Towers, Hulks, and Thingamajigs - PPTQ Not-Really-A-Report Report 1st Place

Hello everyone and welcome to another blogpost on Petals of Insight! I know, I know, it’s been another while since I last wrote, but what can one do? This time around I’ll be talking about my PPTQ experience. Here’s a foreword, I really miss PTQs. I really miss being able to win a qualifier and actually say “I’m going to the Pro Tour.” As it stands, I basically won a qualifier for a qualifier. I… digress. The point is, Dynavolt Tower is a beast of a card and should see more play.

Before we delve into the specifics, let’s talk about the state of Standard. Currently, Standard is in a bit of a bind. Other than the usual Vehicles Aggro deck (either RW or Mardu) and the random UR Visions deck, BR Aggro, or what-have-you; Standard is largely a battle between GB Delirium and UW Flash decks. There is definitely room for some kooky decks to perform well, but that’s until people know what you are doing. Once they’re unto you, the jig is up, and opponents will know how to stop you. Equipped with that knowledge, I knew I had my work cut out for me.

By far, the deck that interested me was Shota Yassoka’s winning deck from the Pro Tour. Not because it won, but because it had everything I wanted to attack the format. It had Radiant Flames, Galvanic Bombardments, Weaver of Lightnings, Unlicensed Disintegration, MD Negates, Void Shatters, draw spells, well, everything. Here’s the list:

Grixis Control – Shota Yasooka 1^st

1 Jace, Unraveler of Secrets

Planeswalker - 1

2 Torrential Gearhulk
4 Thing in the Ice
Creatures - 6

2 Radiant Flames
3 Painful Truths
1 Transgress the Mind
2 Unlicensed Disintegration
3 Harnessed Lightning
3 Void Shatter
2 Glimmer of Genius
1 Ceremonious Rejection
2 Negate
4 Galvanic Bombardment
1 Essence Extraction
3 Anticipate
Spells - 27

4 Spirebluff Canal
2 Wandering Fumarole
4 Evolving Wilds
4 Sunken Hollow
3 Smoldering Marsh
2 Mountain
2 Swamp
5 Island
Lands – 26

SB - 
2 Ceremonious Rejection
1 Negate
1 Radiant Flames
1 Jace, Unraveler of Secrets
1 Transgress the Mind
2 To the Slaughter
2 Confiscation Coup
3 Weaver of Lightning
2 Summary Dismissal

It had Radiant Flames, Galvanic Bombardments, Weaver of Lightnings, Unlicensed Disintegration, MD Negates, Void Shatters, draw spells, well, everything. After watching some videos and doing some testing on XMage, I realized that the deck was not great. Like… at all. Shota won the PT with luck and sheer skill. He played spectacularly. So, I’m already handicapped there! (Just being jokingly honest?) Then, I saw Sam Black’s run with Grixis Control who did extremely poorly. Afterwards, I bought a one-week premium membership so I could read Gerry Thompson’s and Todd Anderson’s thoughts on Grixis Control. They were both very pessimistic on the deck’s potential. The latter less so, because he had been testing with something new. Add to that the fact that my testing was going terrible, I... didn’t feel exactly hopeful.

In testing, it just wasn't performing well. The Painful Truths hurt too much. The Radiant Flames sometimes didn’t line up well with the rest of the deck. Only two Gearhulks meant that there were games where they simply didn’t come up and the games would have been dramatically different if at least one of them showed up. That last one felt even more pronounced in Control mirrors, where my opponents had three so they would always out-Gearhulk me. At this point, I wasn’t particularly ecstatic about my chances and heavily considering not playing. 

