This tournament was supposed to be, and I guess is normally, held in Philly at the convention center, the same spot where we played the Star City 5K. Luckily for us, the convention center was booked, so they decided to hold the event in Edison, which is only a forty-five minute train ride from New York, as opposed to Philly which is two to three hours away.I personally viewed this event as a precursor to States, which will be on December 5th. With so little time between events, it's likely that the decks we see at States will be the same or similar to the ones we saw at this one, in addition to any breakout decks from Worlds. Unfortunately, I still hadn't settled on a deck by the time this event came around, so despite all of my initial protest against the deck, I ended up playing Jund.
Jund is currently the best deck in format. It's strength comes from the amazing amount of card advantage it can generate. For non-Magic players, card advantage in its most basic instance would be drawing more cards than your opponent or alternately forcing your opponent to discard cards from their hand (which Jund does quite well). Another form of it is getting more mileage out of your cards. If you were at a Magic tournament, you would likely hear the term “2-for-1”. This refers to an instance when a player's 1 card is able to destroy his opponent's 2 cards, like a playing a single spell and killing two creatures, or playing a single spell and making your opponent discard two cards. Jund is a deck that constantly 2-for-1's (or better) its opposition. It is also a deck that takes very little (if any) skill to play, which is why I felt confident playing it without having tested with it very much.
Round 1:
I started off the tournament playing a mirror match, meaning I played against someone who was also playing a Jund deck. How effective you are in the Jund mirror is directly tied to how lucky you are. This round it favored my opponent, as I ended up stuck on few lands both games, and he ended up playing better cards than I did.
Round 2:
I ended up facing the guy I was sitting next to in the prior round. He knew that I was playing Jund, but I never got a chance to look at his deck. It ended up that he was playing the new Standard “Dredge” deck. “Dredge” has become an archetype name for decks that play creatures from their graveyard (or bin), where creatures normally go to die. When the deck isn't working, it doesn't actually look like it's doing anything other than putting cards into its bin, but when it is, it can put multiple (often a lethal number of) threats on the board all at once. Luckily for me, he never got to that, so I won handily.
Round 3:
I played a really nice guy who was running a deck he called “Indiana Jones”, which was a rogue deck based off running the trap cards found in the latest set. The deck wins by milling the opposition (forcing them to put all of the cards in their deck into their graveyard). But my constant stream of creatures and burn spells proved to be too much for him.
Round 4:
My opponent wasn't exactly verbose, which made me suspect that he was playing the mono-Green Eldrazi deck, a deck a friend of mine had joked about as being a deck for anti-social people since you never have to talk to your opponent to make understood what you are doing; you just keep attacking them. It turned out that he was playing Team America, one of the few control decks in Standard. Right now the format is extremely unfriendly toward control decks, but I had also had a lot of practice against the deck as two of my friends and teammates were running it. I beat him with a stream of discard spells, as it is hard for a control deck to do anything without a hand.
Round 5:
I got paired against a deck I couldn't actually beat. 5-Color-Cascade is an incredibly bad match up for Jund, as it basically does what Jund does only better. The only reason the deck hasn't taken off is that it is even slower than Jund and loses to any type of aggro deck. My opponent was a really cool guy though, and he gave me some pointers about how to handle the match up, which might come in handy in the future.
Round 6:
Another control pairing, which favored me pretty well. I easily won Game 1, but ended up getting rocked in the Game 2. My opponent said that his deck had about a 25% winning percentage against Jund in the first game, but it went up to 60% after he brought in his sideboard changes. He also commented that the 40% still got to him a lot, and sadly his deck didn't draw any lands. I beat him easily, but I was sorry he lost the way he did since he was a cool guy.
Round 7:
Being 4-2 I looked to stand a good chance of breaking into the Top 16, the prize cut-off for the tournament. And then I came up against Boros, which isn't exactly a favorably match up for Jund, especially when your opponent gets the “nuts” hand (Magic lingo for “awesome”). Game 1 he basically killed me before I could play a spell. Game 2 I managed to stabilize and get rid of his hand, but I was already at 6 life, and two top-decked (cards drawn directly off the top of his deck) burn spells easily finished me off.
Round 8:
Now, at 4-3 I was really only hoping to get out of the tournament with a winning record since I was out of contention for the Top 16 and any prizes. And then my opponent sat down across from me, and we both just laughed. I had met the guy briefly when he beat my friend Isabel in the Jund mirror in Round 4, so we both knew it was a mirror and basically a matter of luck. Unfortunately mine didn't hold up. I took the first game pretty handily, but after that he came storming back and just played better cards than I did. I ended the tournament at 4-4 and placed 46th overall out of 173 participants.
The rest of our team did respectably for themselves as well. Matt and Joe (a pseudo-teammate) represented their Team America decks very well with winning records, but were unable to break into the prize bracket. Kanvaly also did decently with a Bella Swan deck he borrowed from Kyle (or should I start calling the deck Team Edward now?) Derek played his own variant of Bella Swan, but started the tournament 0-2 and ended up dropping after that, though he was a good-sport and did stick around all day to support us.
