Hey everyone. Last weekend at the University of Florida, Swampcon, a multi-genre convention for anime, gaming, and sci-fi themed events took place, and one of the events included an MTG tournament with free entry and a box that was provided as prize support. I participated in the tournament with this deck. The tournament was 6 rounds of Swiss with no cut to Top 8. There were 37 people in attendance at the beginning of round 1.
Round 1: I played against R/G aggro. Both games he had tricks to kill my planeswalkers (mostly Ghor-Clan Rampager and Boon Satyr), and he beat me 2-0. (0-1 overall)
Round 2: I played against someone who seemed very new to Magic who was playing Izzet. He didn't have very many of the higher power level cards and my deck easily took care of him. 2-0 (1-1 overall)
Round 3: My opponent for this round never showed up for the match, so after waiting for 15 minutes the head judge ruled him as dropping. He probably went on to some of the other events that were going on that day. (2-1 overall)
Round 4: My opponent played Monoblack Devotion. Game one, he just couldn't get going with all of the removal I had. Game two, he Thoughtseized away my Elixir of Immortality so I was afraid that I would deck myself if he Hero's Downfall'ed my Elspeth, Sun's Champion later. However, I ended up using Jace, Architect of Thought's -8 to get out a Desecration Demon and my Elspeth and he scooped a few turns later. 2-0 (3-1 overall)
Round 5: My opponent was playing R/G Colossal. Game one was easy except for the mainboard Mistcutter Hydra that I had to use a Supreme Verdict on, but once I starting using Sphinx's Revelation after Revelation, she decided to go to game two. Game two was the strongest of the night for my deck. Turns 2 and 3 she flashed down two Skylashers and started swinging early, but she (what I thought at the time) overextended turn 4 to play a Polukranos, World Eater. Since she was on the play, I responded with a Supreme Verdict and cleared the board. Turns 6 and 7 she played running Mistcutter Hydras as 5/5s and I was incredibly lucky that I had two Celestial Flares in hand for them, or I would have been dead. After that, I stabilized and when she played a third Mistcutter Hydra, I again got lucky in flipping over a Supreme Verdict with a Jace -2. Went on to win with Elspeth. 2-0 (4-1 overall)
Round 6: I played against a Selesnya midrange-type deck with Trostani, Selesnya's Voice mainboard. It seemed like the kind of deck that would be durable enough against aggro, but it has a terrible matchup against control, except for one card: Fleecemane Lion. Game one my deck had all of the answers as usual. Game two, he made his Fleecemane monstrous but the next turn I -2'd Jace and took a Celestial Flare that was revealed. Since Fleecemane was his only creature that I hadn't removed, him knowing I had that Flare kept him from attacking for 2-3 turns until he played an Experiment One and swung with both. What he didn't know was that the Celestial Flare I took from Jace was actually my second one, and I Flared him, saccing Experiment, and Flared him again to get rid of Fleecemane. After that, I ticked Jace up to 8 to ultimate and he scooped. 2-0 (5-1 overall)
At this point, the person I lost to in the first round was 4-2 and only lost to the first place person and someone else highly ranked, so he got 4th and I got 3rd. My friend who was running monoblack devotion ended up going 6-0 and got 1st, winning 16 Theros packs. I didn't get to play him during the Swiss rounds unfortunately, but I think I would have given him a run for his money. :P
Once again, I was really happy with my deck and playing at Swampcon reinforced my belief that Sphinx's Revelation is probably one of the best things you can do in a card game in general (card advantage is good, yes? :P). However, Celestial Flare was the MVP and saved two matches for me, so I'm glad I'm running 3 mainboard and would suggest to anyone else thinking about building a similar deck to consider trying it.
Additionally, clearing comments for now. Thanks!
