Chaos Wins!

A significant portion of our Grand Prix prize pool will be given to the painting and appearance competition as outlined here.

Below is the rubric we will be using for paint scoring. This was lifted from the GW championship GT in 2008.

Only armies participants have painted themselves are valid for entry in the paint/appearance competition. Armies that have won previous Sprue Posse paint/appearance awards are ineligible.

ARMY APPEARANCE CHECKLIST - MAX. 40 POINTS

PAINTING (worth up to 35 points)

Choose one of the following

• Army is fully painted, but only to the three-color standard of
basecoating. 10 Points

• Army is beyond fully painted, additional steps beyond the
three-color standard. 15 Points

Check All That Apply to Bulk (80%+) of Army

• Painting is Uniform: Not a mix of schemes,
styles, and looks. 1 Point
• Clean Basecoat Colors: Base colors are
painted neatly. 1 Point
• Details: Details are painted such as eyes,
buckles, and jewelry. 1 Point
• Clean Details: Details are painted well
(clean, have highlights). 2 Points
• Hand-Painted Details: Details (that are well executed) have
been added such as unit markings, banner artwork, blood
marks, dirt on cloaks, etc. 2 Points
• Artistic: Banners, markings, and details are hand
painted to an incredible degree! 2 Points
• Discernable Highlights/Shading: Drybrushing, lining, shading,
inking, etc. (not required to be clean) 1 Point
• Clean Highlights: Lines are neat, drybrushing is appropriate,
inking is controlled and not sloppy. 2 Points
• Layers of Highlights: More than one layer of
highlight, which may include shading, highlights
over inking, blending, etc. 2 Points
• Beyond Basics: Highlights have been blended, shaded, or
layered well – beyond the basic highlighting techniques of
drybrusing and inking. 2 Points
• Masterful Blending: Highlights have been masterfully blended,
shaded, or layered. 2 Points
• Overall Appearance: Overall appearance is amazing!
Everything works great together to create an
awesome scene. 2 Points


BASING(worth up to 5 points)

Check all that apply to bulk (80%+) of army

• Based/Detailed: Bases have basing materials
(flock/sand/tiles) or details painted on them. 1 Point
• Extra Basing: The bases have multiple basing materials
(rocks/grass), extra details painted on them (cracks in tiles), or
if extra basing is inappropriate, basing is done very well (eg.
rolling desert dunes). 1 Point
• Highlights: Bases have highlighting
(shading/drybrushing). 1 Point
• Special details: There are extra details on the larger bases
(helmets, skulls, animals, building rubble, etc.) 2 Point
CONVERSIONS(Worth up to 4 points)
Choose qne of the following for conversions that are
appropriate and well executed.
• Minimal: The army has some elementary conversions
(head and weapon swaps, arm rotations) or a couple
interesting swaps. 1 Point
• Minor: Units have multi-kit conversions including head
and weapon swaps. This is for more than a few models
such as a unit. 2 Points
• Major: The army has some difficult conversions that use
things such as putty, plastic card, drilling, sawing, minor
sculpts, etc. This could also apply to the entire army having
very well done multi-kit conversions (see above) 3 Points
• Extreme: The army has some extreme conversions, which
could be: a scratch built conversion or sculpt of an entire
model, a large amount of models with difficult conversions (see
above), or the entire army is extremely converted 4 Points


OTHER(worth up to 2 points)

Check all that apply to the army

• Display Base: Basic based & highlighted or
detailed display base. 1 Point
• Something Special: There is something above and beyond
about a model’s painting, the display base, a conversion, or the
basing (eg. movement trays are based/highlighted). 1 Point

Name: Jon Regul

Seed #1
Rating: 1630

2010 Game Record: 6-0-2
2010 Appearances: 2
2010 Tournament Victories: 1
2010 Total Winnings: $105

Featured List - Orks 1500 Kan Wall

HQ

Big Mek (Kustom Force Field)
Big Mek (Kustom Force Field)

Elites

Loota x5
Loota x5
Loota x5

Troops

Shoota Boyz x20 (Big Shoota x2) Nob (Powerklaw, Bosspole)
Shoota Boyz x20 (Big Shoota x2) Nob (Powerklaw, Bosspole)
Gretchin x18 w Runtherd
Deff Dread (Big Shoota x2, Armor Plates)
Deff Dread (Big Shoota x2, Armor Plates)

Fast Attack

Deffkopta (TL Rockitt)
Deffkopta (TL Big Shoota, Buzzsaw)

Heavy Support

Killa Kan x3 (Grotzooka x3)
Killa Kan x3 (Grotzooka x3)
Killa Kan x3 (Grotzooka x3)


Jon has made two appearances during the Sprue Posse Open 2010 season and made them count, finishing 1st and then 3rd with his Kan Wall. He leads the circuit or is tied atop the rankings for: Rating, tournament victories and prize winnings. He's also never lost on the tour. Jon is the favorite and the top seed for the inaugural Sprue Posse Invitational and firmly in the drivers seat for the title of Player of the Year.

