Azorius Aggro Guide - Arena Mythic Top 100

Scoreboard

I picked up Azorius Aggro at Platinum 4, after getting sick of battling Grixis nonsense with Sultai and only winning 55% of my matches.

I haven’t kept exact stats, but I’ve won 70-80% of my matches with Azorius Aggro since then. I know I lost around 8 matches from Plat 4 to Mythic, and at most the same number since hitting Mythic. I probably even padded my numbers by switching to Sultai and spewing off some ranks early on only to win them back with Venerated Loxodon.

The Loxodon Rule

Venerated Loxodon is the best card in Azorius Aggro. Benalish Marshal and Legion’s Landing are in the top five. Two drops are horrible at maximizing those cards.

It’s way harder to turn three transform Legion’s Landing or cast Venerated Loxodon if you played a single creature on turn two. You also want to cast a three drop on turn three and don’t really care about a two drop on turn four. If you draw multiple two drops your hand starts with a bad card.

If there were more playable one drops I might play no two drops, but three Hunted Witness is my limit on creatures barely worth the cardboard they are printed on. Three Adanto Vanguard is a necessary evil, and I almost never configure my deck to have more than four two drops.

The List and Quick Notes

(Deck image via MTGGoldfish)


4 Skymarcher Aspirant (RIX) 21
4 Snubhorn Sentry (RIX) 23
4 Dauntless Bodyguard (DAR) 14
4 Legion's Landing (XLN) 22
3 Hunted Witness (GRN) 15
3 Adanto Vanguard (XLN) 1
4 Benalish Marshal (DAR) 6
4 History of Benalia (DAR) 21
4 Venerated Loxodon (GRN) 30
1 Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants (M19) 3
3 Conclave Tribunal (GRN) 6
2 Baffling End (RIX) 1
12 Plains (RIX) 192
4 Hallowed Fountain (RNA) 251
4 Glacial Fortress (XLN) 255

3 Tocatli Honor Guard (XLN) 42
1 Adanto Vanguard (XLN) 1
2 Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants (M19) 3
1 Conclave Tribunal (GRN) 6
2 Baffling End (RIX) 1
1 Spell Pierce (XLN) 81
2 Disdainful Stroke (GRN) 37
2 Negate (RIX) 44
1 Island (RIX) 193

Don’t mess with the mana curve. See the Loxodon rule. This is my only big deviation from Marcio Carvalho’s Mythic Championshiop Top 8 list.

Don’t keep most four land hands. Almost all of the exceptions are double History of Benalia hands.

Don’t play one drops that get free rolled by Kraul Harpooner, people will sideboard it in just to block. Healer's Hawk is still a stupid 1/1, it's not actually better than Hunted Witness.

Five removal has been decent. Multiple Conclave Tribunal is clunky, hence the 3-2 split.

Unbreakable Formation is horrible. The power-to-cost rate is not the insane six or seven for one like your pump creatures. Most decks beat you by killing your creatures, which makes Formation blank. People are playing Cry of the Carnarium over Kaya’s Wrath. The only matchup Formation is good for is white mirrors, where both the indestructible and vigilance come into play. Ajani at least has redeeming qualities as your 9th pump, like saving sideboard slots.

I haven’t tested Tithe Taker in a while, it may be better than Adanto Vanguard or a 2-1 split in either direction might be right. Full disclosure, I didn’t have Tithe Takers or rare wild cards on Arena when I started my run with this deck and I kept winning too much to mess with it. Overall Tithe Taker is better against Red, White, and Blue aggro decks, it’s debatable against Wilderness Reclamation's counter magic and Esper Control, and Adanto Vanguard is way better against Grixis or Sultai Midrange and Izzet. Tithe Taker only massively better against Mono-Blue which is already a good matchup, whereas Adanto Vanguard has lots of spots it just can’t die and wins the game.

The sideboard Spell Pierce could be a third copy of either other counter, I haven’t done the math on the Island, and the third Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants also isn’t a requirement. If you have good ideas to use those slots on instead feel free to try them.

I’m not going to bother too much with matchup favorability. It isn’t worth it. You have “rough” matchups, but basically all of those can be solved by a good Loxodon draw. Your good matchups just mean your more middling draws are also good. If you want to read between the lines, me saying you really need a pump effect draw means the matchup is unfavorable.

 Also, given my win rate clearly my plan for "bad matchups" has been just crush them anyways.

Matchup - Sultai Midrange

I wrote about this from the other side on StarCityGames a couple weeks ago. They have four ways to win. From least to most beatable: They can cast Finality, they can trigger Wildgrowth Walker, they can resolve Hostage Taker and recast things, and they can play idiots into a Hydroid Krasis for six. Your one drops into pump draws crush their Krasis draws, compete with Hostage Taker, and can struggle against Wildgrowth Walker. The plan against Finality is hope they die first or they don't draw it. Sometimes you win if they don’t keep a creature through it and you draw really well or have Adanto, the First Fort.

If you get lucky and can make a 5/5 that survives Finality, do that. Remember that Benalish Marshal usually dies to Finality and makes this fall apart.

