Here we are, thanks for spending a fraction of your Friday (or whatever day you decide to read this) with me. I'm moving away from the Follow Friday format for today, because I realize, i often #FF the same people weekly, as those are the people I "chat" with as i scroll through my feed from the past week. But in reality, #FF's should be people I appreciate listening to, more than talking to/with. I'll come back to #FF's next week, I'm thinking of making it a 2-4 person limit, so I don't get overwhelmed trying to include everyone who included me in a mention that week, and I can also say a little more about why they deserve a follow. (As always, if you feel you're not getting love, make sure i'm following you!)
Last weekend, a friend of mine, who is a casual player, wanted me to help him out with preparation for the Overextended game day at our LGS Jul 3rd. He's primarily an EDH guy, who's just beginning to dabble in building his cube, and I planned to show him how a spike prepares for a tournament. I show up at his house, and he's got nicely printed proxies for his deck sleeved up, and he's ready to test out his Astral Slide brew. I brought 12 printed decklists, a sharpie, and about 200 basic lands. I said, well, what's your worst matchup? I was anxious to take the U/W/B stoneforge control list for a spin, and figured it would be sharp enough to knock any johnny dreams out of his eyes, and we could get down to brass tacks to fix his homebrew. He kind of scoffed and said something like, "Eh, that match up should be easy." I chuckled, and said, well if I'm going to play in this tournament, I'll likely play this, so do you mind if we run a few quick ones with this. He was busy fiddling with his deck, he didn't even notice I was about 90% done proxying the deck, and he agreed. After 10 games, I finally won one, on the back of manascrew, none-the-less. Woah. He wasn't joking. He told me he hadn't even tested the deck against anything, but it sure as shit crushed any equipment based strategy. It made my value-bears seem like Eldrazi Spawn tokens. My only way to win was to try and jace him out, but eventually a storm of Qasali Pridemages and Eternal Witnesses would knock me down. Next I proxied up the 12-post U/G deck, and woah, my first run through was T1 Cloudpost, T2 Cloudpost, Signet. T3, Tree of Tales,into a Primeval Titan, to get a 3rd and 4th cloudpost T4 Eye, hard cast Emrakul. with a couple mana left for condescend if something unforseen happens. While, that's basically the nut-hand, I fell in love. It reminded me of casting Emrakul off a Brilliant Ultimatum not too long ago in Standard. This matchup was not as good for him, but i was able to point out some key flaws in his game play that i think will help him. After running this game for 10 tries, i started to proxy up a Zoo deck, and he said he'd had his fill. At first i was disappointed, he seemed really motivated to try out the decks, and i had driven a long way and taken the time to organize a gauntlet for him, so I was bummed he wasn't willing to really test the deck. Then I realized, He just wanted to play some magic with me. "Oh Yeah, we play this game cuz its fun, sometimes." We chit-chatted a bit longer, and after i looked at the 12-post deck more closely, and my friend mentioned 20 proxies were allowed, I decided to try and throw it together. Within a few days I'd traded for all the pieces I needed (allowing for the 20proxy space) and have tested with anyone willing at our LGS. THis format is so much fun, and while I had no intention of playing in the event (because the prize support is so poor with respect to the entry fee), now i just want to play in the event. During the week I also helped a friend brew up a Melira Combo deck, and man, i wouldn't be surprised if he takes down the whole event with it. If i had the cards to play it also, i probably would. He was testing it against people's legacy decks (because most people didn't have overextended built) and was crushing it. I did manage to win a test game where he had an arbitrarily large amount of life, though. I had 6 or 7 cloud posts in play after a long drawn out game, as well as an eye of ugin, and i basically had to continously tutor an emrakul, take an extra turn, attack, tutor my 2nd emrakul to take an extra turn and legend bomb, and keep repeating the process as my emrakuls would shuffle back in. I said, "I'll just keep doin this till you're dead, right?" he said, "well won't you still deck out before you kill me?" I pointed at my Acadamy Ruins in play, and my expedition map in my graveyard... "nope." Pretty cool. I love decks like this that are so powerful but can find interesting ways to win in unusual circumstances.
It turns out that I may not be able to play in the event, which is a bummer, but oh well. I may catch up with my closest friend from youth, for the 4th of July weekend. I keep reminding myself that i didn't even want to play in this tournament a couple weeks ago. It appears my casual-player friend really rubbed off on me that day.
