Thursday, September 29, 2011

UW Draw-Go


 As I mentioned in my last two posts, this weekend represents the first time that Standard Mtg will be played with Innistrad. As a result, the internet is furiously buzzing with deck ideas, with everyone trying to get a leg up on the other. I am, of course, no different in this, and I've been furiously brewing for the last weeks (along with my comrades, who have come up with some pretty disgustingly good lists on their own.) From all counts, the format appears to be wide open, with there being no clear best deck, and more archetypes than I can count.

I expect that to narrow down over the next few weeks – especially after the first few Star City Games Open Tournaments. (First one is this weekend, in Indianapolis. If you live in the area and enjoy magic, you should stop by, even if you don't feel up to competing! Big gatherings like this are always a blast.) In the meantime, though, I'll be attending a local event at my shop. Personally, I'll be running the UW Puresteel list that I built and tested over the last two days, but I've also got a friend coming down from New York, and he...well, he loves his control decks.

He, as far as I know, doesn't have a list at the moment, so I took the evening to brew one. Admittedly, this is a little self-serving, since I hope to eventually run a UW draw-go style deck myself. So, consider this a preliminary deck.

A little bit of insight into my deckbuilding process. There's basically two points that I can start at, which depends entirely on if I'm building off an established archetype or not. In this case, UW Control has been theorycrafted to hell and back, twice, within the last block, so we've got a solid starting point. I'm personally using the U/W/x Control thread from MTGSalvation as a resource here. When in doubt, use more people.

Seriously. There's dozens of people on that thread, and most of the threads over there. They're all testing and theorycrafting and trying to find the same edge that you are. It's not cheating to use their answers – as long as you understand the answers. That's the flaw with netdecking. (For those who don't know, the process of grabbing a decklist from the internet and copying it wholesale) Netdecking doesn't give you the nuts and bolts knowledge that you need to play a deck at it's best. It's the kind of thing you only get after the fifth time you get blown out by an aggro deck in a row, or just can't quite get there with your last five damage before they land Gideon with counter backup and can't close out the match.

However, as you get more experience playing in general, you can kind of cheat a bit.

My friend has been playing magic for a long time. He remembers Mirrodin, the first time. As a result, he's got a ton of play experience below his belt, and he can leverage that into knowledge of an unknown format. There's tons of graveyard play? Flashback? I remember that mechanic from Time Spiral! Midnight Haunting is kind of like a less-good Spectral Procession, while the basics of control all stay fairly constant. Even Sword of Feast and Famine is vaguely reminiscent of the untap mechanic from Urza's block.

We have a frame of reference here, even if the picture itself is a little blurry.

I'll admit straightaway that I've never designed a pure control deck – much less a control deck in the draw-go style. The closest I've come is the draft deck I put together, and dozens upon dozens of games against Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Gideon Jura.

I hate those guys.

Here's what I came up with:


My first reaction is that of an aggro player. There aren't nearly enough threats in this deck. Even most of the control players from the last year are probably wincing more than a little – control over the last year has bowed it's head to the insane card advantage of Squadron Hawks and Swords. They'd be more properly be called Aggro-Control than anything else – true hybrids.

We're back to basics here, kids! We don't run threats! We stop threats.

Then drop one card that WILL win the game for us.

As long as we can get to that point intact, we can win.

Let's get there.

So, immediately, I'm going to say something – I'm leery of this strategy. Not because I don't think it'll work, but because I have no frame of reference to compare it to. By all logic, the things that I'm talking about doing – making blockers at instant speed, counterspelling, being able to board wipe, recurring all my cards twice – seems good. I just don't know if it's good in practice, and I sadly have hit the second snag of all players.

I don't have time to test this tonight.

Tomorrow, my friend arrives around 7-8pm. With any luck, we'll have the deck proxied up and testing it against some random decks before the night is out, and we'll have a list for him by the next morning, when we head out to All-Star's Collectables for some spell slinging.

That'll be tomorrow's article, by the way. Our two-man test bed, iterating on the deck, possibly even switching to a different archetype. I'll be documenting our thoughts as we go and posting lists when we've got a testable version.

Until then, sleep and work in the morning. Here's hoping that tomorrow's testing goes well.

