Local T1 tourney in Barcelona. 18 players, 5 rounds + top 8. Metagame: no power, except mine, though sometimes a fully powered Keeper shows up, this time the guy wasnīt there.
I played The Great White Hype (props to Kl0wn):
4 Land Tax
3 Scroll Rack
2 Zuran Orb
2 Sacred Mesa
3 Swords to Plowshares
2 Wrath of God
1 Humility
1 Ivory mask
3 Aura of Silence
1 Story Circle
4 Argivian Find
1 Soldevi Digger
3 Replenish
4 Orimīs Chant
1 Balance
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Phyrexian Furnace
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Diamond
1 Sol Ring
1 Library of Alexandria
3 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
14 Plains
SB:
3 Tormodīs Crypt
2 Ivory Tower
1 Blood Moon
1 Mountain
1 Light of Day
1 Moat
1 Karmic Justice
1 Jesterīs Cap
1 Abolish
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Thran Lens
1 Spiritual Focus
Match 1: Mono U Wizards
Game 1.
Against a nice guy who always comes up with a self invented deck and dislikes my netdecking . He played a monoblue wizards deck. I resolve a Land Tax, have Sacred Mesa in hand and a Chant, so I lay my lands, play Mesa protected with Chant and start kicking him. heīs got Budde on the table and Temporal Adept, but the Adept is too late bouncing the Mesa. There are too many tokens swarming him, he can only bounce one each turn and soon weīre on to game two.
Game 2.
I mulligan to 6. He Force Spiked my Tax, Scroll Rack and another Tax. What good luck, drawing three of them! The table situation looks bad, I have Plains, Pearl and Sol Ring in play and two cards in hand, heīs got Budde, another Wizard that I forgot the name (he draws a card for every creature I target) and casts Temporal Adept keeping only 1 mana open. Unfortunately for him my next play is Chant, Balance, costing him 3 creatures, 3 lands and 3 cards!! Now I am ahead of him, Humility resolves and the game is mine.
1-0-0 (2-0)
Match 2: Nether Void (including MY Mox Jet )
Match two is against a guy lending the deck of the shopkeeper. It is a decent Nether Void, splashing white for Vindicate and playing 4 3cc LD spells (no Hymn to Tourach). His only threats are Factories and Specters.
Game 1: I mulligan to 5 and he Duresses my Scroll Rack in turn 1. After this it is an uphill battle, he resolves Void, lays down Ivory Tower, which I frown upon. The next turn he topdecks Necro and now Ivory Tower seems a whole lot better. I scoop.
Game 2: This was an excellent game. I open with a Land Tax, which gets Vindicated. A Scroll Rack suffers the same fate. Void resolves, I didnīt see my enchantment removal yet. He doesnīt draw a threat and I manage to get some land into play. He plays Necro at 20 life. That is bad. I topdeck Land Tax and the next turn I get a free Ancestral. He destroys a land, I play Sol Ring. I lay Aura of Silence, but donīt sac it yet, assuming he has a second Void in hand. The next turn I play Sacred Mesa. He tutors EOT and plays an Ivory Tower for 6 mana. I destroy it with Aura. He plays Powder Keg. I start making tokens, he puts a counter on the Keg and blows it up, killing my Sol Ring. He vindicates Mesa, but is getting low on life. Next turn a Mutilate! He is at 4 life or something and plays Ivory Tower. I Abolish the Tower, I want to see him win the game with so few life. He Necros down to 1, Demonic Tutors for Seal of Cleansing to blow up his own Necro! It is too late as Sacred Mesa gets back into play and finishes him off. There is no time for another match.
1-0-1 (3-1)
Match 3: GR aggro.
Game 1. Again excellent match. I Balance 4 creatures away, he throws some burn at me and Iīm happy to resolve Ivory Mask. He is hitting me with a Skyshroud Elite for 1 every turn and my life gets dangerously low. A Factory hits play. I Chant one turn. Another turn. I find a plow for his Factory. he plays another one. I chant. Thatīs the third one. I topdeck another Plow. The second Factory is sent into the twilight zone. Iīm down to 3..2..1 He is not playing any more critters, I assume he is having a lot of burn in hand. Then I topdeck Zuran Orb. YES! A Mogg Fanatic joins and I lose one land each turn. Getting closer to the edge, I draw Land Tax. Now every turn I play a land and I need to sac one to stay alive. Than I draw my third plow to finish the Fanatic. Finally I draw Story Circle and now itīs looking good. he canīt do me any more damage, I keep on building my land, Scroll Rack adds to the fun and when I play Sacred Mesa and inform him that I still have Digger in my library to keep me from decking, he scoops. Phfeeeew!