So in my last post, I hinted at this card as the key to my next deck. And while it's true that the next deck I built was focused around Silence, and I still am tuning it to be more streamlined and competitive, in the process I came upon another deck idea which I liked EVEN MORE and I just could not put off building it and testing it out. So I will come back to my Silence deck if this one starts to falter or I lose interest, but I am just so excited that I've actually found a 'rogue' deck that so far has proved to be VERY competitive.

So, this deck started with two cards that I've been using in most of my other decks: Mimic Vat and Culling Dais. The Dais lets me force a creature under the Vat and at only 2 casting cost and 1 colorless to activate the draw, it's actually EXTREMELY efficient card advantage.

I was using that combo to power my Silence deck and the intent was to use the Vat to generate a Mnemonic Wall every turn to return Silence back to hand and effectively lock down the opponent. The problem with that deck was that I often was too low on life by the time I could cast the Mnemonic, sac it, and then start production. So I thought of adding some creatures that give me life when they come into play.

But once I thought of that, I immediately recalled a 'Tier 2' deck that was making the rounds back in the previous Standard - a Mono-white deck built around various creatures with life gainm or benefiting from life gain. While some of those cards rotated out with Scars of Mirrodin, what was added actually made it much more viable. Here is the decklist and a basic rundown of how the deck works afterwards.

3x Mimic Vat
2x Culling Dais
4x Ajani's Pridemate
4x Lone Missionary
4x Serra Ascendant
4x Soul's Attendant
3x Sun Titan
2x Survival Cache
2x Ajani Goldmane
3x Origin Spellbomb
4x Day of Judgment
2x Emeria, the Sky Ruin
4x Kabira Crossroads
19x Plains

So it's essentially using the Pridemate, Missionary, Ascendant, and Attendant which is the previously used lifegain engine to keep me alive and get me to either 30 life (to transform the Ascendant to a 6/6 flyer) or pump up the Pridemate enough to be formidable. What is so much nicer is that I can now use the Culling Dais and the Mimic Vat to have unlimited life gain creatures and with a single Lone Missionary under the Mimic Vat I can shut down almost any offense.

The Day of Judgment lets me reset the board and also lets me use the vat to copy my opponents creatures (Primeval Titan in monowhite!). The Sun Titan is an additional big finisher as well as lets me bring back my creatures in an alternate way (as well as the artifacts if they get destroyed). The Ajani is a late addition and I swapped him in for Baneslayers since he is cheaper and gives me a little bit more flexibility.

Survival Cache and Origin Spellbomb are mainly there as cantrips with benefits. And finally the Emeria, the Sky Ruin as a third option for bringing back my lifegain creatures.



As for the Sideboard, I am still tweaking it and it is still not perfect for the metagame but I feel like my options are a bit limited. What is in there right now can be broken down like this:

2x Journey to Nowhere - Eldrazi
3x Kor Firewalker - Red Deck Wins
3x Leonin Arbiter - Eldrazi and Titan/Valakut Ramp
1x Luminarch Ascension - Any blue control
2x Ratchet Bomb - Any weenie deck
2x Revoke Existence - White mystic artifact
2x Solemn Offering - White mystic artifact (more for Boros)

Now I know in previous articles I have said the 2-man Constructed Tournaments are a horrible option from a pure financial risk/reward standpoint, but I have been loving this deck and felt so confident in it and my schedule was so out of synch with the dailies that I threw caution to the wind and started playing in the 2-Mans. Needless to say, this deck rocked. While definitely not 'broken', it has won about 70% of the time, and I would say some of the earlier losses were due to need for refinement. That may simply be from complete surprise on my opponent's behalf but I'll just pretend it's cause my rogue deck is just that awesome.

At the moment, I'm 2-0 and waiting for round 3 in the Standard Constructed Daily, so I'm hoping this will be the rogue deck I had been trying to find!

