The First SCG Open...

So, Saturday didn't go quite the way I'd have liked.  I ended up placing way back in 110th out of 430+ players.  This may sound good, but in reality, I was only 5-5 for the day, which means I was very much middle of the pack at best.  I attribute my poor finish to some play mistakes, a bad mana count in my deck, and in at least one case, a bad go with variance.  So anyway, I'll get down to the nuts and bolts and post up my round by round history after a quick look at my final sideboard.

I hadn't really hammered out my sideboard choices until right before the event, mostly because I wasn't sure what I wanted to be afraid of and with so little play testing, I wasn't sure what my worst matchups were.  With that in mind, I just tried to be prepared for what I expected some of the more popular decks to be.

Sideboard
3x Centaur Healer (to help stem the flow of blood against aggro)
2x Thragtusk (to help prevent being blown out by board sweepers in control)
2x Tormod's Crypt (to help out against graveyard strategies)
1x Grafdigger's Cage (Same as Crypt)
3x Sever the Bloodline (To help clean up Angel tokens in control)
2x Sundering Growth (I figured populate with enchantment removal might be relevant)
2x Pithing Needle (To help against control with planeswalkers)

So with the board in mind, and the deck list posted in the previous blog, you can now see the full 75 I took to the event.  With no further ado, let's move on to the meat of today's article.

While I intended to run through my match-by-match opponent and results, it seems I've misplaced my notes on the subject, so I'll just touch on the highlights.  I started out round 1 with a win, which thinking back on it seemed easy. 

I moved to round 2 against a BG Zombies deck and an opponent that was ultimately condescending, but blew me out.  This is one of the first rounds that I realized my mana count was off.  I kept my game 2 hand without a white source and got blown out before I played a single card.  I remember making a note not to keep bad hands, but apparently I didn't head my own advice.  More on that later.

Round 3 and 4 were more wins.  I vaguely remember an American control list and UW Humans, both of which went down pretty quickly, leaving me at 3-1 going into round 5.  So far I was pretty pleased with myself and I was one of a handful of my friends that was x-1 up to this point.  We were all on a high, thinking we had a legit shot at making top 8 or at least placing into the money.

I sat down for round 5 and got my spirits crushed (not just the ones on the table).  I was matched against a Bant Control list for the first time in the day, though they were seemingly everywhere according to my play group.  Game one was quick and easy with me living the dream of turn 1 mana dork, turn 2 Lingering Souls, Turn 3 Intangible Virtue for the quick win.  Game 2 started well, but I ended up the match with something like 10 lands in play, and never having seen another real card past turn 3 or 4.  Game 3 went much the same way, except it took him longer to close it out and I finished with more along the lines of 13 land in play...  Not the way you want to see a match like this go.

At some point along this time, I recall making a few play errors.  At some point, I missed a creature that was set aside when I activated Gavony Township and netted a game warning.  I did this again later in the event.  Also, I managed to miss planeswalker activations at two different points in the event, one with Vraska and one with Garruk.  The extra wolf would have helped, but fortunately, I had the removal spell to save Vraska when the opponent attacked her.

Anyway, in round 6 I lost again, I can't remember to what, I just remember being very disheartened at that point because I was keenly aware that one more loss would put me out of the money entirely.  So round 7 I played against a nice opponent who was on Selesnya aggro and I managed to blow her out.  I even managed a game one win of Vraska's tokens by way of Intangible Virtue coupled with a Garruk (flipped) ultimate to net them some trample.  She could block them all, but couldn't keep the one point of damage from spilling over to win the game.  Game two was a much more conventional and easy win  Round 8 was another win, putting me at a running total of 5-3 for the day, and giving me a chance to sweep the rest of the day for cash.  I was a little more optimistic after rounds 6 and 7, seeing more decks that I had good matches agaisnt.

Round 9 was the heartbreak.  I played against a fella I know from one of the stores I frequent and was disappointed to lose to him.  He was on Jund Midrange and played a very tight game against me.  He seemed upset that he was in a position to beat someone he knew out of the money range, but I reasured him that I wasn't going to hold back and that he shouldn't either.  I cruised to a game one win, then a second game loss.  Game 3 started with a nearly perfect opening hand for me and was going very well until he cast Rakdos Return to make me discard my hand.  I was kinda dejected because I had good insurance in that hand.  I ended up the victim of a Mizzium Mortars that cost me the game and the match.  I shook his hand and congradulated him on his win, and wished him luck in the last round since he had really good odds of placing high enough to win some money.

Finally, last round I lost some very grindy games against 4c Reanimator.  The match was fine and I think I could have done better.  I got stuck on 3 mana in game 2 and resulted in going to game 3.  Game 3 was another long haul.  I never saw any of my gy hate and never drew into any of my answers that would have allowed me to win the game.  There were around 5 turns in a row where any one of 4 or 5 cards would have resulted in a game win and a positive record for the day, but I ended up flooded out again for the loss.

