Saturday I went over to my friendly local purveyor of fine luxury cardboard rectangles (nicked that from the MTG Historian YouTube channel) or FLGS The Hobbit Hole as it is also known.

Old age had been playing its cruel tricks on me in the days leading up to the weekend. For some reason I’d thought there was another store champs happening, and had been building/updating my Standard deck (see my Golgari deck list – although it’s slightly out of date now and I’ll have to update it).

It was in fact Magic League time. I was there already, I had to be to pick up some product. So thought why not? Opening packs and building decks is always fun. Although history should have taught me by now I never do great with my pulls in these sealed events.

I ended up throwing my red and white pulls together to make a Boros deck. It was a deck, not a great deck, used the throw spaghetti against wall and see what sticks method. Others there seemed to be taking the whole thing a lot more seriously, and spending a lot of time analysing cards and building their most optimal deck.

So while that was going on John (the pusher of fine luxury cardboard rectangles) and myself had a game of standard using our standard decks that we are planning to use in the standard showdowns (which start next weekend).

It was Golgari vs Golgari. A mirror match up? Not quite. Johns plan and cards were based around the graveyard and the undergrowth mechanic. Mine as you saw in the deck list (even with the tweaks) is an aggro deck. It’s creatures and removal. If you include the Ravenous Chupacabra and Thrashing Brontodon there is 13 pieces of removal of one form or another in the 60. Something that it would turn out plays into John’s plan. Apparently the more competitive regular players at the shop play a lot of removal or denial in their decks. So now I have a little bit of info on the meta I might be facing next weekend.

Anyway in our first game it came down to one moment. It was fairly evenly balanced. I’d been removing John’s creatures with my removal suite, that had pumped John’s creatures. He had a 12/12 flyer on the board because of this. I was empty handed, and needed an answer. I needed to top deck a solution. Ideally as John said at the start of my turn, some removal. I didn’t draw any of my removal. But I did draw the next best thing. Masterminds Acquisition. Plus I had the mana to cast it and cast the solution I fetched. I went to my sideboard and fetched my walk the plank. Obviously I remove the threat and swung in for the win.

Our second game was more one sided. John did get his Vraska, Golgari Queen out and use her +2 ability once. He was lucky I didn’t have any open mana at the time. But my turn was easy, I cast my Vraska’s Contempt and got rid of her. There seems to be a bit of poetry of removing Vraska with her own contempt! I was also building up a few creatures on the battlefield, dealing damage, and finally swinging in with lots of lethal.

It was interesting to see the two different approaches to the same guild. Obviously John was building for the meta he plays in. While I built for a play style I like, and not knowing what meta I’ll be up against. It was also reassuring to see my deck work as planned and great to test it.

I did get my butt handed to me in my single Magic League game. The only notable thing was they were playing a 3 colour deck, oh and unlike me put thought into their deck.

To go with my haul, I bought 3 copies of the 3 cost Pitiless Gorgan, and 2 copies of Demotion. Those 5 cards were 90p. I do like Pitiless Gorgan, not just the art, but as a 3 drop to play.

I’ll go over my pulls from the haul in another post.