Adios

I'm going to stop posting articles here for a while, moving to Good Games Community website, where they actually pay for articles!

Look for me HERE

Thanks for any attention I was getting!

Graham

Been Busy!

Well, I've finished uni now.. handed in my thesis and did my presentation.. That was taking up the majority of my time up until now.

Magic-wise, what have I been doing?
I borrowed a deck for FNM the week after the last post, because I was too late arriving to get my own deck from home. GR elves with no eldrazi monument. I went 0-3-drop, so I'm not writing about THAT.

The weekend after that, I went to Legacy for the first time in a long time, borrowed Belcher, went 3-1, losing to Countertop Natural Order.. Turns out turn 1 belcher on the play doesn't get there sometimes.

Last FNM I played Dredge, and went 3-1, losing to RUW planeswalker control. Game 1 he shut me down with walls of denial and planeswalkered me to death. Game 2 he hit a turn 2 luminarch ascension, turn 3 wall of denial, turn 4 ajani vengeant to shut off my crypt.. Pretty rude.

Last weekend I played Landstill at the Legacy league, went 1-2-1. I had never played the deck before round 1, so it was an eye-opener to find out how difficult legacy was to play when you weren't making 16 goblins on turn 1. Looks like I need to devote a fair bit of time and effort to that format if I want to excel.

That's my recap! moving on to the future!

Standard: I'm still planning to play dredge at FNM, I swapped some cards around and am searching my house for pithing needles for the board, but otherwise I'm happy with how it plays.

Extended: Season is coming up, and I am looking at Tezzeret control. Getting the deck together now so I can start practicing with it. It'll take far more dedication to play well than most decks I end up with.. but dedicated combo in extended is fail right now, and I hate zoo.

Legacy: Trying to play around different decks to get a feel for the format. This week is planned to be Faerie Stompy, if I can borrow the sea drakes. We'll see :)

FNM 13/11/2009

I didn't even realise it was Black Friday until I just wrote that date! If I'd seen that earlier, I would have played MBC instead of THIS monstrosity:

4 Arid Mesa
8 Island
5 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
21 lands

2 Burst Lightning
3 Font of Mythos
4 Howling Mine
3 Into the Roil
3 Jace Beleren
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Ponder
4 Runeflare Trap
3 Spell Pierce
3 Time Warp
3 Unsummon
3 Whiplash Trap
39 other spells

Sideboard

3 Earthquake
3 Flashfreeze
3 Negate
3 Pyroclasm
3 Double Negative

Basically I found this hiding in the Decks of the Week from a MTGO standard queue. it went 3-1 there, so I thought I'd give it a try.

So without further ado, my first tournament report!

Round 1 vs TurboFog
Guy plays a few land, and a howling mine (thanks for saving me the effort!) I'm looking at a hand of bounce and burn, no traps.. he plays turn 5 Telemin Performance... WHAT THE? Everyone laughs at me, shuffle up for game 2!
Sideboard:
-3 unsummon
-3 whiplash trap
+3 negate
+3 Double Negative.

Game 2 goes a little better, with him still playing those howling mines for me, I Runeflare Trap, he Safe Passages, I negate.
Game 3 I Negate a Telemin performance and an Archive Trap, then burn and runeflare trap for the kill.

Round 2 vs Boros (Aaron Yue)
I don't think I stand a CHANCE with this matchup.. He's way too fast, and empties his hand so quickly.
Game 1 he plays a Kor Skyfisher, bouncing a land. I Unsummon the Skyfisher, and set him back in the tempo. Mines and Fonts happen, he bashs in a few times, burns me a few times. On the critical turn, I attempt to trap in his drawstep for lethal +1, he Burst Lightning's me down to 2, then Path to exiles his own dude. I show him a Lightning bolt, and we're on to game 2.

Sideboard:
+ 3 earthquake
+ 3 Pyroclasm
- 3 Spellpierce
- X fonts and Jaces

Game 2: He rushes, I die, it's horrible
Game 3: He plays really slow?? First play from him is a turn 4 Ranger of Eos, fetching Steppe Lynx and Bushwacker. I play another Howling Mine and pass.
He plays Lynx, Fetchland into plains, Elite Vanguard, Goblin Guide, Goblin Bushwacker with kicker.. OUCH??
I whiplash-trap the Steppe Lynx and the Ranger, go to 4.
Untap, draw some, Jace both, play time warp, draw some Jace both, pass turn to him. Attempt to runeflare for lethal, he plays a Harm's Way, we both go to 2, he plays a Burst Lightning to my face. OUCH.

Round 3: Ariff with Bant Aggro.
Game 1: This one goes on forever, after I 3-for-1 myself dealing with a Qasali Pridemage before I play a howling mine (2 bounce spells and a lightning bolt..)
He eventually gets some action going with a Knight of the Reliquary bashing in for 3, getting bounced twice, and on the fateful turn, he outplays himself. Play Noble Heirarch, Play Rafiq, Bash with Knight for lethal, I rewind to his begin-combat step, Burst Lightning the Heirarch, Lightning bolt the Rafiq and go to 2.. He looks at the Knight, swings for 7 and puts me on 2.. Post Combat he activates his Elspeth, sighs and passes turn.
I untap, take 4 turns in a row, trying to deck myself, bounce his whole non-land whole board (2 planeswalkers, 2 knights) and on my final turn, Runeflare for 13, Lightning bolt and Burst Lightning for lethal.

I know he's got meddling mages in the board, because he said he did! I also had my first Runeflare trap Bant Charmed, so I sideboarded with these in mind.
Sideboard:
+3 Earthquake
+3 Negate
+3 Flashfreeze
-3 Font of Mythos
-1 Time Warp
-2 Burst Lightning
-3 Junk of some sort.

