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!