GP Report:

I've been playing this list for a while at my local shop now, and decided to take it to GP Detroit to see how it did in a more competitive scene. I don't use MTGO very much, but I was pretty confident in my build. The plan was to spend the morning playing in 3 or 4 turbo town events as a sanity check to ensure the deck was actually deece, then take it into the evening event and the double up the next day.

Turbo #1 - RB Pain Train 2-0
This guy hadn't really messed with his deck over the last year, and it showed. I don't remember much besides burning the crap out of his creatures and pounding in for lethal. I don't even think I bothered to side in ancient grudges to deal with his vehicles. His deck utilized a lot of creatures that wanted to be tapped, and vehicles to tap them. I had enough burn to ensure they just never got to be tapped, and he didn't have enough removal for my threats.

Turbo #2 - UR Skred Delver 2-0
Turns out, if you just borrow your friends UR Skred Delver deck and run into a turbo match with it, you're probably going to have a bad time. It may be the best deck in the format, but it certainly isn't the easiest. Guy never had a chance, and my life total never dropped below 20. Instead of playing an aggressive game and attacking as quickly and as often as possible, I focused on overloading his countermagic and keeping his board clean, choosing to wait to drop creatures until later in the match, and I hard cast every deep analysis for the full 4 card value and out resourced him. It's a lot easier to manage UR Delver when you have more cards, more lands, and they never get to resolve a ninja.

But most importantly, it's easy to beat UR Delver when the player is inexperienced with the deck.

Turbo #3 - Elves 1-2
This one made me the most uncomfortable, and I most definitely let the loss get to me. At the time, my sideboard was -1 blazing volley and +1 nihil spellbomb. Again opponent was borrowing the deck and was clearly inexperienced, but elves is a LOT more forgiving to bad pilots than UR Delver is. I was able to steal game one, then he managed to bring it back game 2, and in game 3 I had him down to 6 life, and needed to find a single lightning bolt to close out the game, as his board was spiraling into unmanageable territory very quickly. I couldn't find the kill spell, and died quickly after the turning point.

The thing was that I considered elves to be a great matchup for me, given just how much efficient removal I am running, and how hard it is to deal with 4/4 tramplers when your board is constantly being trimmed. So losing to this deck definitely threw my whole nights plans into question.

I ended up running Rhystic Tron with a pretty rough list, thinking I would be able to get more wins with it, and going 0-1-2, drawing once, and losing twice. It was a pretty terrible night.

So Sunday I was up for Redemption, and resolved to run Madness. I added the 3rd copy of Blazing Volley, and locked myself in when I left the house by literally only bringing the Madness deck, some sleeves, and my water bottle with me.

DOUBLE UP

MATCH 1 - Elves - 2-0
This game was nuts. I had my singleton electrickery in my opening hand, but the rest of the hand was pretty lackluster and I almost shipped it, but ended up deciding to keep it. Turn 2 I traded it in for 4 elves and my opponent never found a second land and I beat him down fast with a bunch of 4/4s
|| out: -2 borderland explorer, -1 lightning axe | in: +3 blazing volley ||

Game 2, my opponent resolved a turn 2 spidersilk armor. I was able to apply some early pressure with my tramplers, but made a small punt by putting moldervine cloak on my mulldrifter. I drew a million cards, got some really lucky burn spell top decks, and my opponent whiffed on like 3 lead the stampedes, only ever drawing 2 creatures each time, and I was able to chain together an electrickery and a blazing volley. After that it was two quick attacks with my dudes to crush my way to victory.

MATCH 2 - UB Delver/Angler with Accumulated Knowledge 0-2
In game 1 I didn't do much but die pretty quick. My burn isn't super matched up well to Gurmag Angler, and I didn't find enough creatures to keep one on the board to trade up with.
|| out: -2 Moldervine Cloak, -1 looter il-kor -1 electrickery | in: +2 faerie macabre +2 pulse of murasa ||

I think I made a mistake bringing in macabre. my plan was to use it to fight accumulated knowledge to the value, but my opponent was a better player than me, and also realized he needed to get a lot faster and had sided them out for a more aggro plan.

I drew to 7, and both my opponent and I mulliganed to six, then he called a judge. I had drawn to 7 again, and had looked, and was deep in the think tank and didn't even realize my mistake. I was super grateful he caught it though, as calling a judge on myself 3 turns in would not have been fun AT ALL. I quickly confirmed exactly what my opponent stated, that I had drawn 7, looked at them, and shuffled my hand, and stated I was going to keep it. Judge resolved the issue, and we got on to playing.

I open with mountain and bolt to the face, he casts delver, and I top a lightning axe, so I axe his delver, get a get a rootwalla, then fetch a forest with my wilds. My next draw is a looting, which finds another rootwalla and a mountain. I cast them, and attack for 3. Turn 4 I'm attacking for 5 after which he follows up with an angler he's been feeding the yard for. I'm able to trade up my bolt and a rootwalla for it, and he follows up with another one then another one and closes out the game with mana open for 2 counterspells to fight my one lightning bolt while he's at 2 life.

MATCH 3 - UB Zubera Combo 2-0
It's hard to combo off when I keep killing your combo pieces at really in-opportune times. That's basically the summation of games 1 and 2. I play some dudes, kill his dudes when he doesn't want them dead, and put up enough roadblocks that he can't stitch together anything real enough to go off with. I even punted and gave him an extra turn in game 2 and still took it.
|| out: -1 electrickery | in: +1 Faerie Macabre ||

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The goal is to use burn to manage threats or lower your opponents life total, while presenting good value through madness effects. Faithless Looting does a lot of work in filtering the top of your deck, and digs you 4 cards deep per card, while allowing you to discard cards to your advantage.

Moldervine Cloak is a spicy inclusion that gives you solid discard fodder, protects you from 2 for 1s, and allows you to turn anything into a near unanswerable threat to close out games very quickly.

As for the sideboard, 4 ancient grudge should help keep artifact based decks in check, as it allows you to 2 for 1 any of their cards, and keeping artifacts off the board when their deck is focused on having a critical mass of them should go a long way in helping you build incremental advantage to close out the game before they can do much. Against Boros, it's presenting more hoops for your opponent to jump through just to land threats, and against affinity it's just better removal.

Blazing Volley is primarily there for Delver and other matchups where sweepers are good. Against Delver, you need to up your 2+ for 1 count so you can keep pressure better, as you are definitely the control-ly deck.

Pulse of Murasa is almost always swapped in when Moldervine Cloak is bad. I.e. against removal heavy decks or against burn, where it can do wonders in conjuction with evolving wilds.

You're primary flex spot in the main board is electrickery and any of the singleton cards in the maybeboard are good options to try out for that slot.

Pyroblast and Hydroblast are always considerations. I ended up cutting them because I never wanted better 1 to 1 removal in the matchups I brought them in for, so I think blazing volley and think twice are actually better, considering the amount of removal I already have access to in the main deck.