Hey all. I hope you all had a good Magic: the Gathering Zendikar prerelease weekend opening your desired fetchlands, Planeswalkers and other good cards. I just felt bad because Saturday was also the day that the tropical storm Ondoy ravaged our nation’s capital Manila and the nearby provinces. Casualties and death are still increasing as of the moment and I hope those people affected get enough help to return their lives to normal.

Going back, we had around 20 players on the prerelease and its good because some of our friends got to play because of sponsorship. I guess they’re really gunning for those good rares.

My starting six packs got me a few good cards but no limited bomb. The only card worth mentioning is a Lotus Cobra. At first, it was really hard to build out the deck because of the card pool. I looked at black and red as my potential colors but it lacks support and I’m dying to use the cobra. So I checked my green pool again and saw that I had two Harrows for mana fixing. A few mana and card count calculations later, I made a deck with green as its main color and got red and black as secondary colors. Its pretty much looked like Jund aggro. Lol.

I forgot the actual list but the deck got early beatdown curve with 2 Vampire Lacerators, Cobra and Harrow for fixing and accelaration, Lavaball Trap in case of opponent horde, and spot removals like Hideous End, and Magma Rift. I only got this large wurm for the fatties slot and the rest are weenie beats/utility critters.

Here are the summary of the matches as far as I remembered.

Round 1 vs Esteed (Won 2-1) He was playing 5 color Allies. I got mana screwed on Game 1. Game 2 was almost a loss for me because of his Baloth that gets +4/+4 and trample for every landfall. A top decked Magma Rift saved me and overwhelmed his other creatures with a Savage Silhouetted lacerator. Got him on Game 3 with an aggro start and finished it off with a ping on the magma hound.

Round 2 vs JP (Lost 2-0) He was playing Bant color midrange. I got an aggressive start on both games but his tapper merfolk held the fort and that annoying crab milled my spot removals. His fliers finished me off.

Round 3 vs Gian (Won 2-1) He was playing Black White Blue. Game 1 was a favor for me as he mana flooded. He shouldn’t have kept the starting seven lands. Game 2 was quite a stall but I was drawing lands and got overwhelmed on the board. The deciding game was a battle of combat tricks. The second turn cobra and third turn Harrow got me ahead on the board but he was able to stabilize with much better critters. We were trading creatures right after that. I forgot what happened on the last turns but the one thing that mattered and killed him is the ping from the hound which he forgot.

Round 4 vs Oliver (Won 2-1) He was playing Green Blue Red. My start was faster than his on Games 1 and 3. He almost got me on game 1 with a kicked Rite of Replication on my creature, but I was able to deny it by casting Hideous End on the target. He was successful to do it again on Game 2 and I was not able to recover after that, in addition to drawing three straight lands. Game 3 was all about card utilization and I really learned a lot about being patient and playing the right spell at the right time.

Final record was 3-1 and got me three additional Zendikar cards. The rares were two planeswalkers (Sorin and Nessa) and a… I forgot the other one. Oh well, at least it was worth it. Our sponsored buddy JP got us an Arid Mesa and other tournament staple goodies.

Overall it was a fun fun fun pre release with good laughs and moments with the rest of Iloilo Mtg community. I’ll update with the pics as soon as Masyong got it uploaded. So until next time I guess. Time now to brew Zendikar. 😀