@dashkataey1740 I think that's a little harsh. Regardless of player skill, sometimes games are just unwinnable. Let's treat it like a chess puzzle, how would Faeries have beaten Rakdos game 1? Given all the information of what was drawn, how would the faeries beat that draw? Variance hits you sometimes.
It's to be nice. He's nice. Doing this is a professional game of Magic would be kind of stupid. Always mess with the opponent's head unless you are mr. nice guy mengucci
I don't remember what video, but I'm pretty sure I watched something a few years ago where someone was reviewing WC decks and was like "this is a five color deck with ten swamps, what the fuck was going on in 1997".
This was a fun series, at least both decks got to show off a little of their power. Also I like to see Andrea Mengucci in these videos. He's an excellent magic player and positive personality. -- Spoiler alert -- Too bad the Faeries couldn't put up more of a fight. The 3 games were not as close as you'd expect. The Hazored deck having a much more powerful pro-active game plan and the Faeries having a whole lot of potential dead cards in the list was just too much of a difference in the end. Ending up losing the game with a hand full of cards that do nothing is indicative of this for sure. Thanks for posting, hopefully the Hazored deck does well in the upcoming rounds and Faeries didn't get eliminated for no reason.
@@janmelantu7490 Also shows off how much more reliable removal we have in black currently, having Doom Blade as a strict upgrade or Fatal Push as a one cost modern spell. The Faeries decks tradionally act as a control list but with a tempo plan to shut the opposition down long enough to win the game. Not having the right answers is what normally makes control decks unplayable in a format. In this case, we have to accept the fact that these decks are tailored for their respective metagame and/or not have the best spells available to begin with to compete with the wider range of threats this format has. It is still a fun excercise in a 'what if' way. However, I wonder what would happen if you take all of these decks and upgrade them to a specific format (like modern for example) with all the best tools available and see how they fare against eachother then. Not to take away from this specific series, as it was still fun to watch and the players always make for entertaining games with their banter and explanations of play, but the actual decks did feel a bit like an unfair matchup in the more recent deck's favor.
Bracket line up is a huge part of magic tournaments, dealing with bad luck, bad hands, bad dice rolls, and bad match ups is all part of the process of trying to reach the top. If they ever reseeded the brackets and did it again you'd probably find similar but different results across the whole tournament, where all kinds of decks that should not have been knocked out when they were now doing that very thing to other decks.
@@CardmarketMagic Gonna be honest, would have been very cool to see the entire Swiss, even if it means non edited footage, like some goat decks stream situation rather than actual videos
It's rather fitting given the nature of standard has always been heavily determined by play/draw, and we're just going through decades of standard decks
You might have covered this somewhere else, but it would be really interesting to have a video discussing how being on draw vs play influences your strategy, how it changes what you consider a "good" card. Clearly its a huge deal for you guys, but as a part time dabbler only its not something I'd really considered heavily.
Generally it isn't a HUGE thing either. But a few examples would be if you are playing Thoughtseize against someone playing 4 Ragavans those Thoughtseizes are EASY on the play because you get to take the Ragavans. On the draw when they get to play the Ragavan before a Thoughtseize you might rather want a Fatal Push. Does depend on the scenario. Also a card like Censor gets a bit worse on the draw. Again it depends on which cards are important for the opponent. If they have an important 2 drop you can cut censor, if their best card is a three drop Censor still has some text. Imagine if their best card is a 2 drop there is NEVER a time where Censor will counter that card if you are on the draw. The first time you get to hold up Censor he has 3 mana. 2 for his good card and an extra for Censor... Just two small examples. Not the biggest deal but it's the tiny edges that gives you a chance. The fact that if you are on the play you can always resolve and attack with a Bomat Courier gives you a slight edge sometimes. Also puts the pressure on. Do you kill a Bomat Courier or do you continue to take 1 and give a potential card. As soon as Bomat has 3 cards under it it's rough because you can sacrifice it to its ability in response to removal. 3 cards is a bit early in this deck, but if you doom blade a bomat you dont doom blade the glorybringer. u know it's the small things
@@CardmarketMagic oh - oops. Feel like I knew and forgot for a moment. In Berlin, right? Or was it somewhere else? Anyways, always love Andrea as a guest. He's great!
I imagine they may have had some scheduling constraints and I'm not saying that that either Jamin or Carl are bad players, but I'd have preferred if the whole series could had followed the Jamin vs Carl and Andrea vs Thoralf matchups so "player-skill" could be completely discarded as a factor in this competition.
Agreed. No shade on Carl but when Mengu swung in game 1 and Carl blocked with mutavault and sprite then agony warped giving both -3/-0 and -0/-3 to the karnstruct I feel that really showed his level of play. There were several lines there I believe would have been much better. Say -3/-0 the scrapheap leaving it unblocked, blocking karnstruct with sprite and hitting it with -0/-3 trading those and blocking with mutavault against courier for example.
These videos are doing a great job of showing amazing decks throughout the ages, I think a video series where you guys do a deep dive of famous decks, go over the key cards, the combos, the strategies, the sideboard etc. As a somewhat new magic player I hear about decks like tron or izzet creativity and have no idea what they are. I can look up the decklist but sometimes that doesn't provide the context for why its a good deck or how its piloted. I would love to see you guys go over these decks snd teach us about how and why they work.
