While I did remember a little information I’m still trying to get the process down of taking notes on the sheet where I keep track of both players’ life totals so I can talk more specifically about what happened each game and have a better overall tournament report. That did not happen this time because it was my first limited event in a long while and I had to concentrate on my plays a lot more than I do in constructed. I did take notes after a couple of the game that were more interesting than the others so I do have a few things to talk about!
I think what happened to most people at the prerelease was that they cracked their packs saw a
Lightning Bolt or two and decided they had to play some burn variant. While
Lightning Bolt is good (especially in limited) I found that the matchups against decks that were running it were by far the easiest. They had the
Lightning Bolts but nothing else from red to really back it up efficiently. People must have also cracked
Elite Vanguard and felt that meant they were going to go white / red because the majority of my matches either had red or white in them. This is also probably because red is one of the strongest colors for limited play.
First Matchup vs Red/ White Game One: He got mana flooded and I made a
Centaur with
Oakenform and beat him to death.
Game Two: He got my into single digits before I made my
Baneslayer Angel and proceeded to bash his brains in again.. This was what happened during the majority of the games I managed to win
1-0
Second Matchup vs Red / Green
Game One:
Oakenformed a couple
Centaurs and beat him down before he could really get anything going.
Game Two: Same as game one except he managed to grab his
Garuuk and used him to accelerate and eventually he popped his ultimate
Game Three: Was forced to enchant my
Llanowar Elves with two
Oakenforms and went swinging into his full board. He triple blocked because he had a
Garruk out then I proceeded to do nothing at all until he had enough creatures to overrun with
Garruk for the win.
1-1Third Matchup vs Red / White
Game One: He made two
Elite Vanguards with
Holy Strengths for each and killed me very fast
Game Two: He got going pretty quick with another
Elite Vanguard toting
Holy Strength but I managed to hang on long enough to play my
Baneslayer Angel and turn the tides
Game Three: This was quite possibly the most fun I had all day (also the the most luck I had all day) I had
Baneslayer Angel in my opener with a couple lands including a
Terremorphic Expanse. He was proceeding to beat me down and burn me with multiple weenies and a couple
Lightning Bolts to stop my fliers in their tracks. On fifth turn I was forced to
Nature’s Spiral my
Terremorphic Expanse to get the fifth land and two white I needed to get my
Baneslayer online. This was something that helped me a lot throughout my matchups to get the different colorations I needed and kept me from getting mana screwed in a lot of critical situations. I finally cast my
Baneslayer and pass turn. He sighs and draw go’s, missing his land drop for the turn.
I top a land and smile to myself because I know if something happens to my
angel I just got rid of one of my only recursion spells to get that
Terramporphic back from my yard. I lay it down and play the last card in my hand:
Oakenform, attaching it to the
angel (sweet! 8 / 8 Flying- Lifelink!!) and swing for 8 to his face putting us about even as far as life totals were concerned. I pass turn and he pulls the top card off of his deck looking extremely relieved when lays down his sixth land and taps the lot of em’. I can only look on with a sinking feeling when he flips a
Planar Cleansing, the only one I’ve seen all day, and wipes the board. This was my death sentence because at that point I had no hand and his deck was much, much faster than mine. I untap my lands and knock the top of my deck for luck before drawing the top card.. my one and only
Disentomb! The best possible card in my deck to top! Now glad I had used my
Spiral on that
Terramorphic, I flip the spell targeting my
angel, grab it from my yard and put it back in play via my 5 untapped lands. The rest went quickly because he had nothing else to answer the 5 / 5. Yet another example of how it’s better to be lucky than good.. :P
2-1
Fourth Matchup vs Red / White
•
Game One: I stick my
Griffin Sentinel and attach
Oakenform early and start beating until he gets
Blinding Mage online and keeps me at bay for a few turns. I finally get enough threats on the field (
Child of Night and
Centaur) to get past his tappers and swing for the win.
• Game Two: I get a couple threats online and he turns my Centaur Courser with Oakenform against me using Act of Treason for 6 to my face. This was really fortunate because the next turn I was preparing to get Baneslayer online and if he had Act of Treason-ed it instead It would have given him at least one more turn to recover. I swing for the win a couple turns later.
3-1
Yay! I’m guaranteed to get a pack at this point in the tournament and I’m feeling pretty good about how the deck is performing.
Fifth Matchup vs Blue / Black
This was the first time I had come up against either of these colors all day and they trounced me. This guy had an amazing pool to draw from. He had 2 Hypnotic Specters, the 3/3 Phantom Warrior, two Assassinates, and many other fliers.
Game One: He got both his hyppies online and screwed my hand over on his way to pecking me to death over the next few turns.
Game Two: Repeat
This deck didn’t even have a chance against his unless I happened to get Baneslayer online though even if I had I wouldn’t have been able to attack with it because of his Assassinates which popped up both games. I would have had to play defensively until I could figure out how to get rid of his specters. Overall this deck’s worst nightmare.
3-2
Sixth Matchup vs Red / White / Green
Game One: He curved out perfectly into his green aggro creatures like: Elite Vanguard and Bramble Creeper with Whispersilk Cloak attached to it. I got mana flooded…yay!
Game Two: I curved perfectly into a fifth turn Baneslayer Angel and did what this deck does best: Attack with Baneslayer Angel until death…
Game Three: He got out a few good white creatures including Lightwielder Paladin, Elite Vanguard and Honor of the Pure and beat me down.. Horribly..
3-3
Overall it was a very interesting day of magic to say the least. I wasn’t displeased with my performance as much as I was my card pool. I’m sorry that I didn’t take better notes on my games but I will try to do better in the future! I always like playing limited because it is more about your deck building skills and a little bit of luck rather than your wallet. Not that I’m saying all constructed tournaments are like that but limited just puts everybody on a little more equal footing as far as what cards they can afford to use. Prereleases are always the best tournaments anyway because everybody is buzzing about the new cards and the excitement level is very high!
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