Making Top 8 in Arena Championship

This past weekend, I took my team's cub deck that I wrote about last week to a top 8 finish at AC11.

This landed me a cool $7,000 and an invitation to the Pro Tour. I've said before and I'll say again that I'm not actively pursuing the Pro Tour, but if I can earn an invite from my computer chair to play in one of my favorite cities, Las Vegas, then I guess I'll do just that.

As a reminder, here's the 75 I registered last weekend:

Going into the event, we were confident that the top two represented decks would be Mono Green Landfall and Izzet Lessons. Simic Cub plays Lessons close, and a majority of the team believed Simic was a firm favorite while I'm more on the side of it being a coin toss. Landfall, however, is an easy matchup.

Leading up to the event, Dimir Midrange was also a popular deck, though a risky choice because Landfall was represented by one in four players. Dimir Midrange is also a good matchup for Simic Cub decks.

Because we weren't sure on the decks beyond the top two, Cub seemed like a great choice for the event. We were all happy when we saw the meta breakdown and cautiously optimistic moving into the event.

As the event progressed, we noticed that none of our six pilots in the first three rounds had played against a single copy of Landfall, the deck we came to beat. Overall, we were doing poorly on the Cub side of things. Inevitably, we started to hit our good matchups, and our remaining teammates finally played the matchups we expected rather than being paired against decks like Izzet Elementals, which was only piloted by a few players in the whole field.

I managed to only play against three different decks the entire event. I played against Landfall twice at the tail end of day one and against Dimir Midrange at the start of day one and in a feature match where I beat it to advance to day two and into the top 16.

That leaves six more total rounds left, all against the same deck, Izzet Lessons. The six matches felt like coin flips to me, and sure enough, I went 3-3 overall. We didn't keep track of the team records in total, but I'm confident we had a noticeably better win rate against Lessons than I anticipated.

One deck stood out to the team as an extremely difficult matchup, which we did not prepare for, and that was Izzet Prowess. Some players used and dismissed it early in testing. We didn't anticipate it being a large part of the metagame, so it wasn't worth the time to test the matchup because it wouldn't change any card choices or considerations of what we'd play. In reality, it seems like Izzet Prowess is a great deck that has a lot more opportunity in this newly open and revolving meta than we anticipated.

Moving forward, I wouldn't recommend Cub, but I also wouldn't say it's a bad choice. It was a good metagame call for just one tournament. Moving forward, it's probably an average call, but there's no reason to play it without Landfall dominating the metagame. The format is a revolving door. If you're playing online, it's easy enough to change decks week to week or day to day. In paper, cards are expensive and tournaments are few and far between, so the metagame stays more stagnant, which also makes changing your deck more difficult and less relevant.

If you wanted a deck that is good in any metagame? It's Izzet Lessons or a deck like Dimir Excruciator. Lessons plays everything close, has some of the best high-roll draws in the format, and is adaptable from metagame to metagame. Excruciator is similar in that it's not overly powerful, but it plays everything close, has a chance to beat anything, and doesn't have a matchup that you have to avoid.

While I was going to write up a sideboard guide for Cub, and we had planned to in house, it was impossible. The adjustments you make with Cub will be so list dependent for both you and your opponent, and some changes so marginal, that it's difficult to pin down how you want to change your deck. Ideally, you will have a good mix of mana creatures and payoffs. While the payoffs matter, trimming mana creatures and such is a tough thing to pin down. I could play thousands of matchups with Cub and still not know if I'm supposed to trim 3 Leyline Weavers or 2 of them and a Pollinator.

What I can do is show you the visual sideboarding notes I had for the tournament that I shared with my team. Cards on the right of the land are mostly in the "unclear" category and I'll explain them with each matchup.

vs. Landfall

This is the exact configuration of our list I wanted against Landfall. Wistfullness is not exciting, but the only games you lose against Landfall involve the trample ability. Whether it's Hydra or Ascension that get you, you're trying to avoid dying to those things. Otherwise you can goldfish much faster and more consistently than them. Spell Pierce over a Wistfulness is also reasonable to snipe the Ascension on the stack, which is a massive tempo positive way that can swing a game. It's completely dead other times that it's drawn.

