Shadowmoor Prerelease
Apr. 22nd, 2008 02:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwangoThis past weekend I finally got to attend another Magic prerelease. The last one I got to go to was for Time Spiral, and the 4 sets since then have all been in Boston instead of Boxborough. I signed up for 3 flights because I knew I wanted to play in more than 1, and there was a special deal that got you a third tournament for 1/2 price if you preregistered. You also got both playmats, and I figured I'd put 1 or both of them up on ebay to recoup some of the entry fees. I played in 2 flights on Saturday and the third on Sunday morning, making for a rather exhausting but enjoyable weekend. I ended up with records of 3 wins/1 draw, 4 wins, and 3 wins/1 loss. That won me 6, 8, and 4 packs. I won the random door prize of 3 extra packs at my first flight, and you always get 1 pack as a participation prize, so I walked away from the weekend with 24 sealed packs of Shadowmoor. Nifty!
First tournament of the weekend - Flight #4: Doors opened at 9:00, and I got there at 9:10, but even being preregistered and getting there only 10 minutes late I still ended up in Flight #4, which means at least 96 people were already getting ready to play. It's a pity I didn't get to the tournament area exactly on time, since it would have saved me a lot more than just the 10 minutes I was late 0 - there were some problems with registration info or something, and we got started terribly late - a full hour after I'd arrived. Flight #5 started playing before we did. = P
One of the themes for this set is hybrid mana, with many of the cards featuring costs that are all hybrid mana symbols in two neighboring colors. That makes it a lot easier to build a deck that features 2 neighboring colors, and also gives you more tools to work with from cards that match only one of those colors. After I opened my cards and despaired at my horrible rares I started sorting everything out by color and searching for my strongest cards. It looked like I had a lot of good Red and Black, and so I gleefully started to assemble a deck of screaming doom...only to discover that I wouldn't be able to play a decent creature until about turn 5, barring 3 exceptions. Bleh. Reluctantly, I gave up Black and the ability to play my Red/Black cards with any configuration of land, and added in White, which of course doesn't overlap Red at all. They both have hybrid cards that are Green, though, and it amused me to discover that my White/Red deck had 16 creatures in it, 2 of which were artifacts, 6 of which were Red, 8 of which were White...and 8 of which were Green. In later games I sideboarded in an artifact creature that gained powers if I had Red and/or Green creatures in play, and often had both powers active. I had some pretty good tricks, decent removal, and a lot of cheap, effective critters. I had terrible, terrible rares, though, except for 2 black ones that I had to cut when I switched colors.
Round 1: I got off to the best possible start - turn 1 of the tournament I played the 2/1 for 1 mana that has to attack each turn. I followed it up with a creature every turn for the next 4 turns and had him on the ropes pretty quickly. Still, he hit me in the air a few times, and got me down to 11 before I won. Game 2 was as close as they get - he got me down to 1 the turn before I killed him. My life total went 20, 19, 18, 11, 1. Curiously, that game was sort of the opposite of the first in a way - I kept getting pounded on land and was poking him gradually in the air with a flier he couldn't deal with.
Round 2: My opponent failed to damage me at all during either of our games. His deck was full of stuff that was horrifying if he could live long enough to play it. Unfortunately for him, he had very little way to put up an early defense, and my deck was tuned for a quick kill.
Round 3: Aargh, land screw finally got me. I lost the first game after hitting my opponent for 1 whole point of damage, and actually giving him back 4 life as a cost of killing one of his threats. Not promising. I managed to win the other 2 games with little trouble, though.
Round 4: My opponent asked if I wanted to go for the intentional draw, since we were both 3-0. If we played it out, one of us would get 8 packs and the other would get 4. If we tied, we'd each get 6. I thought about it, but my only loss for the whole day was due to mana problems. I wanted to play it out, since it seemed like I had a good shot at winning. Game 1 I won, though it was close - I was down to 5 by the end. Game 2 I lost, though I got him down to 3 and would have won the next turn if he hadn't had a Flame Javelin. After that, he offered again to go for the intentional draw, and that time I I decided that we were evenly matched enough that it was worth accepting. We played out the third game just for fun anyway, and I got land screwed while had an amazing start, so it was definitely the right decision.
