Chainsaw Massacre 4.02 - 4c Blood

4c Blood

I wanted to take the time to provide a tournament report of an event in the 100 Card Singleton format, where I played 4 Color Blood Midrange, which essentially equates to saying a 4 color, non-blue, good-stuff deck, with low synergy, but high powered, efficient cards.

If you're unfamiliar with the 100 Card Singleton format, then I'd first refer you to an article written by player and author S'Tsung: here. As an abbreviated version, 100 Card Singleton, is a format where each deck consists of a exactly 100, distinct cards (excepting basic lands, or Relentless Rats) with a 15 card sideboard and adheres to a ban list maintained by a playing community. It plays out somewhere between Legacy and Modern pace and is roughly at two-thirds the power level of the Legacy format. That aside, back to 4-color Blood (4CB).

The power of the 4CB archetype is its flexibility and the large volume of efficient, relevant threats and answers available in the R/G/W/B color pie. In many ways, it plays out like a G/x deck, say Jund or Abzan in Modern. Nothing that the deck does is intrinsically unfair, but it tends to be a strong contender, because it can attack more focused (narrow) routes to victory through a large disruption and removal suite, followed by hard hitting threats that limit an opponent's time to draw out of your initial disruptive efforts and fast clock. Additionally, because it's a "good-stuff" deck, it has no issues trading resources with more controlling builds, because fomenting a top deck war will tend to favor it, due to virtual advantage; i.e. "I run less lands than you do, and all of my cards do something on their own, ergo I'll top deck better than you". On the other side of that argument, against aggro decks, you tend to go over the top of their efficiency with overall better card quality. So in a way, this deck is a great hedge deck against a wide field in 100 Card Singleton, due to its near 50% matchup rate (or better) vs most other archetypes in the field - it tends to break the mold that aggro eats control, which eats midrange, which eats aggro. Over time, this archetype has gotten stronger and stronger, and likely will continue to do so, as WotC encourages design trend that promotes higher power (and cheaper, reference: Siege Rhino, Saskia the Unyielding, or Queen Marchesa) level creature cards, resilient and flexible planeswalkers, while generally making answer cards more expensive (compare Disallow with Counterspell or Hero's Downfall with Swords to Plowshares).

The Good Stuff (Exploiting Power Creep)

The Hateful Stuff (what beats infinite Counterspells and Price of Progress)

The Flexible Stuff (what beats Price of Progress and Moat - what beats Supreme Verdict or Blood Moon)

CSM 4.02 - Metagame breakdown

In the Player Run Event for 100 CS, The Chainsaw Massacre 4.02, three players brought 4CB decks to contend with the field. The field consisted as follows:

Control:

• Azorious Control: 1
• Blue(Red) Moon: 1

Combo/Control:

• BUG Loam: 1
• 4 Color Scapeshift: 1
• Enchantress: 1

Midrange:

• 4 Color Blood: 3
• Bant: 1
• Mono Green Stompy: 1
• Vampire Tribal: 1

Aggro Control:

• Mono Blue Fish (Merfolk): 1
• U/W Skies: 1

Aggro:

• Red Deck Wins: 2
• White Weenie: 1

What follows is a tournament report.  Prior to that, here is the deck list that I opted to run in this event:

Decklist

4c Blood by lowman02, 545tix Creatures 1 Anafenza, the Foremost 1 Avacyn's Pilgrim 1 Aven Mindcensor 1 Birds of Paradise 1 Bloodbraid Elf 1 Courser of Kruphix 1 Dark Confidant 1 Deathrite Shaman 1 Doran, the Siege Tower 1 Elves of Deep Shadow 1 Elvish Mystic 1 Eternal Witness 1 Falkenrath Aristocrat 1 Fleecemane Lion 1 Fyndhorn Elves 1 Grim Flayer 1 Huntmaster of the Fells 1 Kitchen Finks 1 Knight of the Reliquary 1 Llanowar Elves 1 Lotus Cobra 1 Loxodon Smiter 1 Noble Hierarch 1 Qasali Pridemage 1 Queen Marchesa 1 Saskia the Unyielding 1 Shriekmaw 1 Siege Rhino 1 Sylvan Advocate 1 Sylvan Caryatid 1 Tarmogoyf 1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang 1 Thragtusk 1 Tidehollow Sculler 1 Tireless Tracker 1 Voice of Resurgence 37 cards Other Spells 1 Abrupt Decay 1 Arc Trail 1 Ajani Vengeant 1 Bitterblossom 1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance 1 Dromoka's Command 1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant 1 Fatal Push 1 Garruk Wildspeaker 1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar 1 Go for the Throat 1 Inquisition of Kozilek 1 Kolaghan's Command 1 Lightning Bolt 1 Lightning Helix 1 Liliana of the Veil 1 Liliana, the Last Hope 1 Lingering Souls 1 Maelstrom Pulse 1 Green Sun's Zenith 1 Path to Exile 1 Sword of Feast and Famine 1 Sword of Fire and Ice 1 Swords to Plowshares 1 Terminate 1 Thoughtseize 1 Vindicate 27 cards Lands 1 Arid Mesa 1 Badlands 1 Bayou 1 Blood Crypt 1 Bloodstained Mire 1 Blooming Marsh 1 Copperline Gorge 1 Flooded Strand 1 Forest 1 Godless Shrine 1 Hissing Quagmire 1 Horizon Canopy 1 Lavaclaw Reaches 1 Marsh Flats 1 Misty Rainforest 1 Overgrown Tomb 1 Plateau 1 Polluted Delta 1 Raging Ravine 1 Razorverge Thicket 1 Sacred Foundry 1 Sandsteppe Citadel 1 Savannah 1 Scalding Tarn 1 Scavenging Ooze 1 Scrubland 1 Shambling Vent 1 Stirring Wildwood 1 Stomping Ground 1 Sunpetal Grove 1 Taiga 1 Temple Garden 1 Verdant Catacombs 1 Wasteland 1 Windswept Heath 1 Wooded Foothills 1 Woodland Cemetery 36 cards Sideboard 1 Burrenton Forge-Tender 1 Choke 1 Containment Priest 1 Deadeye Tracker 1 Deathmark 1 Dread of Night 1 Duress 1 Forked Bolt 1 Golgari Charm 1 Obstinate Baloth 1 Reclamation Sage 1 Rest in Peace 1 Timely Reinforcements 1 Winter Orb 1 Zealous Persecution

Report

Round 1 - RDW:
Opening hand:

In round 1, I got paired off against an opponent that I expected would be on an aggressive deck, I don't know the player personally, but have seen his prior predilection for aggressive or linear archetypes. Going in, I put him on RDW or Mono Green Ramp. My opener was a bit dicey, but was functional: Marsh Flats; Elspeth, Knight-Errant; Ajani Vengeant; Misty Rainforest; Garruk Wildspeaker; Fatal Push; and Elves of Deep Shadow. I was on the play which was fortunate because I knew that on the draw this hand would be a lot less good versus an aggressive strategy that could play a turn one threat and then remove my mana elves on their turn two. This hand would force my opponent to open on removal to slow my game plan down, or present their own threat, which I could in turn, Fatal Push on my turn 2 without much cost because I didn't have a relevant turn two threat.  This in turn, would keep them on their heels, trying to present a recurring source of damage, while I hoped to draw into lands to present my planeswalkers as threats. We led on turn one Elves of Deep Shadow after using Misty Rainforest to find a Savannah.