@@CardmarketMagic I think these videos are great the way they are, we get to see the deck in action so can kind of see why it works, I mean a new series were each video looks at a single deck that was/is popular and does a breakdown. Maybe that doesn't sound appealing for a mass audience but I think it would be cool. Keep up the great work everyone there!
Dude this channel is REALLY well managed The video quality is insane and only gets better I was REALLY rooting for Faeries but Aggro is just too Aggro sadly Love seeing Mengu join as well!
@@CardmarketMagic as you should be! Everyone seems so kind and looks like they're having so much fun, and you can tell the love for the craft in the production quality of the videos I'm loving this series, and love the channel overall!
These matches are so entertaining to watch! I think playing old standard decks against each other would make a great format in itself, call it "retrostandard"?
@@dashkatae it would be near impossible to win even if Carl kept mana open on turn 2. The scrapheap was putting on pressure, and even if he countered every single spell and killed the scrapheap, it would keep coming back; the Faeries have weaker late game than the Red deck, and playing a lot of 1 for 1 removal against a deck filled with value cards is always problematic. Also don't forget he was playing with an objectively weaker deck, against one of the best players in the world, on the draw. and you're being a jerk
@@RussianBot1998 Never said they would win, but would have at least given them a chance to win. Turn three he gets hit, turn four he gets hit but can deploy bitterblossom then, turn five he now has a chump blocker. Besides, he was already getting smashed for three every turn from an unanswerable threat, the chainwhirler. Trying to out-aggro the aggro player when you're a tempo/control deck is a guaranteed way to lose. If his hand was tempo cards, aka, removal, then yes, bitterblossom turn two is the right play against the aggro deck. But he didn't have that in his hand so then he has to slow the game down as much as he can and the best way to do that is to take three a turn while getting yourself set up to come back. Playing Broken Ambitions, for example, against Chainwhirler would have allowed him to get rid of the swamp he drew next turn, allowing him a better chance of drawing a card that would actually have helped him. Turn five gives you the chance to Cryptic Command to stem the damage while also getting some defenses on the board. That's what I'm saying, when you're playing a tempo/control deck, you have to be able to assess your hand and hold back from time to time in order to gain the advantage later. He took 12 damage in three turns because of his bitterblossom and the unanswered Chainwhirler versus 9 damage in three turns from just an unanswered scrounger. Which is the better position? I would rather have more life and only one threat from my opponent than a bunch of threats that I can't answer.
Not a fan of the faeries deck list. I guess that's what you get in standard 2008. Love the videos and Andrea Mengucci is a great addition. I love that he brought his personal deck from playing in that actual tournament 2018. Also Prismatic black agro better make the underdog run a reality, I'm rooting for it!
@@dashkatae He isn't a control player, he's a tempo player. He needs to have pressure in play, because he needs Mengu to die before he can start reanimating scroungers, which Faerie's can't really beat. Playing the Bitterblossom turn 2 is the correct play, it's just a nightmare matchup for Faeries where even the correct play is really bad.
@@bennettpalmer1741 Tempo if he had the tempo cards in hand, he didn't. He has to play it as a control deck against aggro if that's his hand. Wait until turn four, play Blossom then. You'll be at a better life total and with a much better board. If he had removal in his hand, that would be a different story, you play bitterblossom turn two and just kill their stuff, he didn't so it's a massive misplay.
I just love Andrea his humour...the small things like "That's what makes a great player, keeping an opening hand with 5 lands and then only draw spells"
The power creep is surprisingly not that bad since play vs draw made a big difference. Really loving the series so far. Only suggestion would be to move to double elimination brackets next time to alleviate some bracket and play/draw variables
From a viewer's perspective, I can understand how it's appealing. But these videos take me multiple days to make the overlays for each 😅 I can't really afford to do more. But we might revisit the series again this year :)
8:10 Carl misplayed... he should have block the construct with the mutavault, kill the Scrounger with the agony warp and reduce the power of the construct with the agony warp. The muta would survive since the construct is a 0/3 since the Scrounger dies to the agony warp... then the Spellstutter trade with the boumat, making both constructs 2/2 and since it already have 2 damage of the mutavault, that one would die too... It would not change that much the game, but still was not the best play.
We realized that this is a flaw (also missing original affinity and combo winter's welding jar), but we had to cut the pool somewhere. We already had to play about 50 rounds of Swiss 😅
looking at the power of T2 Bitterblossom it makes no sense that ponder wasnt an auto include. I did the math once and it increases T2 Bitterblossom by ~ 10%p. Faeries had bad matchups against agressive red deck, even in their time, and this wasn the best verison of the deck as it was post rotation. Trading 1 for 1 a bunch with Ancestral visions suspended is a lot more fun thanw ithout it.
7:43 Agony Warp in response to Karn activation, or just the Bomat courier play, kills the construct and makes the Scrounger into a 0 power creature for the turn (if it's the target for the -3/-0).I don't understand why this wasn't the play. Life total would be 5 instead of 4.
