Pattern Recognition #362 - Interview with a Winner
Features Opinion Pattern Recognition
berryjon
3 April 2025
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Hello Everyone! My name is berryjon, and I welcome you all to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series. Also the only one. I am a well deserved Old Fogey having started the game back in 1996. My experience in both Magic and Gaming is quite extensive, and I use this series to try and bring some of that to you. I dabble in deck construction, mechanics design, Magic's story and characters, as well as more abstract concepts. Or whatever happens to catch my fancy that week. Please, feel free to talk about each week's subject in the comments section at the bottom of the page, from corrections to suggested improvements or your own anecdotes. I won't bite. :) Now, on with the show!
So I want to thank the winner of the Slow Grow tournament this year, who played the "Head I Win, Tails You Lose" 2021 Secret Lair Precon, commanded by Okaun, Eye of Chaos, partnered with Zndrsplt, Eye of Wisdom. This Izzet Deck was the first Secret Lair Commander deck, rather than being individual cards with a theme, and it started off with a splash! This deck was designed by Gavin Verhity of Wizards as a personal decklist for himself to play, and it shows. It meets the qualifications for a Tier 2 Precon, but it wasn't designed as such, as we shall soon see.
I was so convinced that this player was going to win, I asked them two weeks before the end of the tournament if they would mind answering a few short questions about their tournament experience for you guys this year, and they agreed - but also said that their victory wasn't an assured thing. After their win, I gave them a small list of general questions, and they got back to me a couple days later with their answers. This is their response, and while I have taken the liberty of editing for card links, all words are theirs (except the questions, those are mine).
1: Why did you choose this deck?
It wasn't Golgari, so I was stepping out of my regular wheelhouse. People had already been daring me to play slow grow decks without Black or Green. (ednote: I was one of them, even going so far as to suggest he run Nahiri, the Lithomancer as a challenge.) Plus, flipping coins is fun, I enjoy a little chaos in my games. Blue offers control, and card draw, red provides haste and (somewhat) trample.
2: What were your plans for it?
Just Okaun smash, backed up by counterspells and protection. Especially once we got the points sheets and commander kills became the most viable way to get extra points. It was a good pick.
2a: What Cards did you add/remove? Why?
With 25 swaps in the deck, I'm not going to get into each individual change. Lots of "Game Changers" went in, if they weren't on the TO's ban list (Chrome Mox, Mana Vault, Grim Monolith, The One Ring, Cyclonic Rift, Fierce Guardianship were added, while Rhystic Study was banned). Most of my cuts were cards that were too slow, or didn't progress the game plan of killing with Okaun. Crooked Scales, while it flips a coin, involves sinking 8 mana into it. Risky Move and Mirror March, too high cost for not enough impact, stuff like that. Slow Grow has been more about adding individually powerful cards that provide huge advantages almost the instant they land, and ways of protecting your powerful cards from being removed. Also, every deck needed a bit more spot removal in case of other players also going for Voltron kills. I had to add Snap, Rapid Hybridization and Gilded Drake specifically to fight second place, who also was threatening commander kills with Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin (ednote: This was the player I threw a victory to in week 4. Glad to see it worked!). The deck itself had a lot of very good cards, which led to conundrums in the later weeks, where the cards being removed were still quite good, but there were slightly better alternatives. Stuff like Whispersilk Cloak vs. Brotherhood Regalia/Silver Shroud Costume.
3: What cards did you add or remove that really overperformed or underperformed when you played them?
None of my adds were really underperformers, I was typically more than happy to see any of my adds vs. what was in the deck to start with. As far as what was in the deck that underperformed, a lot of the coin flip cards were overcosted for their effects, and I wasn't thrilled about casting. Karplusan Minotaur was 4 mana, and didn't start flipping coins until the next turn, and stuff like Goblin Kaboomist and Goblin Archaeologist, while 2 mana, were very good at killing themselves immediately. Coin flips are 50/50, but they were outliers that tended to lose their flips. For overperformers, I was always happy to see Mana Vault/Grim Monolith. Fast mana was key in a lot of my games, not necessarily to play commanders early, but to deploy the means to protect them and myself, or to have a little extra mana for equipment when the commanders did come down. The later weeks were very much feeling like 3v1s or 2v1s, even if I was not off to a good start, and that cost me a few games if I didn't draw well, or win enough coin flips to be a threat. Krark's Thumb is the best card in the deck, full stop. It got tutored almost every time I had a way to get an artifact, except the rare occasions where more mana like Sol Ring was needed. And Tavern Scoundrel was an absolute house if it got to stick around. 2 treasures for every coin flip win, and once it sacrificed a The One Ring with like 8 counters on it when I was on 6 life.
4: What did you consider some of your good matchups?
