One Path Forward

A Retrospective on 12th place at RC Milwaukee

Testing

Back at RC Portland I dragged a very large team of friends off a cliff with me playing Lessons.

About a week before the event, I proclaimed that our deck had no bad matchups. The day before, I looked across a sea of Oko and Wistfulness, and concluded we actually had no winning matchups in the entire field. We proceeded to get mauled in the RC. I felt guilty as the main lessons cheerleader that I’d convinced people to play the deck, and only realized it was bad far too late to do anything about it.

I came away with the idea that I should not be leading a large RC team, and that very large teams were a poor idea to begin with. The more people we added, the more the vibes shifted from a group chat to a public forum; less vulnerable ideas were volunteered, most people stayed completely silent, and less testing was actually done.

It was follow-the-leader, I was acting leader, and I should not have been followed.

I planned to test solo for Milwaukee, working with Eli Swafford or Liam Etelson at most. However, Joseph Puglisi unexpectedly reached out to me about testing with Scrapheap. He said he had similar experiences with large groups and also wanted to keep the team intimate this time around, which aligned with my goals.

Myself, Eli, and Liam joined forces with the Heap, and embarked to learn a standard format that had been recently revolutionized by the Pro Tour in Richmond.

Getting Our Bearings

I started where I always do, mindlessly jamming games with every deck on the arena ladder to get a feel for the vibes. In a large open field tournament, I want to be playing one of the most powerful and reliable decks in the room, not something merely well positioned to beat a select few decks.

The team was all over the place. I was immediately drawn to Excruciator. Isaac had just qualified for Arena Champs with Dimir Mid. Joseph liked Cub and Boros Dragons. Zevin was working on Monument and Azorius Tempo. Liam loved Spellementals. Quinn was, as you might expect, only playing Monored.

Around this time, Landfall was resurging and winning a lot of challenges with Sapling Nursery and Fecund Greenshell. This was intuitive: in our previous testing Landfall felt favored into everything but Cub and Airbending, both were a rare sight nowadays.

I was initially impressed with the new Nursery package, but as we took the deck from arena ladder to focused practice sets, I became more skeptical of the deck. There were a lot of matchups where Nursery seemed too slow to matter, and the card introduced some awkwardness. The deck was up to 27 lands with only 3 Ba Sing Se, which made flooding out much more of a possibility than our previous 25 land builds with 4 Ba Sing Se. The Greenshells were also underwhelming on their own, and often felt win-more with the Nursery, as fun as it was to flip through your entire deck.

Nursery-Greenshell Landfall was seeming pretty mid.

Return To The Old Ways

We had a lot of reasons to believe Esper Origins may no longer be good. It was an entirely new metagame, and Origins seemed too small-ball to win against the extreme value the new decks could produce. Lorwyn Eclipsed introduced Spell Snare, Requiting Hex, and Sear which all lined up well into Origins. Still, it was clear that the Nursery vibes weren’t great, and the vibes from this Esper Origins deck were fantastic back in Atlanta.

Nostalgia from a tournament over a month ago isn’t the most sound testing data. However, the more we tested everything else, the more we yearned for the good ol’ days of having a deck that was somewhat functional every game. Now that the cubs were in hibernation, it might be our chance to run back Esper Origins Landfall.

Testing Results

Our primary concerns were the Lessons matchup and Doomsday matchup, which ended up both feeling Landfall favored. We ran a set against Doomsday with a teched list featuring some Annuls and Wan Shi Tong, Landfall went 5-0 in matches. I villained lessons against Eli and got absolutely clobbered.

We knew Cub would be bad, but there were a number of other matchups we were deeply concerned about, perhaps none more than the Cftsoc deck, Temur Harmonizer. I’ll dive deep on this matchup, not because it was particularly important, but because it’s illustrative of a broader realization we had in testing.

Landfall: The Only Functional Deck

We assumed the Temur Harmonizer matchup was close to unwinnable before we got any reps. They have a turn 4 kill we cannot interact with at all, and our average kill is turn 5 which can be interacted with from their side. However, when we actually started playing games of the matchup, Landfall was winning the majority.