-Andrew

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

UW Puresteel Testing - 9/28


I made a few edits to the deck since yesterday, taking the sideboard I'd built into account. I'm playing via MWS, and for those of you who don't know me personally, I'll admit to not being the world's best pilot. I usually do notice my mistakes in hindsight, so there's still hope for me, but I wouldn't take this as the gospel-truth of how the deck plays at extremely high end competition. I'm sure Caleb or someone could do much better with it.

Worthy of noting is that I ended up not including any counterspells in my 75. I don't like this, and I plan to change it at some point. Just need to figure out where the cuts are.

Here's the list I played:



Round 1 vs RB Army of the Dead Ramp

Game 1:

I probe him off the bat, seeing a ton of Red and Black – including a Black Sun. I also see a Warstorm Surge and a Spellskite, so I put him solidly on a rogue deck with a late game plan. Having kept a pretty good anti-aggro hand involving a puresteel and two mortarpods, I decide to play it fast and loose and trot the Paladin out on T2. Love the pressure you can put on if you get in an early probe and see no spot removal.

I probe him again around turn 3-4 and see an Army of the Damned. Oh. Hey. That makes sense. Cool combo.

My paladin goes unanswered for 3-4 turns and finally dies to a doom blade after I've drawn the second. By that point, I have a sword already in play, cast the second paladin, snap-equip him with everything and turn him into an 8/6. I swing for the win next turn, with an O-Ring as backup.

Admittedly, he was on 7 lands at the time, so, was getting a little worried there. 26 power of zombies is enough to kill you, no matter how you cut it.

SB: -2 Mentor of the Meek (too slow if 7 mana wins him the game.) , -1 Accorder's Shield, -1 Mortarpod, +4 Mirran Crusader (Push extra damage through.)

Alright, in hindsight, this was a shitty board. I've got 3 dead dispatches in the deck, could've brought Nevermore to name Army, could've done so many things better. Gotta get my head in this now before I hit an actual deck. (Also notable: I forgot to track my SB choices for the later matches, so, I'm pretty bad at this whole 'recording games' thing.)

Game 2:
I start off curving Flayer Husk > Puresteel > Mirran Crusader. He kills the paladin on end step, then casts Torpor Orb. I reach for the trinket mage...huh. Damn. I guess that Torpor Orb does stop something I'm playing. I play a lifestaff instead and equip it, beating him down for 7. He Black Sun's Zeniths to wipe the board. I play a moorland haunt and make a guy, and play a Sword of Feast and Famine. He plays a Bloodgift Demon to block. I Oblivion Ring it, then equip the Sword of Feast and Famine and Lifestaff, beat in to take him to 4. Out of cards in hand, he concedes.

Moorland Haunt felt like a champ in this game. Even though I had two creatures in hand, I found that the flying body it provided was absolutely incredible. This deck probably wasn't the most competitive opponent to start the night off with, but it did give me a feel for how this version runs, and I like it.

Victory 2-0

Round 2 vs.Solar Flare

Game 1:
Game was close. Having dispatched a grave titan and a sun titan in subsequent turns, he was running out of gas, but had board position when one of our internet's crapped out. Damn. That's disappointing. I wanted to test vs this deck...I'm marking it down as a draw because I had top decks that killed him, and if I didn't he'd have won the first game. Unfortunately, the client wouldn't let me draw to see if I had it, so, we'll never know.

Connection Issue 0-0-1

Round 3 vs RDW

Game 1
I keep a fairly defensive hand with a Mortarpod, which is lucky, because he trots out the turn 1 Arsonist on the play. I'm a little nervous here, because swinging with the arsonist to enable bloodthirst for a Stormblood Berserker is a little tough to deal with. I'm finding that 3/3's with relevant abilities seem to be about the size that we can't deal with early game. Even before rotation, Blade Splicers always gave me some trouble. He ends up not having the Berserker, and the game proceeds on. Eventually, I'm able to get metalcraft online and Etched Champion takes the day with a few clutch sword swings. Sword makes him Slagstorm-immune, so I mostly walk over him from there.

