Iiiiiiit's Standard!
I don't know about you, but it's getting pretty hard for me to want to play Standard any more. Most people have settled on a deck they can stomach and they're not playing anything different unless they absolutely have to.
I've gotten to that point and have been locked into Red White Devotion for the last month. Now that's not to say it's completely a bad thing, RW Devotion has done very well for me! I'm just very ready for a change of pace and, until Born of the Gods hits the shelves, I plan to draft whenever that's an option.
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for you guys, there's no draft on Wednesdays so I decided to play a wacky deck instead of sticking with Ol' Faithful. Ali Antrazi just started writing articles for Channel Fireball and he talked briefly about a Junk Reanimator deck that I thought looked sweet. Here's the list as I played it, I wiggled a couple of cards around based on personal preference but the overall vision is Mr. Antrazi's.
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Sylvan Caryatid
2 Pack Rat
2 Obzedat
1 Pharika's Mender
2 Shadowborn Demon
2 Angel of Serenity
3 Sylvan Primordial
2 Ashen Rider
3 Commune with the Gods
4 Grisly Salvage
3 Obzedat's Aid
2 Deadbridge Chant
2 Whip of Erebos
6 Forest
1 Plains
1 Swamp
4 Godless Shrine
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Temple Garden
4 Temple of Silence
Sideboard
2 Thoughtseize
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Doom Blade
2 Golgari Charm
2 Sin Collector
1 Trading Post
3 Blood Baron
1 Angel of Serenity
The changes I made were to juggle the 3rd Angel of Serenity to the board in place of the 3rd Primordial which I moved main.
I also took out some cards I think Ali plays out of habit like Ratchet Bomb and Pithing Needle.
I was particularly excited to play with Pharika's Mender as well as Deadbridge Chant.
While assembling the deck I was a bit surprised to find I only owned 1 Ashen Rider! I remember pretty clearly trading them off right after Theros was released but I also remember trying to trade for them at some point....
Luckily my buddy Brian had roughly 100 of them for trade and I was able to scoop up the rest of a playset.
And here's how it went!
Round 1 - Travis B. with BWR Midrange
Travis travels down with his brother Grant and they are both really cool fellas. For a while there it seemed like I was destined to play Travis in every single tournament for the rest of eternity but lately we've managed to avoid each other. He was running a fairly typical list with Reckoners, Demons and Obzedat paired up with a pile of removal.
Game 1 - I was on the back foot to a pair of Reckoners pretty quickly and spent a lot of turns casting dig spells without any way to capitalize on them. Just before I got too low on life I drew into an Obzedat's Aid and Ashen Rider was good enough.
Game 2 - I got on the back foot fairly quickly again to an early Reckoner followed by an Obzedat. I spent a few turns casting Salvages and Communes and was already fairly low on life by the time I was able to resolve a Blood Baron. The board bogged down with both of our Obzedat's draining and re-draining but eventually Travis drew an Erebos to shut down my Blood Barons and Obzedat life gain and that was that.
Game 3 - I lost a couple of mana creatures to an early Anger of the Gods, a card I thought for sure would have been sided out, and the loss of a Caryatid stranded an Angel of Serenity in my hand for the entire game. I was able to get one Angel out early thanks to an Obzedat's Aid but I never drew the third white source, instead finding Overgrown Tombs and Forests galore. Travis had a Whip in play to go with his 2 Rakdos Keyrunes and so I couldn't go on the offensive effectively and my deck refused to cough up action. Eventually time was called and we drew. It looked like I was going to be able to pull back into the game there at the end but I was certainly only a Rakdos's Return away from death.
I was a bit frustrated with the match there, somewhat with myself for forgetting to phase out Obzedat at least twice but also a little with Travis. He spent a lot of time thinking over his plays every single turn and I'm positive he used over double the time that I did. This is something I struggle with sometimes and I'm not sure there's a good way to deal with it. I'm not upset with Travis about the draw and I only bring it up because I'm hopeful that someone out there can share their solution to slow opponents.
Round 2 - Don S. with Rw Devotion
Don has been playing Bg Devotion for quite a while and it absolutely shocked me to get attacked by an Ash Zealot on turn 2. I found out after the match that Don had swapped decks with Nick for the night for a change of pace.
Game 1 - I kept a hand that I thought was reasonable against Black, it was slow but powerful. I immediately regretted it when Ash Zealot came down on turn 2. Don curved out with Zealot, Zealot, Hammer, Reckoner, Fanatic and I died with nothing to do.
Game 2 - I kept what felt like a better hand this time with Pack Rat and some accelerators. Don had a Chained to the Rocks for my Rat and I stopped drawing lands and started drawing large monsters. Fanatic x 2 burned my face and I was dead.
I laughed with Don about losing to the good deck that I decided to leave at home and we played a 3rd game for laughs. I ended up winning it but not by reanimating sexy creatures, I won with Pack Rat. It was a perfect way to sum up the outing with Junk Reanimator, don't make big creatures when you can just make Rats!
I ended up wimping out at that point and dropping from the tournament.
In retrospect I should've stuck it out to have more to write about for you guys but 2 frustrating matches back to back put that far from my mind. I'm sorry, please know that I do not love you any less.
In lieu of more Standard content, I have a little info about a Modern deck that I've been crushing on lately. I stumbled onto it in a Magic Online Daily Event where it had performed somewhat well and it immediately locked eyes with me.
Take a look at this beauty:
1 Ajani Vengeant
3 Tezzeret the Seeker
4 Isochron Scepter
2 Vedalken Shackles
2 Pithing Needle
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Lightning Helix
2 Path to Exile
4 Remand
3 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Steam Vents
5 Island
1 Mountain
4 Misty
4 Tarn
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Academy Ruin
I can't remember the sideboard but that's neither here nor there.
