There Are Pandas, and Then There Are Pandas.
And this isn't either of them! The Pandas we're talking about here, are watches, not bears. And what got me thinking about them (again) was a link posted this morning by @cm.rook who pointed a few of us to the very attractive (and not terribly priced) Yema "Rallygraph" Panda which, in it's most traditional arrangement, looks like the one on the left, but can also be had in the version on the right: The model on the left is a true Panda, while the model on the right is called a reverse Panda. The reason for that distinction is clear--Panda bears, only come in the first arrangement. Now at this point, everyone should be thinking about the most well-know Panda, The Rolex Panda, which is actually a Daytona, and among Rolex Daytonas, the most famous of which is the Paul Newman Daytona, which was famous first, because it was Paul's, and second because it sold at auction for $17.8 million (US Dollars). The story of that auction is well-known so I'll only...
Nov 8, 2019
Grand Prix Memphis Top 4
Main Deck 2 Collision/Colossus 3 Dire Fleet Daredevil 1 Forest 4 Goblin Chainwhirler 4 Growth-Chamber Guardian 2 Gruul Guildgate 4 Gruul Spellbreaker 2 Lava Coil 2 Lightning Strike 9 Mountain 4 Rekindling Phoenix 4 Rootbound Crag 4 Shock 3 Siege-Gang Commander 4 Stomping Ground 4 Unclaimed Territory 4 Zhur-Taa Goblin Sideboard 3 Cindervines 1 Collision/Colossus 2 Fiery Cannonade 2 Karn, Scion of Urza 2 Kraul Harpooner 1 Lava Coil 3 Legion Warboss 1 The Immortal Sun Based on our experiences thus far with Gruul vs the various metagame decks, coupled with where we felt standard was heading, we made some changes to Shota’s list and started jamming MTGO leagues. In reading our discussion notes, I can say that we solidified the main deck changes very quickly. Zhur-Taa Goblin had been underperforming a bit for me and was often being sided out because it was the worst card in many match ups. We replaced the Zhur-Taa Goblins with 4 Kraul Harpooner at first as a test of Harpooner main deck, and they were so good they ended up staying there. Another reason we went with the full set of Harpooners was that we expected Mono Blue to be a large part of and a strong player in the MC Cleveland metagame. One of the Gruul deck’s worst match ups is Sultai, mostly because of the ability of Wildgrowth Walker to get out of hand from a creature sizing standpoint (all of Gruul’s removal is damage based) and Hostage Taker acting as a walking Control Magic. Because of these factors, we decided to run the full complement of Lightning Strikes and shaved the number of Shocks down to 2. Growth-Chamber Guardian was another good tool to have against Sultai, and is just a great addition to the deck. It allows the deck to have a source of card advantage and a mana sink, while still presenting a sizable threat on the battlefield. Lastly we swapped out the Siege-Gang Commanders for Skarrgan Hellkites with the same reasoning as I talked about above. Surprisingly all of these initial main deck changes that we made based on theory stuck, and it became clear that while the aggressive version of Gruul was powerful, the midrange version offered us a bit more in terms of flexibility and resiliency against the midrange decks while still being able to aggro opponents out. Unclaimed Territory – So in nearly all of my post-tournament chats with other players regarding the deck, the question on the manabase always comes up: “Three forests and four Chainwhirler? Why didn’t you run Unclaimed Territory?!” To be honest, I simply did not have time to do much testing with Unclaimed Territory from the time when we added Goblin Chainwhirlers in the deck (there were roughly 72 hours from when we started working on Takao’s list until decklists for MC Cleveland were due). During the handful of leagues I ran with the list, mana was only very rarely and issue. The same was true for me at the MC. Going forward I would not discount running Unclaimed Territory over the Forests, but it could affect some of the sideboard choices we made - namely the 2 copies of Vivien Reid may need to be replaced. Here is the deck Sam and I registered and played at MC Cleveland: Timothy Wu
Mythic Championship Cleveland
Main Deck 3 Dire Fleet Daredevil 4 Goblin Chainwhirler 4 Growth-Chamber Guardian 4 Gruul Spellbreaker 4 Rekindling Phoenix 3 Skarrgan Hellkite 4 Kraul Harpooner 2 Lava Coil 2 Collision // Colossus 4 Lightning Strike 2 Shock 2 Gruul Guildgate 4 Rootbound Crag 4 Stomping Ground 3 Forest 11 Mountain Sideboard 2 Lava Coil 4 Cindervines 2 Status // Statue 2 Vivien Reid 2 Legion Warboss 1 Karn, Scion of Urza 2 Shivan Fire