IDD DDD - Match 1 vs. Phelps
Daily Draft Debate
KrazyCaley
16 February 2012
905 views
vs. Phelps
16 February 2012
905 views
vs. Phelps
Tappedout's deck
IDD DDD Deck
Unknown
51 COMMENTS | 2416 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER
Phelps' deck
Phelps' IDD DDD Deck
Modern
367 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER
Comments from KrazyCaley are in italics.
Game 1
Phelps wins the toss and plays first. He mulligans to six.
Caley keeps an opening hand of 2x Plains, Forest, Evolving Wilds, Niblis of the Mist, Midnight Haunting, and Wild Hunger.
Not a great opening hand, but I'm not going to mulligan anything playable if the opponent goes to six.
Phelps keeps his six hand.
T1
Phelps plays Forest and passes.
Caley draws Rally the Peasants. He plays Evolving Wilds and sacrifices it for a Mountain, then passes.
Always fun to mislead as to color in a draft.
T2
Phelps plays Forest and casts Mayor of Avabruck Flip, then passes.
Well crap.
Caley draws Niblis of the Urn. He plays a Plains, casts it, and passes.
Hanging in there.
T3
Phelps plays a Plains and passes.
During C's upkeep, Mayor of Avabruck Flip transforms to Howlpack Alpha. C draws Elder of Laurels. C attacks with the Niblis of the Urn, tapping Howlpack Alpha. Niblis hits. (Caley 20, Phelps 19). C casts Elder of Laurels and passes.
T4
Phelps plays a Forest and casts Niblis of the Mist, tapping Elder of Laurels. He attacks with Howlpack Alpha and hits. (Phelps 19, Caley 17). He passes and gets a Wolf token.
Caley draws Somberwald Spider and plays a Plains. He attacks with Niblis of the Mist tapping the Wolf token and also attacks with Elder of Laurels. Phelps declares no blockers. Caley casts Rally the Peasants and all creatures hit. (Caley 17, Phelps 12).
There's a lot going on here. You might ask why he didn't block. The reason is that my attack was designed to seem like an obvious attempt to get him to trade and trigger morbid on something. Thus, he chose not to block, and thus Rally the Peasants goes off. I am choosing this strategy because this game will be a race - I have no effective way to get rid of Howlpack Alpha, and he will take over the game if it goes very long.
Caley passes.
T5
Phelps plays a Plains. He attacks with everything and hits. (Phelps 12, Caley 9). He casts Chalice of Life Flip and passes. He gets another Wolf token at the end of the turn.
Ouch.
Caley draws a Forest and plays it. He attacks with all his creatures, tapping a Wolf token with the Niblis. He hits. (Caley 10, Phelps 9). He passes. Phelps activates the Chalice in the end step. (Phelps 10, Caley 10).
T6
Phelps plays a Forest. He attacks with everything. Caley casts Midnight Haunting and blocks a wolf token with each one. Phelps casts Hunger of the Howlpack on the unblocked Howlpack Alpha, and Caley concedes.
Sideboarding
Caley removes Ulvenwald Bear and replaces it with Skillful Lunge.
Game 2
Caley plays first and keeps an opening hand of 2x Plains, Mountain, Loyal Cathar Flip, Niblis of the Mist, Elder of Laurels, and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben.
Phelps mulligans to six.
T1
Caley plays Plains and passes.
Phelps plays Forest and passes.
T2
Caley draws Forest, plays Plains, and casts Loyal Cathar Flip.
Leading with the more expendable creature.
Phelps plays Forest and passes.
T3
Caley draws Niblis of the Mist, plays Forest, and attacks with Loyal Cathar Flip. (Caley 20, Phelps 18). Caley casts Elder of Laurels and passes.
Phelps draws Forest, plays Shimmering Grotto, and passes.
T4
Caley draws Deranged Outcast, plays Mountain, and casts Deranged Outcast. He attacks with Cathar and Elder and hits. (Caley 20, Phelps 14). He passes.
Phelps plays a Forest, taps out for Midnight Guard, and passes.
T5
Caley draws Plains, plays it, and casts Niblis of the Mist tapping Midnight Guard. Then he attacks with Cathar, Elder, and Outcast, and hits. (Caley 20, Phelps 8). He passes.
Phelps draws and concedes.
Much too slow a start for him.
Sideboarding
Caley leaves the deck as-is.
Game 3
Phelps plays first and keeps his opening hand.
Caley keeps a hand of 2x Forest, Mountain, Plains, Rally the Peasants, Kessig Cagebreakers, and Elder of Laurels.
T1
Phelps plays Forest, casts Young Wolf, and passes.
Caley draws Geistflame. He plays Mountain and passes.
T2
Phelps plays Plains, casts Doomed Traveler, then attacks with Young Wolf and hits. (Phelps 20, Caley 19). Then he passes.