Now there is some interesting stuff going on with this deck and Tezzeret is very odd, especially in that he's usually going to find a thing and then die immediately. I guess that's alright most of the time.
It's awkward that you don't get to run any Sacred Foundry and I can definitely see swapping that odd looking Tec Edge for one since we don't want to drop our Island count.
I already want more Shackles, if we're jumping through all these hoops with our manabase and not using Colonade I want to make it count.
So I got to play some games and I had a lot of fun. The deck is by far not insane or anything but it's definitely powerful.
A few things that came up:
2 main deck Needles and Relics feels pretty bad. Drawing 1 of each is never going to kill you vs. anyone but drawing multiples in the wrong matchup can. I want to move at least 1 Needle to the sideboard for something like Engineered Explosives or Ratchet Bomb.
In any matchup where they can't remove them the Scepters are absolutely bonkers. I imagine you have to side them out against decks with 4 Abrupt Decays but oh baby is that card awesome.
The Remands felt pretty weak but I think that's a result of the matchups I was playing (Burn and Merfolk). I only drew Cryptic Command once and it was as good as that card always is.
Jamming Shackles on turn 3 after Bolting / Helixing feels unbeatable some amount of the time. Again Abrupt Decay is a card that exists but man, Shackles!
Tezzeret makes me want mana rocks of some kind, Signets or Talismans so that his +1 is more useful. It's probably not worth it but it was a thought I had.
A Snapcaster Mage wouldn't be the worst thing to have access to.
Overall I'm excited to play some more games with the deck. If you have any sweet ideas let me know!
That about wraps it up for today. FNM is upcoming and then on Saturday the Tournabenefit for Jason Lejeune's family. I'm really excited and nervous about this thing and I hope a million people show up to play. You should come!
Thursday, January 16, 2014
Sunday, January 12, 2014
FNM @ Magic Comics & Hobbies, 1/10/14
Oh buddy was this a strange Friday!
My usual end of the week consists of lunch and a movie with some of my pals at the shop but thanks to a busier-than-usual week that was already expected to be busy I had to pull some extra shifts at work. This meant that rather than trundling out of the movie theater at 3:30 in the afternoon to head out to the shop I was at work from 6:30 AM til 4:30. Really I should be grateful for this since it surely saved me from having to sit through "I, Frankenstein" or some other equally terrible film.
I fought back and forth with myself over whether I was going to play Standard again or go back to drafting. Ultimately I left it up to fate to decide my format, if Theros was the draft and there weren't a million people I decided to do that but if it was going to be anything else I'd run back Red White Devotion in Standard.
Theros was the format and 11 is less than a million so Draft is what I did!
Let me take a second to explain one of the stranger things our shop does with the Drafts. Normally you'd have a sign-up sheet for Draft and you'd wait til 8 people were on it and BAM, drafting would happen. For one reason or another, our store piles everyone into one draft tournament and then attempts to divvy them up into relatively equal tables to draft. Everyone then plays amongst the entire draft tournament.
Now I know and you know that this isn't ideal by any stretch of the word but it is what it is. I'm not the one running these tournaments and besides, more people in the draft means more prize money in the pool! I saw down at a table 5 to draft with 2 good friends (Sunni and Eric), 1 guy I'd met once before who's name I'm drawing a blank on and 1 new guy Austin. I prepared myself for strange, unreadable signals thanks to the size of the table and tore into my first pack.
Pack 1 - I opened a Fleecemane Lion which I ended up taking. I've got no problem savagely rare-drafting at FNM but thankfully this rare is actually nearly impossible to answer if it goes Monstrous. There was a white Ordeal and a Battlewise Valor but really nothing else that great in the pack.
I picked up a Nessian Asp over Voyages End and Nimbus Nyad second then snagged a Voyaging Satyr third. Green dried up pretty quickly but white kept coming and I ended up getting back the Battlwise Valor AND the Ordeal from the first pack. Red seemed to be pretty open with solid creatures coming late but I kept picking up white cards so I never felt the need to switch.
Pack 2 - I opened Anthousa, SEtessan Hero which I passed fairly happily. I remember very clearly how bad she was in sealed, a much slower format, and was much more excited to snap up a Time to Feed. Green was a little more liquid this pack and added Vulpine Goliath and Centaur Battlemaster to my deck along with a pair of Hopeful Eidolons and an Observant Alseid. Anthousa even came back....twice....and I couldn't pass up the ol' bulk rare the second time.
Pack 3 - I opened a Soldier of the Pantheon which I was happy to snap up and add to the pile. There was a Wingsteed Rider in the pack as well and I'm pretty sure he's actually better overall than the Soldier but the call of the rare won out in the end. Mr. Wingsteed never made it back which was expected.
In the end my deck looked quite powerful spread out in front of me. I had a pretty low curve with Favored Hoplite, Soldier of the Pantheon and Eidolons at 1, 2 Cavalry Pegasus, Voyaging Satyr, Fleecemane and a Philosopher at 2, and Nessian Courser, Opaline Unicorn and some other dorks at 3. I only had 1 4 drop which was Karametra's Accolyte and then my big guys were Centaur Battlemaster, Nessian Asp and 2 Vulpine Goliath. It was funny to think that plan A was to beat them down with little guys while plan B was to ramp into big things.
For spells I had a Time to Feed, a Divine Verdict, a Vanquish the Foul as well as an Ordeal of Heliod and Battlewise Valor.
I ended up spending too much time digging out specific basic lands for my deck and didn't realize until my first game that my Forests looked more like Plains than my Plains did. I definitely kept at least one hand because I thought it had 1 of each color mana when they were all in fact the same. What a punt!
Pairings went up and I found out I was battling...