Game 2
He gets an early tempo advantage when he burns out my hex parasite that was chewing on his shrine. I tap out to eat the counters off it, and he extends into the board with a Phoenix. Long story short, he lands a Koth, alongside the Phoenix, while I'm on the backfoot because the shrine is ticking upwards to 6 and 7 now. I end up swinging at Koth to kill him, and I'm burned out the next turn. I think I misplayed the last turn though, and realized it right afterward. If I had hit him instead, I could have made him discard his last burn spell, preventing him from recurring back the phoenix, and then dispatched the mountain when he animated it, giving me board position, despite the Koth on 5.

Live and learn, I suppose. Don't tunnel vision, Andrew! You've got this.

Game 3
This was a great game. I start slow again (noticing a trend) and kept an iffy hand involving a bunch of 3 drops and 2 lands. Luckily, no turn 1 play from him gives me the breathing room I need to set up. I topdeck an invisible stalker, and play it, into a trinket mage finding the dagger. He wants to race – I can race with the best of them. It gets bad enough that I force him to slagstorm two of his own guys to reset the board, catching only the stalker and the trinket mage in the blast. I drop a puresteel paladin and Sword of Feast and Famine. No mana to activate my inkmoth though, so I can't equip this turn.. He plays out a Koth, and throws a mountain at me, taking me to 5. He's got a chandra's phoenix, but I've got a spirit to chump block it. Next turn I play Etched Champion, and equip/swing at him with the paladin to take him to 7 from 14. He incinerates me in response to save the burn spell from discard, taking me to two with a Koth on 5, and Chandra's Phoenix.

He swings in, I dispatch the phoenix, and block the mountain with Etched Champion. He reveals his topdeck – shrine of burning rage. I swing with paladin to take him down the last 7.

Victory 2-1

Round 4 vs. Josue's UG Hexblade

This is actually a deck I've been worried about, because of the hexproof issue. He was running Thrun, Dungrove, and Invisible Stalker and I felt like he blanked most of my removal. My friend runs a very similar list pre-rotation, so I know how annoying it is. This is one of the reasons for the 4 Mirran crusaders in the sideboard.

Game 1:
If this game has taught me one thing it's this: Invisible Stalker is TERRIBLE without a sword. I go t2 Puresteel into t3 Sword of Feast and Famine. He goes t2 invisible stalker, then he beast within's the sword during my attack, plays second stalker on his turn, and passes. I play a second sword and equip it. He hits me with a second beast within. I trinket for Dagger, and start swinging away. He plays a Garruk, makes a blocker, I cast Oblivion Ring at the walker. He finally finds a sword and hits me with it, untaps, and Green Sun's Zenith for Thrun. I make a flyer with Moorland Haunt on my end step, suit him up, and fly to victory.

Game 2:
Bird vs Flayer Husk. Stalker vs Mortarpod. I play a Mirran Crusader on 3.

Take that sideboard tech.

He copies it with Phantasmal Image. (That cheeky bastard!)

I kill his bird with my mortarpod, then equip Mirran Crusader with it and swing anyway. (Because pfft!)

Fun fact kids: Mortarpod does have uses outside of sacrificing guys to kill mana dorks! It also provides a toughness boost that wins stalemates and improves the value you get from your creatures.

Long game, involving me killing a Thrun with a double-equipped germ, and basically just getting there by forcing bad blocks because of two creatures with protection from Green. I kept up the pressure, and ultimately, killed him with no real chance to come back outside of a non-green miracle, which he never saw. I do get the kill a turn early via mortarpod shennanagins, so, that's probably notable, since he had a naturalize on his topdeck, but I think I could've sealed the game either way.

Of note: Moorland Haunt was dead this game because I never lost a real creature, just germs. Doesn't make it less awesome, but is something to note.

Victory 2-0

Round 5 vs Grand Architect

Game 1: He resolves a sword of body and mind on his vault skirge. I never see removal for it, or more than one thing that can block the air, despite drawing like 9 cards. Blah. I ask for game two, pretty confident that I can beat him because that's literally all he did all game, and he was already out of cards, but he drops instead.

Loss 0-1

Personally, I don't really count that. Single game matches aren't really that relevant, right?

OVERALL:

6 wins - 2 losses – 1 drop – one refused to play games 2 and 3.
Deck felt pretty strong on the overall. I can tell that this version has a bit more punch than the old one – probably stemming from the dagger, which seems to get there more than anything else in the deck. It's absurd how useful that thing is. I don't know if I agree with people saying to cut lifestaff. It didn't show up against RDW, but it's still a critical part of the anti-aggro match up.

