Zvazda's M12 #12

So I think the deck is pretty sweet, it's a little removal light, but before we ran into tons of white in the games we felt like we had read the signals really well!

Do you get greedy and try to splash the fireball?  I felt like having the consistency was better.  I wish I had played a merfolk over my dignitary, I think.

M1G1 - we came really close, but just couldn't get there against a flameblast dragon.  We pacified it, he unsummoned it, we unsummoned it, he recast it, we aether adepted it, he recast it.  We ripped land and lost.

M1G2 - this game was super sick.  We o-ringed his dragon, traded a bunch of guys.  We stabilized in the air with our sphinx.  He tried to burn our sphinx, we negated it.  He mind controlled our azure mage, we mind controlled his drake FTW.

M1G3 - this match was a tempo battle.  He had double unsummon plus aether adept plus ice cage.  I had unsummon and frost breath to keep his flameblast from attacking long enough to get him to lethal next turn.  I cast my harbor serpent and am attacking for exactsies in the air and island walk next turn... But a mind control on our harbor serpent was the nail in our coffin.

      This was a bummer match to lose because I felt like if he hadn't drawn flameblast in either of the two games he won he wouldn't have won.  I also felt like I played really tight just to have a chance against flameblast.  Also, maybe I should have sided in the Fireball to have more ways to deal with the flameblast?  What do you think about that?

M2G1 - Well... do you keep this hand?

Here's the thing.  Since watching LSV and Simon I have been a less aggressive muller.  I think Marshall and Ryan tend to err on the side of more aggressive mulling so a couple months ago I was more aggressive as well.  Simon at Modern Magic talks about how much he thinks that extra card is worth and he likes to trust his deck to be good and perform the way he wants it to.  LSV also has taught me be a little more greedy with low on land hands because you are much likelier to rip into the couple lands you need than the steady stream of spells you need to stay in a game if you have a 4 or 5 lander.  The thing with this hand is if we hit any land in two draws we can drop two creatures.  If we draw a plains we get a pegasus.  Then we're hoping to get to our adept, frost breath and chasm drake.  I kept it and ripped 3 lands in a row.   He didn't even stand a chance.

Do you think that hands a keep?

M2G2 - This game had a tricky decision early.  On his turn 3 he attacked with his gideons lawkeeper into my Azure Mage.  I chose to block, thinking I was trading Azure mage for a stave off but it turned out I was trading azure mage for a mighty leap.  I think this was probably a misplay, but I'm not sure about that.  Do you block a lawkeeper with your azure mage when they have 3 open mana on turn 3?
He demystified our O-ring on one of his lawkeepers and it turns out it's really hard to beat two lawkeepers.  We tried really hard and got close, but he stabilized with Serra and ran us over.

M2G3 - Got lost.  But we won.

M3G1 - yeah.  We got greedy and kept a one lander, which turns out is ok when villains deck is really slow and sucks.  And by sucks, I mean has a bunch of crappy low drops plus primeval titan and garruk's horde.  Mind control on garruks horde + lawkeeper to tap the titan + chasm drake allowed us to pull out this ridiculous game.  We were full on control and simply outplayed villain.

M3G2 - T1 - Lawkeeper.  T2 - Pegasus. T3 - Benalish Veteran.  We were slowed down by his elixir and angel's mercy... but that's no big deal and was a perfect example why those cards are bad.  When he finally dropped his primeval titan we had our pacify ready.  Cast assault griffin.  Win with Mind Control, Unsummon and Frost Breath in hand.

LISTEN ALONG WITH ZACH


Music aficionados will have to wait because my buddy drafted over my shoulder again, so I was not listening to music this draft.