We thought it was a fluke at first, but the trend held for a very long time. I even ran into Cftsoc themself on the arena ladder twice, and easily 2-0’d both times. What was happening?

While the Temur Harmonizer deck could kill on turn 4, it also did a number of other things. It lost because it couldn’t find all three colors of mana in sufficient quantities. It needed to crack a fetch for fixing and then couldn’t find one later for the combo kill. It took so long to find its combo that the Landfall player was able to assemble enough toughness to get out of range.

The Landfall deck took some number of game actions at random, put some threats on the board, and reliably killed on turns 5-6 through interaction. The results were staggering, but I think Liam put it best.

This was the case for many matchups that looked scary in theory. As a slowish monogreen deck with no interaction, we assumed we were behind against many of the linear decks in the format. If those decks were on an excellent draw, it was generally true we couldn’t beat them. But most decks in standard have games they completely fail to establish a path to victory, and in those games Landfall will always present some threat good enough to win.

I wrapped up testing feeling the best I’ve felt about a deck choice in ages. Even though people were aware that Landfall was good, it didn’t seem to be getting as much respect as it deserved. Our build gave us a meaningful edge in the mirror game ones. Instead of souring on the deck as the tournament approached as I often do, I felt more and more confident that we had a large edge on the field.

The Deck

The architects of the landfall list ended up being myself, Eli Swafford, Liam Etelson, John Puglisi and Pete Ingram with some help from Zevin Faust and Michael Simonetti. We convinced about half of the team onto the deck, with many others playing archetypes they were more comfortable with and passionate about.

This is the build I end up registering, I’ll quickly remark on some of the other unique aspects aside from the no Nursery thing.

4 Ba Sing Se: Other than Earthbender Ascension, this is the second best card in the deck. I would recommend playing four copies, even if you’re on Nursery. It singlehandedly won like 3-4 of my matches this weekend. When I don’t have a copy, I want to find one. When I do, I’m looking for the second.

2 Archdruid’s Charm: The more the meta centralizes around green mirrors and Lessons, the more this card shines. All four modes are useful, and although it’s expensive, it performs numerous functions that no other cards in the maindeck do at all. It’s awesome that we get to play solid interaction in our monogreen deck, and I don’t see myself going below two copies barring a large meta shift.

Maindeck Mossborn Hydra: This was targeted towards a metagame containing more green decks than came to fruition. The idea was that by running one copy and the two Archdruid’s Charms, we have access to 3 hydras in game 1. It’s really broken in the right matchups, but a complete liability in the bad matchups. Likely to be correct going forward, but possibly not right for this tournament.

4 Surrak (2/2 split): This was the choice my opponents often remarked upon, especially the lessons players. Lessons players were often going up heavy on countermagic postboard, and this seemed like the best punish. Disenchants and graveyard hate are nice, but they only address half the problem. Sometimes you lose to grancestral, sometimes you lose to their engines. Drawing the wrong kind of interaction for their hand can be game losing.

Surrak comes in, blanks any progress they can make with gran attacks, and starts pushing heavy damage. The worst case scenario with Surrak is that they have a removal spell and it draws you a card. The best case is that he lives and just murders them. Surrak is so problematic that I was happy to run 4, they can’t really win a game while it remains in play, so I’m content to draw multiples for when they eventually deal with one.

We also found that Surrak is a solid maindeck card. He punishes all manner of interaction and against green decks he’s a four power trampler that wears Harmonizer triggers.

No Origin of Metalbending: I only found this card to be good in the lessons matchup, and I didn’t find it to be particularly amazing there, especially with how they often approach the postboard. I would rather cards like Surrak or Soul-Guide Lantern which are nice against lessons and also have a good spread against the rest of the field.

No Torpor Orb: We came to the conclusion this card was a trap against Doomsday and Elementals decks. Doomsday runs you down on cards so they can win with a 2 mana 5/5 in a low resource game, and turning the entire elementals deck into overstated beaters and removal spells is a recipe for disaster. It does have applications against the Azorius tempo deck and Airbending, so if you expect these in your metagame I would pack a copy or two.

Tournament Report

R1 Scam Aristocrats - Aaron B WW

My first match was against a wild deck featuring evoke elementals, Not Dead After All, the Sephiroth-Voice of Victory Package, and even a couple Insidious Roots.