4 Mirran Crusader in the sideboard felt very strong. I think it blanked a bunch of his removal options, and forced him to adopt a defensive posture. Didn't see any GY based decks to test the Nihil Spellbomb on. Hex parasite was lackluster, but this isn't really the match up I wanted to use it in. Nevermore felt like I never wanted to bring it in – but even without it, Gitaxian Probe was such a hero. Dispense Justice came in against the Hexproof deck, and I really like that interaction, noting a number of times when drawing it would have lead to a complete blowout. I might increase the count on those, especially since you can effectively use to to stop Geist of St. Traft, who appears to be gaining popularity in decks like this. I'd love to see them go t3 Geist, t4 angelic destiny, attack, and then Metalcraft Dispense them both (or use it before the trigger resolves if he has another creature!). I did find myself bringing the mortarpod in for some of the match ups. I still like the card a lot.

Mentor of the Meek draw a bunch of cards, but still felt slow overall. Two invisible stalkers seems like enough to make sure I see one when I want to, and don't when I don't. It's pretty awesome with the silver-etched dagger, and swords are obviously great.

If you liked this post, leave a comment, stumble me, retweet it to your magic friends, all that good social media stuff. Upvote on reddit, if you're feeling especially ambitious!

I plan to test more in the coming days, and I'm attending Innistrad's first Standard on Saturday. I'll obviously be in contact with you all via more posts here, and of course, the wonderful Puresteel Paladin thread over at MTGSalvation. (Link).

Wish me luck,
Andrew

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Puresteel Paladin for Innistrad Standard


As many of you may know, this coming Friday represents the yearly rotation for Standard in Magic the Gathering. As of 30 September 2011, Zendikar, Worldwake, and Rise of the Eldrazi are no longer permitted in decks, and is replaced by Innistrad. This change has wide ranging implications for the entire face of standard, as the majority of current strategies are no longer viable. Valakut and Splinter Twin, both decks that put a hard clock on the format, have rotated out. In addition, one of the two namesakes of the dreaded Caw-Blade is gone, freeing up 4 slots in almost every deck running white. Preordain is gone, as are the person-lands, and fetches.

If nothing else, Zendikar block brought a ton to the table, as far as format-defining blocks go. On the other hand, Innistrad brings a ton to the table in the way of graveyard interactions and spell efficiency. As is usual with a freshly rotated format though, the future of Standard is destined to be defined by the larger card pool – Scars of Mirrodin.

Today's deck list is an iteration of the deck that I'd been running for a few months. When I first saw Puresteel Paladin, he leapt out at me as a 'build around' card. At the time, Sword of Feast and Famine was already the powerhouse that's coming to dominate any deck with more than 17 creatures, and Batterskull was running roughshod over every deck not smart enough to run 4 JTMS and Stoneforge Mystic. Even then, the card had immense potential, and while it never quite got there during Zen-Som Standard, it's my hope that the deck, which has lost near nothing with the rotation, will be a powerhouse that could help define the format in the coming months.

Here's the list that I ran prior to rotation:


There are a few design philosophies in play here that should definitely be noted, to properly understand this deck. This deck is not aggro, nor is it control. It can't even properly be called midrange, because it certainly doesn't play the same way that Hero Blade does, or even Dungrove Green. The way that this deck was described to me was 'progressive card advantage.' None of the individual cards in the deck were suberb enough to win the game alone, but each of them got more than one card's worth of value out of the opponent – and more than that, each synergized with just about every other card in the deck.

Let's analyze that for a moment. Metalcraft means that all cards with that synergize with every artifact on the field. Each Living Weapon synergizes with all the creatures, as they provide their own value, and then survive to do more. Trinket made is a natural two-for-one, often more. Puresteel Paladin turns every equipment in the deck into a cantrip. Not every card in the deck follows this design paradigm, but those exceptions are few and far in between.

Preordain is a card filtering tool so powerful it was recently banned in Modern. Diggigng for whatever piece you needed was too potent to not include. Dispatch, likewise, was too good in a deck that can consistantly activate metalcraft. It's a no-downside Path to Exile, or Swords to Plowshares. Any time you can get that much value out of a single mana, it becomes difficult to justify other choices. Oblivion Ring was a late concession to the deck's weakness to planeswalkers – specifically Gideon.

