Welcome to MTG Leeds!
Quote for the Day. ~ Bad rares are like poker hands. You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em. ~ Chris Millar, House of Cards
Its been a while since our last update, due mainly in part of work and other commitments falling on top of me out from nowhere like Warrior Tokens with Obsidian Battleaxes, and a small part of being indecisive on what to actually write. Do I write about my mega two-headed giant experience with Wei down in Bradford, where we walked away not only with Full Art Mutavaults but also with the title of West Yorkshire Champions? (For life, since it was the last ever championship event) , do I write about the exciting new cards that are coming out, and that I will get to touch for the entire weekend? How about our constructed tournament and draft reports? Gotta have those in as well. And as a result of trying to do too much, I ended up doing nothing, which is in itself, a worthwhile lesson to learn. Eventually I will write about something on Shadowmoor, and the Winners of the Drafts the last two un-updated weeks will be listed forever on the ‘Past Winner’s’ page, so you know who to beat when you turn up for our events. And maybe there will be a piece on a shadowmoor card which has been brewing on my mind for the last week or so. But for now
We move on to this Week. This week, Draft!
Lowryn, Lowryn, Morningtide, take number zillion, strangely enough, are still not bored yet and it will only be two more weeks before we start drafting Shadowmoor, How can this be? Almost all the tribal interactions have been worked out, everyone knows Thundercloud Shaman still rocks, which is why Joe passed it to Martin, choosing instead to go into heavy green, there were 18 players this week, so hopefully by next draft we will maybe have 20 people duking it out. I went… I’m not actually sure what I went into, as I was passed a mixture of random cards, as you would get in a 10 man pod. I managed somehow to branch into both wizards and rogues, no cute interactions, simply very solid and high paced gameplay, Boggart Loggers, Pestermite, two Stonybrook Anglers for pushing through combat, Sage of Fables, Fallowsage Mulldrifter for card advantage and a first picked O-ring and Necksnap to provide some level of removal. Matt drafted Mono-white Kithkin, with plenty of choicy white stuff since it was a 10 man pod, Joe passing to me had rare.dec, with Primal Command, Cloudthresher, a host of removal, a number of elves and sadly didn’t have enough small creatures to justify Revillark in his deck. Andy also had elves, with Perfect, Huntmaster, a number of Treefolk Warriors that can be brought in either with a Deathrending Elf, or smash in face with an Obsidian Battleaxe. Martin… well, martin had Thundercloud Shaman and a bunch of giants, with Brian Stoutarm in the board because he didn’t want to splash a third color, although many have thus argued that its mainly because he doesn’t know how to play Magic. In the face of all these explosive weapons, I wasn’t quite sure of a mishmash of merfolk wizards and random rogues is going to cut it. It didn’t help that I knew someone actually picked up the Thornbite Staffs that I saw going around, and was going to present a problem to my army of 1 toughness guys. We had a couple of new drafters as well who joined us in our pods, though there were actually one too many for me to remember who!
First Round I paired against Joe Churcher.
I wasn’t too happy with my prospects, but my deck went nuts on the first game while he stalled on three mana for most of that. When he did finally get to land drops, I had a better board position, and topdecked an answer to every spell he played, including a Primal Command and a Cloudthesher.
Second game, he didn’t get manascrewed, and I was beaten back quite convincingly, being stomped flat by fat, after fat, after fat, after fat. Perfect and Huntmaster gave him a board position I simply couldn’t catch up with. There was a point where I could have swung and got in for a few point of damage, then hit him in the face with Notorious Throng for its prowl cost, stealing me the game right from underneath his nose, but Alas, tis was not to be.Third game I got flooded. It wasn’t even close.
Second Round I paired up against Chris, a very nice person who had a bit of a rough day. It was compouded with the fact that he mulliganed down to 5 on the second game due to a technicality. Its nice to point out that you can draw cards like Jon Finkel, one less the number you are suppose to draw and the last card to the side, so that if you do accidently draw more then you should at the start of the game, you can identify which one was it immediately without having to look. If you did look, your in trouble.
He had an interesting deck, which was the merfolk mirror, but had Rings of Brightheart and Thousand Year Elixir. … In referance to the quote above, you do not on purpose, draft these two unless you have an amazing plan with activated abilities that may or may not involve Sunflare Shaman, Lightning Crafter or various other things. If you had these two, you would have went aggressively red in order to hope and pick up these Shamans in the Morningtide pack, or Have an Imperious Perfect or something. It turns out it was simply a confusion that Triggered Abilities were not Activated Abilities, and he had plenty of fine triggered abilities, though I’m not quite sure what they were now.
A Notorious Throng for its Prowl sealed away game 1, and Moonglove Extract to do in the last two points of damage sealed away the second game.
Round 3 is fairly more interesting, playing against Andrew and his Warrior deck, with vast amounts of equipment for his beaters. Deathrender had been a problem, turning his sizable guys into really big clocks, and Obsidian Battleaxe also turned his sizable guys into clocks that are one step ahead. In this round, I played out my white removal, taking care of certain problems like the Treefolk Assassin with Oblivion Ring, Necksnapped one or two attackers like the Huntmaster, and swung just barely for enough to push through that last point. In that game, both of us were in a bit of a flood, but I had Sage of Fable and Mulldrifter, He didn’t have Masked Admirers.
The second game he plonked down Perfect, Huntmaster, Battleaxe and Runed Stalagtite. With enough chafe to keep swinging through, I was surprised to be able to fend off wave after wave of attacks, taking damage as needed. At one point, he swung in for 10, taking me down to 9. Then after I dropped a couple of creatures to chump block, including Merrow Reejery and a couple of irrelavant Merfolk, I was able to hardcast Notorious throng for 4, after hitting him with Boggart Loggers (forest walk!)and Pestermite (flying!). It was something he wasn’t expecting, due to the fact that sometimes you really want to prowl it out and I was on three mana, but thanks to Frogtosser Bannert and the spell being a rogue spell, I was able to drop it for 3 and get 4 chumpers out. He swung again, and I went down to 2 after chumping with a bunch of black rogue tokens. He was on 7, and had swung with everything at that point. I came in for 5 points of damage, putting him on 2, and then finished him off by casting and sacrificing Moonglove Extract. Not bad, all-in-all. I came away at 4th place after tiebreakers, as we didn’t have the time to finish a 4th round. Joe won on Tiebreakers.
On the other table there were plenty of big plays, A Colossus for 28, someone finishing life on 120ish, elementals bringing in some bread for Robertas, and Rob(not to be confused with Robertas) somehow winning with cards that didn’t look good on paper but were awesome in his hand. That’s all I have energy for today, as I will be saving my strength and preparing for the pre-release of Shadowmoor tomorrow! As I am going to Manchester to Judge, I won’t be seeing many of our local players, except for Wei and Rick who are going there to judge with me, but I wish the best of luck to everyone. Get your feet wet, for Shadowmoor is coming to Leeds in a few weeks!
Until Then.
~Jin.