I was torn on who to root for here. On the one hand, Lorwyn holds a special place is my heart as that was current set when I first start playing. On the other hand I have a deep-seated hatred for faerie decks due to one we called "Doug the Dream Crusher".
It would be great to see an Odric, Master Tactician deck. This deck would focus on getting a wide human soldier board state, giving it first strike and denying any creature presence from your opponent. Or you could just bypass any blockers and go for lethal. Lastly, depending on what format you want to play this deck in, you could use BANDING from sources like Baton of Morale. Very thematic and good damage prevention.
Good games! I swear, if the Blue White control in the running was the Ivan Floch style Sphinx's Revelation / Elixir of Immortality deck instead of the Teferi nonsense, control would have rolled this tournament.
And go to 1? The struct was a 4/4, Carl was at 5, you go to 1 was hazored you are dead anyway and it turns off Carl's pain lands etc, he had no real choice. And where are your 2 blockers? Only mutavault is saved there, swapping blockers would mean scrap doesn't die. There was nothing to be done at that turn.
I really enjoyed the matchup, really nice video. Also, in the beginning you say that you played all the best decks and got to the top 8, will you release, at the end of the tournament, the stats of which decks didn't get to top 8 and specially, which one was the worst of them all? I really would love to know which decks underperformed and if there was a deck you thought would do better that just bombed. Keep the awesome content Carl!
Thank you :) we'll release a bit of a breakdown in the end but we might not focus on it too much (maybe because we're thinking of doing this again now 🤫). But the deck that did not win a single game in the Swiss was Astral Slide
I feel like taking out the thoughtseizes going second was a mistake. It's the only way the faeries deck has to interact on t1 and it can potentially mess with Andrea's curve. Games went pretty much as expected though, faeries will have a tough time going second against an aggressive start.
Pretty much exactly this. Also, both times sower got played it was with zero knowledge of opponents hand & zero means to protect it. In game 1 it pretty much cost the game. In game 3 faeries were already trailing, but the tempo loss from the sower exchange put them in the ground. You need stronger nerves than that for faeries, can't have any of this ready, fire, aim stuff with your sowers.
What... Imagine turn 1 thoughtseize... Karl takes... hmm let's say a Chainwhirler. Then on turn 4 he resolves a Chandra. What would you rather draw for the rest of the game a Thoughtseize or a Hero's Downfall (or similar) is basically the argument
@@namdoolb Yes because Sower is fucking terrible, dude. He knows that there are maindeck Abrades, a cut and Magma Spray... Sower is just not good here. Not in game 1, not in game 2 and not in game 4555555
It's a classic sideboarding technique in pro magic to remove thoughtseizes against Hazored or other redundant mid-range decks. Taking out one card from their hand is not that strong if all the pieces are simply solid cards that replace each other (it's usually even negative tempo as they don't end up spending the mana on it) and Faeries cannot really afford to lose the life against Hazored
As someone who has tried to make use of Agony Warp - in a casual Faeries deck no less - I was a bit disappointed to not see half of it used to save Mutavault.
That would have left me at one life, which not only would have left me dead to most of Andrea's cards, but also would have made all my pain lands unusable 😅
Removing the power of the scrapheap would have put me down to 1, which would have left me dead to most of Andrea's cards but would have also cut me off from using my 3 pain lands 😬
At 8:50 shouldn't the construct that was Agony Warped have died after combat? Since it was a 4/4 and two artifacts left the field, it should've shrunk to a 2/2 with -3/-3, right?
Scrapheap alone was such a bastidge to deal with on that meta. Sorry to see the Faeries leave but I'm ki da surprised it survived this long considering the power creep
Or the fact that the person who played control was just crap at doing it. It doesn't matter how good a deck is, if the person piloting it sucks, they're going to lose more often then not.
I'm still in shock that the most recent deck that even got to top 8 was 2019's azorius control. I mean, how did epiphany, omnath, AND grixis midrange all get shredded?
They did not get shredded, but some of them did play against each other and only 3 losses cuts you out of the top 8. We were surprised too but also, a lot can happen in 5 rounds of Swiss. If it was round Robin (or many many more rounds of swiss), I'm sure we'd see more recent deck much more favored here
Game 1 blocks could've been SSS blocking courier, Mutabault blocking Karnstruct, and kill the scavenger, so after combat there would only be 11/1 Karnstruct, which mightve given an extra turn
Well, that would also require a halfway-skilled Magic player to be playing the deck. The Faeries game was over on turn two of the third game when he had the brilliant idea of playing Bitterblossom against an aggro deck even though he had three different counterspells in his hand.
question 8:14 why he doesn't Agony Warp -0/-3 the courier, block the construct with Sprite, and -3/-0 the scourger? so he would loose no life and still have the mutavault. right?
