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In my last blog I discussed my plans to write more regularly. That was roughly two weeks ago, so that plan hasn't been panning out so well. The first queue I'm going to detail I was actually playing while writing my last entry.

 

Constructed queue #20 (first v3 queue) -104 tickets (still less than the value of the deck, but not by much)

 

My round one opponent is playing some sort of 5-color elemental deck with reveillark, though it takes two games to put that together. Game 1 is over very quickly as I hit turn 1 Boreal Druid, t2 Gilt-Leaf Ambush, t3 Hunting Triad, t4 Coat of Arms.

Game 2 takes slightly longer, and he manages to wrath after I've dropped a coat. From that point on his elementals are bigger than my elves and they eventually fly over for the win.

Game 3 I bring in squall lines for Elvish Promenades since I now have some idea of what he is playing. He keeps a 1 land hand, and I punish him severly for it. Turn 1 boreal druid, t2 heritage druid and bramblewood paragon, t3 attack for 3 (leaving 1 elf untapped) and cast two gilt-leaf ambushes at EOT, t4 overrun.

 

The match was extremely quick, so I write my previous blog. About 40 minutes later MTGO starts beeping in the background, so I figure it is time for round 2 to begin. I bring it to the foreground, only to find that it is beeping to tell me I've lost the match due to timing out. I was livid. I routinely multitask while MODOing it up, so I was aware of the positively irritating alert that version 3 uses if you have priority in a game in the background. It seems absurd to me that there is no alert for "Would you like to play first?" or "Would you like to take a mulligan?" Customer service disagrees as my refund claim is denied.

On the plus side I find out that they've switched the payout on queues so that the "1" of 4-2-1-1 is Lorwyn packs. (-104+L) Unfortunately trade bots are not running at full capacity for version 3 when I get this pack, so it just sits there.

 

[insert 2 weeks of real life instead of planeswalking]

 

In the more recent past (i.e. just this evening), I notice that they've put MMM drafts up. I read an article on another website that made some compelling points about the potential future value of Morningtide if version 3 lets WotC up its customer base significantly. Apparently adjusting the prize payout and having trade bugs for a while dealt with the flood of M packs, so I spend $14 dollars cash money to get a draft set of M instead of buying from a bot. (-118+L)

 

One thing I'd learned during release events was that soldiers and rogues were quite dominant. Of course I wasn't the only one to learn this and see nothing significant involving the kithkin or dastardly scoundrels. Through pack 1, I am mostly looking toward a warrior deck, but it isn't running quite as richly as I'd like, and it is completely dry in pack 2. I utilize the contingency plan for RG warriors and end up in Rg elementals/shamans. My curve is low since being slow against rogues or soldiers is suicide. Ultimately, though, the matches don't matter for profitability since I open mutavault in pack #2.

 

1 Bosk Banneret

3 Sunflare Shaman

3 Fire Juggler

2 Rage Forger

2 Seething Pathblazer

2 Fertilid

1 Warspike Changeling

2 Pyroclast Consul

1 Walker of the Grove

2 Shard Volley

1 Earthbrawn

2 Spite Bellows

1 Roar of the Crowd

1 Mutavault

9 Mountain

7 Forest

 

Relevant SB:

Luminescent Rain - This is purely tipping races in my favor.

Brighthearth Banneret - This almost made the main deck, but with the prevelance of small creatures that need blocked the bosk banneret took its slot.

Round 1 vs. RG Warriors

Game 1:
My opponent opens with what may be the strongest possible play for his archetype, especially considering he is on the play. T2 brighthearth banneret into T3 unstoppable ash. My t2 sunflare shaman, t3 fire juggler (played after the shaman gets in for 2, of course) look puny by comparison. The race is on as he swings back for 5, then drops ambassador oak. I play a rage forger, leaving R up, and swing in and ping for 2. Blocking with neither tree nor elf, he is reduced to 10 life. He cracks back for 9 and then plays a game trail changeling. I animate my vault and swing in, showing 9 points of damage when he blocks my sunflare shaman. Shard volley is in my hand, though, and it is good enough.

I bring in brighthearth banneret for bosk banneret because the greater toughness is outweighed by reducing the costs on slightly more important cards and reinforce being potentially relevant.

Game 2:

He is on the play. He mulligans to 4. Nothing to see here folks.

 

Round 2 vs. BU rogues

Game 1:

He starts with 2 islands and then misses land drop #3. He never recovers from the tempo loss and my firemen take him down quickly.

Luminescent Rain comes in for Walker of the Grove.

Game 2:

It is a tight race. The most interesting play of the game involves my board of Seething Pathblazer and Fire Juggler vs. his Mothdust Changeling (tapped) and Festercreep. My life total is 3, his is 8. I have Rage Forger in hand as my only relevant play, and I drop it before combat.

I spend a minute in the tank thinking about how this combat can play out, and I eventually swing in with my 2/2 elemental and 3/3 goblin shaman (pinging him to 7), reasoning that if he blocks I'll get another swing in and if he doesn't that I can go lethal.

He quickly decides not to block, and I have second thoughts. I've committed to this point, though, and if he has bounce or removal I'm dead anyway. I sac the shaman, he pops the creep to buy another turn, but he doesn't have anything to get 1 extra damage.

 

Round 3 vs. Monowhite kithkin

In both games he is faster than me, dropping t2 bannerets that I shard volley to prevent the turn 3 explosion of 2 drops. He is still enough faster than me to win the race both games, though the race is tight g2.

 

The prizes come in and it turns out that MMM pays a mix of L and M. This was a pretty decent draft as my packs simply change from MMM to LLM. I'll gladly spend 2 tix to gain a mutavault.

