The Spellskite Rant // Modern Horizons vs One Mana Modern

I have a long Spellskite rant, but the short version is 1 mana vs 2 means this is good protection where Spellskite is mostly a weird hate card in the post-Fatal Push era.

— Ari Lax (@armlx) May 22, 2019

Rant? Rant that is too long for Twitter?

This is exactly why The Internet invented blogs!

Oh, it also has a big theory impact on evaluating Modern Horizons. If you want to skip to that, Ctrl + F for the set name will get you there.

The Spellskite Rant

People play Spellskite in too many Modern decks. Even worse, when they do play it they sideboard it in way too often.

Spellskite is not a baseline good card in 2019 Modern. If you are going to play Spellskite to protect a card you control, you should probably just play another card that matters or a protection spell that costs one instead.

Spellskite in 2019 Modern is a hate card for pump spell strategies like Infect. Or maybe a hate card against very specific other effects with some upside. If you are mainly redirecting Path to Exile, it isn't good.

Wait, When Did That Happen?

I played a Modern Pro Tour where I distinctly remember narrowing my decision down to three decks, and all of them had multiple Spellskite in the 75. That was September 2012.

I played three Spellskite main deck at Pro Tour Eldrazi Winter and my deck was legitimately great. That was February 2016.

Going forward from there, I think I can pinpoint the exact date Spellskite became bad as February 19th, 2017. I think that might have been about the end of the road

Two things happened right then.

First off, Gitaxian Probe’s banning made Infect much less popular. But that’s the hate card angle, not the Spellskite just being good angle.

February 19th, 2017 was Grand Prix Vancouver. Eric Severson Top 8ed the Grand Prix playing Melira Company. He played against a black attrition strategy and was promptly dumpstered out of the event. That deck doing the dumpstering was Jund Death’s Shadow.

The card that killed Spellskite in the literal and metagame sense was Fatal Push.

End Of The Lightning Bolt Era

This wasn’t just Spellskite hit by Fatal Push. This was basically the whole format. From February 2017 though October 2017, you couldn’t really beat Death’s Shadow. There was a half a decade of inertia from Modern being a Lightning Bolt format, not a Fatal Push one, to override.

Fatal Push is just one mana removal, and it isn’t like Modern didn’t have to deal with one mana removal before. Lightning Bolt and Path to Exile have been format staples since its inception. But you can’t really Path to Exile on turn one or two without a real cost.

And Lightning Bolt has a specific cap. It didn’t hit Deceiver Exarch, Wall of Roots, Tarmogoyf, Restoration Angel, wow this list has a lot of cards that aren’t remotely playable any more.

And it certainly didn’t kill Spellskite, meaning that your opponent had to spend two mana on removal to answer your Spellskite.

Fatal Push had none of those qualms. Spellskite against Jund Death’s Shadow ate a one mana removal spell and that was the end of the story.

One Mana Modern

Really, Fatal Push was the start of the era where no matter what you did in Modern, it could be undone for one mana. It isn’t just Fatal Push doing this. Once Fatal Push changed the rules so that a four toughness two drop was in range of dying, it was no longer relevant that it didn’t die to Lightning Bolt. Which means there was little reason to play things immune to Lightning Bolt, and suddenly that card also killed everything for one mana.

There have been three natural reactions.

None of them are actually playing cards that cost five mana. Get real here.

Break rules, and produce things that cost less mana but technically don’t. Hollow One, Gurmag Angler, Scrap Trawler.

Play only things that exchanging for a one mana card is fine for, and more of them than they have removal. Champion of the Parish, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Goblin Guide.

Don’t play things that die. Urza’s Tower, Prized Amalgam, Arclight Phoenix.

These as a whole are also what accelerated Modern. You have people playing a bunch of cost reduced cards, one cost threats, and non-interactive decks. The second order effect of Fatal Push is why no one plays Pia and Kiran Nalaar any more. Notice how some of these are even zero mana options. I don't think we are breaking that barrier any time soon, but I won't be shocked when it happens.

There’s also a modularity associated with one mana plays that has accumulated. You might be familiar with this if you played Hearthstone odd/even payoffs, but there’s a mathematical function of mana efficiency here. If two drops are your optimal low cost card, the game is way slower because of the gaps in when you get to play multiple spells and use all your mana. Turn two and turn three look the same, turn four and turn five, etc. So you can fill in the gaps with clunkier cards, and mana curves exist. (Thanks to Corey Burkhart for putting this into words)

If you have one drops, you just get to always use your mana for the maximum number of actions. As long as each of those cards is worth about one cardboard-action (ie. you aren’t spending multiple one drops to exchange for one of their two drops), you just come out ahead because you do more things. Or the deeper effect of getting to trim lands, then draw more spells, and take more effects that way. This is the Delver of Secrets - Ponder problem from Legacy and Pauper.