Our deck should just go way over the top of cute midrange piles like this, and that’s more or less exactly what happened. In game two my opponent casts Sothera, The Supervoid and I pick it up to read it no fewer than six times. I then stabilize and overpower with a couple Esper Origins.

R2 Doomsday - Alex Strange LWW

We felt favored in our testing, but things were not going well here. Game 1 my threats were cleanly answered, then turn five Cover Up into a turn six Doomsday with shark on board.

Game two is going similarly poorly, and I’m very behind in the midgame. I tank a while on an Esper Origins which reveals a Ba Sing Se on top of my library. This card is usually essential to the matchup, but I feel too far behind here, and decide that I need to bin it because I can probably only win if I eventually get to bring it back with an icetill explorer and other lands.

Shortly after, my opponent doomsdays with a shark on board. It looks like a wrap. I draw my 6th remaining card and meekly pass after running out my only threat, a solitary Mighform Harmonizer. My opponent sharks me the following turn and passes with twenty life, and multiple massive blockers.

I rip my final card, it’s an Icetill. I have an ascension with three counters, so I can play two lands from my yard and get my Mightform to 22 power (4->5->10->11->22). Not enough. I parse through my graveyard again and remember the Ba Sing Se I binned a couple turns ago. I play it, an escape tunnel, then I use Ba Sing Se to earthbend onto the fetch and crack it for my third landfall trigger. 46 trample out of nowhere, I love my deck.

Game three was unremarkable, I think my opponent got screwed on blue mana.

R3 Azorius Tempo - Jonayed Ahmed WLL

I recognize my opponent, he’s a kind and skilled player I lost to at an RCQ a while back.

Game one I have the nuts on the play. Turn 1 elf, turn 2 wagon, turn 3 harmonizer fetch ggs. Game two is tense. Most of what I do gets interacted with, but I do manage to land two ascensions. He beats down effectively with a nice Footpits Drowner, Aven, and Abandoned Air Temple. He puts me to 6 with a 4/4 Aven and a 4/3 Floodpits, and only has one mana up for my turn.

I look at my hand with a cub and fetch, do some quick counting, and decide I surely have lethal. I warp a Mightform Harmonizer. I play the fetch, then move to cast my Cub and earthbend onto it for lethal. Spell snared. I now have considerably less damage because I tried to earthbend the fetch instead of crack fetch with my Mightform trigger on the stack. I still think I can at least force a chump and move to combat, but neglect to consider that I’m down an ascension counter compared to the previous line, and end up one off forcing a chump. Oops.

Game three is doomed. My first couple plays are countered, then I get Avened, Avened again, and Aanged out of the game immediately. Understandable, I don’t deserve to win the match after punting as hard as I did in game two.

R4 Beefy Doomsday - Sylvie Sibila WW

I’m against an interesting Dimir Excruciator list with a lot of creatures: four Overlord of the Balemurk, three Preacher of the Schism, two Cruel Somnophage! This is actually not far off from something we tested, but fortunately the creatures are at their worst in this matchup, since our value goes way over the top of theirs.

Game one my opponent draws all three preachers and it’s just way too smallball for this matchup. Game two is also one-sided. I go extremely wide with two cubs, not finding any way to reasonably play around cover-up with my hand, and my opponent misses their fourth land drop.

R5 Izzet Elementals - Bradley Schlesinger WW

My opponent this round was an absolute pleasure, an extremely friendly/communicative local, skilled player, and offered me a souvenir Milwaukee Magic towel!

The matchup had me worried though, in the day before the event we identified this deck as potentially scary but didn’t have a great plan.

Game one I have an explosive linear start with multiple chocobos, and my opponent doesn’t have any of their two-drop accelerators. It ends quickly in my favor.

Game two I keep a slow six, but fortunately my opponent doesn’t have an accelerator this game either. On his turn four he plays a Roaming Throne, and on turn five he casts Wistfulness to exile my Earthbender Ascension and Esper Origins, drawing four cards and leaving me with nothing.