(-118+LLLM)

 

This draft was pretty enlightening if it is typical for MMM now. There seems to be enough squabbling over soldier and rogue related cards that other archetypes can pick up some of the pieces. Shamans seems like it is a contender if you can get enough rage forgers. Each time one resolved for me it was responsible for 4+ points of damage between pings and counters. Coupled with the ease of getting sunflare shaman (which can get in early beats and then turn into a burn spell after the ground is clogged) and fire jugglers (which opponents are hesitant to block), it seems like getting the toughest part is just snagging a couple of rage forgers and going to town.

Tags: MMM Elves Blind Eternities

MTGO has returned from the nether void in which it has hovered for the last good chunk of time, so it is time for me to blog more about attempting to go infinite. I've been thinking about making my blogging a bit more regular, so the combination of thoughts regarding the nowhere zone that MODO has been in, the MTG story in general, and the v.3 interface have led me to a title.

 

This blog covers the details of my queue experience in the last days of 2.5, which came after a rather disappointing output in a tribal tournament. This will bring me up to version 3, and I plan on gettting out at least 1 entry per week to detail the ledger of this particular planeswalker.

 

Queue #10 (-83 tix):

Round 1:

I face down mono blue control of some sort. The most important fact I gather from this match is that pendelhaven desert. After game 1, 3 overruns come out for 3 squall lines because the 5 mana sorcery is not so great when your opponent can simply cryptic command to tap your creatures.

In game 2, I discover he may be playing pickles because he curves with t1 visions, t2 visions+desert, t3 morph. During this time I am producing loads of elf tokens without fear of wrath effects. He taps out t4 to play serrated arrows, but I rip my single remaining overrun to punish his lack of counter mana. The morph is in fact brine elemental. I may be a sack, but he is very good natured about the loss. I don't think he realizes I had sided most of them out.

 

Round 2: His info talks about the cards he owes people, all of which are parts of faeries. Free information seems good to me.

Game 1: On turn 3 I attack with a paragon into a faerie rogue token (courtesy of turn 2 bitterblossom), leaving back my 1/1 elves. He flashes in a scion of oona, and the elf trades with the token. I take the opportunity to avoid a potential rune snag and make a coat of arms, followed by enough elves on turn 4 to leave him at 1 if he blocks as best he can. With the rogue spewing-flower on his side of the board this elicits a concession. -3 overrun, +3 squall line. Conditional blowout < less conditional blowout. >

Game 2: This game is a close race. Turn 3 he restores the creature type of my animated treetop village to its original printing with a nameless inversion, and several turns down the road I am forced to drop a coat of arms to ask the game deciding question, "Do you have cryptic command?" He does, and the fog cantrip forces me to enter my scoop phase.

Game 3: I outmatch his t2 bitterblossom in token production, but scion of oona makes his tokens significantly more frightening than mine.

 

After the significant increase in profit I received by selling draft sets in the sellers room over offloading packs to people in the buyers room, I've decided to stockpile packs rather than imediately turning them into tickets. -83+M

 

Q11 (-87 +M):

R1:

Game 1, I don't get a very good read on his deck because I kill him too quickly. He is playing some sort of UG concoction, perhaps faeries. There is Venser and Remove Soul, and our pendelhavens legend rule each other at one point.

Game 2, again he strip mines my Pendelhaven on turn 2. Eventually he taps down for sower, so I resolve coat of arms, and a main-phase promenade forces him to have the cryptic command and the sense to tap me down along with countering the spell. Even in that scenario, I still have a mutavault to attack with and force a chump block and probably a win on the next turn.

 

Round 2 GB elves

Game 1 he leads with village. I throw out a druid and he inverts it, so I drop paragon, t3 paragon, and t4 cast hunting triad for 9 power worth of tramplers, t5 drop coat of arms and drop him to 7 with a 3/3 imperious perfect to my 4/4 token and 2 mutavaults. He trades some more to stay alive, but eventually my elves outnumber his.

Game 2 I misplay repeatedly (reinforcing with a hunting triad when I should make tokens and not dropping a coat of arms that would win it then and there), and he rightly stomps my head in.

Game 3 I make dudes aplenty but I don't hit any go-bigs or get them out quickly enough for it to matter.

(-87, +2M)

 

I decide to wait until the afternoon standard PE fires before getting back into an 8-man since I don't have time for a full event.

 

Q12 (-91, +2M)

Round 1: He is running some sort of GBu Rock/Mannequin hybrid. It has goyfs, mulldrifters, shriekmaws, mannequins, and profane commands.

Game 1 I make a bunch of tokens and overrun for the win.

Game 2 starts when he lightning bolts himself with a painland into thoughtseize. He hits a hunting triad. He has t2 into the north, so I don't vomit my hand onto the table to avoid being wrecked by t3 damnation. He tries to grind card advantage by evoking, playing, and mannequinning shriekmaws. My token generators outpace his ability to kill them, and with coat of arms on the board he is forced into chump blocking. Eventually an overrun allows my elves to get through for lethal.

 

Round 2:
He leads with boreal druid and a nonsnow land, and I suspect a mirror. A turn 2 scryb ranger shows that is not the case, but rather he is non-tribal monogreen aggro. I curve with boreal/paragon+heritage/triad/prom ritual+overrun. Game 2 is also ugly for him.

 

Round 3:

I'm up against a true R(g)DW in this one, focusing on a Sligh curve with efficient dudes instead of burn. In game 1 I go on tilt after mulling to a mediocre 5 card hand, and I misplay badly, reinforcing with hunting triad instead of making tokens when he has a magus of the scroll out and only 2 cards in hand.