My favorite card of the day so far was Lurebound Scarecrow. I didn't have one in my deck, but every time my opponent played one it invariably went poorly for them. It's got great stats for its cost, but you have to pick a color when you play it, and if at any time you don't control a permanent of that color you have to sacrifice it. People kept playing the thing with only 1 weak creature of that color to keep it alive, and I'd pick off the little guy and kill them both. It was awesome. I think I did that 3 times during that first tournament alone.
Between delays before and during Flight #4, I didn't finish with it until very late, and when I went to sign up for the next tournament it turned out to be Flight #19. Round 1 of actual play didn't start until 4:45. Aargh. So much for my planned schedule. I think it was between flights that I ran into 2 guys I knew from playing The Spoils. They jokingly gave me a hard time about using Spoils sleeves for my Magic deck. I countered that it wasn't like I was going to get a chance to use them to play The Spoils any time soon.
Flight #19: This time, I got a pool of cards that would let me play overlapping colors - Black and Blue. I got a ton of cheap creatures with evasion, a bit of removal, and a couple of awesome rares - Sygg, River Cutthroat and Ghastlord of Fugue. The Ghastlord in particular was incentive to play Blue/Black even if it meant missing out on some strong things in other colors. It's ridiculous. For 5 mana total in any configuration of Blue/Black you get a 4/4 unblockable creature that when it damages your opponent you get to look at their hand and remove one of the cards in it from the game. Yes, really.
Round 1: Game 1 I won without taking any damage. Game 2 I get hit once for 5, but then the Ghastlord shows up and puts an end to things pretty quickly.
Round 2: Again, game 1 I win without a scratch. Game 2 was a little closer, with me at 10 before victory.
Round 3: Alarming! It looked like my unstoppable juggernaut of doom was actually stoppable, and I had a tough game that I eventually lost. It turned out that my opponent had Oona, Queen of the Fae, which is possibly even more horrifying that the Ghastlord for sealed play.
Game 2, however, I won without taking damage. Game 3 was going to be tense, but I managed to pull off the victory. In one game I won in spite of him getting Oona into play, and in the other I managed to force him to discard it. Oona is a 5/5 flier for 6 with the ability "x (B/U): Choose a color. Target opponent removes the top X cards of his or her library from the game. For each card of the chosen color removed this way, put a 1/1 blue and black Faerie Rogue creature token with flying into play." I was incredibly lucky in Game 2, and out of the first 6 cards he hit me for only 2 were the color he named. The second turn he tried to use the ability again to get himself faeries to block with and save himself...and out of 6 cards was unlucky enough to get 0. 16 out of 40 cards in the deck were Blue, the color he named both times.
Round 4: Both games were complicated, but not terribly difficult. I was surprised he'd made it to the final round with 2 wins and a draw based on how he played and the contents of his deck.
After that was over I headed out to drive the rest of the way to Worcester and find food and sleep. Then I got up early Sunday morning to go back and play in my third tournament. Alas, I got there a bit later, and Sunday isn't nearly as well attended, and had to wait an hour and twenty minutes for 31 other people to show up to start Flight #27.
Once again, I wanted so badly to play Black and Red. Again, though, my black wasn't quite good enough. It turned out that Green would fit well in its place, though, which made me happy that I'd get to have played all 5 colors over the course of the weekend. For the first time, I had a Lurebound Scarecrow of my own, and I played it somewhat against my better judgement, promising myself to play it only if it had at least 2 cards keeping it alive. I got 2 copies of a 7-cost creature that's 7/6, but declined to play them because I had other things that were faster, and it sucks to lose a game because you don't quite manage to play your big fat creature. It felt strange to pass up playing something like that, though. Usually, I look at 7 as the upper limit of playability for Sealed, and it was strange to move the cuttoff down to 6.
Round 1: I won the first game, though it was harder than most of the games from the previous day. Game 2 was very close, and I just barely managed a win at the last possibly moment using Knollspine Invocation, a card that prompted a great deal of discussion at the table for being ridiculous beyond imagining. It's an enchantment for 1RR with the ability "X: discard a card with converted mana cost X. Deal X damage to target creature or player." Great for turning every unneeded nonland card in your hand into removal or a shot straight to your opponent.
