Rage Extractor huh?

I played in another Standard Tournament at Rivals this evening. Rivals is a bit far from my house, but I learned about half way through the day Alec and Ryan would be going to the tournament. Since Alec "owed" me a ride, I asked to tag along.  Alec played his traditional B/W/G Birthing Pod deck, and Ryan played U/W Delver, widely considered the strongest deck in the format current. I ran R/G Wolf Run, as usual. Considering the new set Dark Ascension is will be released next weekend, I figured this was one of my last chances to run my favorite deck in the format.

The tournament started off quite nicely for me. I went 2-0 against my first opponent, who was running some type of mono-red deck. I never saw a Koth of the Hammer, nor a Chandra's Pheonix. He appeared to be running the more Goblin-based version with cards like  Goblin Fireslinger, Goblin Wardriver, and Goblin Grenade. The four Slagstorms in my maindeck worked wonders, often giving me 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 situations. I even brought in a couple Whipflares from my sideboard to help. The Whipflares are there to deal with the prevalence of Geist of Saint Traft, but they also work well against most types of weenie decks.

The second round of the tournament did not go as well. I got paired against an opponent running Rage Extractors combined with Phyrexian Metamorph, Norn's Annex, and Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas. The basic idea of the deck was toplay a copy of Rage Extractor and then play as many spells with phyrexian mana as you could. The Phyrexian Metamorph was particularly annoying against me because he could copy a titan so easily. I had not seen such a deck before tonight, but I felt like my chances were good because I run so many copies of Ancient Grudge in my sideboard. Strangely, I won game 2, where I had to mulligan down to 5, but I lost games 1 and 3, where I simply got land screwed.

The last round of the tournament was my favorite. I was paired against Alec, who beat me in our previous encounter at FNM. This wasn't quite a rematch, because I was playing R/G Wolf Run instead of B/G. The games were very close. In Game 1, Alec made a terrible mistake and blundered a won position. It reminded me of chess in a way. In game 2, Alec had his back to the ropes and was going to lose next turn. He topdecked an Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, which is honestly one of the best white creatures alive. Elesh made it so I couldn't activate my Inkmoth Nexii and kill Alec with poison counters. From that point onward, Alec had control of the game and he eventually won. Game 3 was close, but 2-for-1 situations with both Ancient Grudge and Slagstorm seized the victory. Redemption!

I'm happy with my result this tournament, but I'm a little upset there were only three rounds. That hardly seems like enough rounds to truly separate out the good decks from the bad. There were at least 4 other people who finished 2-1 and I ended up placing almost last among them, 6th overall. The ride home was interesting, as Alec and I engaged in philosophical discussion about the merits of Cartesian epistemology. Until next time readers!

If it isn't broke, don't fix it...

It was a difficult evening at the Magic tournament tonight. I decided about an hour beforehand that I wanted to switch it up and try Conley Woods' B/G Wolf Run deck from the Orlando tournament. I made a few changes to the deck, but nothing major, and nothing to justify the terrible 1-2 result I had with it.

The evening started off horribly. On my way to Guardian Games I was photographed by one of those automatic machines that ticket you for speeding. I think I was going about 40 in a 30 m.p.h. zone. Anyone who knows me knows that speeding has been my Achilles heel, so to speak. The number of tickets I've received for that offense are basically innumerable. I kept thinking about how the ticket was already in the mail, so that put the whole evening in kind of a funk.

I sat down to play my first match after navigating through a ridiculous amount of traffic. My opponent and I rolled two six-sided die to see who would go first, and I rolled snake eyes. It was then I knew; this was not going to be my night. My opponent was playing Mage-Blade, a deck which has taken over Standard lately, and which my B/G deck was supposed to be well prepared for. My opponent drew amazing hands in both games. The first game, he drew 2 Mana Leaks, 2 Snapcasters, a Runechanter's Pike, and a slew of other instants. I was killed quickly. The second game, he drew Delver of Secrets, it transformed to a Mana Leak on the next turn, and he had sufficient counter-magic to protect it. The game was over shortly thereafter. I don't think I played badly in either game, I just didn't draw as well.