Game 2 he is stuck on 2 lands and I curve out acceptably into 2 hunting triads and coat of arms, which he ancient grudges. I land another coat of arms while he has no green mana up and send in my comrade-bolstered, pointy-eared tree-huggers.

Game 3 he has 3 mutavaults so I'm hesitant to play coat of arms until I have enough to turn on my vault as well, eventually I'm forced to play it because he will win in 2 turns if I don't (if he continues his current play pattern) and it gives him the chance to misplay if I do. He doesn't misplay so I lose anyway.

+LM (-91, LMMM) (sell MM for 5=, -85+LM)

 

Q13 (-89 +LM)

Staring at kithkin on the screen, I curve out game one with t1 mana elf, t2 one of each 1 drop, t3 hunting triad and another llanowar. I just can't keep up with the life gained by knight of meadowgrain and can't pendleblock it with cenn making the first striker a 3/3.

Game 2 I make heritage druid turn 1, on turn 3 I cast 2 gilt-leaf ambush, and turn 4 I send my elves to prom and then drop a coat of arms.

Game 3 I make a decent number of 2/2 tokens and drop a coat of arms, then walk into a pollen lullaby...at least it wasn't wrath of god this time.

Queue 14 (-93 +LM)

Post shadowmoor I think we'll be seeing more of the deck I faced in round 1. Blue black merfolk seems decent now. In game 1 I'm completely outclassed due to lord superiority, and in game 2 I overextend into a damnation I should have seen coming when he didn't drop a t3 reej that he had revealed with his t2 silvergill adept. I had assumed sage's dousing, but should have gone for a more cautious approach to put the game away in 2 turns rather than going for the throat that instant. I need to stop assuming that swarm aggro decks won't have boardsweepers. After the board wipe, I draw 2 overruns, a llanowar elf, and an elvish promenade. Mopey.

I'd been thinking about tweaking the deck to make for better potential to grind out some wins when the blowout plan doesn't work and in the process bring the curve down slightly so I feel comfortable cutting 1 land. -2 overrun, -1 coat of arms, -1 forest, +4 imperious perfect, +1 garruk. I don't buy any new cards for this, but it is changing the value of the deck by about 4 tickets, so I'm going to go ahead and say -97.

4 llanowar elves
4 boreal druid
4 heritage druid
4 bramblewood paragon
4 imperious pefect
4 gilt-leaf ambush
4 hunting triad
1 garruk
3 elvish promenade
3 coat of arms
2 overrun
2 pendelhaven
1 horizon canopy
1 treetop village
3 mutavault
16 forest

 

Queue 15 (-101+LM)

Round 1 I face Reveillark and go 3 games against it before losing. I haven't seen much of this deck online, and I suspect that it is because of 2 main reasons: the meta is very heavy with faeries and it seems like working through the combo when you can't just say "50 entity activations on the stack, evacuate you" is a pain.

 

Queue 16 (-105+LM)

Round 1: Once again it is white weenie. I crush him thoroughly in game 1. Game 2 is much closer, I am at 1 to his 8 life, and I hit the 6th land I need so that I can drop coat of arms and activate mutavault to make sure my elves are large enough to finish him.

 

Round 2

He is UW something (I suspect 'lark), but he gets stuck on 2 lands. I do as well, but I have 2 boreal druids and a heritage druid...eot ambush eats a runesnage which lets me resolve 2 perfects on my turn, prompting a concession.
(-2 coat, -2 overrun,-4 imperious perfect, -3 elvish promenade, +3 squall line, +4 harmonize, +4 door of destinies)
Game 2 my opponent mulls to 5 and I mull to 6. I get a t1 llanowar. He gets stuck on 2 lands, and I attempt to bait rune snag with an EOT ambush, and then play heritage druid on my turn...I attack with elves hoping he'll block with mutavault (I am holding hunting triad), but he lets it through. He gets adarkar wastes to go with his island and poocave, and on my upkeep vendillion cliques me (2 squall lines, hunting triad, door of destinies). No matter what he cycles away, he is going to die.

 

Round 3 vs. mana ramp.

Game 1 I mulligan to 5, he is running hellkites main which is bad news for me, and when he has the sense to use primal command as a timewalk (+7 life and land to the top of my library) it makes things even worse.
g2 I don't do anything stupidly broken out of the gates after mulling to 6, so I end up getting smashed by sulfurous blast and better creatures than I can muster. I also think I mis-sideboarded for this; I left in 2 imperious perfects, and they basically read "target opponent plays a burn spell before you can do anything useful with this, and maybe he takes a couple extra points of damage if he was tapped out."

(-105+LLMM=-93+M) I tweak my sideboard after more discussion with Bill Stark, swapping out wurm's tooth (which were in for primal commands and eulogist) out for spike feeders. I also change my main slightly by removing a perfect and going back up to 4 coat of arms. We'll call this an even swap (and note that the xth edition coat is in for the perfect in case I ever have a situation where perfect would be better than the coat).

 

Queue 17 (-97+M) In three games vs. faeries he has t2 bitterblossom every time with only 1 mulligan.

Queue 18 (-101+M)

Against monored burn I play a perfect t3 in game 1, he taps out for a Countryside crusher, allowing me to safely reinforce my elf lord out of burn range.

Game 2 I slow roll door of destinies. In the following elf-flurry I tap myself out to put out a spike feeder (with 6/6 mana elves in play) letting him lash out the spike EOT, and then on his turn incinerate me, pitches a card to jaya ballard, and then goes all in on a gargadon. This wasn't quite an on-board, but it was dang close. If the 2 cards he had in hand includes any burn and the other (or the card on the top of his library) is an incinerate, I just lose with the play series I made. I should have kept the elves untapped to act as blockers and deployed the spike next turn.