Game 2. Never a game. He boarded 4 Hull Breach and 2 Naturalize, but never finds red mana. The only thing he can do is activating his Cursed Scroll, but with a full hand of red cards and my good hand of picking, he never does me damage. He ends the game with 6 Forest and shows me 2 Hull Breaches that he had in opening hand. What a different match this would have been if he could have taken out my turn 1 Mox and Land Tax!!
2-0-1 (5-1)
Match 4: GR aggro.
Game 1.
This guy had won his three matches based on his metagame call of 8 miners maindeck. Well, those Miners didnīt hurt me and after a Wrath swept the board, Humility was added and Sacred mesa, we were on to game 2.
Game 2. I have a good opening hand with Orb and Land Tax and after taxing once, I do a devastating Balance, saccing all my land, wiping the board clean (he had 3 creatures, 4 lands). This costed me some cards from my hand, but now I was the only person playing land and soon my opponent could not see me anymore, because there was an Ivory Mask and Moat laying in front of me. I was busy doing my things drawing cards, stripping and wasting some lands, looking for a Replenish or a Find because he had Therapied 2 Replenishes and 2 Sacred Mesa in the early turns (he splashed Black which I hadnīt seen in the first game). My opponent was still disgusted with the devastating Balance and totally desillusionated he he said: "Iīve got enough of this game" and scooped. Booooohh....
3-0-1 (7-1)
Match 4. Gro.
This game played a unpowered but fairly optimal SuperGro, few duals, but lotsa fetches and basic lands. A pity for my Blood Moon SB tech I could see that he was an experienced tourney player, because he shuffled my deck and when I shuffled again, he said I couldnīt do this, I said (and this was true) that I saw the bottom card of my deck when he presented it to me, I donīt know the rules, but I assumed that with the bottom card exposed, a new cut will not suffice. Whatever. He won all his previous matches, we weīre playing for playing, Top 8 was certain for both.
Match 1. I resolved Library with a full hand. he couldnīt find Winter Orb, I cast 3 spells behind Chants and there was no way he could keep up with an active Library. Aura of Silence resolved, so Library was looking even better. He scooped when Mesa hit the table.
Match 2. Here I made an error by keeping a hand that lacked Tax or Rack. I had been mulliganning very actively, twice until 5, couple of times until 6. My hand had two plains, Balance, Chant and Mox Diamond. That didnīt look bad. I saw a deadly Balance glaring at the horizon. But unfortunately I did not draw any more land during the whole game, so I could not protect my Balance, it got countered when I desperately tried it and I died quickly because some 6/6 flying pro-black creature did me in.
Match 3.
I had a good opening hand and played Rack turn 1 through a Sol Ring. When I activated it, I saw that there were two Replenishes coming and a Mesa and I also had a Mesa in my hand. So I just threw all my land on the table and forced Mesa through, semi-protected with a Karmic Justice. He played Seal of Cleansing, thought for a while and took out Karmic Justice, costing him his Werebear. Humility was countered, but my first Replenish, cast behind a Chant resolved and he saw Karmic Justice and Humility in play again, together with the mesa, so only a few moments later the Pegasi tokens flew over for the win. I never saw Winter Orb in this match, I wonder how many he played.
4-0-1 (9-2)
Now I went into top 8, placing first. Unfortunately, the tournament had been going very slow and my girlfriend called me that she had she wanted to go home. I canīt say no to a pregnant woman, so I dropped. Magic is nice, but there are things more important.
About the deck: I loved playing it. The Chants go really really well. Anyone want a playset of Abeyances?? MVP (what means this, Most Valuable Play??) was Balance, casted 4 times, 4 times devastating (only one of these devastating times, it was countered
). Karmic Justice I will NEVER take out of the SB. Invariably people will have some removal in the SB and Karmic Justice is a real pain in the bottom. I boared it in every match. My SB is changing every day, I think the Cap is going to get kicked out in favor of a Processor. There is no combo here, except Dragon, which is a cakewalk for this deck. Looking forward to play another tournament with the GWH and I hope that I can finish it next time!