Round 2: I don't remember exactly what happened...possibly land screw. My record sheet shows that I failed to wound my opponent at all in game 1, though. Games 2 and 3 I won, however. Both were pretty close, and both prominently featured Knollspine Invocation as the instrument of victory. I began to wish I didn't have so many low-cost cards in my deck. Also, I had an unfortunate tendency to draw too many land once the Invocation was in play, and in particular Game 2 I only barely won, and only because I managed to draw a card with a cost of 3 or more on the last turn before I would have been killed.
Round 3: Ah, this was one of my favorite games, because I finally got to use my Spawnwrithe. For 2G, you get a 2/2 with Trample and "Whenever Spawnwrithe deals combat damage to a player, put a token into play that's a copy of Spawnwrithe." I'd drawn it too late during previous games to be worth playing, and thrown it at least once to Knollspine Invocation. This time, I got to play it on turn 3 when all my opponent had was a 1/1, and he failed to play a creature the turn after I got it. That meant almost certain victory right there. I hit him and made a copy. The next turn, he couldn't block either of them, and I went up to 4 Spawnwrithes. At that point, he realized the full implications of what was happening...it hadn't registered to him before that the copies would also make copies. His next turn he managed to deal with 2 of them, but it was too late by them, particularly in light of the additional threats I played to back up the Spawnwrithes. Game 2 I just poured on the doom, and even managed to undo most of the damage he did to me using my Kitchen Finks. No Knollspine Invocation needed that round.
Round 4: Round 3 had been easier than rounds 1 and 2, and I was feeling optimistic. So much so, in fact, that I didn't offer the intentional draw to my opponent, and decided to play it out. I won the first game with no trouble, but then things went very poorly in game 2. I though again about offering the intentional draw, but I knew I could beat him, based on how Game 1 went. Alas, I drew way too many land in Game 3, and not enough things to do with it, and ended up losing.
Too bad the weekend had to end on a down note, but at least my record still got me 4 packs, and the weekend taken as a whole was still a lot of fun. My good records overall meant I got enough stuff as prizes to make the high initial expense more worthwhile. I hope I don't have to wait over a year to get to do one of these again. I'm dimly optomistic that the last time they had tournaments in Boxborough it was for back-to-back sets. I'm hoping that they venue in Boston is booked in the summer, and Eventide will have its prerelease in Boxborough as well.
First tournament of the weekend - Flight #4: Doors opened at 9:00, and I got there at 9:10, but even being preregistered and getting there only 10 minutes late I still ended up in Flight #4, which means at least 96 people were already getting ready to play. It's a pity I didn't get to the tournament area exactly on time, since it would have saved me a lot more than just the 10 minutes I was late 0 - there were some problems with registration info or something, and we got started terribly late - a full hour after I'd arrived. Flight #5 started playing before we did. = P
One of the themes for this set is hybrid mana, with many of the cards featuring costs that are all hybrid mana symbols in two neighboring colors. That makes it a lot easier to build a deck that features 2 neighboring colors, and also gives you more tools to work with from cards that match only one of those colors. After I opened my cards and despaired at my horrible rares I started sorting everything out by color and searching for my strongest cards. It looked like I had a lot of good Red and Black, and so I gleefully started to assemble a deck of screaming doom...only to discover that I wouldn't be able to play a decent creature until about turn 5, barring 3 exceptions. Bleh. Reluctantly, I gave up Black and the ability to play my Red/Black cards with any configuration of land, and added in White, which of course doesn't overlap Red at all. They both have hybrid cards that are Green, though, and it amused me to discover that my White/Red deck had 16 creatures in it, 2 of which were artifacts, 6 of which were Red, 8 of which were White...and 8 of which were Green. In later games I sideboarded in an artifact creature that gained powers if I had Red and/or Green creatures in play, and often had both powers active. I had some pretty good tricks, decent removal, and a lot of cheap, effective critters. I had terrible, terrible rares, though, except for 2 black ones that I had to cut when I switched colors.