Sideboard:

-3 Adanto Vanguard
-1 Conclave Tribunal
-3 Hunted Witness

+3 Tocatli Honor Guard
+2 Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants
+2 Baffling End

I don’t mess with counter magic against Sultai. No matter which one you choose half their plans just win through it regardless, and your best plan against both Finality and Hydroid Krasis is just kill them first. Once you start bogging your deck down with reactive cards you are playing into their game of cast one spell a turn, Sultai’s punch harder. This is also why you have to trim on a Conclave Tribunal, too many answers is a fast way to lose.

Your sideboard focuses on stopping their second best plan of Wildgrowth Walker, as all their other plans require time and land drops that Wildgrowth Walker often helps bridge to. Tocatli Honor Guard also shuts off Hostage Taker. Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants layers Tocatli Honor Guard through removal and gives you threats that survive Finality. The creatures you cut are just the worst ones in the deck, with the two drop cap still applying. Adanto Vanguard isn't bad, it's just worse than Tocatli Honor Guard and worse than curving out.

On the play I often trim a Baffling End for any one of the cards I take out, but you can’t Conclave Tribunal a turn two Wildgrowth Walker on the draw and need the extra two mana answer.

Yes, Tocatli Honor Guard is a nonbo with Venerated Loxodon. I don’t care, because you usually win if Honor Guard lives and you usually win if you cast Venerated Loxodon and trigger it. If you draw both just figure out if you need to shut off explore and Hostage Taker now or can just play the 1/3 after making seven power for two mana.

Matchup - Goblin Chainwhirler (Gruul Midrange, Red Aggro, Jund Deathwhirler, etc)

This matchup has two key issues: Goblin Chainwhirler, and the fact that all of these decks have more threats you have to kill than you can have removal. Runaway Steam-Kin, Goblin Chainwhirler (first strike sucks), Experimental Frenzy, Rekindling Phoenix, Growth-Chamber Guardian, Skarrgan Hellkite, Gruul Spellbreaker, etc.

So step one is figuring out how to not lose all your things to a one damage sweeper, and step two is figuring out how to navigate a bunch of threats. The answer is usually just play a mass pump effect and kill them. If you don’t do that, you probably die. If you have an early Venerated Loxodon you are a massive favorite, if you don’t you are solidly behind.

If you see a basic Mountain early and have options on casting one drops, see if you can leave yourself only losing one thing to a Chainwhirler trigger. Hunted Witness and Snubhorn Sentry survive, and if you cast Dauntless Bodyguard after other one drops you can save something.

Sideboard:

-3 Adanto Vanguard
-4 Skymarcher Aspirant

+2 Baffling End
+1 Conclave Tribunal
+3 Tocatli Honor Guard
+1 Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants

Creatures that die to Chainwhirler with no hope of leaving value around are gone. More removal and answer to Chainwhirler trigger are in. Jam hard, good luck. The matchup isn’t as bleak as I’m making it sound, but it’s real easy for mediocre hands to die horrible deaths.

Matchup - Esper Control

I don’t have a generalized plan for this matchup as too much changes based on how they play, revealing what cards they do or don’t have. The quick tips:

-You usually shouldn’t play around Cry of the Carnarium. You should play around Kaya’s Wrath a bit, then as soon as they don’t cast it on an obvious turn play as if they don’t have it.

-Casting a History of Benalia into a possible Kaya’s Wrath with other stuff is less of an over extension than it sounds because the second Knight shows up after.

-Transforming Legion’s Landing is strongly correlated to a win. On the draw against Watery Grave I will default to casting it on turn one to avoid Thought Erasure taking it.

-There can be later game spots where they are low on life, struggling to find an answer to a couple idiots or an Adanto, the First Fort. If you get them in one of these probably no removal, clock ticking down spots where you are low on resources you often just don’t want to cast spells into Absorb mana. If they don’t gain three life, they die.

-Attacking a fresh Teferi from 5 to 3 loyalty with a Knight token is often a solid option so it can’t freely -3 to kill your token. This comes up when your opponent is in the 8 life range against a couple small attackers, where you clearly don’t want to waste a ton of damage on Teferi but they also could stabilize with two one-for-one answers.

Sideboard:

-4 Venerated Loxodon
-4 Snubhorn Sentry
-2 Baffling End
-1 Hunted Witness

+1 Island
+2 Disdainful Stroke
+2 Negate
+1 Spell Pierce
+1 Adanto Vanguard
+2 Tocatli Honor Guard
+1 Conclave Tribunal
+1 Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants

Out go the cards that require you to play into Kaya’s Wrath and aren’t great after. In come a bunch of ways to steal the game by countering Kaya’s Wrath.

Now that you don’t have Venerated Loxodon more two drops are acceptable, and Tocatli Honor Guard stops Hostage Taker. The fourth Conclave Tribunal versus the third Tocatli Honor Guard is a close choice, but too many people have brought in Thief of Sanity on top of Lyra Dawnbringer and Hostage Taker lately.