Game 2: He's on the play, turn 1 Noble Heirarch, Turn 2 Rhox war Monk, turn 3 Elspeth, swing for 7.
I'm doing absolutely nothing, looking at a hand of earthquakes and ponders and jaces, wondering why I kept.
when he plays the turn 4 Qasali Pridemage and swings for 8, I pack it in, as we're getting close to time.
Game 3: I keep an average hand of removal and Mines/Jaces. He gets a turn 3 Rhox war Monk, which gets bounced twice before connecting and finally eating 2 lightning bolts. An elspeth token slaps me up three times, while two Qasali pridemages take out two Howling Mines... I think I just got out-card-advantaged.
Meddling mage comes down naming time warp just as Time is called, I have a hand of Land + Earthquake, he has 6 cards in hand, a token and a meddling mage.
Draw, land, play earthquake for 2.
he draws, plays another meddling mage for Time Warp, plays a Finest Hour
Draw, land, pass turn, lose in turn 3 of extra time.

So far this deck has been underwhelming, mostly it stumbles on land in the early game, being loathe to crack fetches as it decreases both my landcount and my life total. It's hilarious when it wins, and it wins with style.. both good points in my book, but it doesn't win ENOUGH.

Round 4 I get paired against Tristan with monoblack vampires.
Game 1 I fail to draw a runeflare trap, while my Howling Mines and Jaces draw him into Hexmages (which kill my Jaces) and many Guul-Draz Vampires.
Game 2 he stumbles on land, only starting to draw into them when I'm playing Howling Mines and Fonts, at which point he dies to a Runeflare trap for 8 and then 10.
Game 3 is FUN, after about turn 10, when I finally hit my 5th land drop. In the meantime he's been doing me very little damage, as I keep Bouncing whatever he plays other than a single Guul-Draz-Vampire, which ends up dealing me 6 damage before I get to the fifth land, time warp myself into Lighting bolt + Pyroclasm to deal with his turn 10 play of Malakir Bloodwitch + 2 1-drops.
I "stabilize" on 5 life, when he plays a Guul-Draz again, bashes me to 2, then slams his Gatekeeper, taps his land and throws down a Blood Tribute saying I'm dead..
I look at the card, adjust my life total to one, and ask him if he Kicked that..
It turns out he though Blood Tribute did me damage equal to the number of vampires he controlled??? Anyway, I untap, take 2 turns, bounce both of his creatures and Burst Lightning him to 16, in his Draw step, double Runeflare Trap him for 8 a piece. The only instant in his hand was Doom Blade with no targets.. lucky me!

All in all, I went a mediocre 2-2, which is quite common when I play janky alternative decks.. I did however have a lot of fun with the games I won, and the games I lost (other than R3G2) were all nailbiters, as befits a combo-control deck like this one.

At one point during the night, someone asked why I wasn't running Twincast, to which I replied "I don't know..." and thought about exactly how good it would have been.
Other suggestions for modifications are: Adding more land, or at least decreasing Fetch-count. I dealt myself an average of 3-4 damage per game.. some starting hands had ONLY fetches in them, not healthy.

I would consider dropping some of the Unsummons and 1 Whiplash trap, though at least 2 of the latter need to stay in. Sideboard probably wants Essence Scatter, to help you survive longer. Earthquake is pretty overrated, as very often you are losing a race, and don't want to deal yourself 4 just to wipe away at Rhox War Monk (for example).

This deck might stay together long enough to see play next FNM too, which is a rare occurrence for me. Generally random experimental decks get 1 week to prove themselves good and/or fun, and then get pulled apart for the next weeks deck du jour.. I think this one has potential, especially with Twincast in it.

Any thoughts/suggestions are very welcome!

Graham

First Post!

Introductions:
My name is Graham Croucher.
I live in Sydney, Australia.
I play Magic: The Gathering at a competitive, but not (yet) Professional, level.
Anything not related to the above point is not really relevant to this blog.

My Magic Experiences:
I started playing the game when my older brother came home from his new High School with a pile of the cards, and showed me the game. This was in 1994. He had this awesome R/G/W deck that "curved out" and Palladia Moors and Fireball for 20. I got the leftover colours of Blue and Black, which suited me just fine. I quickly fell in love with counterspells and powersinks, causing my brother no end of frustration.

I played the game at a casual level up until 2000, when I played in my first Sanctioned Event, a Masques/Masques/Nemesis Draft in which I came 7th.
I kept playing until Legions/Scourge, which I disliked and caused me to lose interest in the game. I came back in June last year to Shadowmoor drafts and Block Constructed season.

From these humble beginnings I've begun my quest for glory:
- 17th at Nationals after grinding in for my first time attending.
- 1 PTQ top 4, a 9th place, 10th place and 12 place all in the last year of playing.
- 5-0 to 5-3 at GP Melbourne this year (I was doing well until I tilted against LSV)

What can you expect from this blog:
Right now, not much. I will start regular updates soon and decide on the amount and type of content then. What I envision for this is a place for me to post my thoughts on the current format du jour, be it Standard, Extended or Limited. I follow the PTQ circuit, play weekly Standard FNMs and draft when I find the time. This will add up to a surprising amount of content if I find the time to put it all down. More likely, you'll see me post decklists that I made/found and think are cool, and talk about my experiences with playing them.

I'll be writing up reports, if that is of much use, of my FNM games, as well as obviously writing about my successes and failures at larger events, such as PTQs, GPs and the like.

Feel free to comment on things you like and don't like about this blog, as long as it's going to help me improve my writing or my game.