The Magic: the Gathering Tournament Reports is usually started with a short back story as to how the deck archetypes and their components were completed. At that time, I may have been fond of sharing these stories to give them a more flavorful detail, and on what I will be planning soon on the decks based on their tournament performance.

Here below is an example of a short-but-precise tournament report.

We were back again in Standard constructed format as we entered the month of September. Also, we changed our tournament schedule starting last Friday to accommodate our other players that couldn’t join the Saturday tournaments. I hope that’ll work and so far there’s an increase of participants last Friday (an increase of three actually, Lol..).

Anyways, I was thankful that I was able to complete my Demigod Red deck (thanks to Mao for the Snow Mountains, and to Rei and JR for lending me the Flame Javelins. Lol.) and that was my immediate deck of choice for the tournament. I guess I don’t need to repost the main decklist as you all know the components. For reference, here’s my sideboard.

Sideboard (15)

3 Everlasting Torment

4 Magus of the Moon

4 Sulfur Elemental

4 Sulfurous Blast

We started a quarter before 6 pm because our TO was a bit late for the event. Here were the recap of my matchups:

Round 1 – I was faced with the number 1 player in our community, Patrick. He was playing faeries so I thought this would be an easy matchup. Unfortunately, I lost Game 1. I boarded in the Magi and the blasts. I took Game 2 fast and Game 3 was a close one as we were exchanging attacks but his blossom is ticking down his life. I was able to neutralize his man-lands with my magus of the moon and a sulfurous blast took the game and the match.

Record: 1-0, 2-1

Round 2 – I was paired with Mark Co who was playing Elves. Another good matchup I guess and it turned out to be true. Game 2 was a bit close to me losing but I was able to take down his colossi and stabilize at 5 life. Several burns to the dome and a Demigod took the match.

Record: 2-0, 4-1

Round 3 – A bad matchup for me as I was against Kithkins piloted by Mark Tubola. Game 1 was very fast. He got me on turn five via Mirrorweave. See the pics below for the snapshot. I boarded in Sulfur Elementals and Sulfurous Blasts. In Game 2, I thought I was ahead on the beatdown until I saw my creatures one by one disappearing, either Unmaked or removed by Oblivion Ring. I ran out of gas and he began the beats with a Glorious Anthemed Spirits, a FOD, and a Knight of Meadowgrain. That’s just enough to beat me to death.

Record: 2-1, 4-3

Round 4 – I was paired with another Kithkin deck, this time piloted by my friend Oliver. We talked about our chances of getting to the top 4 and knowing that I had the higher chance, he gladly conceded to give me the win. Thanks Pot!

The final record, 3-1. My observation on the deck is that its overall performance was good except on the match against kithkins where I didn’t see any of my Sulfurous Blasts. Figure of Destiny was awesome against decks with limited or no removal, as it can take the game all by himself.

I’m planning of playing this deck again tomorrow with, of course, a little adjustment on the sideboard. I’ve heard that one of the players will be piloting Lark so I better bring in my macabre. Hehehe… Let’s see what happens.

Till next time peeps. Thanks very much for reading…

Reading some Magic: the Gathering tournament reports and blog posts back in the old blog is a trip to memory lane as some of the events were not covered like some of the current and new vlogs. In my way of resharing them as via under the throwback category on my blog posts. Today’s tournament report share is on my past fave Mono-Red Burn deck. Check out the details below.

