Well, that was an interesting experience. This was my first open and I wanted to get there as early as possible to soak in the whole thing.
Damus, my son and I showed up as soon as the doors opened and entered into the convention center hall to see rows of empty tables and vendor booths lining the sides. My son was pretty excited to be there even focusing in on the featured players tables hoping his dad would be able to play there (spoiler alert, I didn't lol). People were scurring about trying to get their last minute cards and deck lists finalized. Some even brought what felt like entire collections to sell to the vendors at the open. While I had the opportunity, I went ahead and scored a copy of
Gishath, Sun's Avatar for my inevitable dino EDH.
Once we got situated, we played a few practice rounds and I got what I hoped would be my terrible hands out of the way for the tournament. My son is new to the game and this has probably been the most rewarding part of magic for me: having him be so excited about playing and seeing the look in his eyes when he opens a booster pack with some awesome cards for him to add to his pre-built Huatli, Dinosaur Knight deck. He wants a playmat to use, so I let him borrow my The Ur-Dragon playmat after scoring my new one from the open.
Tournament time
My first matchup was against a four color energy deck. The gentleman I played splashed black to include cards like Duress for the discard ability. As soon as time started, he called a judge. He registered too many of one card and had to get it sorted. We got a 7 minute time extension.
Game 1: He kept me in check any time I thought I might get something going and he took game 1 with Chandra, Torch of Defiance pulling off her ultimate and pinging me to a quick death.
Game 2 was a lot different. I kept his board under control with my Longtusk Cub and Bristling Hydra. He was constantly in reaction mode with very little mana to help him make more than one play. I pulled Nissa, Vital Force and started turning on the pressure until the 5/5 land brought it home for me. 1-1 and going to the third game I felt good.
Game 3: It felt very familiar to game 1 in that my opponent was starting to get his land going and was peeking at my hand and causing discards. We got a few things out and we would ping them back to keep the board clear. Chandra, Torch of Defiance made another appearance. This time I kept her in check and took her out with my Skysovereign, Consul Flagship. My opponent played Gonti, Lord of Luxury and happened to pull my second Skysovereign, Consul Flagship and put it onto the field. Unfortunately, he didn't have the creatures to crew and I finally got the win.
After the first round, I went 2-1 and felt great to get a win. This is what the deck was supposed to do, win games. Temur energy wound up being a hugely popular deck at this tournament. I'm sure everyone thought the same as me in that since there was very little rotating out, that it would be the best chance at new brews.
My second match was against a deck called Esper Gift. I sat down pleased with myself, hoping for more of the same. I was so naive. Esper Gift was a beatdown. Games 1 and 2 went about the same with my opponent milling himself and bringing out God-Pharaoh's Gift and returning his Angel of Invention to the field as 4/4 zombies. Once he got that going, the lifelink put me away. I got him down to around 10-12 life and it just went right back up. He took out my Glorybringer and I was left defenseless against the flying onslaught. Game 1, I had to mulligan because I didn't draw any land. That made my hopes go down pretty quick.
Game 2, my only shot at a decent match, scored me a Confiscation Coup early and allowed me to pull one of his Angel of Invention's away from him. I was quickly brought back into check when he cast Fumigate and I never recovered. Solemnity was the final nail in my coffin, not letting me pump my creatures up and he beat me. I went 0-2 this round and I was fine with that. I didn't think there was much else I could do to change that outcome other than shuffle more/less to get better card draw.
Round 3 and I'm 1-1. Feeling ok about that start considering this is my first tournament and really my first real competitive game of magic outside of a pre-release event and a few FNM's back when I first started playing. I sat down across from my opponent and quickly realized that I was playing Temur Energy (with a few differences but practically the exact same list I have)
Game 1: I had to mulligan, which was not a good sign for me. We got it going early and his Longtusk Cub really did the work for him while I was scrambling to get something on the board. He took game 1. I sideboarded both Confiscation Coup's, Rhonas the Indomitable and 2 Sweltering Suns to hopefully take his Glorybringer or Bristling Hydra away.
Game 2: I pulled out Rhonas the Indomitable and had a Rogue Refiner. I was ready to do some work, but he hit me with an Abrade and left Rhonas alone. He had a few creatues on the board and swung so I went down to around 8-10 life at that point. Then he took Rhonas from me. I was bummed at having my own deck do so well against me. I used Confiscation Coup to take my Rhonas back and I got an excited "yeah" from my opponent when I cast it. I could tell he respected the fact that we basically sideboarded the same things into the match. That was basically my last move though and I ended up losing again. I told my opponent that I wanted him to take it home for Temur Energy and I went ahead and dropped from the tournament.
All in all, I went 1-2 (2-5 in games) with this deck. I don't feel that it was under performing of the cards at all, I could have made some different decisions obviously but given my hands, I think I played as well as I could considering what was available to me. My opponents were great, and my second opponent did well placing 19th in the open. Congrats to him, that was a hell of a deck to play against.
Temur Energy (splashing black for The Scarab God in the sideboard) placed 31st in the tournament. A lot of four color energy decks placed in the top 32 with one of the decks taking 2nd in the open. Top deck was Grixis Improvise. So even if I didn't make it to the top 64 or anything crazy, I felt I was there in spirit with my energy brothers.
This deck is a lot of fun to play and even in casual can do some damage against multiple opponents. I think I am going to retire from the competitive play for a while and focus on casual and EDH with my playgroup. Shout out to Damus, AmazingAvenger, ch33s3burg3r, SlayerEpyon, zh_66, and sanchocurse for being available to test against over the last month plus playtesting on their own against other decks on the site to see how well they think it could do.
