living to do it again the next turn)

LVP: Angler Drake (unlike Enshrouding Mist with white, this wasn’t entirely useless and even played a key role in one of the wins, but it turned out to be too costly of a tempo creature to fill in for Harbinger of the Tides as well as I’d hoped, and in most cases it was the first card to be exiled from hand whenever another removal option was available)

My first few opponents weren’t playing green, and one was even a cycling deck; for a brief moment, I wondered whether I might be able to escape the merciless gauntlet of Kiora and N3 decks I’d been expecting at the outset … and then the tide started rolling in. Desolation Twin … Gaea’s Revenge … Season’s Past … Prism Array … Crush of Tentacles … Exert Influence … Imprisoned in the Moon … Ulvenwald Hydra … Sandwurm Convergence … and more. It was like a greatest hits compilation of the most terrifying threats to face in Legacy, and by the 3rd or 4th U/G deck, I started to seriously doubt whether I’d be able to manage 8 wins overall.

Luckily, I managed to catch just enough breaks at key moments down the stretch, and escaped with only 2 losses amidst what could easily have turned out to be 3 times as many. A Kiora that played 3x Desolation Twin and Crush of Tentacles (not all in the same turn) led to one of the more heartbreaking losses I’ve had in a while, as I ultimately came up 4 damage shy of lethal. Among the wins, combining Claustrophobia and Lay Claim to steal Gaea’s Revenge was probably the most satisfying moment, since it was exactly the scenario I envisioned when building the deck and essentially the sole reason why I included both cards.

Lay Claim was probably the most interesting card in the deck overall; with mana being a serious constraint, I had to avoid cycling it on multiple occasions when I would have preferred to simply exile it normally, but at the same time, it’s entirely possible that no other card would have sufficed when I actually needed to cast it in order to rescue a potentially losing position. Claustrophobia also performed better than I was concerned it would; aside from exposing 2 otherwise-lethal instances of Gaea’s Revenge to removal, on several occasions it also bought key tempi to charge the next bounce spell or J1’s 2nd and eke out a race, even if, as expected, it didn’t function as a permanent removal spell in most games amidst a field full of gem conversion and occasional support destruction.

All in all, I don’t think this deck could manage 8 wins in every TotP cycle, but at least on this occasion it managed to survive by the skin of its teeth, and even pulled out a Legendary node game in the process.

Day 3 (black)

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Results: 8-0

Summary:

MVP: Stir the Sands (this is somewhat arbitrary; as none of the cards were seriously tested, I defaulted to the most efficient creature, but had the games been more competitive, it’s hard to say what would have proved to be most useful)

LVP: Fleshbag Marauder (again, this pick is arbitrary; I went with the most expensive removal option because none of them wound up having much use, but against stronger AI opponents this would probably have been a much more important card)

The games with black were somewhat disappointing; I was curious to see how I’d fare against zombie decks, but instead ran into nothing but one passive control variant after another.

Several were creatureless Ob decks and one was cycling, which naturally left the AI essentially defenseless, but even the others mostly played reactive spells and supports that never really posed a serious threat or left the outcome in any doubt.

Liliana’s ultimate helped to renew the board from time to time against opponents with heavy removal and access to more cards overall, but the only uncertainty for the most part was when I would win, not whether.

Hopefully tomorrow’s games will turn out to be more exciting, and will serve as a better litmus test of the next deck’s performance.

12

Excellent!

It was nice to revisit the base 5 walkers wasn’t it?We’re so caught up in trying to develop broken strategies that we forget that the most fun was always had when we were underdogs starting out.

13

If a new-to-Platinum player doesn’t have this many rares, they tiered up too fast.

Also I love this @Ohboy thanks for sharing.

14

It really was; I’d almost forgotten the thrill of trying to climb the mountain in the first place after all this time, but many of the most exhilarating moments I’ve experienced in this game came around summer and fall of last year, when I had to compete against cards like Drowner of Hope, Hixus, Tyrant of Valakut, Crush of Tentacles, Disciple of the Ring (before the nerf), and Omnath using mostly rares or worse, with only a handful of total mythics to go around. Having a stronger collection now is better for most purposes of course, but having a fun remaining challenge to pursue with whatever tools are available is just as important, and with cycling that’s been severely lacking recently.

It’s a lot of fun reliving that experience in a fault-tolerant environment with TotP, and it would actually be great to see more of these kinds of challenges encouraged via the overall event structure in some way as an alternative to seemingly arbitrary objectives in most other events, but that’s probably getting into a whole separate topic.

At any rate, I’m looking forward to the rest of this week’s events more than I have since about one day into AKH when I first discovered infinite cycling, and the break in routine is definitely a refreshing change of pace.

15

You guys have inspired me… I might try out the “mythics only” challenge.

16

Can you do this in Standard? If so, I’m impressed!

17

Well, I don’t think the decks will actually be very good. But I do have Dynavolt, Gonta, AWM, Planar Bridge, Hok, MWC, and Archive which are all colorless, so I can definitely get to 10 lol.

18

not quite the same but here’s my tg nissa1 deck

creatures
conclave naturalist
herald of the pantheon
shefet monitor
dwynen, gilt-leaf daen
cultivator of blades

spells
swell of growth

support
fertile thicket(swap out for nissa’s pilgrimage to
make it standard legal)
elemental bond
bounty of the luxa
brawler’s plate

HH

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Day 1: Black

This deck has pretty much no synergies. It is practically impossible to trigger Gonti unless you are playing against a energizing opponent. I did get a couple of AWM triggers. The only removal are fat arsed blockers and boomship. Strategy includes and is mostly limited to discarding your hand and then reviving them. I apologize for splashing the worst masterpiece in the game (arguably) but I needed something cheap to cast for more energy gems.

Regardless, 8-0 with the deck even though it is admittedly terrible. I got lucky and never ran into Olivia or really much of anything other than some zombies and Ob’s.

20

33 Mythics, 6 Masterpieces in Standard

White: 7 (2 dual-color)
Blue: 6 (1 dual-color)
Black: 6 (2 dual-color)
Red: 12 (3 dual-color)
Green: 7 (2 dual-color)
Colorless: 7

So I’m pretty sure I could do the all Mythic challenge using the 5 original PW’s and colorless cards.

I think the point people forget is as proven by thread is that you don’t need great cards to win most of the time. You always get to go first (and draw) and you know how the AI will play. Even with the powerful decks they still most of the time aren’t played correctly by the computer so you generally can take advantage of that. Not to mention the AI never has the concept to save up loyalty to use better abilities. I mean most Ob decks are built around his third ability and any cycling deck is useless in the hands of the AI.

The fear of moving to platinum mostly is a legacy from when the event rewards were good and you needed to be perfect to get them. A competition for an exclusive mythic aside the reward tiers don’t mean much and the progression rewards are better in platinum. Talking with my coalition mates who stayed in gold, they can consistently finish near the top of their events but they don’t generate the same amount of crystals and jewels and have a hard time getting key cards from the new sets without paying money. This is very notable in Trial of the Planes since essentially every day for 30 mana crystals I can get 20 mana jewels as opposed to the gold level it is 60 crystals for 15 jewels. I’ve been in platinum across the board for a while and while I may finish 27th or 52nd in an event as opposed to 4th I still have been generating more resources and got more useful cards all without ever spending a dime. And now with cycling it really is a matter of how long you can tolerate playing the game to win almost any node.