Name: Ryan Shepard

Seed #2
Rating: 1625

2010 Game Record: 10-5
2010 Appearances: 4
2010 Tournament Victories: 1
2010 Total Winnings: $105

Featured List - Tyranids 1500

HQ

Tervigon (Adrenal Glands, Toxin Sacs)

Troops

Tervigon (Adrenal Glands, Toxin Sacs, Onslaught)
Tervigon (Adrenal Glands, Toxin Sacs, Onslaught)
Termagant x 10
Termagant x 10

Heavy Support

Tyrannofex (Rupture Cannon)
Tyrannofex (Rupture Cannon)

Elite

Hive Guard x2
Hive Guard x2
Hive Guard x2


Ryan holds the distinction of being the overall win leader on the Sprue Posse 2010 circuit at 10. His 4 appearances are a big reason for that, but he still holds a solid win percentage winning twice as often as he loses (and interestingly enough never tying). Ryan finished a sterling 4-0 in Sprue Posse #3 to secure his ticket to the invitational.

So after my poor showing in the Daily Standard Constructed, I decided to review my deck and the 'combo' at its core: Liquimetal Coating + Mimic Vat. I knew I wanted to keep this in the new deck, but I was hoping to now make it just one of the multiple viable strategies within the deck. Unfortunately, my brain seems to gravitate towards a 'free association' approach to deck building. If that doesn't make sense, please continue reading and follow along on what unfortunately is not an uncommon process when I am trying to build a deck. Now, as I write this I of course see a ton of new options and ways I could and should have gone while I was building this new version, but I want to show how my mind happened to work in this instance.

---

I start with Liquimetal Coating and Mimic Vat.


Then, I add Acidic Slime, a card that continually wrecked me in games 2 and 3. Not only can it kill artifacts and lands but also supports enchantment removal, all on a 2/2 body with deathtouch! Why didn't I think of this one before?

Then, I need some way to kill it (and opponent's creatures). My red burn was fine against the white and green decks I playtested against, but it just can't get the job done against Frost Titan. So, I turn to black and opt for simple effective Doom Blade.

Now, I said that Liquimetal Coating could help with Metalcraft, so let's see what's good with Metalcraft in black and green. Unfortunately, nothing really jumps out at me in either of these colors for metalcraft. This, I would later realize, is because I was searching only against the cards in my collection rather than all legal cards in the set. I'll discuss that in my next article.

So without good metalcraft, I decide to see what would benefit just from artifacts in general. I notice that Phylactery Lich would be pretty nice, but unfortunately don't see much else that meshes well. At this point, I think these colors won't work for this deck. I still like the Acidic Slime path, so I decide to re-evaluate black. Since I went into black as an answer to Frost Titan, I could either go into white and aim to stop it once it's in play, or go into blue and aim to either prevent it from coming into play via counters, or stealing it for myself.

As a general statement, I LOVE blue and will often play blue to a fault. In this case though, I think it would help solve one of the other problems I had with the first deck in that I now have access to card draw which should help me get to the Coating and Vat more reliably. Doing a quick search in my collection for Blue cards with artifact in their text shows me a whole slew of cards that get me giddy at the visions of amazing synergy now possible in the deck.

Vedalken Certarch is an auto-include. With the ability to lock down my opponents lands, creatures, and artifacts once I hit metalcraft, I start looking at this guy as if he's the next best thing since Liquimetal Coating! Stoic Rebuttal is also a great counter if I can reliably hit metalcraft. While not a 4x include, definitely want 2 or 3 in the deck, complemented with the real 'auto-include' Mana Leak. I also can't help but notice Grand Architect which I've wanted to use for awhile any way I could. Not only can I use him to get my artifacts out earlier but he can also pump up my blue creatures. Only one problem though...I don't have any blue creatures other than the Certarch!

    

On top of that, my only green is the slime and I think I'm only going to reduce the effectiveness of my deck if I include the green just for that card, especially since it's not a game winner on its own.

So I decide to switch gears and look at going at maybe a mono-blue deck that is just built around artifacts. At this point, I've essentially lost the focus of the deck although I don't realize it. I just keep following one connection to the next. Blue + Artifacts means I start adding Riddlesmith, Trinket Mage, and Argent Sphinx. I even go back to a 'combo' I tried to make work during Zendikar block with Dormant Gomazoa except now I figure I can make it an artifact and then untap with Voltaic Key! I think my lowest point was when I actually thought "Hey, Scrapdiver Serpent would actually be bomb with the Coating!".

