ToC Round 2

I was with the Sui Black and Florian (not sure if that is the nick he uses here) had the Void deck. I felt pretty good about this matchup. I have enough cheap threats that it should be hard to get an advantageous Void for him and more importantly he only had 8 sources of damage main deck (4 Shades, 4 Hyppies) and no more in the sb. After boarding in 4 Contagion and considering my 2 main deck edict plus the fact I can drop cheap critters of my own that are basically all bigger than his, I thought it would take pretty lousy draws for me to lose 2 of 3. The only thing that he could do that would really hurt would be a really early shade followed by Void and even then I felt I could recover if I saw a Contagion.

Game 1: He wins the die roll and Duresses taking Sinkhole. He Rituals out Hyppie turn 2 I think and I drop a turn 2 Shade. I lose another Shade to the hyppie but peel one so it ends up my 2 Shades racing his one Hyppie. Obviously that doesn't work out well for him. He was stuck with only 1 Swamp all game, which obviously hurt. I think he only cast the Duress, a Ritual and Hyppie for spells all game.

The only things I want to SB in are 4 Contagion really, but I cannot figure out what the hell to take out. I end up taking out 3 Sinkholes and the Yawg Will. My reasoning is with Sinkholes and possibly Voids that a broken will is extremely unlikely. I dropped the Sinkholes since he has so few creatures and not THAT much removal either, so all I have to do is lay a couple creatures and keep turning the sideways. Maybe others can suggest superior boarding, I'm really not sure the way to go here.

Game 2: Again no brokeness from either of us early, I Consult at eot of my first turn and get a Ritual (my hand was Negator, Warbeast, Congation, and land I think). I think that was a dumb consult in retrospect. Consult for Hymn to cast on turn 2 and then follow up with Negator is probably better. I ritual out Negator but he has a Keg. I hit a couple times with the Gator before he Kegs it away and he has another Keg waiting for my Warbeast but takes one hit from it before he blows it. After I laid that Beast I had Contagion, Demonic Tutor and Negator waiting in hand so I thought I had the game easily and was in fact on the phone at the time telling my brother about how I was just about to win this match. He peels him and nails the DT and Gator. Hmph. He then kegs away the Beast leaving him at 3 and me at 19. I have Contagion in hand, 4 Swamp, he has 4 Swamp or so and no cards in hand. He draws Hyppie. Hmph. I draw Duress and kill it when he attacks. He drops Shade. Jeez. I peel Ritual. He drops Nether Void. What the hell....did I just lose this game? My next 2 draws are Ritual, Lotus which is moot since I would have been decked even if I killed the Shade. My consult for the ritual had been bad, but I hadn't realized how bad until I tutored after he dropped the Void and realized I had 2 cards left in my library...doh.

Game 3: I get to go first and finally a fairly broken draw shows up for one of us. I drop Swamp, Jet, double Duress (taking Sinkhole and Hymn, leaving him with 2 Contagion and 3 land). I then drop another land and Hymn (hitting Contagion and land I think). He lays land and says go and next turn I Demonic Tutor for Necro, consult for another swamp and lay the Necro the turn after and refill my hand. I have 4 land, mox, and 7 cards in hand at this point to his 3 land and 1 card. I don't see how I can lose, but I thought that game 2 for a while too. I Duress the one card away next turn (another Contagion) and then drop Hyppie, Warbeast the next turn and Shade the turn after that. The game ends quickly.

Hmmm, thought I had the game 3 log, but now I can't find it. Shrug.

Good match and a very pleasant opponent. Appy lagged badly for parts of game 2 and 3, but we soldiered through it. He had to mulligan at least 2 of 3 (maybe all 3), that didn't help him either. Thanks for the games.

Tony