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I thought my luck for the weekend had run out in Round 1, Game 1. Actually, I thought my luck had run out the morning prior. Actually, I thought my luck had run out at the end of March.
My wife and I had been trying to sell our house since September of 2024. We did not have any luck selling through December. Really, no one was even coming to look at it. We had two tours over three and a half months. So with the holidays impending, we took the house off the market until the Spring season. Within two weeks of putting the house on the market in February, we had six different couples come through and an offer on the table, which gave us until May 1st to find a new house. Fast forward to the end of March, and I truly believed that we were going to have to move twice, to a rental and then to our next home once we found it. And if that was the case, I definitely was NOT going to be able to attend the North American PreModern Championship at Lobstercon. But in the last weekend of March, in a Hail Mary of final house tours, we found our home with just enough time to close and move in before we needed to vacate our last house. Lucky stroke number one.
So the week of Lobstercon was quite the long haul. I spent Monday packing and shuttling as much as I could between our old and new house in our little Prius. And then the movers came on Tuesday, which was an exhausting day of anxiety and toting and not eating enough food. Then Wednesday and Thursday were days surrounded by boxes where we unpacked, sorted and debated how our life in this new home would work. Finally on Thursday evening, Dan Serwan, fellow magician and OldSchool afficianado, came by to give me cards for his cube to get signed at the event by Heather Hudson. I took a break from the move to have a drink, talk, and then finally to pack to fly to Boston the next morning. I’d booked a somewhat later morning flight, because even though I wanted to play in the Unchained event I knew that moving houses would exhaust me and I didn’t want to get on an early-ass flight. Besides, I reasoned I could get cards signed, drink beer and hang out with my friends between rounds.
Friday morning I got a Lyft, made it through security, picked up a cold brew and a bottle of water and headed to my gate. Except the gate had a departing flight to Charleston, not to Boston. I took a look at my ticket again. In the haze of the lead-up to the move, I’d booked a 9:20 PM flight instead of what I thought was an AM flight. This is not the sort of mistake I usually make, but moving houses had drained me mentally, physically and emotionally. I considered going home and unpacking boxes while waiting for the evening. I considered canceling the trip entirely, as I wasn’t sure that it would be worth it to fly in late Friday evening only to turn around and head home on Sunday morning. I went to the American helpdesk, and they told me that the next flights that morning were all booked but that I could try to get in on standby. As it happened, the exact one no-show I needed occurred, and I got on a 9:33 AM flight to Boston. Lucky stroke number two.
At this point, I pretty much didn’t care how my Magic playing went the rest of the weekend. Even though I was playing a deck that relied on topdecking, I was mainly concerned with just having a good time. I’d been lucky enough at this point. Anything else would be a cherry on the top.
Since I wasn’t playing Friday, I took the long walk up from South Station up to the venue, stopping for a salmon BLT, some tots and a couple of Hill Farmsteads on the way.
I got to the venue and started getting some of Dan’s cards signed. Then when my friend, Brad Hanley decided he’d had enough of the vanilla PM event that day, he and I hit Remnant Satellite where we had some beers, food and good conversation while waiting for everyone else to finish up.
After a few drinks, we picked up some more beer and headed to the Airbnb, which was about a mile from the venue. I half-jokingly called our Airbnb “Spike House” since we had Nate Shue and Ian Hendry (two Top 8’ers from last year) staying with us. Philadelphia Old Style/Premodern ringers: Matt Ranson, Brad Hanley, and Sean Murphy who stayed there are no slouches either. The Philadelphia/Pennsylvania contingent, albeit inclusive of people that don’t necessarily live in Philadelphia and didn’t stay in Spike House, was rounded out by Brandon Econ, Okechukwu Sydney Igbokwe, Nick Mostovych, and Alex Bohn. Also want to shout out to our friend group, the Rhode Island-centered Tormod’s CryptKeepers!
We chilled out at Spike House drinking, chatting and watching the stream. Nick convinced Matt to play a maindeck E-Plague over Jester’s Cap (much to my dismay) and even after the Jester’s Cap had won the match against Dreadnought earlier that day. I got pleasantly drunk and continued to punish my already exhausted body by staying up till midnight drinking, playing and talking.
Soon enough, the next morning was upon us. After a breakfast of some BOM Dough (place is lit), we headed to the venue. And I had to see if I had any luck leftover for the best top-decking deck in Premodern: Devourer.
THE DECK
Most games with Devourer go one of two ways: (1) You crush your opponent quickly or (2) you both sit on the edge of your seats waiting for the right/wrong card to come off the top of the deck or for someone to mess something up. I mean, most good Magic games are like that I guess, but Devourer condenses the action into just a few turns in a very effective way.
