0-2 to Top 4
Hello. I'm bored at work and have decided to write a tournament report about the invitational. First fucking thing is first. Here's the magic card deck I done went and I played.
2 faithful4 jace
4 elf
4 blood artist
1 ayli
1 grim
4 sifter
4 reflectman
4 husk
4 company
4 rally
24 regular lands
4 dispel
4 cut
2 cleric
2 duress
2 anafenza
1 zulaport extraction
RALLY!!!! Rally is not only the best deck in standard, it's also the deck I've played with most this standard. Playing anything else would just be sheer foolishness. I will admit I'm not the most proficient magic player in the world so me playing this medium/hard difficulty deck has been a little dicey. I think I've got it most of the way nailed down though.
I expected a lot of other people to be on rally (at least 3-4) and I put another quarter of the field on abzan variants. The rest of the field I predicted to be wide spread shotgun blast of random shit that I decided to mostly ignore. I geared my sideboard to beat the mirror and anafenza the foremost and was perfectly content with that.
Also I was secretly on "team wizards of the nice" aka "team goo cats" with Amanté and Ian but they both put up scrub results so... Yea. I jumped ship to the prestigious"team protect the business" in the top four.
Cube draft
Here is where I have the most trouble at these things. In kyles cube I love to cobble together shaky combo decks that put giant retards in play and then I die when I don't go off in the first 3 turns. Not the best archetype but it's one that I will force every single time. Not close.
So p1p1 was eureka. P1p2 was ulamog. Just how i drew it up. We're on our way now folks. Pick 3 was without a green card thanks to Amanté who was drafting the reasonable medium speed ramp deck directly to my right. I took unexpected potential just because I was gonna hope to play something stupid I don't need. Pick 4 gave me just that in Sphinx's rev. I drastically over value this card in cube for some reason so I took it. The pack continues terribly and i end up with 2-3 more giant eldrazi and I think actually 4 naturalize effects and some u/w fixing.
Pack 2 we open up recall. Alright time to shift gears. We're playing this card. Blue cards start flowing like the river styx. I'm also noticing some black cards coming around that are decently powerful and in my realm of broken nonsense (entomb, reanimate, ect) so we start nabbing those up mostly on the wheel.
By pack 3 I'm firmly cemented in a sub-par esper reanimator deck and it dawns on me that I still have unexpected potential. We're playing that eureka still. Bet your nasty little ass. So we finish out pack 3 with some fixing and a couple discard outlets and call it a deck. Oh also my deck had mindshrieker and brainstorm and top and emrakul in it. So I was secretly hoping to 16 someone that way again (shout out to Willy J).
Match 1 (0-0) vs. Ian campbell (mono red)
So we're dead here. We can't beat a 2 power one drop unless we combo out. Luckily game one I get to tutor up eureka and put in an ulamog and a frost titan and steal it. Games 2 and 3 go exactly how they should and I die horribly. No surprise there. Can y'all believe tempt with vengeance tokens have haste? Oh well. On to the next.
Match 2 (0-1) vs. Ginter (g/w good cards)
Seems like an okay match up. Can't really interact with my combos that well. Game 1 I shit out inkwell leviathan on turn 2 and start going to town. NOW HERES WHERE IT GETS A LIL FUCKY. Chris and I both forget that inkwell has trample. He's blocking with 1/1 tokens. I'm saying "okay wow inkwell sucks a turd". He slams a Karn and i die (although I did do some fancy divining top backflips to kill an eldrazi displacer). So we're sideboarding and that when I notice the keyword "trample" on inkwell and vomit everywhere. Chris is nice enough to to ask "how do you wanna proceed?" which I interpret as "do you want the win for that game?" It clearly my fault so I just say we carry on with the match. Game 2 i steal with an early norn and game 3 we have slog where I inevitably just don't get there. Not going well for the home team so far.
Match 3 (0-2) vs. Amanté (medium size ramp)
Here's a matchup I can get behind. A green deck with even fewer ways to interact then the last green deck. Didn't end up mattering cause I combo'd out ruthlessly both games. So we're still in it. Barely.
Match 4 (1-2) vs. Tai (horse-shit prowess)
Ahh of course my first match of standard would be against giant flying/unblockable guys. Just exactly what I want to play against. This is a match I've played before and it's absolutely abysmal for me. Tai floods out a little in game one and I can steal a win on the back of reflector man that way. I board in ALL THE DISRUPTION. Cut, dispel, and duress. I have to focus on him not killing me and cause his deck is just the faster combo deck. Fortunately for me he flooded out pretty bad again and I had well placed murderous cut. We're scrapping by but are still in this motherfucker.
Match 5 (2-2) vs. Kate (ramp)
Yay. Another match I decided not to bring a board for. Ramp isn't actually as good of a match as one might think. Worldbreaker hitting white sources is kinda a nightmare and I can never beat an Ugin ever. But I did. A lot of this win just comes from Kate not knowing the match up. She would slam Ugin and I would company and kill it. She'd slam another Ugin and I'd company and kill it (yeah 2 companys check me out). That's how game one went. Just Ugins biting the man's dust bad. By the time she was able to catch up turns after and cast a big eldrazi i already had it locked up. Game 2 she learned about the cold truth that is unblocked nantuko husk while at 14 life. 14 ain't enough sweetheart. NEXT.
Match 6 (3-2) vs. Gabe (r/w 2 drops)
Oh buddy, we have hit our stride here folks. We're rallying right back into this fucker. Gabe's only way to interact with me is hallowed moonlight (maybe?) so with a little care I navigate a win here. Game one I got caught with my pants down a little. I accidentally die to a giant myth realized. Did not foresee that being a thing that happened that day. Games 2 and 3 go off without a hitch though. Just rally doing its thing completely uninterrupted. Feels good man.
Match 7 (4-2) vs. Clayton (8 command red)
Clay and I played this match a lot the night before and it's not great for me. I basically have to draw hot fire to win it. Also I'm just not packing anything for the match aside from 2 clerics. So game one I mull to 5 and then proceed to have Culbertson level draws. Just land company land company land company land rally rally. Game 2 Clayton stumbles on a second green long enough for me to build a decent board. We have a "who can go wider" contest and I end up stealing it with a third blood artist off a company.
Match 8 (5-2) vs. Pat (abzan)
Pat is nice enough to scoop me into to top 4 even though we found out I had it anyway. Regardless I cashed and I get to go to starbucks. This was a match I was prepped to win though. I had sideboard cards and everything. Woulda been great.
Match 9 (semis) vs. Clayton (8 command red)
This time the match goes much more how one might think. Clay goes a little bigger and wider than my elvish visionaries and I'm dead by the time I can think about rallying. Both games go to him in a walk thus ending our full throttle tear through the standard portion of this tournament.
All in all i would say I'm great at Magic and deserved to win all the matches I lost and also deserved all the wins won. Suck it.
- Alex Henderson (2 time invitational top 4 competitor)
Sent from my iPhone