Notes from Gameday
I thought I would share some notes, thoughts and anecdotes regarding yesterday’s game day. I took my kids to Your Hobby Place in Martinsburg (which is an awesome shop) to pick up pre-con Commander decks. They’ve been enjoying EDH thoroughly at home, but using borrowed decks and wanted to get their own.
The youngest got Counterpunch and the oldest got Heavenly Inferno, basically so that he could beat up on the youngest. They also got a play mat, some dice, deck boxes and sleeves. And then we played stuff:
EDH
The oldest won a three-player with Heavenly Inferno against Mimeoplasm and Doran, the Siege Tower. The youngest was too distracted by all the shopping opportunities, talking to the store owner and looking at other games to focus like he does at home, so he ended up eventually forfeiting most of his games. We then played a three player with Heavenly Inferno, Doran, the Siege Tower and my Rayne, Academy Chancellor deck. The game eventually ended on Laboratory Maniac after Doran killed my oldest son and I wiped the board with Oblivion Stone and like 20 cards in hand.
Consecrated Sphinx should be social-banned from EDH in my opinion. It’s just un-fun for everyone who doesn’t have one.
Modern
The secondary purpose of the event, other than getting pre-cons for the kids, was to test some Modern decks for the upcoming PTQ season. I have been playing Teachings online and have blogged about this before. However, I decided I wanted to try something more aggressive against an open format with no Punishing Fire and Wild Nacatl. This has the added benefit of being less risky to play on MTGO with the match timer system there.
In case the deck pans out and I use it competitively, I don’t really want to post a list. I will say, however, that it is White Weenie-esque. If you are really interested and want to exchange notes, etc., contact me on Twitter and I’ll see about sharing. Let’s just say that I wish Figure of Destiny on Magic Online didn’t cost 40,000 tix. I don’t think that gives anything away.
Here’s roughly how it went (all win %s are pre-board):
- vs. Boat Brew (Boros) - 60/40, although it was hard to factor in the number of mulligans that occurred. The fact that my opponent routinely started at 14 life each game made my more explosive openers pretty insane. The key card here for my opponent was Ajani Vengeant, although it was usually not fast enough unless he was on the play. My opponent was getting annoyed that I was routinely calling his plays correctly before he was making them.
- vs. 5-color Domain/Glittering Wish - 70/30 - this match was in my favor, also partly due to fetch/shock mana bases. I thought Tarmogoyf, Knight of the Reliquary and access to Firespout and Jund Charm would be tough, but it worked out pretty well. Spectral Procession, if unanswered, was a beating.
- vs. Birthing Pod - 30/70 - this match was definitely in Pod’s favor, given the low amount of main deck removal I have available and the resilience of the combo. Sideboard graveyard hate was definitely tech. The key card here was Spectral Procession. I should have mulligan’d more aggressively.
At the end of the day, I confirmed the validity of at least 12-14 of my 15 sideboard cards and have made 6 main deck slot improvements for further testing. I think the deck is strong enough to consider until the field develops more fully and proper meta-gaming can occur.
Legacy
I was the only one with a deck, so no playing occurred. However, I did pick up a few more cards I need to finish de-proxying the deck:
- 2 Kitchen Finks
- 2 Verdant Catacombs ($7 each, nice!)
I’m down to one cheap-ish dual land and three or four sub-$10 singles. Basically, ready for SCG next year.
Teamwork
Over lunch, before the shop opened, I had a good discussion with one of my teammates about practice, teamwork and what it takes to do well in competitive tournaments. It’s obvious and everyone knows this: individual successes tend to be a fluke or unreliable. Consistent performance is about working together, testing, improving deck lists, practicing against a field and all the synergy that comes from cooperation.
So we basically agreed to try, lifestyles-permitting, to put as much work in to any season/event as we can for preparation even if it involves Cockatrice or just a day before an event. Even if we don’t attend many events; for the ones we attend, we will take them seriously.
Of course, then we get to the shop and he plays a two-hour game of mental magic. But it was a nice discussion.