I’ve played Devourer on and off for about a year now. Of course, I recognized pretty quickly that it was extremely powerful. My first inclination whenever I pick up a new deck is to figure out how to make it better. This inclination is usually a weakness because with a new deck, I don’t know enough about it to figure out how to actually make it better, and in the best case scenario I make it different. Worst case scenario, I make it significantly worse.
Thankfully, PreModern’s relatively static nature lets me muck around with inferior versions of decks for months or even years before realizing that a stock build is the correct one. That said, I think this community as a whole is eye-rollingly willing to adopt what is “stock” way too easily given the size of the card pool and the lengths of time we get to toy with that card pool. And Devourer’s raw power is just forgiving of some amount of mucking around as well. As long as you keep a sufficient number of combo pieces and artifacts to Tinker away, the deck is really resilient to you making inferior versions of it.
And I tried a BUNCH of inferior versions. I realized pretty quickly that the deck could be five colors just by changing Shivan Reef into City of Brass, particularly if you play Lotus Petal. So I tried Enlightened Tutor… and I found that I really did not want to be putting an artifact on top of my deck as often as I expected. I tried Gamekeeper with Cabal Therapy and Phyrexian Tower… and it was fun and worked ok a decent amount of the time, but I found I was still mostly (90%) just winning the old fashioned way with Tinker or hard-casting Devourer. I really thought that additional colors would unlock new sideboard options to deal with all of the hate that Devourer faces, but after exploring a lot of those options, blue bounce generally gives me all that I need to assemble a win. It’s hard to beat Rushing River as an answer when you cast it on your opponent’s EOT so you can win on the next main phase.
So, let’s talk about some of the more unusual cards I DID and did NOT sleeve up in more detail.
1. No Oath/Gamekeeper/etc. – I really felt like these cards are a bit of a hat on a hat. They are powerful and fun alternate wincons, but when the core of the A-B combo of the deck is so strong, I just don’t know that they are necessary.
2. Lotus Petals over Sky Diamonds/Fellwar Stones – I’m a really big fan of Lotus Petals. I keep saying that Devourer is the best top-decking deck in Premodern, and Lotus Petal leans into that. It’s a free artifact off of the top to get you that one last mana to combo off or it lets you combo off while playing/holding up an answer. It’s a free artifact to Tinker away, which is often very relevant for the fastest wins. Now, the mana rocks have their own utility, but to really make them more effective than a Lotus Petal, you need them to tap multiple times, and in the case of Sky Diamond, that’s like 3+ turns to get value off of it. They are also good Tinker sac fodder once they tap for mana (which Lotus Petal doesn’t offer), but they just don’t go as fast, and I wanted to go fast.
3. Ancestral Knowledge – So, I really like Impulse. Being able to cast it EOT and then untap and win is so so good. But Ancestral Knowledge (“AnK”) digs down 10 cards, and 10>4, by more than double, for those of you counting at home. Look, I am not sure that three AnK is necessarily correct over Impulse. Likely it should be a split of two AnK and one Impulse or something like that. If you, dear reader, decide to try the deck out, you should figure that out and let me know, please.
A few words on Ancestral Knowledge. It is a challenging card to play. I literally threw games that I should have won with it in testing. Get your reps in with it to figure out how best to use it. I’m pretty sure I still have not resolved one fully correctly, and I’m pretty damn sure I’ve cast more AnK than 99.999% of Magic players. Just figuring out how to reorder 10 cards so that you can hopefully win the next one or two turns can be challenging enough. But then thinking through what to exile in case you are forced to shuffle by a disenchant effect or something else, forget about it. About halfway through the tournament, I was very sad that I just hadn’t run Impulse instead. Decision fatigue is real, folks.
The general heuristic I would use to get you started if you are playing AnK in Devourer is that it should be treated as a three mana Vampiric Tutor. Don’t get greedy with it. Only play it if you are trying to get one card and preferably if you have a source of card draw handy to draw immediately. When you play it trying to get two or more cards, you often get trapped. And exiling is often incorrect… but you probably will correctly exile cards with it some percentage of the time as well. More on that in the matches, below.
Finally, AnK needs more love in PreModern. Its most disgusting home is in Dream Halls. I’d love to show it off in Dream Halls, but it is such a fragile deck, and I had to put my explorations there on pause to get some reps in with Devourer over the last couple of months. I also want to try AnK out in Storm, Illusions-Donate and maybe some other stuff as well.
4. Scroll Rack – I think this should be a Defense Grid. I was just getting cute with synergies with AnK, and I wanted some maindeck discard protection. It did win me a game though. More on that in the matches, below.