Caley draws Skillful Lunge. He plays a Forest and passes.
T3
Phelps attacks with his creatures, hitting. (Phelps 20, Caley 17). Then he passes.
Mana-screw to the rescue!
Caley draws Niblis of the Urn. He plays a Plains and casts Elder of Laurels. Then he passes.
T4
Phelps attacks with Young Wolf. Caley blocks with Elder of Laurels. The Young Wolf returns as a 2/2. Then Phelps casts Hunger of the Howlpack on the Wolf, pumping it up to a 5/5. Then he casts Burden of Guilt on the Elder of Laurels and passes.
Nice turn.
Caley draws Wild Hunger. He passes.
Damned if I do and damned if I don't. Casting the Niblis won't save me, so I think my best chance is to sit tight, hope he casts something else that will keep him from using Burden of Guilt, and then kill the 5/5 wolf with a Wild Hungered Elder.
Phelps taps Elder of Laurels and attacks with everything, hitting. (Phelps 20, Caley 11). Then he casts another Young Wolf and passes.
Amazing what you can do with two lands.
T5
Caley draws Somberwald Spider. He casts Niblis of the Urn and passes.
Phelps uses Burden of Guilt, tapping Elder of Laurels. Then he attacks with everything. Caley blocks Doomed Traveler with Niblis of the Urn. The wolves hit. (Phelps 20, Caley 5). Phelps gets a spirit. Caley casts Geistflame on it. Phelps passes.
T6
Caley draws Wild Hunger and concedes.
There is no defense.
Analysis
Perhaps it was questionable to keep the starting hand in that last game, as it was very slow. Still, it seemed like Phelps' deck did take a while to get rolling, and I had bombs in hand, which is always valuable. I was impressed with the Young Wolf + Hunger of the Howlpack play, which is just unfair. By turn 2 you can have a 5/5 out and you don't need to do anything to get it but chopblock and use a forest twice.
I was unhappy with my draws; I felt overloaded with pretty expensive combat tricks and no really good creatures to use them on; I didn't feel like I could do much with the creatures I had available in the time I had against Phelps' deck. It seems like our deck is best equipped for a nice, long, creature standoff draft duel, and that was not this duel.
I would have liked to see some more removal. Having no answer for Mayor of Avabruck Flip was pretty awful.
Results from all matches:
Phelps def. Tappedout 2-1
Grim def. Elaine 2-1
Ethereal def. P.T. 2-0
Max def. Kelso 2-1
Next round
Tappedout (0-1) vs. P.T. (0-1)
Ethereal (1-0) vs. Phelps (1-0)
Max (1-0) vs. Elaine (0-1)
Kelso (0-1) vs. Grim (1-0)
DeckBuilder345 says... #2
Sweet the matches have started! ok now to read the article.
February 17, 2012 12:47 p.m.
DeckBuilder345 says... #3
Yeah that mayor opening was tough. Turn 2 mayor beats most decks unfortunately. Unless you have removal you can use that very turn to kill the mayor it usually means gg. He is that good in limited.
Only thing i can say is you are probably right should have gone to 6 on that last hand. Problem is it is hard to make that call based on the info you had. It was difficult to tell which version of his deck was the true version though based on games 1 and 2, the one that beat you on turn 2 when he dropped the mayor in game one or the one that he didn't do anything all game long in game 2 (for all we know at that point if he doesn't get an early mayor maybe his deck doesn't go anywhere).
Nothing really to say but his game 3 hand was way faster than ours.(As i read your opening hand and considered his turn 1 play my gut reaction was for you to flame it on turn 1 and I was thanking our lucky stars we had the flame and mountain in our opening hand, but after reading your actions I understood the logic of not wanting to take 2 the next round especially with no early drops in hand and whats more I believed at the time that your play was the correct one and that I was being hasty w/ my Geistflame suggestion and that I was not carefully considering the game state.) Turns out flaming on turn one might be the only thing that could have happened to make that game turn out differently. (too bad we had no way of knowing that at the time) If you Geistflame on turn 1 to kill his wolf and make it a 2/2 that would prevent it from becoming a 5/5 later and probably allows you to kill it with a combat trick and our niblis. Which might have been enough to buy us the time we needed, especially considering his mana screw.... but who would have thought giving him a 2/2 early would be the best play before hand? I sure didn't. But you know what they say hindsight is 20/20!
February 17, 2012 1:52 p.m.
KrazyCaley says... #4
@ S.A.C. - I did consider siding it in during game 2, but all I could think of was and how it laughs off a if it showed up.
SupremeAlliesCommander says... #1
Our opponent had the type of deck where I'd want to side in Divine Reckoning
.
Why not flashback Rally the Peasants
during game 1? Not sure it would have made a difference, but getting his life total below 5 might have put him in a defensive mindset.
February 17, 2012 12:12 p.m.