I feel like the thoughtseizes were very important to snipe out problem threats like hazoret honestly. it's super feels bad that faeries lost despite getting a pretty good hand game 3
Game 1 the turn andrea swings with bomat, construct, and scrap heap. I believe the response shouldve been: Spellstutter block bomat Mutabailt block construct Agony warp (-3/-0) on construct Agony warp (-0/-3) on scrap I think this wouldve been the most optimal play pattern on defense there, can someone confirm this?
i have an honest question if the construct @8:49 got -3/-3 untill end of turn and then when the other artifacts dies that would make it a 1/1 would it not be dead due to the -3/-3 ?
![Digital Circus Episode 4 [TRAILER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/abZtsmMUbJo/mqdefault.jpg)
🔥🧚♀️ Decklists: bit.ly/3NmkMZI
Can we get a breakdown of how the eliminations went? Whittling it down to the top eight?
I swear if Prismatic Black wins this whole thing, I’m going to absolutely lose my mind. The biggest underdog story of all time is in the making.
How dare you, prismaggro black is my favorite
proof that powerlvl of cards back in the day was way less than the powercreep we got now.... but like in eternal formats: speed > Powercreep
💯
With how bad some of these players are at playing these decks, I wouldn't doubt that Prismatic Black would win at this point.
@dashkataey1740 I think that's a little harsh. Regardless of player skill, sometimes games are just unwinnable. Let's treat it like a chess puzzle, how would Faeries have beaten Rakdos game 1? Given all the information of what was drawn, how would the faeries beat that draw? Variance hits you sometimes.
Andrea has a lot of subtle professionalism in his play like separating the lands from spells on a thoughtseize
It's to be nice. He's nice. Doing this is a professional game of Magic would be kind of stupid. Always mess with the opponent's head unless you are mr. nice guy mengucci
@@Nicc11221 Mengucci doesn't need to mess with the opponent to win. He is that virtuous.
I so hope prismatic monoblack wins it all in the end. I would laugh so hard
I don't remember what video, but I'm pretty sure I watched something a few years ago where someone was reviewing WC decks and was like "this is a five color deck with ten swamps, what the fuck was going on in 1997".
It’s going to depend who plays what. There’s a big skill gap.
@@Rallylabs nah, there is a 0% chance prismatic black will win. it CANNOT beat hazored, regardless of player.
Yeah, the only aggro deck more efficiemt than Ramumap Red is Affinity.
Please bring us more of this! The decks are so iconic and pure nostalgia, you could and should establish a bigger series for this.
We're thinking of giving it a second spin at some point this year :)
Man this is such a genius video series! I've been enjoying each and every one. Andrea and Carl have such a fun rapport.
This entire series is pure gas, love seeing these old decks and the chemistry between everyone has been top. More please!
Love every video with Andrea playing paper magic. Such a great personality, so much fun to watch ❤
He is indeed always great to have on :)
This was a fun series, at least both decks got to show off a little of their power. Also I like to see Andrea Mengucci in these videos. He's an excellent magic player and positive personality.
-- Spoiler alert --
Too bad the Faeries couldn't put up more of a fight. The 3 games were not as close as you'd expect. The Hazored deck having a much more powerful pro-active game plan and the Faeries having a whole lot of potential dead cards in the list was just too much of a difference in the end. Ending up losing the game with a hand full of cards that do nothing is indicative of this for sure.
Thanks for posting, hopefully the Hazored deck does well in the upcoming rounds and Faeries didn't get eliminated for no reason.
The fact that faeries was running Terror against a deck full of artifact creatures really shows how sensitive a metagame is to specific answers.
@@janmelantu7490 Also shows off how much more reliable removal we have in black currently, having Doom Blade as a strict upgrade or Fatal Push as a one cost modern spell. The Faeries decks tradionally act as a control list but with a tempo plan to shut the opposition down long enough to win the game. Not having the right answers is what normally makes control decks unplayable in a format.
In this case, we have to accept the fact that these decks are tailored for their respective metagame and/or not have the best spells available to begin with to compete with the wider range of threats this format has. It is still a fun excercise in a 'what if' way. However, I wonder what would happen if you take all of these decks and upgrade them to a specific format (like modern for example) with all the best tools available and see how they fare against eachother then.
Not to take away from this specific series, as it was still fun to watch and the players always make for entertaining games with their banter and explanations of play, but the actual decks did feel a bit like an unfair matchup in the more recent deck's favor.
That was about how I thought the match was going to play out. I’m anxious to see how the next couple weeks finish up. Great video guys.
Thank you :) hope the next two deliver!
@17:57 That fairy animation on top of Bitterblossom? Magical. Nice editing, guys. Your videos just get better and better to watch.
Thank you :) I'm really proud of how much better at editing I've gotten in the past year!
It's a bit sad that play draw was so determinative here. If faeries was on the play for two games this could easily have gone the other way.
Bracket line up is a huge part of magic tournaments, dealing with bad luck, bad hands, bad dice rolls, and bad match ups is all part of the process of trying to reach the top.
If they ever reseeded the brackets and did it again you'd probably find similar but different results across the whole tournament, where all kinds of decks that should not have been knocked out when they were now doing that very thing to other decks.
Yes, we were surprised by the Swiss especially. If we did the whole thing again, I wouldn't be surprised to see an almost entirely different top 8.