Our opponent led on a basic Mountain, and played a Rakdos Cackler, unleashed. On our following turn, we drew swords to plowshares, which was not what we'd hoped for, but also allowed us to kill the Cackler without using our second fetchland, which we put into play, and also not take 1 damage from Elves of Deep Shadow. So, we presented our additional fetchland, Swords to Plowshares’d the Cackler and passed the turn back to our opponent. The opponent then played a Teetering Peaks for a land drop, targeting my Elves of Deep Shadow, followed by a Falkenrath Gorger. This led me to believe that my opponent may be mana screwed, or at least out of lands because typically as a RDW player you want to get every ounce of damage out of your cards. On our following turn, we drew into our untapped land, and cast out Garruk, thinking that this could be a mana choked hand (with two more 4 drops) and Garruk would allow us to present more threats than our opponent. Additionally, Garruk allowed me to untap two lands, one of which was a Bayou, so that we could protect him from the Gorger plus a burn spell with the Fatal Push. Our opponent, then played a Mishra's Factory, cast Searing Blaze targeting us Garruk and the Elves of Deep Shadow. Garruk went down to one loyalty counter, but we were able to save him with Fatal Push targeting our opponent's creature. On our following turn, we drew into another mana dork, which allowed us to play out our new mana dork and also, with Garruk's untap ability and present Elspeth, Knight-Errant, which would allow me to chump block the opposing factory and force our opponent to use a full burn card to remove Garruk. Our opponent, on their following turn, cast Searing Spear targeting Garruk and killing him, but had to pass it back without making an additional land drop on their turn. We then drew an additional land drop, cast our our Ajani Vengeant and left his factory tapped down, limiting him to casting 2CMC spells the next turn unless he drew land. We made another Soldier token with Elspeth and passed it back. On our opponent's turn he cast an Ember Hauler and passed it back without making a land drop. We ripped Vindicate off the top deck, killed his mountain, so it made Wasteland a live draw, and if he were to cast Price of Progress it would damage him highly as well, and then tapped down his Teetering Peaks with Ajani, limiting him to no red mana on the following turn. He shortly conceded the game before we could find another threat, as Elspeth was close to ultimate and we'd flooded the board with many blockers (and soon to be attackers) and could cast any spell I drew in the deck.

Game 1 of match 1 concluding:

In boarding I brought in Burrenton Forge-Tender to protect against Price of Progress; Golgari Charm to kill Blood Moon, or regenerate vital threats or screw up combat math; Zealous Persecution, to win in combat, and ideally as a one sided, two mana Wrath; Obstinate Baloth, because he hoses RDW's game plan and can just win the game at a fine pace; I also brought in Forked Bolt, because it's great vs the X-1s I expected my opponent to be playing and it can be cast very early in the game; and lastly I brought in Timely Reinforcements, because when cast for maximum value it can significantly slow down an aggressive deck's progress and in this matchup can act almost as a 4-1 card swing or greater. I ended up cutting some 4 drops, Dark Confidant, and Bitterblossom to ensure the deck was efficient as possible and wasn’t helping my opponent progress their own plans with my cards.

Game 2 vs RDW:

Opening hand:

In game 2, I opened on a 4 land hand, on the draw, which wasn't great, but the hand also contained Tidehollow Sculler, Liliana of the Veil, and Siege Rhino. I felt like despite wanting one less land, and one more interactive card to kill my opponent's expected turn 1 play, that I couldn't toss this hand back because it did curve very well after turn 1 and could cast all of its spells. So I kept our opening 7, and said go.

Our opponent led on a Legion Loyalist, a surprisingly powerful card in a RDW with a high creature count (it's really quite good when you can attack through a Batterskull for your final points of damage); however, I was happy to see this card over something with two power, because I knew that I would likely be able to block it with my Sculler in a few turns. I drew land on my turn 1, played a land, and passed it back. Our opponent then cast Goblin Guide on turn 2, after making their land drop, and attacked with their two critters; I was lucky and got a land off of Goblin Guide. I drew a mana dork on my turn, but opted to play the Tidehollow Sculler out to slow down their plans and get a better idea of how I should sequence my own play. In their hand, I saw Rampaging Ferocidon, Skullcrack, and Ash Zealot, which was a little confusing because I'd assumed that they would have played the Ash Zealotas opposed to the Goblin Guide (which I assumed they'd drawn on the turn prior and had mostly burn spell in hand), to allow them the flexibility of either playing the Goblin Guide in conjunction with Skullcrack or their sole 3 drop the Rampaging Ferocidon, and also to mitigate giving me free lands. I wasn't happy to see this hand, because it handily mitigated my game plan to get a Siege Rhino down to allow blocks and swing life totals favorably. I decided to take the Rampaging Ferocidon, because I knew that if they drew land, then they would be forced to not use one mana, and if they drew a spell, then they would be limited to only playing one card in their next turn. I passed it back and they missed their land drop, but played out their Ash Zealot, and turned Goblin Guide and the Zealot sideways, I was fortunate and drew another land off of Goblin Guide. I had planned on blocking the Loyalist, but it didn't get in, so I instead opted to block the opponent's Goblin Guide, trading, but giving them back the Ferocidon. I knew I couldn't sit around and hope to accrue value, I'd have to trade resources in this phase of the game to live.

