So, I’m back and all bleary eyed from my Khans of Tarkir prerelease experience. Wow…what a time! Let’s get out in front of this…I didn’t do very well. I played in the Two-Headed Giant prerelease on the Sunday evening and it was packed! We ended up in the pizza joint next door for deck construction as overflow and it was nuts. With that many players it was bound to be a tough hill to climb and it was exactly as I expected. My brother, who is my usual partner, and I had a record of 2 wins, 3 losses, and 1 draw. We ended up way down the standings, but had tons of fun and really didn’t feel like our record was indicative of the strength of our decks.
In the first game we were a little slow off the mark but were starting to make some headway and stabilize the board. It wasn’t helping matters that I drew land for 6 consecutive turns forcing my partner to handle the load of the work. However, just as we were turning the corner and getting things set up to really get in the match we got hit with a HUGE Icy Blast that tapped us down for 2 full turns. Needless to say, we didn’t last long because that sort of tempo play is just backbreaking. We took it on the chin and were 0-1 to start.
In game two our opponents got out to a quick start and built up some solid board presence. However, they got tentative and tried to slow roll us as they set up their kill stroke. However, when both our decks roared to life at the same time, and yet another HUGE Icy Blast later, we had them dead and kicking themselves for playing so slowly. We moved on in a very respectable 1-1.
Game 3 was a situation where we came out and dictated play reasonably well. We had strong board presence, had preserved our life total reasonably well, and generally were in good shape…until they hit us with…you guessed it…Icy Blast. Well, that was the game and we were 1-2. You may have noticed that we were just getting crushed by Icy Blast and it was doing some work. Essentially, whoever resolved Icy Blast typically won out and it proved to be a ridiculous bomb.
Game 4 we were on the beatdown plan pretty hard. We had them on the ropes pretty good and were laying waste to them pretty hard when out of nowhere came End Hostilities clearing the board. Since they knew it was coming they could follow up with some explosive creatures and very quickly we found ourselves in a hole. We just never recovered from the Board Wipe and they quickly mopped up the rest of the damage to leave us 1-3 and feeling pretty sorry for ourselves because we felt we deserved a better fate,
Game 5 was one of those games that everything went our way. We dodged all their big spells, countered or killed all the most relevant threats and generally had the run of things. However, they scrounged and wouldn’t give up and we ended up going to extra turns. In the end we drew, but it should have been a win for us…with our life total being at a ridiculous 49 life to their 2 points and all the threats in the world. We just couldn’t quite seal the deal leaving us in a draw. This sort of game leaves a bad taste in your mouth because we had the win…we could see it…we just didn’t quite get it in time. Sweet…everyone loves to be 1-3 and a draw.
It was at this point that we dropped the actual event, but we did sit down with some buddies of ours who came with us to play. They had fared much the same way we had and were way down in the standings, so they dropped too and we played them in a sort of exhibition game with our Limited decks. It was pretty fun but we pretty much ran them over quite quickly. I’ll call this a win for us, even though it doesn’t appear in the standings. 2-3 and a draw…not ideal, but fairly reasonable.
Here’s my deck:
Overall, my impression of the format was that it felt very slow. With so many tapped lands entering play to enable the wide array of colours, early pressure was super important and usually left your opponent reeling. The good news was that it was easy as pie to meet your mana requirements in terms of colours. I found that all evening I was able to cast my spells and never in need of looking for double black or double white to cast my spells…I always had it. The “Refuge” land cycle was hugely important because it was occupying a common slot in just about each booster pack and was readily available to provide the fixing that was needed. Also, casting costs seemed to be generally pretty high and did not have a ton of easy to cast 1-2 and 3 drops. The argument on the flip side was that Morph could enable a quicker play, but a 2/2 for 3 is pretty poor considering what else we can get. I’m not sure I saw Morph get used to its fullest abilities in this first go around, but it definitely looked powerful and could do some very neat things. I liked the Limited play in general, but deck construction proved very challenging as I had to balance a number of colour requirements, a reasonable curve, and generally manage the demands of straining my mana that little bit further than normal.
Icy Blast- This was a devastating card all night long. Every time it resolved it pretty assured that a winner was going to be declared soon. For limited this is a ridiculous bomb and automatic include in your deck. If you see this in a Draft, grab it, even if you aren’t in blue just to ensure you don’t need to face it down.
End Hostilities- Another disgusting bomb that messed things up. Not as scary as Icy Blast, but still very good and pretty uncool to try and face down. At least now you have the option of countering it, but it is still pretty crushing if you can hit it.