Round 1 - THE BYE
NOOOOO! Here I was with this sweet GW Beatdown deck and I got the dreaded bye. It stung me extra hard because I knew it would impact you guys, my faithful readers, by depriving you of sweet, sweet content candy!
I wandered around the shop, did some trading and scoured the toy section of the store for hidden treasure. Byes are always dangerous at our store because they have SO MANY sweet action figures, statues and generally nerdy wonderment for sale that it can be very hard not to end up bringing something home.
Luckily for me (and my shelf space) I resisted the call, but who knows what will happen next time?
Round 2 - Eric R. w/ UG Flying Things
Eric was sitting to my left and was the happy recipient of all of the bounce spells and sweet Flying creatures I passed. He drafts a lot more than I do at the shop and he and his brother Matt are basically always at the top of the standings at the end of the drafts. Both of them are great guys and it's always a lot of fun to do battle with 'em.
Game 1 - Eric and I traded hits for a while, me swinging with Soldy P. while Eric had a Vaporkin. I pulled ahead quite a bit with bestowed Hopeful Eidolon and then was lucky enough to have Diving Verdict when Eric attempted to block with Breaching Hippocamp. Benthic Giant outclassed my Soldier but Centaur Battlemaster with a second Eidolon was enough to finish the game. Eric didn't play a second color this game so obviously his draws weren't great.
Game 2 - I came out of the gates pretty quickly with a pair of Cavalry Pegasuseses that were bricked by Eric's Horizon Chimaera. We stared at each other for a little while, I was scared to cast my Nessian Asp into a counterspell and Eric was content to sit and gain life with his Bird/Dragon/Thing. Eventually I cast Centaur Battlemaster, fully expecting it to get Dissolved or some such thing but no! It resolved! Time to Feed dealt with the Chimaera and suddenly I was on the offensive. Eric had a Voyage's End on the next turn when I bestowed Alseid on the Centaur which bought him a bit of time but in the end I crashed in for victory.
Round 3 - Austin w/ BG Agent of Fates
Austin was a new guy to me, he said he had planned to play Standard but decided last minute to draft because he was still missing some cards for his deck. It was obvious he was just excited to be playing Magic, he was friendly 100% of the time.
Game 1 - I kept a somewhat slow hand that was helped immensely when I drew a Voyager Satyr just in time to cast it on turn 2. Austin played an Agent of Fates on turn 3 which terrified me and my hand of large dudes, thankfully he didn't have a lot of ways to target it this game and I ran him over somewhat quickly with Nessian Asp > Vulpine Goliath > Vulpine Goliath. Much like Eric, Austin did not reveal his second color during our first game which may have been one of the reasons I won so easily.
Game 2 - This was the game where I kept a hand with 3 Forests thinking they were Plains. I was on the draw though and ripped a Plains just in time to cast a turn 4 Fleecemane Lion. Austin and I stared at each for several turns as the ground got more and more gummed up, he had Baleful Eidolon, Sedge Scorpion and Agent of Fates while I hat Nessian Courser, Soldier of the Pantheon and Fleecemane. Neither one of us really wanted to swing, him because I was never blocking his 1/1 Deathtouchers and me because he was 100% blocking with said Deathtouchers. I was finally able to break the stalemate by bestowing first Hopeful Eidolon then Observant Alseid onto my Monstrous Fleecemane. Austin showed me a few of his tricks by casting Feral Invocation on his Agent of Fates but ultimately he had no way to deal with my indestructible kitty and I was triumphant.
After reporting the score I found out that there had been some number of draws in the tournament and I was left as the only undefeated player. I was happy to be Da Winnah but a little sad that the tournament was over so fast. Of course, it was always going to seem short with me getting a bye! The TO handed out the sweet Warleader's Helix promos, doled out some store credit and wrapped things up for FNM for the week.
I hope you enjoyed the write up of the draft, if there's anything you'd like to know in the future let me know and I'll be sure to add it in. I fully intended to take pictures this time but completely spaced in the moment. I'll do better next time, I promise!
I'll be back with WNM this week, then FNM and then the grand Tournabenefit that I've been pimping for the last few weeks. I won't be playing in the Tournabenefit but I still plan to do some kind of post about it. Ideas on how you'd like to see that handled are certainly welcome!
Thanks for reading!
My usual end of the week consists of lunch and a movie with some of my pals at the shop but thanks to a busier-than-usual week that was already expected to be busy I had to pull some extra shifts at work. This meant that rather than trundling out of the movie theater at 3:30 in the afternoon to head out to the shop I was at work from 6:30 AM til 4:30. Really I should be grateful for this since it surely saved me from having to sit through "I, Frankenstein" or some other equally terrible film.
I fought back and forth with myself over whether I was going to play Standard again or go back to drafting. Ultimately I left it up to fate to decide my format, if Theros was the draft and there weren't a million people I decided to do that but if it was going to be anything else I'd run back Red White Devotion in Standard.
Theros was the format and 11 is less than a million so Draft is what I did!
Let me take a second to explain one of the stranger things our shop does with the Drafts. Normally you'd have a sign-up sheet for Draft and you'd wait til 8 people were on it and BAM, drafting would happen. For one reason or another, our store piles everyone into one draft tournament and then attempts to divvy them up into relatively equal tables to draft. Everyone then plays amongst the entire draft tournament.
Now I know and you know that this isn't ideal by any stretch of the word but it is what it is. I'm not the one running these tournaments and besides, more people in the draft means more prize money in the pool! I saw down at a table 5 to draft with 2 good friends (Sunni and Eric), 1 guy I'd met once before who's name I'm drawing a blank on and 1 new guy Austin. I prepared myself for strange, unreadable signals thanks to the size of the table and tore into my first pack.