On my following turn, I drew Green Sun's Zenith, but was a mana short from getting Kitchen Finks, I briefly considered getting Tarmogoyf, but opted instead to play out Liliana of the Veil and using her minus ability - I figured this was as good as she was going to be, and in a way she still acted as a 2-1 because I would kill the Loyalist and our opponent lost an attack step dealing with her. On our opponent's turn, he again missed land, but as expected killed the Liliana, and then fortunately for us cast a Stromkirk Noble, which meant that I could expect my Siege Rhino on the next turn to resolve and have the life gain occur (I was at about 13 life at this point, from early beats and fetchlands). On my turn, I cast our Siege Rhino, gaining 3 life and presenting the biggest threat on the board - stalling my opponent's 2/2 first striker and 1/1 vampire (putting the life totals to 16 life for me and 17 life for my opponent). I passed it back after putting down the Rhino, the opponent again missed their land drop and opted not to attack into the Rhino, this told me they'd likely not drawn a burn spell that could target critters, because it's not uncommon to see Ash Zealot make some crazy attacks into 5 toughness critters due to the high volume of 3 damage burn spells that combine well with its First Strike ability. On our next turn we drew into Inquisition of Kozilek. We played Inquisition, seeing that our opponent had Arc Trail, Skullcrack, Rampaging Ferocidon, and Magus of the Moon. We opted to take Skullcrack because it was the only card castable on our turn, which meant the opponent would go another full turn cycle without using their mana. I then played a free fetch land I'd gotten off of Goblin Guide and found the one basic forest in the deck, cast out my mana dork, knowing that it could die to Arc Trail, but what I wanted to do, was force inefficiency out of the RDW deck: if he drew a land then he'd be in a place where he'd want to present a threat and not cast the Arc Trail, if he drew an additional land the turn after that, then he'd be obliged to play his other threat, but still not have the mana to cast Arc Trail. His other line could have been to draw the land he so badly needed and then not use it the turn he drew it to deal with a 1/1 mana dork and deal me two damage with Arc Trail - which seemed really bad. After resolving the mana dork, and fetching the basic forest, I then used the Green Sun's Zenith I had drawn to find Tarmogoyf. I could have gone for Kitchen Finks and not played out the mana dork, but figured that Tarmogoyf would end the game faster, force him to block sooner, which red critters are bad at, and this also gave me 3 critters which if need be could present good blocks to his Menace threat the Rampaging Ferocidon. I then attacked with Siege Rhino bringing the opponent to 13 life, and said go with a combined 10-11 power on the board. Our opponent saw their top deck and quickly scooped them up.

Game 2 of round 1 concluding:

I think our deck is highly favored versus RDW and other aggro strategies, mostly because its creatures and threats are just more powerful, if slightly less consistent and efficient. However, I think the important take away of the game, or learning point, was that in order to beat a deck like RDW, it's very important to disrupt what matters most to them: their mana curve and efficiency. Our opponent put themselves in a bad spot in our game 2 by playing Goblin Guide over Ash Zealot - given they never drew the land that would have punished this decision, if they had, then this play decision would have punished them from turn 3 onward. Additionally, I think we made some decent decisions to further exacerbate their obvious mana choke issues, by our use of hand disruption and what we opted to take. They weren't always the most immediately, turn impacting cards, but I think they were the most game impacting cards, assuming they drew what they needed: namely land. And, lastly, the flexibility of 4CB, which I lauded in my intro, has to be understood, so that one can know when to make the transition from defense to aggression at a very rapid and punishing pace in this matchup. This is highlighted in going for Tarmogoyf and mana dork, over solely casting Green Sun's Zenith for Kitchen Finks, which would have still likely won us the game, but I think would have also been incorrect and given our opponent more outs to winning.

Round 2 - MonoU (Merfolk) Aggro Control:

I won't go into as much detail on this one, because Round 1 went forever (about a 40-50 minute game, with 16 turns), mostly due to a timely True-Name Nemesis, that drew the game out because of its great blocking capability against non-trampling critters and its ability to knock out planeswalkers with relative impunity.

