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....
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