Game 3 I mulligan into oblivion and am never in it.

 

Queue 19 (-105+M)

Round 1 vs. monored burn

Game 1 I keep a hand that has the explosive elements but lacks in basic elves (it has heritage druid, coat of arms, mutavault, and overrun), when I make a t3 boreal druid he burns the heritage druid, when I play t4 coat he burns the boreal druid. He swings in with 2 vaults and fanatic, and the next turn I leave mana up. He swings in with just fanatic and I ambush it (losing the clash), blocking with just 1 token. With damage on, he taps & activates vaults to save it. On my turn I swing with the tokens and 2 mutavaults, ambushing after blockers to push it up to 16 damage, which combines with some earlier nickle and diming to get there.

Game 2 I am too slow getting going when he sulfurous blasts away a pair of mana elves, but game 3 goes exactly to plan. Turn 3 spike feeder eats a lash out and gains me 4 life, letting me soak up hits until I drop t4 door. Turn 5 I drop 3 elves, turn 6 I drop more elves and just win it.

 

Round 3 is against monoblue pickles. I find this matchup tedious to play and even more tedious to write about. Sowers are his all-stars as they typically 3 for 1 me unless I have squall line. The lesson I take away from this is that if you've got blue on the ropes, don't add the extra creature to play around removal. They'll drop sower and have an extra blocker.

(-105+MM=-100)

 

I think that I'll take this opportunity to rant about the prize structure for queues. The huge over-supplying of morningtide packs means that the market is flooded with them and they are a poor consolation prize. I don't think that my overall record of 7-10 from this batch of queues warrants going up any, but it seems like a 17 ticket drop is pretty harsh. Even though I only had 3 more losses than wins, my output was worse than scrubbing out 4 times in a row. Unless shadowmoor introduces some new tools for dealing with swarm aggro, I expect that I'll be able to post some better results when 1-1 in a queue doesn't result in losing 1.5 tix.

Tags: Elves Blind Eternities

In this time of MODO darkness, perhaps documenting some previously unblogged ELVES! action may serve to wile away the time.

 

After an almost entirely successful PE running ELVES!, I decided to queue up after tweaking the deck slightly. The changes to the main board are simply adding in mutavaults to gas up my mana base, and the sideboard tweaks are ones I'd discussed with fellow Iowan, Bill Stark. In our attempts to shore up the match against burn decks, we'd tried Elvish Eulogist+Primal Command (too slow in my experience) and Dragon's Claw. Bill had the breakthrough of realizing that ELVES! is probably going to cast more spells than the red decks, so switching to the green-triggered equivalent seemed like a good idea.

 

4 llanowar elves
4 boreal druid
4 heritage druid
4 bramblewood paragon
4 gilt-leaf ambush
4 hunting triad
4 elvish promenade
4 coat of arms
4 overrun
2 pendelhaven
1 horizon canopy
1 treetop village
3 mutavault
17 forest

SB:
4 wurm's tooth
4 door of destinies

3 squall line
4 harmonize

 

Saturday

I spent most of Saturday doing wedding planning online with MTGO up in the background. Every now and again the flashing at the bottom of the screen alerted me that someone was interested in the packs I had listed in the sellers' room. Before I was even ready to play, I had offloaded the entirety of my winnings from Friday's PE and purchased the 3 mutavaults in the list above. (-69)

 

The only actual magic playing was a single queue (-73).

Round 1 vs. Doran

Game 1: I won the roll and mulliganned to 6, keeping 2 forests, boreal druid, heritage druid, bramblewood paragon, and overrun. His hand was an action-packed 7 that included the mana for t3 doran and a t4 goyf that feasted on tribal instants of the creature killing variety. I didn't draw enough action to deal with that start and the match was soon over in favor of the bad guys (i.e. everyone but me).

Game 2: On the play I have some minor action, but he rips my hand apart with thoughtseize, a goyf to hold the ground, and another thoughtseize. As more action materializes for him on the ground, it becomes apparent that I am not going to get through for any damage, which saddens me because he is at 10 from his painlands and mind-ripping spells.

 

I have other obligations to attend to so I note the PE schedule for the next day includes a 2x standard tribal event. That format requires 20 creatures which share a creature type, and this deck almost qualifies. It also is played without sideboards, so I contemplate bringing in some number of squall lines to be pre-boarded vs. faeries. In the end, I simply decide to cut the gilt-leaf ambushes since they produce the smallest number of tokens and insert 4 essence wardens in their place.

 

Sunday

Tribal PE (-79)

This event is a wretched abortion. I get beaten by Fujita-style elves in rounds 1 and 2, and every time I see an essence warden I desperately wish it was ambush instead. Even in the creature-heavy format, the life swing doesn't justify the mostly worthless 1/1. Every game where my opponent sticks an Imperious Perfect rapidly goes to crap as their elves were bigger to start with and now they are able to out-token me since I've replaced one of my two-dude spells with a single 1/1 body. If I were to run in a tribal event again, I'd definitely put in Perfect over the Warden.

 

After the 0-2 drop comes a series of unfortunate queue-vents, which will be blogged in the not-too-distant future.

