On Sunday I played in the regular Sunday Magic Standard tournament at Guardian Games. The turnout was decent, with roughly 20 players showing up to play, including high "ranked" players such as Aaron Henner and Henry Freedman.

I once again ran R/G Wolf Run, with minor sideboard alterations to deal with Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. Before the tournament, I spent some time considering whether I should run Birds of Paradise or Gut Shot in my sideboard. Both are effective at eliminating the potential ramp disruption that Thalia causes when she hits the table on turn 2. I decided to run the Birds, but in hindsight, I think Gut Shot was better. Gut Shot is not only useful against Thalia, but also against Delver of Secrets.

In the first round, I was paired against Glissa control. My opponent was mana screwed the first game and I won easily. The second game, he had sufficient mana, but he was never able to place a threat on the board. He was unable to counter any of my Titans; at one point I cast Galvanic Blast on a Spellskite when I had metalcraft, and ended up killing him with a Slagstorm several turns later. I won the match 2-0.

After the first round, I mentioned to Ryan Engbrecht that the tournament seemed to have a lot of players running B/W Tokens---I saw at least 3 such decks. For a moment, I wished I had placed copies of Ratchet Bomb in my sideboard.

In the second round, I was paired against Natty Leof running Frites. Although some Wolf Run decks are weak against Frites, my version runs sufficient copies of Beast Within so that I can kill any fat creature they eventually summon. I'm also running sweeper spells like Slagstorm and Whipflare to disrupt the mana-providing creatures Frites players utilize to quickly cast their spells. Galvanic blast is also disruptive. What this means is that Frites players are often too slow to cast their Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. Usually, by the time they are able to cast the Elesh I have already cast a Titan, and the game is basically in my favor.
There was one aspect of this second round worth mentioning. At one point, Natty had a wolf token and 4 spirit tokens, which he had obtained in past turns by casting Huntmaster of the Fells and Lingering Souls. I attacked with my Primeval Titan, fetching two lands, and Natty blocked with all of the tokens. In response, I cast Beast Within on the wolf token, allowing my Titan to live, killing every spirit Natty owned, and even doing 2 points of trample damage to Natty in the process. This little "trick" has actually happened numerous times in the past, and happened again later in the tournament. I won the match, 2-0.

Round 3 proved to be the most difficult round of the tournament. I was paired against Henry Freedman, who used to be a top rated player in Portland. Henry was running U/W Delver equip, widely considered to be one of the strongest decks in the format, so this match was going to be difficult. I won the first game easily, on the back of Thrun, the Last Troll, but that meant Henry was on the play in game 2. He mulliganed so that he could get a first turn delver, which did some damage before I was able to kill it, and he eventually killed me with a Geist of Saint Traft backed by Vapor Snag. In game 3 I missed several land drops and lost because, with only 8 mana, I was unable to cast an Inferno Titan around mana leak. I lost the match 1-2.

In round 4 I was paired against DJ, who was running U/W Humans with Loyal Cathar. I lost the first game because I was an idiot and didn't read the cards properly. I didn't realize that Loyal Cathar comes back after being killed with sorcery-style wrath effects. Duh. Nevertheless, after sideboarding in multiple copies of Whipflare I was able to effectively kill DJ's creatures. Inferno Titans also helped immensely. I ended up winning the next 2 games and subsequently saving myself a lot of grief since if I had lost, I would have been extremely upset with myself for not paying closer attention. I won the match 2-1.

Strangely enough, in round 5 I was paired against Ryan again, who was once again running Naya Pod. I don't really have much to say about this match. Ryan was basically mana screwed in both games and his deck never really got rolling. I won the match 2-0.

In summary, I ended this tournament 4-1 and was awarded 6 packs for my trouble. That prize was reduced to 4.5 packs because I ended up splitting with Ryan in the last round. I used the credit to obtain another foil Copperline Gorge to further trick out my deck, and a nice foil copy of Stony Silence.