Opening hand:

We opened on another 4 lander, this time on the draw, but had a Lotus Cobra, Loxodon Smiter, and Queen Marchesa. I kept this hand, again because it curved very well, and I figured Smiter would be good against a mono-blue deck with mostly weenie critters. Unfortunately, our opponent, who didn't play anything on turn 1, played a turn 2 Hangarback Walker, which was able to get to 4 counters before we were able to deal with it in combat, and our Lotus Cobra on turn 2 ate a Dismember, which our Loxodon Smiter also ate because Snapcaster Mage was able to allow it to be recast. Queen Marchesa was looking pretty bad in my hand at this point, and didn't seem like she'd get much better because of the Hangarback Walker (unless I could rip a Swords to Plowshares). I eventually drew into a Bitterblossom, Courser of Kruphix, and Fleecemane Lion; the Blossom could at least serve as a black two mana Forcefield, which would eventually allow me to develop my board well enough to accrue value from it and courser could draw me free land cards so I'd draw into more gas. Luckily, my opponent went for the Dismember on Smiter, which allowed me to resolve both my cat and Blossom. At this point, he was not presenting any more threats, so I figured he was on counter magic of some sort, so I continued to develop my mana base despite having the relevant Courser in my hand. I figured I could get value off of the cat, by making it Monstrous on his turn and this would present an issue for him. I figured that the chances of this working were pretty low, but that it would take up his mana on his turn and a card to bounce it in response, or face a Hexproof, Indestructible 4/4 cat. On his turn, he turned both the Snapcaster Mage and the Hangarback Walker sideways (at this point the Hangarback was a 4/4), I blocked the Walker with the cat and traded a Faerie Rogue for the Snapcaster Mage. During declaration of blockers, I paid 5 mana to monstrous my cat, to which my opponent responded with Snap, getting to untap, but losing a card and the 4 damage from the Walker. I was pretty happy about this, but figured that my cat would get countered next turn when I attempted to replay it. On my following turn, I played a land, attempted to cast my Fleecemane Lion out, but was Remanded, I attempted to cast it for the third time, but was Mana Leaked. I felt pretty good about this exchange though, because my opponent was now on two cards to my 4. On my opponent's following turn, they played out Kira, Great Glass-Spinner and Dakra Mystic, going to 1 card in hand and very little open mana. I resolved my Courser of Kruphix, getting a land off the top of my deck, after drawing a Kitchen Finks for my turn, after taking the land, I knew I'd be drawing a Scavenging Ooze. My opponent used Dakra Mystic, I think they expected to get rid of my Ooze, which would get quite large and keep their damage in check, but saw a True-Name Nemesis, and gave us both the cards on top of our decks.

I knew True-Name Nemesis would have to be raced, because I didn't have answers to it main deck, especially given the opponent's large horizontal presence - Liliana would be about it, but killing all of his other critters with Kira in play would be very unlikely. My opponent played the True-Name Nemesis and then passed it back. I drew into a Thragtusk and got another free land off of my Courser. I played Tusk and Ooze, to start swinging the life total and to setup breaching through my opponent's defenses. I figured that my best defense was a strong offense at this point so in the near term, I started swinging with both Ooze and Tusk, to keep my opponent from continuing to swing with True-Name Nemesis. This ploy worked, but I was forced to kill my opponent's Hangarback Walker which gave him large horizontal growth of his board. He continued to develop his board with Mulldrifter and Shorecrasher Elemental (which is also very painful to attack into because of it's ability to "jump" out of combat and remorph itself). At this point, we were banking on our top deck, which we assumed we were favored on, due to Courser of Kruphix, to provide us with some good planeswalkers, because we figured our best way of winning the game was to highly incentivize the True-Name Nemesis to attack, so that we could in turn attack without losing cards every time. Additionally, we had to continue using Bitterblossom as a Forcefield, but leaving at least two Faerie Rogue tokens alive in order to de-incentivize our opponent from attacking with his 2x two toughness (and power) flying attackers (Kira and Mulldrifter); if he'd been been able to then we'd have lost the race. So, we had to make some weird blocks on Thopter tokens, that involved any number of our Faerie Rogues, excepting two from blocking each turn, until we could attrite the Thopter tokens off the board at the cost of life. Eventually we drew into an Elspeth, Knight-Errant which was promptly countered by Mana Drain, but luckily this forced our opponent to go hellbent, and they couldn't use the mana to impact anything on the following turn. Then we were able to draw into Garruk Wildspeaker, which if it resolved, I knew would force our opponent to attack, because if left unchecked on the following turn would allow all of my critters to have a sizable buff plus trample. Our opponent obliged in this attack and we were able to make a large counter swing, which did significant attrition to their board position, due to bigger ground-based critters, and a sizable flying army of Faerie Rogues that had built up. Our opponent realized that they would have to race us at this point, as we had been able to gain sizable enough advantage in the air with Bitterblossom, and they had been forced to make many trades and chumps while attacking Garruk and not having the True-Name Nemesis back to blank my best threats on the counterattack. Unfortunately, for our opponent, while True-Name Nemesis is great at stopping races from starting, it's not the best at stopping them, once they have started. We peeled a land off the top of our deck on the last turn of the game, saw a Lightning Bolt, which would win the game, so we cast our Queen Marchesa, who we'd had since our opener, to peel it during end step before our opponent could untap, swung will all, and forced a concession before drawing the bolt on end step from being the monarch. We were able, with large green monsters and black flying men, to close the game out in a 16 turn grindfest. I probably don't do this game justice in words, so check it out in the video of this event at the end of this article; this is the sort of game that I personally really enjoy.