The number one thing you can do to increase your win rate in this matchup is mulligan to hands that get on board quickly with a payoff. You can comfortably win games with five cards in this matchup, so don't keep hands without mana creatures and hopefully a Rhythm, Ouroboroid, or at the bare minimum a Riddler, however that's only to find Rhythms and Ouroboroids quickly.

vs. Lessons

I was bringing in two Unable to Scream on the draw and bounced around from having zero to two copies on the play.

Detect Intrusion is a card that can have a high impact, but it can also be tough to weave in. This is a matchup where your opponent will almost always win the longer games, and you will win the shorter and mid-sized games. You are asked to get and stay on board early. You can survive a sweeper if your follow-up is great. Playing around sweepers often leads to falling behind, so I tend to play into them with a backup plan when they have it.

With no Screams in deck, I filled out with Leyline Weavers. As you can see, there are 61 cards. I'd go up and down on the number of Weavers based on how many Screams I wanted.

In retrospect, I'd probably cut a Wistfulness for a Reclamation Sage in the sideboard. Despite drawing it in testing several times where it was an almost dead card, it's only good if your opponent gets going and you have an overwhelming board presence prior to that, thus having a purely reactive card feels bad.

vs. Mirror

This is a full-on race. Mull aggressively. Riddler always allows for that and getting on board fast is the key.

vs. Excruciator

Sadly, I didn't take a snap of my sideboard for this one, but the general gist is this matchup isn't that bad. You want to get some pressure on the battlefield, and it usually comes down to them resolving a Demon Trigger early or a sweeper in the midgame. If you can stop those things, you can usually win.

This is a 50-50 matchup, maybe slightly worse. Your opponent can build their deck in a way that's harder to beat, but it's at the cost of winning many other matchups.

Trim something on the right of the lands. You want to come out fast, but you need cards with impact. Most importantly, get a bunch of counter magic in and lean on it when you get an overwhelming board.

vs. Dimir Mid

Nothing is exciting in the pile to the right. The matchup is great, and the ways you lose are almost always on the draw against a good Kaito start when your hand isn't that explosive. Maw is good for resetting the Kaito while also developing on board. Your opponent doesn't have many sweepers in their list, usually one max in the sideboard, so you can build your deck as normal. Hoof was contentious in my testing team. I left it in because it seemed better than a card like Curator, which sizes up fine against them as a two-mana 3/3 with little upside, but it's not part of your core plan against your opponent.

The best way to beat Kaito is to just get on board so that it's difficult for your opponent to spend their turn putting it onto the battlefield.

This is an extremely good matchup.

vs. 4c Elementals

This isn't a matchup we expected much from, which is why we played the deck. It's fairly bad, as is any Sunderflock deck, but not unwinnable.

It's possible you want Into the Flood Maw. You could trim a Wistfulness and a mana creature or something. Wistfulness is mostly here to interact with Roaming Throne, while allowing you to have an elemental in play if they manage to stick a Sunderflock.

It's a bad matchup that you don't want to see on the pairings sheet.

vs. SpellEmentals

This is probably the most unsure we were about sideboarding, I'd approach this matchup by finding holes in their draws. Ideally, you play to the board as fast as possible to counter and keep elementals off the battlefield while setting up a win. There's 64 here. I would cut a few Rhythms, the Wistfulness, and a mana creature, probably Weaver. Maws can keep them off Flocks in theory, especially if you whittle their graveyard down with curators and keep their creatures more expensive to cast.

Cub is an easy deck to play. The only hard part was figuring out mana on big Rhythm turns, which mostly only come up in mirrors and against Landfall. In both instances, I found if I couldn't beat the Arena rope to count properly, then I could often find a Marang River Regent and reset their board to a spot I could almost always win.

Moving forward, there are a few things I'd change about the deck if i had to play it, but I'm looking forward to seeing how things evolve if Cub goes back into hibernation.

With my top 8, I'll once again head to the Pro Tour, testing with my old teammates. I also squeezed in a few attempts at the Arena Championships Limited Qualifier and managed to spike, so I have that to look forward to, as well. Overall, it was just a weekend of Siggy winning again.

Next week, we'll talk all about Ninja Turtles. See you then.