Update: As pointed out in the comments, I bring in 1 more Ajani over a lower impact card. Having a unique threat is great, but Ajani is a bit on the slow side and runs the risk of giving them something really good to Teferi -3 on so two is about the max.

Matchup - Wilderness Reclamation (Simic Nexus, Temur Explosion, etc)

If they don’t have Root Snare in their deck (Temur), you just gun for a goldfish kill. The one interactive piece to consider is Syncopate, but there’s rare spots you actually play around it that are largely “cast Venerated Loxodon with a mana open over History of Benalia on turn three”. Remember if you have multiple History of Benalia that you want to resolve the +2/+1 ultimate first to force Fiery Cannonade before your Knight token trigger resolves.

If they do have Root Snare (Simic), it’s similar but your goal is to force them to cast their Root Snares as soon as possible as that cuts down their mana to dig with and can run them out of Snares. If given the choice of Benalish Marshal or Venerated Loxodon, I do the math. If Benalish Marshal gives me an out of drawing another Marshal to force lethal next turn, that’s the play.

Sideboard:

-3 Hunted Witness
-1 Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants
-2 Baffling End

+1 Island
+2 Disdainful Stroke
+2 Negate
+1 Spell Pierce

I like having the fourth Conclave Tribunal against Temur Reclamation’s Rekindling Phoenix and Niv-Mizzet, Parun. Simic Nexus is less likely to pass the turn, and Conclave Tribunal for half a Biogenic Ooze is a worse rate.

Matchup - Mono-Blue Aggro

This is a good matchup, but as always they can do weird stuff. This is another matchup where I just have tips and you have to read their options based on plays and Arena priority.

-If you can resolve Venerated Loxodon, you usually win.

-Dive Down is a combat trick, but usually that exchange is fine.

-If they have Siren Stormtamer, Conclave Tribunal can target Curious Obsession. If they have Obsession on a Stormtamer or Mist-Cloaked Herald you can play around Dive Down this way, but Pteramander is often worth the risk to just gun for.

-Not casting spells into counters can come up in tight races versus Pteramander. It's not common like versus Esper, keep an eye on that math.

-If they pass with two mana up doing nothing, don’t lose a 1/1 to Merfolk Trickster. Adanto Vanguard even loses indestructible.

-Conclave Tribunal convoking to leave up two mana for Spell Pierce is a common play.

Sideboard:

-3 Adanto Vanguard
-1 Hunted Witness
-1 Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants

+2 Tocatli Honor Guard
+2 Baffling End
+1 Conclave Tribunal

If you had Tithe Taker, it would be better than Tocatli Honor Guard. Guard used to be much better when Exclusion Mage and Faerie Duelist were typical.

Don’t cut History of Benalia. If they want to have Spell Pierce in their deck let them draw it and leave it open and not counter removal. If they don’t have it, History kills them.

Matchup - Izzet Spells (Phoenix, Drakes)

This matchup is basically the same as the Mono-Blue Aggro matchup, but you get to jam harder and not worry about counters on your threats.

Sideboard:

-3 Hunted Witness
-1 Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants

+2 Baffling End
+1 Conclave Tribunal
+1 Adanto Vanguard

Kill their stuff and kill them. Adanto Vanguard sizing up from a 3/1 to a 4/2 with one pump makes it really important for attacking into x/4 Drakes.

The exact number of Baffling Ends you want depends on how many good targets they have. You want all of them against Izzet Drakes with Pteramander and Enigma Drake, and only two or three if they are a Niv-Mizzet deck that only has Enigma Drake or an Arclight Phoenix deck that only has Goblin Electromancer. In the lighter cases keep in some Hunted Witness.

Matchup - White Aggro Mirrors

Being on the play is a huge edge here. The ways to flip that advantage are multiple History of Benalia or having more pump effects. Occasionally you can reach parity and a flying Skymarch Aspirant ends it but that isn’t typical.

On turn one and two, figure out if you want to trade or are building up to something bigger. Determine your first attacks and blocks entirely based off that.

You might have to use removal in other ways, like holding off History of Benalia, but saving it for a Benalish Marshal is the best case scenario. Try not to Conclave Tribunal their enchantments as they can Conclave Tribunal back and retrigger Landing or History.

Sideboard:

-3 Adanto Vanguard

+2 Baffling End
+1 Conclave Tribunal

Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants is fine as a one of, but more is too slow.

Matchup - Selesnya Tokens

It’s like a mirror, but they have more of the army in a can and pump effects that break things open. Your goal is to land multiple early pumps and force them to start chump blocking as fast as possible. Save removal for Trostani Discordant if possible, but also don’t let them run away with a game.

They can also recover games that would be traditionally unrecoverable in Azorius Aggro mirrors with multiple March of the Multitudes. This is why getting to forced chump range quickly is key. The less resources they keep off using March as a Root Snare, the less the second one snowballs the game.

