Card Choices: Mainboard

《Growth Spiral》 + 《Paradise Druid》

4

3

The ramp element of the decks. 《Growth Spiral》 is just an incredibly good card and I wouldn’t mind playing more of them. 《Paradise Druid》, while not as good as Spiral since it’s a poor late game topdeck, is even better in certain land-light hands and just offers a way to increase the % of a turn 3 《Frilled Mystic》/《Nightpack Ambusher》.

《Frilled Mystic》/《Nightpack Ambusher》

4

4

This is the flash package. Playing around those two cards at the same time is almost impossible and most of our best starts involve those cards. 《Nightpack Ambusher》 is also a surprisingly powerful card by itself as long as you can reliably trigger it.

Remember also that you can just randomly play 《Frilled Mystic》 as a 3/2 if you expect the body to be relevant to protect a Nissa or to shorten your clock by one turn.

《Brazen Borrower》

2

《Brazen Borrower》 is an incredibly powerful card that I wanted to play more since the creation of the deck. It’s even Legacy playable!

However, it doesn’t really fit our plan of big threats very well, so it is a very good card that it is simply not very good in our deck. While it took me a lot of games to realize, I think Borrower is one of the worst cards in the deck if not the worse. Seth knew since the beginning! Still, 《Brazen Borrower》 offers a cheap interaction spell that goes well with Nissa and reinforces a little bit the tempo axis so it does deserve a slot.

《Hydroid Krasis》

2

《Hydroid Krasis》 wasn’t there during the early version of the deck, but it really does a lot for the archetype. It often closes to game in combination with 《Nissa, Who Shakes the World》 and even if you draw it without a planeswalker it is still enough to help you grinding games against slow decks.

《Nissa, Who Shakes the World》

4

《Nissa, Who Shakes the World》 is in contention for the best card in Standard and has been for a while. Nissa bridges many of the aspects of the deck, since it can be either a late game combo with 《Hydroid Krasis》 or simply a fine tempo play that pushes us ahead.

Nissa also plays very well with 《Nightpack Ambusher》 in a subtle way, since any time you play and end of turn Ambusher, you are always threatening with a Nissa follow-up, so if they spend the resources dealing with the wolf the coast will be clear for our planeswalker.

The Countermagic

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1

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2

As any flash deck, we pack a bunch of counterspells. They are all distributed since it’s usually better to draw different ones so you can pick which one to use in every situation.

《Mystical Dispute》 maindeck is a nod to 《Teferi, Time Raveler》, a card that can singlehandedly win a game against us in an otherwise pretty good matchup.

We also played 3 《Quench》. 《Quench》, coming from being a mediocre card in Ravnica Allegiance draft, is actually quite good in this deck. While 《Quench》 is not a 《Mana Leak》, Standard is full of expensive cards like Nissa or 《Korvold, Fae-Cursed King》 and also spells like 《Hydroid Krasis》, so it is not that hard to find a spot to play a 《Quench》 even in relatively long games. It also offers an extra answer to Teferi on the draw that doesn’t involve playing more 《Mystical Dispute》s.

《Castle Vantress》

2

Among all the lands, 《Castle Vantress》 is the most important one since it plays very well with the flash nature of the deck. If our opponent chooses to play nothing to play around counterspells and we do not have a 《Nightpack Ambusher》, 《Castle Vantress》 will be enough to make sure we are advancing in our gameplan. If the metagame becomes heavy on blue decks, I would consider adding another copy.

Card Choices: Sideboard

Some of the sideboard cards like 《Aether Gust》 or 《Lovestruck Beast》 are fairly obvious, but others require a little bit of explanation.

《Chemister’s Insight》

2

Seth found out quite early that postboard games often involved both players having a very high proportion of answers in their decks. What this means in practice is that we could have a hand of counterspells and threats against a hand full of answers against those threats. If our opponent has a Murderous Rider on their hand, having a 《Nightpack Ambusher》 will not make our game advance. The way to make those situations good for us was adding 《Chemister’s Insight》. While it seems an underpowered spell, it was the very best card at doing this job. We also tried with 《Gadwick, the Wizened》, but at the end Insight’s flexibility made it better.

《Kenrith’s Transformation》

2

《Kenrith’s Transformation》 was a non-efficient way to deal with many things the deck sometimes had trouble with, like a huge 《Rotting Regisaur》. The most important target of those troublesome creatures was clearly 《Edgewall Innkeeper》, since otherwise we just can’t deal with this card. We decided to play Transformation over 《Frogify》 since in our testing we found playing Transformation targeting a 《Shifting Ceratops》 was actually important. It even happened to me on the MC VII twice!

