Well I guess I need a starting point for it so here goes:
DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | |||
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CREATURES 3 Snapcaster Mage COUNTERS 4 Mana Leak 2 Negate 3 Dissipate Control 4 Day of Judgment 3 Ratchet Bomb PLANESWALKERS 2 Giddeon Juara 1 Elspeth Tiercel 2 Karn Liberated | DRAW 4 Think Twice 4 Ponder 2 Blue Sun's Zenith Land 4 Seachrome Coast 4 Glacial Fortress 8 Island 6 Plains 4 Ghost Quarter | SIDEBOARD 3 Timely Reinforcements 2 Oblivion Ring 2 Celestial Purge 2 Dismember 2 Gut Shot 2 Phantasmal Image 2 Flashfreeze |
I might have to do a bit of tweaking of my sideboard as I get some testing in but I mostly just stripped someone else's SB for now.
MAINDECK:
-3 Ratchet Bomb these are designed to hold agro at bay. I think there will be more control / ramp style of lists out tonight so I am going to cut these out assuming they wont be needed tonight. I still have my wraths to clean things up.
+3 Oblivion Ring replacement removal. I am assuming I will see more control and ramp decks tonight so I need some answers to big fatties and planeswalkers.
SIDEBOARD:
-2 Oblivion Ring I am running these MB so no problems with needing them in the SB
-2 Gut Shot this was an anti fast agro sort of card. With the increase in life and random partners I just don't think it will be needed. I am still keeping my timely in the SB just in case but I think this is a bit more than is needed for 2HG.
-1 Timely Reinforcements I expect a lower turnout for agro decks and the ones that will show up will be having a hard time with the 2 opponents to slow them down and the 30 life format. While I wont abandon them all I think I can cut it back to a 2x of these.
+ 1 Dismember while it is normally a SB card against infect I am bringing these in for answers against Inkmoths and or infect in general. We will have random partners from what I hear though so I dont know how much infect I should expect but regardless I think this will be good to have on hand. Better than Gut Shot in the least.
+1 Flashfreeze I am assuming that there will be some jump in the number of Primeval Titans I see going into a 2HG night so I figure it is just safe to add this in.
+3 Surgical Extraction I will be expecting control and ramp so I figure I might as well set up to have a good match against the opposing control. Stripping their counterspells is the first step in having a good game.
ROUND 1:
Game 1: Jank Solar Flare... This guy was packing 12 counterspells and it was just annoying... Luckily I baited him with a mana leak he could pay for on a draw spell that he misplayed during his turn and I established planeswalkers in the early game. This caused him to loose the game.
Game 2 he learned from his mistakes and played a much better game. This one was actually quite brutal it came down close as he literally had countered like every single planeswalker from my deck but I resolved a WSZ for some bears with the counter option up. From here I just rode them in for the win right before we ran out of time.
ROUND 2:
Game 1: this guy is playing some sort of WW agro build with sort of budget options. His cards arent great but he actually plays them fairly well arround my things. I get stuck with a few threats in play against me and literally cannot dig an answer in the like 6 turns as he just beats me for 3 dmg a turn and I suck it up and dye...
Game 2: the game goes much better with me drawing answers and I just run him down with planeswalkers. Lucky for me he concedes well before I would have been able to finish it.
Game 3: we are pushing the time and I know I only have a little bit to try to finish this game. The game is going fairly well and then he O Rings my Gideon and I slow wayyy down. I manage to wrath him like 3 times though so he is hurting and I stick a Karn as my Ratchet Bomb is going up to 3 counters. I blow away the O Ring and continue my beating with Gideon with Karn Covering for him. The judge calls time as I swing for the final 8 with a snapcaster + gideon.
ROUND 3:
Game 1: Hardest matchup of the night. He is actually playing a fairly legit Solar Flare. I get royally screwed and have like no lands. I go down to like 5 cards and play it but after missing 2-3 land drops I just scoop to his planeswalker.
Game 2: I sort of slow roll us into the late game realizing he is just drawing and dumping lands so I go ahead with my threats and he can only answer like 1-2 of them and he concedes to my endless planeswalker dropping that he got screw drawn out of.
Game 3: We both get a decent game this one but he is sideboarding and he knows my deck and has several annoying things for me. He leads off early with a Traft early on which I dont have a counter for but I drop a Snapcaster as it swings and soak it up. He tries a few other things which I manage to counter. It ends up he flips a C Sphinx and Images it in the same turn... Next turn I draw an Image of my own and we go off to the races with card drawing. I have a few cats sitting arround from earlier and he needs to hit them with a ratchet bomb that I force a back and forth counter war over which leaves him tapped out on my turn for. On my turn I drop Gideon and Elspeth and pass back. He drops Gideon and Elspeth to answer mine. At this point I have a WSZ in hand and I decide to see how he tries to play it out and he drops a bunch of stuff down tapping down with 2 counters worth of mana up. I WSZ for 4 dudes keeping mana for 2 counters myself. He cant stop it and dies to the cats
I would say out of everything I realized I really need to include 2 Surgical Extraction in the SB. I would have done amazingly if I had hit an opponent's counterspells with it. I should definitely make room in the SB for them. I haven't seen much WRR yet in my meta so I think I will pull the flashfreeze until it picks up.