Sideboard:

-3 Adanto Vanguard
-1 Hunted Witness
-1 Conclave Tribunal
-2 Baffling End

+2 Disdainful Stroke
+2 Negate
+2 Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants
+1 Island

Counterspells are great, as all of their cards that break parity are expensive. If you have the third Disdainful Stroke this is where it really shines. Negate also covers you against random sideboard sweepers they might have, like Settle the Wreckage.

Tocatli Honor Guard would shut down their Venerated Loxodon, but I think your Venerated Loxodons are more important on balance and they are happier fighting 1/1s versus 1/1s. It shuts down half of Trostani Discordant, but not the pump half. It shuts down Knight of Autumn, but you are trimming removal already. I’m not interested in a low impact, two cost, awkward timing creature.

Sultai Midrange Is A Beatdown Deck

“How's your Jund matchup?”

It's June 2010. Bloodbraid Elf is still legal in Standard despite literally nothing stopping Jund Cascade since October. Rise of the Eldrazi brought some new hope to the format. My friends were convinced through extensive testing that Simic Polymorph-Emrakul, Naya Vengevine, and Mono-Red Aggro all beat Jund. Bant Mythic, a Noble Hierarch and mythic rare threats deck, was another supposed bad matchup.

Three ten game sets later, I went 7-3 or better against all three rogue decks. I went 3-0, 6-0 against Bant Mythic at the Grand Prix.

This wasn't luck, I was playing the matchups in a different way than most Jund people and my opponents couldn't win.

So here we are in 2019. People are saying stupid stuff like “Sultai is 45% against everything”. And here I am winning 75% of my matches with Sultai.

Oh boy are they all doing it wrong.

Let's break down the old example, examine the past, and see the present in that light.

Simic Polymorph aimed to beat Jund with positioning. Cheap counterspell, single creature, and then there's an unbeatable Emrakul, the Aeons Torn.

Mono-Red Aggro beat Jund via speed and inevitability. Get Jund low on life, keep throwing four damage spells at them.

Naya Vengevine won via recursion. Removal on Vengevine was largely ineffective, and eventually it would grind out the ultimate attrition deck.

Bant Mythic won via a large number of must answer, often hard to kill threats. Planeswalkers, Knight of the Reliquary that immediately held up protection via Sejiri Steppe, and trying to do all of this fast.

Meet Putrid Leech, breaker of spirits, an old school wrecker of plans.

If Simic Polymorph just kept taking four damage, they didn't have time to wait for protection. Or maybe they went off and still died because Emrakul had to wait a turn to attack.

If Mono-Red Aggro just had less draw steps, less turns to unearth a Hell's Thunder, they died.

If Naya Vengevine started needing to chump block, Jund's removal on Vengevine mattered as it ensured other things died.

Bant Mythic’s planeswalkers could die in combat. They could die if you got a bit ahead and snipped their mana by Bolting the Bird.

It wasn’t even just Putrid Leech. Bloodbraid Elf, Lightning Bolt, and Blightning were all great ways to apply quick pressure to your opponent’s life total. They all were good cards at blocking and trading off for threats, but they also killed opponents.

Just because all your cards provide card advantage doesn't mean you have to win by running them out of cards.

“If they are trying to do almost any strategy, of of the best counters is to just go fucking kill him” - Day9 (Sean Plott)

Sultai Midrange today has the same role to play. Merfolk Branchwalker and Jadelight Ranger are really messed up. Every other deck has to pay mana to fix their early draws with a spell. Sultai Midrange gets to do that and put significant power on the battlefield. Other decks have proactive two drops and three drops, but Merfolk Branchwalker and Jadelight Ranger match them on sizing while still putting you up cards or selection.

If your opponent starts bending their deck to be controlling, then your attrition tools come online. If your two-for-one attackers start drawing answers, your opponents will run out of cards due to things like Hydroid Krasis.

Your Izzet Phoenix opponent is trying to pull off some Arclight Phoenix recursion, Crackling Drake, maybe Niv Mizzet or Ral Zarek plans. Just kill them with a 4/3 Jadelight Ranger.

Your Mono-Blue Tempo opponents are trying to assemble these weird protected contraptions of fliers and what not. Just hit them with Wildgrowth Walker and they die.

For some reason the term aggro-control and the idea of changing your role got prescribed to blue decks with Delver of Secrets, but every green midrange deck has all the tools the enact the same role-selection game plan.

If your opponent lets you trade all of your cards for theirs, you don’t have to be the aggro deck. You can bury them in card advantage. But that line has largely been cannibalized out of the format because Sultai Midrange is so good at it, with a few hold outs from Azorius Aggro, Gruul Aggro, Mono-Red Aggro, really anything that says it’s aggro or other creature-based midrange decks.

Sultai's strength is being able to attack opponents who don’t trade for your cards because they are trying to do some wonky stuff to avoid it, then to punish them with raw card advantage if they try to become the control to your aggro. Your removal is utility aimed at the most pressing threats they have that let them outclass your baseline two-for-one bodies.

The pattern is the same as it was in the days of Putrid Leech. If you play Sultai Midrange as an attrition-control deck, that’s when it’s a 45% deck. When you play it as a proactive deck with punishing anti-interaction attrition tools and a good answer set, that’s how you win 75% of your matches.

