It’s been three whole weeks since I last managed to attend a Magic tournament. Despite the hectic work schedule and the fact that spoilers have failed to impress me, I managed to wrangle a Saturday off to hit Robinson’s Galleria for the Eventide Prerelease.
So we show up early and join the first flight. I open and register a Shadowmoor tournament pack with next to nothing in terms of decent cards. I think the best removal it had was an Aethertow, and none after that. I was glad that usually small set Prereleases required passing the tournament pack. Naturally, after I was done registering, the judge told us that for our table, we would keep the tournament pack. Doh!
I opened my three Eventide boosters and saw two unexciting rares(Endless Horizons, and Glamerdye) and one mediocre one (Pyrrhic Revival). I did notice I had quite a bit of playable R/W hyrbids though, including two Belligerent Hatchling, which would be great with a Flourishing Defenses I had in the tourney pack. I also had twoEdge of Divinity, which seems awesome except I had like two B/W hybrid creatures.
I decided to go mostly white, splashing green for some acceleration and utility creatures. At first glance, Cinder Pyromancer seemed awesome as well so I was willing to put in one mountain just to splash him. I had trouble deciding what to cut so I stuck with 17 lands (didn’t have any good Retracers anyway)
My decklist:
My round one opponent thankfully read Cinder Pyromancer for me out loud when I played it and I realized it didn’t actually hit creatures (not as awesome as I thought!) and I lost the first game due to pretty much having only a dorky 0/1. I boarded it out for a Snakeform (which I would do so for the rest of the rounds), then proceeded to win games two and three in very tight races.
In round two I thought I had game three in the bag when I managed to play turn one Duergar Assailant into turn three Scourge of the Nobilis and he had no immediate answers. I managed to get the life totals to 36-8 in my favor before I foolishly traded my heroic dwarf in combat and he stabilized with a Voracious Hatchling in play, which then proceeded to chase the life totals to to the other side of the board. I made several bad plays with the Hatchling, especially when he swung the 3/3 Hatchling into my 3/3 first-striking Kithkin with one mana open. I instinctively blocked, and of course he had the scar! This was very early on, and I don’t think he would have been able to win without the Hatchling, so I should have just gone all-in and mass blocked with everyone. I lose the match 1-2.
Round three, my opponent seemed new to tournaments, so I found myself holding back at some points. Flores said Mercy will kill you! but luckily it didn’t and I won in two games.
Round four, and I’m paired up with Switch, who cardpools with me and was one of the people I came to the prerelease with. Not cool, but we don’t have a choice. We get the pack either way, so we just play for the win on the record. I get in an aggro start – “I want to win the game,” showing Scourge of the Nobilis – and win in two.
Switch and I win five packs between the two of us, but we open more unexciting rares (R/U liege for the lose!). So far I’m still not too excited about Eventide, or Magic in general these past few weeks to be honest. I’m more interested in Block than Standard, but Block seems to be dominated by Faeries, which I find annoying. I hope Eventide shakes up the block meta enough so that it’s more varied by the time Grand Prix Manila rolls around.
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