@@CardmarketMagic Gonna be honest, would have been very cool to see the entire Swiss, even if it means non edited footage, like some goat decks stream situation rather than actual videos
It's rather fitting given the nature of standard has always been heavily determined by play/draw, and we're just going through decades of standard decks
@@CardmarketMagicdo we have the swiss record somewhere?
You might have covered this somewhere else, but it would be really interesting to have a video discussing how being on draw vs play influences your strategy, how it changes what you consider a "good" card.
Clearly its a huge deal for you guys, but as a part time dabbler only its not something I'd really considered heavily.
Generally it isn't a HUGE thing either. But a few examples would be if you are playing Thoughtseize against someone playing 4 Ragavans those Thoughtseizes are EASY on the play because you get to take the Ragavans. On the draw when they get to play the Ragavan before a Thoughtseize you might rather want a Fatal Push. Does depend on the scenario.
Also a card like Censor gets a bit worse on the draw. Again it depends on which cards are important for the opponent. If they have an important 2 drop you can cut censor, if their best card is a three drop Censor still has some text. Imagine if their best card is a 2 drop there is NEVER a time where Censor will counter that card if you are on the draw. The first time you get to hold up Censor he has 3 mana. 2 for his good card and an extra for Censor...
Just two small examples. Not the biggest deal but it's the tiny edges that gives you a chance. The fact that if you are on the play you can always resolve and attack with a Bomat Courier gives you a slight edge sometimes. Also puts the pressure on. Do you kill a Bomat Courier or do you continue to take 1 and give a potential card. As soon as Bomat has 3 cards under it it's rough because you can sacrifice it to its ability in response to removal. 3 cards is a bit early in this deck, but if you doom blade a bomat you dont doom blade the glorybringer. u know it's the small things
Andrea is a welcome addition and hope to see more collaborations in the future.
Andrea is a main character in the Cardmarket Cinematic Universe at this point :) he's not going anywhere
"I still had all these, says Carl" haha. I love the energy Mengu brings to the channel. Love all you guys :)
Yes Mengu is wonderful :)
Heck yeah! This has been such a great series to follow!
Yay for Andrea! He's amazing. Much love from Germany.
Andrea is indeed great. Also, in case you don't know, all of these videos are filmed in Deutschland :)
@@CardmarketMagic oh - oops. Feel like I knew and forgot for a moment. In Berlin, right? Or was it somewhere else?
Anyways, always love Andrea as a guest. He's great!
Oh boy. This'll be really interesting! My guess is Hazored but this should be incredibly close!
Love Love Love this series so much. Hope to see this somehow in other formats, and love the guests (especially Mengu!)
What formats would you like to see it in?
Definitely modern! But pioneer and legacy would be super fun too!!
@Hopkins0316 modern would indeed be great :D
I imagine they may have had some scheduling constraints and I'm not saying that that either Jamin or Carl are bad players, but I'd have preferred if the whole series could had followed the Jamin vs Carl and Andrea vs Thoralf matchups so "player-skill" could be completely discarded as a factor in this competition.
Agreed. No shade on Carl but when Mengu swung in game 1 and Carl blocked with mutavault and sprite then agony warped giving both -3/-0 and -0/-3 to the karnstruct I feel that really showed his level of play. There were several lines there I believe would have been much better. Say -3/-0 the scrapheap leaving it unblocked, blocking karnstruct with sprite and hitting it with -0/-3 trading those and blocking with mutavault against courier for example.
@@whocifer9392 that game was 100% lost though, so it wouldn't have mattered anyway.
watching andrea playing rakdos was a masterpiece on putting on pressure, thanks!
Mr. Mengu, you are a wizard of many coasts. Love to you all @Cardmarketmagic as well 🤗
🥰
I could see this go either way! Cool match, great content!
Thank you :)
These videos are so much fun and so beautifully made. I don't even play magic and I love them.
That's such high praise :) thank you for your kind comment
this really showcases the difference between play and draw, much closer than expected!
These videos are doing a great job of showing amazing decks throughout the ages, I think a video series where you guys do a deep dive of famous decks, go over the key cards, the combos, the strategies, the sideboard etc. As a somewhat new magic player I hear about decks like tron or izzet creativity and have no idea what they are. I can look up the decklist but sometimes that doesn't provide the context for why its a good deck or how its piloted. I would love to see you guys go over these decks snd teach us about how and why they work.
If we do another series like this, we'll look into having a deeper breakdown on how the decks function :)
@@CardmarketMagic I think these videos are great the way they are, we get to see the deck in action so can kind of see why it works, I mean a new series were each video looks at a single deck that was/is popular and does a breakdown. Maybe that doesn't sound appealing for a mass audience but I think it would be cool. Keep up the great work everyone there!
I've only known the faerie deck for 2 videos, but I fell in love quickly. I'll miss it T^T
I don't think fries will win but I'm rooting for it.
Yes tater tots have got this
French fries are worth rooting for.
@@TostonDePana they'll put up a valiant effort but it shall be in vain
Big fan of mash potato myself, think it's got everything it needs to go all the way. 💪
@@EpicallyEvil1 are you crazy? Mashed potatoes haven't been meta since 2011
This format is awesome! I really hope you do more of this!