High Sentinels of Arashin- This is a disgusting bomb. A 3/4 flier for 4 mana is pretty good, but it is the additional abilities that makes it just busted. It gets +1/+1 for each creature you control with a counter on it. Cool…but in Abzan that’s EVERYTHING. This was routinely a 8/9 creature for me, and with the “Sliver-esque” feel to the Abzan it could get first strike, trample, Lifelink, or anything else really. It’s pretty crazy to say the least.
Abzan “lords”- As I said, the “Sliver-esque” ability of the Abzan to grant each other abilities can make for a devastating combination if left unchecked. It resulted in gross amounts of life gain through the Lifelink granted by Abzan Battle Priest and coupled with the High Sentinels I had a full team of disgusting, Lifelinking monsters to terrorize my opponents. I liked them and they all synergized well together.
On the whole, I liked the Outlast mechanic, but I found it very slow. Some of the other abilities, like Prowess or Ferocious ended up being easier to trigger and it was a bit of a challenge about when to spend the mana on the Outlast counter and tap the creature down versus when to keep it up to block.
Feed the Clan. Normally I would never run a card like this. Pure, unadulterated life gain is just not something I like to play, but we kept getting blown out on Icy Blast and such. So, both my brother and I main decked one of these with the express intent of firing one off to save our bacon and let us buy another turn in order to staff out getting knocked out of the match. Believe it or not, it worked. It bought us considerable time in one match and was not a dead card in another game we played. I could hardly believe it was playable. I’m still not convinced based on my small sample size, but I will be keeping an eye on it.
My MVP was Armament Corps. My opponents would always allow this to resolve thinking that it was just a 4/4, but it could target itself and be a nasty 6/6 to cope with it. However, the real benefit was in dumping the +1/+1 counters on other creatures (without utilizing their Outlast mechanic) to gain the benefits of the Abzan “lord” cards or to trigger the High Sentinels. It proved to be a terrific barrier to shut out an aggressive ground game and a great way to enable powerful plays through the synergy with other Abzan cards. This was a quiet star and one I was always glad to see turn up.
Honestly, while it was useful a couple of times, Take up Arms largely disappointed. This is not M15 limited where Triplicate Spirits and the like are defining cards. This is an expensive card that spews out some counters that could be neat if you are all aboard the Warrior-tribal theme…but I think will usually be an under performing card. 1/1 tokens just aren’t relevant enough because they don’t really trade profitably with much unless you double (or usually triple!) block a creature. I would have rather played something more powerful at 5 mana than this.
I really enjoyed the Prerelease and wished I could have played a few more over the weekend, but needless to say that wasn’t possible based on my schedule. It was a ton of fun, but it was just a glimpse of the Limited format that is going to shape up now that Khans is hitting the stores. This format seems light years more complicated and nuanced than M15 which felt very narrow and stifled, but Khans is crazy diverse and a breath of fresh air. The next several months are bound to be fun.
Well, there we have it, thanks for reading this week. I’ll be back to my usual affairs of putting together a crack a pack and I’ve got some other irons in the fire in order to brew up some new decks and some other fun things. So, stay tuned as we start to ramp up some of the brewing and news now that Khans is here.
Until next time, keep it fun, keep it safe…and most importantly keep it is Casual.
by Bruce Gray – Casual Encounters @bgray8791 on Twitter
Montreal is a fantastic city. There are lots of interesting things to see, do, and experience around every corner. It’s extremely diverse meaning you can find almost any language on the planet , and almost as many delectable foods to try and smells to discover. The city is crazy for their favorite hockey team, the beloved Canadiens de Montréal, and the shopping is first rate. The city is a first rate city right up there on the world stage and when the latest GP descended on Montreal I knew I had to attend.
I had never been to a GP before and when I was taking stock of where all the GP’s were being held, the dates in Montreal all but jumped of the page. Here was an opportunity to experience something new, something unique, something truly special in a special city and I was going to be darned if I missed it.
So, I rallied a few of my friends and left my house at 5:30 am looking to make the 2 ½ hour drive to arrive at the GP in time for the morning events. I really had no intention of playing in the main event (the side events appealed just as much) but I wanted to witness the mass of humanity gathering to play Magic . So, after 3 stops to collect my friends, and another stop for breakfast/coffee at the local Timmies, and then another stop for a bathroom, we finally pulled into Montreal at 9am ready and raring to go.