Game 1 of round 2 concluding:

During boarding we cut Sword of Feast and Famine; Aven Mindcensor, Dark Confidant, and Falkenrath Aristocrat, and brought in Golgari Charm and Zealous Persecution (both of which I wished I'd had in game one for obvious reasons), as well as Forked Bolt for early interaction and Choke, which could just end the game if timed right.

Game 2 vs vs MonoU (Merfolk) Aggro Control:

Opening hand:

Game two was a bit less interesting, in that it played out in the typical fashion that I expect this matchup to play out. We opened on a 1-3-5 curve hand, where we played a turn 1 Deathrite Shaman (without a fetchland), into a turn 2 Fleecemane Lion (which we got lucky and drew), into a Doran, the Siege Tower or Loxodon Smiter (depending on how my opponent was playing). My opponent played nothing turn 1, but cast a Shaper Apprentice, on turn 2, which was a significantly less powerful card than our two drop, but could be concerning if he played a Merfolk lord out. Our opponent played a Merrow Reejerey on turn 3, which luckily we had Go for the Throat to deal with because despite our cards being more singularly powerful, this card would have allowed him to make his less powerful critters far better and essentially it would have allowed him to cast them for one less mana while he developed his board, and later on would have greatly messed up our ability to block. We landed Doran, which was bounced by Jace, the Mind Sculptor, who in turn died to our backswing from the Lion and Shaman. We resolved Doran again on our next turn and our opponent in turn resolved another Merfolk and a Master of Waves. Luckily Doran is just as good at breaking sieges through combat as he is at playing gate guard, because all of our opponent's X/1 critters were quite anemic given his presence on the board. I knew my opponent did not have a bounce spell, so I continued to press the offense, casting a Thragtusk to go back up on life, and the Loxodon Smiter. I eventually lost Doran to a quintuple block by all of the elemental tokens, but was happy that I wouldn't have to face bounce and a game ending swing from my opponent's team. This set the pace of the game to my favor and with one more swing and a timely Green Sun's Zenith finding Siege Rhino I was able to close the game out pretty quickly.

G2 Breaking the Siege

The first game in this match was an obvious grinder, where I think tight play (by both players), build decisions, and some luck saw us through the game. The second game I think highlights the fact that you need all of your cards to do something a little more than expected; in this case I'd highlight Doran, the Siege Tower: he's typically just played as a 3 mana 5/5 beater, which is still a pretty good card; however, he actually works in this deck to allow you to race the more aggressive decks of the format that pack a lot more X/1 critters. 4CB tends to have critters with larger toughness, excepting Falkenrath Aristocrat, so he's often not detrimental to our own game plan, but when the opponent is for instance casting Ball Lightnings, Hellspark Elementals, or Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, then they all look pretty embarrassing when this fellow comes down. The take away is, you want all of your cards, especially in a lower synergy, good stuff deck, to have impacts on multiple matchups; in this specific case: Doran is fine vs control, he's a decent, efficient threat, that doesn't need to be followed up with more cards before fomenting a Wrath for 1-1 exchange and against aggro he's a clock and a wall, in more than one way. To highlight another example of this from these games, Bitterblossom, a fairly unassuming card, if you haven’t played it, acted as a black Forcefield initially, but eventually transitioned into a win condition. While this card certainly doesn’t shine against aggressive decks, it can buy a lot of time, and act like a Tangle Wire, to buy you some crucial draw steps, and eventually it will win best supporting actress for closing out games. Against control decks, it’s a death sentence if not dealt with immediately, it will crush their planeswalkers, force 1-0 exchange of wrath effects, and generally just force buffoonery of the highest order to find an answer to it, which generally means that your other stuff is resolving too. Cards like these are true gems, they have flexible, but meaningful interactions against varied strategies and will always just do something in and of themselves—They’re the heart of this style of deck.