The game is feeling completely over, but I deploy an Icetill Explorer and a 1/1 Mossborn Hydra the next turn and try to steal a game with double harmonizer in my hand. My opponent addresses the hydra with a Vibrance, but opts to hold up Flashfreeze instead of killing my Icetill with sear. He Flashfreezes the first warped harmonizer, but I warp another and then play two fetches for 32 power on Icetill to win out of nowhere.

R6 4C Rhythm - Newton Cheng LWW

Game one I keep Forest, Fetch, 2x Chocobo, Cub, 2x Mightform on the play. This was a really poor keep. It has a plausible combination of cards, but they don’t really combine to do anything amazing, and there are few draws in the deck that make this hand actively powerful enough to win in the cub matchup.

Mulliganing is a lot of the matchup, and I just shortcutted to assuming the hand was good enough without thinking through the line I would take on every turn and what exact draws I would need to hit to make the hand winning. I lost horribly as I should have expected.

Game two I draw an amazing seven with multiple Mossborn Hydras and tons of fetches on the play, and win easily.

Game three I now need to win on the draw thanks to the poor game one keep. My opponent gets off to a fast start with a cub and an Ouroboroid, and threatens a scary next turn.

I get into a spot where I have a hydra on board and an icetill in hand. I can either choose to make the hydra a 2/2 with a forest and play a meldstrider’s resolve to kill a 2/2 llanowar elf, or I can play a fetch instead and make the hydra a 4/4. Given my four landfall triggers from two fetches next turn I can only make my hydra a 32/32 this turn if I don’t fetch, and with their Ouroboroid they’re too likely to be able to chump through that and kill me on the next turn if I don’t make my hydra a 64/64.

I opt to fetch, they play another Ouroboroid the next turn and pump their entire team by 5. They’re a couple damage off of killing me through my blockers so they pass back, only present ~40 toughness, and I barely get there with 64 power the next turn.

R7 Izzet Lessons - Joshua Willis WLW

This was my favorite match of the weekend. Joshua is a world class player and he completely schooled me at one of my first RCs. However, I’ve learned a lot in the ~8 months since we last played, and I want to prove how far I’ve come.

All three games were really close, we both drew strong hands and it came down to small edges in very complicated games. The spots were a bit too complex to describe with 100% accuracy, but the games I won were punctuated by two interesting Archdruid’s Charms.

The first was a tutor at the end of his turn, where I opted to get Ba Sing Se as my 5th land instead of getting an Icetill, fearing countermagic. This land ended up enabling a few key turns where I could play around Quench or double spell, and eventually the activations threatened a win. The second charm killed a Gran-Gran in response to an end of turn ancestral, while growing my cub out of Firebending Lesson range.

I played well, my opponent played well, and there were interesting spots and hand-reads to be made nearly every turn. This is what I play magic for.

R8 Doomsday - Sanggu Lee WW

My next opponent was also someone I knew, a strong RC grinder equally happy to start 6-1.

I mull to 6 OTD and see six lands, including a fetch, Ba Sing Se, and Esper Origins. I think to myself, without irony, I’m not sure if they can ever beat this. Turn 1 Intimidation Tactics whiffs, I topdeck a 6th land and their Deceit is forced to take Esper Origins. I then topdeck an elf, play it, and flashback Esper Origins on turn 3. The Esper Maduin is dealt with but my Ba Sing Se completely takes over the game.

Game two is uneventful, my opponent gets stuck on five lands and can’t interact super well. I draw a Ba Sing Se and they get too low on life to even safely wipe the board without dying to an earthbent land the following turn.

R9 Spellementals - Paul Green WW

I was not particularly happy to face Paul Green in the next round in a matchup I didn’t have much practice in. We have a nice conversation getting set up, he can definitely tell I’m a bit nervous.

I elf on turn one, he Sleight of Hands. I Worldwagon the following turn, he sleights and declares ‘Oh! I’m going to lose this game terribly’. He then discards to hand size after whiffing a land in six looks.

Game two I keep a hand with two Hydras, an Icetill, and a Royal Treatment. He deals with the first hydra I run out on turn 3, but the second Hydra is protected by the Treatment. He can’t interact again and is forced to hope I don’t trigger too many landfalls and deploy his threats. I show him Icetill, 4 landfall triggers, and a 33/33 Hydra the following turn.