Round 1: I got off to the best possible start - turn 1 of the tournament I played the 2/1 for 1 mana that has to attack each turn. I followed it up with a creature every turn for the next 4 turns and had him on the ropes pretty quickly. Still, he hit me in the air a few times, and got me down to 11 before I won. Game 2 was as close as they get - he got me down to 1 the turn before I killed him. My life total went 20, 19, 18, 11, 1. Curiously, that game was sort of the opposite of the first in a way - I kept getting pounded on land and was poking him gradually in the air with a flier he couldn't deal with.
Round 2: My opponent failed to damage me at all during either of our games. His deck was full of stuff that was horrifying if he could live long enough to play it. Unfortunately for him, he had very little way to put up an early defense, and my deck was tuned for a quick kill.
Round 3: Aargh, land screw finally got me. I lost the first game after hitting my opponent for 1 whole point of damage, and actually giving him back 4 life as a cost of killing one of his threats. Not promising. I managed to win the other 2 games with little trouble, though.
Round 4: My opponent asked if I wanted to go for the intentional draw, since we were both 3-0. If we played it out, one of us would get 8 packs and the other would get 4. If we tied, we'd each get 6. I thought about it, but my only loss for the whole day was due to mana problems. I wanted to play it out, since it seemed like I had a good shot at winning. Game 1 I won, though it was close - I was down to 5 by the end. Game 2 I lost, though I got him down to 3 and would have won the next turn if he hadn't had a Flame Javelin. After that, he offered again to go for the intentional draw, and that time I I decided that we were evenly matched enough that it was worth accepting. We played out the third game just for fun anyway, and I got land screwed while had an amazing start, so it was definitely the right decision.
My favorite card of the day so far was Lurebound Scarecrow. I didn't have one in my deck, but every time my opponent played one it invariably went poorly for them. It's got great stats for its cost, but you have to pick a color when you play it, and if at any time you don't control a permanent of that color you have to sacrifice it. People kept playing the thing with only 1 weak creature of that color to keep it alive, and I'd pick off the little guy and kill them both. It was awesome. I think I did that 3 times during that first tournament alone.
Between delays before and during Flight #4, I didn't finish with it until very late, and when I went to sign up for the next tournament it turned out to be Flight #19. Round 1 of actual play didn't start until 4:45. Aargh. So much for my planned schedule. I think it was between flights that I ran into 2 guys I knew from playing The Spoils. They jokingly gave me a hard time about using Spoils sleeves for my Magic deck. I countered that it wasn't like I was going to get a chance to use them to play The Spoils any time soon.
Flight #19: This time, I got a pool of cards that would let me play overlapping colors - Black and Blue. I got a ton of cheap creatures with evasion, a bit of removal, and a couple of awesome rares - Sygg, River Cutthroat and Ghastlord of Fugue. The Ghastlord in particular was incentive to play Blue/Black even if it meant missing out on some strong things in other colors. It's ridiculous. For 5 mana total in any configuration of Blue/Black you get a 4/4 unblockable creature that when it damages your opponent you get to look at their hand and remove one of the cards in it from the game. Yes, really.
Round 1: Game 1 I won without taking any damage. Game 2 I get hit once for 5, but then the Ghastlord shows up and puts an end to things pretty quickly.
Round 2: Again, game 1 I win without a scratch. Game 2 was a little closer, with me at 10 before victory.
Round 3: Alarming! It looked like my unstoppable juggernaut of doom was actually stoppable, and I had a tough game that I eventually lost. It turned out that my opponent had Oona, Queen of the Fae, which is possibly even more horrifying that the Ghastlord for sealed play.
Game 2, however, I won without taking damage. Game 3 was going to be tense, but I managed to pull off the victory. In one game I won in spite of him getting Oona into play, and in the other I managed to force him to discard it. Oona is a 5/5 flier for 6 with the ability "x (B/U): Choose a color. Target opponent removes the top X cards of his or her library from the game. For each card of the chosen color removed this way, put a 1/1 blue and black Faerie Rogue creature token with flying into play." I was incredibly lucky in Game 2, and out of the first 6 cards he hit me for only 2 were the color he named. The second turn he tried to use the ability again to get himself faeries to block with and save himself...and out of 6 cards was unlucky enough to get 0. 16 out of 40 cards in the deck were Blue, the color he named both times.