Round 3 - Izzet/Blue Moon Control:

I had watched a few of my opponent’s games after my first round, so I knew they were on a blue and red control list, that was likely main decking a lot of non-basic hate. So, my going in position was to keep an efficient hand, that could present enough pressure between turns 1-3 that playing a Blood Moon or Back to Basics would essentially equate to a Time Walk for me, because my opponent would be doing nothing to deal with the impacts I had already had on the board. I knew my curve was lower, and I expected that I could win, if I took away their main weapon, which was catching me with an early moon and no threats or mana dorks to play around it.

Opening hand:

I luckily won the die roll, which would support my plan. What I saw was dicey at best, but just barely worth keeping on the play (it was the worst keep of the night); I had: Inquisition of Kozilek, Aven Mindcensor; Anafenza, the Foremost; Bloodbraid Elf; Elspeth, Knight-Errant; Blood Crypt, and Blooming Marsh. This hand has obvious fixing problems, but my rationale for the keep was that I could stop early disruption with Inquisition and get two draw steps to find a land. I cast Inquisition on my opponent and saw an hand that I thought was even worse than my own: Abrade, Electrolyze, Lightning Bolt, Kher Keep, Island, Island, and Aetherling. My opponent was banking on drawing a Mountain or red source of mana very hard; I didn’t really care about the Lightning Bolt or Abrade as the only threat in my hand that they could kill was the Mindcensor, which seemed weak in this matchup anyway as two color decks tend to play less fetchlands. So, I took the Electrolyze, because I felt it would tend to lead to the strongest bridge play and would involve more hidden information for me to consider 3-4 turns into the game. I passed it and they played their basic Island, and passed it back to me. I then ripped a Grim Flayer, resolved it, and prayed that my opponent would continue to miss on red mana. They obliged my hopes, but played another basic Island and resolved a Delver of Secrets. On my turn, I missed a land drop again, drawing Eternal Witness, but got to swing with the Grim Flayer and connect with my opponent. Upon trigger of my Grim Flayer, I saw that I had a mana dork, Kolaghan's Command, and a Lavaclaw Reaches on top of my deck; I actually put all of them into the graveyard, because I really wanted an untapped land, and because by putting all of them into the graveyard I hit delirium which meant my opponent would need to resolve two burn spells to deal with the Flayer, additionally a 4/4 does a far better job of racing an Insectile Aberration than a 2/2 does. Our opponent hit their land drop on the following turn, but it was an Izzet Boilerworks, which meant they couldn’t cast anything meaningful on their turn. I drew into an untapped G/W source and played out Anafenza, the Foremost, from here the game became fairly elementary, because we swung for 4 and then 9, putting the opponent to 5 life and forcing them to 2-1 themselves with Abrade and Lightning Bolt to kill a 6/6 Flayer. Bloodbraid Elf and Aven Mindcensor sealed it up with the big body of Anafenza doing the lord’s work of the task.

Grim Flayer - Flaying our opponent and getting swollen on top deck repetitions straight into the graveyard:

This was the first true control match we had in the night, so I was happy to bring in my anti-control cards from the board. We boarded in Duress because their cards are generally singularly powerful, but not of equal value or flexibility, so 1-1 exchange through discard vice control tends to be very good; Winter Orb because this card forces a player to play board impacting cards every turn, if you’re casting investment cards, or cantrips, then you’re losing against it; Golgari Charm because it kills Blood Moon and Back to Basics; and Choke because it can turn off the better half of their deck. We cut Falkenrath Aristocrat because it costs a lot of mana, and we didn’t expect our opponent to have Wrath effects; Sword of Feast and Famine—it’s just slow and not as relevant in combat, albeit good with Winter Orb; Aven Mindcensor — again, they shouldn’t be fetching as much and outside of a few cards they’re not really a tutor based combo deck; and lastly Shriekmaw, because they don’t run that many creatures and maw costs a lot of mana to get value out of.

