Magic: the Gathering Wednesday Night Magic (Feb 5th) Recap

I was able to join a local Magic: the Gathering tournament again last Wednesday and all I can say is that I got very rusty. The new Standard with Theros Beyond Death looks to be more appealing to me if I have done playtesting. All I did since the start of the year was to brew possible decks and read through some of the new cards’ functionalities. 

Time constraints is my main reason so just this week I decided to play and they scheduled the Wednesday Night Magic which is just coincidental.

I asked Ace for available decks and he provided me with the Rakdos Knights deck which we completed just before Theros arrived in Standard. Here below is a sample decklist of the archetype:

Mainboard
24 LANDS
4 Blood Crypt
2 Castle Locthwain
9 Mountain
9 Swamp

28 CREATURES
4 Blacklance Paragon
4 Bonecrusher Giant
4 Fervent Champion
4 Knight of the Ebon Legion
4 Rotting Regisaur
4 Spawn of Mayhem
4 Stormfist Crusader

4 INSTANTS and SORC.
4 Drill Bit

4 OTHER SPELLS
4 Embercleave

SIDEBOARD
3 Duress
2 Epic Downfall
2 Legion’s End
2 Murderous Rider
4 Noxious Grasp
2 Sorcerous Spyglass

Source: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=24554&d=371686&f=ST

There were fourteen participants that night and I am quite happy with the turnout. It seemed that they were enjoying the new metagame of the format. Below are the results of my matchups.

Round 1 vs PR Melo (Golgari Oven) – Lost 0-2

Round 2 vs Ruel (Gruul Adventures) – Won 2-1

Round 3 vs Ralph (Mono Green Stompy) – Won 2-1

Round 4 vs Mossy (Mono Red Aggro) – Lost 0-2

Most of the losses were purely due to mana flooding even with my several attempts to randomly shuffle the deck to prevent it. I guess I just got very unlucky that time and my hands were cursed. Lol. My teammate, Ace, also didn’t win his last two matches. He was playing Blue-White Control.

Here below are the top players after 4 rounds of gameplay:

Wednesday Night Magic Tournament Results
Top 5:
After 4 rounds of awesome magic the gathering
1st AJ – Mono-Red Aggro
2nd Raymund – Mono-White Aggro
3rd Mossy – Mono-Red Aggro
4th Ace the Snake – Blue-White Control
5th Christian Wonderboy – Orzhov Doom

I do hope this player attendance can become a regular thing on Wednesday nights. The local game store really needed the support so that it could level up later on and organize higher-level types of tournaments.

Until the next blog post.

U/W Control, Red Deck Dominate Iloilo Meta

I was able to receive the results via Messenger of the MTG Iloilo community Saturday Standard tournament held last February 1, 2020, at Pro Rei Place. Twenty players were in attendance and it is a good number to gather the data.

The newly updated format with Theros Beyond Death went back to the basics of deck archetypes. I was able to observe the games during rounds two to four and checked on those who were at the top of the rankings. There were a few Blue-White Control while aggro decks were also present. I see that this version of the control deck was very successful in the metagame and seemed to continue its dominance in the format. Here below is the decklist:

Mainboard
2 Castle Ardenvale
2 Castle Vantress
4 Hallowed Fountain
8 Island
6 Plains
4 Temple of Enlightenment

3 Dream Trawler

4 Absorb
2 Dovin’s Veto
4 Shatter the Sky
1 Thassa’s Intervention
4 Thirst for Meaning
4 Banishing Light
4 Omen of the Sea
4 Teferi, Time Raveler
4 The Birth of Meletis

Sideboard
3 Aether Gust
1 Dovin’s Veto
1 Elspeth Conquers Death
1 Elspeth, Sun’s Nemesis
1 Glass Casket
1 Heliod’s Intervention
1 Mystical Dispute
2 Narset, Parter of Veils
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
2 Whirlwind Denial

The setting of the decks is far different from what I brewed last time during the Theros Beyond Death spoiler season. It is mainly because of the playset copies of The Birth of Meletis which makes sure you hit your lands on turns 3 and 4. This card also provides a blocker and lets you gain life. Banishing Light is the default spot removal that is set to the 3-mana curve line of the deck alongside Teferi. The deck’s sole win condition is Dream Trawler, which is very powerful in the late game. Castle Ardenvale can also provide an army of 1/1s once the battlefield is stabilized.

The second deck in feature is the Mono-Red aggro or Red Deck Wins as most players call it. Here below is a decklist.