On Friday night, the friend that was going to lend me the deck didn’t show up, meaning I now had no deck for the PPTQ. As luck would have it, a Mr. Justinianes randomly came through with a weird Grixis deck built exclusively around the Energy mechanic. He was packing Live Fasts, Harnessed Lightnings, Dynavolt Towers, Die Young (absolutely terrible card), and Glimmers of Genius to the brim. He had the usual Gearhulks (only this time he had three (the magic number)), Thing in the Ice, and Goblin Dar-Dwellers. The deck was cool in many respects. What stood out the most was, you guessed it, the Towers. The games where I drew them felt pretty incredible. What the deck lacked were ways to interact with opponents on the stack. There was so much removal, yet no ways to effectively deal with Planeswalkers unless I had a few active Towers.

My next thought was: what if I combined both decks? Shota’s and Mr. Justinianes’s? Todd Anderson had put two Towers in his version. That’s a good start. Can’t I go farther? Maybe three Towers. Maybe a third Unlicensed Disintegration so I can make sure I can kill Eldrazi of all stripes, Ishkanah, Kalitas, Gearhulks of all sizes, Avacyns, and so on. Drop a Painful Truths in favor of a third Glimmer of Genius. Three Painful Truths is one Truths too many; the life-loss adds up quickly, and the fact that it’s sorcery-speed hurts against a lot of match ups. In addition to that, Glimmer scries and gives you extra energy for the Dynavolt Towers. Along the same lines is going up to four Harnessed Lightnings for maximum energy pay offs.

Among the cards not holding their own were Jace, Unraveler of Secrets, Essence Extraction, and Transgress the Mind. Jace is a great card, don’t get me wrong, but tapping out on your turn for this is not where you want to be. There are match ups, mainly UW Flash and Control Mirrors, where you simply can’t afford to tap out for Jace; and others where he’s just too slow (Vehicles, for instance). The only match up I can see Jace being phenomenal is against GB Delirium, and even then I’d rather had countermagic or Gearhulk up to keep Ishkanah and any other hard-to-remove permanents from touching the battlefield. I mean, countering Ishkanah means I don’t have to worry about the other three arachnid buddies it brings along, which translates into more removal for the cards that do matter.

Essence Extraction was originally in the deck to, not just kill 3-toughness duders (specifically Smuggler’s Copters), but also to mitigate the life-loss from the Painful Truths. With one less Truths, I felt I wouldn’t need that life-gain, and the Copters? Vehicles often makes their Copters and Fleetwheel Cruisers into 4/4s and 6/4s respectively by crewing them with Motorists and Depalas. Consequently, you end up wasting the Extractions on the 3/1 and the 3/3 to keep the Vehicles small. Sure, you gain 3 life for the trouble, however, you still lose to the Vehicles. I’d rather hit the Vehicles themselves, therefore I need removal that can take them down no matter their toughness, and the third Unlicensed Disintegration and Harnessed Lightning (assuming you’ve gone up to more than 3 Energy are the cards to do the job.

Transgress the Mind is the card I’m still debating. Maybe it has a spot in the deck. It might be alright versus the bigger decks of the format, taking a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar versus UW Flash or an Ishkanah against GB Delirium might be better than hoping to nab them with counter spells. I have two Dispels in my sideboard currently, which is the spot where I would put Transgress the Mind if I ever choose to play them. I’m currently on the Dispel wagon which is better in Control Mirrors and UW Flash. I guess I need more testing.

Anyway, without further ado, my list:

Dyna-Grixis Control

3 Torrential Gearhulk

4 Thing in the Ice
Creatures – 7

2 Negate
2 Painful Truths
3 Anticipate
3 Glimmer of Genius
3 Dynavolt Tower
3 Unlicensed Disintegration
3 Void Shatter
4 Galvanic Bombardment
4 Harnessed Lightning
Spells – 27

1 Choked Estuary
1 Smoldering Marsh
1 Sunken Hollow
1 Foreboding Ruins
2 Mountain
2 Wandering Fumarole
3 Spirebluff Canal
3 Swamp
4 Island
4 Aether Hub
4 Evolving Wilds
Creatures – 26

Probably the most curious thing about the deck is the mana base. It is essentially the brain child of Mr. Justinianes, with my only change was cutting a Mountain in favor of the second Wandering Fumarole. As is? This mana base is actually some kind of beauty. It just… works. On paper, it seems all over the place, but it just works. That said, I would probably make one more change and it is probably going down to three Aether Hubs in favor of a second of either Sunken Hollow or Smoldering Marsh with a strong lean towards the UB land.

