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Sunday, September 30, 2012

Return To Ravnica Prerelease

Return To Ravnica prerelease tournaments bring something new. This time a player has to choose a guild he would represent. Today at the game store Mephit there were 14 players. Each of them chose a guild. The reasons why certain player chose this or that guild differed. Golgari was played by majority, Izzet followed. Two players chose Rakdos and other two chose Selesnya. Only one player played Azorious.

Before the tournament I wasn't really sure what guild to play. If I would choose without looking at the cards I'd go for Golgari. I'm registered as Azorious member though at Planeswalker Points. After seeing the complete spoiler I decided to play Junk or Bant. Bant were the colors I prefered. It was to be either Selesnya or Azorious. After seeing the guild promo card though I decided against Azorious and picked Selesnya. Grove of the Guardian seemed to OP to me.

I grabbed all the guild packs and distributed them to the players. While doing that I asked what the battle cry of the guild is. Some guilds cooperated some did not. After greeting all the players and explaining game mechanics we were ready to go. Most players already opened their packs anyway. I opened my first pack and the first card I saw was 2/2 Azorious Flyer. The card that followed (not counting token and land) was Supreme Verdict. In the next booster pack I opened Azor's Elocutors and New Prahv Guildmage. The other rare cards don't need mentioning. They weren't worth playing nor worth money (except one, but I still did not play it). Last I opened the guild booster pack and was quite dissatisfied with it. Except the promo there was no card I'd like to play. I threw the cards back in the box and finally build my deck. Here's the decklist:

2x Azorious Arrester
1x Gatekeeper Vine
1x Doorkeeper
1x New Prahv Guildmage
1x Call of the Conclave
1x Druid's Deliverance
1x Axebane Guardian
1x Hover Barrier
1x Vassal Soul
2x Rootborn Defenses
1x Skymark Roc
2x Hussar Patrol
1x Towering Indrik
2x Eyes in the Skies
1x Azor's Elocutors
2x Coursers' Accord
1x Trostani's Judgement
1x Grove of the Guardian
2x Azorious Guilgate
1x Selesnya Guildgate
1x Transguild Promenade

I was looking forward to the first round. In the first round I played against Rakdos player, playing Jund. My opponent started with small creatures with unleash and that actually dealt quite some damage to me. My Azorious creatures with Flash were destroyed even before they could block. As the number of opponent's removal had to be finite I waited before I would create 8/8 elemental token. If by a chance my opponent would still have a removal I had Rootborn Defenses ready. Now it was time for the Rakdos player to chumblock my 8/8 with Vigilance. I won a turn later. Second game was rather similar but it was army of centaurs that won me the game.

In the second round nothing much changed^_^. I played against another Jund. This time it was played by a Golgari Guild member. My opponent was using Scavenge as much as he could and it actually worked more or less. At least my Defenders weren't really good for blocking 4+ power creatures. Korozda Guildmage a Golgari promo - Corpsejack Menace did not help it either. I hoped that two copies of Azorious Arrester would give me enough time to draw a sixth land. It happened two turns later, so more of my creatures died and I even had to chumpblock with my defender. I managed to draw the land then and exile the annoying Fungus. After 20 minutes of relative stall I managed to finally get centaur token in play and populate. My opponent was attacking with one big creature each time. The creature encountered some Eyes in the Skies or Rootborn Defenses and died. I was waiting for Azor's Elocutors but they did not want to show up. When I finally drew the card I was already milling my opponent with one of my defenders. 5 turns later I won and I could choose if I would win with the use of Elocutors or wait for my opponent to draw a card (as there were no left).

In the third round it was again Golgari. This deck was faster and I was suddenly at 9 life. My opponent even gained some life and played more creatures. The creatures were small though - one centaur should be able to deal with the situation. But my plan was disrupted - Mind Rot was played and I discarded Eyes in the Skies a Coursers' Accord. The only reason that I was still alive was due to Arresters and Azorious Guildmage. The only card left in my hand was Grove of the Guardian. I played it and created the token. Guildmage was still alive so I detained opponent's creatures and went through with the elemental. In the second game it seemed that I would not survive. Detain mechanic nor 2/4 Patrols did not help me. I was down to 2 life and I thought that nothing would help me. Grove of the Guardian came though and solved everything. Azorious obviously needs to be hidden somewhere and command Selesnya units. But without Azorious guild aid I would be dead for sure.

After all those previous rounds where I played against Jund decks I finally had the chance to play against something different - Izzetu (with white). Izzet was too slow for my deck though. I couldn't kill 1/4 creatures but those creatures could not kill my creatures either. I waited till my opponent finally tapped all his lands and then created my first Centaur token. Later I added some birds and centaurs and was attacking each turn. My opponent did not have enough blockers to deal with it but occasional burn spell or counterspell slowed me down. The second game could bedescribed as Centaur swarm - an easy win for me.

I still had about 30 minutes left so I got up and went to scout some decks. The players that could possible play against me were still playing so I could check their Golgari decks. One of them had Vraska and Lotleth Troll on the table.

Guess against whom I played in the last round^^. Golgari with Vraska and Troll. My opponent played few creatures with the troll that can regenerate. But even that could not save him from my centaurs, birds and elementals. In the next game Vraska came early and she decided to ruin my mana base. Hopefully my mana fixation was good and even decided to come. I decided to destroy Vraska first before killing my opponent. I took me about 4 turns to finally kill her. My opponent though returned the card and played it once again. At this point I decided to ignore her completely and rather kill my opponent. I dealt him 16 damage in the first attack. He tried using Vraska on my elemental but I showed him Rootborn Defenses and then killed him in next attack with the help of Azorious Guildmage.

My result today was 5:0 (all 2:0???!!!). Next I distributed prizes to players and gave some extra booster packs to those who managed to get most achievements done.

Some players started to open their boosterpacks and no one seemed happy about it. So I took mine and well... here's a photo of what I opened.

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