Conta ended up being Team DOTS's representative in the Top 8 going 6-0-2 with his Boros deck, but unfortunately got eliminated in the first round facing Jund (which made up half the lists in the Top 8).
Now with two weeks to prepare for States, it's back to the proverbial drawing board, though I haven't decided whether I will choose to optimize my Jund deck or go for something completely John Cleese.
Anyway, I will be taking a brief break from my duties as blog-author and turn the reins over to Conta who will have tournament reports both for this event and for a Legacy tournament he played in up at Binghamton. In the meantime enjoy yourselves, have a Happy Thanksgiving, and you'll be hearing from me post-States.
Round 2:
I ended up facing the guy I was sitting next to in the prior round. He knew that I was playing Jund, but I never got a chance to look at his deck. It ended up that he was playing the new Standard “Dredge” deck. “Dredge” has become an archetype name for decks that play creatures from their graveyard (or bin), where creatures normally go to die. When the deck isn't working, it doesn't actually look like it's doing anything other than putting cards into its bin, but when it is, it can put multiple (often a lethal number of) threats on the board all at once. Luckily for me, he never got to that, so I won handily.
Round 3:
I played a really nice guy who was running a deck he called “Indiana Jones”, which was a rogue deck based off running the trap cards found in the latest set. The deck wins by milling the opposition (forcing them to put all of the cards in their deck into their graveyard). But my constant stream of creatures and burn spells proved to be too much for him.
Round 4:
My opponent wasn't exactly verbose, which made me suspect that he was playing the mono-Green Eldrazi deck, a deck a friend of mine had joked about as being a deck for anti-social people since you never have to talk to your opponent to make understood what you are doing; you just keep attacking them. It turned out that he was playing Team America, one of the few control decks in Standard. Right now the format is extremely unfriendly toward control decks, but I had also had a lot of practice against the deck as two of my friends and teammates were running it. I beat him with a stream of discard spells, as it is hard for a control deck to do anything without a hand.
Round 5:
I got paired against a deck I couldn't actually beat. 5-Color-Cascade is an incredibly bad match up for Jund, as it basically does what Jund does only better. The only reason the deck hasn't taken off is that it is even slower than Jund and loses to any type of aggro deck. My opponent was a really cool guy though, and he gave me some pointers about how to handle the match up, which might come in handy in the future.
Round 6:
Another control pairing, which favored me pretty well. I easily won Game 1, but ended up getting rocked in the Game 2. My opponent said that his deck had about a 25% winning percentage against Jund in the first game, but it went up to 60% after he brought in his sideboard changes. He also commented that the 40% still got to him a lot, and sadly his deck didn't draw any lands. I beat him easily, but I was sorry he lost the way he did since he was a cool guy.
Round 7:
Being 4-2 I looked to stand a good chance of breaking into the Top 16, the prize cut-off for the tournament. And then I came up against Boros, which isn't exactly a favorably match up for Jund, especially when your opponent gets the “nuts” hand (Magic lingo for “awesome”). Game 1 he basically killed me before I could play a spell. Game 2 I managed to stabilize and get rid of his hand, but I was already at 6 life, and two top-decked (cards drawn directly off the top of his deck) burn spells easily finished me off.
Round 8:
Now, at 4-3 I was really only hoping to get out of the tournament with a winning record since I was out of contention for the Top 16 and any prizes. And then my opponent sat down across from me, and we both just laughed. I had met the guy briefly when he beat my friend Isabel in the Jund mirror in Round 4, so we both knew it was a mirror and basically a matter of luck. Unfortunately mine didn't hold up. I took the first game pretty handily, but after that he came storming back and just played better cards than I did. I ended the tournament at 4-4 and placed 46th overall out of 173 participants.
The rest of our team did respectably for themselves as well. Matt and Joe (a pseudo-teammate) represented their Team America decks very well with winning records, but were unable to break into the prize bracket. Kanvaly also did decently with a Bella Swan deck he borrowed from Kyle (or should I start calling the deck Team Edward now?) Derek played his own variant of Bella Swan, but started the tournament 0-2 and ended up dropping after that, though he was a good-sport and did stick around all day to support us.
Conta ended up being Team DOTS's representative in the Top 8 going 6-0-2 with his Boros deck, but unfortunately got eliminated in the first round facing Jund (which made up half the lists in the Top 8).
Now with two weeks to prepare for States, it's back to the proverbial drawing board, though I haven't decided whether I will choose to optimize my Jund deck or go for something completely John Cleese.
Anyway, I will be taking a brief break from my duties as blog-author and turn the reins over to Conta who will have tournament reports both for this event and for a Legacy tournament he played in up at Binghamton. In the meantime enjoy yourselves, have a Happy Thanksgiving, and you'll be hearing from me post-States.
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