The saga of the mightiest deck in the universe continues. My previous outing showed me a solid control matchup and maybe 60% aggro matchup. I tweaked the sideboard to improve the aggro game post-board, dropping the useless Yixlid Jailers for 4 Last Gasps.
Here’s how I did:
Round 1 2-0 win vs MGA
Round 2 0-2 loss vs RUW control (no angels)
Round 3 2-0 win vs RGW mid-range aggro (elephants/avalanche riders)
Round 4 2-1 win vs RW Boros aggro
Round 5 2-1 win vs RG Gruul aggro
Round 6 1-2 loss vs GW aggro
Round 7 0-2 loss vs RGW Zoo
The below stats are for both tournaments
total wins: 21
total losses: 13
win% ratio (total): 61%
wins vs aggro: 15
losses vs aggro: 10
win% ratio vs aggro: 60%
wins vs control: 6
losses vs control: 3
win% ratio vs control: 67%
Obviously, I did a lot worse than the previous tournament, as all my percentages dropped. Probably due to the fact that I actually went to work before going to the tournament (which meant I had a lot less sleep… ), I made too many bad plays in the first two losses. There’s an article today on magicthegathering.com about how you should avoid racing aggro and avoid taking damage as much as possible… I think I basically violated every single principle in that article during those losing matches. Yes, even the lone control matchup – I didn’t kill a Hellkite thinking I would just race it with Korlash, but the Bust on his turn sealed my fate.
The GW aggro loss hurt – I lost the last game because I was at three, he had a Saffi, all I had was a 9/9 Korlash with a Temporal Isolation on it and I didn’t notice my opponent had a Vitu-ghazi and I thought I could survive one more turn with one life. If I had just taken out his Saffi with the Demonfire I had in hand instead of waiting to burn him to 0… I would have drawn a House Guard next turn, transmute for Tendrils, swing with Korlash, stack damage and cast Tendrils on Korlash for an 18-point life swing.
The round 6 loss really broke my spirit, I was in such a bad mental state that I played badly in the round 7 zoo matchup. Not that having perfectly tight play would have helped – he had the zoo god draws both games, I was down to eight before I even had Damnation mana.
Lessons learned:
- Never, ever try to race with damage. I may have bigger beats, but I’m usually behind on life. I should always take out threats until I can stabilize with Tendrils.
- I need to become mentally stronger, so that play mistakes from previous losses don’t affect succeeding games.
Seeing as how the local metagame is maybe 60-70% aggro, I’ll also probably tweak the deck to make the maindeck stronger against aggro and move some of the control hate to the board.
Next stop: Regionals.
See Also