I think I will be bumping up my Dissipate to 3x MB. I have on occasion wished for more counterspells but I have not been too huge on the other cards I have tried rotating through this list.
I am still playing with the SB a bit and am mostly happy with it currently. I haven't had too many issues with any one card other than the fact that Thrun is sort of picking up in use in my meta but I have the images in there for him but even then I don't always have an answer on hand for him. Thrun outside of Wolf Run isn't too hard to deal with as I can chump him so that has worked out fairly nicely as well.
Round 1: Sort of a homebrew Solar Flare. I dont think he was running it nearly as tuned out as a lot of the lists are. We went back and forth for a bit but Karn and USZ both kicked him to the curve as he didnt have an answer for either of them and he eventually lost out to them. We got most of the way into game 2 before hitting time with me having won the first game. Oblivion Rings from the SB did help out quite a bit which I pulled the Ratchet Bombs out for.
Round 2: against U/R Delver agro style list. Game one I lost because I got baited into using a counterspell in my own turn 3 play to suck on a turn 4 Koth which I learned from. I have been playing way too much agro and the counterspelling still comes a bit odd to me. I quickly conceded game 1 as I knew I wasnt going to deal with the turn 4 Koth before it killed me.
Game 2 of round 2 I sideboarded bringing in 2 Gut Shots, 3 Timely Reinforcements, and 2 Celestial Purge pulling out: 2 Snapcaster Mage, 1 Karn Liberated, 2 Blue Sun's Zenith, my floater card at the time Simulacrum, and 1 Think Twice
This game goes much better as my opening hand is 2 Ratchet Bombs with some land and control. I jack up his opening by making him stagger his guys. He uses tons of probes on me using all 4 of his snapcasters this game. I manage to stall him into a kill from Gideon once he is out of steam.
Game 3 I get going nicely with some gut shot action taking out his early delver and just stall with counters and control into the late game where he cant operate to finish him. I think he had to Ponder on turn 1 to get his delver which didnt help him though as after that he just didnt have the steam.
Round 3: against Tezeret infect. I am not too familiar with the deck but it was great as all his removal were blanks for the most part and his card draw was inferior to mine. It was a slow overwhelm sort of a game where he died to the planeswalkers and Blue Sun
Game 2 I got a bad hand and he got 2 Tezerets. I did manage to stop them both from killing me but not by countering them sadly. I did force him to bring me to 1 life by the time he got infect #10 on me. I had a hard time with his inkmoths though.
Game 3: I had a much better hand and countered his tezerets. This one finished up without too much of an issue especially when I got to resolve the Blue Sun for like 6 cards twice. He did Treasure Mage into a Spine of Ish Sha which was interesting as I didnt have a hard counter for it and he did manage to blow up a lot of my planeswalkers with. I manged to slowly overwhelm him though once I countered it and got Gideon #2 going.
After this I played some like 5 hours of casual games with a buddy of mine. He has like 5 fairly good decks currently but is still working to learn how to play them correctly. From all of the games I dont think I like Spellskite and Revoke Existance in my SB so I might end up pulling them out. Revoke Existance is good but I dont have any Tempered Steel in my meta so that could probably turn into the instant speed artifact removal which can pick up on Inkmoths which seem to be more of an issue. I need to come up with a better SB vs Wolf Run Ramp though as I felt like it was a bit lacking. Perhaps some Images and Flashfreeze if I can afford it in my 15.
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I had one floater card this weekend where I tried out a few different cards in this list for the final card just for kicks. Here is what I tried:
Solemn Simulacrum he seemed good on paper but I dont want to tap out at 4 mana for this sort of card. Too much important things go down right around here where I need mana up for countering and this surely isnt something I want to tap out for.
Jace, Memory Adept I tried out jace thinking what the hell we are running superfriends. Sadly he offers no control element and while being an alternate win con he wasnt very good at defending himself which is something I need my planeswalkers to do. He was cute but not effective enough.
Darksteel Sentinel this add was sort of just for kicks. I like him due to flash + indestructible however by the time he comes down a 3/3 often doesnt solve the issues I have. Plus he wasnt so cool when I actually draw him against MBI where everything flew anyways and he didnt do jack ****.
As of right now I might just move my floater spot to be another counterspell... I will have to figure it out though. I also considered some sort of tempo tap down or bounce effect.