    
Please don't judge me

---

I think this is the point when I realized I had completely lost the focus of the deck and I just wanted to call it quits. I decided Liquimetal Coating was nothing more than a red herring, included simply to distract and confound mediocre deck builders like me. Not really, of course. But I decided I needed to take a break from Liquimetal Coating and just try a completely new deck idea. Not that I am really giving up on the Coating, just that I think letting my mind rest before coming back to it will hopefully open my eyes to other potential synergies.

On a side note, this is actually one of the benefits of MTGO that I hadn't actively appreciated until now. In paper magic, when I make a deck, I have to pull out the cards from my collection and sleeve them. At that point, those cards can't be used in another deck. I would have to get additional copies, or constantly pull cards out from one deck to another, etc. Not to mention that if I wanted to have any chance at reconstructing my previous decks I'd need to maintain a separate file with each decklist. Maybe people actually do that for paper magic, but I've always been a '1 deck' kind of player (as far as paper goes).

With Magic Online though, it actually frees people up to go crazy and try out wacky deck ideas (I heard about this awesome combo...) without a large process overhead or product investment. If I don't like a deck, I just hit New in Deckbuilder and it's like my collection is magically sorted and available. I think it's something most MTGO players take for granted, myself included. Of course the downside for most people is they started with paper and the thought of trying to 'recreate' their collection in MTGO is a huge barrier to entry unless they're willing to sell their paper collection. But hopefully Magic will come up with a solution, maybe some sort of 'dual-booster' that has some increased cost over a regular booster, but each pack has a code that lets you redeem online to get 'both' versions. Kind of how DVDs now offer a 'special' digital download license in addition to the physical DVD. I don't know the financials around that or thought through the impacts to both play environments, but as a player I love the concept.

Anyways, enough rambling! To wrap up this article, let me give you a hint of what I'm CONVINCED is the key to my next deck idea...

The prize formula for the Sprue Posse Grand Prix is now official:

Sprue Posse Awards - Based on the official tournament prize pool (Portion of Ticket Fees + GW Donations + 3rd Party Donations)

Generalship

1st Place - 35%
2nd Place - 15%
3rd Place - 10%
4th Place - 7.5%

Painting/Appearance

1st Place - 25%
2nd Place - 7.5%

3rd Party Awards - Based on a separate prize pool (3rd party donations only)

Best Sportsman
Renaissance Man (Sportsmanship + Painting + Generalship)

The actual full prize value of both prize pools is still TBD. One of those variables is pegged to participant turnout and additional sponsorship opportunities but the amount should be in the neighborhood of at least $500 worth of store credit/product with a cap of around $1000.

The Sportsmanship award is provided by a third party benefactor and is a player rated score. You will rank your 5 opponents with a score of 1-5 at the end of the tournament. 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. You cannot allocate the same score twice.

The Renaissance Man award is equal parts generalship, painting and sportsmanship.

Players are eligible to win as many awards as they qualify for. Sweeping Generalship, Painting, Sportsmanship and Renaissance awards is a possibility.

For the low low price of 6 tickets, I have been reminded once again that I am NOT the master deck builder that I seem to think I am :) And that when playtesting in the Casual > Tournament Practice room (which I will now refer to as the TP room), I should note that Tournament Practice is considered a subdivision of 'Casual'. That is to say, what wins in the TP room should not be considered a 'winning formula' :)

So, back I go to devising a deck. I will not yet succumb to 'net decking' yet. I think I will set a limit of ~50 tickets to trying to come up with a viable Rogue deck. That allows for 5 daily tournaments and 20 tickets for card purchases. And that is starting from today, so this won't include the 9 tickets I used for the previous deck's cards, and the 6 tickets for the daily last night.

As for my next deck idea, I still want to try and build something that uses Liquimetal Coating + Mimic Vat. I think it's a highly potent combo that can allow for repeated abuse of metalcraft and versatile permanent destruction. The only question is what I should do about the other 52 cards.

It was pretty clear from my performance in the Standard Daily last night (which I'll do a write-up for later, hopefully with video) that my deck is flawed. It was obvious that lack of playtesting against Blue-Green-(White|Red) with Frost Titan was a factor as I didn't realize just how easily I was shut down. Unless I could pull one of my 4 Coatings, I had no way to get rid of the Titan. And way too often the Coating that I had managed to successfully draw and cast was simply destroyed the following turn.

I need to make the focus less on making the Coating some kind of 'killer' card, and instead make it a support card for more viable and versatile strategies. So far, the ones I'm thinking of have shifted me entirely out of red but I am going to spend a bit more time just reviewing available cards and seeing what other synergies I can find.