I didn't list a sideboard here deliberately, because it shifted so often depending on my expected metagame that week. I brought a very different board to FNM than I did to PT Philadelphia. It generally focused pretty strongly on my matchups against Valakut and Twin, which I considered the weakest matchups for the deck. We just didn't have enough power to push that much damage through before they could safely go-off.

But those decks are gone now, and we've got a brave new world in Innistrad. Vampires and werewolves, spirits and humans.

What did the deck lose?

The first, and probably the most notable change, is that we no longer have Basilisk Collar. Regrettable as this is, since Mortarpod + Collar is removal second-to-none in the format, especially in a deck that creates so many bodies to use as fodder, it isn't nearly the deathknell that many are making it out to be. While Collar did win games for us, by itself at times, it wasn't the power that the deck was riding on – it was just more of the same – progressive card advantage.

At the Innistrad Prerelease, I aggressively traded for a few cards and managed to get the deck into a place that I like. Here's the list that I'll be playing at my first event:



The first change I made was filling the list. Squadron Hawks out, Mentor of the Meek in. Basilisk Collar out, Silver Etched Dagger in. Preordain out, Ponder in. Play with land totals and add in Moorland Haunts. Remove one Mortarpod to add a fourth Flayer Husk. Cut two Etched Champions, adding in Mirran Crusaders. By all accounts, this list should have been good, and so, with little more than theory to back it up, I took it to testing.

Around this time, the first results from the Magic-League Standard Trial popped up. The first two showed two decks far and ahead of the pack in early tests – an Esper Solar Flare list, and Red Deck Wins.

I made a few tweaks, expecting that metagame. I'm less worried about the solar-flare deck, because it focuses on stripping card advantage, and I've got that in spades. They shouldn't be able to run me dry, and I put on a healthy amount of pressure that I doubt they can handle. Plus, they're in the three colors least equipped to handle my artifacts. Liliana is concerning with her Edict effect, but she's so weak to start that I'm not afraid of her as much as I otherwise would be.

RDW, on the other hand, has long been a thorn in the side of Puresteel. I started my old sideboard with 4 Kor Firewalker – a choice I never regretted. They just have enough burn to keep you off of good blocks, and have enough pressure that you have trouble with setting up your engine.

I made some swaps, especting enough Red that I wanted to be sure of a solid game 1. I swapped the Mirran Crusaders back out, and picked my Etched Champions up again. Sword of Body and Mind got cut for a second Sword of War and Peace. Strongly considering re-adding the fourth mortarpod, because of how punishing it is to Reckless Waif and Stromkirk Noble, even ignoring how useful it is in every other matchup ever.

I sat down to test.

I was a little surprised what I found.

First, Mentor of the Meek was great, as I expected, but not quite as good as I had hoped. Puresteel is naturally a deck that gulps mana down, paying for equips while trying to play more of them, constantly drawing cards, playing out more equipment. No matter the situation, I always felt like I never had enough mana – and burning one to draw extra gas, while a great option to have, was one that did slow the deck down. It's safer, but at the same time, lets your opponant have more time to draw his Gideon.

I decided, with a little bit of a twinge, that I needed to cut at least one. I marked it down and moved on to other concerns.

I didn't miss Sword of Body and Mind, and began questioning it's inclusion in the sideboard. That's something to handle once we have a more solid idea of what we're facing though. I noticed that all my changes did make the deck a little higher on the mana curve, so the replacement for the cut mentors should be something that's a 2 drop or less. I ended up deciding on Invisible Stalker. The card has gotten some hype as the de-facto sword carrier in blue – being near impossible to stop, and nearly guaranteed to connect.

I didn't like him as a one-of, so I cut two mentors and added in two Invisible Stalkers.

That gives me the list that I'm currently running with. The only thing that's still significantly in the air is the actual count on Moorland Haunt. It didn't pop up too often in my testing, but I'm still not sure if I should be running two or three. My gut says two, but I'm open to being wrong on that count.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you UW Puresteel (SOM-ISD Standard).