Pack 1 - I opened a Fleecemane Lion which I ended up taking. I've got no problem savagely rare-drafting at FNM but thankfully this rare is actually nearly impossible to answer if it goes Monstrous. There was a white Ordeal and a Battlewise Valor but really nothing else that great in the pack.
I picked up a Nessian Asp over Voyages End and Nimbus Nyad second then snagged a Voyaging Satyr third. Green dried up pretty quickly but white kept coming and I ended up getting back the Battlwise Valor AND the Ordeal from the first pack. Red seemed to be pretty open with solid creatures coming late but I kept picking up white cards so I never felt the need to switch.
Pack 2 - I opened Anthousa, SEtessan Hero which I passed fairly happily. I remember very clearly how bad she was in sealed, a much slower format, and was much more excited to snap up a Time to Feed. Green was a little more liquid this pack and added Vulpine Goliath and Centaur Battlemaster to my deck along with a pair of Hopeful Eidolons and an Observant Alseid. Anthousa even came back....twice....and I couldn't pass up the ol' bulk rare the second time.
Pack 3 - I opened a Soldier of the Pantheon which I was happy to snap up and add to the pile. There was a Wingsteed Rider in the pack as well and I'm pretty sure he's actually better overall than the Soldier but the call of the rare won out in the end. Mr. Wingsteed never made it back which was expected.
In the end my deck looked quite powerful spread out in front of me. I had a pretty low curve with Favored Hoplite, Soldier of the Pantheon and Eidolons at 1, 2 Cavalry Pegasus, Voyaging Satyr, Fleecemane and a Philosopher at 2, and Nessian Courser, Opaline Unicorn and some other dorks at 3. I only had 1 4 drop which was Karametra's Accolyte and then my big guys were Centaur Battlemaster, Nessian Asp and 2 Vulpine Goliath. It was funny to think that plan A was to beat them down with little guys while plan B was to ramp into big things.
For spells I had a Time to Feed, a Divine Verdict, a Vanquish the Foul as well as an Ordeal of Heliod and Battlewise Valor.
I ended up spending too much time digging out specific basic lands for my deck and didn't realize until my first game that my Forests looked more like Plains than my Plains did. I definitely kept at least one hand because I thought it had 1 of each color mana when they were all in fact the same. What a punt!
Pairings went up and I found out I was battling...
Round 1 - THE BYE
NOOOOO! Here I was with this sweet GW Beatdown deck and I got the dreaded bye. It stung me extra hard because I knew it would impact you guys, my faithful readers, by depriving you of sweet, sweet content candy!
I wandered around the shop, did some trading and scoured the toy section of the store for hidden treasure. Byes are always dangerous at our store because they have SO MANY sweet action figures, statues and generally nerdy wonderment for sale that it can be very hard not to end up bringing something home.
Luckily for me (and my shelf space) I resisted the call, but who knows what will happen next time?
Round 2 - Eric R. w/ UG Flying Things
Eric was sitting to my left and was the happy recipient of all of the bounce spells and sweet Flying creatures I passed. He drafts a lot more than I do at the shop and he and his brother Matt are basically always at the top of the standings at the end of the drafts. Both of them are great guys and it's always a lot of fun to do battle with 'em.
Game 1 - Eric and I traded hits for a while, me swinging with Soldy P. while Eric had a Vaporkin. I pulled ahead quite a bit with bestowed Hopeful Eidolon and then was lucky enough to have Diving Verdict when Eric attempted to block with Breaching Hippocamp. Benthic Giant outclassed my Soldier but Centaur Battlemaster with a second Eidolon was enough to finish the game. Eric didn't play a second color this game so obviously his draws weren't great.
Game 2 - I came out of the gates pretty quickly with a pair of Cavalry Pegasuseses that were bricked by Eric's Horizon Chimaera. We stared at each other for a little while, I was scared to cast my Nessian Asp into a counterspell and Eric was content to sit and gain life with his Bird/Dragon/Thing. Eventually I cast Centaur Battlemaster, fully expecting it to get Dissolved or some such thing but no! It resolved! Time to Feed dealt with the Chimaera and suddenly I was on the offensive. Eric had a Voyage's End on the next turn when I bestowed Alseid on the Centaur which bought him a bit of time but in the end I crashed in for victory.
Round 3 - Austin w/ BG Agent of Fates
Austin was a new guy to me, he said he had planned to play Standard but decided last minute to draft because he was still missing some cards for his deck. It was obvious he was just excited to be playing Magic, he was friendly 100% of the time.
Game 1 - I kept a somewhat slow hand that was helped immensely when I drew a Voyager Satyr just in time to cast it on turn 2. Austin played an Agent of Fates on turn 3 which terrified me and my hand of large dudes, thankfully he didn't have a lot of ways to target it this game and I ran him over somewhat quickly with Nessian Asp > Vulpine Goliath > Vulpine Goliath. Much like Eric, Austin did not reveal his second color during our first game which may have been one of the reasons I won so easily.
Game 2 - This was the game where I kept a hand with 3 Forests thinking they were Plains. I was on the draw though and ripped a Plains just in time to cast a turn 4 Fleecemane Lion. Austin and I stared at each for several turns as the ground got more and more gummed up, he had Baleful Eidolon, Sedge Scorpion and Agent of Fates while I hat Nessian Courser, Soldier of the Pantheon and Fleecemane. Neither one of us really wanted to swing, him because I was never blocking his 1/1 Deathtouchers and me because he was 100% blocking with said Deathtouchers. I was finally able to break the stalemate by bestowing first Hopeful Eidolon then Observant Alseid onto my Monstrous Fleecemane. Austin showed me a few of his tricks by casting Feral Invocation on his Agent of Fates but ultimately he had no way to deal with my indestructible kitty and I was triumphant.
