Roy Tang

Most probably my last tournament playing 5cc this season, the local City Champs was last Saturday, Apr 18 at Robinson’s Galleria. I slightly tweaked the decklist I’ve been using for the past month. I was able to borrow 2 Exotic Orchard to improve my mana base, and I put the fourth Volcanic Fallout in the board to improve the difficult Faeries matchup, plus an additional Terror to help with Mistbind Clique. I added the 27th land in the board (Reliquary Tower) to help against control mirrors.

Unfortunately, it was not my night to win a top 8 extended art Mutavault or even one of an undetermined number of Bramblewood Paragons. This tournament report’s going to be short.

Round 1 2-1 win vs 5cc (mirror)

Round 2 0-2 loss vs B/W tokens

Round 3 2-1 win vs Monored

Round 4 1-2 loss vs RGWb Planeswalker Ramp

Round 5 0-2 loss vs UB Faeries

I probably punted the BW match, since this was only my 2nd time playing that particular matchup. But for the planeswalkers and faeries losses I felt particularly helpless. The 5cc deck is really just soft against planeswalkers, and this deck even had Fulminator Mage to make things difficult. I can’t really counter everything; I just pretend I can. The Faeries battle was mostly one-sided, I was on the defensive the whole game and never managed to recover.

That’s it for five-color control for me then (no, I’m not selling the Reflecting Pools. Why give up on the archetype? Early spoilers for Alara Reborn point to more difficulties ahead for 5cc; I’m leaning towards something aggro again. Well, of course it still depends on how the metagame evolves, I might be proven wrong later and 5cc still turns out on top and leave me no choice but to play the best deck.

This weekend is the Alara Reborn prerelease, and the upcoming set seems ready to turn standard upside-down, and we have a lot of standard to look forward to: Regionals, Nationals grinders and PTQs for Berlin. Hopefully Alara Reborn brings us an even more fun metagame.