Dude this channel is REALLY well managed
The video quality is insane and only gets better
I was REALLY rooting for Faeries but Aggro is just too Aggro sadly
Love seeing Mengu join as well!
Thank you 🙃 I'm really proud at how I've gotten better at making these videos in the past year
@@CardmarketMagic as you should be! Everyone seems so kind and looks like they're having so much fun, and you can tell the love for the craft in the production quality of the videos
I'm loving this series, and love the channel overall!
yesss, another episode of my favourite youtube series!
You’re doing a great job with this series, good job guys!
Thank you! :D
Love the collaboration with MENGU!
There will be many more to come :)
Great series! Waiting to see what the next games will bring!
These matches are so entertaining to watch! I think playing old standard decks against each other would make a great format in itself, call it "retrostandard"?
You've got at least one more guaranteed player for Retrostandard anyway!
I would like to see you guys try a similar series. Featuring current Pioneer meta decks.
Damn, really sad to see faeries goes this way. Hoping to see temur energy in the finals vs hazored now!
Would have been more exciting if Faeries didn't punt the third game away on turn two against an aggro deck.
@@dashkatae faeries would have won that game would they? Getting smashed for 3 ever turn by an unanswerable threat.
@@dashkatae it would be near impossible to win even if Carl kept mana open on turn 2. The scrapheap was putting on pressure, and even if he countered every single spell and killed the scrapheap, it would keep coming back; the Faeries have weaker late game than the Red deck, and playing a lot of 1 for 1 removal against a deck filled with value cards is always problematic. Also don't forget he was playing with an objectively weaker deck, against one of the best players in the world, on the draw.
and you're being a jerk
@@RussianBot1998 Never said they would win, but would have at least given them a chance to win. Turn three he gets hit, turn four he gets hit but can deploy bitterblossom then, turn five he now has a chump blocker. Besides, he was already getting smashed for three every turn from an unanswerable threat, the chainwhirler. Trying to out-aggro the aggro player when you're a tempo/control deck is a guaranteed way to lose. If his hand was tempo cards, aka, removal, then yes, bitterblossom turn two is the right play against the aggro deck. But he didn't have that in his hand so then he has to slow the game down as much as he can and the best way to do that is to take three a turn while getting yourself set up to come back. Playing Broken Ambitions, for example, against Chainwhirler would have allowed him to get rid of the swamp he drew next turn, allowing him a better chance of drawing a card that would actually have helped him. Turn five gives you the chance to Cryptic Command to stem the damage while also getting some defenses on the board. That's what I'm saying, when you're playing a tempo/control deck, you have to be able to assess your hand and hold back from time to time in order to gain the advantage later. He took 12 damage in three turns because of his bitterblossom and the unanswered Chainwhirler versus 9 damage in three turns from just an unanswered scrounger. Which is the better position? I would rather have more life and only one threat from my opponent than a bunch of threats that I can't answer.
Not a fan of the faeries deck list. I guess that's what you get in standard 2008. Love the videos and Andrea Mengucci is a great addition. I love that he brought his personal deck from playing in that actual tournament 2018. Also Prismatic black agro better make the underdog run a reality, I'm rooting for it!
That deck was a total terror back then, but threats were way less efficient too.
Seems like this series is coming to a conclusion soon. 😢
Na, ok you will probably still play loads of paper magic
I'm truly happy you enjoy it :) this series is my pet project. Hopefully what we do afterwards equally delivers
If this deck goes against Temur energy I think we can all agree glorybringer is a good card.
Really?
LEGBONE ENERGY
Sad to see the outcome but it makes sense. Love this series so much!
Makes sense when the control player decides to play a turn two Bitterblossom instead of holding up his mana for a counter.
@@dashkatae He isn't a control player, he's a tempo player. He needs to have pressure in play, because he needs Mengu to die before he can start reanimating scroungers, which Faerie's can't really beat. Playing the Bitterblossom turn 2 is the correct play, it's just a nightmare matchup for Faeries where even the correct play is really bad.
@@bennettpalmer1741 Tempo if he had the tempo cards in hand, he didn't. He has to play it as a control deck against aggro if that's his hand. Wait until turn four, play Blossom then. You'll be at a better life total and with a much better board. If he had removal in his hand, that would be a different story, you play bitterblossom turn two and just kill their stuff, he didn't so it's a massive misplay.
Great game and great series! Thanks guys!
Thank you :) happy you enjoyed it
Such great content! Love Andrea.
Was hoping it would be TheAsianAvenger piloting the faeries but I'm guessing he wasn't around for the recording.
We recorded the whole series in one weekend. Crim will be in many upcoming videos though :)
I just love Andrea his humour...the small things like "That's what makes a great player, keeping an opening hand with 5 lands and then only draw spells"
The power creep is surprisingly not that bad since play vs draw made a big difference. Really loving the series so far. Only suggestion would be to move to double elimination brackets next time to alleviate some bracket and play/draw variables
From a viewer's perspective, I can understand how it's appealing. But these videos take me multiple days to make the overlays for each 😅 I can't really afford to do more. But we might revisit the series again this year :)
@@CardmarketMagic No worries, appreciate the hardwork! Excited for you guys to hit 100k soon!
