-1 Rampaging Baloths -1 Burgeoning -1 Golgari Thug
+1 Caustic Caterpillar +1 Exploration +1 Noose Constrictor
Yeah it was a nice little upgrade overall, made it a bit more consistent.
Anyway had a local EDH tournament last weekend at my LGS and while normally it's probably split 50-50 for casual/competitive (as in we see Zur *f-etch* and Thrasios + Tymna *f-etch* but also Doran and Krond) and while normally I'll bring either my Hackball or if I'm messing around my Locust God deck but this time I took Gitrog and I won! 4-1 record overall so I took top place after a tie-breaker which was nice, anyway small analyses:
Game #1: vs. Zur the Enchanter *f-etch* - Loss.
First game out the gate was a quick one, he combo'd off as expected and even though I mulligan'd down to 5 to find early dorks I got Gitrog on Turn 3 only for her to eat a Force of WillGC as she dropped and Zur had the full Doomsday roundabout done and dusted a turn later. About what I expected but still disheartening, though the Zur deck only went 2-3 overall which was surprising, his list didn't seem completely optimised though thank life.
Game #2: vs. Uril, the Miststalker - Win.
I got Gitrog down on turn 2 thanks to a disgusting T1:Birds, T2:Dark Ritual and Dakmor Salvage was in hand for my 2nd drop immediately after. When all was said and done I sculpted to Exsanguinate for the win on turn 3 and the guy was a pretty gracious opponent, said he'd like to try Gitrog himself sometime if it was anything like this. He ended up 2-3 as well but he was a new face in the crowd and I hope he comes back, he was a nice dude.
Game #3: vs. Jin-Gitaxias, Core AugurGC - Win.
This guy has a reputation for being a bit of an asshole at my LGS but he took this game pretty well overall, even if he did try and call a judge for "slow play" while I was Dakmor'ing through my deck with Oblivion Crown on Gitrog. He's a really good player though normally (I think he's primarily a Standard guy though) and I think he was fully expecting to win even while he successfully let me cast Autumn's Veil on my combo turn and then attempted to Mana Drain my Squandered Resources only to realise what he had done. I think that was why he called slow play but honestly JG isn't the greatest commander anyway and he went 1-4 for the day, only pulling off his planned Blue Sun's Zenith + Omniscience
combo and recurring it to deck the guy out with some other cards I honestly forgot.
Game #4: vs. Prossh, Skyraider of Kher *f-etch* - Win.
Probably my closest game of the day, both she and I had really bad draws Turns 1-3 though I got a Sol Ring down on T1 and then proceeded to draw almost nothing to let me dig for Dakmor until Turn 6 when I pulled Realms Uncharted and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Of course she had as much fun bringing out a goddamn Food Chain on the same turn and is2g if Deglamer wasn't in my deck for this game I would have put it in as soon as I got home thank god for that. She went 3-2 at the end, she won every single time with Food Chain as expected and I saw some pretty salty people for it.
Game #5: vs. Ruric Thar, the Unbowed - Win.
The only game of the day I didn't win through infinite-sculpt-into-Exsanguinate shenanigans, the guy ramped Ruric out on Turn 3 and then got mad when I chump'd Gitrog into it to stall (I had nothing to search Dakmor yet anyway) but I replayed the frog on T4 and then managed to drop Avenger of Zendikar on T5 into 6 plants. He cast Red Sun's Zenith and nuked my plantbro but I bounced it back with Eternal Witness for another 8 plants the turn after thanks to Dark Ritual and then I ended up swarming him down. Probably the only reason I don't mind running a little bit of landfall as a backup, even when I know it's not optimised at all. He went 3-2 as well but he's a regular and a pretty chill dude, even if he was playing Zo-Zu the Punisher and Blood Moon and even Blood Sun and all manner of red hate-cards to ruin everyone else's day.
Final Game: vs. Mikaeus, the Unhallowed - Win.
Funnily enough I didn't even see this guy during the day I was a bit focussed until near the end but goddamn was it a fun match. Somehow he'd never even seen Gitrog before and his own Mikaeus deck had been drawing a lot of hate because he had something like 7 infinite insta-win combos in there, as you expect. It was a pretty high cost deck too, average CMC would have been 3.5 or higher at the least since he played almost every big removal artifact or spell in Black that you can think of. Still, he had a bit of a fundamental error when he played his Eye of Doom in that he didn't realise I could target his cards too, so he didn't end up pulling his trigger when Mikaeus got targeted (along with Gitrog) and I snuck out my Skirge Familiar to discard and generate mana after he used Spine of Ish Sah to target my Avenger with the Crown on it.
All in all it was a great day, had a blast of a time and I got to meet a few new people over the course of it that I hope will come back to play some more EDH with me in the future!
Anyway I know nobody reads this except me but it's nice to look back on things as they have changed over the deck getting played and built, so I'll continue doing it. There's another tournament in two months so I'll bring her again, my kitchen table friends have asked me to stop using Gitrog more than once a week until they can make decks that are comparable.
