Your weekly ramble!
Sick of UW Decks Yet?
Guys I have the same shameful, speculative and excited feeling you get after having unexpected group sex. Only this time it's public and people want soundbites!
I'm gonna give this win to my friend's
Sunblast Angel,
Aetherspouts and
Epochrasite. My two new pals Sunblast and Spouts really showed me whats up and Epochrasite is a card I can't say enough about. I almost always want an Epochrasite in my deck and it is almost always better than you think it's gonna be. Also shout out to sideboard copy of
syndic of tithes. So glad I got to play with extort a little, what a great mechanic.
Drafting was interesting, I snapped up an early
control magic and
compulsive research but led right into a mystic monastery, the first land I saw of any relevance. I thought I was doing it again, red seemed plentiful and enough good blue was coming my way pack 1. Pack two sort of messed me up because I noticed white was wide open but it was mainly aggressive (while I already had one hoof in control) while splashable red cards had almost dried up, thankfully I got a tonne of lands in that pack and just played it loose by trying to take cards that could go control or pressure into pack 3. A like 11th pick lingering souls had me seriously questioning my commitment to red. Pack 3 solidified me in control with an early wrath of god and sunblast angel, I knew then no one was gonna have any fun : )
Round 1 was probably the most difficult, Myles was putting us on a time limit to keep the tournament rolling (he was just playing videographer today) and our match actually came down to turns! I was so worried I'd lose my streak to a first round draw.
Rob is a new friend I might end up working with actually, he was playing a deck similar to my last draft's where red and white early pressure leads into strong midrangey plays like
Assemble the Legion and recurring Phoenixes. I was really proud of myself for holding my removal in our games because I saw a lot of moments where if I had been trigger happy I would have lost to a trickier threat later. I felt sorta bad for the guy because his deck got flooded twice, but I think that's the way these things go when you aren't playing draw fixing and you invest a lot of slots to creature augmentation and not threats. Tight games still. bouncing my own lifelands and playing cards off curve to extort with
syndic of tithes are probably what kept me going in games 2&3.
Round 2 was my buddy
Peter! He said in his interview he learned to properly play magic through cubing with me and #EricChan 2 years ago and he's never gotten any better. I'd probably call him a liar, but Peter is a headstrong guy with a penchant for idiosyncrasy. He wants to make his own mistakes and draft a deck that tickles him. Peter was on a grixis value deck with a lot of reanimation and mimic vat. Peter actually had got Skirsdag High Priest going against me in a really zany turn, but sadly, in the perfect alignment of interactions I calmly
Valorous Stance'd his token and untapped to sunblast his remaining team. Glorious! I think my other favourite play was when I had a dead
oblivion ring on the table that had fizzled, I got to blink it with
flickerwispto take out his
Hythonia the Cruel before he could wipe me with it, while also protecting me from the reanimation in his hand omg. Hythonia is a really cool card and I'm glad I get to see it in action a little!
Now I was getting pumped. I think it was the din of all the dungeons and dragons players around us, or maybe it was the fact that Myles had prewarned everyone about me and I had become sort of a running joke. I started to polish off my victory apple and asked Myles if he knew who my next round was gonna be. Of course it was the D man,
Denix himself.
Conclusions? Myles had been creating some drama in the interview segment, apparently Denix was out to make a name for himself as the Lucas killer. A story as old as The Old Republic and World of Warcraft. Me and Denix had been clashing in cube for a couple years now, often only really buckling down and getting serious when we played each other. Our matches are usually grueling and full of small interactions we obsess over in conversations on the way home. Denix loves value decks and I play a lot of control so we often leave with a headache. I didn't want this to be one of those nights. I marched up to denix and took a big honkin bite of my victory apple, got on my knees beside the table and started to pray like some sort of deluded quarter back. I think that was when Myles started filming again. I was gonna have fun losing or winning.
Round 3 was not pretty, but we managed to have fun either way. I think me and Denix both sang through the majority of the round and made faces at each other regarding our hands. I had heard denix had made himself a combo deck but i couldnt see it. I think by turn 4 he had a fully leveled
Joraga Treespeaker and
llanowar elf in play and he seemed content to beat me down with those until I did something. I played and bounced lifelands to set back his 10 turn clock and eventually started the game in earnest with a
sunblast angel, I noticed he had
temur sabretooth but I had the
Aetherspouts and by then was too far ahead for that card to be the engine he needed. Game two was a landslide. You need some fast interaction and pretty decent pressure to beat a draw as assertive as mine was.
Seeker of the Way into two turns of
Lingering Souls followed up by a
Control Magic on his
Temur Sabertooth. Prowess and flashback are too cute and I really want to see more of that action in white decks. Denix tires to get tricky with
bone shredder but it's too late. I take another bite of my victory apple and try to find my way to Myles and his camera assistant to give another lightheaded interview and open my modern masters pack. Me, Peter and Denix sauntered off to get some cheap chinese food and get to an open mic night.
So yeah now I have some of Toronto's cubing old guard after me and I think my sun may have set, but hell I had a good run.
Control Magic totally underperformed in this draft and as did
Valorous Stance. Both of those cards are really awkward with the number of small bodies and tokens littering the draft. Except during the last game
Lingering Souls essentially just bought me turns by discouraging attacks. Honestly the day was won by
Epochrasite,
Aetherspouts and bouncing lifelands, I love it!