6. Gustha’s Scepter – This card is an easy sideboard card to keep around. It’s discard protection, Tinker Fodder and easily slots in for a Defense Grid or Tsabo’s Web that isn’t cutting it. If you don’t expect a lot of discard, then it might be an easy cut from the board.
THE EVENT
courtesy of Michael Heup
They started by announcing it would be Competitive REL. Internal monologue: “Fuck. I play too much Old School for this shit.”
Match 1
I played against Samurai Funn (not his actual name, but I didn’t keep notes and am limited to what my memory and Spike Rack tell me) on a sweet RGW Survival deck with a fair plan and a back-door into an Enduring Renewal/Goblin Bombardment/Anger combo. Deck was cool. Game 1, I mulled to 6 and my opponent mulled to 5. I kept maybe a sketchy hand and ended up having to fire off an AnK and exiling 9 cards to it to just hope to draw into the pieces I needed to win. I didn’t get there. The life lost from my lands and the beats from my opponent knocked me into Bombardment range before I was able to find and deploy the combo. It was not an auspicious start to the day when I couldn’t even win on my opponent’s mull to 5. That said, the deck did what it was supposed to in games 2 and 3.
1-0 (2-1)
Match 2
I played against Brett Spinelli on Goblins. I recall that all of these games were super tight. I won the race game 1 through some Tinkerer disruption. Game 2, I lost the race, and Game 3, I again won through Tinkerer disruption.
2-0 (2-1)
Match 3
I played against Matthew Isaacs on Rec Sur. Game 1 was a quick combo win. Going to sideboarding, I took out my phone to look at my sideboarding guide when Matthew stopped me, pointing out it was competitive REL. “Fuck. I play too much Old School for this shit.” I’m glad he stopped me, and that this happened at this point in the tournament. We called over a judge to explain to me how it works in Comp REL. I resigned myself to not being able to consult my sideboard notes for the rest of the tournament. I didn’t feel too heartbroken about that part though as I felt like I’d done the work in thinking through the various matchups and how I’d sideboard in the days leading up to the event, so didn’t necessarily think I needed the crutch. Mostly, I was just trying to set aside my feelings of chagrin over my faux pas.
Game 2, Matthew was able to disrupt me with discard. I was left with a single combo piece, a Devourer I believe, in hand for several turns while I desperately dug 5-7 cards deep into the deck with Webs, Mind Stones, Spheres and natural draws. I didn’t get there before Matthew was able to deploy a Mesmeric Fiend. Fortunately, I had out Gustha’s Scepter to save my Devourer. Unfortunately, Matthew had the Naturalize in hand to send Devourer off to exile forever. Of course, then the best topdecking deck in Premodern did its thing, and I subsequently ripped a Fling followed by another Devourer (or Tinker, I forget) to win. The combo deck sometimes just gets there, and I almost felt bad for lucksacking.
3-0 (2-0)
Match 4
I played against Christopher Baviello on GWb Oath. I’m a big fan of Chris after last year we met in the later rounds with our rogue decks. He had been on a sweet UWB control list, and I was on Philly Zoo (another article). This year, we were both bringing some more meta decks (though we both had our tweaks to the respective archetypes cuz brewers gotta brew), and our final placements in the tournament reflected that. These were also tight games, but the power of Tsabo’s Web cannot be denied, and not playing into Oath of Druids was helpful as well. Hope we can keep our match streak going into 2026, Chris.
4-0 (2-1)
Match 5
I played against Anthony Ho on Terravore Oath Replenish. I saw the Terravore side of the deck in both of our games. I was thankful I didn’t have to grapple with the Parallax portion. Game 2, I got to exhibit the power of Rushing River. Anthony was beating me down with a Terravore and had an Aura of Silence in play that was shutting off my ability to deploy the Tinker/Altar win I had in hand. I was at a low life, so the Terravore would be killing me in a turn or 2 (in conjunction with Ancient Tomb) if I didn’t address it. I was able to Rushing River with Kicker to bounce back the Terravore and Aura, but I didn’t have enough mana to win that turn. Anthony redeployed the Aura but didn’t have the mana to also cast the Terravore. On EOT, I cast a second Rushing River with kicker to bounce the Aura and a Mox Diamond to take Anthony off of sufficient mana to interact, leaving me free to combo off on my turn.
5-0 (2-0)
Match 6
I played against Noah Mickel on Stiflenought. I think I only won this match due to a mistake of Noah’s. Game 1, I was able to push a Devourer onto the board, but it was clear that Noah had the counter ready for my Fling (or Altar). I passed the turn, and Noah tapped out to Impulse, at which point I mentioned I had a response. Noah had just forgotten for a split second that he needed to keep the 2 up to counter my bullshit. I offered to let him take the play back, but he declined (gentlemanly) and the Fling did its work. Game 2, I think I saw three different Defense Grids. I do not recall if one ever made it through the counterspells, but regardless, I was able to exhaust the countermagic enough to combo off and escape the match.