In the second round I faced some noob playing U/B control. I won the first game, lost the second, and at one point I had to ask him to stop stalling and speed up his play, because it seemed like he was trying to draw the match. He was nice enough to speed up though, and I managed to win the game on the back of a Thrun.

In the third round I faced Alec Baker, a Knightfall Games regular and a frequent opponent. I have a winning record against Alec, but tonight he got the best of me with his B/W/G Birthing Pod deck. Alec has now beaten me twice in a row, which is especially upsetting.

Disheartened from the loss to Alec and from my new deck's poor performance in general, I dropped out of the tournament and headed home. I totally forgot not to speed through the same section of road, though by this time the ticket machine had apparently been removed. I immediately dismantled this bullshit B/G deck and remade the R/G version. I guess the lesson from this tournament is: "If it isn't broke, don't fix it." Until next time readers.

Tau (Melanie) vs. Elder (Ryan) 1000 points

It was a cold and rainy day in Portland today. Earlier this week, Melanie suggested we play a game of 40K, and although I was too busy at the time, I suggested today would be a better day to play. After gathering our armies and filling our bellies, we traveled to Knightfall and started to make our lists. Knightfall was busy with several 40K players, some more annoying than others. For the most part, these players kept to themselves, but we did have to endure the occasional asinine comment throughout the afternoon.

Our lists made, Melanie and I rolled for mission and deployment. Seize Ground and Spearhead were the result. I've never particularly liked the Seize Ground mission; more often than not, the result is a draw. Still, the Tau are one of the weakest armies in the game right now in my opinion (their codex is the oldest in the game) so I had a good chance of winning even within the Seize Ground Mission. After all, if you completely annihilate your opponent's army, you win the game regardless of the mission. :-P

We rolled off for who would get to go first. Melanie won the roll and deployed her entire army. She placed some of her Crisis Suits hidden from view, but there was insufficent cover on the board to obscure her entire army. I decided I did not want to let Tau have the first chance to shoot, so I left my entire army in reserve and deep struck my Warp Spiders. This turned out to be an excellent strategy, as I was able to kill some units before they ever had the chance to shoot.

I was fortunate in that 75% of my reserves came in on the second turn, and further fortunate that my Warp Spiders landed almost exactly where I wanted them to land.

Melanie took an army that was extremely good against mech, but less prepared against units with a 3+ armor save, like the Warp Spiders. The result was that my tanks were quickly destroyed or made useless, but the Warp Spiders quickly advanced and destroyed everything in their path. Melanie decided to take two Devilfish filled with Fire Warriors for her troop choices. While the Devilfishes were useful as cover for the crisis suits, their guns suck and they were rather costly (80-100 points each, and you only get a few S5 shots). I think against Eldar Kroot might be a better choice: they're cheap, they're S4 so they can kill a tank, and they have so many deployment options (normal deployment, infiltrate, or outflank). They're vulnerable to blast templates, and can break or be pinned easily, but I like the aggressiveness of the unit; infiltrate and charge---similar to a genestealer. They are MEANT to distract the opponent's fire and die while the rest of the army moves into position and shoots.

My tanks were quickly destroyed by Melanie's crisis suits. Her suits could simply shoot too many twin-linked S7 BS 4 shots, even Armor Value 12 couldn't save me. I taught her to take this Tau configuration, which is highly effective against Rhinos, Wave Serpents, and any other vehicle with AV 12 or less. You can see Lord Fuegan in the bottom right of this picture (above). Fuegan did very little the entire game, and was hardly worth the 205 points I paid for him. I think he killed a Crisis Suit, but that was about it. Fuegan is simply a beast against Tau. He has a 2+ armor save, T4, Eternal Warrior, and Feel No Pain, and 3 wounds, all of which means he can absorb a ridiculous amount of shots before finally facing death. I made a mistake this game not simply deploying him in the center of the board. He entered the board on the right flank, and was basically out of the battle the entire game.

