This past Saturday was the much heralded Zendikar Game Day. I had traveled to Pandemonium in Garden City with my lovely wife to play in a Grand Prix Trial for Minneapolis. The “Game Day” tournament didn’t start until 2pm and we figured we could jump in it if our sealed decks didn’t shape up.
Apparently nobody knew about the GP Trial because there were a grand total of like 20 players. So we sat down in about 1/4 of the space available in the room and set about registering some sealed decks. The card pool I opened wasn’t too bad, with a few removal spells and a couple decent creatures. I wouldn’t have minded receiving it back. I heard more than one person say “I hope I don’t get this crap back.” and only 2 say they’d be overjoyed to receive theirs.
I was one of the ones that got someone else’s crappy pool. My only removal was 1 disfigure. I had multiple copies of such winners as Goblin War Paint, Spidersilk Web thingy, and Kraken Hatchling. The only real standout of the pool was the blue, which had about 3 bounce spells. Unfortunately the blue offered about 3 creatures, 2 of which were Kraken Hatchlings (and I had no good equipment) and no early drops to out-tempo someone. So I went black-red-green splashing the green for solid creatures. Going 2-color wasn’t really an option as the pool was just so abyssmal.
Later when my wife and I compared pools I saw hers and said “not too shabby, should be good to top8 a 20-person event.” And she said “Yuck!” when she saw what I had to work with. My thoughts exactly.
I believe I won the first round, but shipped the next three with reckless abandon. I was so disoriented and confused with the deck sideboarding wise (I was siding in multiple cards, usually cross-colors, just to have a fighting chance) that I mis-sideboarded at one point, got deck-checked, and received a game loss. 😦 That’s my first ever penalty in tournament play. Unless you count a caution I once received for something silly long ago.
So at 1-3 of a 5-round 20-person tournament I decide to drop (good call, only one 3-2 player made it in) and play in the ZEN game day. My wife was doing well with her pool and went 3-1-1 to secure a spot in the draft.
I briskly walk to the store and let them know I’ll be entering the game day and when I realize entry is only $5 I’m elated (I thought it would be more). There were only about 10 people playing in it, which also suprised me. Then I learned there was a PTQ in Ohio that day and it all made sense. I think they got over 200 people. So I sleeved up a Jund list and prepared for battle. The tournament was three rounds of swiss, cut to top 4. The most fun part of the tournament was that nobody had any idea what the prizes were until the finals, where we learned there was about a $6 difference in store credit and a lovely certificate.
My wife and I share a collection and the night before the tournament we spent a great deal of time trying to construct 2 different playable decks from the cards available to us. While waiting for the game day to start I had to break-down her deck to give me a better Jund build. And thanks to Kurt for letting me borrow some Planeswalker goodness and lands!! Here’s the list I ended up with:
3 Dragonskull Summit
4 Forest
2 Mountain
4 Rootbound Crag
4 Savage Lands
4 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bloodbraid Elf
3 Broodmate Dragon
2 Thornling
4 Putrid Leech
4 Sprouting Thrinax
3 Bituminous Blast
4 Blightning
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Terminate
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Maelstrom Pulse
Sideboard
4 Duress
3 Goblin Ruinblaster
3 Jund Charm
2 Thought Hemorrhage
3 Great Sable Stag
I had heard that Thornling was good in the mirror and happened to have some with me, so I tossed those in and ran with it, expecting to play against Jund all day. Little did I know…
round 1: Boros Bushwhacker (Dan Hojnacki)
All of my opponents on the day were polite, including Dan. He raced out to a ridiculously fast start in game one and I barely caught up. But catch up I did and when he didn’t draw the burn to seal the deal I was Bloodbraiding into Lightning Bolts to finish the deal. In game two he got stuck on two lands and just couldn’t keep up the pressure.
1-0 rounds, 2-0 games
round 2: Boros again (Gian Colista)
This time with a different pilot, but similar result. I won in two straight but I’m unsure of how the games played out. I know I almost lost one game but after removing his Lynx and Geopede he drew no more creatures. Game two he had a Goblin Guide running wild but only for 2 turns as I had a Leech followed up with a Thrinax. I think it was game 2 when I was stuck on 2 lands after dropping the Leech and he was debating a Path to Exile on it. I was praying he had a path so I could search out a basic and drop the Thrinax, and he went for it, which enabled my 3rd turn Thrinax which he could only sigh at and Bolt. I generated the saprolings to block his Guide and that was all she wrote as I promptly drew a 4th land and got silly with Cascade.
2-0 rounds, 4-0 games
round 3: Pyromancer’s Ascension (Vivek Soi)
Third round against the always exciting Dr. Soi. A tournament regular who we always manage to run in to at various events and a really nice guy. I knew what he was playing due to my last match taking all of 7 minutes and his taking the full round. So I had a feeling I would be able to win. He did have the craziest tech of the day, however, Swerve. Swerve is very silly and redirected about 4 of my Blightnings on the day from 2 different opponents. The games were surprisingly quick as I had good draws both times and he ran out of gas in game 2. He swerved the blightnings but couldn’t get the Ascension online and succumbed to Cascade card advantage.
3-0 rounds, 6-0 games
top 4: Boros yet again, same guy from round 1
Dan and I clashed again with the same result as round one.
4-0 rounds, 8-0 games
Finals: UWR Planeswalkers (Michael Schlotz)
I don’t believe I’ve played against this guy before but he played well. Sadly my deck did not. I kept some decent hands but Swerve reared its ugly head and sent my Blightnings back my way. Game one saw me going for it with turn 3 blightning, he had the swerve, of course, which made me pitch a land and I think a Broodmate. I then went for turn 4 Bloodbraid for which he had the Double Negative. I drew lands and Bit Blasts for the rest of the game and I believe he burned me out with Chandra. Game two was much of the same but I hit a land clot after about turn 6, and by the time his Luminarch Ascension was creating 4 Angels a turn I had upwards of 12 lands in play. Ah well. The deck put out some amazing gas for five rounds every game then petered out in the last one. Peak Oil? Hmmm…
4-1 rounds, 8-2 games
So even though the Trial was a bust for me, it was great for Sarah as she got to do a formal top 8 draft and proceed to punt the quarterfinals with a pretty good deck. Her opponent’s deck was ridiculous, though, so I’m glad she almost beat him. She claims that the savage punting was due to me walking over to watch after my top4 match. I claimed innocence, but she may have a point.
I received my $12 in store credit and used it to obtain a Sunpetal Grove. Woot! I was looking to get a Baneslayer (by dropping $22 in addition to the credit), but I think my finals opponent beat me to it. 😦 It was still a fine day for Standard, even though I missed out on that glorious certificate… and I am not the official “Zendikar Champion” of the store. /wrists
(oh, and R.I.P. my Limited Rating after that fiasco! Down to 1793 from 1843. 50 points for a GP Trial!!! At least my Constructed went up to 1886… from 1880… yeah, 6 points. 😐 )
(Oh, one more aside. I’m not a fan of Jund in the current Standard and I’ll have a post about my reason for that and what deck(s) I would play, coming soon!)
Force of Nature 