After reporting the score I found out that there had been some number of draws in the tournament and I was left as the only undefeated player. I was happy to be Da Winnah but a little sad that the tournament was over so fast. Of course, it was always going to seem short with me getting a bye! The TO handed out the sweet Warleader's Helix promos, doled out some store credit and wrapped things up for FNM for the week.
I hope you enjoyed the write up of the draft, if there's anything you'd like to know in the future let me know and I'll be sure to add it in. I fully intended to take pictures this time but completely spaced in the moment. I'll do better next time, I promise!
I'll be back with WNM this week, then FNM and then the grand Tournabenefit that I've been pimping for the last few weeks. I won't be playing in the Tournabenefit but I still plan to do some kind of post about it. Ideas on how you'd like to see that handled are certainly welcome!
Thanks for reading!
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Wednesday Night Magic @ Magic Comics & Hobbies, 1/8/14, Standard Format
I got to play some cards last night and I'm gonna tell you about whether you like it or not!
These introduction paragraphs always feel so awkward to me, having to open up and say something about something, it feels so forced and unnatural.
I got to the shop about an hour before the tournament was supposed to start and played the manliest of card games with Achille. Yes, that's right, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I brought to bear the full might of Twilight Sparkle while Achille employed the forces of Rainbow Dash. I'm still not sure how much I like the game itself but it does remind me in several ways of the old Star Wars CCG, so much so that I keep saying "Force Drain" and "Draw Destiny" instead of "Confront a Problem" and "Flip a Card" which is confusing to everyone.
After successfully defending Equestria from the forces of, um, Achille, I got to hang out do some trading while the tournament got cranked up. We had 18 people which is a pretty solid number for a Wednesday and included at least one new face to Standard.
I ended up playing the Red White Devotion deck that I've been excited by lately, it's been performing well and nothing else in the format is really appealing enough to get me to switch. I still feel good enough about every known matchup and I don't think any deck in the format has a more powerful "Plan A" than Fanatic Your Face (tm).
Round 1 - Mike E. with Naya Explosivo
Mike is a super laid back fella who's basically always smiling. He's been playing this Naya deck for a little while now and it's extremely scary. Between Advent of the Wurm, Ghor-Clan Rampager and Boros Charm your life total is basically never safe.
Game 1 - I curved out into a quick Dragon backed by a couple of removal spells and Mike could never get a foothold on the game.
Game 2 - Mike played a turn 3 Advent on my end-step then played Unflinching Courage and Boros Charm on it giving me 1 turn to draw a Chained to the Rocks, I did not.
Game 3 - I kept a removal-heavy hand with a Dragon while Mike had a land-light, Caryatid-heavy draw. I was able to use an overloaded Mortars to keep his mana down while clocking him with my Stormbreath. Eventually Mike flashed in a second Wurm to block an attacker and a second overloaded Mortars cleared his field and locked up the game.
After the match, Mike showed me a Planar Cleansing that he'd had in hand for a while. All of my Mortars wiping out Caryatids had prevented him from blowing me out big time!
Round 2 - Jack W. with UW Control
I was sitting with Jack, watching him play a Dragonball game on the DS, when the pairings were called. Jack and I have been trading matches back and forth over the last few months and I'm just starting to get caught up in wins!
Game 1 - I had a solid start of Zealot > Reckoner > Chandra but Jack had answers for then all. I'm pretty sure I played out a Fanatic too soon to put Jack to 5 or 6 life when I should have held it until it was lethal. There were several turns where I could've drawn a Dragon to win but I drew lands and removal. Eventually Jack ultimated Jace and I scooped 'em up.
Game 2 - Jack didn't draw particularly well this game and I was able to finish him off with a Boros Charm after getting some damage in with creatures.
Game 3 - My draw of 2 Wear//Tear lined up well with Jack's draw of 2 Detention Sphere, I gained so much tempo freeing my Chandra and making him deal with it multiple times that it didn't even matter than the fiery planeswalker bricked multiple times. Burn finished the game and the match.
Round 3 - Nick M. THE MIRROR
Nick is the reason I picked this deck up in the first place and we've talked a lot about it over the last month. I told him I fully expected to lose, especially since I never discussed sideboarding in the mirror....
Game 1 - Nick had multiple removal spells that kept his life total high and my board clear. He played a Dragon on turn 5 and then another on turn 6 giving me 1 turn to draw a Mortars to clear his board. I didn't draw it and Nick showed me the other 2 Stormbreaths he had waiting in the wings.
Game 2 - Nick mulliganed to 4 while I kept a very good 7. I felt this game start to slip away as Nick played removal spell after removal spell while I drew land after land. Luckily for me, Nick drew multiple Nykthoseses and couldn't find a second red source to get on the board.
Game 3 - We both kept 7 this time and spent most of the game trading resources. I was able to land a Chandra and protect it for a few turns but all it really did was dig me through a pocket of lands I didn't need. Eventually the top of my deck treated me a bit better than Nick's did and I drew both an attacker and a removal spell for Nick's blocker in the right order.
Nick and I compared sideboard plans and his was quite different from mine. I sideboarded very minimally, taking out 2 Hammers and a Nykthos for 1 Wear//Tear, 1 Chained and 1 Mortars while Nick brought in a lot more removal.
Round 4 - Achille F. with Green Red Devotion
Achille and I were the last undefeated players and chose to Intentionally Draw and split the prizes. At the suggestion of friend of the blog John A. I had planned to play a set of games anyways so as to have more content but Achille and I were pretty tired and decided not to this time.
So another solid outing with the Red Devotion and I still don't see any reason to play something else. Perhaps the entire rest of the shop will adopt the deck, that may be a good enough reason to abandon ship.
Coming up on Saturday, January 18th is our Benefit Tournament for the family of Jason Lejeune. We have a staggering amount of prizes to hand out and I'm really hoping everyone in the state of Louisiana will turn up to play cards and remember a great friend.