By the later turns of the game, Melanie had started shifting her troops toward one side of the board, and basically started moving toward "my" objective (the nickle, bottom side, above). The Warp Spiders are incredibly fast, and quickly gave chase with the intention of either killing her troops, or contesting the objective. I also started moving my own troops toward "her" objective. At the very least, this would ensure a tie. You can see Fuegan in the top right, still very far from the battle. Partly this was due to some bad luck on my "run" rolls; I rolled 1 both times. 

I don't have any great pictures of the end of the game, but I basically won because Melanie was unable to grab an objective before the end of the game. With win in hand, I agreed to play another turn "to see what would have happened." Although I still think I would have won, we determined that if Melanie played strategically and thoughtfully, she would be able to draw the game. All in all I had a really fun time, and I look forward to crushing the Tau again. Until next time readers!

Another Day Running with the Wolves

Today I played in another Standard tournament at Guardian Games. I've said it a million times, but for any new readers I will say it again: Guardian runs some of the toughest tournaments around. The best players in Portland arrive frequently and today was no different. Henry Romero (ranked 1st), Ryan Bemrose (ranked 2nd), Aaron Henner (ranked 4th, but who acted as judge), and Henry Freedman (ranked 20th), all showed up today. So needless to say, the tournament was going to be tough. It wasn't until I arrived that I learned that today's tournament was a GPT qualifier, requiring a $10 entry (as opposed to the usual $5), and thus that this would be a 5 round swiss tournament with a top 8 single elimination tournament at the end. The only deck I had with me was Wolf Run, and I decided to run it yet again. This turned out to be a decent decision, as I ended the tournament 4-1, and took third place.

The tournament started off well for me. I went 2-0 against an Esper control deck and a 2-0 against a U/R illusions deck. Neither of those decks impress me much; the first one's mana  base seems too jacked to ever work effectively, and the second one is just weak against Wolf Run. I mean, when I can kill all your creatures by just paying one red and one green and tapping a Kessig Wolf Run, there's not much that can be done.

The worst round of the tournament was round 3, where I lost to a Solar Flare deck which eventually took second place. Despite my expressed lack of respect for the Esper mana base (see above), this Solar Flare deck functioned perfectly against me. In the first game, my opponent played a Liliana of the Veil on turn 3, discarded a Sun Titan and an Unburial Rites on turns 3 and 4, and then cast the Unburial Rites from his graveyard on turn 4 to basically win the game. It was the "nut" draw, so to speak, and any creature I could have cast to block the Sun Titan would have been instantly killed by Liliana of the Veil. In the second game I got mana screwed and my opponent once again cast a turn 3 Liliana of the Veil. There was nothing I could do and the match ended quickly 0-2.

In the fourth round I faced off against Mono-Red. I lost the first game to double Stromkirk Noble, but the second and third game Thrun, the Last Troll came down on turn 3 and just went all the way. I've mentioned before how much I love Thrun, the Last Troll in Standard right now. He is simply one of the best creatures around and will just win games on his own.

In the fifth and final round I faced off against Zach Ledesma running his own version of U/B Infect. This was effectively a rematch from our meeting a week ago, where I beat him in three games to take 1st place in another Guadian Games Standard tournament. Once again, his deck's heavy reliance on artifacts, including Inkmoth Nexus, Runechanter's Pike, and Sword of Feast and Famine, meant that I would often get 2-for-1 situations after Ancient Grudge came in from the sideboard. Furthermore, he failed to run any sacrifice effects in his deck, such as Liliana of the Veil or Geth's Verdict, which meant that once Thrun, the Last Troll came down, he was there to stay. I won the match 2-1 to take clear third place in the tourney.

