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

Returning to Ravnica!

So here we are, a few days away from the pre-release events we all know and love.  I've already preregistered to compete in all six events at Legends.  I'm playing the first two events as Selensya, then one as Izzet, then two more as Azorius, then the last one as Golgari.  I'm looking forward to seeing what all comes in the guild packs.  I'm also looking forward to playing with as many of the new cards as possible.  The cards I'm most looking forward to playing with are pretty much the ones you'd expect.  I want to play with the new planeswalkers, though Vraska looks a lot more fun that the new version of Jace.  I like the new guild charms and the new guild keys.  I'm curious to see what kinds of fun ways we can break those kinds of cards.  I think there's a few new versions of Delver decks I want to explore, as well as new token decks.  My personal favorite in the format right now is the Token deck.

So, as I'm sure the few people that read this blog are aware, I'm a huge fan of token strategies in almost any format.  They're just fun to me.  They usually offer great card advantage when pitted against point removal, and they're less of a blow out against sweepers.  Also, they have the most efficient anthem effect in the game at the moment in the form of Intangible Virtue.  There are a few different ways to go with the over all strategy at the moment and numerous color combinations, but I think my favorite right now is Junk.  Selensya is offering some awesome token generators as well as some great support spells, so I love G/W tokens, but then you're missing out on the opportunities offered by splashing for another color.  Of the token support that I think has the most to offer at the moment (and that will improve with Gatecrash in another three months) is Black.  By adding black we get access to some point removal, some Golgothi cards to go with our Selensya base, and even more importantly, the mana to flashback Lingering Souls and to play Sorin, Lord of Innistrad.  So here's the decklist I come up with as a rough draft.

Creatures (8)
4x  Arbor Elf
2x  Doomed Travelor
2x  Trostani, Selensya's Voice

Planeswalkers (6)
2x  Vraska the Unseen
2x  Garruk the Relentless
2x  Sorin, Lord of Innistrad

Spells (22)
4x  Intangible Virtue
4x  Lingering Souls
3x  Gather the Townsfolk
3x  Call of the Conclave
4x  Selesnya Charm
3x  Oblivion Ring
2x  Abrupt Decay

Lands (24)
4x  Evolving Wilds
4x  Temple Gardens
4x  Overgrown Tomb
4x  Isolated Chapel
2x  Forest
2x  Plains
1x  Swamp
1x Vault of the Archangel
2x  Gavony Township

This is a rough draft and I still haven't decided if I want to up the land to 25 to help support the three colors, or if I want to change the count of Abrupt Decay and Oblivion Rings.  The sideboard will vary quite a bit, but I think it's safe to say the remainder of the playset of O-rings and Abrupt Decays will be in there, as well as the new version of Naturalize.  I feel like there's also an American Tokens deck that's possible, but not sure how it is positioned.  I think it'd be more of a straight forward aggro deck and less mid-range, but the card pool is very interesting.  Tokens does have some problems in the current meta, but I don't think there are so many weaknesses as to make it improbable for this to be a competitive deck.  On the plus side, most of those weaknesses are in red, which will partially limit the number of decks that support them.  However with the number of multi-colored decks that are going to be running rampant in the coming months, I really doubt that there will be a shortage of these cards in the format.  Then again, I feel that way about the hate cards for any deck type.  Thanks to the abundant manafixing in the set, there's going to be no shortage of hate from all colors spread around in splashes into other decks.

In closing, as I've said, I think Token decks are going to have a wide range of options to choose from.  I'll fully expect to try Junk tokens first myself, but  American Tokens has a lot to offer as well.  I will probably at some point attempt to build both of these decks and playtest them thoroughly.  I'll post again later this week with my idea of the American Tokens deck.

SD13

Return to Ravnica Previews

I'm thrilled to say that the spoiler season for Return to Ravnica is in full swing.  There are already a few very nice cards that have seen the light of day.  My personal favorite that's shown up so far are the "shock" lands from the original Ravnica block.  I love the way these lands work.  The only downside to seeing them reprinted is that they will lower the value of my originals slightly...  On the other hand, I can't wait to play them in Standard.

Anyway, moving on to less fanboy-ish things...  The Warhammer community is all lit up with rumors about new codexes and the latest 40K release from Games Workshop is helping to fan the flames.  The new starter set for 6th edition is a combination of Chaos Marines and Dark Angels.  There really aren't any completely new things to be looked at on the Dark Angels side, but the addition of cultists and of a new dreadnaught type model for Chaos is causing a stir.  It makes sense to assume that these are going to be the first two codexes released for 6th edition.