Further, Sunday marks the Planeswalker tournament on MTGO. Thanks to the Community Cup team, i got a free Planeswalker pack, and entry to the Planeswalker tournament on Sunday at 9am. Just for participating I'll get a M11 booster, and if i manage to win a few games i'll get a few more. I checked out this format, and boy is it weird. I'm actually kinda curious as to why this is the format that was chosen. My speculation is its a non-monetary prize for everyone, but you have to participate in the event to get something of value out of it. That part makes sense. What doesn't make sense is this format. Even @modogodot didn't understand my explanation of what this format is. Essentially there are 4 planeswalker packs you can buy on MTGO, and they are Gold Bordered cards, like collectors edition. These cards can only be used in Planeswalker format online. Each pack has a hanful of precon configurations you can run, but it appears each one is geared towards one of the actual Planeswalkers. THe one I got thanks to the #mtgocc, is the Nissa Revane pack. I'm assuming everyoen got the same one. It is the original planeswalker pack. It has a decent Elf deck included, with pieces available to splash into any of the other colors. This format also has no Sideboard, but includes many cards that should really belong in the sideboard. This was hard for me. Could I really have Terror be my only removal spell? What if i play against a black deck. Am I really going to maindeck some Deathmarks? What about Natrualize? My pool has a Loxodon Warhammer in it, so I assume I'll be seeing that card a lot. What deck isn't going to include that card. I toyed around with the elf precon, tweaking and tweaking, and took it for a test spin in the New Players room (which is the only place i could find people playing this format). My first go around, I died to a T3 Emeria Angel, followed by a T4 Baneslayer Angel. My next match was a Kor equipment deck that involved a Kor Duelist wearing a Kitesail and followed by, you guessed it, a loxodon warhammer. That game didn't last long either. Because these games are without sideboard, most players are looking to play single game matches. I'm assuming thats what the format will be like this weekend also. I double checked my cardpool to make sure I didn't have a Baneslayer Angel that I had just overlooked, and this is when I realized there were other Planeswalker packs than the one I had. Now it makes sense, of course wizards needs some kind of way to encourage me to buy something for this event. I was starting to worry about those guys up there, but the fact that i almost considered buying another one, so that I could have Vampire Nighthawks, Baneslayers and more at my disposal was telling. It also was obvious to me that this is an awesome tactic for teaching new players the way this game works, and getting them used to buying more product. I overheard (overread?) some people in the New Players room asking ORC's how to buy more cards. To be so naive again.... *wanders off wistfully* I digress. I realized even though an additional planeswalker pack is only $5, I'm only playing for a few boosters here, and you can't use these cards in any other MTGO format, so I slapped myself in the face and wisened up. I re-evaluated my pool, realizing I needed to be prepared for more than just the cards I see here. I had thought everyoen was looking at the same pool as me, but that was not the case. I loaded up on removal, and my elf deck had less elves, and more black cards like Nekrataal *drool*. Eventually i scrolled down to the gold cards and saw there was copies of Sprouting Thrinax. Most cards didn't have more than a couple copies each, so this was a good find. I had also already come to accept that Rampant Growth was going to be a 4of, and there was also a Rampant Growth on a stick that gave a 1/1 body for an additional mana, as well as civic wayfinder. Those three became my only non-gold green cards, and I built a Jund deck, maximizing my playset of Blightnings by also runing two copies of The Rack. If i wake up early enough on Sunday, I'll be playing this:
Jund Rack - A planeswalker format (using only cards from the original Planeswalker Pack1)
4x Rampant Growth
4x Blightning
4x Rampant Grown on a stick guy
2x Civic Wayfinder
4x Mind Rot
1x Mind Shatter
1x Nath the token making elf
2x Broodmate Dragon
3x Terror
1x Final Revels
1x Destroy Target Non-Elf
3x Incinerate
1x Flameblast Dragon
2x THE RACK
1x Loxodon Warhammer
1x Nekrataal
1x Naturalize
and a bunch of random dudes, i'm having trouble remembering now, and the *.dek file doesn't show me the card names. It's a surprisingly decent Jund deck. I did find that i was not very good against pacificsm, and apparently thats the white removal spell of choice in this format. I rolled a bunch of people in the New Player room, and while that's nothing to write home about, i did steamroll the mirror match twice, with the Rack being the key player to break the blightning mirror. I basically used it to outrace an opponents Thrinax. There is also a Thieving magpie deck that apparently has 12 counterspells in it, which makes a bloodbraid-less Jund pretty embarrassing. I have to get a dragon down to win that match. Mind Spring and Tidings mainboard essentially negate my Racks. Did I mention these are 1 game matches without sideboard? so awkward. The deck is decent, but the format just isn't that much fun to play. It feels like a busted sealed pool, but you're battling against other busted sealed pools (or someone who bought all 4 sealed pools). At a minimum i'll try to at least log in to collect my single pack, and play if I'm feeling up to it.
