Another Saturday and another (my fourth) Standard Showdown. These are getting addictive!
Naturally I tweaked the deck a little this week. There were some cards I wanted to give a try. But more on that later.
Once again this Standard Showdown was an 8 man field.
Round 1 – Charlie (red aggro)
I’d never played against Charlie before, he’d been looking at his deck with Ben when I arrived at the store. I’d overheard Goblin Chainwhirler being mentioned so I knew at least this deck had red.
Game 1 started off to plan, but I was undone by Experimental Frenzy with no way to remove it while it was out. Experimental Frenzy just allowed Charlie to flood out an overwhelming board state that I was unable to stop.
Game 2 was more like it. Things clicked, creatures came out, I controlled the board. That annoying card didn’t come out.
Game 3 for me was a complete disaster. I was mana screwed, so it was just turn by turn chipping away at me until I was dead.
Definitely my undoing against this deck was the combination of Experimental Frenzy, lots of cheap cards, and plenty of lands. Once that combination is in place, unless you can disrupt it, you have lost.
Result: Loss 2-1
Our games were pretty quick. So we played a couple of friendly games to fill the time. Our first game was a first for me too. I had the perfect start with the perfect hand. It had the mana, Llanowar Elf and Steel Leaf Champion. So I was attacking with with Steel Leaf Champion turn 3. The deck just went through the gears as intended and won before Charlie got started.
The second friendly game was more of the earlier Experimental Frenzy b.s., while I struggled for mana. Naturally I finished on another loss.
Round 2 – Paul
Another new opponent, this time Paul who had thrown together a Boros deck.
This was an easy match up for my deck. Especially when in the first game Paul had to mulligan down to 4 cards, and ended up mana screwed. I had some sympathy, as MtG players we have all been there. You just have to sit there hoping against odds that you draw into mana before it’s too late. Sadly for Paul that moment never came. Remember I’d been in a similar situation in the first round.
The second game Paul just never had a board presence. So once again despite him having mana this time, he was unable to stop me swinging in.
Afterwards I had a look at Paul’s deck. He was going Boros dinosaurs. But was missing the copies of the obvious ramp cards, and a few dinosaurs. I like the idea behind the deck, and I think it could be a fun deck to play.
Result: Win 2-0
Round 3 – John Golgari v Golgari
We’ve seen this match up a couple times since I built this deck. Both times my deck has been victorious. Naturally in that time tweaks have been made by both of us. John is still chasing that graveyard boosting his creatures tactic.
However as in the previous games my deck was victorious. Being able to remove any of these big threats John could create because of his graveyard and swing in unimpeded worked for me. It’s a simple tactic, and has been successful for me in the past.
Result: Win 2-0
Overall Record: 3rd Place 2-1
Prize support was down this week. Third place only got me a participation booster and after a roll off a Showdown booster.
So how does the WotC system determine that I come third, whilst another player with the same match ratio comes second?
After a bit of internet research, and downloading the official WotC tournament rules, I looked at page 17.
“The following tiebreakers are used to determine how a player ranks in a tournament:
1. Match points
2. Opponents’ match-win percentage
3. Game-win percentage
4. Opponents’ game-win percentage”
So basically one of those tiebreakers didn’t go in my favour. I know the Opponents’ game-win percentage I had would have been worse. My route to two and one was easier, with opponents that had a worse track record than those faced by second place. So basically you not only have to win, but you want you opponents to do well also.
If you want to go into specifics and the math behind those tiebreakers look at Appendix C of the tournament rules.
6 Player Commander
After battling it out with our standard decks a 6 person Commander game started. I was playing my mono green big stompy deck. Dean was playing some partner Commander deck. Michael was playing an Edgar Markov vampire deck, Charlie had borrowed the b.s. dragon deck from Dean, can’t remember Andy’s deck, and Ben was back with the b.s. no fun Estrid deck.
Luckily for the rest of us the Estrid deck never got to hit its stride, although it did have a white enchantment out that meant Ben tapped a creature at the start of each players combat phase. Very annoying if you only had one creature out.
