Going Infinite, October 21st
Alrighty! We're starting to break even fishes! This week we tested out my take on a fan-submitted deck, Impact Tremors, on Monday and went with the simple deck, Green Stompy, on Wednesday. Surprisingly, we managed to go three two in both leagues. So, without further ado, let's start with the recap.
This deck did so much better than I had hoped and I couldn't be much happier. The idea being we use a suite of fog effects and the ability to recycle said effects while sneaking in damage over time with our tremors. In an ideal world, we can get one or more Impact Tremors onto the field while playing our creatures for value or fog effects. In the fog slot, we are running three Stonehorn Dignitary that we can get extra usage out of using our Ephemerate package and Kor Skyfished alongside two Prismatic Strands and a playset of Kami of False Hope. We are running alongside the Kami a sometimes used card, Grim Harvest with the rare Recover mechanic. What does that all mean? Well, if we have six mana, with two of it being black and one white, we can cycle and re-use our Kami every single turn for the remainder of the game unless they kill it on our turn. Even then, we can STILL get it back and keep the train going. Not to mention it guaranteeing triggers for our tremors. Since we are running Ephemerate we are naturally running Archaeomancer so we can keep recycling one for the whole game if we want to. The last two creatures are ways of us staying in the game. With Soul Warden, we are able to stay out of the red zone until we can set a lock up and sometimes just get completely out of range of our opponent killing us even if they manage to break a lock later. Then for some extra card advantage, we are also running three Palace Sentinels which work great with our no combat damage plan. The only artifact spell we are running is Arcum's Astrolabe to both net some card draw if we need to but more importantly, filter our mana to what we need. The last spell in the deck is Stream of Thought. This might seem weird, but with how our deck excels at locking the board down, we oddly enough don't have removal, so sometimes we need to just mil our opponents out. This plan actually works great against control and life gain decks, since replicate can effectively ignore counterspells by just copying it more times than they can counter and then cycling them through the deck while milling our opponent out. The sideboard, to be blunt, is a bit of a grab-bag that I hastily threw together, but the idea is we have an answer for go wide decks in Holy Light, the graveyard in Faerie Macabre and the rest is mostly up to what you feel is right beyond that. That explanation out of the way let's break down the games.
Match one, we... sort of won? Technically, our opponent was going to win in game one, but then they conceded the entire match so... yay? It was familiars, which we just can't answer pre-board. Post-board, we'd have gotten to bring in three Red Elemental Blasts and four Faerie Macabre so I think we might have been fine games two and three, but we will never know now.
In our second match, we ended up losing, but only time. We took game one by the grace of tons of lifegain and a double Impact Tremors on the field. On the last turn of the game, we domed the opponent for a whole ten damage by just recasting and bouncing a single Kor Skyfisher, a line I almost didn't even think of! Game two we kept a very sketchy hand and ended up giving the opponent the Monarchy, which led to us losing out to them just drawing a bunch of cards over time. Game three, we timed out. There is no way to get around it, we lost to time and me trying to fix an audio issue during the first two games. At the very end, we even managed to lock them down and we just needed a way to bounce or draw one of our Kor Skyfisher and we would have been able to tremor them out of the game.
Match three was burn. I'll keep this short and sweet, we don't have enough life gain and interaction for burn. Going forward, I think I will drop the Martyr of Sands in the side for another Hallow and somehow fit in Blue Elemental Blast somehow to deal with the permanents.
Match four was a hoot against a Mystical Teachings deck. Game one we kind of lucked out with our opponent getting a bit behind on mana and by the time they got the lands we were just too far ahead. Game two the same thing sort of happened with the main difference being we got the Monarchy and the opponent just didn't have a way to steal it back. We were able to just play super conservatively until we were just in a good position to beat them up.
Match five was the most grindy thing ever! We managed to steal game one by just abusing Tremors with our creatures and finishing them off with multiple castings of Kor Skyfisher. Game two was even funnier for me at least. We milled them out! The secondary, secret win-con of the deck. We locked them down so they just couldn't really kill us, fogging, blocking, blinking and gaining life while they just couldn't hit a Pestilence to wipe the board to try and make a come back. The fact that we milled one of them over and they discard one early in the game makes it so much sweeter.
In the end, we got a single chest with an Ugin in it, so not the best chest for raw value.
Wednesday we played the simple, fun, and powerful deck of Green Stompy! This deck is simple; we play effective creatures, we pump them up, we get in. Can't get much more simplistic than that.
Match one, we just blitzed the opponent in game one, getting under the control aspects of a brew of Jeskai. Game two though our opponent just kept us from ever getting any steam going. In the third game, we managed to just land a devastating and large Silhana Ledgewalker that they just couldn't answer. That one Ledgewalker was enough to beat the opponent into submission.
Match two was a rough tumble and drawn out mirror match. To be entirely honest, it was a mixture of goldfishing and using Vines of Vastwood as effectively as possible to pull the win off for the match.
Match three we got wrecked by some classic RW aggro. Our deck just unable to deal with their removal and their flyers. We fought as hard as we could, but in the end, they killed us so bad.
Match four was almost the same as match two. Yes, it was a mirror match again. This time though, we largely played defense until we had a better offense than our opponent could hope to handle.
In the fifth round, we went one-two against a sweet black aggro deck. It just ran evasive, effect black creatures and a ton of removal with a top-end Gray Merchant of Asphodel. They didn't get to really play in game one, but after that, they just kept us from keeping the pressure on with their removal. Even then, in the third game, we were on decent draw away from stealing the game away.
Overall, a solid 3-2, so nothing to complain about.
Now, I know I didn't really go into much detail with the second league, but to be honest, it just isn't that interesting of a deck. You play creatures, pump, turn creatures sideways. I only ran it to show just how strong it can be with even just an unfamiliar player running it.
That's a wrap for the week then! Sure, it wasn't a big week, but it was a, technically, profitable week. With our rental costing 1.8 tix, we made 4.8 tix if we had just sold the chests as is so we'd have net gained 3 tix. It's just a matter of being able to consistently do such now. So, check back in Mondays and Wednesdays on Twitch and yell at me when I punt and laugh with/at me. Until next time, DISMISSED!
