Highlander Series #2

After the success at the first tournament I decided to go to the second tournament of the series. But I wanted to change my deck a bit. My BUGw Aggro conrol sometimes has hard time killing my opponent with its 1/1 mana dorks so I wanted to try something a bit more agressive. The week the second tournament took place there was another highlander tournament at a different game store. A friend of mine asked me to prepare him a deck so he could play. I took out my Cube and chose all the good cards of all colors I could possibly use for the deck.

I added some lands, but I needed to cut quite a lot of them (as 10 dual lands, 10 shock lands and 10 fetch lands is already 30). In the end I added few more cards like Dryad Arbor, Fleecemane Lion (not going to play this anymore) and Loxodon Smiter.

1 Ajani Vengeant
1 Avacyn's Pilgrim
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Blade Splicer
1 Dark Confidant
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Delver of Secrets
1 Edric, Spymaster of Trest
1 Eternal Witness
1 Falkenrath Aristocrat
1 Flametongue Kavu
1 Fleecemane Lion
1 Geist of Saint Traft
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Loxodon Smiter
1 Noble Hierarch
1 Putrid Leech
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Restoration Angel
1 Reveillark
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Shriekmaw
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Tarmogoyf
1 Thragtusk
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Wild Nacatl
1 Young Pyromancer

1 Abrupt Decay
1 Brainstorm
1 Chain Lightning
1 Daze
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Eladamri's Call
1 Electrolyze
1 Evasive Action
1 Fire // Ice
1 Force of Will
1 Force Spike
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Izzet Charm
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Lightning Helix
1 Lingering Souls
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Mana Drain
1 Mana Leak
1 Miscalculation
1 Path to Exile
1 Ponder
1 Preordain
1 Remand
1 Spell Snare
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Thoughtseize
1 Tribal Flames
1 Unearth
1 Vindicate

1 Arid Mesa
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Breeding Pool
1 City of Brass
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Flooded Strand
1 Island
1 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Plateau
1 Polluted Delta
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Savannah
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Scrubland
1 Steam Vents
1 Stirring Wildwood
1 Swamp
1 Taiga
1 Temple Garden
1 Treetop Village
1 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
1 Underground Sea
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wasteland
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills

My friend made 4:0 at the tournament. The day before the tournament I wanted to play in I was asking people on facebook if I should go 5c or show up with my old deck. Those who answered were for the 5c deck so I went with it.

During the tournament I played against a staxx deck that beat me. Trinisphere in all the first turns was simply wrong for me. In the first game it is something that actually won me the game but otherwise I just couldn't do much with it. In one of the games my opponent could't draw a card that would kill me. So I was there stuck with nothing to play and sometimes dealing 1 damage to Ajani so I could keep my lands for few more turns. But then Armageddon decided it all. The other game I lost was pretty short as I couldn't deal with early Tezzeret. The other deck that beat me was mono white. The pilot of the deck went 6:0 and beat me in the final round. I could have won. The only thing I needed was a flipped Delver of Secrets^_^. But no instant or sorceries followed in the next five turns unfortunately for me...

Anyway during the tournament I did not really have so many problems with my mana base - that's something I feared the most. Those problems I had were caused by the fact that I did not recall what shocklands I put in the deck and that resulted sometimes in having wrong lands in play. But with the knowledge of the lands in the deck everything would be fine. Draws with something like Mountain + Badlands as my only lands were really discouraging but usually one mulligan solved the problem (I got once Bayou + Forest instead of even worse combination but it worked fine). Once it took me three turns to play Falkenrath Aristocrat as I couldn't get Black or Red but I won the game no matter what...but it meant finding Sakura-Tribe Elder and surviving one more turn (which could mean I could lose pretty easily). Anyway the deck is agressive, it can counter and occasional burn helps a lot. I'll probably try playing with this in the following tournament as well. (this deck could hardly beat my EDH though o_O That WAS discouraging...)