Gatecrash Prerelease

Hello! Last Saturday the wife and I decided (at the last minute) to head to a 7pm Two-Headed Giant Gatecrash Prerelease. It was pretty darn fun with regards to the guilds, the flavor, and the matches.  Unfortunately when we arrived and were seated to open product they announced that it would be SIX rounds of swiss.  SIX.  That put the end time at around 2am. Ugh.  Sure it’s no midnight prerelease, but I would never do that anyway.

The one problem with this prerelease is that I didn’t extensively study the spoiler beforehand. With every set, I examine the spoiler before I go so I can anticipate what the best colors/combinations are. This time I didn’t do that and it cost us. Had I read more about the Extort mechanic I would have realized how sick it is in 2HG. You see, Extort drains “each opponent,” so in 2HG it drains 2 life per activation. Yowsa. We lost the one match we lost to Extort triggers and had we known about this quirk we would have gone double Orzhov instead of Orzhov + Gruul.

We did open a good pool, however, with most of our rares being playable in the two decks we came up with.  My wife’s deck was Orzhov splashing red for Aurelia’s Fury and Boros Charm while mine was straight Gruul.  Double Rubblehulk was nice, but I had no Rampagers and only like 1 burn spell (Homing Lightning, there were no Muggings or Pit Fights), I guess Massive Raid is a burn spell but it was pretty hard to use effectively as the other teams typically had a lot of removal in black.

For the first two rounds of the tournament we used Extort to only drain our opponents for 1 and they let us. We still won, but there was a close game in there once.  Had we lost I would have felt like an idiot.

Our only loss came at the hands of the eventual winners, who went double Orzhov, of course. I don’t think we played our best in that particular match, but we still had tons of fun at the tournament.  Most of our opponents were at least civil and a few were downright hilarious.  The Dragon’s Maze prerelease ought to be pretty interesting with all ten guilds in action.

Live Blogging a Magic Online PTQ

Howdy!  Today I’m going to record my experience of an online PTQ.  These things are grueling, with 500+ players and 10+ rounds, you have to be ready for a long day if you want to win. This PTQ Dragon’s Maze is Return to Ravnica Sealed Deck.  At 10:00am EST the sealed pool opened up and here’s what I was faced with:

Built U/W because no other colors seemed strong enough alone or together. Almost Rakdos, but not fast enough and pretty light on removal. The U/W deck would be faster. I like Selesnya but there are no good populaters/token makers, so that’s out. Also, I don’t have enough fixing for wacky 5-color.

Here’s what I ended up running:

I think the deck can have some good, curved-out starts as well as being resilient to trump bombs (2x Detention Sphere… What Pack Rat? ^_^). I also like the Detain guys to help punch damage through, not to mention the late-game fliers. Seems like a decent deck.  To be honest, though, I think we would need a much stronger pool to Top 8.  I think this pool will be lucky to have a winning record at the end of the day.  If you had a different way to build the deck be sure to sound off in the comments!

ROUND ONE:

good hand, Dryad Militant, Keening Apparition, island, plains, detention sphere, sunspire griffin, voidwielder.

On the play, curved out: militant/apparition/griffin

He had the Sundering Growth for my Detention Sphere on his Axebane Guardian. He’s playing forests, islands, and izzet, so I’m guessing 4/5-color crazy.

He concedes after I Voidwielder the Axebane Guardian.

Game 2:
He’s actually Selesnya with a splash for something I haven’t seen.
Martial Law hurts me. Especially when followed up by Trostani. I’m really tired of losing to rares/mythics in this sealed/draft format.

Game 3:

Mulligan to 4. That is all. My 7, 6, and 5 card hands were completely unplayable. My 7 only had 1 land and all 4-6 drops. My 6-card hand had 2 plains but 2 blue 6-drops a 5-drop and a 4-drop. My 5-card hand had no land and 5/6 drops. My 4-card hand had Azorius Guildgate, 2x Detention Sphere, and the detaining Spirit (4-drop). He manages to roll me when I can’t deal with his Drudge Beetle which dealt like 12 damage. I am eventually able to Detention Sphere it (reluctantly) because I got locked at 3 mana and never drew another land for detaining spirit guy.

 ROUND TWO

Game 1: I have a sketchy 2-island hand but keep it after the mulligan to 4 debacle. This game goes pretty well until he gets out the Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage and starts populating.
Luckily, though, my kids running through the house being crazy distracts me and I misclick. Awesome.

Sidenote: Chorus of Might really pisses me off.

Detention Sphere may save the day after I remove his flying blocker. The Vitu-Ghazi showed up too late for him to start Populating like crazy. I also Ethereal Armor’d my weakest ground guy to turn it into a Centaur-killer. Yup, got it!

Game 2: I side in Hover Barrier against his pump effects (he killed both of my Hussars last game with little pumps). Hover does its job, blocking some fliers for a few turns. Grove of the Guardian presents a problem, but I have detention sphere in hand to take care of the token. The game gets silly as my kids present an ever-growing problem due to their unwillingness to play nicely together. I eventually win, though, thanks to Detain.

ROUND THREE:

game 1: decent opening hand, 3 land 4 spells.
Kids going absolutely nuts. It’s really ridiculous. I win after detaining his only guy over and over. Oh, and removing filibuster counters with fliers.

game 2: he plays ground dorks and I play fliers and detain his ground dorks. Pretty simple game. A poopy diaper threatened to steal the win, but I was able to quickly change it and return to battle. He tried some populate shenanigans, but luckily Detention Sphere shuts that down in a hurry.

Record: 2-1

ROUND FOUR

game 1: He plays turn 2 pack rat.
I don’t draw Detention Sphere… EITHER OF THEM THE ENTIRE GAME ARGH. EXCEPT THAT WHEN THE GAME IS OVER I DRAW MY NEXT CARD AND IT IS FREAKING DETENTION SPHERE… AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Other notable cards of his include Dreadbore, Rakdos Keyrune, and Korozda Guildmage. Also, my kids continue to rage and refuse to calm down, be quiet, or play nice. They are honestly crazy today for some reason. Also funny, they seem to know when I’m actually playing because when I’m inbetween matches they leave me alone… It’s really something.

game 2: He doesn’t play turn 2 pack rat this time! yay! We have some good back & forth with a Thrill-Kill for him and a Vassal Soul for me. He has better guys, of course, while I have fliers. Phantom General comes down after a Courser’s Accord and threatens me big time. Oh, btw, still zero Detention Spheres. *interlude where I go yell at two crazy kids who are screaming repeatedly for no reason*

Special note: I have drawn zero detention spheres this match. Had I drawn even one, at any time, it would have won me both games. The first, removing the Pack Rat would have let me easily fly over the top of an empty board, and in the second, I would have won the race by taking out his Centaurs. How cute. I guess sometimes you do just lose to random bullsh*t.

Record 2-2, just playing for fun now. Yay. Can I even get prizes with 2 losses? Sigh.

ROUND FIVE

Never happened.  I got distracted by crazy kids and putting them down for naps. Sigh. Ah well, guess I’ll PTQ when they’re older. 🙂