Overall I think this was a decent tournament for me because it helped me get the bad flavor of the previous tournament out of my mouth. Ryan Bemrose ended up winning the tournament with a B/R/G Wolf Run variant, which I thought was his own brew, but which I was informed after the tournament may have been created by someone else. Anyways, thanks for reading, and see you next time!

Sometimes it Hurts to be a Gamer

Today I played in a Standard Friday Night Magic tournament at Guardian Games. Usually I play FNM at Knightfall, but having learned that very few people intended to show up at Knightfall I decided to carpool with a friend to Guardian. As I've said before, the field is stronger at Guardian, but the prizes are slightly better because you can win store credit and trade for singles.

Going into this tournament I had a ridiculous streak going. I had won something like 11 games in a row with Wolf Run. I was hoping to extend this streak, but it was not to be.

I won my first round against a deck I don't remember. The action didn't start until second round.

In the second round I played against Aaron Henner running U/W Haunted Humans. I have a lot of respect for Aaron. He's a level 1 Judge and a regular at several tournaments around town. He's currently ranked 4th in Portland. The games between us were extremely close. I won the first game (he had to mulligan down to 5); he won the second (Hero of Bladehold is really good when you have 2 Honor of the Pure out). Game 3 came down to the wire. It was amazing; he played a Gideon's Lawkeeper, a Leonin Relic-Warder, and Mirran Crusader on turns 1, 2, and 3. I played a Thrun, and then I Slagstormed and killed every creature my opponent had. I thought the 3-for-1 was quite nice, and that the game was probably over. Instead, my opponent dropped a Moorland Haunt and a Doomed Traveler and suddenly I had to face the fact that he would have chump blockers against my Thrun for like 8 turns. I prayed for a Wolf Run. I pleaded with my deck to provide one, but none came. The game was getting close; the spirits were *dinking* me to death. I was at 1 life; he was at 2. I drew a slagstorm and killed us both. Draw.

Round 3 was also not worthy of mention. I won and moved on to the final round. A win would place me at 3-0-1 and in clear second. More importantly, my streak of undefeated games would continue.

I played against a mono-Black infect deck. He won the first game; I won the second. In game three a critical position arose. He had 8 swamps untapped. I had just played a Primeval Titan and had both an Inkmoth Nexus and a Kessig Wolf Run out and all the mana to deal either lethal poison damage or lethal life damage next turn. My opponent had a Phyrexian Crusader out. He had three cards in hand, but it was clear whether he had a Virulent Wound in his hand to kill my nexus or not. What did seem clear, is that he had no real way to kill the Titan. He attacked. Like an idiot, I blocked. The Primeval Titan got two -1/-1 counters, and the Phyrexian Crusader died. My opponent tapped 6 lands, and cast Black Sun's Zenith for four, killing the titan and leaving himself 2 mana open for the Virulent Wound the following turn.

I never should have blocked. I asked after the game, "were you dead if I hadn't blocked?" He answered, "Yeah. I would have had to Black Sun for 6 to stay alive, tapping out in the process, and you would have killed me with the Inkmoth Nexus and the Kessig Wolf Run next turn."

What followed was the painful feeling you get in your chest when you realize that you lost because of your own stupidity and play error. Instead of placing second and winning prizing money, I fell out of the running and won nothing. Hopefully I'll learn something from this experience, but for now I feel like I just didn't play attentively enough to recognize the critical moment when it arrived. Until next time readers....

Ancient Grudge for the Win!

First place at Guardian Games! Today I played in Guardian Games' Standard Sunday tournament. As some of you know, Guardian Games has the toughest tourneys around and today I went 5-0. Guardian usually gets the best turnouts in Portland because of their central location (10-30 people) and the Guardian players are some of the highest rated players in Portland. Today was no different.

I decided before the match that I would once again try a near copy of Junya Iyanaga's Wolf Run deck (find a copy of it here). The only changes I made to deck were to remove the Devil's Play from the mainboard (adding a fourth Slagstorm and a Beast Within) and of course, creating my own sideboard.  I believe my substitutions were logical choices given the prevalence of hexproof creatures such as Geist of Saint Traft in the current metagame.