Mainboard

3 Castle Embereth
17 Mountain

4 Anax, Hardened in the Forge
1 Bonecrusher Giant
4 Fervent Champion
2 Phoenix of Ash
4 Rimrock Knight
2 Robber of the Rich
4 Runaway Steam-Kin
4 Scorch Spitter
4 Tin Street Dodger

4 Light Up the Stage
4 Shock
3 Embercleave

Sideboard
3 Claim the Firstborn
2 Embereth Shieldbreaker
2 Experimental Frenzy
3 Lava Coil
1 The Akroan War
4 Unchained Berserker

The aggressive start is still there and the new inclusions from Theros Beyond Death set are Anax and Phoenix of Ash. Anax looks to be devastating with Embercleave and the Phoenix can be a late-game damage source with its Escape ability.

The Top 4 finishers in last Saturday’s Standard tournament at Pro Reis place are as follows:
1st, Ace – Blue-White Control
2nd, Earl – Rakdos Sacrifice
3rd, Franco – Mono-Red Aggro
4th, Ericson – Simic Ramp
20 players, 5 rounds of gameplay.

The expected metagame might still be the same in the coming weeks unless a major tournament overseas provides a breakout deck but I doubt it will be only some deck upgrades or card tech in an existing archetype.

That is about for this local metagame report. Until the next post and thanks for reading.

Theros Beyond Death Prerelease Report

Last Friday night was the first Theros Beyond Death prerelease in Iloilo City wherein the host game store was Nth Dimension: Comics and Games. I reserved my slot beforehand to make sure I am one of the first players to experience playing the cards and building the deck from the newest Magic set. There were only 18 slots allotted for the Prerelease event and so to avoid extra participants, Part Lee, the shop owner, announced on their FB page the slot reservations days before.

I did make time to read some articles and watch Youtube videos on the prerelease guide and on what cards to consider in building our sealed pool. Knowledge-wise I think that was enough and I had to rely on my luck in opening good and powerful cards. I also posted in my DeathMarked Facebook on the things to prepare for your first Prerelease event.

I arrived at around 5:30 pm in the shop which was just a few blocks from the city hall where I work. There were already a few familiar faces who were also playing in the Prerelease. We then discussed what they would like to open in their PR kits and regarding that one, I made an instant and short video interview. Check it out below.

The rest of the players arrived later that night and we gathered at the designated conference room on the second floor to get ready for the kit distribution and deck building. It officially started at around 6:45 pm. I was not able to choose my PR kit as it was just plainly distributed by the shop owner and so when I opened it, the foil promo card was Dalakos, Crafter of Wonders. It was not impressive to be used in an Enchantment-heavy format so I decided to just open the rest of the booster packs and sort them by color.

The other Rares I got were Tectonic Giant, Nessian Boar, Shatter the Skies, Haktos the Unscarred, Storm’s Wrath, and a Protean Thaumaturge. I then checked the commons and uncommons and sort out the good cards from the bad and unplayable ones. It turned out that Red and White are the best options mainly because of the two mass removals in each color. Also, Haktos is Red White and there were also a few spells and creatures that can be decently used.

My problem here is that my creature is quite high. There were only four creatures with mana cost three or less and the rest were mostly on five costs. I would expect awkward draws where my Auras could not enchant early and had to wait for slow creatures to be played first. It certainly did happen in some of my matches. Here below is a recap of my matches that night.

Rd 1 versus Black-Blue-Green – Won 2-1

Rd 2 versus Blue-White – Lost 0-2

Rd 3 versus Black-White – Won 2-0

Rd 4 versus Blue-White – Won 2-0

It was in the Blue-White matchups that I was punished by a mana flood and awkward draws of no creatures. In Game 1, I was able to bring him down to 1 life and was also able to sweep his creatures with Shatter the Skies in the early turns. He, however, was able to stabilize with Thryx beating down in the air for a few turns while having a blocker on the ground for my creatures. I was not able to answer it immediately and had to rely on my top deck which was only lands. If only I had drawn Haktos at that time as surely he would not have any answer to that if I roll the right number.

It was a learning event overall, but somewhat tiring because it finished at around 11:00 pm. Emphasis on learning as I had gained knowledge on most card interactions within the set and that Black got the most removal spells. It is quite different if you got the experience playing the actual cards than just reading each of their rating in a strategy article. At that time, I knew what I would do on my next PR sealed deck which I will be applying on the Saturday Prerelease at Pro Reis place. That will be Part 2 of this tournament report.

That is a wrap, thanks for reading, and until the next blog post.