My first impression of the location was full out awe. I’ve seen big crowds before, that wasn’t a concern, but to imagine all these people gathering to play Magic was something I’m not sure I could fully comprehend. The room seemed to be wall to wall people paired off and ready to play Magic. There were pros and Magic personalities that I recognized from a range of spots and they were rubbing elbows with regular players just there for the day. The organization of this many people must have been astronomical. I give kudos to everyone for the monumental task and I was very glad to see the event kick off because I was anxious to play on some of the side events.
Once I got my fill of the spectacle I turned my attention to the side events. My friends and I opted for the 10am sealed side event, which seemed like a solid idea. I like to play sealed as it forces you to think creatively and to play some cards you wouldn’t normally play. So, we signed up and then we waited. This was one of the hardest waiting games I’ve ever played but I suppose the process of organizing a venue as large as a GP has logistical issues. Our 10am event didn’t start until almost 12:30pm and our first game wasn’t until well after 1pm by which point I was hungry, a little annoyed, and eager to get my games in.
My sealed pool seemed solid to me with some really top notch cards like Anger of the Gods, Courser of Kruphix, Soldier of the Pantheon and Temple of Plenty. All the signs pointed to a solid G/W deck with some fun Heroic creatures, nifty enablers and some reasonable removal. So, I set about building my deck and sleeved up my cards. I was ready to rock and roll!
From this point on my games went terrible. At every turn I got smashed, by every manner of deck of almost every description. Sure, my deck would get the pieces together to win a game here and there, but never enough to win a match. I spent my afternoon getting drubbed over and over again and wondering what went wrong. I kept flipping through my extra cards wondering what I could side in…and saw no obvious answer. So, what was I missing?
It took 3 days after the GP for me to sit down and really reflect on what transpired during the sealed event we played. First off, there were a few errors during game play that I committed that I will need to correct, but I think those are manageable. What really sat with me were the errors I made in deck construction. Some of these lessons are things that I already knew and forgot about and others are newer issues that will need to be corrected for the next time.
1- Keep an open mind! The first issue was that I limited my card pool too quickly. I evaluated my cards and identified that Green and White were by far my best colours and immediately set about building a two colour deck. In some situations, if your sealed pool is deep enough, this can work just fine, but in my case after the first couple of cards the pool in both Green and White dried up significantly, meaning I was playing some suspect cards. The problem was that I was overly committed, in my own mind, to playing only two colours that I blinded myself to other options, and so instead of playing strong cards, regardless of colour, I forced myself to play substandard cards of only 2 colours. The lesson learned is to slow down and to be flexible when building your deck because three (or maybe 4 colours) is not the end of the world if they have the cards and abilities you need.
2- You can never have too many creatures! The second lesson I re-learned was that in limited format it is all about creatures. Rarely do you have enough strong combat tricks that you can full on trade your creatures for tricks in your 23 card slots. I routinely got stuck looking for creatures to cast my tricks on, but my creatures were too few and far between. Even if I was able to cast a couple of creatures they usually got targeted with the removal straight away meaning I was still looking for creatures. In some sets I would have been stuck running creatures OR spells. However, with Theros/Born of the Gods sealed I didn’t HAVE to choose because I could have opted for Bestow creatures that would have offered me benefits while enchanting my creatures and left with a body once the enchanted creature died. However, I was limited in terms of the number of Bestow creatures in Green or White, but had several in other colours. Once again, I should have opted to add a third colour, but this time for the benefit of the Bestow abilities.
3- Run as much removal as you can find…of any variety! The third lesson I re-learned is that removal, even if it doesn’t look like removal, is vital. Case in point is Griptide. This was one of my extras in Blue and I opted not to run it. It wasn’t really removal because the creature didn’t die, right? Wrong. What Griptide does do is it does remove a creature from the battlefield, even if only temporarily giving me a chance to find a better answer to deal with the threat or to change the board state suitably that my opponent no longer wanted to cast the spell. So, I needed to take off my blinders and allow myself to see that there were spells available to be used as removal, even if they weren’t the most conventional methods.
4- Play spells that will improve your board state in all situations! The final piece I learned is that cutesy spells like Warrior’s Lesson really have no place in a sealed deck. It neither provides damage or protection to my board state and at no point did I lack for cards so the card draw it afforded would be of minimum value. Quite the opposite, my hand was routinely well stocked with cards and filling my hand with more cards was not needed. It did make for a nifty Heroic trigger, but it was too infrequently used and would have been better off with another body instead. The question I should have asked myself is this: “In what situations do I want to top deck this spell?”. If the answer isn’t “in almost every situation” then I should be looking for something different. So, while the ability would have been neat, the fact remains that I was not well served by spells of this nature and would have been better off with spells that offered more.