Finally had some success with drafting in the past week. Had a sweet G/W infect deck, that i'll certainly try to draft again at my next NPH draft. Starting with a1st pick triumph of the horde 2nd pick Shriek raptor, and a 4th pick infect Bear, I commited to the archetype early. I normally wouldn't suggest doing this, but because its a fringe archetype, you're rewarded for choosing it and sticking with it. I ended up with 2 Shriek Raptors, 3 Lost leonin, 3 Tine Shrikes and 1 priest of norn. That's a solid amount of White infect guys. I didn't get many of the green ones, instead focused on pumpspells, and grabbed artifact dudes in pack 3. It turns out there was a green infect player on my right, he'd take a green infect guy, and i'd take the pumpspell right behind him. It was actually pretty awesome. It's also pretty sweet knowing you can get a couple Seize the Initiative in Pack3, as this card gains a ton of value in Infect strategies. I easily ran through my opponents with this deck, and you're able to table extremely awesome commons in packs 1 and 2 like Tine Shrike and Shreik Raptor.
The next draft I also opened a Triumph and immediately thought to build the same deck, but was passed an Act of Aggression and went into Red. I had a number of Razor swines in this deck, as well as a late voltcharge. I was able to get a ton of green guys to fill out my curve, and my deck was pretty aggressive. A late Trigon of Rage Pack 3 sealed the deal.
I also won a draft with a typical G/B infect deck. I passed a Red Sun Zenith for a Flesh Eater Imp, here, and many ridiculed me with things like, "You never pass fireball!" I tried to tell them that Flesh Eater Imp was an infect Fireball, and actually had synergy with my deck. I didn't like passing it, but i'd do it again. I really do think the top tier infect guys are more important than removal in an infect strategy. While you certainly can't forgo removal all together, you need to have threats to apply. That deck had 3 blightwidows in it too *drool*. There was a point where I had 2 Blight Widows, a Scourge Servant and a Flesh Eater Imp on table. I had just cast the imp and bashed with 1 servant and 1 Blightwidow, and my opponent was at 8 poison. My opponent tapps out for Cerebral eruption, and I'm at 12 life, and I have a mutagenic growth in my hand. What do? I mentioned this on twitter, and got some interesting responses. It turns out it wouldn't matter what I had done, but it's a really intersesting choice. My deck had 1 5-drop remaining in the library, as well as a spinebiter 6 drop. It was pretty thick at 3 and 4 drops, with a some 1-2 drop pump spells. I think What i did was wrong. I paid 2 life for Mutagenic growth to fall to 10, and pumped my imp, and let the Eruption resolve. Of course it hits the Spinebiter, I lose my board and fall to 4, and die to an attack of a myr token and a Furnace Scamp (+sac). I likely should have also sac'd my servant to the flesh eater, if i was going to pump it up to 6. That way I still have a blocker in the worst case scenario of the 6 drop coming, although i'd be forced to trade it with the furnace scamp. Was a tough call. I ended up winning the match anyway, but that was such a blowout and interesting decision.
I also had a G/U ramp deck, featuring vorniclex, Maul Splicer, Green sun zenith, 3 mana myr, a Emmisary, and a sphere of the suns and a bunch of 4 and 5 drop fliers and a myr battlesphere. I lost single handedly to the white chancellor both games, and it was pretty embarassing. I was staring at this chancellor with 6 lands in play staring at a maul splicer, Phyrexian Juggernaut, and the 6-drop 4/4 flier in my hand wanting to die. I boarded in two pistus strikes, but never found one game 2, and died in the same fashion. This time I had ramped up to 8, and died with vorniclex in my hand without being able to pay the 1 for chancellor.
The chess game with @Bgardnerdurbin is near completion. Looks like i might lose this one. I felt like i was ahead the whole game, but he turned it around late with a move I wasn't expecting. I think we're pretty well matched opponents, so i'll be trying to get my rematch! Anyone else who is interested in some correspondence chess, sign up for an account at Chess.com and add me (user name ChadHavas).
Have a great weekend, all!
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