Yesterday my buddy SFL and I played in the prelaunch tournament for the new Magic expansion Rise Of The Eldrazi.
The tournament ran like this: every entrant was given 6 booster packs (containing 15 cards apiece) and 45 minutes in which to assemble a deck with which to play. The deck size had to be at least 40 cards, and land was provided. This expansion is planned to be playable by itself, so all boosters were Eldrazi boosters.
Making the deck was much harder than I thought. I wasn’t very impressed with my cards (I pulled no mythic rares, and only one of my six rares is what I consider ‘good’) and had a distinct lack of interesting spells. I was originally going to play mono green before noticing I had no fliers in that colour, so I eventually chose green/white. My final deck contained 17 lands, 5 spells and 18 creatures (I would tweak it once during the event itself).
SFL was a lucky girl, and pulled two mythic rares from her boosters, both of which ended up in her blue/white deck. What were they? I’ll leave that until later in this post…
Once deck creation was complete the games began. There were 36 entrants, and the magical Wizards Of The Coast software used to run the event decided on 6 best-of-three rounds to be followed by a top 8 single elimination. So each player would play a minimum of 12 games against a minimum of 6 opponents.
Here are the details on my six rounds in order.
Round One: I won 2-1
The event started off well for me. Eldrazi plays slowly, and games in which each side had 10 or more mana were not unusual. I won my very first game 42-0 against an opponent playing blue/green. How did I get my life total so high you ask. Because of only two cards:
I got the attendant out on turn one, and by games end had played both of the wurms in my deck. It was a resounding victory for me! In game two I also won, this time 14-0, with the final blow being dealt by this guy:
Annihilator is a mechanic that requires the defender to sacrifice permanents when the creature attacks. On my last attack phase the opponent only had lands to sacrifice.
Round Two: I lost 1-2
I was up against a seasoned opponent who later in the evening would tell use that he had played MTG for years and years, owned thousands and thousands of cards and actually won two preleases when the last expanion (Worldwake) was released. Not surprising, since I could tell when I played him his level of skill was beyond anyone I had ever played before. He was using red/white and had a particularly nasty abundance of direct damage spells that he used to great effect, including:
The above card was perhaps my most hated to have the opponent play, and every red deck I played against seemed to have more than one. This opponent also made good use of the following combo in both games:
Wall of Omens is a great card and I’m happy I had one in my deck. But it’s not great when your opponent splinters it every turn for a free card!
Despite his skill and his deck I managed to win one game on the back (again) of my Pelakka Wurm. But in the end, victory was his.
Round Three: I lost 0-2
One element of the competition that was very welcome was how friendly and enthusiastic everyone was. As I do, I chatted with most of my opponents and found they were more than happy to chat back. My third opponent was playing in his first tournament (as was I) and his background in MTG was similar to mine – playing it back when it started 15 years ago, giving up and then returning relatively recently. He was also amusingly apologetic during the games themselves, almost as if he was sorry for the thrashing he was dealing out to me.
And a thrashing it was, with me losing each game quickly, mostly due to one card of his:
See the red expansion symbol on the card? That means ‘mythic rare’ rarity status, which translates to 1 in every 8 packs (on average). Anyone that drew a mythic from their six boosters was lucky indeed. I think this opponent in particular hit the jackpot because the above card is extremely powerful. It is one of the new leveler cards (of which I had none in my deck) but the leveling cost (a single red mana) is extremely low and the power of the card at max level is very high. He got it out both games and finished me with it. In the second game, I never even cast a single creature because all I could draw was lands 🙂
After this round, for no particular reason, I added an extra land, removed a spell (destroy enchantment) and added an extra creature.
Round Four: I won 2-1
My fourth opponent was playing a red/green deck with a lot of mana acceleration. Cards like:
I had each in my deck as well, but he had at least two of each of the above (and more). His deck (and play) seemed fatally flawed, in that he had almost no red cards (or played almost none) except for other mana-boosters such as:
It was clear he was trying to get the enormous Eldrazi creatures themselves into play. But he never did. Even so, he beat me once (when he had 3 life remaining) but I finished him quickly in the third game.
Round Five: I won 2-0
This time I faced a black/green deck. In the first game my initial draw was lucky and I beat him quickly with buffed fliers. This was one of the few games I got any real use out of my totem aura spells:
Both were on fliers he couldn’t block, so I drew a free card every turn as well.
In the second game against him I was able to (finally) cast the best card in my deck (also the only rare I included):
Unfortunately I never got to do anything with it because he conceded as soon as it came out (I also had a Pelakka Wurm on the table, and my life was over 30 to his 10 or so).
This would turn out to be my final game of the night, because in the sixth round my opponent folded without playing, giving me the automatic win…
Round Six: I won by default 2-0
So my total tally was 4 wins 2 losses in six rounds, and the breakdown was 9-6 in total wins/losses per game. This latter stat was important because it decided who made it to the final 8. In other words there were likely more than one entrants with 4-2 in terms of rounds won, so then they look at total games to see who gets into the top 8. Since I didn’t, I surmise there were others with better tallies, such as 10-4 or 9-5.
What about SFL?
Amusingly, she was the only female in attendance! I like to think some of her opponents may have underestimated her because of this, and I bet they quickly regretted that.
The blue/white deck she used is best described by these two cards she pulled from her boosters:
Yep, two mythic rares. The guy on the left is amazingly good, and the guy on the right – when levelled up to maximum – allows you to take two turns for the opponents one. I didn’t get to watch many of her games, but in the few I saw she seemed to have one or both of these guys out and very often the Chronologist was at level 7.
In the end SFL had 3 wins and 3 losses. She seemed to play more varied opponents than I, including a young boy and a very intense dude who obviously took the game very seriously (and ended up being the favourite going into the top 8 with 6 wins and zero losses). I think it is fitting our wins/losses were about equal in the end (since we can hardly count my fourth win since the opponent folded).
All told the event was a good time out. It was great fun playing all sorts of different people and experiencing all the new cards in one go. I didn’t expect to win *any* games at all so it was pleasing to win a few. And although neither of us won any prizes, we at least each walked away with one of the promotional cards given out during the event itself. This guy gives you an idea of how crazy the top-tier Eldrazi creatures are, and perhaps explains why my fourth opponent spent so much time trying to build his mana base:
