RUG Delver
Taylor Scott
1st Place at StarCityGames Legacy Open on 2/9/2014
The beatdown is centered around a trio of very mana efficient creatures with Delver of Secrets, Nimble Mongoose and Tarmogoyf. All three grow much larger then they’re costed at and can quickly decimate your opponents life total. Then with a stacked control suite of Force of Will, Daze, Spell Pierce and Spell Snare almost any threat can be suppressed before it even starts threatening. You can’t have a blue deck in Legacy without the requisite draw package with Brainstorm and Ponder helping not only to dig through your deck but also to set up the top of your deck to flip Delver. The red slips into the deck with a modest amount of burn with Lightning Bolt and Forked Bolt both working to remove small pesky creatures or dome the skull to finish off the opponent. The final piece of the puzzle is the resource denial which comes primarily with Wasteland razing their mana but also the sneaky and handy Stifle which can prevent a fetch after they’ve paid a life and sacrificed it already. And it can also be used against an Emrakul or Storm trigger just to name a few.
Creatures (22)
Spells (15)
Sideboard
Planeswalkers (10)
Spells (23)
Sideboard
Here we have another Planeswalker themed control deck along the lines of Zendikar’s Super Friends or last seasons Junk Walkers. It is really just your good ol’ UW control from Theros standard with a small splash of green for Kiora, the Crashing Wave and Mistcutter Hydra out of the sideboard. It moves away from the Aetherling win con and opts for a Planeswalker plan only in the main.
The main deck contains UW‘s usual removal, counter and draw package. The powerful Azorius Charm is used mostly for tempo with Detention Sphere as four-ofs along side a couple of Last Breaths for removal. Your counter package is just a set of Dissolve and a Syncopate. For draw spells it’s primarily the instant speed Sphinx’s Revelation, but also Azorius Charm can be used for it’s draw one which can be handy in conjunction with the Scry from your lands and spells. Although there are no Divination or Opportunity, there is still Jace who coupled with Kiora‘s Explore ability is still a potent draw engine. Finally there’s a set of Supreme Verdict as your number one sweeper with Elspeth‘s minus three as a good alternative against things like RG Monsters and Desecration Demon.
This deck’s main goal is to survive long enough to stabilize on board than finally winning with the sheer power of it’s Planeswalkers or the odd time with Mutavault beatdown. You take control by wiping the board with Supreme Verdict or Elspeth and using Sphinx’s Revelation to come back by gaining life and drawing into your answers.
The sideboard gets interesting as it has a few surprises against opponents who side out all or most of there removal and sweepers. There is a set of Archangel of Thune and three Brimaz, King of Oreskos which if used together will make a rapidly growing token army when left unchecked. Mistcutter Hydra is a great answer against Mono-Blue Devotion. Pithing Needle for things like Maze’s End or other Walkers and Negate to counter any non-creature threats. Revoke Existence is mainly against Indestructible gods like Thassa or Erebos and can also get rid of Underworld Connections.
Creatures (21)
Spells (15)
Sideboard
While this deck is billed as a Bant Aggro list it is in essence a White Weenie variant. With its mana base such as it is sporting eight Scry lands there is no one drop in the deck instead looking to open with a Scry of the bat. The two drops then power the deck out of the gate with Voice of Resurgence, Precinct Captain and Fleecemane Lion to start laying the beats. Then we have the popular newcomer Brimaz, King of Oreskos and Loxodon Smiter next at three on the curve. Also filling at three mana there is the decks utility removal Detention Sphere and the creature buff Spear Of Heliod. All of that serves to build the devotion count for the two gods which fill the four drop slot with Heliod, God of the Sun able to clutter the board while granting Vigilance to all your creatures and Ephara, God of the Polis which serves as the decks primary draw engine. In true White Weenie form this deck uses Brave the Elements as both a way to save it’s creatures from targeted removal and as an enabler for Alpha Strike wins. Finally we have utility from Selesnya Charm which is able to either push a creature over the top, exile a big nuisance creature including a god or just add an extra body to the board to keep the pressure on. All in all a powerful and exciting deck sure to hold a spot in the meta.
So by now everybody has gotten their hooks or teeth into the Born of the Gods expansion and have probably started to brew up a hundred new decks or just stuck to minor modifications to current decks in the format. Well, I’m not exception. But I’m not going to look at Standard today, I want to look at Theros Block Constructed.
For those who don’t know what Block Constructed is, it is where you create a deck based off of cards from only a block. Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it? If you haven’t gotten it yet I will give you an example. The previous block involved Return to Ravnica, Gatecrash, and Dragon’s Maze, and if you constructed a deck out of only those cards then you would have a Block Constructed deck. So that means, if we move to the present block, that we are going to only use Theros and Born of the Gods for this exercise.
If you are asking why we would do something like this, and potentially ‘gimp’ ourselves in design space, you need to read my previous article about Pauper and how restricting your card selection forces you to look at things differently, challenges you more, and makes you see cards that you wouldn’t have normally looked at. Not to mention an exercise like this can prepare you for when the eventual standard format rotates.
I am going to use a focus card for this article, and one that caused a little bit of a stir when it wa previewed, Ragemonger.
I don’t know how many creatures or cards in the past have been able to reduce coloured cost of creature spells being cast, but there aren’t that many. Colourless cards have been printed throughout the ages starting from the days of Urza’s Incubator all the way through the Scourge with the Warchiefs, and beyond. But coloured cost is something special. It makes playing creatures much easier, most of them turning into colourless casing only, leaving you free to keep up whatever mana you need for your combat tricks and removal in your hand.
So, how can we abuse this? Let’s take a look at some of the more prominent Minotaurs that showed their heads in the last two sets.
Fanatic of Mogis, a devotion based Flametongue Kavu that hits your opponent’s life total instead of a creature. While sometimes that creature removal is preferred, it can’t be denied how much damage he can cause, especially if you remove the coloured mana costs. Can you imagine being able to spend three generic mana to get what he can do?
Felhide Spiritbinder, a creature with the new mechanic Inspired. When he becomes untapped, presumably during your untap step after having attacked with him the turn before, you can pay two mana to make a token copy of a creature you control and give it haste until the end of your turn. When you combine this with other minotaurs that have Enter the Battlefield abilities, such as the above mentioned Fanatic of Mogis, it can quickly get out of hand.
Kragma Warcaller is one of the biggest creatures that can be affected by Ragemonger, reducing his casting cost from five converted mana cost down to three. Would you like to play a turn four Warcaller for only three mana? Can you imagine how much damage that would punch your opponent for? Imagine if you copied it with Spellbinder?! Such potential.
Oracle of Bones, a new creature from Born of the Gods using the Tribute mechanic.which will either pump him up to a decent 5/3 or keep him at 3/1 and grant you a “free” instant or sorcery from your hand. (Side note: Going standard this can make split cards from Dragon’s Maze with fuse free, see Toil // Trouble)
And lastly the new Minotaur Lord, Rageblood Shaman. The last key piece to making a deck like this work is certainly a guy who will pump up your little cow army up and even give them the ability to trample over your opponent.
Now if we include a playset of each of these we have twenty-four of our sixty cards already spoken for. So what Black and/or Red (leaning more towards the Red) can we arm ourselves with?
Well, if we go expensive we can grab Hero’s Downfall for spot removal, Fall of the Hammer and Lightning Strike are cheaper ways to remove more roadblocks, Magma Jet to deal some damage and to dig for the key pieces. A playset of each of these and we have forty cards with which to bullrush our opponent. Trim that deck down a bit and we might be able to find something like this:
What do you think? It’s not Slivers, and it’s not Humans, it’s a tribal all of it’s own, and it ain’t no bull!
~ Gerald Knight
Extra Booty: Some things to consider if you want to take this into Standard, Boros Reckoner works amazingly well with Fanatic of Mogis and becomes cheaper with the Ragemonger. Any Black and/or Red Fuse cards from Dragon’s Maze become viable with the Oracle of Bones. Doom Blade is a cheap alternative to Hero’s Downfall and is also less mana restrictive. If you want to go really big you can include Mogis, God of Slaughter himself to keep the pressure on your opponent.
Creatures (28)
Planeswalkers (2)
Spells (5)
Sideboard
Well, well…the more things change the more they stay the same. This happens to be one of only two decks in the top 32 to not feature at least one new Born of the Gods card in its 75, the other being also Mono-Blue Devotion. The telling sign is that both of those decks were in the top 8 finishing first and seventh. But the major players were UW Control and GR Monster which combined for almost half of the top 32 pushing most of the devotion decks to the wayside.
So by now everybody has seen the new God of Dimir colours, Phenax. When he was previewed (without the rest of the set) it was met with mixed reactions, at least it was on Mythicspoiler.com. Half the people were saying how this card sucked and that they wished that Wizards would move away from the Mill deck, and the other half were screaming at how great the card would be, especially if you combined it with Consuming Aberration. Let that combo sink in for a minute. A powerful combo indeed and almost guaranteed to kill your opponent within 2-3 turns. But that is almost entirely a casual deck. Not that there’s anything wrong with casual, as it drives the market, but what surprised me was that nobody was talking about how this card could impact limited.
In limited this card is going to be a bomb, and in my opinion it is almost assuredly a snap first pick. When you figure that your opponent is running a 40 card deck then draw 7 on average for their first hand leaving them with 33 cards, and then by the time you get to play this baby down they have drawn 4-5 cards more leaving them with 28 cards or so. And with this guy as a milling engine, the games won’t last long. Much in the same way that Jace used to pump your deck in 2-3 turns when he hit the table and milled 10. Only this isn’t a planeswalker, can’t be destroyed or attacked directly. It’s an indestructable God. So there is my limited analysis for you.
But back to the group of people that really drive this game, the casual market. This guy is going to be a lot of fun and people are going to try and work him to death to make the fabled mill deck that seems to have become as niche a collection of cards as classic burn has. So I thought to myself, why not try and see what can be done by combining as many high toughness stall out wall-type creatures in the deck as possible and waiting out Phenax to drop.
Sadly we have no one drop defenders in Black or Blue, but we have several two drops that will fit in quite nice. The first is Doorkeeper, a 0/4 defender which has built in milling already, which works well if you don’t have Phenax out already, but is probably a little lackluster once Phenax is in play. Next we have Murmuring Phantasm, a very simple 0/5 defender for one and a blue. Nothing too complicated, but it will clog up the ground rather nicely. In keeping with going alphabetically we have Returned Phalanx next at a 3/3 with defender and a little combat trick that will let you attack if need be.
Moving into our three cost slot we can find Corpse Blockade, a nice 1 /4 creature that has a little combat trick of sacrificing a creature to gain deathtouch. An ability that should make opponents wary about attacking into you at all times if you have another creature to offer up to the god. After that comes a very nice Hover Barrier, a 0/6 defender with flying to boot. There isn’t much out there that isn’t monstrous that this fat wall won’t take care of. And after that comes an old goodie in Wall of Frost, a 0/7 defender that can cause your opponents creatures to stall out for a turn if they are blocked by him. And then we have the new member to the Fat Defender family from Born of the Gods with Black Oak of Odunas, a 0/5 defender for two and a black that can pump itself up with +1/+1 until the end of the turn at the cost of a Black mana and tapping another creature.
But we can’t rely on just these defenders in order to keep our opponent at bay, we need spells too. Defensive spells, such as Hero’s Downfall, Doom Blade, and Voyage’s End. Cards that can stall out our opponent until we can get our awesome defender mill engine online. Another card that came to mind is Far//Away, a multi-purpose card that acts as both an edict and a boomerang effect. Versatility goes a long way in deck construction.
So where would that leave us? Well, lets throw something together.
Creatures (24)
Spells (12)
Lands (24)
Overall, this is a very casual deck, and doesn’t appear to do very much, but when you get the engine online your opponent is bound to pull his (or her) hair out. It has the potential to be a very deceiving deck.
Until next time,
~ Gerald Knight
Adrenaline started pumping as I walked through the door to the shop, seeing it filled with only a few people. The owner of the store playing a match of magic at a table close by, he greeted my friend and myself. I remarked that there weren’t as many people as last time, to which he replied “just wait, there will be more” and with that I looked up at the Harley Quinn clock to note there was still half an hour until the Born of the Gods pre-release was to begin. Maybe he was right, maybe the field would grow. It was always more enjoyable with more people.
The half hour passed with introductions of my friend to the locals of the shop that had already shown up, digging through the commons boxes for a chance that I would find those Slippery Bogle’s I need for my legacy deck, and deciding which sleeves I was going to buy for the event. It is a tradition I started a while ago and keep to this day. New cards, new sleeves. My friend was going to do the same thing and of all the choices that were there he wanted the yellow shields. Leaving me with Black, White, and Purple. Black seems so plain and I have had them before, and White is so bland, so Purple it was. I’m not a huge fan of Purple as a colour, but maybe tonight it would help me out. (ed. note – you had the lucky 3KL Purple !!!)
The store filled up faster than I had anticipated and before I knew it we were packed and starting to roll dice for our picking order. Two d10 were set on the main table and we all took turns rolling. I rolled a 54, which didn’t mean much more than I would be choosing from the middle of the pack of people. My friend however rolled 99 which meant that unless someone rolled ‘aces’ he was going to get first pick of the box of 5, then the next person down got to pick until the box was empty at which point we opened a new box and continued the process. It was fair and made sure that people didn’t just hoard all of the colours perceived to be more powerful than the others, such as Blue which is what my friend picked when the order was sorted out.
I lucked out when my number was called and we were fresh into a new box, only blue having been called and so I went with my second choice. White. The pre-release creature seemed rather powerful compared to all of the others, and it had the best common removal for the format that I could see with Revoke Existence, and there were going to be a lot of enchantments running around.
The rest of the packs are given out and we are told that we can open them and start building. Excitedly I open up my “Destined to Lead” box and pull out the Quest card and look it over. Target my pre-release creature or return an enchantment creature from the graveyard to the battlefield, sounded like an easy enough quest. Then I picked up my seeded pack and proceeded to tear the plastic off. It was filled with white, and a few blue cards and a red card. But none of that mattered as I looked to the rare. Hero of Iroas! I couldn’t be more excited, and a little disappointed too, but only because I already had 4 on pre-order with 3KL. Oh well, a fifth one won’t hurt me and it is a fantastic card to have in your sealed pool right? Not to mention there was a Ghostblade Eidolon in the pack. I opened up the next pack and feel a bit of joy and disappointment again. Ephara, God of the Polis. The second worst god in my opinion. But it was a god, so who was I to complain really. I didn’t hurt that there was an Archetype of Courage in the pack either, which is in my opinion the best of the Archetype cycle. The last Born of the Gods pack gave a Temple of Enlightenment and an Ephara’s Enlightenment. I think the Gods were trying to tell me something.
I quickly set all of those cards aside and ripped through the Theros packs to find anything that could compliment what was already starting to form into a very aggressive Blue/White Heroic deck, and I couldn’t have laughed any more when I pulled a Fabled Hero. Number 5 for my collection like the Hero of Iroas, but hell, I didn’t care at that point. Everything was falling into place and I couldn’t have been more giddy. I worked through my card pool and thinned it down to twenty-three playables and this is what I came up with:
1x Ephara, God of the Polis – Cast a creature spell on your turn, draw a card on theirs
1x Fabled Hero – Double Strike – Heroic +1/+1
1x Hero of Iroas – Aura’s cost 1 less, Heroic +1/+1
1x Temple of Enlightenment – Blue/White Scry land
1x Silent Sentinel – Attack and return an enchantment to the battlefield
1x Archetype of Courage – Creatures you control get First Strike, opponents don’t
1x Ephara’s Enlightenment – Creature gains flying and gets a +1/+1 counter
1x Ghostblade Eidolon – Doublestrike, Bestow
1x Phalanx Leader – Heroic +1/+1 counters on all creatures you control
1x Akroan Skyguard – Flying, Heroic +1/+1
1x Battlewise Valor – Creature gets +2/+2 until EoT, Scry 1
1x Crypsis – Creature gets Protection from Creatures until EoT, untap it
1x Ephara’s Radiance – Creature gets 1W{T}: Gain 3 life
1x Griptide – Target creature goes back ontop of it’s owners library
1x Hopeful Eidolon – Lifelink, Bestow
1x Loyal Pegasus – Flying, can’t attack or block alone
1x Mortal’s Ardor – Creature get’s +1/+1 and Lifelink until EoT
2x Nyxborn Shieldmate – Bestow
1x Observant Alseid – Vigilance, Bestow
1x Omen Speaker – Scry 2
2x Revoke Existence – Exile target Artifact or Enchantment
1x Stratus Walk – Creature gains flying, can only block flying, draw a card
Overall, I was quite happy with this Heroic deck. It had just enough creatures, of which five could be used to trigger heroic, and I only had to splash a moderate amount of blue. I don’t think I could have built it any better or lucked out in the pool I received. I was happy as anything and eagerly awaited my first match.
The store hushed as names were called out. I listen carefully and then groan slightly as I hear my name paired up with Brian. He is one of the locals in the store and is generally a really good player. Looks like my road to victory wasn’t going to start easy. Oh well, that just means it will be all the sweeter. We roll off and I keep while playing first. I get off a quick start with a Hero of Iroas and just start pumping him with bestowed creatures. I realized quickly how powerful the Nyxborn Eidolon was as a cheap heroic trigger, and I start beating my opponents face in. I think it was turn five or six when I beat him. He sides into a few cards and we start match two. The play starts off fast out of the gate for me again and I build outwards with a Phalanx Leader, an Archetype of Courage, and an Omen speaker each with a few counters and swing in to drop him to 3 life. Next turn was death, my death. I got tunnel vision and didn’t realize that swinging would leave me open to lethal. I then realized that this wasn’t going to be as easy I thought and that I had to play smarter. Third match couldn’t have started worse for me. Turn 3 I met up with a Nullify on my Fabled Hero. From there it was an uphill battle, but I managed to get another pumped up Hero of Iroas and Ephara out. This was where my opinion on Ephara turned around, as I was able to keep a steady draw of cards going and my field built up enough that the stand off we found ourselves in could quickly swing my way. At least it was that way until a Sudden Storm tapped them down during my declare attackers step and my opponent swung with two Arbiter of the Ideal’s in back to back turns to build out and finish me off. But I did manage to get my quest done when in the last match I got the Sentinel into play and returned a Stratus Walk to play on the Hero of Iroas.
Not a great start to the night. I couldn’t believe that I had let him win that second match, and my confidence was almost shattered right there. But I vowed that I was going to go into the next matches with my wits about me and the fog of drowsiness behind me. I grabbed a Monster Energy drink and pounded it back. This wasn’t going to happen again.
My next opponent , Cody, created an Orzhov deck with his pool. My first hand after he shuffled was filled with all five of the islands in my deck, and two white cards. I wasn’t keeping this, and then went down to five when my next hand showed no land. This wasn’t starting out too well. My third hand wasn’t too good, as it only had one land, but it had a Pegasus and a Hero of Iroas so I kept it. My opponent started out with a quick Gorgon’s Head to match my Pegasus. My next turns I lucked out catching a break with drawing into mana and being able to play out my Hero of Iroas while my opponent merely played lands and passed. I swung in for some damage over the next few turns, putting the pressure on him until his fifth turn he dropped a Sentry of the Underworld. My Pegasus assault was stopped and I could only attack with the Hero, slowing his demise. Next turn he equipped the Gorgon’s Head and left mana open to Regenerate him. Thankfully I drew into a Ghostblade Eidolon and with the help of Hero of Iroas aura reducing powers manage to Bestow it on him, to swing in for what would be lethal unless he blocked with the Sentry, which of course he did and he paid the three life to regenerate it, not realizing that because of double strike the Sentry was going to die anyway. The next turn I found a Fabled Hero and that was game as he couldn’t draw into anything to stop it.
The second game went very much like the first except I managed to not have to mulligan down to five, and only mulliganed down to six this time. So first turn he dropped the Gorgon’s Head, I dropped my Pegasus. He played out lands while I played a Fabled Hero and an Archetype of Courage and a Stratus Walk. Eventually he played out the Sentry again and equipped the Gorgon’s Head to it, but it was already too late as I was able to push damage through with an Akroan Skyguard after the Sentry had been dealt with. It was a quick victory, and made me feel more confident about the deck and my choices.
Cameron was my third opponent who was also sitting with a 1-1 record. He had built a Rakdos deck and started off our match complaining about how he had been getting hosed on mana almost every match. Apparently he would get enough mana to cast what he had in hand, except that it was always of the off colour. Inwardly I grinned because I knew that my deck was more streamlined than his, and shouldn’t have as many problems with mana even though I’d had to aggressively mulligan in previous matches.
Reflecting back on it, I only had five cards that were off colour, and 6 sources of blue mana, not to mention that I only had three cards over four converted mana cost. It was a really well built deck, and I just knew that I could take on his deck if he was complaining about mana issues.
The first match went similar to how I battled Cody with the Hero of Iroas coming down on turn two with the next turn being followed by a Ephara’s Radiance to swing in for three damage, keeping two mana up for when he attacked, so I could Crypsis and kill his Nyxborn Eidolon. Then swinging back the next turn after dropping an Observant Alseid and eating his life total away. He missed on a critical land drop and scooped game one. The second match saw him sitting on two mana while I dropped Fabled Hero on turn three into a Stratus Walk on turn four, and my opponent struggling to keep up. The match finished quickly after that when he couldn’t find a way to eliminate the aerial threat and I rejoiced and breaking above the fifty percent margin with one more match to go.
Between matches myself and a few of the guys in our grouping began to figure out how things were going to play out. See, Brian had played and lost against the currently undefeated Barry and was the only other player to have a 2-1 record, which meant that unless the computer screwed something up I was facing probably one of the best players at the shop. And I was right. What made this more amusing was that we had been sitting next to each other when we were opening our packs and building our decks. He knew I had pulled the two Heros and Ephara, and I knew that he was on RUG with the 6/6 Tribute pre-release guy. It was going to be an interesting match to say the least.
So we sat down and rolled the dice. I lost by one Which in that building usually is a sign of good luck as I tend to win matches when that happens. He played out an Island and for the first time that day got to play out my Temple of Enlightenment first turn and Scry’d away a land that would have put me over the curve of four that I already had in my hand. He played a second land and passed while I played down an Akroan Skyguard. He dropped a third land with no play, which is where the game started looking really bleak for him because I dropped a Pegasus, and Ephara’s Radiance to start the beat down from the sky. He played down a fourth land and dropped down a Bow of Nylea. This could have been bad, very bad. I swing in for what damage I could get off before dropping an Archetype of Courage as a little bit of ground insurance. His next turn he played down another creature, but failed to leave mana open for the bow activation to take down the flyer. Which he paid for next turn as I played a Revoke Existence and removed it as a factor and swung again. In his last ditch effort to slow his death he played the Nessian Wilds Ravager hoping he could get a creature taken care of, because lets face it, nobody wants to stare down a 12/12 with cards like Aqueous Form in the format. But I was holding a Griptide in hand and allowed him to have the extra six +1/+1 counters only to return it to the top of his library next turn and swing in for lethal.
This was when he remarked at just how fast the deck was, and conceded that his probably wouldn’t be able to keep up, but wanted to try anyways for obvious reason. I mean we were playing for packs. The way we figured it we were playing for first and second. There was honor at stake. Well, there wasn’t actually, but why not see if my deck had what it took to take him down, right?
So the next match gets underway he drops a Satyr Hedonist into a second land, and I drop down a second turn Hero of Iroas, which I have to say really is the best card I played all day. His third turn saw. Third turn he played a third land and passed, where I played a Stratus Walk and an Bestowed Nyxborn Shieldmate and swung for five in the air. His fourth turn saw the Bow of Nylea come out again. I came back and swung for another five in the air and played down more land, with Ephara coming down to the board. This was where his hopes came alive thinking that he could have the game swing in his favour and I had to applaud him for the neat little trick, because the Bow couldn’t deal enough damage to destroy the Hero. He attacked in with the Hedonist making it an attacking creature and triggering off the Bow, and then cast a Fall of the Hammer to have the satyr deal damage to the Hero and kill it before combat resolved. It was a cute trick and worked to get rid of the biggest threat he had seen. The next turn I played a Revoke Existence on the Bow to ensure it didn’t happen again and put a Fabled Hero out in place of the Hero of Iroas. The next few turns saw nothing of consequence from him until he played down an Akroan Conscriptor, which had me worried because by that time I had built up a 10/10 Lifelink Double Strike Fabled Hero. Mind you I was at fifty life by that point, so I was comfortable. But I didn’t like the idea of him stealing it from me and keeping himself alive. Fortunately that didn’t last too long as I played down a Sentinel and he scooped having no way to deal with it.
I finally breathed as the match came to a close and went to report to the organizer the results of the match. He seemed almost surprised that I managed to take Barry down in two matches, but then again so was I. All that remained was waiting to see how we seeded in the rankings and get our prizes. I was pretty confident that I was going to go home with a bunch of packs. I mean I only had two losses in games and finished with an overall 7-2 record having won six straight games and I beat the only undefeated third round player. Then the organizer came out and handed the first stack of packs to Brian. My first opponent. He then handed the next pile to Barry, and I got the shortest pile having come in third. Apparently we all had the same record and it came down to percentages and Cody and Cameron didn’t help my odds any.
I was a little upset, I will admit. But I still managed a respectable third, and have every confidence that if I had to play more rounds or was in a GP or grander event that I could have continued to stomp face. Though there was a certain irony of this pre-release that occurred to me as I opened my prize packs. The last pre-release I participated in, Theros, saw me lucking out and getting the colour I wanted, Black. It saw me playing four of my six rares, and I ended up third place with first place being the only guy that beat me that night. What are the chances?
I hope you enjoyed the story and may the gods of the mulligan ever be in your favour.
~ Gerald Knight
