Ended up going 3-1 and finishing 3rd out of 23. My one loss ended up getting first so that helped my tie breakers.
Round one was an extremely competitive Hidden Strings heroic variant. It had recently taken first place at the most recent FNM, but I finally put an end to his streak. I won the die roll, and basically whoever was on the play won. I was on the play twice, so I finished 2-1. All of the games were intensely close, but Stormbreath Dragon pulled me through. Also, one of the games was totally turned around with his Young Pyromancer with ciphered Hidden Strings and about 7 tokens were all swept away by an overloaded Mizzium Mortars.
Round two was a really strangely difficult mono white soldiers / humans kind of thing. I was lucky enough to get a Stormbreath Dragon fighting off all her creatures with Domri Rade and basically being unkillable by anything in her deck. I managed to get a Mizzium Mortars overloaded game two for a huge turnaround. Finished 2-0.
Round 3 was the fateful mono white spew weenies all day game. Imposing Sovereign was a huge pain that kept me feeling a turn behind every game. I managed to steal the second game, but the first and the last games were determined by Brave the Elements, which just put games out of reach. Finished 1-2.
Round 4 was a mostly mono black with a bit of blue for ashiok, nighmare weaver. Very tough matchup for me in general, anything mono-black-ish with Desecration Demon and lots of spot removal puts me in a hard place. I took game one by a hair. Basically he attacked for huge, took me to 3. I hoped he didn't have the kill spell and attacked with Scavenging Ooze and Elvish Mystic. He blocks with Omenspeaker, and I bloodrush with Ghor-Clan Rampager and grow the ooze for exactly 5 damage taking game 1. Ridiculous close. Game two everything got killed and I was quickly shut out of the game. Game three, double Stormbreath Dragon put down his Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver and eventually his lifetotal. He just couldn't draw the removal in time to deal with them, and with Domri Rade swinging around dragons to clear up his board, he never got devotion or a blocker online.
As always, still trying to come up with ideas for improvements. I feel better with Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, as it barely ever offered me much advantage and I would rather have mana color fixing. Always looking for more sideboard answers to mono black and anything running Thoughtseize, Desecration Demon, and the rest. Comments always welcome.
