Normally I don't play in store championships, but this time I had to make an exception. Everyone was going on and on how valuable the full art Urza's Saga was, and I had to get in on this. I admittedly didn't have any intention of keeping the card, but I knew that I could get some great trade value for it, or at least be able to sell it for a decent amount of money When the first weekend of store championships took place, this card was selling for $350 USD. It has since gone down to about $270 USD, but it still makes it worth it - especially when the entry for the event was $20, and I already had it covered for free with store credit that I had built up. I waited for the event at my LGS, and I brought my trusty mono-black discard deck, and gave it a shot. There were four rounds in total, and it took a deal at the end to get it done, but I was able to get through the day undefeated and secure the saga. I'll go over how my matchups were, and of course some key elements of the deck that I played. I believe it is very similar to a deck in one of my previous articles, so I won't dwell on the list itself too much. We will mainly just go over the key cards that make everything work, and some of the cards from today that stood out in each matchup. First, let's take a look at the deck!
This deck is aptly named Standard 8-Rack. It models itself after a similar archetype in modern that punishes the opponent for having one or fewer cards in hand. Ideally, we have the deck set up where after the opponent has their upkeep and draw step each turn, they are losing four life. You can also double down on that with the fact that one of the effects dealing the damage is a creature that is difficult to block, and that can also accelerate the clock.
Key Cards for the Rack
We all know that Sheoldred one of the best cards in Standard, and honestly a top-tier card in multiple other formats. We want to resolve this creature spell when the opponent has little to no cards in hand, decreasing the likelihood that they would have removal, and force them to either top-deck an answer, or die. Since the deck has a lot of other valuable threats, I was able to wait around lot during the event for the perfect to cast Sheoldred, and it often ended up being the fin that I needed to close out the game. Since it is the most popular card that people wish to be able to remove, I did include four of her in this deck, and in turn, that makes up 4 of our total 8 racks in the deck.
Bandit's Talent is another card today that went bonkers for me. It took a lot of influence over how my opponents played against me today, and it allowed me to have more control over how they played than they did at times. They ended up having to hold more cards in hand than they wanted to in order to not sooner. They also had to sometimes waste removal on it, as white-based decks were using their Get Lost on the Bandit's Talent, rather than saving it for Sheoldred It ended up being ridiculous amounts of value for me to the point where they were more worried about that than my plethora of other threats in the deck.
I have a good bit of practice with this deck on Arena so far, but today was the first time that played it in paper. I had a couple of instances where I could have sequenced mana better, and where I could have made slightly better decisions in the moment, but overall I believe that I piloted the deck well. I wasn't upset with myself over my play, I just knew that there were some things I needed to clean up.
Matchups Throughout the Event
Round one I played against another mono-black deck, oddly enough. Their deck was pretty well-made, but they definitely were more aggro-based, and I believe that allowed me to be favored after sideboarding. I was able to bring in the removal that I needed. After duressing the opponent a few times, it became evident that their deck was pretty much only creatures and removal spells. It was pretty straightforward what I was dealing, and I was to win games two and three after losing game one. It simply came down to having enough removal, and forcing the opponent to dump their hand onto the board in order to try and have enough threats to beat me. Once I did that, I was able to keep my Sheold on the board and level up the Bandit's Talent. This pretty much was the game after I got that point. Thankfully they were pretty quick games, so I got to hang out for a bit after the first and take a nice rest.
Round two, I went against Azorius Mentor. It is basically a prowess deck that also uses Haughty Djinn as a bomb. It had definitely a lot of tempo, but we were able to offset the tempo that they tried to create by attacking their hand constantly. We had good amounts of removal, and the opponent's deck in my opinion did not have enough lands in it, and they missed land drops badly in the two that I won. In game three, they kept a one-land with a cantrip, and I duressed on turn one to take the cantrip. It was pretty much over after that, as they were never able to get back in the game. The match did go to three games, however, because playing against the tempo on the draw was pretty tough. I wasn't able to get enough removal to deal with their threats and then the mentor simply went off. Thankfully, I had a timely turn one duress in game three so that we were able to set up the clear lines for victory.
Round three was definitely a tough matchup, and when I saw the pairing I was dreading playing the match. It was a local player that I knew plays Magic well, and they were playing Azorius Control. I usually have a hard time against that deck, but I will say that all of the spells in the deck that I have tend to help a lot. Thankfully today that was also the case. I was able to beat them in three games as, and they simply were not able to ever really take control of the game This individual really wanted the Urza's Saga, and I actually ended up trading it away to them for a bunch of valuable cards. I felt okay about that because they wanted to foil out their modern deck that runs four Sagas. I respect the want to bling out the deck, so I was willing to make the trade them.
The Finals
Round four in the finals I also had a matchup that was kind of a toss-up. Since I knew it wasn't a guarantee that I would win, I asked the individual if they wanted to split and just take all of the store credit between the both of us, and I would take the Urza's Saga. They agreed to this, because they said that they were simply going to sell the card back to the first L that would buy it. Since it was likely that this person would only get 100-140 in store credit for the card even if they won, I recommended that they just take the store credit from splitting with me that was over 100 USD, and they went for it. So I technically went 3-0-1 on the day, and was considered the champion for my LGS. The Urza's Saga went to a good home, I got some sweet cards that are very valuable, and my opponent in the finals got a bunch of store credit. It seemed like a good day all around, and I can definitely that this store champ was worth playing in!
I would also like to leave a final note that I do believe the Urza's Sagas will start to drop in value, so I thought it best to take as much value as I could get today, as the value will be dropping going forward. It made more sense to me to take guaranteed value now, rather than list the for sale and wait, while hoping it doesn't drop in value too quickly. We have another weekend of store championships, and once that weekend passes, it is likely that the card will have a significant drop in value.