Hey peeps. I’m here once again to discuss my performance on last Saturday’s Standard and DCI-sanctioned tourney. I’m piloting a Mono-Red Burn deck and it has performed quite well. Before the tournament, I was deciding to play Black-Green Elves and my friend Oliver provided me with his build. I made some last-minute playtesting online thru MWS and so far it was doing well. We were able to complete the main deck list but the sideboard was lacking the cards that we want. We just adjusted the sb with cards that were available at that time. This gave me second thoughts and since the playtest wasn’t enough for me to get familiar with the deck, I decided to stick with my mono-red burn and made some adjustments. Here’s the list:

Mono Red Sligh a.k.a. Summer Heat by Mark Ian Alloso

Main (37)
16 Creatures
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Magus of the Scroll
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Spark Elemental

21 Spells
4 Incinerate
4 Rift Bolt
4 Shard Volley
4 Sudden Shock
4 Sulfurous Blast
1 Manabarbs (Tech Wannabe)

Land (23)
2 Ghitu Encampment
2 Keldon Megaliths
15 Mountain
4 Mutavault

Sideboard (15)
4 Cryoclasm
1 Fury Charm
1 Ingot Chewer
4 Magus of the Moon
2 Manabarbs
3 Threaten

Round One: Jaime Hernandez playing Mono-Red Burn

Game 1: We started throwing burns at each other’s faces but I ran out of gas while he was able to Browbeat for more burns and ended the game quickly.

Game 2: I was able to start ahead with fanatic and marauders while he had less burn in hand. He Browbeat for answers but I decided to take the 5 damage instead and took the game after several burn spells to the dome.

Game 3: Quite a similar scenario to game 2 where he draw more lands than burned and I was able to go beatdown with Fanatic and Mutavault.

Record: 1-0

Matches: 2-1

Round Two: Emben Estrella playing Mono-Blue Faeries

Game 1: One-two punch of fanatic and marauders took him to low life. He countered some of my burns but Magus of the Scroll burned him to crisp.

Game 2: Early beatdown once again by fanatics and marauders and Magus of the Scroll did the rest.

Record: 2-0

Matches: 4-1

Round Three: Derek Palanca playing Mono Green Elves

Game 1: I burned his creatures one by one. He overextended by casting a vanquisher and an Elvish Harbinger and fetching Elvish Promenade. Sulfurous Blast wiped out his board and I started the beatdown with my man-lands. After several attacks and two sulfurous blasts, he was dead.

Game 2: His first two creatures were burned to a crisp and I played Mana Barbs on an empty board which I noticed later was a huge mistake. I was getting him to low life and the barbs keep on hitting me at the same time. Mutavault took most of the beats and with him at two life, a suspended Rift Bolt finished the game.

Record: 3-0

Matches: 6-1

Round Four: Jonathan Tabalina playing Homebrewed Project R

We are both standing at 9 points and decided to draw the match.

Record: 3-0-1

Matches: 6-1-1

Round Five: Caesar Ean Escleto playing Tarmorack

This seems to be a bad matchup for sligh because of the massive discard and an early fatty Goyf, but we decided to play it out.

Round 1: I played first and started fast with fanatics and marauders. I took him to 14 and suspended two Rift Bolts without playing a third land. He didn’t play any spell at turn three while I was stuck at two lands. I was expecting a Stupor but I’m glad that it didn’t come. I was able to get to draw my next two lands and Shard Volleyed him to take the game.

Round 2: I boarded in my fury charm and ingot chewer for his rack and two threats for Tarmogoyf. His turn two The Rack was met with an evoked chewer and I was lucky that he didn’t draw any direct discard spells. I burned his augur of skulls and Oona’s prowler but he was able to discard Haakon and play it from the grave. But it was too late for him as I burned him with my Magus.

Record: 4-0-1

Matches: 8-1-1

The results were calculated and I ranked 1st having 13 points. The second placer was Raynard also with 13 points. The other players who made it into the top 8 were Jonathan, Gian, Patrick, Micheal, Caesar, and John Paul. The pairings were made and here we go with the top 8.

Quarterfinals: John Paul Imperial playing Mono-Blue Rogues

Game 1: I started burning him while he suspended an Infiltrator-il-kor and played Cloak and Dagger. I got him to low life and played a main phase Sulfurous Blast unhindered to take game 1.

Game 2: Quite a similar scenario of burning and in addition a beatdown of two Mutavaults while he didn’t have early threats. Two Shard Volleys in response to his Cryptic Command ended the match.

