For those of you who want to see what happened to me in the GP look HERE.
After not making day two my buddies and I scampered off to find us some block decks. The problem was that the one guy who owns most of the block cards couldn’t come with us, and to make things worse he had forgotten to give us the cards we might need before he left to go do whatever it was he was doing. So knowing this I had spent much of my time between rounds looking to see if someone had a block deck I could borrow if any of us didn’t make it to day two.
I talked to Mike Pinnegar and he had already lent his out to someone else, but I did get some info on a lot of cool tech. I also tried several guys from Madison, most of whom would go onto to make day two and two of which would go on to top 8, but they all showed up to play limited, and had nothing. For a short time we considered asking Gabe Nassif for one because he had knocked Ryan out of contention for day two and obv didn’t need to play in a PTQ, but none of us could bring ourselves to do it.
Sidebar: For those of you who have never seen them in person all of the French pros are incredibly short. I’m pretty sure that Wafo-Tapa is like 4’10” at best. The only exception is Remi Fortier who is like 9 feet tall. It’s really quite awkward to see them all together.
So with no decks to borrow we headed back to the room to see what we did have that we could build a deck with. The first thing we noticed was that we had no Bitterblossom so Faeries was out. We also only had 4 Mutavaults so that meant that only one of us could play a Kithkin esque deck. We also didn’t have any Cryptic Commands with us so we couldn’t really play any of the 5 Color Control variants.
After a bit more digging I had put together a R/G warriors deck, we had a Kithkin deck, and probably most of an Elf deck. At this point we were feeling pretty bummed until someone said, “We should play this in a deck.”
There was a little bit of laughter at first, but then I remembered something Mike Pinnegar had told me earlier about Scareblade Elite.
“Chameleon Colossus is an Assassin.”
It was also as it turns out a Scarecrow, and we were well on are way to making one heck of a deck, and I had a whole pile of those tribal dual lands from Lorwyn so we decided to run with the Changeling thing and had a block version of that old Changeling Zoo deck and we realized that if we wanted to play an Aggro deck that we should probably just be playing Kithkin. So out went the one drops and in came more far. I remembered how sick Masked Admirers was against 5 colors and we realized that this deck was really good at playing Doran on turn 3 so we put some in. After a few test games and a little tinkering we ended up with this, or something similar I don’t have the exact list in front of me.
4 Wren’s Run Vanquisher
3 Scarblade Elite
2 Woodland Changeling
4 Taurean Mauler
2 Doran, The Siege Tower
4 Chameleon Colossus
2 Masked Admirers
2 Reaper King
4 Nameless Inversion
4 Crip Swap
3 Firespout
4 Gilt-Leaf Palace
4 Aunties Hovel
3 Ancient Amphitheater
1 Wanderwine Hub
4 Reflecting Pool
2 Murmuring Bosk
2 Wooded Bastion
1 Sunken Ruins
2 Vivid Grove
1 Vivid Marsh
The deck actually tested very well against Kithkin, after we added Firespout, and 5 Color, thanks to Masked Admirers. We didn’t have time to test the deck against Faeries at all, but stuck Wispmares, another Firespout, and something else in the board and hoped it was enough. Ryan shotguned playing it, so I was stuck with Kithkin.
Now for some matches that have very little to do with this deck, and some funny stories generated by this deck.
Round 1 VS Mike
Mike was playing Merfolk. Game one I did some beating down with random white dooders. Then at some point he resolved some kind of card drawing effect, and accidentally pulled to many cards off the top. He hadn’t looked at them, but wasn’t sure how many cards were supposed to be in his hand. So we called a judge. The judge told him to put on card in his had and the other one back on his library. He did that the judge walked away and he drew the card again . . . for no reason . . . So se recalled the judge and this time he got a game loss. What a waste of 20 minutes.
Game two was me trying to race Drowner + Judge of Currents. I lost
Game three was more of the same.
0-1, 1-2
Round 2 VS Ben
Ben was playing Faeries. I don’t remember much of this match except 3xNegate 3xSpectral Procession and Faeries Kithkin.
0-2, 1-4
Meanwhile, Ryan is 2-0 with a deck that we made in about 30 minutes the night before. Not only is he 2-0, but during his Round two match he cast a Reaper King and the guy sitting next to him yells, “That just happened!” needless to say everyone nearby had to stop and take a look at that action. Ryan also said that the look on peoples face when you play a tribal dual land and reveal a Woodland Changeling is just priceless.
I did acctually play a few more games, and even won a few, but they were all boring. I ended up going 2-3, and I can say that I don’t suggest to anyone that you play Kithkin as it’s not very interesting to play at all.
Ryan got blown out by Fulminator Mages in the next two rounds, and I mean like multiple Mages + recursion, not just one or two.
The deck has since been updated some, and while I don’t have the exact new list I do know that the deck now plays a Singleton Hord of Notions, rather than Reaper King. They also cut, Woodland Changeling, for the full set of Dorans and the full set of Scareblades.
Ryan took the updated version to a PTQ and was X-1 late into the swiss before finally getting knocked out by Faeries. Which it turns out is very good against this deck. Ryan also says that Masked Admirers probably doesn’t belong in the main deck and something like Kitchen Finks might be better.
All in all the GP was probably the most fun I’ve had playing Magic, ever. People who write online about just going to these to hang out are not lying to you. It’s retardly fun and I highly recommend it. Until next time.
Bob
Tags: Magic PTQ Block
Related to:
Magic: the Gathering