This series is great!
8:10 Carl misplayed... he should have block the construct with the mutavault, kill the Scrounger with the agony warp and reduce the power of the construct with the agony warp.
The muta would survive since the construct is a 0/3 since the Scrounger dies to the agony warp... then the Spellstutter trade with the boumat, making both constructs 2/2 and since it already have 2 damage of the mutavault, that one would die too...
It would not change that much the game, but still was not the best play.
22 minutes and I did not expect this video to go to Game 3 hahaha
The best matchup yet!
This is such a great series.
Chainwhirler vs the 1/1 tribal deck. Andre that doesn't seem fair!
Best Format of the Channel ❤
I love the fact that it might very likely be two decks from the Kaladesh meta in the finals.
Mengu FTW! Sad to see faeries go, though:)
How can you not love Mengu! Also; super happy the rakdos deck advanced and those stupid bitterblossoms get to go home.
Another hazored game love to see it!
Love this series! One problem with the deck selection i have is banned decks, most notably oko, never lived to a world championship.
We realized that this is a flaw (also missing original affinity and combo winter's welding jar), but we had to cut the pool somewhere. We already had to play about 50 rounds of Swiss 😅
looking at the power of T2 Bitterblossom it makes no sense that ponder wasnt an auto include. I did the math once and it increases T2 Bitterblossom by ~ 10%p.
Faeries had bad matchups against agressive red deck, even in their time, and this wasn the best verison of the deck as it was post rotation. Trading 1 for 1 a bunch with Ancestral visions suspended is a lot more fun thanw ithout it.
This 1997 mono black getting to the semis is crazy lol
7:43 Agony Warp in response to Karn activation, or just the Bomat courier play, kills the construct and makes the Scrounger into a 0 power creature for the turn (if it's the target for the -3/-0).I don't understand why this wasn't the play. Life total would be 5 instead of 4.
I was torn on who to root for here.
On the one hand, Lorwyn holds a special place is my heart as that was current set when I first start playing. On the other hand I have a deep-seated hatred for faerie decks due to one we called "Doug the Dream Crusher".
It would be great to see an Odric, Master Tactician deck. This deck would focus on getting a wide human soldier board state, giving it first strike and denying any creature presence from your opponent. Or you could just bypass any blockers and go for lethal. Lastly, depending on what format you want to play this deck in, you could use BANDING from sources like Baton of Morale. Very thematic and good damage prevention.
My two favourite decks, glad they went to game 3
Good games!
I swear, if the Blue White control in the running was the Ivan Floch style Sphinx's Revelation / Elixir of Immortality deck instead of the Teferi nonsense, control would have rolled this tournament.
Game one
Agony warp
-3/0 the creature being blocked by your mutavault
0/-3 the Karnstruct. Keeps two blocks for the next round
Exactly.
And go to 1?
The struct was a 4/4, Carl was at 5, you go to 1 was hazored you are dead anyway and it turns off Carl's pain lands etc, he had no real choice.
And where are your 2 blockers? Only mutavault is saved there, swapping blockers would mean scrap doesn't die.
There was nothing to be done at that turn.
I really enjoyed the matchup, really nice video.
Also, in the beginning you say that you played all the best decks and got to the top 8, will you release, at the end of the tournament, the stats of which decks didn't get to top 8 and specially, which one was the worst of them all?
I really would love to know which decks underperformed and if there was a deck you thought would do better that just bombed.
Keep the awesome content Carl!
Thank you :) we'll release a bit of a breakdown in the end but we might not focus on it too much (maybe because we're thinking of doing this again now 🤫). But the deck that did not win a single game in the Swiss was Astral Slide
@@CardmarketMagic how did dragonstorm do? one of my fave decks
Great timing. Just went on lunch break.
Saaaaame
I feel like taking out the thoughtseizes going second was a mistake. It's the only way the faeries deck has to interact on t1 and it can potentially mess with Andrea's curve. Games went pretty much as expected though, faeries will have a tough time going second against an aggressive start.
Pretty much exactly this.
Also, both times sower got played it was with zero knowledge of opponents hand & zero means to protect it.
In game 1 it pretty much cost the game.
In game 3 faeries were already trailing, but the tempo loss from the sower exchange put them in the ground.
You need stronger nerves than that for faeries, can't have any of this ready, fire, aim stuff with your sowers.
What... Imagine turn 1 thoughtseize... Karl takes... hmm let's say a Chainwhirler. Then on turn 4 he resolves a Chandra. What would you rather draw for the rest of the game a Thoughtseize or a Hero's Downfall (or similar) is basically the argument
@@namdoolb Yes because Sower is fucking terrible, dude. He knows that there are maindeck Abrades, a cut and Magma Spray... Sower is just not good here. Not in game 1, not in game 2 and not in game 4555555
It's a classic sideboarding technique in pro magic to remove thoughtseizes against Hazored or other redundant mid-range decks. Taking out one card from their hand is not that strong if all the pieces are simply solid cards that replace each other (it's usually even negative tempo as they don't end up spending the mana on it) and Faeries cannot really afford to lose the life against Hazored
@@CardmarketMagic Yes. That's what I am saying, yet it was in there for game 2 XD
I learn so much from andrea it's amazing
Great Video once again I cant wait to find out, who wins it all
As someone who has tried to make use of Agony Warp - in a casual Faeries deck no less - I was a bit disappointed to not see half of it used to save Mutavault.