6-0 (2-0)
Match 7
I played against Rich Shay on Enchantress. Game 1, I was able to dump my hand and combo off pretty quickly. Game 2, I again had a fast hand and deployed Devourer into the Altar kill, except that Rich seemed pretty calm letting my combo pieces hit the board. The calmness (and prior knowledge of Rich) made me suspect that he had a Blessing in his deck, but I felt like I had to go for it to see. Of course, a blessing was milled. At that point, I MAYBE could’ve cobbled together enough cards left in my library to try for a Fling kill, but I would’ve needed to get lucky and ripped a Fling in one of my next couple of cards. Likely I should have played that game out further, but it was unlikely I would’ve won and I was rattled anyways, so I scooped it up into game 3. I sided out my Altars and hoped that I could find a Fling to do the job in game 3. Game 3 saw me facing down a Solitary Confinement. Cantripping and Scroll Rack let me sculpt my hand until I was left looking at the exact three cards I needed to end the game through the Confinement: EOT Hoodwink into untap and Tinker Fling for the win.
7-0 (2-1)
Lucky stroke number three: I was locked for Top 8 and had some time to rest and get some much needed fuel.
Matches 8-9
IDs. I got the salad at Mamaleh’s, which is banging. It was a long break, and I felt like I slipped out of my intense state of concentration at some point.
7-0-2
Top 8
My run ended against Dreadnought, piloted by Justin Provencal. Justin didn’t give me any window to do something silly, and I just didn’t see the volume of Defense Grids and/or Red Blasts that I would need to push through his wall of countermagic. Accumulated Knowledge (not AnK) was particularly brutal here, as it felt like once those started to resolve, I could never draw enough must counter spells to breach the shield.
It was a good run. I keep finding that my best Magic performances are when I’m in a kind of fucked-up flow state. I can find a flow state fairly easily at work I need to figure out if I can find a way to do well in large tournaments without being in that state of mind, as I’d prefer to enjoy winning just a little bit more than I do in that state of mind. If I can’t, I might just have to prioritize playing Philly Zoo (or similar) and ending up with a middling record every year. We shall see; keep your fingers crossed for me that I can find the happy medium.
I HAVE IT
Should I (you) play Devourer?
At least going into this tournament, the meta was soft to it. There aren’t that many E-Plagues, Cursed Totems, or Null Rods running around right now as there have been at other times in the history of Premodern. The Oath decks these days don’t play Gaea’s Blessing; mise! There are even fewer Meddling Mages than there have been in the past. NOTE: Shame on us all for that being the case. Meddling Mage and Cabal Therapy are the actual pillars of the format, IMO.
The worst Devourer matchup is mono-blue Tide. Chain of Vapor is a good way to send early Defense Grids back to your hand (to be subsequently countered), Counterspells are annoying, Stifle is an excellent answer to Altar, and Parallax Tides just lock you out. For many of those same reasons, mono-blue Dreadnought is also a deck that you don’t want to run into. And there are a lot of mono-blue Dreadnoughts out there these days. Other than that, I feel like most other matchups are either a coinflip or I’m favored. Though while I haven’t played it, I wasn’t psyched about playing against traditional UW Control or Tribe. I’m probably forgetting a few other decks right now, and you, dear reader, may discover some I’m not thinking about.
So, maybe? I think if the meta changes minimally in the wake of Lobstercon, then it is probably still a good choice. But if people react to the conversion rate of the 2 Devourer decks, then it gets to be a tougher slog. I think the biggest issue would be the rise of Gaea’s Blessing or if more people start playing more maindeck E-Plague again. If that happens, you’d probably have a better shot of winning with something else.
Winning aside, what I can say is that the deck is fun to play in a big tournament and OK to occasionally whip out at your local meet-up to keep people honest. Haha. But don’t play it exclusively at your locals unless you want to be THAT guy (I’m perilously close). I plan to hang up Devourer for awhile. It was fun, but I need to explore some other parts of the meta for a bit. Too many fun things to play in PreModern.
PROPS:
The Organizers for putting on a great event
Philly Premodern Testing Community for all of the discussions, testing, bullshit, and sideboard strategizing
Shane Cota for Gustha’s Scepter tech
Ty Thomason and Jarred Doucette for confirming what I could and could not do, bye-wise, with my record.
“Spike House” for some good times and great discussions
My opponents for being mostly gracious in getting A+B combo’ed
The salad at Mamaleh’s
The breakfast sandwich at Bom Dough
Dante staff - ALWAYS
SLOPS:
Not getting on camera
The moving company, for losing my kitchen knives and a precious ornament
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