Time to blog. This weekend has been a busy one. With FNM on Friday and Game Day on Saturday, I've hardly had time to sit down and write about the tournament experiences. Both tournaments went relatively well for my R/G Wolf Run deck. I scored 3-1 at FNM, taking third place, and 3-0-1 at Game Day, placing clear first.

I made some minor changes to my R/G Wolf Run deck based on various versions that I've seen online. Most notably, I think the addition of extra copies of Thrun, the Last Troll really helps the deck against the current metagame, and is a better addition than Owen Turtenwald states in his article (you can read the article here). Thrun can act as a blocker against Strangleroot Geist, Wolfir Avenger, and provides some defense against Zealous Conscripts. I've always been a fan of the card and I think it provides a much needed defensive presence in the deck.

I disagree with Owen's recommendation about Huntmaster of the Fells. I've never liked Huntmaster in the deck because he often just dies to my own Slagstorm or Whipflare, and I have no time to wait to flip him. Nevertheless, I do run 2 copies of Huntmaster right now, because he is good against both aggro decks and Delver decks and speeds the deck up slightly.

I did add a copy of Bonfire of the Damned to my deck, based on Owen's recommendation. I just thought I'd try it. So far, it hasn't really done much.

I did however, love Owen's recommendation of adding 4 Glimmerposts to the maindeck and removing the Cavern of Souls to the sideboard. In the current aggro-heavy metagame, Glimmerpost is just bad ass.

Finally, I also don't agree with Owen's recommendation to add Pillar of Flame. The fact that Pillar of Flame is a sorcery seriously influences its playability in Wolf Run. Consider this; if I'm on the draw, then Pillar of Flame makes some sense: On the first turn, I draw, play a land, and then I can cast Pillar and kill the Birds of Paradise (or the Doomed Traveler). However, on the play Pillar of Flame is less useful, since the soonest I could kill something with it is on turn 2, and I often simply want to ramp on that turn. If one recognizes that Pillar is best used on Strangleroot Geist, then there is simply no convenient time to cast it where it doesn't disrupt the usual ramp plan.

Now on to the games.

FNM

On Friday night I played at Guardian Games, scoring 3 wins and 1 loss (for third place).

In round 1, I faced off against R/G Aggro run by Molly, who surprisingly, was a girl! It's not often that you get to play Magic against women and that made this round kind of special. The games were pretty close. Molly was able to win Game 2 on the back of a Strangleroot Geist equipped with a Sword of Feast and Famine. I won games 1 and 3 though, and the match thus ended 2-1 in my favor.

In rounds 2 (and 3!) I played against Mono Blue Architect. This list is also described in Owen's article (again, see the article here) and I can tell you that despite Owen's advice, the list is pretty good. Yes, it does rely on Wurmcoil Engine quite a bit, but my deck doesn't have good answers for Wurmcoil Engine so that's not a knock on the deck. In addition, the 8 clone effects in the deck are actually kind of a problem, since the blue player is often just cloning my Titans like crazy. Finally, the deck runs a full complement of Vapor Snags and Snapcasters, which has always been a problem for the R/G Wolf Run player. I won the first match, but lost the second, and so entered the fourth and final round of the tournament 2-1.

In round 4, I was paired against Ryan, who conceded to me in exchange for a prize split and the use of some blue cards to try the mono-blue deck. He's supposed to get back to me regarding his thoughts on how the deck runs.

And so that was FNM this week. I think I scored like $15 in prizes, which i used to partially pay for a foil Darkslick Shores. Go me.

GAME DAY

Game Day went even better than FNM. I decided to play at Otherworlds Games (which I generally don't like), because I thought the competition would be easier and because it's close to my house. Jonathan Chu, Nathan Doyle, and Austin showed up, but otherwise the tournament was relatively free of veterans. I ended up scoring 3-0-1 to take clear first.

In round 1 I faced off against B/W tokens. My opponent never really got the anthem effects he needed, and I won the match easily, 2-0.

In round 2, I played against Jonathan Chu, who was running BUG Pod. Jonathan is a good player, a veteran with good deck building skills, and I thought the match could go either way. He got land screwed in game 1 and I killed his only Birds of Paradise, thereby leaving him with 2 mana the rest of the game. Game 2 was closer, but Jonathan land flooded and was unable to draw any action. Just like that, the match was over. I now have 2 wins in a row against Jonathan, and his previous win streak against me has been erased---so that's one good takeaway from this tournament.

In round 3 I played against Nathan Doyle running U/B Control. Strangely, I won game one, which almost never happens against U/B control because my deck just has a terrible matchup. I lost game 2 to a Grave Titan and a Phyrexian Metamorph copying the Grave Titan. Needless to say, there were a lot of zombies on the board in game 2. I won game 3 on the back of a third turn Thrun, the Last Troll, who delivered 16 points of damage before dying to a Phrexian Metamorph. Unforunately, Nathan had to spend 2 life to cast the Metamorph, which put him at 2. I resolved an Inferno Titan on the subsequent turn for the win. I won the match 2-1.

In the last round I intentionally drew with Ruben who was running R/W Humans. We played the match out just for fun and I won, 2-1.

So that was Game Day. As prize for first place I received 9 packs, which I traded in for another Sword of War and Peace. Why crack 9 packs and game when i can just get a guaranteed $35 mythic rare?