A few of my matches this tournament deserve mention. In the first round, I played another wolf run deck. My opponent's version was inferior in my opinion, because he played Dungrove Elder without playing the requiste number of forests. Honestly, if you play Dungrove Elder you really need to play like 19 Forests, 2 Inkmoth Nexus, 2 Wolf Run, and 2 Mountains. My opponent tried to get the best of both worlds by playing Dungroves combined with Red/Green "non-forest" dual lands such as Copperline Gorge (Mono-Green isn't viable in Standard. Green has to combine with another color to be playable). My opponent would play a Dungrove Elder and I'd kill it with a Slagstorm because the Elder was only a 2/2. There just weren't enough forests in the deck, and I won 2-1.

Second round I played against a G/W Birthing Pod deck. I have a G/W/U Birthing Pod deck of my own as a "fun deck," but I would never play it competitively because I just find the deck leans too heavily on one card. Oftentimes a Birthing Pod will get Mana Leaked and the game is just basically over because the Pod player has nothing but creatures (some of which cost 5, 6, or 7 mana to bring out). In my opinion, the strongest version of this deck is the G/W/B version since it gives you access to better "Pod" creatures like Massacre Wurm, Reaper from the Abyss, and Sheoldred. Nevertheless, I think all versions are too one sided. I won the first game easily because my opponent got mana screwed. I lost the second game because my opponent lost so quickly the first game I never got a chance to figure out what I was playing against. I won the third game because I sideboarded in 4 Ancient Grudge and killed any Birthing Pod as soon as it hit the table.

In Round 3 I played another Wolf Run deck. This time my opponent added blue to the mana base, giving him access to counterspells like Mana Leak and Flashfreeze. He won the first game by countering my Primeval Titan and casting his own on the following turn. Not fun. In games 2 and 3 I sideboarded in two additional Thrun, the Last Troll and he just went all the way. I've mentioned before how clutch Thrun can be against blue decks...he is just the reason I love playing green right now.

In Round 4 I faced a U/B infect deck with Phyrexian Crusaders, Sword of Feast and Famines, and Runechanter's Pikes.The Runechanter's Pike is quickly becoming a hot card in view of the large number of instants and sorceries at blue's disposal. An inadequately prepared opponent can easily lose to an Inkmoth Nexus with an equipped Pike. I lost game 1, and in games 2 and 3 I once again sideboarded in all four copies of Ancient Grudge. Grudge simply won me the two subsequent games.

In round 5 I played Wolf Run Robots, a deck originally designed by Travis Woo (you can find the deck here). In my opinion this deck just sucks. The "ramp" creatures are all so soft and a couple well-timed Slagstorms and Ancient Grudge and the match was over, 2-0.

I have now won 8 matches in a row with this Wolf Run deck. Boo-fuckin-yah. I won $35 of store credit for my effort and I used it to acquire some cards for my Modern Jund deck. Until next time readers!

Tyranids (Ryan) vs. Chaos Space Marines (Adam) 1500 pts.

As you all may or may not know, I've had a lot of free time on my hands lately since school is not in session and I'm on vacation from work. I've spent a lot of this free time gaming. Today I played Warhammer 40K against Adam at the local gaming shop. In the past I would usually play Eldar against Adam's Chaos Space Marines, and for that reason (and for no other reason, such as lack of skill) my record against Adam is like 2 wins, 5 losses, 1 tie. Don't quote me on those figures, but trust me the result is quite embarassing. Because of this terrible win percentage against Adam and others, I switched to Tyranids and my results immediately improved. Tyranids are simply a better army. Going into this game against Adam I was 1-0 with the 'Nids and I wanted to extend the streak. Little did I know, Adam was about to even the score. The game was set at 1500 pts (designed to take about 2 hrs).
I ran a list similar to one Ty ran against me a few weeks prior: 1 Tervigon, 2 x 10 Genestealers, 1 Broodlord, 7 Hive Guard, 6 Raveners, and 2 Trygons. Adam ran 1 Chaos Lord, 4 x 10 Chaos Space Marines, 2 Defilers, and 1 Vindicator. The mission was Annihilation, the deployment was Dawn of War. Adam deployed first and got to go first.
I don't really want to go into the specifics since a true battle report would take up half the page. As they say, a picture is worth 1000 words.