Round 4: Both games were complicated, but not terribly difficult. I was surprised he'd made it to the final round with 2 wins and a draw based on how he played and the contents of his deck.
After that was over I headed out to drive the rest of the way to Worcester and find food and sleep. Then I got up early Sunday morning to go back and play in my third tournament. Alas, I got there a bit later, and Sunday isn't nearly as well attended, and had to wait an hour and twenty minutes for 31 other people to show up to start Flight #27.
Once again, I wanted so badly to play Black and Red. Again, though, my black wasn't quite good enough. It turned out that Green would fit well in its place, though, which made me happy that I'd get to have played all 5 colors over the course of the weekend. For the first time, I had a Lurebound Scarecrow of my own, and I played it somewhat against my better judgement, promising myself to play it only if it had at least 2 cards keeping it alive. I got 2 copies of a 7-cost creature that's 7/6, but declined to play them because I had other things that were faster, and it sucks to lose a game because you don't quite manage to play your big fat creature. It felt strange to pass up playing something like that, though. Usually, I look at 7 as the upper limit of playability for Sealed, and it was strange to move the cuttoff down to 6.
Round 1: I won the first game, though it was harder than most of the games from the previous day. Game 2 was very close, and I just barely managed a win at the last possibly moment using Knollspine Invocation, a card that prompted a great deal of discussion at the table for being ridiculous beyond imagining. It's an enchantment for 1RR with the ability "X: discard a card with converted mana cost X. Deal X damage to target creature or player." Great for turning every unneeded nonland card in your hand into removal or a shot straight to your opponent.
Round 2: I don't remember exactly what happened...possibly land screw. My record sheet shows that I failed to wound my opponent at all in game 1, though. Games 2 and 3 I won, however. Both were pretty close, and both prominently featured Knollspine Invocation as the instrument of victory. I began to wish I didn't have so many low-cost cards in my deck. Also, I had an unfortunate tendency to draw too many land once the Invocation was in play, and in particular Game 2 I only barely won, and only because I managed to draw a card with a cost of 3 or more on the last turn before I would have been killed.
Round 3: Ah, this was one of my favorite games, because I finally got to use my Spawnwrithe. For 2G, you get a 2/2 with Trample and "Whenever Spawnwrithe deals combat damage to a player, put a token into play that's a copy of Spawnwrithe." I'd drawn it too late during previous games to be worth playing, and thrown it at least once to Knollspine Invocation. This time, I got to play it on turn 3 when all my opponent had was a 1/1, and he failed to play a creature the turn after I got it. That meant almost certain victory right there. I hit him and made a copy. The next turn, he couldn't block either of them, and I went up to 4 Spawnwrithes. At that point, he realized the full implications of what was happening...it hadn't registered to him before that the copies would also make copies. His next turn he managed to deal with 2 of them, but it was too late by them, particularly in light of the additional threats I played to back up the Spawnwrithes. Game 2 I just poured on the doom, and even managed to undo most of the damage he did to me using my Kitchen Finks. No Knollspine Invocation needed that round.
Round 4: Round 3 had been easier than rounds 1 and 2, and I was feeling optimistic. So much so, in fact, that I didn't offer the intentional draw to my opponent, and decided to play it out. I won the first game with no trouble, but then things went very poorly in game 2. I though again about offering the intentional draw, but I knew I could beat him, based on how Game 1 went. Alas, I drew way too many land in Game 3, and not enough things to do with it, and ended up losing.
Too bad the weekend had to end on a down note, but at least my record still got me 4 packs, and the weekend taken as a whole was still a lot of fun. My good records overall meant I got enough stuff as prizes to make the high initial expense more worthwhile. I hope I don't have to wait over a year to get to do one of these again. I'm dimly optomistic that the last time they had tournaments in Boxborough it was for back-to-back sets. I'm hoping that they venue in Boston is booked in the summer, and Eventide will have its prerelease in Boxborough as well.