Record: 5-0-1

Matches: 10-1-1

Semifinals: Patrick Tirol playing Dragonstorm

It was getting late at that time and the remaining players were quite exhausted. So we decided the match and this generous opponent gratefully gave me the win.

Record: 6-0-1

Matches: 12-2-1

Finals: Gian Occeña playing Project R

Another generous player. We were discussing who will be first and he gratefully gave me the top spot.

Record: 7-0-1

Matches: 14-3-1

So there you have it folks, my first tournament report for April. My match-ups were somewhat favorable and I’m glad the deck performed very well. If you’re looking for a deck to build this summer, this deck is fit for the season. Hehe…

After the tournament, we went to Mao’s place to celebrate his birthday and the graduation of his younger brother and fellow Magikero, Carlo. 

Until the next time, Chow.

Happy Thursday all. One more day and we are into the weekend of Magic: the Gathering games and other hobbies that you might have scheduled to do on those days. Today’s blog post is another throwback Thursday report of the local tournaments done back when the Lorwyn set was still in the Standard format. Check it out below one of our Block Constructed events.

July 19th, 2008, the last Saturday our Magic: the Gathering tournament was held before Eventide becomes legal. We decided the format to be LBC (Lorwyn Block Constructed) in preparation for Team Iloilo for the upcoming GP Manila in August.

The sad part is that I have no components for the block version of my RDW deck. I contacted my friend and fellow player Gian if he has cards available for the list I’ve created. Luckily, he will play a different deck that time so all of his red and black card components are available. I gave him the list of the cards that I will borrow and he gladly brought that cards on the tournament day. Btw, here is the list that I’ve played. It is a Black-Red midrange control deck that is popular on the recent PTQ in the United States.

Main deck
4 Auntie’s Hovel
4 Graven Cairns
11 Mountain
5 Swamp

4 Demigod of Revenge
4 Festercreep
4 Murderous Redcap
4 Shriekmaw

4 Flame Javelin
4 Incendiary Command
4 Lash Out
4 Nameless Inversion
4 Tarfire

Sideboard
2 Chandra Nalaar
3 Fulminator Mage
3 Guttural Response
3 Makeshift Mannequin
3 Spitebellows
1 Puppeteer Clique

I forgot to borrow 2 Reflecting Pools, and so I just substituted them into two Swamps. Also, I couldn’t find a fourth Fulminator Mage so I stick with a Puppeteer Clique.

Here is a quick recap of how my matches went:

Round 1 – Gian (Assassins)

Win 2-0. Nice…..

Round 2 – JP (Merfolks)

Win 2-0. Wooohoooo….

Round 3 – Ramon (Assassins)

Lost 1-2. Waaaaaa…..

Round 4 – Mao (Faeries)

Lost 0-2. Aaarggghhhh….

I thought I’ll gonna get a winning streak again after round 2 but my game 3 with Ramon seems like a disaster. I was stuck at three lands with one red mana source while he just went into turn 4 and turn 5 Colossus and these two went all the way. Sigh.

A 2-2 record for a first-timer on the deck is not bad but I won’t take it as an excuse. At least now I know how the deck works. Now all I have to do is get some tweaking on the main list and the sideboard. Our meta here seemed a bit slow so a little adjustment of the speed of the deck is needed. The Fulminator Mage was mostly my MVP in the games that I’ve won. I guess he deserves a slot in the main deck.

As for the coming of Eventide, I’m thinking of the option of going into mono-red with Stigma Lashers and Figures of Destiny as the new addition to the deck. We’ll see if that works so stay tuned next week peeps as I put this into action. For now, I’ll do some playtesting on the new build. I hope I could get some time to do that.

Here are some of the pics that I took during the tournament:

I am sharing again another Magic: the Gathering tournament report from my previous Death-Mark blog and this event report for the week is from a Saturday draft with the Shards of Alara set. This is dated back to October 2008. Check out the recap report below.