Fundamental Caveats, aka making fun of Boros Angels: 

-The midrange-beatdown plan specifically works as a window exploit where you have long game to back your optional early game. If your "midrange" deck is just casting non-value fours and fives, your opponent can effectively become the control deck and your deck is only good if your entire threat package is an exploit to the answers of the format, aka if no one has Vraska's Contempt for your Rekindling Phoenix and Adanto Vanguard.

-The midrange-beatdown plan really requires your early drops to be able to play offense and defense. Otherwise your Adanto Vanguard deck might have to play against a different Adanto Vanguard deck that hits you harder while you draw two mana do nothing creatures.

-The midrange-beatdown plan needs to be a relevant clock for the format. Jadelight Ranger is right now. Knight of Grace without your own black permanents to pump it really isn't.

Whir Prison at GP LA - 12-3, 15th Place

Prep:

Starting in 2012 after the the first real Modern bans, I spend 8 years playing a ton of the format with approximately everything. I know the approximate contents and plans of every deck in the format.

I then don't play Modern between an RPTQ win in December and the Monday before the GP.

I decide I should check out Whir Prison first as it's the only deck I haven't tested a lot. I'm half asleep, having arrived at the Cleveland airport at 4am, landed at Newport News after DCA Airport was closed due to wind, and cabbing 3 hours home. I unpack my suitcase, load it with giant boxes of Modern, and get to work.

I 4-1 my first league, then 4-1 again. Overall I go 23-6, with my only direct prior prep being watching susurrus_mtg's Prison Mike MCQ stream. For the other people who didn't watch The Office, here's Prison Mike for reference. After the fourth League I unpack my suitcase, order the missing cards, and load exactly one Whir deck into my backpack. In my last pre-event match my opponent wins game one with Mono-Red Phoenix, casts Shatterstorm games two and three, and  I still win.

Basically all of my online opponents concede to the lock. I also manage to cast a spell into my own Chalice of the Void on accident about three times a League.

This could either be the best or worst Grand Prix ever.

Travel:

I wake up at 5am DC time. (Small woof) My dog has decided it is food time. (Bigger woo) It isn't. (Grrr woof) She settles for a 30% share of my blanket in exchange for another two hours of sleep. (Heavy sigh, chuff) As always she drives a hard bargain.

I wake up at 6:45am. My flight has been delayed five hours then undelayed. I'm glad I missed this nonsense.

I board my Boston to Burbank flight. The pilot tells us our route often has to stop in Denver to refuel. I have flashbacks to last GP LA where I also got stuck in Denver. Somehow we make it all seven hours in the air without landing. I arrive at Danny Batterman's couch, we find our way to a burger bar where they have Founder's Canadian Breakfast Stout (actual 10/10), where I get to deliver my rant about how buns actually make burgers worse regardless of your stance on bread, and where I convince Danny to cut Sigarda from his Amulet Titan sideboard but not Zacama from his maindeck.

Rounds 1 & 2: Byes

I get breakfast, cards, and scour the site for people I know. They have largely given up the Grand Prix grind. The event feels hollow, the main show feels like a crammed in after thought in a hall of side events, I wonder what purpose this event serves that an early 2000's Regional prerelease didn't, and I talk to all ten people I know on site about how there's literally no Wizards-run events targetted at people between those trying to spike local qualifiers and those getting $200,000 in annual equity in the MPL. My event report is tailored to match this hollow irrelevance.

I'm also told by a third party that Ari Zax is hunting me for an in event showdown.

I decide to meet new people and be social to avoid becoming the isolated victim of an Edgar Allen Poe plot. Even if to some people the appearance of grandeur has worn off events and tournament reports over the last two decades, you can still find it hidden in the details.

Round 3: Spirits

Game one on the play I play turn two Ensnaring Bridge. Thanks Mox Opal! My opponent doesn't find Deputy of Detention off Collected Company and concedes to Chalice of the Void for three somewhere in the middle of me assembling the full lock with Sorcerous Spyglass on Selfless Spirit and Engineered Explosives for three sunburst (X equals 4 though, gotta watch that Chalice).

Game two I resolve Torpor Orb on turn two and Ensnaring Bridge on turn three. My opponent's deck is now 60 Grass Energies, they concede when I demonstrate that my deck contains Sai, Master Thopterist.

3-0

Actual Game Wins: 0
Misery Overloads: 2
Games Lost : 0

Round 4: Jeskai Control

My opponent mulligans, I Sorcerous Spyglass. They flop their hand, I name their already on the battlefield Flooded Strand. They draw another, and by the time they get to real mana I have Crucible of Worlds and Tectonic Edge and Sorcerous Spyglass on Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. I make a small punt later on and don't Whir for Pyrite Spellbomb, which if they Cryptic Command my Teferi-Spyglass means they lose Teferi if it -3’s to clear another card.

Game two I have an absurdly good draw and just jam through some counter magic. An end of turn Whir of Invention baits a counterspell, Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas resolves, the game ends.