In other news, the MidwestWarfare gaming group is set to host it's next tournament on the 15th and 16th this month at Legends in Vincennes.  I'm hoping we have a good turn out, but it seems unlikely given the launch of a new rules set.  But one can hope anyway.  I'm still tinkering with my army lists and trying to nail down exactly what I want to play.  I'm not sure if I'll even actually be playing in this event.  I guess we'll just have to see.

SD13

Reflections on 6ed 40K.

After playing my first full sized game with allies and the whole shootin' match, I like the new rules even more.  I played 2K with Mathew down at Legends yesterday.  He was on Chaos Marines and I played Blood Angels with Grey Knight allies.  It was a fun game, even if there were a lot of distractions and some confusion caused by the new rules.  It took us about 4 hours to finish 5 turns, then I had to leave.  I won, but it was kind of a sketchy victory.  Due to the time limit we had, the game ended before he had a chance to get another objective.  If the game would have gone full term, I think he'd have won, but there's no way to say for sure.

Other than the games of 40K going on this month, it's been pretty quiet on the gaming front.  I haven't had much time to devote to Magic, which is sad considering the pace at which the metagame evolves these days.  I'm an easy month and a half behind the ball on that one.  If the last article I read this week on TCGplayer was any indication, it smells like Delver is making a come back.  It made a huge portion of the top 8 placings last weekend at the larger open events.  I'm not sure if I want to play much before rotation.  Even if that means come rotation time, I'll have to completely rebuild a new deck, since the ones I've been tinkering with lately all rely very heavily on cards that are going to rotate in October.

Things to consider.

SD13

40K Like its My Job.

So lately I've been taking a bit of a break from Magic.  I'm not a fan of the current format and I've been pressing too hard recently and I'm afraid of burnout.  So, I'm taking a break and refocusing on Warhammer for a bit.  As such, I'm trying to get our group, Midwest Warfare, a bit more organized.

A problem occurred with the new rules set.  No-one (or at least a small minority) has managed to play games with the new rules.  A few of our players reportedly haven't even laid eyes on the new rules.  SO.... That pretty much rules out a large tournament style event this month.  So we've dropped back 10 yards and we're taking a big punt.  Tournament play will be next month, and leading up to it this month will be a few weekends of practice games and goofing off.

Starting today for a few of us, and going into next weekend for more of us.  Then at the end of the month, instead of the tournament, a large gathering at our usual location at Legends in Vincennes.  Then I'll (probably) be helping judge a tournament here in TH.  With our tournament postponed until the weekend of the 15th next month.

At least that's the current plan.  Here's to hoping it works out.

SD13

New Sets, New Rules

So here's the deal.  Since my last post, there have been all kinds of changes in my gaming world.  Warhammer 40,000 was given a new rule set by the gaming lords at Games Workshop and Wizards of the Coast graced us with yet another core set in their endless pursuit of profit.  The only really good thing I have to say about the release schedule from Wizards is that it keeps the game fresh.

But, to move along let's focus on the Magic side of things first.  M13 has changed up the format a little bit.  Right now we're in the midst of the worst (depending on how you're looking at it) or best part of Standard progression.  We have two core sets and two whole blocks to pull from, and both of them are very powerful blocks in their own ways.  Personally, I can't wait for October to come around and Return to Ravnica to kick Mirrodin and all the terrible cards it offers as well as the over bearing duplicity of M12 out of the format so we can all breath a sigh of relief.

However, in the meantime, competitive players have three months of this to get through.  Its just a mater of knuckling under and getting work done.  I've been building and tinkering with a lot of new decks and cards.  Last night I went to a "win-a-box" event at one of the local shops.  I played a Bant Superfriends deck that was a lot of fun, but needs some tuning.  I ended up placing 4th out of around 13 players and won 4 packs.  Naya Pod made up both of my actual match losses.  I also had a rough time against a BR Vampire aggro deck with tons of burn in it.  My final record after the swiss rounds was 2-1-1.  I drew against the BR Vampires and lost to Naya Pod.  Then for some reason we cut to the top 4 and lost again to the same Naya Pod list.  My biggest problems with the deck were that I flooded out hard in four or five games in the event.  Drawing 14-16 lands out of 25 seems very unlikely and harsh.  I'm probably going to cut a few for some more ramp spells.  I need to play test some more, but I think this is the deck I want to play.

So, moving on to 40K...  The new rules set is pretty good after a little play testing and a lot of reading.  GW may have gotten things right finally.  The game plays a little more complicated, but it is a lot of fun.  There are some great rules changes that have made the game a lot more interesting and a lot more balanced.  My favorite two things in the new rules set are the Allies system and the new wound allocation rules.  They're going to make the game a lot more bearable and add a lot of diversity to the games we play.

As of now though, I'm out to get some work done.

SD13