Steal Ryan's Shit and Kill Him With It.

Dread Marit Lage lies dreaming, not dead.


Cool art. Decent flavor text. Terrible card.









On Sunday I played in a standard tournament at Guardian Games, scoring 3 wins and 1 loss to take 5th place after tiebreaks. Although the tournament was generally enjoyable and I made the prize pool, there were only a few card interactions worth noting.
In round 1 I played against a noob Bant Humans deck (for those who may not know, Bant refers to the U/W/G color combination). My opponent's deck failed to cast anything really dangerous, and I won the match 2-1.
In round 2 I faced a RUG control deck, which I'm beginning to believe presents a terrible matchup for R/G Wolf Run (more on the expiration of Wolf Run Ramp in previous articles). I lost the first game after 40 minutes and had only 10 minutes to sideboard and attempt to win. In game 2, I managed to cast Garruk, Primal Hunter, and even managed to produce several beasts and get him to 6 loyalty before my opponent cast Zealous Conscripts, stole Garruk, and used his ultimate ability to destroy me with a bunch of 6/6 Wurms that should have been mine. Not cool dude. Not cool at all. I lost the match, 0-2.

In round 3 I faced Steve Empey running B/G Glissa Pod. I won the first game by casting an Inferno Titan, which was apparently unanswerable for just long enough to reduce Steve's life to 6. Steve topdecked a Go for the Throat, but by then it was too late: I double Slagstormed players on the subsequent turn, winning the first game.

Game two of this match was kind of hilarious. It reinforced the theme of the day, which appeared to be "Steal Ryan's shit and kill him with it." Steve drew nothing but artifacts, but they happened to be some of the most dangerous artifacts in the game. Over the course of the first 7 turns, Steve cast Sword of War and Peace, Sword of Feast and Famine, Mimic Vat, and Birthing Pod. Although I was killing Steve with two Solemn Simulacrums because he had no creatures out, I still felt like I was losing. It became clear that as soon as Steve drew any other creature, if he had the mana he could (1)cast the creature, (2) pod it into a whatever, (3) place the sacrificed creature under the Mimic Vat, (4)make a token with the Mimic Vat, (5) double equip the swords to the token, and (6) bash me with a ridiculous haste token beatstick. A similarly "broken" outcome would result if Steve ever killed a Solemn. If the token hit me the effect would be ridiculous; he'd untap all his lands, I'd discard a card, I'd take damage equal to the number of cards in my hand, and he'd gain life equal to the number of cards in his. I started leaving Solemns untapped because I was scared he'd be able to kill one at the end of my turn and be able to hit me while I was wide open. I remedied the sitaution by casting a Karn Liberated ,and decided that instead of trying to remove all the artifacts in play, which was slow and probably impossible, I was just going to restart the game. After Karn hit the board, I made Steve exile a card from his hand. He choose Black Sun's Zenith---fine, whatever. The next turn (he again failed to draw a creature), I ticked Karn up again, this time choosing the Primeval Titan in my own hand. "Hahahaha, I'm so smart," I thought. "I'm going to restart this game and just be in an epic position." Imagine this for a moment: I use Karn's ultimate with a Primeval Titan exiled. The game restarts. I get to go first (says the card errata). The Primeval Titan comes into play, so I fetch two lands. He doesn't have summoning sickness, so I attack and fetch two more. In this beautiful hypothetical, by the end of my first turn, I'd have 4-5 lands out, a 6/6 trampling Giant, and my opponent would be at 14 life. Fucking awesome. Unfortunately, I botched the whole thing by (right after exiling the Primeval Titan from my hand) casting an Inferno Titan and dealing 3 damage to Steve. At the end of the turn, Steve cast Go for the Throat on my titan and placed it under the Mimic Vat (Steal Ryan's shit and......well....I should have died). On Steve's turn, he could have made an Inferno Titan token with the Mimic Vat, double equipped it, attacked, and basically won the game, but he misplayed, failed to kill Karn, and I was able to exile the Mimic Vat and cast another Titan on the subsequent turn. I won the match, 2-0.

Go for the Throat was useless against the Solemns, but perfect against the Inferno Titan. I played foolishly because I gave Steve a target. There was no need to cast the Inferno Titan. Lesson learned.

In round 4 I played against a Grixis control deck (Grixis refers to the color combination B/R/U) with Heartless Summoning. The deck never really presented a challenge, and I won the match 2-0.

I received only two packs for my fifth place finish, but lo and behold, I pulled a Cavern of Souls from one of them, which has recently been added to my trade binder. All in all, a pretty sucessful tournament.