Here's the details as they stand now:
Date: January 18th
Time: Reg @ 10 AM, Start @ 11AM.
Entry: $15 (all entry fees go to the family)
Format: Standard Constructed
We'll be playing swiss rounds determined by the number of players followed by a cut to Top 8 based on the final standings after swiss. Top 8 will be best 2 out of 3 with the higher seed deciding whether to play or draw.
Here are the prizes as they currently stand!
ALL of the Top 8 will receive playmats of some kind.
1st - Sealed Booster Box of Modern Masters
2nd - Sealed From the Vault: Realms
3rd & 4th - Alliances Force of Will OR Revised Taiga, determined randomly
5th through 8th Revised Plateau OR True Name Nemesis OR Sealed Naya Commander Deck OR Sealed Jund Commander Deck, determined randomly
In addition, we'll be giving away a sealed Mind Seize (Grixis) Commander Deck at the end of the Swiss Rounds to someone who participated in one of the tournaments.
"Tournaments, why is that plural?" you might say to me, well I'm glad you asked!
Once we get the main event going I'm going to host 8-man Powered Proxy Cube drafts for a $5 entry fee per person. These drafts won't be sanctioned and they won't be for any big prizes...but they WILL be tons of fun! The cube can only handle 1 group of drafters at a time but as soon as one group is done and I can get the thing shuffled again we'll run it back. I'm up for running these Cube Drafts for as long as people want to buy in so bring your drafting pants friends!
Spread the word, bring your friends, bring your pets (don't bring your pets) and come celebrate the life of Jason Lejeune.
Thanks for reading, hugs.
These introduction paragraphs always feel so awkward to me, having to open up and say something about something, it feels so forced and unnatural.
I got to the shop about an hour before the tournament was supposed to start and played the manliest of card games with Achille. Yes, that's right, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I brought to bear the full might of Twilight Sparkle while Achille employed the forces of Rainbow Dash. I'm still not sure how much I like the game itself but it does remind me in several ways of the old Star Wars CCG, so much so that I keep saying "Force Drain" and "Draw Destiny" instead of "Confront a Problem" and "Flip a Card" which is confusing to everyone.
After successfully defending Equestria from the forces of, um, Achille, I got to hang out do some trading while the tournament got cranked up. We had 18 people which is a pretty solid number for a Wednesday and included at least one new face to Standard.
I ended up playing the Red White Devotion deck that I've been excited by lately, it's been performing well and nothing else in the format is really appealing enough to get me to switch. I still feel good enough about every known matchup and I don't think any deck in the format has a more powerful "Plan A" than Fanatic Your Face (tm).
Round 1 - Mike E. with Naya Explosivo
Mike is a super laid back fella who's basically always smiling. He's been playing this Naya deck for a little while now and it's extremely scary. Between Advent of the Wurm, Ghor-Clan Rampager and Boros Charm your life total is basically never safe.
Game 1 - I curved out into a quick Dragon backed by a couple of removal spells and Mike could never get a foothold on the game.
Game 2 - Mike played a turn 3 Advent on my end-step then played Unflinching Courage and Boros Charm on it giving me 1 turn to draw a Chained to the Rocks, I did not.
Game 3 - I kept a removal-heavy hand with a Dragon while Mike had a land-light, Caryatid-heavy draw. I was able to use an overloaded Mortars to keep his mana down while clocking him with my Stormbreath. Eventually Mike flashed in a second Wurm to block an attacker and a second overloaded Mortars cleared his field and locked up the game.
After the match, Mike showed me a Planar Cleansing that he'd had in hand for a while. All of my Mortars wiping out Caryatids had prevented him from blowing me out big time!
Round 2 - Jack W. with UW Control
I was sitting with Jack, watching him play a Dragonball game on the DS, when the pairings were called. Jack and I have been trading matches back and forth over the last few months and I'm just starting to get caught up in wins!
Game 1 - I had a solid start of Zealot > Reckoner > Chandra but Jack had answers for then all. I'm pretty sure I played out a Fanatic too soon to put Jack to 5 or 6 life when I should have held it until it was lethal. There were several turns where I could've drawn a Dragon to win but I drew lands and removal. Eventually Jack ultimated Jace and I scooped 'em up.
Game 2 - Jack didn't draw particularly well this game and I was able to finish him off with a Boros Charm after getting some damage in with creatures.
Game 3 - My draw of 2 Wear//Tear lined up well with Jack's draw of 2 Detention Sphere, I gained so much tempo freeing my Chandra and making him deal with it multiple times that it didn't even matter than the fiery planeswalker bricked multiple times. Burn finished the game and the match.
Round 3 - Nick M. THE MIRROR
Nick is the reason I picked this deck up in the first place and we've talked a lot about it over the last month. I told him I fully expected to lose, especially since I never discussed sideboarding in the mirror....
Game 1 - Nick had multiple removal spells that kept his life total high and my board clear. He played a Dragon on turn 5 and then another on turn 6 giving me 1 turn to draw a Mortars to clear his board. I didn't draw it and Nick showed me the other 2 Stormbreaths he had waiting in the wings.
Game 2 - Nick mulliganed to 4 while I kept a very good 7. I felt this game start to slip away as Nick played removal spell after removal spell while I drew land after land. Luckily for me, Nick drew multiple Nykthoseses and couldn't find a second red source to get on the board.
Game 3 - We both kept 7 this time and spent most of the game trading resources. I was able to land a Chandra and protect it for a few turns but all it really did was dig me through a pocket of lands I didn't need. Eventually the top of my deck treated me a bit better than Nick's did and I drew both an attacker and a removal spell for Nick's blocker in the right order.