Now, how about the sideboard? For the sideboard, I knew I wanted Weaver of Lightning which is quite a beast against Vehicles and UW Flash. I knew I wanted some amount of Radiant Flames, to be safe I started with two. Seeing as how absurd the deck is with Dynavolt Tower, it is quite possible that I go down to two of the sweeper. The way I see it, Radiant Flames is more of a… safety valve. A way to catch up when playing against the Aggro decks. More so because I’m also playing Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet in the sideboard. I figured that having Thing in the Ice, Towers, Kalitas, Weavers, and Radiant Flames would be enough to punish Aggro. Kalitas makes blockers and pads up your life total with the potential to effectively race these decks.

I had the lone Negate to be able to go up to three for the match ups where I wanted to keep opponents off of Gideons and Lilianas, Vehicles, or to win counter wars. Dispel is in the same camp. In testing, UWR Control decks were out-controlling me constantly with their extra Gearhulks, their Dovin Baans, their post-board Gideons and so on. I wanted that to stop. Not to mention, Dynavolt Towers were instrumental to beating them before and after board. Sticking an early Tower meant that their clock was literally ticking down. Tower gives you so much inevitability in that match up, that I wanted a cheap way to protect it. Hence, the Dispels. It was easier to play turn 4 Tower with Dispel-backup than to play it turn 5 with just Negate.

In the counter-camp, I decided to keep three Ceremonious Rejections in my 75, all of them in the sideboard. Rejection was a concession to Aetherworks Marvel. I just didn’t want to be surprised by it and I also knew there was someone playing BW Eldrazi and didn’t want to take my chances. As fate would have it, I played against Eldrazi and countering 3 and 4-mana critters for one mana felt satisfying. Despite how effective it was, it would likely be better to cut one and open the slot up for something else.

The last card in the sideboard was one of my favorites. I’ve seen quite a few lists from decks that run Red, and I’ve yet to see Tears of Valakut. What better card than Tears of Valakut? Kills Copter, Skysovereign, Consul Flagship, Avacyn, all of UW’s flyers, and so on. No Negates, no Spell Shrivels, no counters can touch it, period. It’s a great tool to have and may even consider going up to two.

This is how the sideboard would look like:

SB
1 Negate
1 Tears of Valakut
2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
2 Dispel
3 Radiant Flames
3 Weaver of Lightning
3 Ceremonious Rejection

Moving forward, I might cut one Flames and a Rejection for two Transgress the Minds. Can’t say without much testing however.

As for the tournament, it was five rounds of Swiss and cut to Top 8. I went 4-0 and with an intentional draw into the Top 8 as first seed. I went:

Round 1 – Grixis Emerge – 2-1
Round 2 – BW Eldrazi – 2-1
Round 3 – American Control – 2-0
Round 4 – UW Flash – 2-0
Round 5 – GB Delirium – ID

The Top 8 was:

Quaterfinals – Bant Midrange – 2-0
Semi-Finals – UW Flash (same player) – 2-1
Finals – GB Delirium – (different player) – 2-0

Is Dynavolt Grixis a good deck? It might just be. Out of all the games I played, only one felt losable and my opponent misplayed giving me the win. Otherwise, it would have been a legit loss. All my other game losses were due to getting stuck on mana and couldn’t catch up once I started drawing the lands. Without more testing, I really can’t make the claim, but it could just be one of the best decks in the format. We’ll see.

Anyway, thanks for reading! Remember to support the blog by sharing the articles and commenting! See you next time!

Love,

Chris