So you play Spellskite. It costs your second turn or most of your third turn. They play a removal spell, it costs them a fraction of whatever turn, and wow does that suck. If you just had a different threat and they didn’t have Fatal Push that would be better. If you had a one mana spell it would be better.

That’s why Spellskite sucks. Unless of course you get to spend two mana and turn off their deck. Spellskite is to Bogles as Stony Silence is to Affinity.

And before you say it, yes I did play Spellskite recently in Whir Prison. It's a reactive hate card there. Welding Jar is your maindeck better Spellskite. Spellskite is your Spellskite against very specific things like Shattering Spree and Echoing Truth, which when you get your lock online are the literal only cards that matter. Sometimes blocking is an upside, sometimes improvising is an upside, and it rarely trades for a one mana card.

Modern Horizons

Where does that put our hundreds of new, targeted designs from Modern Horizons?

Let’s look at some previewed cards:

Giver of Runes is closer to Benevolent Bodyguard than Mother of Runes.

Not that Benevolent Bodyguard wouldn't see Modern play.

— Ari Lax (@armlx) May 22, 2019

Giver of Runes is the textbook example here and the card that prompted this whole Spellskite discussion. It costs one mana and forces a trade for a one mana spell, which runs them out of answers for your other stuff. Giver of Runes will almost surely make a splash in Modern.

Goblin Engineer is closer to Entomb than Goblin Welder.

Oh wait, this is a favorable comparison. pic.twitter.com/3WBHQ3BoLR

— Ari Lax (@armlx) May 22, 2019

Goblin Engineer is somewhere in the middle. It does force a removal spell, but it trades down on mana for that. So you want to set up a spot where the artifact search to graveyard matters, and losing it to a one mana removal spell still leaves you up an Entomb. Goblin Engineer will be good in a narrow range of strategies where that Entomb is a big deal, with the obvious one being Thopter Foundry - Sword of the Meek

Bazaar Trade Mage is the peak of the one mana issue so far. Why are you paying three mana for an effect that costs one mana (Faithless Looting)? You are down a card on a Fatal Push, so you are up…. Three discards? Gross.

So, when you think about Modern Horizons, think about the cards in context of one mana alternatives and interactions. Can you do this for one mana? Do you get wrecked by a one mana card? If you can't figure out how your spell is favorable against the one (or sometimes zero) mana options, try again.

The Issues with the London Mulligan

The premise is always the same. The worst part of Magic is that sometimes you don't get to play Magic in a game of Magic. People always propose ways to fix that. Every time, the problem with their solutions is the same.

The best part of Magic is that games are constantly unique. You have to adapt to different situations, and two matches between identical decks can look massively different. Every time you try to reduce the variance responsible for "non-games", you eat into the variance that makes Magic great.

The Vancouver mulligan was definitely on the right side of this balancing act despite initial concerns. It was comically obvious the first time you played with it the rule was a strict upgrade. You immediately learned mulliganing for the nuts was unreliable, and that keeping riskier six card hands was less of a crap shoot. All upside.

The London mulligan is not on the right side of this balance. My first reaction was anything but it being an obvious upgrade.

If you want the short version: the London mulligan homogenizes game play, promotes mulligans in ways that further push this, and trades "non-games" where someone doesn't take actions with "one note games" where someone takes exactly two or three actions and the other person either answers them and instantly wins or misses and instantly loses.

The Fair Side

It isn't entirely fair to the London mulligan to judge it by the broken half of things from Modern. It was largely designed to make mulligans less painful in Standard and Limited.

The problem is it doesn't.

In Limited, too much of the game is determined by raw quantity. "Every draft deck is a form of midrange" is the classic saying, and part of that is playing five and six cost cards that require you to invest five or six cards into lands. Every time you mulligan, the cardboard cost to play lands is much larger relative to your hand size. You can't hit all your lands and plays due to the lost card. Mulligans in Limited still suck with the London mulligan rule.

Same with Standard most times. Luis mulliganed two non-functional hands against Andrew at Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica. Even if he stacked his five or four card hand he would be massively behind to a reasonable seven. I doubt any simple solution that still leaves someone down cards combats this sufficiently.

