Today only 12 players (including me) gathered to participate in a Standard tournament open for everybody. The tournament is mainly aimed at beginners but everyone is welcome.
We have few relatively new but really hard trying players. Jan Podrouzek trying his luck with green/red deck and Dan Krucky with simple burn deck with which he usually succeeds pretty well. Next we have few players from a school nearby. Jakub Matejka with RB Vampires and Ondrej Altman who came with his RG Werewolves and fought well. Not so many players try to play control decks at this tournament, but one showed up - Ondrej Pem with Grixis Control (too bad he lost in the last round).
Before the tournament I decided to update my deck. I build it before Innistrad was even out and did not really change it much after Innistrad was released. I ignored Dark Ascension completely.
I took out Liliana of the Veil and Phantasmal Image, 1x Think Twice, 2x Dissipate, 1x Tribute to Hunger and 1x Unburial Rites. I added Lingering Souls in playset, 2x doom blade, 1x Grave Titan, 1x Snapcaster Mage and 2x ??. I changed the mana base as well, making it more white and adding two Ghost Quarters. My sideboard consisted of Nihil Spellbomb, Timely Reinforcement, Dissipate, Oblivion Ring, Go For the Throat, Consecrated Sphinx, Revoke Existence, Day of Judgment, Think Twice and Ratchet Bomb. I hoped that the deck would not screw me up on the manabase as I wasn't really calculating it. It worked better than before.
Round 1
In Round 1 I played against Jan Podrouzek. This player is really eager to try out new cards and build decks and that's what the local players need. We need players like that. With more players like this the community will be healthy. Unfortunately his deck couldn't keep up with mine. But I learned one lesson ^_~ Hellrider is quite an annoying creature and a deck could be build around it. Jan though wanted some good creatures there and put in there Huntmaster of the Fells and Vorapede. I would actually take these out and replace them with something much less expensive like CMC1 or CMC2. Young Wolf came to mind and the best attacker in red or green is probably Stormblood Berserker, but that did not come to my mind at that time. Anyway this creature with Volt Charge can be annoying. Volt Charge also charges undying cards like Strangleroot Geist. With all these little creatures he would be able to deal quite a lot of damage soon and the Hellrider would be used to its fullest. I gave him some advice about the deck and the different approaches he can take, so we'll see next time. He's on a good track for sure.
Round 2
In Round 2 I played against Ondrej Pem on Grixis control. That is where Lingering Souls is a good card - to be countered. I hoped that my opponent would counter it at least once so I could play something I needed more later. He did. Actually it seemed that my opponent had 3 Mana leaks from the beginning of the game. I tried to let him play cards and not allow him to play too much Forbidden Alchemies and slowly waited for some Titan or Wurmcoil Engine. I played mainly Lingering Souls not caring about if it gets countered. Anyway those tokens actually dealt quite a lot of damage. Some got countered and some died to Slagstorm. After the first game I sided out Doomblades that are useless against Olivia and Grave Titan and put in Dissipates.
In this game I tried the same approach and soon was enchanted with Curse of Dead's Hold. So some bigger creatures needed to finish my opponent. Wurmcoil Engine on both sides, but I had unburial rites to reanimate my Wurmcoil Engine after it died.
Round 3
After these nice games I played against Jakub Matejka, probably the most conscious Magic player from the school kids in the area. His primary deck is Goblins but they are not standard legal. He played some kind of Black/Red but unfortunately wasn't fast enough nor was able to come up with a threat I would need to cope with immediately. This player though will be a very good in the future if he will be still playing Magic.
Round 4
Last round I played against Lukas Jenco playing Red Deck Wins (quite many player play it now. They usually try something, figure out that it does not work and then switch to RDW). He wasn't really happy to play against Solar Flare as he thinks that he can't win. I won the first game fast since on turn 3 I played Forbidden Alchemy and put Wurmcoil Engine into my graveyard and two turns later I reanimated it.
In the second game we both were mana screwed. If any one of us would get some lands that player would win. Timely Reinforcements and Snapcaster Mage + Timely Reinforcements tried to deal with Chandra's Phoenix, Stromkirk Noble with 4 counters and Stormblood Berserker with 2 counters on it. My only chance of trying to survive was by getting some life from Wurmcoil Engine, but that was stolen from me and I was killed by it instead. I had nothing else to do.
In Game 3 I changed the deck to a more control version still keeping Timely Reinforcements in and won, but not that it could be called a game. My opponent mulled to five and his draws weren't particularly good.
What I learned? Lingering Souls is a strong card and if popular I will need to deal with it. For that I can play Curse of Dead's Hold and put in few Ratchet Bombs (I had them in SB). Why didn't I think of this earlier? Hopefully my opponents also found some new information, learned from their mistakes and had fun.
At these events we don't get packs but instead we open the packs in the prize pool and pick the cards according to our standing. Lukas Jenco being second wanted to first pick Mikaeus Foil so I let him. Hope he enjoys the card and congratulation to all!
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Esper Control
by STsung
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