Our match concludes in ten minutes, most of which was me nervously rethinking my sideboarding plans. Better lucky than good.

At the end of day one, the Landfall squad did exceptionally well. I led the pack at 8-1, but Liam, Pete, and John weren’t far behind at 7-2. Eli dropped at 4-3 since he was already qualified and wanted to play the LTQ. I know my deck is good enough to take me all the way, I would just need to play well tomorrow.

R10 Spellementals - Angus Johnson WLW

Games one and two are one-sided.

Game three I resolve a turn three Icetill on the play and my opponent goes deep into the tank. After a while it becomes clear they’re stuck between holding up countermagic for a potential Harmonizer kill or tapping out for a Winternight Stories. They choose to hold up Get Out, I dodge it by flashing back an Esper Origins. They’re forced to tap out the following turn to cast their Winternight, too far behind to do anything else. Harmonizer kills.

R11 Azorius Tempo - Christopher Kral WW

Our match begins with a twenty minute deck check. I’m getting really anxious, sure that me or my opponent are somehow in trouble given the massive delay, but the judges come back and say that both decks are good. No clue why it took so long.

In game one I land a turn two Ascension and things quickly get out of hand for my opponent. It takes a while for me to convert the win, but I’m never in any real danger.

Game two was pretty complicated and to be honest I don’t remember it that well. We were both under some time pressure from the previous game and a judge was watching our match and urging both players to act a bit quicker, probably in the interest of this round not actually going 20+ minutes over. I found a window for Mightform lethal in a complicated board state, and I was finally staring down my first PT win and in.

R12 Lessons - Prez Kuhnke LWW

My opponent is wearing a jersey for a San Diego local team I have many friends on, and we realize we run in many of the same circles.

We had a couple of nice conversations throughout the match. He brought up our mutual friend who started 9-0 at an RC and went on to not qualify for the Pro Tour after a series of bad breaks. We both admit the stress of the moment is weighing heavily on us; we really want to qualify, neither of us have before. This would be a rough position to fail from.

The games are uninteresting, a victory lap. I get obliterated by a nut draw game one, and the following games he draws awkwardly and Surrak solos.

Happy endings. I qualified for my first Pro Tour, and he qualified for his fifty minutes later.

R13 Lessons - Maxx Kominowski LL

If you gave me a nickel for every time I played Maxx Kominowski on backup feature cam three in the Lessons vs Landfall matchup in the last two months, I would have two nickels. Unfortunately, I would also have zero wins.

Game one he has the nuts. On the play Gran, heavy lesson interaction and he’s already cast ancestral by my turn three. I put out a couple creatures that don’t really matter and earthbend onto a promising vein. I look woefully behind, as he’s set up multiple Talents and Monuments but can’t quite kill me. He leaves up one last treasure for a Combustion Technique, which gives me a narrow window to steal the game in response to his first talent trigger if I draw exactly Royal Treatment for turn. I don’t.

I desperately warp a Mightform to try to push for lethal, but the odds that my opponent doesn’t have an answer are cosmic, he just drew thirty cards. He has the Combustion and I concede.

The next game was less one sided, I developed slowly and both players got stranded on cards. I start to chip my opponent down with a Surrak before he can ancestral, but Surrak is eaten by an X=4 Wan-Shi-Tong. I died shortly after.

R14 Lessons - Will Krueger LWL

I reached near exact mental clarity in my five rounds earlier today. In round six, be it the nerves, the exhaustion, or not taking good care of myself, I hit a wall.

Game one I keep a pretty airy hand with cub, wagon, and an Icetill Explorer and four lands. I didn’t draw any more spells and couldn’t dig to an Esper Origins despite my desperate attempts; my opponent’s talent into monument draw played solitaire effectively into my passive hand.

Game two I look at my opening hand: it contains a lot of lands. Too many lands. I accidentally drew eight cards, fuck. Not sure if it was keepable with any subset of the eight, but now I have to ship it, and I’m pretty furious at myself for making such a stupid mistake. I draw my six and it has six lands and a cub, down to five. My five is nice: Elves, Surrak, Wagon, and two lands. My t2 wagon gets annulled, and my game completely collapses when my opponent hits my Surrak and Elf with the same Slagstorm. Super over.

