2 Crucible of the Spirit Dragon and 4 Aven Skirmishers. Only removal spell in 6 packs was the Jeskai Charm from the clan pack. I hate sealed sometimes. Ah well, +6 hours of sleep for the next go. Maybe I can open more than $2 worth of cards in the next failpool.
Peters is a local, he's played Pod plenty before, he just borrows the cards. That said, with the right match-ups, the decision tree isn't exactly staggering. And it's gotten significantly less branchy in the post KTK metagame. More of a tree trunk with a few leafless branches shaking in the wind. "Is Rhino in my hand? Can I get to Rhino via Pod?"
He spent most of the last year playing AggroLoam. A resolved Seismic Assault is mildly amusing against Delver.
I successfully cast 7 pods in 35 games. Activated pod about 12 times total. Deck still ran fine otherwise, even with "useless" 1-ofs. Reclamation Sage was the only one that tended to be a "dead" card in matchups. If I had faced grindier decks that would have sucked a lot, but Pod itself is one of the few prevalent grindy decks present, in which case a Pod ban would affect both equally. I'm not saying banning Pod would have no effect on the combo-less pod, afterall, if that was the case, I'd already not be playing pod. It'd be a weaker deck without pod. I just wouldn't feel particularly worse for wear in the endless series of burn and delver match-ups without it.
If you banned Pod and nothing else tomorrow, I'd just replace my Pods with some more siege rhinos and resto angels and not feel particularly worse for wear.
Grats on the finish, good to hear Baneslayer did well too. I was going to try it out this past weekend in a field considerably softer than day 2 of a GP but then they decided on Standard instead. How did you like Blood Baron? What typical 5 drop was it replacing? Saying the Nobles were irrelevant, did you not run into any situations where you could have used Exalted? I find that to come up all the time.
I played against 10 Burn or Delver decks this weekend. The majority of the time I was either not attacking at all in order to have defenses up, or swinging with 2+ Guys, or didn't have one of that 2-card slot in play, or had that 2-card slot killed by fork-bolt :). Hierarch is the better card on paper, but it's been near enough for me in actual play that I don't feel particularly compelled to drop that much cash on a mana dork :). I let Deathrite Shaman convince me I didn't need Hierarchs when they were cheap. Pilgrim did force the Infect opponent to use a Pump-Spell to not trade their glistener with my blocking pilgrim :D. There were a few times I lost 1 or 2 damage to no exalted, but then made that damage back up in the final swing, or by tackling a 2/1 with the 1/1 defensive corpse. If I had ever gotten into a Rhino vs Rhino staring match, I would have likely longed for Noble Hierarch, but that hasn't really happened much. Wall of Roots was actually hands down the best Mana Dork of the day, for me.
Blood Baron was absolutely brutal in my POD matches. It replaced Baneslayer in game 2, as Murderous Cuts/Dismembers/Paths/Whatnot tended to get sideboarded in. Broke stalemates, created stalemates in inferior board-positions pre-Baron. Most of the creatures capable of interacting with it are the same creatures that get devoured by the Pontiff/Darkblast before it gets to that point.
Ended up 10-5 (no Byes), but had a lot of fun at the event. It was pretty shoddily run both days; pairings boards not working, wrong pairings listed, wrong *standings* listed (which got Shenhar to draw instead of playing, which put him in 9th), repairs, having people get free wins in the first 3-rounds of day 1 by playing against people with byes (Pretty magical to be 2-2 coming into the event round 3 :D), and 40 minutes of processing time per round.
Played Pod (Rock), lost to Combo (Paper), beat Delver/Burn (Scissors) and other Pods, lost to Shenhar and Sam Black.
People in the room were not super excited to be there.
I live in Omaha, and I can tell you, it's stupid to schedule a GP there in January, especially a week after Denver, and a week before the Pre-releases.
Was a little salty at being 1168 players in the main event. 32 more people and I'd-a had some money today. Nice for the TOs though, I guess, good Entry-Fee-to-Payout ratio
Had Treasure Cruise cast against me 5 times in one game and still won the game. That's how bad Delver's match-up is against Pod
Ended up 74th place at Grand Prix: Omaha with No-Combo Pod. Baneslayer in place of Reveillark did ludicrous amounts of work. Responsible (directly) for 6 wins on its own, responsible (indirectly) for many more as she soaked 2-or-3-for-1s. Brought in Blood Baron of Vizkopa from the Sideboard against other pod decks, which lead to at least one rage-quit.
Won two games with my Avacyn's Pilgrims that I would have lost if they were Noble Hierarchs (Swing with the team for exactsies!). Lost one game with Avacyn's Pilgrims where the Green mana production of the Noble Hierarch would have potentially kept me in it. Rest of the games the difference was 100% irrelevant.
Only actually put Birthing Pod onto the battlefield 7 times over the course of 15 rounds (No byes).
Beat a Delver player who Treasure Cruised 5 times in one game, felt pretty good.
Got completely run over by Sam Black on Camera round 5. Only Delver I lost to out of the 7 I played against today. Maybe I'll get a rematch tomorrow and get to make my land drops
Really enjoyable tournament so far, lots of nice folks, very little salt in losses. Tons of Delver everywhere.