Tags: Elves Going Infinite

My last blog entry detailed a pitiful performance on a Thursday evening, but after a good nights rest, I’m ready to conjure forth legions of elves again. I haven't changed my main deck from the beginning, but for this event I change my sideboard slightly, going to a configuration of

2 elvish eulogist

2 primal command

3 harmonize

4 door of destinies

4 squall line

 

I spend my 6 tix to enter into the 10 am standard 2x PE, along with 45 other souls. (-65.5)

 

Round 1 I face RG mana ramp and in game 1 curve beautifully with t1 llanowar elves, t2 gilt-leaf ambush, t3 heritage druid into coat of arms. Apparently dark ritual is good. I swing in with a 4/4 elf warrior that turn and mop up the next. Game 2 is also very fast, though treetop village does cost me a little tempo. I overextend cautiously, holding back 2 ambushes to rebuild if he has the sulfurous blast. On his turn 4 he thinks about a pyroclasm (I can tell by the tapping of 1R and then the untapping), but decides to go with siege gang commander instead. I cast 2 ambushes thanks to heritage druid in play. I have coat of arms on top, and he puts land to the bottom then lets pyroclasm stay. I cast the coat on my turnand attack with 2 warriors, leaving 3 elves untapped. He gang blocks two of my tokens, but another ambush pushes them out of the range of his punny 5/5 commander and 4/4 goblin tokens..

1-0

 

Round 2

He is playing what looks to be Fujita’s elf list. It has a heavy focus on swarming, but not quite as much as my deck. The flip side is that the creatures are individually better.

Game 1 I keep a slower hand and am forced to sit back on a coat of arms for several turns because it isn’t quite lethal and his retaliatory strike will knock me out. Eventually he slaps down elvish champ and forestwalks in.

G2 we both make tokens and I eventually drop a coat and force some major trading if he wants to live. He still takes 11 damage, but our creatures are now more reasonably sized. He drops gaea’s anthem, seemingly unaware that with coat out I can trade up. I swing in a bit more and take it home.

G3 I keep a one lander with llanowar elves, 2 elvish promenade, heritage druid, and ambush. If I hit a land (other than treetop village) or a one cost elf in the first two draw steps I’m golden (31 outs in my remaining 43 cards). I draw two boreal druids. T3 I have tapped down for a hunting triad and then tap those elves to ambush EOT, revealing paragon. My hand at this point consists of two elvish promenades, so I keep him on top. T4 brings the paragon, and it turns out that two elvish proms is more like an elvish orgy, bringing me up to 30 creatures, with 20 of those being 2/2 tramplers.

2-0

 

Round 3

This round I face the dreaded monored burn. In game 1, my opponent plays a mogg fanatic and then stalls on 2 lands. Eventually the third land arrives and I take a browbeating after checking to make sure it has been properly targeted. Countryside crusher comes in the next turn, locking in the enemy land count at 3 mountains. Eventually I get 5 tokens out with Pendelhaven in play. At this point I know all but 1 card in my opponents hand, some of them dead (like sulfurous blast), some of them worthwhile (incinerate), but with only RRR available my opponents only out is shard blast when I cast overrun with Pendelhaven still untapped.
(-4 promenade, -4 overrun, +4 life gain, +1 door of destiny, +3 harmonize).

Game 2 my opponent chooses to draw. It is an understandable choice that works out well for him as mogg fanatics eat my first 2 mana elves. With that start, I’m never really in this game.

In game 3, I’m on the play once again. Things go better for me this time. He allows a turn 2 mana elf to live, which leads to a turn 3 door of destinies. He burns my 1/1 in response, but I can live with that as I drop a llanowar elf and 2 boreal druids. My elves just keep growing in number and size, and he is quickly overwhelmed.

3-0

 

Round 4

Battling against faeries is all about maintaining offense with this deck. Unless they hit the turn 2 bitterblossom, they have a hard time playing defense with a deck loaded with x/1 creatures.

G1 there is the turn 2 bitterblossom, but regardless I am in a position to explode the next turn on t3. His sower steals my heritage druid, which makes overrun an impossibility.

G2 he thoughtseizes and decides to ruin my prom instead of stealing away an overrun. This was the proper move as it allows him to keep pace with my tokens thanks to a t2 bitterblossom. I still overrun on t4 to force through more damage, and on t5 I play a horizon canopy and pop it. He responds with a mistbind clique, so I float mana from my remaining lands and topdeck elvish promenade. Their dresses are so pretty. The next turn I throw most everyone into the red zone, changing my outs from just squall line to squall line or hunting triad by getting for a couple more than I would have without the boreal druids’ sacrifices. The next turn I get the triad and swing, but the reinforced token gets bounced, ruining my chances.

3-1

The server goes down, and when it comes back up, one of the matches that was still running has been duplicated. Eventually a WotC rep manually drops a person from that match and the tournament continues, though about an hour is wasted between the downtime and the time before someone had the sense to go to the MaSS room. At this point I wonder if the PE will wrap up in time for me to go to FNM.

 

Round 5, win or go home.

I am paired down against another GB elf deck. Game 1 treetop village costs me tempo, but I overrun repeatedly to push through damage. If I had not had so many overruns in hand, the game plan would be to save up for one lethal one instead. Game 2 treetop village costs me tempo again as he curves out with multiple paragons and perfects. My token hordes do very little against tramplers. Game 3 has me dead to rights with a lethal profane command on the stack, but he is kind enough to scoop to me since he is out of the running. After the tournament I PM him and hand off a few of my prize packs as a way of saying thanks. Wondering if this could be considered collusion, I take a look at the terms of service, and can’t find any mention of bribery, collusion, DCI rules, or anything like that at all.

4*-1

Round 6 both my opponent and I have very good tiebreakers. If everyone draws, one 4-1-1 will get cut, if even one match has a winner and loser, none will. We ID.

