MtG Origins Prerelease Report - Midnight

As usual, I played in the midnight prerelease at Outer Limits in Melville. There were already four red players by the time I registered, so I went with green. The pool I opened was ok, though not hugely exciting. I did open a Nissa, which is value but not spectacular for limited play.

Here's what I ended up running:

Click to enlarge

My green was by far the best colour I opened, and I chose to pair it with blue as it gave me the most interaction. It also provided me with some flyers which I find are very important in sealed as a lot of games end up in a board stall. 

2-1 vs Mono-White Artifacts

I managed to curve out and use the blue disruption to push through the last few points of damage. The Managorger Hydra was terrific in both game that I won and the Whirler Rogue was brilliant too. I lost the second game to Sentinel of the Eternal Watch... holy crap, that card is horrifying. I was in total control of that game until it came down and then it just took over. 

1-2 vs RW Agro

Turns out the red/white deck is super aggressive. He curved out in all three games and my under powered four drops were not enough to stabalise. I managed to steal the second game with Bounding Krasis, but got taken out in the third. Menace seems to be a relevant ability, especially when my three drop is a Scrapskin Drake that can't block. 

2-0 vs Mono-Black 

Game one went according to plan as I managed to curve out and use the blue spells to tempo my opponent out. Game two he got stuck on two land... but hey, I'll take whatever win is available.

2-0 vs GB and UW Skies

I managed to out value my opponent's mediocre GB deck in game one and outraced his UW flyers deck in game two with bigger creatures. 

I had great fun with this format and had a good enough record to come third. My big takeaways from this event were that I really enjoyed Whirler Rogue every time I played it, Red and White are frighteningly aggressive and Nissa was actually quite easy to flip but didn't have much impact when she did. 

I'll be posting my reports from my Saturday prerelease and from my FNM later in the week, so check back for that. 

-Odd

"Nissa had only the space of a heartbeat to react, her instincts steering her blade." 

    -Wild Instincts, flavour text

MtG FNM Report - GU Defender Mill

Another FNM at Outer Limits last week. This time I decided to play something very different as I was getting a little bored of my Vampires week in and week out. So here's what I ended up running:

Mainboard	Sideboard
4x Gatecreeper Vine	4x Essence Scatter
4x Axebane Guardian	4x Negate
4x Doorkeeper
4x Fog Bank
4x Hover Barrier
4x Ludevic’s Test Subjects
2x Galvanic Alchemist
2x Jace, Architect of Thought
2x Inspiration
4x Increasing Confusion
4x Cyclonic Rift
11x Forrest
11x Island

So this deck is basically a really bad combo deck. Lots of defenders to mill with Doorkeeper and setup Axebane Guardian for a big Increasing Confusion. Fairly simple but very different from my aggro vampires. This deck even has an infinite mana combo with Axebane Guardian and Galvanic Alchemist.

I'd just like to point out that I have opened both my Jace's. I would never trade for this kind of card but it's worth so much that noone wants to trade it off of me, so I might as well play him.

Round 1: 2-0 vs UW Flash
Milled him out both games. Going into this tournament I was quite worried about the control match-up but it turns out that Increasing Confusion is very resilient to counter due to it's flashback and all his draw helps me mill. Great first match.

Round 2: 1-2 vs Golgari
Manged to mill him out in the first game but some unlucky land draws in the second and third coupled with a huge amount of destruction was just too much to overcome. This was a very strong opponent who eventually went on to win the night, so I'm not disappointed.

Round 3: 2-1 vs GWU tokens
Wow, the new Jace is absolutely crazy against a host of 1/1 tokens. Both my wins came due to flipping a Ludevic's Test Subjects and the one I lost was due to manascrew. Good performance.

Round 4: 0-2 vs 4 colour control
Let me start by saying that I really like this deck, it's just the sort of madness that I enjoy playing. Tons of board-sweep and cantrips make for a difficult game, but mainboard Elixir of Immortality and Laboratory freaking Maniac means that I never had a hope. Seriously. Laboratory god-damn Maniac. Jeez.

So I went 2-2 for the night and came in 5th. Not bad for an out of guild deck in this metagame. I was specifically impressed with Ludevic's Test Subject, after the opponent has seen them once they are a truly frightening drop :)

I had a ton of fun playing this. Even the games I won felt really stressful and close, which is a big change from my more point-and-shoot vampires. I think I will try a similar deck again once Gatecrash comes out and I can pick up some funny land and some useful spells from the Simic guild.

Next time I'll be trying out a Izzet build. So tune in next week to see how that went.
-Odd
"After several frustrating experiments, the visionary Ludevic realized he needed to create a monster that fed on torch-wielding mobs." -Ludevic's Abomination, flavour text