We had a fun ALA draft last Saturday. It was our first draft for the set. A total of 12 players joined the tournament which is quite surprising coz we can’t even complete the minimum eight players for our weekly Standard tournaments. I guess we need to increase our registration fee for them to always join. Lol! I was happy though because the old players are coming back to play again. Hehe…

We were divided into two pods with six players on each pod.

I had no draft strategy that time but I got a few hints by reading the tournament reports from GP Kansas City and GP Paris. I just stick with the usual strategy with my previous drafts which I called “The First Pick Technique.” It paid off though as my first pick was a Battlegrace Angel. I thought of going into Bant or Naya draft. The succeeding picks though led me into an aggro Naya build with early beaters, late-game Fatties, and burn finishers like Soul’s Fire. The Gruul spirit was still there. Lol.. Here’s a glimpse of my picks as I forgot to list down my cards. Big thanks to our resident Maniniyot.

The deck creation was pretty difficult as I was deep into a think tank on what cards to include, especially since I’ll be having three colors (Green, Red, and White) in the deck. The card arrangement helped a lot though in filtering out the unwanted cards. You should really read each purpose of the card as you will base it on how you formulate the number of your lands for each color plus your Panoramas, Obelisks, and other mana fixers.

Ok now for the matchups, I was paired with Master Mao on the first round. He was piloting a four-color Esper-based control deck. I considered it as a control because he had a lot of removals, even for my fatties. I got him fast on game one, thanks to a first turn Wild Nacatl. In game two, I almost had him but I had a terrible error as I forgot about the Unearth ability of Vithian Stinger. He was at 4 life, in play was his critters and I got a 3/3 Wild Nacatl. I drew into Soul’s Fire thinking that he was still at one if I used it. What a dumb mistake! Grrr… That haunted me on Game 3. I was still able to aggro him early but that wasn’t enough as I drew land after land and ran out of gas. Wtf… The result was 1-2.

In Round 2, I was against a player in my pod. I forgot the name sorry but he was a comeback player. He played in the Time Spiral days and stopped at Shadowmoor. His draft was a Grixis deck with the Traitor King as the bomb. I wasn’t able to remember my plays here but I was able to aggro him games one and three. His Sedris got me in game two. The result was 2-1. I’m at one win and one loss apiece.

In Round 3, my opponent was piloting a somewhat Bant deck. Not sure of what his actual bomb is because he got mana screwed on both games but I saw in his previous match that he drafted a Stoic Angel. The round result was 2-0 and I’m at 2-1.

I was paired with card pool buddy Oliver at the final round. We decided that I will be the winner of this match because of the higher record and it will also benefit our pool by having the higher rank on the rare picks. My final tournament record is 3-1. I got third place and a third pick on the rares. Wooot!

My picks for the rare draft were quite worth it: Hell’s Thunder, Salvage Titan, and Feral Hydra. Enough to pay my registration I guess.

To summarize, I was pretty happy with the draft. Drafting and building a favorite type of deck is really worth it. It’s a good thing that I wasn’t in many conflicts with my pod in drafting the Naya colors.

My props for the tournament would be:

• Wild Nacatl for always being there in turn one to do much of the damage,
• Sigil Blessing-Soul’s Fire combo for the early finish,
• Battlegrace Angel for the awesome Exalted Lifelink.

The slops would be:

• Mana flooding and mana screw despite the 17 land count. Probably shuffling problems. Grrrr..
• Vithian Stinger’s Unearth ability. Read the damn card Mark!
• Gift of the Gargantuan. I should have included it main deck to deal with the mana probs and creatureless situations.

Oh well, I really still need more practice in drafting. I hope I could do it despite of my hectic schedule at work.

That’s it for now peeps. Till next post… Chow…

Hello, I am sharing again another Magic: the Gathering tournament report from my previous Death-Mark blog. This time, it is about the Eventide Prerelease for Iloilo City held last July 2008. Wow that is fourteen years ago, and the community is still very active in the local gameplay scene and what excites us every time are these Prerelease events.