Any slow deck, low interaction deck or deck that went tall with a small number of creatures. My deck was not the fastest, but it could outspeed slower decks and then sneak in with a massive Okaun before they could assemble a resistance. Zndrsplt/Okaun thrived in the early weeks, when all the other precons were at their slowest and least interaction. A quick combination of Krark's Thumb and Trample or Unblockable was good for a kill most of the time, then it snowballed from there due to the extra cards. Low interaction let me set up without as much concern of having crucial pieces removed mid combat. And other decks that wanted to make 1 large creature could be avoided with spot removal or simply going over top. Okaun hit 700,000 power one game with double strike and trample, not a lot of precons can put something in front of that and not just die on the spot.
4a: What about bad matchups?
Decks with a lot of spot removal/ interaction, or decks that liked to go wide with a lot of creatures. My deck had a small number of creatures, and I died a few times to decks that made a board of 9 or 10 creatures and just swung in constantly. Especially if the whole table had the same idea to eliminate me, as I was in first place for the entire league. Propaganda offset it a few times and made it too hard to deal enough damage, but that's 1 card in 98 and it was far from consistent. Cards like Koma (ednote: I presume Koma, Cosmos Serpent, in the Morska deck here, and not Koma, World-Eater) would also be a huge problem for me, as they'd have enough resources to make it essentially impossible for me to do any real damage if Okaun was kept constantly tapped down.
5: What would you consider one of your best plays in the Tournament?
The best play I can remember was against a guy playing the 20 Ways to Win deck (ednote: Came in 6th place overall, and changed commander to Jenson Carthalion, Druid Exile). We had a back and forth for an entire round where I had to counter his board wipe, then had to Mana Drain another player's additional combat card to prevent me from dying. Then, on my turn, to attack and kill the 20 Ways to Win player, he had a Deflecting Palm that I needed yet another counter for, but luckily had drawn my Fierce Guardianship. Other than that, Planar Chaos being in play made for a lot of shenanigans where my board got protected by virtue of no one else winning their coin flips. I don't know if that qualifies as good plays on paper, but it kept me ahead in a few games where I would have been shut down.
5a:What about Misplays?
Too many to count, I miscounted mana a couple times, casted an unnecessary Embercleave that didn't matter and wasted mana for Seize the Day. A couple games were writeoffs to bad mulligans (one game I never saw a land, and had kept a 5 card hand with Chrome Mox and Sol Ring, which both immediately got destroyed), and a couple others were mistakes due to misreading cards or not playing politics as well as I should have. I'm sure there was many other mistakes that I don't even realize were made. C'est la vie, it is what it is.
6: What are your plans for next year?
Nope, I don't plan for these anymore, just grab what looks like fun and send it. The first few Slow Grows were planned, and Meren cleaned house. I'm not as invested in magic as I once was, so now it's pick a deck that looks like fun, or has cards I want to poach out and put into other decks. To be honest, I didn't even really plan for this year's. Even after every week, it was on a week by week basis of what I felt like the deck needed, and no real thought put in after my weekly changes.
7: What general comments would you like to make?
I didn't really realize how strong the deck was out of the box, until I was sleeving it. It had been sitting in it's box for a couple years. Other people have played the other Secret Lair decks in previous Slow Grows (Cats and Dogs last year, and this year someone played 20 Ways to Win), so I kind of just assumed this deck was on a similar power level. Strong for a precon, but not completely imbalanced. Then I put a copy of the list on Tappedout, and realized the average CMC of the deck was like 3, versus most precons being closer to 4 or higher. And cards like Commander's Plate and Shadowspear already in. The first couple weeks were enlightening, to say the least. Luckily, the coin flips kept me from running away too hard in the later weeks, and the other players also helped keep me in check once their adds started coming in.
8: We never played! Did you miss the opportunity?
Hell yeah I did, I wanted to see what everyone was playing. Unfortunately, due to how the later week matchups were made, I ended up seeing a lot of the top few players and not much of the rest of the field. Looking at the rest of the list, I saw a couple other players whose decks I never saw either. It may have been for the best though, seeing the top few players helped keep me and them all in check and not letting them run the lower power tables probably made their games more fun as well.
And that was the interview! A bit short, but I didn't want to delve too deeply into the nitty-gritty. I'm the only one taking copious notes during the tournament. I can't expect people to remember everything about everything.
I hope this helped provide a different viewpoint into the operation of the format, and some assumptions going into decks. This year's winner looked into single high-impact cards, where I was trying to build up the deck from its base components.
He's also threatened to 'help' me next year, to work with a good deck and make it better. Not sure how that will go!
Thank you all for reading! I'll see you next week when I put together my tournament retrospective and a deck rebuild. Hopefully.
Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job (now), but more income is always better, and I can use it to buy cards! I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!