Sunday Report: The Mage's Realm and Gameday

So this post will be how I did this past weekend! I know today is Monday but I didn't get home until after midnight last night so this post is a day late.

First off, Friday, at Mages Realm in Sacramento. Really quickly, as I mentioned in yesterday's post, it was a pretty nice shop. They had a lot of space, had Weiss Schwarz, Pokemon, Yugioh, and Magic players all there at the same time. They also had a lot of space saved for Warhammer stuff too. And a row of people playing League of Legends as well.
I did play in both their Free Standard Event and then their draft event.

For standard, I went in with my junk midrange deck. It was 3 rounds.

My first round opponent was against a player who just started this past summer. He said it was his first constructed format. So whether it's good or bad. I went easy on him. He was playing mono white lifegain. Game 1, I just kept letting Obzedat drain him while letting him find an answer. Game 2, I didn't use golgari charms and let him win. Game 3, was pretty rediculous. I had trostani and obzedat combo while he had an army of 1/1's and he had a bunch of lifelinkers. To show how rediculous
things were getting in terms of lifegain, here was the back page of one game of the life totals:

So I won match 1!

Match 2 was against an older gentleman who was bragging about how he netdecked the PT Theros game winning deck. That deck in question is mono blue devotion. He was also 1-0 and was bragging about how he was going to go 3-0. He kept missing triggers and there were times he tried to attack
with thassa when I tried to show him that thassa was not a creature due to devotion. I eventually got him down to 1 life pretty early on, but could not push through that final point of damage as he had a master of waves out with about 10 elementals. Somehow I was able to survive with just 1 scavenging ooze, a whip of erebos, and sylvan caraytid. I was just waiting to draw an obzedat. Eventually, he started remembering his scry triggers but he was not putting the card on top or bottom of the library. He would put it like 3 from the top or 2 from the top. There was even a time, that QSP can back me up on, called the "Scry Impulse", where he tried to put the card 4 from the top, knocked over his top 4 cards and rearranged them. I tried telling him how scry worked but he got mad, he was mad that he was not winning. Since it was free standard and nothing on the line, I didn't really care too much. He ended up winning after the scry impulse let him play clone on the master of waves. I couldn't really deal after that.

I didn't know Scry 1 meant do this

The problem was, that after game 1, we only had 5 minutes left in the match.
Game 2, I got out mistcutter hydra super early and he could do nothing about it. He had 2 lands in his hand (I thoughtseized him) and he was trying to stall by saying he "might have a response" after each time. He was down to 4 life, and he had no play (no cards in hand) and I said, want to go to game 3? He declined, waited until time went to turns, and then let me kill him. So the match ended up in a draw.
I was kind of mad at the time, but it's a bit funny in hindsight. Oh well, 1-0-1 isn't the worst.

Match 3 was against UW control. The guy said he always played burn so it was a new deck for him. My voice of resurgences weren't very nice to him. He seemed very baffled on if he should counter spells or not, and I was able to easily play around his counters. When he would count all of his lands, I correctly read that he had syncopate as he also asked me how many lands I had untapped. He also would always dissolve or syncopate my elvish mystics and waste them all. Game 2, he used 4 dissolve on 3 elvish mystics and a sylvan caraytid. That freed up a lot of his counters for me to play obzedat and then proceed to win.

2-0-1 record in FNM standard. Not too bad. Got a promo ghor clan rampager, ratchet bomb, and ended up in 4th place.

After standard, we signed up for draft. I saw a lot of blue open, black was being fought for hard (over half the pod was playing black. I ended up with quite a few sea god's revenge, 3 shipwreck singers, returned phalanx, and mid power fliers.

MVP of every draft deck I lose to

One thing I liked about my draft deck was that it had no rares. I have another friend who said that drafts are all about just the rare/mythic you pull, and I wish he would have been there just to see that he is wrong.
Match 1 was against someone playing mono black with a splash of blue. It was a tough match, all my
sweepers bounced, which meant I wasn't using any against his enter the battlefield effects. He won both games with the grey merchant of asphodel. I went 0-2 vs this opponent.