I was ramping nicely, getting stuff out. The others were targeting the two b.s. decks (dragons and Estrid). I played Praetor’s Council, so I had an unlimited handsize. Which was handy for when Dean was bouncing creatures back to hand on mass. I wasn’t having to discard cards because of it like the others.
Andy hit everyone for 8 life each, and gained that much life. He was looking good on 80 odd life, it would have to be commander damage to take him out.
Eventually plays started dropping out. I was in a reasonable position on 30 health and creatures out on the battlefield. I was a threat, but not acting in a threatening way by attacking. If anyone thought of attacking me I’d remind them “do you really want to upset the big nasty green creatures?”
Dean and Ben were under 10 health, so I killed them both off. Leaving just Andy and me.
So how do you win against a player on 86 life? My 2/2 Commander wasn’t going to be doing much Commander damage, even if it had been out on the battlefield.
Thanks to Zendikar Resurgent (ZR) I was getting basically double mana, and card draw. Which was handy because I drew into Primordial Hydra (PH). Primal Vigor (PV) was already out also and going to play an important part in the plan.
I played PH which entered the battlefield as a 52/52 (X was 26 thanks to ZR and PV did the rest) with trample. I thought as a matter of honour I better let Andy know what would happen at the start of my next turn.
Andy decided to swing in with everything. The total damage would be short by 4 points of killing me. He had no cards in hand. But I suspected shenanigans. So I held PH back, and blocked with my other creatures. The last thing I needed was a creature being given deathtouch and killing PH.
We resolved the combat. I went down to 13 life.
Next turn 52 more +1/+1 tokens went onto PH due to its ability. Thanks to PV it then got 52 more and PH was now a 156/156 with trample if I did my maths right.
I could now one shot kill Andy with a really big fecking hydra. Forget Godzilla. King Kong who? Primordial Hydra was the man!
I swung in with everything. There was a massive over kill. And a bloody big crater/footprint with Andy’s corpse at the bottom.
I’d won!
Ok here is the bit some of you have been very patient and waited for.
I’ve been wanting to try these 2 cards in the deck for a while now. But couldn’t really decide what I would swap out. But after Andy looked at my deck the last time he commented about how he couldn’t see why Dire Fleet Poisoner fitted in. Ok I don’t get any benefit from its etb effect. But I really liked the flash and deathtouch. I still do.
I really like the art on Pitiless Gorgan. It’s why I got a playset in foil. The card is very cheap too, even as a foil. Or was when I got them.
Now Pitiless Gorgan isn’t as good as Dire Fleet Poisoner in my opinion. Costs more and doesn’t have flash. But I can use just forests to cast, which is a benefit if I haven’t hit any swamps or dual lands.
I like that ability of Pilfering Imp. It adds another control element to the deck, and getting rid of potential threats from an opponents hand. Plus a flying chump blocker if needed and a cheap bit of damage.
Here’s the deck list…
Creatures:28
4 Llanowar Elves
3 Pilfering Imp
2 Skittering Heartstopper
4 Vicious Conquistador
2 Pitiless Gorgon
4 Steel Leaf Champion
2 Thrashing Brontodon
1 Nullhide Ferox
3 Ravenous Chupacabra
2 Carnage Tyrant
1 Ghalta, Primal Hunger
Spells:11
4 Assassin’s Trophy
2 Find // Finality
4 Vraska’s Contempt
1 Vivien Reid
Lands:21
6 Forest
1 Foul Orchard
4 Golgari Guildgate (a)
1 Overgrown Tomb
7 Swamp
2 Woodland Cemetery
Sideboard:15
1 Pilfering Imp
2 Skittering Heartstopper
2 Thrashing Brontodon
1 Demon of Catastrophes
1 Doom Whisperer
1 Ghalta, Primal Hunger
2 Find // Finality
2 Never Happened
2 Ritual of Soot
1 Vraska, Golgari Queen
Oh before I forget here’s the mana curve and amc for the deck.