《Crushing Canopy》

1

Flash strategies are probably the best you can do against 《Fires of Invention》 decks. However, after playing the matchup a bunch we actually found that past the occasional turn 3 《Teferi, Time Raveler》, a relatively common way to lose was to some 《Sphinx of Foresight》/《Cavalier of Gales》 we couldn’t deal with, since they are actually quite good against the all the numbers on the Nissa card. 《Crushing Canopy》 was a card that was both good against 《Fires of Invention》 itself and against those fliers.

Day 1

My personal tournament started well in day 1, where a 5-2 record even let me have one extra match to rest before ending the day. I felt like I was making some mistakes but I also think it’s related to the nature of the deck. A deck that can play both instant speed and sorcery speed will often offer you the choice of playing two vastly different games, and I think it is very hard to avoid this “oops I probably took the wrong one” feeling.

Day 2

Day 2 started with me losing a very fun match against Andrea Mengucci where he put his Ceratops to a good use against me. After this, I ran very well on the matchups until I ended losing round 5 against Brad Nelson on the mirror. Then, I got paired against Martin Juza in a matchup where we had an extremely long game 3. Not only we were the last ones to end, but we also both drew most of the cards in our libraries, and at some point I was worrying about decking myself with my 《Hydroid Krasis》 trigger. For me, that was the most intense game of the tournament. My win an in was against Carlos Romao, where basically this deck didn’t function very well leaving me with a Top8 slot.

Day 3

Day 3 started well with me beating both Brad Nelson and Andrea Mengucci (who always beats me!) and then I lost the winner’s finals to Piotr “kanister” Glogowski. I think I made a small combat mistake that eventually ended me costing a lot. When you play against players of this caliber, every mistake you make can just be devastating. The issue with mistakes like that is, it’s really hard to fix. We all obviously don’t want to make mistakes in important matches, but it is also important to understand that they will happen. It did sting to misplay in an important game, as it always does, but hopefully it will not be the last mistake I make in a very important match, because that will mean I’m playing them!

After that I lost for my tournament life against Brad Nelson on the mirror once again. I made a questionable judgment when my hand was not very good but I’m not sure if would have change things at all. Brad is very hard to beat! Just about 2 minutes later after the match, we were all 3 discussing how to approach the finals matchup against Piotr, and I didn’t even feel the need to take some time to take the hit. Maybe there’s a lesson about losing there, who knows.

At the end, Piotr Glogowski showed the world once again why he is one of the best players in the world and took the whole thing without losing a single match in the tournament. Congratulations!

I ended on 3rd place, which is one of my best lifetime results. Strangely enough, I don’t think I played particularly well in the event, but it also felt like the edge was gained on the deck selection phase, not with technical gameplay, which makes sense considering the high level of the opposition.

I am overall very happy about how the tournament went and I can’t really wait for the next tournament!

Thanks for reading!

…Just kidding, here’s the Matchup/Sideboard Guide.

Jeskai Fires

Against Jeskai Fires (On the Play)

Out

In

Against Jeskai Fires (On the Draw)

Out

In

On the draw we want to sideboard out 《Paradise Druid》 because we don’t want to play it on turn 2, since that would expose us to 《Teferi, Time Raveler》, their best card.

Simic Flash

Against Simic Flash

Out

In

The mirror is tricky, but overall it is important to fight for the tempo, and that’s reason why expensive counterspells are not very good, since having 3 or 4 mana card countered by a 《Mystical Dispute》 can be devastating.

Jund Sacrifice

Against Jund Sacrifice

Out

In

This matchup sideboarding really depends on small things, but overall we are aiming to play a long game with our 《Chemister’s Insight》 + 《Hydroid Krasis》 plan trying to have enough answers for their things.

Golgari Adventures

Against Golgari Adventures

Out

In

They usually sideboard some removal, so 《Negate》 actually becomes quite good if the games go long. If they play the 《Rotting Regisaur》 + 《The Great Henge》 build, Borrower becomes better because our grinding plan is worse.

Rakdos Sacrifice

Against Rakdos Sacrifice

Out

In

One key thing on this matchup is that 《Mayhem Devil》 isn’t actually that good compared to how it from Jund, so It’s often better to use our Countermagic/《Kenrith’s Transformation》 in other pieces.

Simic Ramp

Against Simic Ramp

Out

In

This is a matchup where we just don’t want to change much of what we are doing. Disputes comes in mostly to fight their Disputes/Gusts, and the main way we will win is if we answer their Nissa while playing Ours.

Temur Reclamation

Against Temur Reclamation

Out

In

Transformation is there to have an answer to 《Niv-Mizzet, Parun》, and expensive counterspells come out to have a better game against 《Mystical Dispute》.

Rakdos Knights

Against Rakdos Knights

Out

In

This is a bad matchup, but it really improves post sideboard. Transformation offers a good answer against 《Midnight Reaper》 while being a fine card to have against Regisaur, even though 《Frogify》 would actually way stronger in this matchup.