Noah's Nemesis

Noah has played in three pretty big Modern tournaments.  In two he played Tron and in one he played Affinity.  Affinity is now exclusively my deck.  But he did very well with Tron.

The first Tron tournament, he went 3-1-1, intentionally drawing the last game to split the prize.  The time he played with Affinity, he went 2-2 which really isn't as bad as he remembers (he toasted a Grixis Control dude with an ensouled darksteel citadel).  And the last Tron tourney, he went 2-2.  The same record BUT he finally beat Splinter Twin so that day was a success.

He has a good poker face but his body language is a bit telling.  I can usually tell from a distance when he has a lock on the game.  And unfortunately, I can also usually tell when somebody casts his nemesis: Cryptic Command.  Holy toledo, he hates that card.  In fairness, I know he's beaten both a Grixis Control and the Splinter Twin deck that played it but I'm also pretty sure every other Modern tourney loss he's had has been at the hands of that card.  It's right there on this page, go ahead and read it.  It's just a mean nasty vile card.

You've heard the saying, "if you can't beat them, join them"?  We have to join the Evil Cryptic Command Gang.  So we spent about two weeks refining the Tempo Twin list we wanted to play.  But since we're not blue people usually, we need almost all of the cards.  We had a couple of remands, a few dispels, one polluted delta, a few Splinter Twins, and of course four freakin' Kiki Jikis because he's a goblin.  But none of the blue staples of the deck.

So Noah got to trading, starting with Cryptic Commands, Remands (somehow we now have 5), deceiver exarchs, the rest of the splinter twins, pestermite and holy toledo we have a long way to go.  So we remembered our neighbor talking about PucaTrade.

And I've gone into overdrive trading around the country with Gitaxian Probes, Spell Snares, Telling Times, Izzet Charms and hopefully a couple of Vendilion Cliques on their way.  It's going to take some time but so do Magic games involving blue cards so we should get used to it.  All told, we'll have about 70 cards for the mainboard that we'll have to narrow down then start worrying about the sideboard.

And then, someday, Noah will cast a Cryptic Command, bounce my Wurmcoil and I'll start planning my revenge on the Splinter Twin.

hashtag-endless-loop-of-deckbulding-revenge

Relevant podcast deck tech from Masters of Modern.  Take a listen.  And don't think that Twisted Image isn't on my list to kill spellskites.