Have any questions about the deck? Comments? Concerns? Leave them in the comments. Have another deck you'd like me to take a hand at brewing? Likewise, let me know. I'm actively looking for things to write about now that I've revitalized this blog, and the current list is kind of skimpy.

Open poll as well: What decks are you worried about in the new standard? What do you expect to do well? What decks do you think will take off, and which are going to have tons of hype and ultimately not deliver?

As for me, I think it's about time for bed.

-Andrew


Monday, September 26, 2011

Innistrad Pre-Release at All-Star Collectables

This weekend, I went to the pre-release for Innistrad, the fall release for Magic: The Gathering by Wizards of the Coast. As is customary, I attended and had a great time. Here's a brief tournament report.

The closest event to me was being held at Redcap's Corner, in Philadelphia, but because my friends and I do monthly gatherings to play Magic, DnD, and other wonderful games like that, I instead went to All-Stars Collectables at the Oxford Valley Mall, about 45 minutes away, near Trenton, NJ.

We walked in at the crack of dawn, almost. Forgive me the exaggeration, but it was a weekend, and I figured that starting at 10am was beginning to get a little insane. I was used to noon-starts, but since the shop owner was planning on running two events, he wanted to start a little earlier. I guess that's why he owns a store and I play at one, because he ended up being correct, in spades.

There were some technical issues with getting started, between making sure the printer was running and signing up the over 100 (!) people who wanted to play in the first event. Our wonderful Tournament Organizer George was on hand, with his beaituful wife providing support and acting as a salesperson. When I went over to buy my intro pack, she seemed like she was doing some pretty swift business. On the other side of the room, we had Joel and his crew, who were the official singles vendors for the event. I'm told they didn't do too badly either, and picked up a fair number of good transactions for the day.

First event started at around 11am, by the time everyone was seated and started cracking their packs. I opened my set of six and admittedly, I was a little disappointed. Not that opening a new set isn't exciting, but I was less than thrilled by what I had opened. From what I'd looked at in spoilers and such, I didn't feel like I wanted to be in green, but lo and behold, there it was. There were just too many good werewolves to ignore, and beyond that, I had about even choice between:

-Red with a good removal suite, but a pretty poor creature base
-Blue with not enough to make it work
-White, with 8 cards in total, most not playable
and the option I ended up going with – Black with some removal and a few evasive creatures.

Taking the evasion to creep some damage through after my green fatties clogged up the ground seemed like the best choice, so I sleeved up the deck and sat down for my first round.

Admittedly, I did not expect to be writing this post, so I didn't take any kind of significantly accurate notes on individual games and rounds. I'll just sum this one up as an overall feel.

First, werewolves are interesting. Since the duel-side cards are kind of the elephants in the room, my opinion is that they're very dynamic, and easy to keep track of. I never found myself missing triggers on them, and everyone I was playing with felt that they were a very intuitive answer to them. Some of my opponents used the checklist cards, though I opted to sleeve up the originals. The only issue that I noticed that was detrimental at all was having to de-sleeve and re-sleeve so often in more constructed situations. A full-on tribal werewolf deck seems like it would be a hassle to switch back every two or three turns. Other than that, however, they played wonderfully. It was an interesting mini-game to switch them how I wanted, but it was never insurmountable. Overall, I liked it.

Morbid played well too. I found myself actively refusing to block, taking the damage rather than risking activating morbid at an inopportune time. It made me afraid of death in the games, and that's a wonderful translation of flavor to game mechanics.

Hexproof also seemed to fit here very well, giving me a real feel for the inevitability of certain creatures. The removal all felt powerful, but conditional. Bomb rares still felt powerful, but less overwhelming than normal. Making the format slower than m12 meant that I could effectively hold removal for the 'real threats', which mitigated their effect once they hit the field.

My first four rounds went 4-0, putting me in a great place to get into the top-8. I needed to win one of the last two rounds to seal my spot. Unfortunately, I lost the fifth round to an onslaught of blue and white flyers, and the sixth round to Garruk. A sad end to the first round of the day, but my friend Marshall managed to make it into the top-8 despite his round 3 loss (to the person I faced in round 6, actually. He also made top-8.)

