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An Alluring Tournament Report
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Main Deck 4 Aluren 3 Vampiric Tutor 3 Intuition 4 Birds of Pardise 3 Wall of Blossoms 4 Cabal Therapy 3 Cavern Harpy 3 Raven Familiar 4 Brainstorm 3 living wish 1 Wirewood Savage 1 Soul Warden 1 Maggot Carrier 4 Polluted Delta 4 Yavimaya Coast 4
4 hickory woodlot 3 City of Brass 3
1 swamp Sideboard 2 Pernicious Deed 2 Guilded Drake 1 City of Brass 1 Bond Shredder 1 Academy Rector 1 Monk Realist 1 Faceless Butcher 1 Genesis 1 Naturalize 1 Soul Warden 1 Raven Familiar 1 Cavern Harpy 1 Wirewood savage Now that that’s out of the way, we can get to the tourney. As a side note, I apologize if I misspell any names since I’m not 100% on all of them, especially Pawl Waingerlyasianboywonder. I think there’s a “U” in there or something. Round 1 Matt Scott For the first round, I start out with a marginal hand which I decide to keep. The good news is that I’m playing against stompy. However, I get a very slow draw which ends up losing to a might of oaks the turn before I could go off. Things weren’t looking so good right then, but the matchup is in my favor as long as I don’t see too much sideboard hate. Sideboarding: +2 pernicious deed +1 bone shredder -3 cabal therapy
In the second game, things go much better. It was a relatively simple 4th turn win. Matt had something like an 8/2 wild mongrel due to 3 rancors, but a wall of blossoms stopped the bleeding enough for a comfortable win. The third game, by far, was the most interesting, though. To start, I begin with a mulligan. Then, I keep a sub par hand. It basically consisted of an aluren, a brainstorm, and two wall of blossoms. As we get going, I see several creatures including pouncing jaguar, wild mongrel, and wild dogs. In addition to this, he had a rancor to punch through my walls. With the walls and the brainstorm+polluted delta I manage to get only a cavern harpy and the clock was ticking. I’m hoping for one of my many outs when I finally draw a bone shredder. From there, I’m able to take out all of his creatures for one life a piece. This holds him off until I get to a familiar and a soul warden for the win. Good game. Round 2 Pawl Waingerlyasianboywonder. For this round, I know exactly what I’m up against because Paul has a deck that I built him. It was, of course, Affinity. Game one of this match is a breeze for the most part. He plays his fast, aggressive creatures, efficiently while I put together a three-piece puzzle and win on third or fourth turn. Sideboarding: +2 pernicious deed +1 naturalize -3 cabal therapy The second game was good for Paul. To start of with, he uses my duresses effectively to slow me down while mounting an offense of frogmite, myr enforcer, and broodstar. I however, get a deed. The problem is that I can only activate the bomb for three, leaving him with all three creatures out. My draws aren’t significant and I lose. In the third game, I believe I got duressed, but my hand was better this time, so it wasn’t as painful. I intuition and brainstorm for the right cards and go off easily enough. On an interesting note, the only game I lost to affinity was the one in which I activated a deed. Weird. Round 3 Rudy Marintez Ok, this match was frustrating. No, that was an understatement. Let’s just say that it was pretty one-sided. That is, most of the time in the match was used up on one side of the table and it wasn’t mine. In game one, I try for an early win, but Rudy has a bone shredder in hand, which surprises me. Of course, this play didn’t win him the match. It just slowed the game down. He drew some control cards while I threw together some combo pieces. When I get to one of my therapies I’m able to go off. Sideboarding: +2 deed -2 therapy Yes, the sideboarding isn’t all that much in this deck. Anyway, in the second game, I keep another one of those wall of blossoms+brainstorm hands. I’m basically on a draw. Rudy gets a pretty fast hand including massive amounts of his smaller creatures, which he uses as scull clamp bait. That guy sure loves to draw cards. Because of this, my life total wasn’t in any kind of threat, but his full hand was sure to be full of annoyances. He starts to duress me, so I play an alluren when I get a chance to keep it from being discarded. Unfortunately, he has naturalize. So the game kept going….and going….and going….When I ask for the time, I’m told that we have about 10 minutes left. Then Rudy finally starts moving in with his villages. I decide that my chances are better with going into game three, so I scoop. Of course, Rudy gets some pretty bad draws, which would normally be great, but this wastes too much precious time. I keep one of my weaker hands, but I don’t want to waste any more time, so we get into the game as soon as rudy keeps his 4 CARD HAND. I start out with 2 birds and a wall of blossoms. However, Rudy finds his scull clamp plus his little critters to build up a hand very quickly. HOW DOES HE DO THAT???!!! I don’t know, but I do know that I am running out of time. Rudy’s deck gives him plenty of control cards while mine gives me just enough to keep from winning. X amount of naturalizes, lyrists, and duresses later, I decide that I don’t ever want to play rudy again and we end in a dissatisfying draw. After the match, I use what is left of my lunch time to get some rice across the street and shortly after I finish we get to round 4. Round 4 Scott Pepmeyer Yeah, I’m definitely not sure about the spelling on that. Anyway, I’m sorry to say that this was a pretty boring match. He was playing stompy, but his draws weren’t extremely explosive or anything. In the first game, I saw something like rootwalla on the first turn, mongrel on the second, and rancor plus another creature on the third turn. It was a decent start, but nothing special against combo. I manage a third turn win, which he wasn’t prepared for. Sideboarding: I’ll leave this to your wild imagination In the second game, I don’t see anything on his side until his 3rd or 4th turn. Obviously I didn’t have any trouble, going off on 4th or maybe 5th turn. Gaining 1 trillion life is fun. Round 5 modular guy [Forrest Allen] No offense to this kid, but Paul should have had NO TROUBLE in winning against this MODULAR deck. There wasn’t even any affinity in it from what I saw. When I realized that this would be the deck I played in the last round, I was more than a little surprised. Apparently, he was 3-1, going into the match. In game one I went off fairly quickly, seeing only a couple modular guys on his side. Sideboarding: Bla Bla Bla In game two, I am light on land, so it takes longer, but I still win in an anticlimactic fashion. At least I got to see Adam and Destan play some Napoleonesque creatures across from me. So, after five founds, I ended up with 4 wins and 1 DRAW. I won! Yay! I hate drawing with rudy! Yay! Paul made top 4! Yay! He shouldn’t have kept that terrible hand against the modular guy! Yay! Ok, I’m done |
Last changed: 08/01/2004 by AMWDirect any questions you may have to awhitlat@knox.edu
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Yes,
corny titles are very fun.