The weekends gaming was a weekend of playing MtG.

Naturally Saturday was Standard Showdown at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole. Usually I write the whole thing with a round by round summary. With a deck list tagged to the end if I played a new deck or tweaked the deck.

But I thought I’d change it up a little in this post.

I’d taken the new pirates deck with me for John’s daughter to play if she wanted to. However she was not feeling well. So I decided I’d change things up and play it myself.

Knowing John’s merfolk deck was a bad match up for the pirates (it negates the copies of Walk the Plank) I still tested the deck against his. The games were not complete walk overs, but still it lost.

I got off to a flying start to Standard Showdown with back to back wins. Although the games against Andy were made a lot easier with him getting mana screwed both games. In one of the games he mulliganed down to three cards. There was a bit of guilt during those games. An unusual feeling for me. But sometimes that’s the way the cards fall. As an MtG player it’s something you come to accept is part of the game. It’s not fun when you are experiencing it. A hint of optimism is always helpful. You just hope it’s a temporary blip. Or that any moment you will start getting the land and that it’s not too late to turn things round. But there is also an element of inevitability in the current game as your opponent plays lands, get their eggs in a row and finally puts you out of your misery.

Apart from my games against Mr Hall (one of the stores elite four) the ones I lost against Michael were pretty close. But even then with Mr H it wasn’t that I didn’t have answers in my deck, and my deck needed tweaking. I had answers just didn’t get them.

In the friendly games I played with the pirates deck it lost. The mono blue mill also lost in a friendly game. If I was able to mill once more for two cards it would have won. Naturally the Simic deck won it’s friendly game.

Standard Showdown Stats

Standard Showdown Participants: 10

Rounds: 4

Round 1: Simon (Gates Deck) Win 2-0

Round 2: Andy Win 2-0

Round 3: Andy Hall Loss 0-2

Round 4: Michael Loss 0-2

Record: 2-2

Final position: 5th

Sunday morning saw me being messaged by Dale to see if I wanted to meet up. So we did that afternoon at The Luxe. I took along the three standard decks I have currently for us to play with.

Dale and I spent the afternoon chatting and playing MtG. I had a great afternoon. But I’m sure Dale must have been bored with the MtG chat.

Deck plans:

Before Standard Showdown started Saturday John showed me a card he pulled during FNM the night before that did really well for him. It was Twilight Panther.

I immediately took a liking to it. It needs a swamp to activate its ability. But it’s a white version of Skittering Heartstopper. A card I like. Opponents are not keen to block a card like this with big creatures because with the mana open it takes that blocker out.

I like the idea of playing a deck with both of those cards in it. So that makes it Orzhov or white/black.

Looks like I have some card research to do know for a new standard deck.