4*-1-1

 

Top 8

 

Round 1

I’m facing off against RG mana ramp and destroy it quickly. Game 1 I keep one of those one-land, play-it-all-anyway, get a million token hands. It does exactly that. I side out 2 proms, 1 paragon, 4 overrun to bring in 4 door of destiny and 3 harmonize. If my opponent didn’t have sulfurous blast as a 4-of in the main, it should be to that point after sideboarding. Game 2 I make a bunch of mana elves, then he taps out for siege-gang commander on turn 4. I use my turn 4 to drop heritage druid and throw an elvish prom. I then use the tokens to fuel a coat of arms. He puts loxodon hammer on his SGC and swings in with the crew. I block the commander and one of the mooks, and skred combines with the li’l gobo to finish off my 8/8 elf. It doesn’t matter as I’m left with 6 6/6 elves when he has no blockers and 28 life.

There are 50 minutes left on the round clock so I get my stuff around for FNM…one match goes nearly to time.

 

Round 2

Playing against faeries once more, and this list is using cloudsprites. I curve beautifully game 1. T1 llanowar elves, t2 boreal and heritage druid, EOT ambush, t3 prom, prom, prom to go up to 30 elves.

Game 2 is slightly longer, with the win set up when he attempts to mistbind clique me and I squall line to kill it and his team. I misplay later on due to poor stop setting, as he cryptic commands to tap my token army, I should have set a stop so I can let it resolve and then attack with a manland. Later on he is down to low life with bitterblossom out, and he champs the blossom with another clique to stop the bleeding. I make enough tokens to swarm around the edges for a win.

The match takes 12 minutes.

 

Round 3

The other match was mercifully short, so it isn’t long before I’m bashing against faeries again (he declined an ID). My notes for this section are very sparse because I was trying to play fairly quickly.

Game 1 he manages to out-tempo me just enough to secure the win at 3 life.

Game 2 he prioritizes killing my mana-producing elves, so I take a long while to get up to speed.

Second place may be first loser, but at least this first loser job pays fairly well: I swiftly receive 6 LLM draft sets. For those of you concerned about whether I made it to FNM, I ended up getting there just in the nick of time, walking in the door as people were being seated for round 1.

Saturday brought some time sitting in the sellers room, along with some queue action to detail for a later blog. Taking into account the packs I gave to my round 5 opponent, I ended up bringing my balance up to the black. A mighty $0.00! I celebrate this accomplishment by getting 3 mutavaults (-69, but now with a 119 ticket deck).

Tags: Elves Going Infinite

Previously on ELVES!:

"The elves! They're huge!"...

"If I can't stop it, we're going to die!"...

*EXPLOSION*...

Queue the theme music and start the episode filmed on 4/3, Thursday night.

 

 Today's blog is a lesson in failure. It actually starts with the end of the previous blog, where I posted myself up 1.5 tix from my starting value. That failed to take the entry for the last queue into account, so my current balance sits at -52.5 (with 50 of that being the cost of the deck). It's not that much lower, but significantly more depressing since it isn't progress.

 

 Monored burn has proved to be a fairly tough match, so I altered the sideboard slightly, cutting 1 primal command to put in an elvish eulogist. The slots dedicated exclusively to that match still stay at 3, but it makes a command into a likely 12+ gain in life, which buys a few turns versus the creatured versions, and is nearly impossible for the pure burn builds to fight through before I finish them off.

 

With the changes made, I jump into the 8-man queues.

Queue #4 (-56.6)

I know as soon as the dice are rolled that I'm likely facing MRB with creatures because it is my opponent from the finals of Q3. Crap. You take what you're given, though, and sometimes that is a bad matchup round 1.

 

Game 1 he uses mogg fanatic on my first turn mana elf before I can untap and use it, followed by a t2 keldon marauders. When he swings in the next turn I use gilt-leaf ambush as a healing salve that leaves behind a 1/1 body. He drops another marauders after combat, so I reinforce my elf with hunting triad while I can since I suspect sulfurous blast next turn. He swings with his marauders, and after I block them he lashes out at my 4/4 elf. He then plays another marauders and a fanatic. I play a hunting triad and the next turn my elves try to pick up their dates for prom, but two of them are shot down in response. 4 mana is a lot to pay for a single 1/1 token. I get in some small beats, but he does what red mages do when they're bleeding: he cauterizes the wounders. We're both left with empty hands with me in range of any pair of burn spells and him at a precarious 1 life. I then topdeck 5 lands, while he passes twice without action, suspends a gargadon, makes a land, and then drops a countryside crusher.

Game 2 I mulligan to 5, and we scrabble for a bit. Eventually he is out of gas in his hand but has a countryside crusher in play, and I'm in topdeck mode. Elvish eulogist buys me what I assume will be two turns when she chump blocks the crusher and gains me 5 life. I rip harmonize, which leads into 3 more forests. He flips a good number of lands into the graveyard and smashes back, and my next card is not a blocker, so I die.

 

Queue #5 (-60.5)

 G1 I keep a 1 lander...that also has 2 mana elves, heritage druid, and 2 coat of arms, and an ambush. I need one of two things to happen for this to work: no turn 1 removal or ripping a land. This seemed much more reasonable in the heat of battle, and ripping the land made me feel smart rather than lucky. He led with plains, so I thought it could be lark, and, after casting druids of both boreal and heritage varieties, I main-phased an ambush to avoid rune snag. The clash revealed militia's pride and hunting triad. Since he is kithkin, I leave the triad on top, and on my next turn dwarf his 2 drop by making a bunch of elves and playing a coat of arms. His response was to pm me "lol" "that deck is terrible"

G2 is a tight battle, and I eventually choke on excess land. I had sideboarded door of destinies in for coat of arms, but I think this may have been a mistake in retrospect because it has no immediate impact on the board and he lacks the removal needed to keep my numbers below his. Coat of arms can potentially help him more than it helps me, but in those situations it seems like the door only does nothing instead of actively hurting me.