The second sealed started just as the top-8 was running, and I made sure to get my name on the list. I opened a fairly solid pool, where I could have chosen any color but red. I ultimately decided to go with White/Black on the strength of the evasive creatures, even though there was only a single rare in those colors – an Elite Inquisitor. I was rewarded with a 3-0 record, and then an intentional draw into the top-8.

This sealed had three rounds that were very memorable for me, so I'll recount them a bit.

In the first round, I was paired with someone who unfortunately didn't have nearly the grasp of the rules that I did. He pulled a Liliana, but he was misplaying left and right. Even though the games were incredibly one-sided, I tried to keep the mood light-hearted so he wouldn't be discouraged. We had a bunch of laughs, and I got a handshake and a smile at the end of the game.

Playing against someone who's worse than you is always tough. You want to win and advance, but you don't want to hurt someone's feelings – it is, after all, a game, even if there's 100 bucks worth of boosters on the line. That round left me feeling a bit somber.

Second round, however, was a bit of a wake-up. The first game was pretty routine, with me winning on the strength of my flyers. Game two, however, was normal until my opponent got a rather large looking treefolk ready to beat me in the face. I counted a bit, doing the math, and figured that I could kill him before he could break through and counterswing for lethal. I even had a counterspell for backup. I swing out, and proclaim “So, that's it?”

He blinks at me, confused. “I'm at four.”

I look down at the spindown on my side of the table. He's at two by my count. He missed the swing last turn for two damage, by my reckoning. That said, his spindown still read four, and I didn't really have any way to prove one way or another. I all of a sudden realize why so many competitive players count with a pad – because it takes priority over a simple die. Without any method of deciding who had the correct count, I consider calling over a judge. That's probably the correct move, but I don't understand if there's anything they can do to correct the issue. I look over at the clock, and see fifteen minutes left, then make the snap call.

“That's fine. You're at four.”

He looks a little penitant, and protests that he doesn't want to be a (bad word redacted), but I assure him that it's fine. On his turn, he gains fifteen life, putting him safely out of range of my flyer and kills me on the backswing.

It bothers me, but I know it's not HIS fault. He clearly didn't miss the damage deliberately. We go to game three quickly and continue playing. The game goes down to the wire, but I manage to push enough damage through to kill him with less than a minute before turns.

I don't quite know if I handled that situation how I should have. There was a disagreement, but I didn't want to seem like 'that guy' by calling the judge – who knows me and doesn't know the guy – and ask him to make a ruling on the matter. I know George would have been impartial, and probably would have ordered us replay the game. (Since there's no other way to find an equitable solution, that I can see, at least.)

I gave him the match because I was fairly sure of my ability to win the third match, but the whole thing still left a sour taste in my mouth. I'll be bringing a pad next time, to avoid something like that.

We have to evacuate the community room at this point, because it's after 9pm. We go back down to the shop proper and resume the third round, with the shopkeep calling out that the soda is on him for the rest of the night. Thanks Warren!

The third match was one of the most technical games of magic I've ever played. It involved staring down a Bloodline Keeper in three successive games, and managing to win out over it despite having nothing on the field that could directly answer it. It was a long game of trying to fight tempo games and not fall behind while still maintaining enough offensive pressure that I didn't lose to a transformed Keeper. Winning that round, and against someone I knew from FNM's as a great player, gave me a nice ego boost – and happy day, my opponent managed to get into Top-8 on the strength of his breaks, so good news all around.

Because it was after 10pm, the top-8 decided to split the prize fund amongst us, rather than playing it out. We split to 9 packs each, and the shop closes. Total of about 14 hours of magic, all said and done.

I also did a healthy amount of trading, picking up a bunch of the utility lands that I needed, as well as a playset of Mentor of the Meek. By the end of the day, I had half a play set of Stromkirk Nobles as well, which makes my RDW nearly complete, and my Puresteel Deck 'finished' and ready for testing to prepare for the next constructed tournament I'm able to make it to (which depends largely on free time, sadly, since my Saturdays are notoriously terrible for the rest of the month).

Innistrad is the first set to have me really excited for the mechnical side of things. Ironic that as a long time player, I was more interested in New Phyrexia from a lore standpoint, but Innistrad really has me sold on a blending of the mechanics with the flavor of the set.

Overall: Favorable impression. Would buy again.

Till Next Time Everyone,
-Andrew