On Friday night I played a 5 round Standard tournament at Knightfall Games. There were just over 20 participants; the participation was high due to the prerelease event scheduled to take place later that night. I did not attend the prerelease, mostly because I dislike the idea of playing Magic from 12AM to 4AM in a room full of unwashed men, but I heard it was pretty fun.
The FNM went fairly well. I ran my usual R/G Wolf Run deck, and I scored 4 wins and 1 loss to tie for first through third (there were no undefeated players). Of course, my tiebreakers were the worst of the three tied players, and I received third on tiebreaks. I don't know why that always happens to me.
A note about R/G Wolf Run: Although I have expressed some boredom with the deck lately, only one week remains untill the new set rotates into Standard. It seems a waste of effort to try anything new at this point. This next "season" though, I think I would like to try something new. Now on to this tournament.
The first round was actually the defining round. I was paired against Adam Brown, who played W/G aggro control in hopes of getting an FNM Dismember. Adam has had a lot of success with W/G in the current "season," and I think he considers it his strongest deck. He uses Birds of Paradise, Blade Splicer, Hero of Bladehold, Gideon Jura, and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, as well as Gavony Township and Oblivion Ring to create a deck with a lot of midrange potential. The match was quickly tied 1-1 and had to be decided by a third game. Although the third game was extremely close, Adam was able to resolve an Elesh Norn, which prevented my Inkmoth Nexii from activating and dealing lethal poison damage. Elesh also diminshed my Primeval Titan to 4/4, which made it impossible to block Elesh without losing the Titan. Adam slowly chipped my life away, and although there were three remaining copies of Beast Within in my deck, I could not draw one to kill Elesh and win the game. Adam won the match, 2-1.
I suppose I should mention, that although Adam won this match, he did not win the war. He placed 4th in the tournament, just behind me. Adam lost in round 4 to B/W tokens and intentional drew the fifth and final round to guarantee his receipt of a Dismember.
After losing the first round, I was paired against a "noob" red green deck, which did not run Titans, and I won the match easily, 2-0.
In round three, I was paired against a new player, who was running a fairly standard B/W Tokens deck. These games were actually pretty close, but a resolved Inferno Titan was able to stay on board, ruining any chance of my opponent gaining momentum, and I won the match 2-1.
In round four I faced a "noob" green white deck quite unlike Adam's version (for example, this opponent did not run Oblivion Ring), and I won the match easily, 2-0.
Round 5 was interesting, as I once again had to face Ish. Ish is a player with whom I have had some disagreements in the past, as catalogued in previous entries. This time, Ish was running Tempered Steel, a deck he has played a lot in the past. Now, usually I consider my deck a favorite to win this matchup, in particular because Ancient Grudge is an incredible card. However, I have faced so few Tempered Steel decks lately, that I reduced the number of Ancient Grudges in my sideboard to 2. Nevertheless, I recently added 2 copies of Naturalize (which also works on Oblivion Ring, Manabarbs, and oh yeah, Tempered Steel), so I was still well-prepared for this matchup. My maindeck also contains 4 copies of Slagstorm, which is fairly active against Tempered Steel (although Slagstorm does fail to kill Glink Hawk Idol, Inkmoth Nexus, or Etched Champion). I should also mention that my usual anti-aggro card, Whipflare, is completely inactive against Tempered Steel, and I was lucky not to draw the card in game 1. The games were close and we went to a third game to decide the match. Strangely, the card that proved most troublesome for Ish was Karn Liberated, because he could actually exile an Etched Champion. Although the third game was ridiculously close, I ended up winning with an unblocked Inferno Titan, who I pumped the good 'ol fashion way--avoiding Spellskite---to deal 14 points of damage.
So again, I placed third and received a Dismember for being in the top 4. I also got 5 packs, which I converted to $9 of store credit. Don't ask me how 5 packs = $9 because I just don't know.
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