Round 1: Vs. R/W/B
Game 1: Held on for a while, long story short, no shock lands to drop, he got too much burn on me.
Game 2: Dropped Blind Obedience turn 2, dropped Witchbane Orb ( a new mainboard card that I have been toying with). His Sorin, Lord of Innistrad was his workhorse.
Results: 0-2
Round 2. Vs Well...I don't really know what he was doing
No real results to report on this one, he got mana screwed both games, so didn't really have to do anything
Results 2-0
Round 3: Vs. BU Controlish
Game 1: He got me locked down early on by dropping 3 Ravenous Rats, and responding to my board wipes with Immortal Servitude. His Nephalia Drownyard really kept me on my heels, and just waiting to topdeck something that didn't happen.
Game 2: Sided in another Witchbane Orb and another Gideon, Champion of Justice, as well as another Blind Obedience. Dropped Blind Obedience Turn two, turn three Farseek Turn 4 Gideon, Champion of Justice, turn 5Supreme Verdict. He never did anything against Gideon, he kept bouncing my witchbane orb, but letting Gideon, Champion of Justice just accumulate counters, board wiped and swung for 18.
Game 3: He did some sideboarding, never really saw what he brought in. Turn 3 Supreme Verdict , Turn 4 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage, got off her ultimate, game over. Dude was like an Asian version of Elton John with a bad attitude. Played him before and he's a pretty sore loser, can never admit someone played well, always implies that either his deck screwed him or his opponent got lucky. I really enjoy these wins
Result: 2-1
Round 4: Vs. U/W Midrange I guess?
Game 1: We traded control back and forth for a little while, in the end, my control was stronger. Was a good fight
Game 2: He got mana screwed and it wasn't fun for either of us. Wish he hadn't gotten mana screwed because he's a good player and fun to play against. Hate winning like this.
Result: 2-0
Record so far: 3-1, place before cut to top 8, 5th
Top 8: A lot of Aggro made it to top 8, seems I didn't see any of it in the initial wave.
Round 1: Vs. B/G Aggro, played this guy a lot at my LGS, so knew it would be a fun laid back match
Game 1: He came out swinging really hard, Strangleroot Geist x2, Rancors. Got a Thragtusk Drop on turn 5. Top deck Terminus turn 6, it all fell into place after that, he just over extended his aggro.
Game 2: Turn 2 Blind Obedience, Turn 3, saved mana for Dissipate, got Tamiyo, the Moonsage off and protected her to pull off her ultimate, he scooped.
Results: 2-0
Round 2: Vs. Boros Aggro. This is the match I'd been anticipating all day, kind of worried to be facing it in round 2 of top 8.
Game 1: Turn 5 death, played an Azorius Charm and a Cyclonic Rift, wasn't enough.
Game 2: Complete Sideboard. Turn 2 Blind Obedience, Slowed him down quite a bit. Still hit me pretty hard for a while, I dropped a Fog to bait out a Skull Crack, and sure enough, he had one. He's tapped out, next turn Thragtusk to get me back up to 10 health. Got stabilized, started extorting off of Blind Obedience and got him down.
Game 3: Took a bit longer to get Blind Obedience out, but he only had one white mana when I dropped Tamiyo, the Moon Sage and just kept him limited to red mana for a few turns. Boros Reckoner is nice, but Supreme Verdict and Terminus don't really mind his 30$ price tag. This guy was a sore loser too, started freaking out about how control sucks and tamiyo is over powered, etc etc. Really sours the game when people water down a victory, especially when it has been so hard fought.
Results 2-1
Game 4: Vs. B/G Zombies, or so I thought...I've never played in a tournament that cut to top 8, so I'm really happy to have made it this far, despite the few sore losers, most of the games had been fun. I had seen this guy at drafts and sealed events, but never played him. I never liked him because he's one of the people who thinks that shuffling the cards he passes after his pick works on anyone. Turns out he was very civil and a good sport, and it was an enjoyable game.
Round 1: His plays Turn 1 Gravecrawler turn 2 Blood Artist turn 3 Geralf's Messenger, turn 4 Blood Artist, turn 5 Geralf's Messenger.. Yea, I just couldn't answer a single thing he did, don't know what I could have done, he just flat out out played me.
Round 2: Sideboarded out the Blind Obediences and put in another Witchbane Orb. Turn 3 got the Witchbane Orb out thanks to turn 2 Farseek. Turn 4 got myself a blocker and some life to help stop the bleeding thanks to Thragtusk. Next turn I top decked a Terminus and used it. Here's where I made a bad play that I didn't even think about. With the Witchbane Orb out, I didn't realize I was immune to not only Geralf's Messenger's 2 damage, but I would have been immune to Blood Artist's ability. So I played a Nevermore naming Blood Artist, when I should have played it naming Abrupt Decay, which was the only other card I had seen played. In my hand I had left an Angel of Serenity and a Drogskol Reaver, I was at 5 life. I played the Reaver. He played Abrupt Decay on my Beast Token from earlier and Tragic Slip on my reaver. Two mistakes like that ended the game. If I had played the Angel of Serenity and targeted his creatures, they would have at least been in his hand rather than just flat out beating me down.
Result: 0-2. He out played me, end of story. I lost the playmat, which made me frowny face, but it's perfectly ok to lose to an opponent who outplayed you. Learn from your mistakes, they make you play better.
Lessons Learned: Keep Witchbane Orb mainboard until the Innistrad block cycles out. It protects from Mill, weird damage effects, I had to look it up, but it even prevents Skullcrack
"1/24/2013 Skullcrack targets only the player. If that player is an illegal target when Skullcrack tries to resolve, it will be countered and none of its effects will happen." per WOTC.
I feel that I have finally created a deck that can perform consistently, which is what I've wanted to be able to do since I started playing magic again. When I played back in the 90s, it was just pile all the good cards of a color I had into a deck and go to town. I'm very happy with this deck, and will be sad to see it go when the block cycles. Time to start working on some alternatives for the future.