In dawn of war you may only deploy 2 troops and 1 HQ at the start of the game. I infiltrated my two genestealer squads into positions where they were extremely threatening. The first squad (in the lower left, above) used the building to block line of sight and ran straight for Adam's Rhinos. The second squad (under the landing pad in the center of the board, below) also blitzed toward the enemy.

Turn 2 everything else had to walk on from the edge of the board (see below). This especially sucks for Tyranids since they have to run the length of the board to get into their preferred close combat with the enemy. Luckily I had the landing pad to use as cover. Adam and I agreed that anything under the pad was "in cover" for the purposes of determining saving throws.

By turn 3, my genestealers were all dead from one lucky shot from the Vindicator (Adam's luck is well-documented), my two Trygon's successfully entered the board but taking heavy fire (see below).

I don't have any shots of the board in the final turns. Adam and I were rushing a bit to finish. If I had any pictures, you would see my army was almost completely obliterated. Nevertheless, it was a close game with very little arguing. I look forward to playing again!

Wolf Run Redeemed!

I played in another FNM tournament tonight at Knightfall Games, scoring 3-0 and taking clear 1st place. Before the tournament I was stressed because I was having trouble settling on what deck to play. Minutes before the tournament I decided I would run a Wolf Run deck highly similar to the deck piloted by the MTG World Champion, Junya Iyanaga (you can find the deck here). I made small changes to the mainboard of the deck, adding another Slagstorm to deal with hexproof creatures (which proved prescient) and a couple of Beast Within because, well, personally I can't play a deck with zero removal. As usual I made my own sideboard catered to the players/decks I usually encounter (4 Ancient Grudge, 2 Beast Within, 4 Combust, 2 Thrun, the Last Troll, 2 Garruk Relentless, and 1 Tree of Redemption).
This deck was highly efficient all night and has caused me to temporarily re-evaluate Wolf Run's place in the metagame.  Out of the 7 games I played, I only lost 1 game to some kind of Mono-Red deck using Kudoltha Rebirth and a ton of really fast creatures. I just didn't draw a Slagstorm in time. I crushed Adam B's U/R Delver deck in round 2 with timely Slagstorms and Thrun, the Last Troll. I have said this before to some of you, but I will say it again: Thrun is simply the best creature in Standard right now. He is a veritable beatstick against most decks. He can't be countered, he beats Hero of Bladehold, and he can easily block most of the Titans. He just wins games against control decks and aggro decks alike. Because of Thrun's apparent supremacy, I run 1 Thrun mainboard (+2 Green Sun's Zenith to find him) and 2 more in the sideboard. I bring in multiple copies after sideboarding against Blue decks. Just for your info, dear reader, the best way to deal with Thrun in Standard right now appears to be cloning him with cards like Phantasmal Image or Phyrexian Metamorph (the Legendary rule causes both Thrun and his clone to die immediately). He can also be effectively removed by forcing the opponent to sacrifice him with cards like Liliana of the Veil or Tribute to Hunger. I often wonder if the fact that Thrun is called "the last troll" means Wizards will never print another Troll. I think that would be cool.
In the third and final round I squared off against Austin piloting a U/W deck. Austin's idea was to utilize Invisible Stalker combined with various artifacts to enhance his power (Silver-Inlaid Dagger and Inquisitor's Flail, for example). I found this deck somewhat odd since Melanie and I had discussed Invisible Stalker deck over lunch today. One game came really close, but I literally topdecked an Ancient Grudge for the win and closed the tournament.
Tomorrow is the weekly Modern tournament at Guardian Games. Should have a good turnout and I'm brewing Martyr Proc. See you then!