Game 2 vs Izzet/Blue Moon Control:

Opening hand:

Going into game 2, we open a riskier 7 card hand with three lands; Gideon, Ally of Zendikar; Elspeth, Knight-Errant; Chandra, Torch of Defiance; and Bitterblossom. The mana was good to fix for the two double white planeswalkers and could surprisingly also fix for the double red planeswalker as well as cast the Bitterblossom. This hand, not knowing the matchup is a complete pile of rubbish, but in this matchup it's actually not poor because every card is a haymaker punch and I figure my opponent can only have so many answers, but far fewer threats for the board. My fear going in was my turn two Bitterblossom would not resolve and that I would face a turn three on the play Blood Moon from my opponent, but the presence of Chandra in my hand made me keep it even based on this worst case scenario, because she would be castable under a Blood Moon. Our opponent led on Volcanic Island and passed it back to us, which led me to believe that they had not kept a Back to Basics or Blood Moon hand because they led with a dual; we drew Winter Orb for the turn, which brought our going in plan even more together because now if we got moon locked we could resolve Chandra and drop Winter Orb to buy many turns of free draw, even if they were all Shock, off of Chandra. We played a tapped land and passed it back; our opponent played an Izzet Boilerworks, returning the Volcanic Island and passing it back. We resolved Bitterblossom on our turn and figured that we’d just stolen a win because this card backed up with Winter Orb against a control deck would ensure that we’d never run out of threats and we figured we could get all the time we needed to off of the orb. We passed it back to our opponent, who then resolved an Izzet Keyrune, which mitigated the power of our Winter Orb, but was not followed by a land. We drew another land for our turn, played out one of our lands and passed it back, with a free 1/1 flyer on our board thanks to Bitterblossom. Our opponent hit their land drop and cast out Vance's Blasting Cannons; a card, that under normal circumstances may have concerned me, because it’s a card advantage engine, but against Winter Orb it tends to be a one-sided Uba Mask. By playing this spell, I also felt comfortable resolving my Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, which is essentially a 7 power attacker the turn after it comes into play, and I felt would only further seal the deal once I resolved Chandra on the following turn with Winter Orb off of her mana generation ability. My opponent went into a flurry of spell casting to put critters onto the board to beat through my Faerie Rogues and send burn spells to kill Gideon, leaving them tapped out upon end step. I then resolved my Chandra putting a Winter Orb in play, which didn’t promptly end the game, but assuredly did. Over the next few turns, my opponent was able to eventually kill the Gideon at a horrendous exchange rate of both cards and mana under the Winter Orb lock and I was able to continue making 1/1 flyers and eventually landed my Elspeth to beat down in the sky for lethal.

Winter Orb - doing what it does - favoring the player with more board impacting cards:

Round 4 - mirror match

My round 4 opponent, player S'Tsung, is a good friend of mine, and we were the only two undefeated players, so I offered the draw to her, which I knew would favor her for first place because of previous pairings, but even if I could win this last match, I didn’t plan on keeping the prize pool because I host the event. Additionally, knowing it was late for her and wouldn’t impact anyone else in the tourney it seemed like the right thing to do.

The tournament results can be seen here: Chainsaw Massacre 4.02 Results

In the top 4, we had two 4CB decks, one U/W Skies deck, and one U/W control deck. It was cool to see a decently diversified winners' circle, excluding poor aggro, but there's always a next time and sometimes - Red Deck Just Wins.

Conclusion

Despite a recent series of unbannings, enabling Blue and Black-based control decks, we found that the 4CB archetype is still very strong and viable in the format, despite very few changes - still punishing aggro decks and hating control decks into the ground. I most certainly don't think that this is the best deck in the format, but I do believe that it's likely the most match percentage neutral deck going into a wide meta, with the greatest flexibility and speed in shifting between being the control or the beat down - and its cards are just all great. I hope the depth of some of the games detailed above strikes your interest, and one day we see you slinging a pile of count 100 in the Chainsaw Massacre. I also recorded all of the matches detailed above as well as commentary on other games in the event on my YouTube Channel.

Enjoy and take it easy!

Lowman02