The tournament in Karlsruhe was held for the second time, and I knew this would be a challenging competition, since all of the Heidelberg players take part in Karlsruhe. The first tourney back in february had proven this.
I expected some artifact decks, since Heidelberg is a Workshop-heavy Metagame, Dragon, which was played in february, and various control-decks like Keeper and Tog, plus the always present random decks which also appeared last time, Sligh, Suicide and things like Parfait and Enchantress. All in all, a very wide-spread metagame.
So I chose to play the deck that went very good for me the last events, Red-Green-Beats. I made some changes, especially to the sideboard, and here is what I played:
rot-grün Askese
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Black Lotus
3 Cursed Scroll
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Incinerate
4 Naturalize
4 Kird Ape
4 Blurred Mongoose
3 River Boa
4 Gorilla Shaman
2 Grim Lavamancer
2 Troll Ascetic
4 Taiga
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Treetop Village
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
3 Mountain
3 Forest
60
SB:
3 Maze of Ith
4 Red Elemental Blast
4 Artifact Mutation
2 Krosan Reclamation
2 Tormod's Crypt
15
I felt this could be flexible and aggressive enough to take on this field.
Marcus Quandt, Stefan Rychlewski and me started with some burger-lunch and the traditional last-minute sideboard discussion. Marcus could not decide what to play, he had a lot of decks which he tested the last weeks, but in the end decided upon a Tog variant with white-splash and 4 Serenities SB. Rych had found Gobin-Food-Chain to be a deck for his mood, and was very motivated to play it and see its performance in a tournament. Sadly, Maik Hofmann was ill and therefore could not take part, but on the bright side, he could borrow me his Moxen and Lotus. Thank You!
The event started in time, but with quite few players, though enough to stay with 5 rounds of swiss.
1st round, Marco Weber
Workshop Prison
First Workshop deck since 2 tournaments, but no big threads, as Marco had 2 unlucky draws. I had 2 games with 2-3 Naturalize each, and was able to attack freely. In the first game he had 2 Ensnaring Bridges (holding one card) and a Null Brooch, I was holding one Naturlaize and had 4 or 5 creatures with 2 power in play. He tapped out for something (a Charbelcher maybe) and I topdecked the second Natralize, gave the Bridges back to nature and finished.
Life:
Marco: 20 16 12 7 4 3 2 0
Me: 20
Sideboarding:
out: 4 Incinerate
in: 4 Artifact Mutation
Marco: 20 17 14 8 5 0
Me: 20 19 13 12
1:0:0 ; 2:0 ; 3 points
2nd round, Henning Herndler
Rogue white-green aggro-lifegain something
This guys deck was strange, playing first strike Knights, Serra Angel and a lot of creature enchantments like Serras Embrace. Add to that some expensive lifegain (enchantment, which gives you life for each creatures power, that comes into play on your side, etc).
First game was quick. I managed to burn some creatures in response to the creature enchantments and kept the pressure up.
Second game was just sick. I had him down to 1 life, when he had enough mana and started the lifegain-show, dropping creatures and Serra Avatars (!!!). An embraced Avatar finally came over and kissed me good-bye.
Third game was much like the fist, quick and dirty.
Life:
Henning: 20 18 15 12 13 10 7 1 0
Me: 20
Sideboard: nothing
Henning: 20 19 17 15 13 10 4 6 7 1 2 14 17 15 28 26 23 21 24 22 20 18 16 14
Me: 20 19 15 11 0
Henning: 20 18 16 14 16 14 8 0
Me: 20
2:0:0 ; 4:1 ; 6 points
3rd round, Bo Fingerhut (cool name, cool guy)
Tog
Tough matchup for me. Luckily, he drew almost only lands in game one, and I saw no teeth at all.
Second game I started putting some pressure and tried to Red-Blast his Intuition, which he forced. He took 3 Accumulated Knowledge and passed his turn. I topdecked another Blast and coutered what he accumulated. He got a deed out and took my creatures, but a Treetop Village still beat on him. He dopdecked Wasteland, but I was already holding the next Village for the win. Again, no Tog.
Life:
Bo: 20 18 16 14 13 11 8 5 0
Me: 20 19
Sideboard:
out: 2 Naturalize, 4 Gorilla Shaman
in: 4 Red Elemental Blast, 2 Tormod's Crypt
Bo: 20 19 18 16 15 14 12 10 8 5 2 0
Me: 20 19 18
3:0:0 ; 6:1 ; 9 points
4th round, Alessandro Ciuchi
Dragon
Argh, I lost to him last time and knew he was with Dragon again. But I had leared a lot about Dragon matchups, so I was confident.
First game I started Wasteland-go. He just simled, even more at the second Wasteland-go on my side. I could start playing creatures after some rounds and beat him down to 3, when he was able to animate a Verdant Force. This uglyness and the wurms it produced now put pressure on me. He animated a dead Shaman out of my graveyard to eat my Scroll, and for like 5 or 6 turns I hoped to draw a Bolt. I did not, and Saprollings killed me.
Second game I was able to hold him back for a long time and with him at 2 life, he tried to animate. I was holding Naturalize and answered to the come-into-play effect of the dragon, animate left, dragon left, permanents in, permanents out. All gone (Yippie!). But it was not over. He the played a Bazaar, drew, played Lotus and Necromancy to animate again. We both assumed all permanents would the come back due to the dragons ability, but indeed they do not. Only the permanents removed by the Dragon in play, that removed them, are brought back (some timestamp rule as I understood).
Well, we found out too late and he won. Next time, he will not
Life:
Alessandro: 20 19 14 9 8 6 3
Me: 20 19 11 10 9 8 4 3 0
Sideboard:
out: 4 Gorilla Shaman
in: 2 Tormod's Crypt, 2 Krosan Reclamation
Alessandro: 20 16 15 11 8 6 3 2
Me: 20
3:1:0 ; 6:3 ; 9 points
5th round, Christian Hangel
Dragon
Boo, Dragon again! Well, at least I was prepared and loaded with new rules-knowledge. And Christian is a nice guy, which makes loosing easier sometimes
First game he started slow and I kept 1 or 2 Wastelands open, while beating him down.
Second game he animated quite fast and we went to the third.
Third game I kept a hand with Wasteland, 2 Naturalize and a Krosan Reclamation (Yippie!). I played defensive and started the beatdown some turns later. But for the win, I really had to play all of the Naturalizes and the Reclamation, plus the Flashback. Dragon is just sick.
Life:
Christian: 20 18 17 14 11 6 0
Me: 20 19 18
Sideboarding:
out: 2 Gorilla Shaman, 2 Incinerate
in: 2 Tormod's Crypt, 2 Krosan Reclamation
Christian: 20 18
Me: 20
Christian: 20 19 18 15 10 9 7 4 0
Me: 20 19
4:1:0 ; 8:4 ; 12 points
The metagame shift was really dramatical this time. Half of the field consisted of Tog and Dragon variants, which both only appeared 1-2 times in the past. We all wondered if the people traded their Workshops for Bazaars...
4 people finished 4:1, and due to opponent score I placed 2nd. Rych came on 11th, Marcus on 13th place.
I won a Bird of Paradise, and after excessive dragon rule discussion we drove off, taking burger dinner and making big plans for the next events (Mannheim 13.02., Karlsruhe 03.04.), in special how to hate Dragon
.
Props:
Karlsruhe event organizers, for replacing Heidelberg tournaments just in time.
Studio 4, for being a nice location with much space.
T1 Magic-People, for being friendly and funny.
Maik for being ill
Slops:
DRAGON! (We hate it!)