G3 he gets a slow start, playing goldmeadow harrier turn 1 and then keeping up mana to tap a creature each turn. His t2 goldmeadow stalwart blocks a token that I reinforce, and I happily continue to throw out tokens. He casts wrath of god. There was definitely an akward pause at that point. White weenie isn't supposed to waste slots on wrath, is it? I can see austere command since it clears out the big dudes while leaving your kithkin in place, but WoG? Unlike my opponent, I don't send a smarmy pm after getting blown out. I just post about it on the internet.

 

Queue #6 (-64.5)

 Apparently the first Q of this evening is done now, since I'm facing the MRB player again. I manage to take game 1 by waiting until turn 2 to play a mana elf so that it can have pendelhaven backup, then exhausting his resources by making a million tokens that he burns away in attempt to avoid death by 1/1's. Games 2 and 3 are not so pretty, and I will spare you the bad beat stories.

 

Queue #7 (-68.5)

 In the notes I'm taking for blogging purposes, I've typed "If I don't get past the first round, I'm going to bed."

 

Match 1 is a protracted pseudo-mirror match. He has slightly better elves, but slightly fewer token makers and no apparent "go big" spells. He has Rhys in the main and essence warden out of the board, but I don't think he has overrun since I didn't see any. He takes game 1 on the back of his superior creatures, but I spend my sideboarding time to go get a Coke. Since I make more elves than him, coat of arms is in my favor. It also enables my 1/1 tokens to trade with his 2/2 creatures every time, and sometimes with the larger ones, depending on just how many elves die in combat. I take game 2 on the back of a massive overrun, and game 3 he left home enough blockers to stay at 1 life after my trampling assault. 1 life isn't usually good enough against my elvish horde (I guess they're blood elves?), and this time is no exception.

 

Match 2 is against a rock deck, and in game 1 his only mana sources for the first 2 turns are llanowar wastes. When he starts the game at 14 life, I easily swarm for the win. I haven't seen whether he is running bitterblossom, and I'm unsure if there will be damnation post boards, so I swap in squall lines for elvish promenades.

In game 2 he gets a touch of mana screw while I have mana flood. I have 3 overrun in hand, though not much to trample through with. I figure +6 damage is fine and overrun with 2 creatures out and he kills one in response. Lather, rinse, repeat. Eventually he gets some larger creatures and is stable at a fairly low life total, I need to either swarm around the edges or squall line through. I hit a couple of boreal druids and then cast the X spell for the win.

 

I manually split in the finals, going up by 10.5 tix once I sell the packs. (-58 balance)

 

Queue #8 (-62)

Round 1 I play against some sort of UB fish deck. I am on the play and I keep a hand with 2 lands, 2 mana elves, and 3 overruns. I immediately think better of it, but MTGO has a very strict "No Gobacksies" rule. Turn 1 he suspends visions, t2 lord of atlantis, t3 he misses his land drop and then on my t4 he rune snags an overrun that will only cause a single elf to crash through the red zone. Familiars ruse on my next overrun allows me to get through for 2 unblocked instead of 8 worth of trampling, angry elves. His vision resolves, and he discards after playing a mutavault, leaving him with just 1UU available. I'd rather have him cancel a hunting triad, and thanks to my super amazing ability to topdeck nothing but forests until then I have the mana to pay for a rune snag. I get the tokens. By this point I've come to realize that he has his stop on my turn set in my main phase rather than at the beginning of combat. T7 I pass priority instead of going for the overrun since he now has cryptic command mana. He uses the command to fog me, and I then make a paragon. His turn he taps everything but mutavault to play bitterblossom and lord of atlantis. The 3rd overrun is lethal.

G2 is fairly unexciting. He suspends a visions and puts out a faeries conclave. I make a billion tokens. On a turn where I am approaching lethal mass I pass priority, expecting cryptic command to tap my guys. He activates the conclave instead. Because his stop was set in my main phase, I cast overrun and he only has runesnag mana so it resolves.

 
Round 2 also brings a fish matchup, though this one is less one-sided.

G1  I lose the die roll and his first turn is spent suspending visions, with the next being ponder. During this time I am busily making tokens. The defining play of the game is when I swing a swarm of tokens (2/2 thanks to bramblewood paragon) into his board of 2 lords of atlantis and 2 mutavaults. With each of those blocking a 2/2, I reinforce one of the tokens that a lord of atlantis has intercepted. The 3/3 merfolk dies, which causes a chain of state-based effect checking that leads to a blood bath involving 5 dead elves, 4 dead merfolk, and 2 dead brushwaggs. Finishing him from there is not a problem.

In the second game he has silvergill adept followed by reejerey and lord of atlantis. My tokens are outclassed badly, and I can't drop a coat of arms because it would make it worse. The coats turn into doors for game 3.

G3 I use a door to good effect, but he has 3 lords so it is a tight race that he is winning. It all comes down to resolving a squall line, but he has flash freeze for it, and shows me another flash freeze in hand.

+M puts me at -59.5

 

My thoughts on this evening were that I am definitely running too little action. I have gotten mana flooded and had topdecked lands in situations where they aren't needed repeatedly. I don't want to drop the land count, though, because of the many 4 and 5 cost spells that are needed to make the deck do ridiculous things. I am in dire need of mutavault. There is a PE on Friday morning at 10 that I plan to enter, and if things go well in that perhaps I'll end up with the tickets I need to acquire those.

I feel like my number of misplays is dropping, though I am still trying to find the balance between swarming effectively and overcommitting. In the match against kithkin I was going for a blowout, when I didn't particularly need to. I was in a winning position, yet I threw two hunting triads and a prom out (over the course of a few turns) just to get the game over before he could turn it around. White weenie lacks the kind of earth-shattering spells that necessitate that sort of massive overcommitment. Heck, it lacks earth-shattering spells at all unless it is siding in wrath of god.