My Matches (7-2, no Byes):
Round 1: U/R Delver
Round 2: U/R Delver
Round 3: RUG Delver
Round 4: America Delver
Round 5: U/R Delver [Sam Black, got run over on camera :D)
Round 6: Affinity (My other loss)
Round 7: RUG Delver
Round 8: U/R Delver
Round 9: American Burn Cruise
I am definitely not regretting being on "Massive pile of life gain: The Deck" today. Every table I was at was flooded with Delver and Pod.
Abzan was 5/8 and 6/8 of the top 8 at the two prereleases I went to. Outlast is clunky, but I never saw any good player+good deck combination outlast an individual card more than once, and more often that not their +1/+1 Counters came down the line from an Armament Squad, Incremental Growth, or a mid-combat blow-out Abzan Charm/Dragonscale 4 mana green instant. The Outlasters, for the most part, have fine bodies even without using their abilities.
Pretty sure I actually used outlast 8 times total during the 7 rounds of swiss, and it was 7 Ainok Bond-kin uses, 1 Longshot Scout use (which was primarily to get him to 4 power to trigger the ferocious on a Bear Punch).
Abzan Charm is the stone-cold nuts. 3 incredibly strong modes. I think other factions have better rares/mythics they can pull, but Abzan's Commons and Uncommons are premium quality. The strongest deck in the room at one of the events was Jeskai, but that required a 6/6 strong, usable rare pull, and 12 on-plan uncommons.
Jeskai Banner
Mystic Monastery
Jeskai Charm
Cloudform
Brave the Sands
Act of Treason
Aven Skirmisher
Cancel
Efreet Weaponmaster
Monastery Flock
Cunning Strike
Erase
Refocus
Wind-Scarred Crag
Aven Surveyor
Sorry for no picture, I have a random 90s flip phone.
He spent most of the last year playing AggroLoam. A resolved Seismic Assault is mildly amusing against Delver.
*doe eyes*
I played against 10 Burn or Delver decks this weekend. The majority of the time I was either not attacking at all in order to have defenses up, or swinging with 2+ Guys, or didn't have one of that 2-card slot in play, or had that 2-card slot killed by fork-bolt :). Hierarch is the better card on paper, but it's been near enough for me in actual play that I don't feel particularly compelled to drop that much cash on a mana dork :). I let Deathrite Shaman convince me I didn't need Hierarchs when they were cheap. Pilgrim did force the Infect opponent to use a Pump-Spell to not trade their glistener with my blocking pilgrim :D. There were a few times I lost 1 or 2 damage to no exalted, but then made that damage back up in the final swing, or by tackling a 2/1 with the 1/1 defensive corpse. If I had ever gotten into a Rhino vs Rhino staring match, I would have likely longed for Noble Hierarch, but that hasn't really happened much. Wall of Roots was actually hands down the best Mana Dork of the day, for me.
Blood Baron was absolutely brutal in my POD matches. It replaced Baneslayer in game 2, as Murderous Cuts/Dismembers/Paths/Whatnot tended to get sideboarded in. Broke stalemates, created stalemates in inferior board-positions pre-Baron. Most of the creatures capable of interacting with it are the same creatures that get devoured by the Pontiff/Darkblast before it gets to that point.
Played Pod (Rock), lost to Combo (Paper), beat Delver/Burn (Scissors) and other Pods, lost to Shenhar and Sam Black.
People in the room were not super excited to be there.
I live in Omaha, and I can tell you, it's stupid to schedule a GP there in January, especially a week after Denver, and a week before the Pre-releases.
Was a little salty at being 1168 players in the main event. 32 more people and I'd-a had some money today. Nice for the TOs though, I guess, good Entry-Fee-to-Payout ratio
Had Treasure Cruise cast against me 5 times in one game and still won the game. That's how bad Delver's match-up is against Pod
Won two games with my Avacyn's Pilgrims that I would have lost if they were Noble Hierarchs (Swing with the team for exactsies!). Lost one game with Avacyn's Pilgrims where the Green mana production of the Noble Hierarch would have potentially kept me in it. Rest of the games the difference was 100% irrelevant.
Only actually put Birthing Pod onto the battlefield 7 times over the course of 15 rounds (No byes).
Beat a Delver player who Treasure Cruised 5 times in one game, felt pretty good.
Really enjoyable tournament so far, lots of nice folks, very little salt in losses. Tons of Delver everywhere.
My Matches (7-2, no Byes):
Round 1: U/R Delver
Round 2: U/R Delver
Round 3: RUG Delver
Round 4: America Delver
Round 5: U/R Delver [Sam Black, got run over on camera :D)
Round 6: Affinity (My other loss)
Round 7: RUG Delver
Round 8: U/R Delver
Round 9: American Burn Cruise
I am definitely not regretting being on "Massive pile of life gain: The Deck" today. Every table I was at was flooded with Delver and Pod.
Pretty sure I actually used outlast 8 times total during the 7 rounds of swiss, and it was 7 Ainok Bond-kin uses, 1 Longshot Scout use (which was primarily to get him to 4 power to trigger the ferocious on a Bear Punch).
Abzan Charm is the stone-cold nuts. 3 incredibly strong modes. I think other factions have better rares/mythics they can pull, but Abzan's Commons and Uncommons are premium quality. The strongest deck in the room at one of the events was Jeskai, but that required a 6/6 strong, usable rare pull, and 12 on-plan uncommons.
Urza's Saga had a shiny star!
Article Title: "Magical Contraptions"?