Trust Your Intuition

How many times do I have to learn to trust my intuition before I finally heed the lesson? I played in another MTG Standard tournament this evening at Ancient Wonders, scoring 2-2 and taking 6th place out of 8. I piloted Tempered Steel again, which proved to be a poor decision. The deck lost its first two rounds to Haunted Humans. The combination of Geist of Saint Traft or Mirran Crusader and Angelic Destiny was simply too dificult to deal with. I remained in the tournament to try and salvage what I could. I received the bye in round 3 and won against a U/B control deck in round 4.

However, the criticalt decision of this tournament came at the beginning. Before the first round, and before I decided what deck I was going to play, I learned I was paired against Ryan E and his Haunted Humans deck. I decided to play Tempered Steel but for a moment my intuition told me Mono-Black Infect would have been a better decision. The Haunted Humans deck has no effective answer for Phyrexian Crusader. Thus, I feel it was a mistake to simply lean back on a deck that has done so well for me in the past, rather than to try something new and put myself at risk of losing. I tested my Mono-Black deck against Ryan's Haunted Humans after our match and went undefeated. My decision to play Tempered STeel was incorrect.

On a more positive note, I should mention that my intuition to build a Mono-Black infect seems to have been correct. Mono-Black exploits a particular weakness in the metagame with cards like Distress and I'm looking forward to trying the deck out perhaps tomorrow or Friday. The deck needs refinement, but I think it's almost ready.

What is the Deal with MTG tiebreakers??

Played in a Standard MTG tournament today at Guardian Games ("GG"). I ran Tempered Steel because the crowd at GG is pretty legit and you can't just bring any chump deck. I ended up scoring 4-1, which was good enough for second place, but I placed 4th after tiebreakers. I find this occurence odd, considering I went 2-0 in every match I won and 1-2 in the match I lost. Simply put, I hate the way MTG calculates tiebreakers. If two players are tied for a particular place the system looks at your "opponents' match win percentage" rather than your individual game win percentage. In other words, you have to play harder opponents to place higher. It doesn't matter how badly you crush your foes. I guess I just don't like this system because it always seems to screw me. I can control how badly I beat an opponent. I can't control how my opponents fare against other players.

Now that I've vented, on to the games. The first round I played U/B control and I won easily. He just didn't have enough Black Sun's Zenith or Steel Sabotage in the sideboard. The second round was much more memorable because I got smashed by a MonoRed deck. MonoRed may or may not be a viable deck in today's metagame, but against Tempered Steel it just owns. The combination of cards like Arc Trail, Manic Vandal, and Slagstorm puts Tempered Steel in an awkward situation. Should the T-steel player dump his hand, and play into a possible 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 situation? Or should the T-steel player save his creatures in his hand until after he has played a Tempered Steel? The only problem with this latter strategy is that MonoRed tends to put T-Steel under pressure immediately with creatures like Stromkirk Noble and Stormblood Berserker, and if you don't have blockers you can easily find yourself at 10 life facing a 4/4 Stromkirk Noble by turn 5. MonoRed also has more than enough answers for T-steel creatures, like Galvanic Blast. I guess I would sum all this up by just saying MonoRed was a bad matchup for me, and I lost handily.

I won my next three matches against B/G/W Birthing Pod, Haunted Humans (see previous entry), and some chump deck which wasn't even sleeved. The Birthing Pod deck was my favorite matchup because the first game I basically drew the nuts (first turn Plains, Mox Opal, Glint Hawk, Memnite, Signal Pest, go.), and the second game my anti-Birthing Pod sideboard tech came down on turn 2. gg.

I used my prize store credit to pick up a third Sword of Feast and Famine with the idea of sometime playing this cool Mono-Black deck I found online. Perhaps Tuesday or Friday. See you next time!