4-0

Actual Game Wins: 0
Refusal to Give Me The Satisfaction of Eventually Winning: 4, I technically did activate Ipnu Rivulet a couple times and have a non-lethal Tezzeret setup pending.
Games Lost : 0

Round 5: Mono-Red Phoenix

I lose a game on the draw to a quick clock. My opponent is appropriately dumpstered by Chalice of the Void and lock pieces the other games. A weird ruling occurs where they reveal the top card of their deck to only me when they bump it on a cut. No penalty, they don't shuffle, they draw the Mountain I saw and die.

This deck is not necessarily simple, but it is easy to play against decks that lose to Ensnaring Bridge and Chalice of the Void.

5-0

Actual Game Wins: 0
Taking Their Toys and Going Home: 6
Games Lost : 1

Round 6: Mono-Red Phoenix

I lose games one and three on the draws to their burn draws with an early Prowess threat. I win game two against Hazoret, the Fervent and Shrine of Burning Rage via Inventor's Fair, Spellskite, and Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas.

5-1

Actual Game Wins: 1, Tezzeret ultimate
They're Over It: 6
Games Lost : 3

Round 7: Mono-Red Phoenix

I resolve Chalice of the Void by turn two both games. My opponent performs no game actions. I set up Chalice on four game two and win by Exploding it, playing Tezzeret, and immediate re-Chalicing for four. They didn't have the Shatterstorm anyways.

Notably my opponent is 11 years old. He has only played Modern for a week. His dad asks him why he didn't concede early, and is told "Gotta make him beat me to make Day 2".

He finishes 12-3.

6-1

Actual Game Wins: 2, another Tezzeret ultimate
Broken Wills: 7
Games Lost : 3


Side plot update: Danny has won basically every match due to Zacama, except the one he sideboarded it out. I start considering I might be wrong there. Ari Zax is also 6-1, the Evil Twin showdown appears to be closing in.

Round 8: Shadow Zoo

Game one I mulligan to five and play Welding Jar, Mox Opal, land, and some other brick. They go Bloodstained Mire, Mishra's Bauble, Thoughtseize off Godless Shrine seeing my last card is a land. I tank, draw and play Engineered Explosives for two thinking they are Abzan Delirium. This is bad and wrong as they clearly have red due to Bloodstained Mire. I lose to one drops. I play Sai game two and Whir up a Spellskite to save it one turn before full locking them, then resolve Chalice of the Void game three. They don't draw Unravel the Aether and only see one Ancient Grudge, I easily win.

Other notable punts: not establishing another Chalice of the Void on 2 game three to lock future Ancient Grudges, not considering Stony Silence in sideboarding and shaving the 21st land.

7-1

Actual Game Wins: 3, Sai finally gets one
TKOs: 8
Games Lost : 4

Round 9: Humans

I die game one and three on the draw due to clunky draws versus good Humans disruptive draws. I think this matchup is actually difficult on the draw and if they have Gaddock Teeg and Kambal, Consul of Allocation like my opponent did.

7-2

Actual Game Wins: 3
Escape Ropes Used: 9
Games Lost : 6

I leave Day One barely functional due to jet lag and accumulated fatigue of six of the last seven weekends spent grinding events. I almost forget how to eat food and ponder never leaving the Eastern Time Zone again.

Round 10: Emerson T. Chair

I don't understand how I get so many free wins at events, but I won't refuse them. Tom Martell next to me looks visibly disgusted as I sign the match slip ten minutes into the round.

8-2

Dice Towers Assembled: 1

Round 11: Izzet Phoenix

My opponent has no real hate in their deck, just three Abrade. They have lost the match on turn negative one. I also have Chalice of the Void turn two both games.

9-2

Actual Game Wins: 3
Accelerated Lunch Breaks: 11
Games Lost : 6

Round 12: Golgari

This match is notably against Nam Sung Wook, who gave me my 5th loss late at the Mythic Championship the previous weekend. I resolve to revenge my loss in this much lower stakes scenario.

Game one I mulligan to five on the draw, keep a two Glimmervoid hand, get my zero drop discarded, and don't play a land turn one or two. I still have Abrupt Decay and Assassin's Trophy covered and only lose to the second Trophy, being one blue source off beating that too.

Game two Tezzeret makes a 5/5 that kills Liliana of the Veil. Then another 5/5 that kills him. I may have elected to not save an Ensnaring Bridge from Maelstrom Pulse earlier this game. “Oops”.

Game three he sticks on mana after a mulligan, I set up a lock and stick Tezzeret, which eventually ultimates for lethal.

Actual Game Wins: 5, each a different Tezzeret Mode
Tap Outs: 11
Games Lost : 7

Sideplot Interlude: Danny continues with beat people with Zacama, I am declared formally wrong there. Ari Zax is also 10-2, preparing for the highest stakes version of the showdown.

Round 13: Humans

I win the die roll and play Ensnaring Bridge and Bottled Cloister early game one. Game two I play turn one Torpor Orb, set up an Ensnaring Bridge and removal in play to cover a future relevant Meddling Mage or Gaddock Teeg, and they had had just shown up with Torpor Orb-able sideboard cards.