Or so I thought. It’s a really bizarre game but I proceed to draw and play two more Surraks. The first is dealt with quickly again, but at least draws me a card. The second one sticks and pushes serious damage before being again dealt with and drawing me a card. My opponent is stumbling with a couple of talents but no gran or monument, and has gone down really low on cards. They eventually stick a monument but are in imminent danger of Ba Sing Se.

At four life they try to dig for enough answers to deal with my Chocobo, earthbent land, and the incoming haste land from Ba Sing Se but they come up short and I somehow win. I’m feeling incredibly blessed that my ridiculous mulligan blunder didn’t knock me out of the tournament. If I could win that game then I’m not sure what could stop me in game three.

In game three, I keep a hand with Llanowar Elves, two Ascensions, and four lands. I never draw another spell, play a land every turn and concede revealing four more basics stuck in hand. I congratulate Will and wish him luck in the top 8.

R15 - Intentional Draw

My friends start telling me that I’m in a brutal position. I could choose to play for a possible top 8, but risk falling out of top32 and losing my PT slot. I’m forced to reckon with my priorities. Am I here to qualify for the Pro Tour, or am I here to win this tournament? I ponder in anxiety but decide it will be a game-time decision based on the probability of each outcome.

The standings get posted and reveal my friends had no idea what they were doing, it’s the cleanest of clean cuts for top eight and top thirty-two. I look for my opponent and gleefully draw, grateful I won’t make any more real decisions for the day.

We get the Scrapheap gang back together for a team draft; my brain isn’t functioning in the slightest. I draft my seat horrendously and trainwreck both myself and Zevin to my left. I 3-0, playing terribly, getting insanely lucky, and being outrageously obnoxious to my friends the entire time. We gather the team for dinner, argue for half an hour in the freezing cold about whether Eli’s LTQ draft deck is a 4/10 or 6/10, (when Eli arrived he informed us it was a 5/10), and enjoy some Korean food.

Reflections

I played my first RCQ in July of 2024, and my first RC in January of 2025. I go to every American RC and most Spotlights. I’ve not been playing competitively for that long a time, but I’ve played so many events.

I reached nearly 2k Elo and had never played so much as a PT win and in – I never came close. My event history is littered with 9-6s, 10-5s, and 11-4s with completely unviable breakers.

People would often compliment me by telling me I was due for an invite. While I thought I was at the level where I could definitely qualify, I was still making enough mistakes that I couldn’t really complain about my results at any given tournament.

At this tournament, I also made multiple large mistakes that lost me games. I was fortunate that none of them cost me the invite; you don’t generally have losses to give. It was only because of a broken deck, a few lucky breaks, and strong matchup plans that I even had a chance to qualify after some of my errors. I walk away from my first ‘success’ even hungrier to improve than from any of my failures.

I’ll be at Spotlight Richmond, mostly looking to qualify for the Limited Championship and hang out with some friends from Cornell. After this, there are no paper tournaments until the Pro Tour in May, which gives me some time to sharpen the blade. I’m going to work on regiments to improve my focus, implement a better diet, dial back my non-magic screen time, get some exercise and resume reading. I’m physically and mentally out of shape; it’s detracting from my game and my life.

I’ll continue with writing; I am humbled by the positive response my last article received. Expect some theory/improvement focused articles covering the lessons I’ve learned by grinding like a maniac for the last year. I recognize few have the privilege of playing and consuming magic for hours every single day like I do.

Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven

I didn’t expect to have many testing team invites, but I’ve been graciously offered a testing spot on a truly elite Pro Tour team, beyond even my wildest hopes. I’ll be the only player on the team playing their first PT, and will be collaborating with many of the greatest players of the modern era.

I’m obviously nervous, but I’m confident I will contribute meaningfully, and I’m ready to put my 100% into maximizing the opportunity. I will be asking many stupid questions, losing many testing sets, and hopefully finding the deck that will win us the Pro Tour.

Shout out to all the grinders working towards their first big win. It might feel like insanity travelling across the country to min-cash, and that’s because it is. But it’s awesome, and I’m so glad I never gave up on it.

Seedcore/Scrapheap/???

-Neil Estrada