Here below is my tournament write-up.

I. Introduction

Finally! I am writing my report for the Eventide Prerelease weekend recently held here in Iloilo. Sorry for the delay guys and gals. My writing mood just kicked in after a few days of blank thoughts. Grrrr… I don’t know why, maybe because of the “Superstar Syndrome”. Lol…

Anyways, the Eventide Prerelease was held with 15 players participating and with Mr. Francis Profeta as the tournament organizer from Neutral Grounds. Everybody was excited (including me) about what new cards we were going to get from the fresh packs. I was still hoping for more players coming to join, but unfortunately, the tournament has to start. That was around 11:30 am. Sir Francis arranged the names on the table according to the registration list and distributed the packs. The players were seated in and the sealed deck listing and creation started.

II. The Deck

I started off by opening my Shadowmoor Tournament Pack. I was pretty excited when Sir Francis announced that no card rotation will be made but upon opening my rares, I was like “Wat duh???” The rares from that pack were Polluted Bonds, Swans of Bryn Argoll and Elemental Mastery. Sigh. The only card that I think was worth selling was a Tattermunge Maniac. Oh well, maybe on the Eventide packs I’ll get lucky so I opened the remaining three Eventide packs. I got a Sapling of Colfenor, a Wake Thrasher, and a Pyrrhic Revival. It wasn’t even close to the good cards but still okay. My other cards looked playable in this tournament. I listed the cards one by one as carefully as possible just to make sure I won’t miss one.

Ok, now for the deck creation. I was browsing my cards on what two-color deck I can possibly make. I was confused about which color to stick to because a lot of options are popping in my mind due to the hybrid cards. Plus, I haven’t gotten enough sleep because of the night out at MO2 (it’s Saturday night you know). Hehe… I know what you’re thinking.

Ok, going back, I decided to go red-green because of lots of removal spells on my Red pile. Unfortunately, there are fewer red creatures and bombs so I checked the lists again. I’ve noticed that the most number of hybrid cards that I have are on the black-green hybrid pile. Also checking the black and green piles, I discovered that I have enough black removal spells and possible threats on my green hybrid critters. So I’ve listed my possible components and came up with the final decklist. 

Here’s the list:

B/G Eventide Prerelease Sealed Deck 7/13/2008

by Mark Ian Alloso

Lands (18)

9 Forest

9 Swamp

Creatures (14)

1 Sootwalkers

1 Kulrath Knight

1 Slippery Bogle

1 Quillspike

1 Grazing Kelpie

1 Wickerbough Elder

1 Wildslayer Elves

1 Morselhoarder

1 Desecrator Hag

1 Sapling of Colfenor

1 Gloomwidow

1 Faerie Macabre

2 Rendclaw Trow

Spells (8)

1 Blowfly Infestation

1 Gloomlance

1 Cankerous Thirst

1 Syphon Life

2 Gift of the Deity

1 Barkshell Blessing

1 Favor of the Overbeing

The inclusion of the two Gift of the Deity was pretty solid I think because most of my creatures are black-green hybrid and it can single-handedly kill all of the opponent’s creatures. I’ve also chosen Favor of the Overbeing plus Slippery Bogle as having these two on your starting hand could be a possible early GG.

III. The Match-ups

I wasn’t able to jot down my matches so some accounts here are somewhat inaccurate. It is just an overview of what I’ve remembered during the matches.

Round 1 – Jonathan Tabalina

Jonathan was playing black-white with a splash of red. I got lucky on the first game as I’ve drawn what I call my mini-combo, Favor of the Overbeing, and the little troll-shroud guy. I won the die roll and I was pretty excited to play the 1/1 critter on my first turn. Athan didn’t have any action on his first three turns so I took advantage by playing the Favor on turn 2 and a Gloomwidow on turn 3. After several beats of the 3/3 flying, vigilance, and troll shroud beast, he conceded. During game 2, we started off trading early creatures but he ran out of gas while I played some evasion and persist creatures, overpowered his, and get in for a quick kill. The result was 2-0.