11-2

Actual Game Wins: 5
Tap Outs: 13
Games Lost : 7

Round 14: Izzet Phoenix

Opponent has the bare minimum hate. My hands function. His deck no longer does.

12-2

Actual Game Wins: 5
Wait Come Back I'm Not Done Yets: 15
Games Lost : 7

Ari Zax falls out of my bracket. We sign and exchange possibly the only two copies Evil Twin in the room. While not the maximum possible nonsense value we could have received, it was sure close.

Round 15: Grixis Shadow

Game one I keep a fine but slow draw and lose three Whirs/Bridges to discard. He tries to cast the third into Damping Sphere, can't, and I can either Whir up Tormod's Crypt or Explosives for one with my last spells before he takes the other. I Explosives, he has Gurmag Angler and discard.
I Stirrings into another Bridge, but can't cast it due to the Damping Sphere I played to ramp to Whir. It gets countered next turn, I die.

Game two I keep a one land great draw. I miss once, lose my Chalice and Bridge to discard, start hitting, and clear a Death's Shadow with Engineered Explosives. He plays another, I punt and play a Welding Jar instead of holding it for post-Sai, but a Kolaghan's Command, two counterspells, and Hurkyl's Recall have me dead regardless. He also has the Dismember on Sai for show.

12-3

Actual Game Wins: 5, all sideboard cards
I Agree, This Deck Is Dumb: 15
Games Lost : 9
Chalice of the Void related warnings: 0!

Tiebreakers declare me the winningest Ari. Mutual friends remain unsure which of us is the good twin, all of them consider the possibility that one is elsewhere locked away in a dungeon somewhere Hugo and Bart style.

I finish writing this report in JFK airport. My plane was supposed to go from LA to Boston. There's apparently no way for me to get from JFK to DC on Jetblue without flying north to Boston. At least I get unlucky in the least functionally inconvenient ways possible.

Quick FAQ: 

Is Whir Prison a miserable deck to play? No. It is quickly clear your opponent is dead, the actual win isn't that bad, and the sideboard cards are all easy mode.

Would I play Whir Prison again? Yes. It's really powerful in a format that is soft to Chalice of the Void and Ensnaring Bridge.

Is Whir Prison a true dominant deck? No. There's too many small card choices opponents can have that are really problematic. You aren't Lantern Control, where a single card without instant cantrips to find it can be milled. They find it eventually. If people start Hurkyl's Recall or Shatterstorm or whatevering you will have big issues.

Is Whir Prison really hard to play? Nope. Maybe a bit complicated, but not hard. Your plays are really scripted. You don't make many dynamic decisions. By virtue of there being so few cards that matter you don't care about hidden information. You are just learning a script, the literal “one easy trick to stop this deck” for each deck. Of course, this style of deterministic game play is one of the things I'm best at in Magic so your mileage may vary.

Except the Amulet Titan matchup, which crosses the complexity threshold of moving pieces to be actually hard.

How do I learn Whir Prison? Twitch.tv/susurrus_mtg. Watch replays. Take notes. Then play games. I'll also be putting up a written primer next week on Starcitygames.com with the self-derived sideboard plans I used in testing.

What about X matchup? Look at their deck. Which cards can win the game through Ensnaring Bridge or remove it or find the ones that do. Stop those. Can they stop you from stopping those. Stop that. Can they exile your graveyard. Stop that before going to actually win. Congrats, its over.

How do you manage to deal with all the travel nonsense you do and keep booking tickets? I remind myself "At least the plane isn't on fire like that one time".

The RNA Draft Meeting Part #2: Pick Order and The Purpose of Them

Part 1 of this breakdown discussing all the Ravnica Allegiance draft archetypes is linked here.

Reminder that this info is mainly for use in drafts against humans, and needs adjustment for Magic Arena bots.

The second part of a good Mythic Championship pick order is establishing a Pick 1, Pack 1 ranking of the better cards. This is then used to rank the rares, which is important because even over fifty or sixty drafts you are likely to have not played with or misevaluated one or two of those due to small sample size.

Let's skip ahead and here is mine, with credit due on some rare opinions to a lot of other great people like Eric Froelich and Andrew Elenbogen.

For comparison, here is Limited specialist Ryan Saxe's pick order.

I personally think a well done pick order is one of the best tools for a draft format, but historically people have rallied against following a strict pick order.

Why Pick Orders Are Bad

It's hard to launch my counter-counter argument for pick orders without covering the classic argument against them. Especially because that argument is right.

Pick orders have been called bad for a long time because Limited is about building a cohesive deck. You need specific combinations of cards to create specific profitable scenarios to win the game. You need to be dynamic in a draft, understand the typical issues you need to resolve, look at your cards
and identify possible new issues to resolve, and pick according to that.

A strict pick order is vulnerable to a lot of contextual pitfalls, but flying loose goose is vulnerable to not just making the theory-optimal play.