That would have left me at one life, which not only would have left me dead to most of Andrea's cards, but also would have made all my pain lands unusable 😅
That was brutal and amazing.
casually flexing them chest hairs by folding the collar. okay, I see you 😂
Havent even watched yet, but chainwirler is such a house against fairies i cant imagine it losing here.
I love the casual Ragavan in the back😂😂😂
It's Andrea's very fancy Kari Zev token 😅
@@CardmarketMagic Its just a little bit better in a few ways
Carl's untap phase featuring hidden Scatter Your Lands everywhere step
It's a secret teck to confuse your opponent 😅
I had a mini stroke when Carl didn't save his mutavault with agony warp🤦
Removing the power of the scrapheap would have put me down to 1, which would have left me dead to most of Andrea's cards but would have also cut me off from using my 3 pain lands 😬
Nevermind your right. For some reason I thought the karnstract was a 3/3
Kinda expected this outcome, but game 2 is a testament to how nasty the faeries deck can be.
At 8:50 shouldn't the construct that was Agony Warped have died after combat? Since it was a 4/4 and two artifacts left the field, it should've shrunk to a 2/2 with -3/-3, right?
No damnation in the fairy sideboard? I recall using that alot back in the day.
Look at the sideboard of the Faeries deck. It's unreal. It's so meta specific for 2008 that it creatures such unfairness
at 8:30 carl used both parts of agony warp on the same creature. He could have lowered scroungers power to keep mutavault alive.
Thank you for this series! Super content! When will be next semifinal?
We release them every Thursday. So the next one is in 4 days, and the finals is the Thursday after that :)
Scrapheap alone was such a bastidge to deal with on that meta.
Sorry to see the Faeries leave but I'm ki da surprised it survived this long considering the power creep
I need to see the third place match cause these games are waaay too fun to watch
It seems like control decks which are generally designed to play against a meta are at a huge disadvantage across this tournament.
Or the fact that the person who played control was just crap at doing it. It doesn't matter how good a deck is, if the person piloting it sucks, they're going to lose more often then not.
Prismatic black vs Hazored both piloted by Andrea in the finals. Let's go!
Would be cool if y’all did something similar for the commander precon decks. Which is the strongest? Or funnest.
I'm still in shock that the most recent deck that even got to top 8 was 2019's azorius control. I mean, how did epiphany, omnath, AND grixis midrange all get shredded?
They did not get shredded, but some of them did play against each other and only 3 losses cuts you out of the top 8. We were surprised too but also, a lot can happen in 5 rounds of Swiss. If it was round Robin (or many many more rounds of swiss), I'm sure we'd see more recent deck much more favored here
it’ll be crazy to see if we get a temur vs black red vehicles in the finals two decks that dominated the meta almost back to back haha
This series is great.
Always with the 🔥 content
Any chance we'll get a "best of the rest" series to showcase some of the older decks that didn't make the Top 8?
Not that exactlt, but we might give this series another spin with the decks that did not make the cut this time :)
Game 1 blocks could've been SSS blocking courier, Mutabault blocking Karnstruct, and kill the scavenger, so after combat there would only be 11/1 Karnstruct, which mightve given an extra turn
Well, that would also require a halfway-skilled Magic player to be playing the deck. The Faeries game was over on turn two of the third game when he had the brilliant idea of playing Bitterblossom against an aggro deck even though he had three different counterspells in his hand.
I love this series!
Oh no. I was really wishing faries could make it to the top. Such a good game.
question 8:14
why he doesn't Agony Warp -0/-3 the courier, block the construct with Sprite, and -3/-0 the scourger? so he would loose no life and still have the mutavault. right?
The construct would not die. It had 4 toughness. This play would leave me at 1 life, turning off all of my pain lands 😅
I feel like the thoughtseizes were very important to snipe out problem threats like hazoret honestly. it's super feels bad that faeries lost despite getting a pretty good hand game 3
Why have you removed the 1994 deck from the list? We want to see the Power in action! 😉
Because we had not ended up playing it as it wasn't a standard deck. It showed up in the graphic by mistake
Game 1 the turn andrea swings with bomat, construct, and scrap heap. I believe the response shouldve been:
Spellstutter block bomat
Mutabailt block construct
Agony warp (-3/-0) on construct
Agony warp (-0/-3) on scrap
I think this wouldve been the most optimal play pattern on defense there, can someone confirm this?
This would have left me at 1 life, which would have made most of Andrea's cards lethal, but also would have turned off all of my pain lands 😅
i have an honest question if the construct @8:49 got -3/-3 untill end of turn and then when the other artifacts dies that would make it a 1/1 would it not be dead due to the -3/-3 ?
oh i continued the video and it was gone lol question answered