So, after the end of the event, my thoughts were on the future and on tweaks to make the deck play more consistently for the next time I have a chance to play in some serious standard competition.  These are the changes I would make:

Maindeck:
-1 Vraska
-2 Trostoni
-2 Vault of the Archangel
-2 Call of the Conclave
+2 Collective Blessing
+1 Gather the Townsfolk
+1 Gavony Township
+1 Sunpetal Grove
+2 Selesnya Keyrune

Sideboard:
-2 Sundering Growth
-2 Tormod's Crypt
-1 Grafdigger's Cage
-2 Pithing Needle
-2 Thragtusk
+1 Centaur Healer
+4 Deathrite Shaman
+2 Trostoni, Voice of Selesnya
+2 Vraska the Unseen

My over all concern is that I wasn't fast enough or aggressive enough.  By dropping out the slower cards in the deck that weren't adding to the actual plan, I figured I could squeeze in some more tokens, and more anthem effects.  As for specific card choices, I'll start with Vault since it will likely be the selection that most people shake their heads at.  Through the even though, I never wanted Vault though.  Any time I hit Vault, I found myself wishing it was a Gavony or a land that produced the more important colors in the deck.  As for dropping Vraska and Trostani, they seemed to only help the matches I was already solid against.  This deck has good game against control and against midrange, and I think moving these to the board is the best choice.  Game 1 Vraska was weak against aggro and Trostani was weak to control.  So I decided to slide a few more cards into the deck that were more often active threats.  I dropped Call of the Conclave in favor of another Gather and the Keyrunes because I felt that more bodies was better with the addition of more anthem effects and the Keyrunes would help accelerate me to a more stable manabase in addition to providing a threat that was resilient to board sweeps.

As for the Sideboard, I dropped all of the reactive cards in favor of more pro-active strategies.  Why just remove the cards in Re-animator's graveyard when I could instead benifit from removing the specific problem cards with the Shaman?  Pithing Needle seemed redundant to the playset of O-Rings maindeck, and by dropping in Vraska in a pair, I had much better odds of being able to destroy opposing planeswalkers and giving myself another win con against control.  Trostani is good in the matchups where I need lifegain, but that's so very rare that I figured instead of drawing a game out longer with lifegain that was encouraging me to overextend, I would be better served by her in the sideboard, making room for the Collective Blessings maindeck.

Also, on the trip home, I started hashing out an American Miracles deck with the guys I was traveling with and it looks pretty solid.  I'll post it up next time I get a chance, hopefully after a little playtesting of both decks. 

Until next time, keep gaming and rock on.
SD13

Return to Competition

So Saturday is the first competitive level event I'm going to have played in in months.  I'm pretty set on my Junk Tokens.  I've done some playtesting up at the local shop and here at the house and I think I've settled on a good deck design.  I have good game against control, though it's not perfect.  I have a very good match up against midrange decks in the form of board flood and inevitability.  And I feel like I have very good game against the fast aggro decks in the format.  I really do feel like the crazy control builds are my worst matchup and I'm still considering my board options against it.  Most are running an inane number of board sweepers, usually between 5 and 8, and that's hard to recover from.  Especially Terminus, being as indestructible, regeneration, nor protection from x do anything to stop it.

My current decklist:
Creatures
Avacen Pilgrim x2
Arbor Elf x4
Trostani, Voice of Selesnya x2

Planeswalkers
Garruk, Relentless x3
Vraska the Unseen x1
Sorin, Lord of Innistrad x2

Spells
Lingering Souls x4
Selesnya Charm x4
Gather the Townsfolk x3
Call of the Conclave x2
Intangible Virtue x4
Golgari Charm x2
Oblivion Ring x4

Land
Isolated Chapel x4
Temple Garden x4
Overgrown Tomb x4
Forest x2
Plains x2
Swamp x1
Evolving Wilds x2
Vault of the Archangel x2
Gavony Township x2

My current problem with my deck is that it doesn't offer me what I consider enough pump spells.  I dropped two Phantom Generals in favor of 2 more mana dorks, which I think will make the deck play out a little more aggressively, but gives me less long game.  But the short game is where I think I was lacking.  Lowering the curve and giving me more chances to drop Lingering Souls on turn two feels very important.  I'm also unsure of my split of planeswalkers.  Vraska seems ok, but I don't know if I want a second one of her.  I've been contemplating dropping her for another copy of Sorin to add to my chances of drawing an anthem effect.  I'm also thinking about dropping her for a copy of Angel of Serinity that I can fetch up with Garruk's (flipped) -1 ability.  It would give me a big out to some of the other deck's end game plans and offer me a chance to slip in the fatal hits needed to end a game.  Just some ideas. 

As for my board, right now it's built to shore up the control match up and give me some outs against Unburial Rites decks. This is in the form of 2 Tormod's Crypt and 1 Rest in peace.  It also gives me more game against control decks in the form of 2 Pithing Needles and 3 Sever the Bloodlines.  I feel that a lot of control decks are riding Entreat the Angels to the win and a timely Sever will snatch the game out from under them.  I've got 3 Centaur Healers in there for match ups that are bad races.  Azorius Aggro and Rakdos/BR Zombies being my biggest worries in that respect.  The last 4 slots are currently utility things such as Sundering Growth and Rootbound Defense (2 each).  I haven't decided if these are the best things in the slot or if I'm better off putting in a pair of each of the knights.  Pro white and pro black are both very relevant right now and I may want to drop them both in in different match ups over the utilities.  Alternatively, I can add in some bigger nasty critters to act as my finishers in the place of Vraska.  I have no idea at the moment, these last 4 spots are the only ones I'm not confident in right now.

I'll post again when it's all over and update the decklist one last time, as well as posting a tournament report.

SD13