Match 2, I had the bye. Woohoo. 1-1. I went and watched QSP play his game that he won.

My own MVP

Match 3 was against the guy who was to my left in the pod. He was playing black/white. He had gift of immortality on a grey merchant of asphodel, but my shipwreck
singers did fabulous work both games. There was one point in game 1 that I had all 3 of them out. I won 2-0 against him.

Went 2-1 in draft swiss. Was pretty good. Got 3rd place which landed me 2 packs. Got an Ashiok in one of the packs! So my Friday night of magic was pretty good.





So Sunday was gameday!

I'll go round by round on what happened!

Round 1 I played against a Naya midrange player. Again, whip of erebos got me to victory as I gained an incredible amount of life that my opponent could not deal with. At the end of game 2, I was at 69 life while my opponent was at 3 life. I won this game quite easily 2-0.

Round 2 was against an esper deck. I resolved obzedat early both games and he could not deal with it.  Another easy win 2-0.

This guy is so OP

Round 3 was against the mono blue devotion deck. This match was an interesting one. Game 1, my opponent had the perfect curve. Turn 1 judge's familiar, Turn 2 frostburn weird, turn 3 thassa, turn 4 master of waves, turn 5 bident of thassa. I just lost horribly. Game 2, my opponent got mana flooded while I assembled obzedat, trostani, whip combo and won pretty huge in my favor. Game 3 was the
interesting game. He didn't have a blazing fast start, but had the tidebinder mages to tap down my voice of resurgence and my trostani. Then I played a mistcutter hydra with x=5. I was racing him, swinging in while blocking his master of waves tokens. I was at 18 life and he was at 6 life. He top decks ratchet bomb and ticks it to 1 while I bring him down to 1. Then I lost my mistcutter hydra, and my chance at victory as I had gone all in on that damage race. Overall, it was a fun game even though I lost 1-2.

Round 4 was against Red deck wins. Game 1, I had misplayed and read the life totals wrong, and thought I was going to lose on the crackback swing. However, I did have double golgari charm in my hand to ensure that his attackers could not kill me. Game 2, I won easily with a resolved obzedat and trostani combo. He could not deal as much damage as I was gaining life.


At that point, it was cut to top 4. I was 3-1, so I barely made the cut into top 4. (Cut to top 4 due to the smaller amount of players in the tournament).

My top 4 opponent was playing boros midrange. Game 1 I lost horribly because I attacked with an advent of the wurm and did not see purphoros was active at red devotion 5. Game 2, I was racing a stormbreath dragon, but again obzedat's life gain was able to give me the advantage. Game 3, I had all the answers to all 4 of his chained to the rocks, was able to abrupt decay his boros reckoners to keep purophoros from coming online.

Then, I got into the finals! I split with my opponent. He really wanted the playmat so I took 13 packs. However, we did play to see who would get the win. My opponent in the finals was playing mono black devotion. I was able to win game 1 by assembling the obzedat and trostani and out racing his
nightveil specters. Game 2, I went for a turn 1 thoughtseize putting me at 16. He had nightveil specter x2, read the bones, lands, and cyclonic rift. I took the cyclonic rift. While I was racing with a mistcutter hydra and an advent of the wurm token, he just had a lot more power than me. The shock and thoughtseize damage mattered. I ended up losing because he had so many creatures out. Game 3 I won due to reaper of the wilds. There was a situation where I had a reaper of the wilds, a voice of resurgence, and he had 2

Unsung hero of gameday

nightveil specters and a grey merchant of asphodel. He had to block both of my guys so I was able to scry 1 three times, letting me get to the hero's downfall by tucking 3 lands deep, winning the following turn by hero's downfalling his only creature (which I found out afterward was great because he was going to start chaining gray merchent of asphodels).








So I won gameday! It was a nice feeling and was hard fought. I was happy I won the matchup,
especially against the mono black deck because he plays so many Erebos that would have stopped my lifegain engine.