Something needs to be done about the red matchup, though. It feels like lifegain may be the answer, so finding some slots in the sideboard for at least one more eulogist and command would be worthwhile. I could see one harmonize and one door getting getting cut for a final configuration of
2 eulogist
3 command
4 squall line
3 door
3 harmonize 

Tags: Elves

For those of you who don't know me, I am John Jackson, a high school teacher by day, mighty planeswalker by night...at least on Friday nights. My magic related accomplishments include such illustrious things as occasionally stealing points from Bill Stark and Blake Rasmussen at the local drafts and FNMs, top 8'ing a smattering of 2hg PTQs (which cut to top 4), and playing Haakon, Stromgald Scourge far more often than I should. Basically, if you are here to learn at the feet of a master, you're in the wrong place.

 

One thing that is unique about my situation is that I live in a small town in rural Iowa, with the nearest game shop 40 minutes of driving distant. This limits my face-to-face magic to about once per week, usually a draft or FNM. I've played MTGO online, but I've never before attempted to document my successes and failures for public scrutiny. Since Blake hasn't posted a Going Infinite blog in a very long time, I thought I might try my hand at something similar, though likely more to the red side of the ledger.

 

I started by building the ELVES! deck that Bill Stark has been writing about on another site with some slight budgetization. 4 mutavaults breaks the limit of what I am willing to spend on the secondary aspect of this hobby. Instead I upped the pendelhaven count and stuck in a horizon canopy and a couple of treetop villages. This left me with this list:

 

4 Boreal Druid

4 Llanowar Elves

4 Heritage Druid

4 Bramblewood Paragon

4 Gilt-Leaf Ambush

4 Elvish Promenade

4 Hunting Triad

4 Coat of Arms

4 Overrun

2 Pendelhaven

1 Horizon Canopy

2 Treetop Village

19 Forest

SB:

4 Harmonize

4 Door of Destiny

4 Squall Line

3 Primal Command

 

It took about 25 new tickets to acquire the pieces I was missing (most of the Morningtide uncommons and all of the rares save 1 command and horizon canopy), and I peg the value of the other cards I put in at around 25 tickets going off the prices in the Sellers room. This fuzzy math lets me conveniently call the deck a 50 ticket investment, which makes it simple to remember. With the deck built and half a dozen goldfished games, I headed to the 8-man queues.

 

Queue #1:

 Round 1 I am up against elves (not to be confused with ELVES! that I'm playing). Though I throw away game 1 by putting coat of arms out too early, I manage to take games 2 and 3 using overrun and door of destinies (in for the coats).

 

Round 2 I face monored burn, and the near-creatureless version of it at that. A riftbolt suspended on turn 1 hits my face rather than a bramblewood paragon to give you an idea of how seriously this guy takes his gameplan. He is just a bit faster than me and burns me down before I can put together an overwhelming offense. Game 2 is little better.

 

1-1 is good enough for a pack of Morningtide, which I was disappointed to find is only going for 2.5 in the buyer's room (3.5 in sellers). If I had more time, I probably could post in the seller's room and get 3 for it, but until I have a slightly more substantial buffer of packs this doesn't seem worth my time. 2.5 tix it is.

 

(-50 start up costs-4 entry+2.5= -51.5)

 

Queue #2:

Rogues tear me apart game 1. I keep a mana-light hand that has a pair of overruns and coat of arms, his t1 nightshade stinger, t2 stinkdrinker bandit, t3 earwig squad (which amusingly eats my remaining overruns and a coat of arms) are enough to outdo my performance when I stall out with 4 mana available and he adds Oona's Prolwer to the board.

Game 2 I make more tokens than he can deal with, especially when pendelhaven followed by a hunting triad reinforce eats his turn 3 earwig squad. Game 3 is a close race, with him putting me to exactly 0 the turn before I would drop coat of arms and swing back for 35 (barring blocks).

 

(-4 entry, no prizes= -55.5)

 

Queue #3:

Round 1, game 1, I am unsure of my opponents archetype, it looks to be some sort of elf build with heavier black. Undetered by my lack of knowledge, I smash face with a bunch of elves and coat of arms. Game 2 is a good example of the sort of powerful start this deck is capable of, even in the face of resistance. On turn 4 his board position consists of 2 goyfs (4/5), gaea's anthem, and bitterblossom (it turns out he's playing Rock). I, however, have 7 elves and only need one of them for mana when I overrun and swing in for 16 that gets past his blockers. Bleeding from the blossom on his turn, a swing with the 6 survivors past 5 blockers with pendelhaven pumping the unblocked one, and another self-ping from the blossom are enough to finish him off. Especially against a mid-range deck, ELVES! feels more like a combo deck than an aggro deck.

 

Round 2 I beat faeries handily. My token production outstrips theirs greatly, and post-boards squall line comes in, which can wrath their board or burn them out if they tap out for some reason.

 

Round 3 I face the version of monored burn with countryside crushers and greater gargadons. Game 1 he races me and wins, and in game 2 I walk into an onboard trick of gargadon noshing on some lands and pumping up crushers in response to reinforcing a blocked token. The next turn he burns my only blocker and goes all-in to finish me off exactly. In my haste to remove his giant, I neglected to think of it from the point of view of a swarm aggro deck. Instead of trying to bring down his monster, I should have let that elf die and then made 3 more.

 

-4 entry +7 (L@4.5, M@2.5) puts my balance on the evening at -48.5. At this rate I only need another 97 queues before I've made back my investment. Things should improve as my familiarity increases, and I make fewer blatant misplays.

Tags: Going Infinite Elves