Nick and I compared sideboard plans and his was quite different from mine. I sideboarded very minimally, taking out 2 Hammers and a Nykthos for 1 Wear//Tear, 1 Chained and 1 Mortars while Nick brought in a lot more removal.
Round 4 - Achille F. with Green Red Devotion
Achille and I were the last undefeated players and chose to Intentionally Draw and split the prizes. At the suggestion of friend of the blog John A. I had planned to play a set of games anyways so as to have more content but Achille and I were pretty tired and decided not to this time.
So another solid outing with the Red Devotion and I still don't see any reason to play something else. Perhaps the entire rest of the shop will adopt the deck, that may be a good enough reason to abandon ship.
Coming up on Saturday, January 18th is our Benefit Tournament for the family of Jason Lejeune. We have a staggering amount of prizes to hand out and I'm really hoping everyone in the state of Louisiana will turn up to play cards and remember a great friend.
Here's the details as they stand now:
Date: January 18th
Time: Reg @ 10 AM, Start @ 11AM.
Entry: $15 (all entry fees go to the family)
Format: Standard Constructed
We'll be playing swiss rounds determined by the number of players followed by a cut to Top 8 based on the final standings after swiss. Top 8 will be best 2 out of 3 with the higher seed deciding whether to play or draw.
Here are the prizes as they currently stand!
ALL of the Top 8 will receive playmats of some kind.
1st - Sealed Booster Box of Modern Masters
2nd - Sealed From the Vault: Realms
3rd & 4th - Alliances Force of Will OR Revised Taiga, determined randomly
5th through 8th Revised Plateau OR True Name Nemesis OR Sealed Naya Commander Deck OR Sealed Jund Commander Deck, determined randomly
In addition, we'll be giving away a sealed Mind Seize (Grixis) Commander Deck at the end of the Swiss Rounds to someone who participated in one of the tournaments.
"Tournaments, why is that plural?" you might say to me, well I'm glad you asked!
Once we get the main event going I'm going to host 8-man Powered Proxy Cube drafts for a $5 entry fee per person. These drafts won't be sanctioned and they won't be for any big prizes...but they WILL be tons of fun! The cube can only handle 1 group of drafters at a time but as soon as one group is done and I can get the thing shuffled again we'll run it back. I'm up for running these Cube Drafts for as long as people want to buy in so bring your drafting pants friends!
Spread the word, bring your friends, bring your pets (don't bring your pets) and come celebrate the life of Jason Lejeune.
Thanks for reading, hugs.
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Catching Up and Making Promises I'll Break Next Week
Happy New Year my friends!
It's again been too long since my last post but this time I get to fall back on the excuse of the holidays. That doesn't mean it's a GOOD excuse since I've largely slept and watched magic videos on the intertube, but if I were inclined to give an excuse that one would be reasonable.
So at this point I have 2 Standard Tournaments and 3 Draft Tournaments to talk about.
They're kind of far away from me at this point so I apologize if anything's wrong or doesn't make sense, I only have myself to blame.
The oldest tournament was a Wednesday night magic, standard format, at my usual stomping grounds Magic Comics and Hobbies. This would've been...something like 12/18.
I played a slightly modified UW Control with some number of Last Breaths in the main deck and a couple of Celestial Flares in the board.
I don't remember the first 2 rounds of the tournament except that I won them.
Round 3 was an extremely overwhelming loss to Rw Devotion and I remember quite a bit of that one. I was paired with Nick M. who has been on quite a tear with the Rw deck locally and he ran me over in game 1 with a triple Fanatic of Mogis draw. In game 2 I felt somewhat stable until Nick dumped his entire hand of Burning Tree x2, Reckoner, second Nykthos, Fanatic x 2 dealing lethal damage in his first main phase. I'm probably getting the numbers wrong in there somewhere but now is not the time for maths.
I was actually stunned by the power the Rw deck showed there. Now there's no doubt Nick's draws were absurdly good but mine were not terrible at all and just don't know how I could have played different in either game. I'll talk a little more about the Rw deck in a bit.
Round 4 was against The King and his RW Burn deck, a literal pile of 2 and 4 damage chunks. I really enjoyed this match because I had to play around his Skullcracks and Boros Charms and eventually Spark Troopers of all things. It felt like everything I did mattered and that's my favorite kind of magic. Fiendslayer Paladin did a lot of work out of the sideboard and I squeaked out the win.
The other Standard event was at a newish place called Wyatt's Comics and Cards in Hammond. They run a Saturday Night Magic that pulls in pretty big crowds. Some of the usual suspects from Slidell have been going for a while now but this was one of my few Sundays off of work so it was my virgin experience.
The store is your typical small comic and game store with products stacked and stuffed wherever they'd fit and tables everywhere. There was just enough space that you didn't feel cramped sitting down but just for good measure I tried my best to aim for the outer rim when choosing a seat. Wyatt's also had all kinds of sweet action figures displayed for sale around the store, it's a testament to the somewhat high prices that I didn't leave with anything.
After being walloped by Nick's Rw deck I decided it was time to give it a shot myself and that's what I ended up playing at Wyatt's. I was actually floored by how powerful the deck felt, no matter what the opponent was doing my plan always felt better.
I got to play 5 rounds against real decks ranging from Red Black Aggro to Esper to Naya to Blue Devotion and I was always in every single game. I went 5-0 fairly easily despite barely knowing what I was doing sideboarding, several games I watched as my opponents jumped through all these hoops to set up blockers or build an overwhelming force of attackers all the while knowing that they were dead to the Fanatic in my hand.
Now on to the draft tournaments.
I've had a pretty low opinion of Theros limited stemming entirely from the Pre-Release. It seemed like every single match ended with a creature stacked with enchantments crashing in for the win. Because I very much hated the sealed I stayed far away from the draft until Gamer's Paradise Championship tournament got close and I realized I'd need to know what I was doing should I get the chance to draft in that event.