That means there are three min-max viable plans after a London mulligan. Ship your end game and hope an early curve dunks on your opponent, keep some rare that solos the game and just enough to tread water to get there, or keep no early action and hope you don't die before casting a couple heavy hitters.

This is not the most dynamic game play. I would categorize the first two categories of uninteracted aggression or rare as close to non-games, and the last option of hoping their hand is slow having a high percentage of non-games as well. The word polarized comes to mind, where old mulligan games were more mixed plans and shifting struggles against the lost resource.

So instead of non-games from turn zero, you have games where people play cards for a bit but continuing decisions don't exist or don't matter. This is just as bad, aka the Solforge problem or the Turbofog issue. It's better for people to be done with a non-game faster than to spend more time for a marginal percentage of their opponent's draw horribly failing, or to just push the variance off to later draw steps where you need to hit perfect to keep up pace. This is doubly true in online platforms where you can just queue up again if you lose fast.

Aside: this may be less true on Arena because of the ladder system emphasizing every match win. In Magic Online leagues where you just lose and instantly rebuy one bad match it is easy to write off in a session. But the Arena loss sticks to your rank. This is a whole separate discussion on why ladder systems are unhealthy, where emphasizing tilt over simple bad luck is only one piece of the puzzle.

I'm overselling this a bit. As always, the first mulligan is certainly something you can overcome in a dynamic longer game. Divination isn't three mana win the game. But five cards? I still struggle to imagine dynamic Limited games where one player started down two cards and forced themselves down a non-scrappy plan with mulligan selection.

There's also a boost to conditional cards from this mulligan rule that I really like. One of the issues of conditional cards in Draft, even pump spells, is that they are liabilities if you mulligan and struggle to find a spot to covert them to true value. Now they just go to the bottom of your library, and Limited is deeper the more reasonable but unique effects people get the choice of playing.

Aside: forcing people play a bunch of mediocre conditional cards is how you get Avacyn Restored, giving them the option is how you get all time greats like Innistrad or Iconic Masters.

In Standard it is much the same. If Mono-Red Aggro mulligans, it is looking to keep one drop, two drop, three drop, burn spell, two lands next hand. The late game is hope to draw well or hope they don't get there.

I keep using the word dynamic, and I think dynamic games are the loss here. The puzzle of how you want the game to play out is much more solved from turn zero, especially as you are incentivized to try again on hands that don't execute it well. This then echoes back to opposing hands, where they are incentivized to combat your scripted plan, and back and forth.

The London mulligan does make something like Sultai midrange mirrors way more dynamic as your sixes are more likely to recover your card with explore creatures and play up the curve, but I don't think Magic really needs to promote that specific effect more. Value bodies up the curve is already the defining strategy of Standard over the last several years.

Again, the first mulligan doesn't assure that any of this precise scripting happens, but the second one sure does reduce games to it.

I'm also thinking mostly from a player and analytics perspective. I'm sure a game where someone plays some cards, gets hard bricked, then loses broadcasts better than someone doing nothing, even if in both cases the outcome was almost certain from the start.

The Unfair Side

This is the real bad stuff.

Starting from Standard, the biggest issue is probably the high impact hate card one. The London mulligan makes it extremely probable you find a specific card. If that is a card that breaks a matchup, you can approximate sideboard games as that card showing up and both players warping everything around it.

This isn't a consistent pattern across Standard, but it exists in some spots in almost every Standard format. Cry of the Carnarium versus Azorius Aggro. Rampaging Ferocidon or some other hate against God-Pharaoh's Gift. Some swingy life gain spell against Mono-Red Aggro. Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet against Rally the Ancestors.

The reliability of these hate cards when they exist makes the idea of a secondary plan less a small shift and more of a requirement. You have to aggressively mulligan to anti-hate, or just give up on playing the basic strategy you registered two games in a match. It's one thing to have to fundamentally repurpose on your chosen strategy because they have full deck coverage, it feels shitty when it's because one card exists. And its not like you can make a format without those hate cards, because an extra consistent linear deck with no answer is bad news. Or not make a format without potential for these decks, otherwise we would have that and not Aetherworks Marvel or Nexus of Fate.

These one card wins aren't restricted to sideboard games. The extreme of this would have been Mono-Black Devotion under this rule, with Pack Rat or Underworld Connections. More recently some decks could never beat Cryptbreaker, Hazoret the Fervent, The Scarab God, Tireless Tracker. Five cards or seven, these just override any disadvantage. Again, if Magic could exist without these occurring reasonably often it would by now. Or at least the post-Mana Leak, post-Baneslayer Angel, post-Inferno Titan design era.