Needless to say, it was a very humbling experience for me as I’m not accustomed to losing that frequently and it was a tad embarrassing. The long car drive home with my friends was hard to stomach as they chatted away merrily about the games they played and the wins they scrounged together. I ended up just having to bite my tongue and take their ridicule. The only real saving grace of the experience was that the other players I met were all very nice guys just looking to have some fun. Up and down the table there was not a single guy who acted like a jerk and many of them actually helped out their opponent by pointing out triggers that may have been missed. All in all, while the experience of playing with a bunch of decent guys was refreshing and lots of fun to meet the new guys, it was tough to accept being beaten as soundly as I was all day long.
So, in the end, I have to say I did enjoy the experience of attending my first ever GP and it was even better in Montreal. I didn’t get the results I was looking for from my matches, but I did enjoy the first hand experience and taking in the ambiance of the event. It was something I’ve never seen before and something to behold. I have absolutely no regrets about going and in fact will happily go again when there is a GP close to home again to get just a little taste of the event again. However, until then, I will need to content myself with some smaller events and to take the lessons learned in Montreal moving forward to the next I sit down to play in a limited format.
So, until next time, keep it fun, keep it safe…keep it casual.
Bruce Gray
Off to battle I went with my red white deck of unsurmountable speed. I know, that’s a big word for me, but I figured why not try and make my deck sound better than I anticipated it would be. To be honest, I didn’t really like my cardpool, not when I compare it to what I had at the pre-release. But that is my first problem. I’m comparing it to my previous sealed pool and I can’t do that. I have to look at this with fresh eyes, and so with a bit more analysis I went into my first match.
I had ten cards I could cast on turn one, six cards on turn two, one on turn three, and so forth. Sounds like I have a good curve. I have nine humans to abuse with the pegasus, I have five heroic creatures with XX spells (bestow and otherwise) to be able to trigger them, including some pretty cool combat tricks (coordinated assault is cute). And I have a removal suite that can range from the little guys to gods. Maybe I didn’t have such a bad pool afterall. But there was only one way to find out. And that was to take it into the field.
So my first opponent for the week was Robert who was playing a Blue/Green deck. His seeded pack was Green and so he had the Nessian Wilds Ravager in his pool and he was boasting a bunch of fliers. And he also had the Legendary Kraken. I had a feeling that my little army was in for a big fight.
Match one started with me on the play, dropping a Priest of Iroas, into his island. Then I swung for one damage before dropping a Priest of Iroas. He presented a second land, played an Kiora’s Follower – Game Day Promo passed. I swung in with both my guys and he blocked the priest. Unfortunately for him they planned a Coordinated Assault and the follower fell. He played a third land and passed, to which I responded by hitting him again uncontested and then played out an Akroan Phalanx. His next turn saw another land and another pass. I swung in again and he flashed a Horizon Chimera in, which would explain his lack of tapping, but unfortunately for him I held my mana open and had a Lightning Strike to answer that threat. He sucked up the damage before I played a Cavalry Pegasus and he scooped. Game one down.
Game two started with him having to mulligan down to six on the play and starting with an island. I played a plains and put down a Nyxborn Shieldmate, by far one of my favourite commons of this set. He played down a forest and like deja-vu he played down Kiora’s Follower again. My second turn met with a mountain and a bestowed Nyxborn Rollicker to make my shieldmate ⅔ and swung past the Follower unblocked. His next turn played down an Ordeal of Thassa on his Follower and swung in for three. This is when I almost started to panic, until I drew into a Lightning Strike. I swung simply and did my damage, leaving all my mana open. He took the bait and declared attackers, which forced the Lightning Strike out of my hand to a combat trick I wasn’t expecting. He played Retraction Helix on his own creature and responded by bouncing it back to his hand, ending combat and playing it back out. But at least the bounty was gone. By my next turn I was ready to swing again but this time he blocked. Then I played another Akroan Phalanx to end my turn. He played a land and passed. I drew, played a land, attacked and the Phalanx met a Voyages End, only to be played out again. This same thing happened the next turn, except after I played the Phalanx again I played a Pegasus that was met with an Annul, all the while whittling down his life. Unfortunately this was where things started to look bad. He finally had enough mana out to throw down his Nessian Wilds Ravager. I knew I couldn’t let him destroy one of my guys so I let him have the counters and stared down a 12/12 hydra. Not the most pleasant thing in the world to say the least. I went to my turn, and played an Akroan Crusader and passed, knowing that nothing I would be able to do would get past the Nessian. I needed him to attack with it and I could crack back to hopefully finish him off. Which is how it played out with a little bit of a twist. After he attacked with the hydra and dropped my life total down he played a Thassa’s Emmisary, nearly foiling my plans until I drew into one of my two Revoke Existence’s. I cleared the way and swung in to bring him to within an inch of his life before playing down a Favored Hoplite just to make sure that I had more than one chump blocker back in case he had any tricks. He drew up but couldn’t find an answer and said “good game”.