To repurpose a Patrick Chapin classic: If you aren't half pick order, you aren't using your head enough. If you aren't half context, you aren't using your heart enough.

Why Pick Orders Are Great

How can you make dynamic decisions about your deck before you know what deck that is?

Pick orders are absolute musts for the developmental stage of the draft, where you are evaluating multiple non-overlapping choices. Sometimes you have to decide between Frenzied Arynx and Imperious Oligarch and knowing which is better is likely the most important context.

The goal of a pick order should be allowing you to evaluate difficult decisions that will determine the direction your draft take before you really lock in on a framework to build within.

The Importance of Grades 

So you have some context. Maybe you have a Blade Juggler, then see Frenzied Arynx or Imperious Oligarch. How do you make that decision?

That's where grading has to come in. Let's say you think Frenzied Arynx is better than Imperious Oligarch here. How much better you think it is matters a ton, as does how you compare it to the Blade Juggler you already have.

When you assign cards a grade like B+ or C, you are trying to cluster things beyond a raw pick order so you can weight semi-informed decisions.

In this case, you are looking at a B level Arynx and B- Oligarch while your already picked Blade Juggler is a B+. That puts Juggler at not quite the level that it's worth a huge concession to stick to, and Arynx is solidly better than Oligarch to the point I would take the Gruul card.

This is where I think Ryan Saxe's pick order is lacking, though it might be due to the cleaner presentation format making it harder.

How People Grade Wrong

Grades as an abstract rating of how good a card is are stupid.

The purpose of grades is to help you quantify the relative difference between early picks.

Too often people use grading scales that are better at delineating between late picks, where context often overrides raw power. There's a couple key breakpoints defining whether a playable is slightly above or below average, but once you get into the D-level cards I don't really care that much. If you are ranking D+ vs D-, you are really just ranking the odds of wanting a conditional effect in the sideboard.

Or maybe they spend a bunch of time grading rares and mythics A+ vs A- and only put the best uncommon in the set at B+. What’s even the point of all those grades ahead of it? You aren’t going to be picking one rare over the others, and at most you are looking at whether a card is so broken you warp your deck for it or not.

Or maybe they just grade 20 cards at B and you have no clue how to rank those relative to each other, so if you see Orzhov Enforcer versus Sauroform Hybrid you don't really know how much better the Enforcer is. Or the reverse case from a pick order, where the fact that fifteen cards are between those two overstates the difference between them in quality.

This issue I solve with the subgrade clusters. Orzhov Enforcer is a B, Sauroform Hybrid is a B, meaning they are both fine early picks but not worth a huge commitment to, but Enforcer is multiple clusters ahead and distinctly better. But if you see Orzhov Enforcer and Enraged Ceratok, technically I like Enforcer more but if you take Ceratok it's about the same. Or if you already have a Trollbred Guardian and see Orzhov Enforcer and Savage Smash, it's a fairly small cost to stick with your first pick.

In the end, you want to end up with something that is an overlap of a pick order and grading. You have all the cards ranked, but with clear breakdowns of where power level gaps occur. Grades slapped on cards have a distinct meaning about the kind of power they offer.

The Pick Order

Again, here's the link.

Some notes on everything:

As I said, grades are being used to somewhat indicate what that section of the pick order is.

A : Rares I first pick over all non-rares. The top batch is kinda A+, where I drastically skew my picks for them, and the second batch is more A where I only moderately skew for them.
A- : Uncommons and rares I P1P1 that I actively bias my next picks to play
B+ : All good cards to first pick, where power uncommons/rares start colliding with the best commons due to various caveats about the cards (CCDD costs, etc)
B: Cards I first pick but am not attached to when I do
B-: The bottom barrel of first picks, in this case the last things I take over a Gate

I’m much higher on good red aggressive cards than a lot of people, and I’m not budging on that. People had mixed opinions on Rix Maadi Reveler and the card has been nothing but busted for me. They had Skewer the Critics much lower, and I wonder if they have ever cast Skewer the Critics and a three drop on turn four. I have Vindictive Vampire and Fireblade Artist really high up as I like the semi-burn Rakdos decks. Feel free to downgrade these cards a bit if that’s not your jam.

Similarly, I’m willing to take Savage Smash over generic removal because it is so much less replaceable if I end up in a Savage Smash deck than Lawmage’s Binding is in a deck with Slimebind access.

I’m very willing to take a heavily committed multi-color card early, hence why Rakdos Firewheeler is just on the border of my top 10 uncommons.

Trollbred Guardian is my favorite card to cast in the set. It honestly makes games too easy. How did they let me play Molder Slug as a common?

Running late on my pick order blog, so here's some RNA draft hot takes:

Quench is legit good in almost every blue deck. If you are slow you probably have enough Gates you want two drops that trade up on turn 3 or 4, and the card often still works on turn 7.

— Ari Lax (@armlx) March 1, 2019

Some more specific takes from my Twitter, closely related to this and the notes.

If you have any questions or want to ask about adjustments for Magic Arena, feel free to reach out to me @armlx on Twitter.