I drafted 3 different times and was pleasantly surprised by how much fun Theros was to draft. Rather than try and remember 9 games that happened at least a week and a half ago I'll give you my overall thoughts of the format.
- Blue is best. 2 common removal spells, a lot of flyers and probably the best uncommon in the set (Sea God's Revenge) have me aiming to be blue every time.
- Green is second best. If you can get Voyaging Satyrs you can start crapping out huge creatures very quickly. Even if you miss the Satyrs there are so many solid, big green guys that just casting them turn after turn can win for you.
- White is great BUT can go south quickly. I've tended to avoid white because you have to get the good heroic dudes (Wingsteed Rider, Phalanx Leader) AND good enablers and if you miss either one your deck is bad. White also tends to be popular. I tend to avoid it.
Now I'm not a master of the format by any extension and I'm biased by my own play style too. I just wanted to give you a peak into what my mind's up to during a Theros Draft.
I appreciate you reading my ramblings! I hope to be back again soon with some more content, things are getting somewhat back to normal schedule-wise and so I'm hoping to get settled into a routine of blogging. If there's something you'd like to see me write about let me know. I'm also hoping to include some pictures eventually....
It's again been too long since my last post but this time I get to fall back on the excuse of the holidays. That doesn't mean it's a GOOD excuse since I've largely slept and watched magic videos on the intertube, but if I were inclined to give an excuse that one would be reasonable.
So at this point I have 2 Standard Tournaments and 3 Draft Tournaments to talk about.
They're kind of far away from me at this point so I apologize if anything's wrong or doesn't make sense, I only have myself to blame.
The oldest tournament was a Wednesday night magic, standard format, at my usual stomping grounds Magic Comics and Hobbies. This would've been...something like 12/18.
I played a slightly modified UW Control with some number of Last Breaths in the main deck and a couple of Celestial Flares in the board.
I don't remember the first 2 rounds of the tournament except that I won them.
Round 3 was an extremely overwhelming loss to Rw Devotion and I remember quite a bit of that one. I was paired with Nick M. who has been on quite a tear with the Rw deck locally and he ran me over in game 1 with a triple Fanatic of Mogis draw. In game 2 I felt somewhat stable until Nick dumped his entire hand of Burning Tree x2, Reckoner, second Nykthos, Fanatic x 2 dealing lethal damage in his first main phase. I'm probably getting the numbers wrong in there somewhere but now is not the time for maths.
I was actually stunned by the power the Rw deck showed there. Now there's no doubt Nick's draws were absurdly good but mine were not terrible at all and just don't know how I could have played different in either game. I'll talk a little more about the Rw deck in a bit.
Round 4 was against The King and his RW Burn deck, a literal pile of 2 and 4 damage chunks. I really enjoyed this match because I had to play around his Skullcracks and Boros Charms and eventually Spark Troopers of all things. It felt like everything I did mattered and that's my favorite kind of magic. Fiendslayer Paladin did a lot of work out of the sideboard and I squeaked out the win.
The other Standard event was at a newish place called Wyatt's Comics and Cards in Hammond. They run a Saturday Night Magic that pulls in pretty big crowds. Some of the usual suspects from Slidell have been going for a while now but this was one of my few Sundays off of work so it was my virgin experience.
The store is your typical small comic and game store with products stacked and stuffed wherever they'd fit and tables everywhere. There was just enough space that you didn't feel cramped sitting down but just for good measure I tried my best to aim for the outer rim when choosing a seat. Wyatt's also had all kinds of sweet action figures displayed for sale around the store, it's a testament to the somewhat high prices that I didn't leave with anything.
After being walloped by Nick's Rw deck I decided it was time to give it a shot myself and that's what I ended up playing at Wyatt's. I was actually floored by how powerful the deck felt, no matter what the opponent was doing my plan always felt better.
I got to play 5 rounds against real decks ranging from Red Black Aggro to Esper to Naya to Blue Devotion and I was always in every single game. I went 5-0 fairly easily despite barely knowing what I was doing sideboarding, several games I watched as my opponents jumped through all these hoops to set up blockers or build an overwhelming force of attackers all the while knowing that they were dead to the Fanatic in my hand.
Now on to the draft tournaments.
I've had a pretty low opinion of Theros limited stemming entirely from the Pre-Release. It seemed like every single match ended with a creature stacked with enchantments crashing in for the win. Because I very much hated the sealed I stayed far away from the draft until Gamer's Paradise Championship tournament got close and I realized I'd need to know what I was doing should I get the chance to draft in that event.
I drafted 3 different times and was pleasantly surprised by how much fun Theros was to draft. Rather than try and remember 9 games that happened at least a week and a half ago I'll give you my overall thoughts of the format.
- Blue is best. 2 common removal spells, a lot of flyers and probably the best uncommon in the set (Sea God's Revenge) have me aiming to be blue every time.
- Green is second best. If you can get Voyaging Satyrs you can start crapping out huge creatures very quickly. Even if you miss the Satyrs there are so many solid, big green guys that just casting them turn after turn can win for you.
- White is great BUT can go south quickly. I've tended to avoid white because you have to get the good heroic dudes (Wingsteed Rider, Phalanx Leader) AND good enablers and if you miss either one your deck is bad. White also tends to be popular. I tend to avoid it.
Now I'm not a master of the format by any extension and I'm biased by my own play style too. I just wanted to give you a peak into what my mind's up to during a Theros Draft.
I appreciate you reading my ramblings! I hope to be back again soon with some more content, things are getting somewhat back to normal schedule-wise and so I'm hoping to get settled into a routine of blogging. If there's something you'd like to see me write about let me know. I'm also hoping to include some pictures eventually....
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