First match of the league in the books and I felt good. Not entirely confident in the deck just yet. Always found I had more mana than I needed and I am thinking about dropping one mana for another combat trick. But I can still be happy being off to a good start.
I also took the time to look over Roberts pool and noticed that he went the wrong way. Even with all of his blue control he had more in black with Hero’s Downfall and Asphyxiate, along with Pain Seer, and a Reaper of the Wilds. I convinced him to maybe try out Green/Black for next week, might be a better challenge.
~ Gerald Knight
So a few months ago a new brick and mortar gaming shop opened up in the heart of my beloved city’s downtown core. I was there the day it opened and couldn’t thank the owner enough for doing something that was so risky. See, shops in our city’s downtown region don’t usually last long unless they serve coffee or cigarettes, so this guy was taking a huge risk. But it was a necessary one because if you wanted to game and you lived downtown there was nowhere to do so without hopping on a bus for a 20 minute ride or so.
So you can imagine my excitement when this shop opened up, and how excited I was to hear that they were going to be starting a Born of the Gods league if they got enough DCI numbers before the release. Well they managed to accomplish this and I’m now entered into this league.
But what is a league you ask? Well this league is a WotC sanctioned series of events. You start with a seeded sealed pool. Meaning that they are using Born of the Gods pre-release overstock packs to start our limited decks off. So, I chose white again seeing as I had such great luck with it last time, but I will get to that in a bit. From this sealed pool of three Born of the Gods boosters and three Theros boosters you make your deck of 40 cards (minimum) and then you play at least 3 matches against others in the league within a weeks time.
After the first week you get to choose either a Born of the Gods booster or Theros booster and add those cards to your pool, and keep going. This goes on for 5-6 weeks and then prizes are handed out depending upon how you did. The store keeps the decks in their shop to ensure that nobody cheats by modifying the contents in between matches, but after the first week you can opt out of the league and take home everything you pulled. Though I don’t know why someone would do this.
So, like I said I picked the white seeded sealed pack and went to town opening up my product to see what I could manage to pull off.
First I will get to my rares:
Plea for Guidance – This was in my seeded pack, and I couldn’t have groaned any louder upon pulling it. I am not a fan of this card, though it might not be that bad if I could pull something else to compliment it, such as a god, but overall at sorcery speed I can’t be happy with this.
Mindreaver – I didn’t really look twice at this card. It’s not that bad as a mill engine with it’s heroic ability, but it’s second ability holds almost no relevance to the limited format because you don’t generally see multiples of cards in within your top 23.
Chained to the Rocks – This card I was happy to see. One of the best white removal spells in the format. Though it is not as good with Born of the Gods bringing in Revoke Existence, but it is straight up cheap removal.
Xenagos, the Reveler – The planeswalker, not the god. I was quick happy to see him show up in my pool. If things went my way I could easily pull off an awesome deck if I got cards to compliment him. Either way I had found my money card.
Arbor Colossus – Another great card, cheap beats with a monstrous ability that can take out every pre-release promo except green. Awesome!
Felhide Spiritbinder – This guy is a beast for abusing enter the battlefield abilities. Not to mention a ¾ body for four mana isn’t bad at all.
Overall I wasn’t too pleased with my pulls, I mean I certainly wasn’t pulling off the Blue/White heroic deck like I did at the pre-release, but from the rares I pulled it looked like I might have been able to pull off a monster Red/Green deck. So let’s take a look at what I did pull that didn’t make it into the deck.
White
Red
Blue
Green
Black
Multi-coloured/Land
And then I had the deck. I resorted to playing Red/White with the use of Chain to the Rocks and the Felhide as the champion rares. The deck looked to be as fast as I could possibly make it with a quarter of the deck being only a single converted mana cost, the next stage up had another six, after that there was one three CMC card with only a handful beyond.
Creatures (17)
Spells (6)
Land (17)
Come back for Day 2 and beyond as I take the deck through the league. If you have any suggestions or see something I missed please leave a comment and I will look into it. Thanks.
~ 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
