Yeah, I post these late, I’m a busy man. But I want to have a record so here we go. Same deck as the last time , except I removed the 2 grim harvests from the board and put in +2 sudden death (to improve the pickles matchup)
Round 1: My opponent had a BUw Mannequin deck, splashing for O-Ring and Blink. He obviously put the deck together at the last minute though.
2-0 win
Round 2: Table 1! UW control, but he has bad draws both games.
2-0 win
Round 3: B/G Elves. Manny totally crushes aggro decks.
2-0 win.
Round 4: MGA. Wow, this matchup is even better than the last one. But I get a bad draw in game two and almost lose to a Spectral Force before topdecking into the Damnation.
2-0 win.
Round 5: A 4-0 start feels good. A friend warns me beforehand that my next opponent is U/B, but turns out he’s wrong. He has Dreadship Reefs as storage lands so that’s where the mistake was made, but my opponent was none other than MUP – Monoblue Pickles. I win game one somehow and board in +2 sudden death, +3 Extirpate. I break the Pickles combo in both of the next two games, but sadly due to bad attacks and blocks on my part I still manage to lose to Teferi and an army of Factory Workers.
1-2 loss.
Round 6: Mannequin Mirror match here, but his build is new, as he shows me Ponder on the first turn. I lose game one to Profane Command. In game 2, 3 of the lands I draw are Faerie Conclaves… coincidentally he draws 3 Riftwing Cloudskates. I was behind on creatures and mana all day. Obviously, I need to figure out the mirror match…
0-2 loss.
Crash and burn after a good start, as usual.
Round 7: U/W control. It’s my turn to be insane with the Riftwing Cloudskates here, grabbing lots of tempo off my opponent while bashing with Ironfoots. I take it in 3.
2-1 win.
One more win gets me into top eight…
Round 8: R/G Big Mana. 90% of the deck is really easy for me to beat, after all it’s creatures and burn, I’m removal and card advantage. I take the first game easily, but fumble on sideboarding – I certainly wasn’t aware of this matchup going in, so I had no idea. Bottle Gnomes? Extirpate? I just bring in 3 Vesuvan Shapeshifters to handle his Red Akroma and Hellkites. Game two, he shows me the other 10% of his deck that would give me fits: Chandra Nalar. My entire offense literally stops after Chandra takes down one creature and Incinerate knocks out my last one. I lose to the card disadvantage and proceed to search my board for answers to Chandra. I had none (I don’t own any Pithing Needles sir), so I just sucked it up and decided to try for a fast aggro kill. I had a good hand too – Faerie Conclave into suspended Cloudskate. But midgame he shows me another aspect of his deck – land destruction. I get hit by Avalanche Riders and Mwonvuli Acid-Moss and he even shows me his sideboarded card: Rootgrapple! I have mana problems up to the end, and he even gets Chandra out again. I didn’t get in a single point of damage for this game.
1-2 loss.
Final record: 5-3, finishing 17. Not so bad I guess, considering I finished 25th the week before and 37th the week before that. At this rate, I figure next week I’ll be 8th or 9th. 😀
Next: PTQ KL #3
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