I think it's fairly straight forward to say more Pack Rat games is not good for the game.

After this, we leave Standard for older formats.

One thing we quickly found in testing London mulligans in Modern was decks that couldn't have a reliably good draw off five cards didn't gain a lot. It could be due to card quantity, like Amulet Titan, or a lack of redundant pieces, like Goryo's Vengeance. The first mulligan gave you one more shot, but the upgrade from the Vancouver mulligan to the London one wasn't huge. It was abusing the second or even third mulligan where stuff drastically diverged.

The decks that meshed low required card count and redundancy were the winners. Tron, Dredge, Cheerios, and Simian Spirit Guide - Chalice of the Void. None of these are really fun strategies. They also aren't unbeatable, largely because of the degenerate sideboard interplay I mentioned prior. You can sweepingly ban these decks, but are they too good on power? Can you assure that next set something else won't break this way? Are you just turning Modern into another midrange format, both with a power level chop and a push towards midrange decks finding their Fatal Push hands or Stubborn Denial hands more correctly?

The margin between linear but too consistent to be reasonable playable and linear but too inconsistent to be playable dries up real fast with the London mulligan. More unique game play is lost.

Aside: back to Standard, the decks that can win off one, two, three curves are built for this redundancy and I would expect to be able to regularly have five card hands that fire off quick beats.

Even within the context of these decks, unique game play is lost. Playing against medium Dredge and Tron hands used to be fairly interesting with the other player really judging how they can best use the extra time, and now those medium games don't exist. In testing we would mulligan every Dredge seven or six without multiple discard enablers. Few Dredge games were the slower build up games where the opponent had to figure out how quick they needed to play before things snowballed while still avoiding key points like Conflagrate. It was just a bunch of turn two eight power nut draws.

This then pushed hate cards towards the more absolute and fast, like Leyline of the Void. Sideboarded games became very scripted. Death's Shadow had two types of openers: Leyline or no. Dredge could almost always mulligan to an answer and enabler. The non-Leyline hands didn't beat Dredge sevens, but they might beat lower hand sizes. The Leyline hands won on the play via Thoughtseize on Nature's Claim, often lost on the draw to turn one Nature's Claim, or had double Leyline and it was all over. No decisions about what to Surgical Extraction, fewer about Dredge staggering damage production to minimize Death's Shadow sizing. Just binary outcomes the whole way.

Additional mulligans into functional games is also a strain on tournament logistics. Normally a mulligan to four means a quick game. If you now both mulligan more and play typical games more and (partly because of open deck lists) play into interaction more, rounds just take longer. You are losing minutes a match in shuffling overhead in Modern, and despite a much more aggressive format I would bet the average Modern match at MC London took longer than at PT Bilbao.

Now that I mentioned open decklists, that shift doubly amplifies all the issues with the London mulligan. More pre-scripted game play derived before the games start, lowered risk for aiming for the best possible hand for the situation, more mulligans and time spent shuffling even by decks that aren't linear.

A Fix

The problem is the same in every case I described. Five card hands with the London mulligan play Magic, but it doesn't promote good Magic. But the London mulligan fundamentally promotes maximizing decks for mulligans to five.

How can we shift this?

My best suggestion is increase the cost of that second mulligan. The mulligan rule I would like to look at is similar to the London mulligan, but always bottoming one card and losing access to cards after the first mulligan. So start on seven, then mulligan to seven and bottom one, then six bottom one, five bottom one, and so on. This is two steps from the Vancouver mulligan, giving you both the extra card of info prior to a mulligan decision and the ability to send back any of your cards. It preserves the London mulligan in full for the first redraw, giving normal decks a better shot at keeping a closer hand, but starts to punish more aggressive mulligans. It also simplifies the selection process, similar to why Scry X Mulligan was rejected in favor of the Vancouver mulligan.

The space I haven't explore is drastic decision alternatives. Pokemon used to give the opponent an extra card (I know this is bad), there's the classic one shot cycle some cards (one shot also not great), and probably even more options along these lines. Go down a card, but then Abundance the first draw choosing land or non-land (some broken one land applications).

I get that there are a number of pressures with the changing landscape of Magic that promote a shift in how mulligans work. Arena and coverage have new demands, but from a depth of play and physical logistics perspective the London mulligan has too high a cost for too little benefit.

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".