Another 5K in Edison

Yesterday found Team DOTS at another 5K event out in Edison, New Jersey. Unfortunately not many of our team members were able or willing to make it, so it ended up just being Matt, Izzy, and myself. Other players we know were in attendance like Joe Shi, our friends Alex and Calcano, and a new friend of ours Andrew Gill. As I mentioned in a previous post, all 5K's (that I know of) are either in the Standard or Legacy formats. This was another Standard event, as I think Conta is the only person on this team who seriously competes in Legacy, at least at the moment.

As Izzy could tell you, I was having some serious frustrations leading up to this event. I didn't think any deck that I had the cards to make would be any good. I had tried my hand at Jund, the dominant deck in the format, and come up short with it every time. For the past month or so I had been playing around with a Bant deck and in the last week switched over to Knightfall (AKA Junk). Both of these decks are white and green, but Bant has a blue splash and Knightfall has a black one. I wasn't particularly happy with either of them after testing.

The problem with these decks, and many mid-range decks actually, is that they run a high number of accelerants to let you drop your big spells early (both decks are actually able to drop 5-cost spells on Turn 3). However, as any good arson will tell you, if all you don't have any matches, there won't be much of a fire. Basically what I'm saying is that in testing I found that when I needed to draw either a threat or a solution, what I ended up drawing a lot of the time were my accelerants, and that ended up costing me games. I wanted desperately to have a good showing at a big event, not necessarily to win or even Top 8, but just to place respectably and feel like I'm actually good at this game.

After some debate and thoughts about messing around with the Knightfall list and running fewer accelerants, I decided to run the list as it was and just to see how it went. Izzy stuck with her Jund deck, which is pretty much always a good option. Matt, ever the control player, had been playing Grixis control (black, red, blue) leading up to the tournament, but the night before decided to switch to a totally different white/blue control deck that Patrick Chapin had debuted at the San Diego Pro Tour (which just happened this weekend).

Izzy ended up doing the worst of us, going 3-3 and losing to a Summoning Trap deck in Round 6. She decided to drop after that, though a 3-3 record is fairly respectable. Matt and I both had opportunities to place high, and Matt may have actually had a shot at Top 8. We were both 5-2, Matt punting his seventh round match after starting 5-1, and me winning three matches in a row after a 2-2 opening. Matt drew his last match in a control mirror (which always takes a really long time), and then his opponent got angry that he wouldn't concede to him and let him into the Top 8 (what a dick, really). I got paired up against Vampires in the last round (a terrible match-up for my deck), and managed to win the first game. Then I punted game two and ended up losing the match.

Note: “Punting” like in football when you kickoff to the other team, is when a player makes a mistake that basically hands the game over to his or her opponent.

However, overall I was happy with the way things turned out. My deck performed well, and I drew relevant cards at the right time, which had been my concern going into the tournament. I even had a chance to beat one of my worst match-ups, and I think I would have if I had played correctly. I think I will even stick with this deck for a bit, though the new Naya deck looks ridiculously amazing and at least warrants some testing (sadly they are sold out of the cards I need for it on both of the sites I usually shop from).

I should give shout-outs to both Alex and Joe Shi, who ended up being in the Top 4 after winning their first rounds in the Top 8. They then split the prize with two other players and wound up with 1G each. Both of them were playing Jund, if you were curious.

I know I had intended to do this earlier, but the next article will be a short write-up on Worldwake. I have a slightly better perspective on it now that I've played with and against it both in Standard and in Limited. And I have to say that some cards I really didn't think were that good have broken into Standard, especially in the new Naya deck (red, white, green aggro) that Louis-Scott Vargas rode to a 10-0 in the Standard portion of the swiss this weekend at PT San Diego. He went undefeated until the semi-finals.


Upcoming: A Worldwake Review


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