Round 2 – Rei Anthony Coo

As I was called by Rei to seat in for the match, I said to myself, “Omg, I’m facing the 2008 Cebu Regionals second placer. This is going to be a tough one.” So I just prayed that my deck will do its job well, hopefully. Rei was playing black-red.

In game 1, he got me in an early rush of critters and the two Noggle Bandits seemed unstoppable. In Game 2, I mulligan my draw to a better hand of six. I started the beats on turn three and saw him not playing any threats. Maybe he got mana-screwed as I only see Mountains on his side.

He was able to stabilize turns later but wasn’t enough to stop my creatures for the kill. In game 3, he was able to get me into 6 life with an early beat. I was playing creatures turn after turn just to keep up with his Noggle Bandit. Luckily, he ran out of blockers, and seeing his next draw to be of no use, he extended his hand. Game result: 2-1

Now I’m just two wins away from that Prerelease T-shirt. I was already happy because of the two booster packs I’ve won and seemed content with it.

Round 3 – Elmer Casipe

Seeing Elmer defeating Master Mao in the previous round gave me the chill. Maybe his deck is composed of bombs and good cards. Still, I have no choice but to play it and hope my deck will maintain its good tempo. Elmer was playing Red-Green-White.

In game 1, Lady Luck was on my side again. He seemed to be mana screwed! Seeing the opportunity, I took advantage to get some early damage on him. After seeing me playing several threats, he cast Hallowed Burial. Wtf! Still, he continues to draw-go and I was able to play the rest of my hand, getting in for some damage and playing removal on his critters. My Wicker-bough Elder withered with three counters and the Quillspike, very happy to see those -1/-1 counters, took him from 10 life to zero.

In game 2, we had an early trade of creatures and he hold on defense 3 critters, including a Lockjaw Snapper. A wrong decision of block and having a Blowfly Infestation in play resulted in a domino effect of -1/-1 counters, and left him with a 1/1 Wildslayer Elves. We were both able to stabilize our defenses again until he played a Volleymaker. I had no removal in hand and was praying for a good top deck. God is very good and my top deck was a Gift of the Deity. Woohoo! I quickly enchanted it to my Desecrator Hag and swing in to kill all of his creatures. He seems to be mana flooding after that and my two remaining critters took the game and the win. The game result was 2-0.

Wow, a 3-0 record. My first time to have this record in a Prerelease and I was very happy about it. Only one more to go, can I do it in the last round?

Round 4 – Oliver Mastilero

Nice. I was paired with a card pool partner, Master Oliver. He was very considerate and we agreed that I will be the winner of the match. Game result: 2-1.

Games: 8-2

Matches: 4-0

IV. Conclusion

Overall, I was happy with my decision and card choices on the deck. I must also say Luck is a part of Magic and it plays a very good part. Even though I have no bomb rares and only got a Sapling of Colfenor as a rare creature threat (I don’t consider it as one though, lol), the deck’s performance was good. Gift of the Deity was my MVP card at that tournament. The other cards worth mentioning are:

• Rendclaw Trow – Persist and wither are a very good combination in this card.
• Quillspike – Trow’s best friend. I can imagine his eyes glowing as he sees those wither counters in my other creatures. Wait, his eyes are really glowing! Lol…
• Wicker-bough Elder – For eating my opponent’s Scuttlemutt and providing a good beatdown.
• Slippery Bogle and Favor of the Overbeing – For the two-card combo and a very good early threat.
• Cankerous Thirst – A definitely good combat tricks card, killing two for one.
• Blowfly Infestation – For serving its purpose well in Round 3.

After the tournament, we decided to have a drinking session with Sir Francis to make him enjoy his stay in Iloilo before he goes back to Manila that night. 

That concludes my tournament report peeps. Thank you very much for reading. Till next time… =)