SoI Prerelease - How'd You Do?

[Tinfish]

Share your tales of victory and/or defeat! What went well, what seems strong, what's busted, and what's just funny?

To my complete surprise, I ended up going 4-0. I didn't pull anything amazing, would've been happy to win one match ... ended up going all the way. My deck:

Click to Expand

Ulvenwald Hydra (foily!)
Paranoid Parish-Blade x2
Intrepid Provisioner
Moonlight Hunt
Unruly Mob
Thornhide Wolves
Ulvenwald Mysteries
Puncturing Light
Strength of Arms x2
Town Gossipmonger
Hanweir Militia Captain
Silverfur Partisan
Angelic Purge
Veteran Cathar
Hinterland Logger
Nearheath Chaplain
Ethereal Guidance
Always Watching
Duskwatch Recruiter
Neglected Heirloom
Pack Guardian
Plains x8
Forest x9

The rares in my pool were:

Click to Expand

Markov Dreadknight
Cryptolith Rite
Game Trail
Descend Upon the Sinful
Ulvenwald Hydra
Hanweir Militia Captain
Silverfur Partisan
Always Watching

My promo card was Avacyn's Judgment.

I wanted to go white-red or green-red, but while I had some decent red cards (including Fiery Temper x2) there just weren't enough to make it run; just by number of playables green-white was the clear winner. With a lot of bear-sized creatures I was able to go under most durdle-y decks, and just outnumber a lot of decks, pushing through with unexpected combat tricks.

The deck was unhappily split between werewolves and humans, which meant that Intrepid Provisioner didn't always have a target to buff, and Moonlight Hunt didn't always have wolves to punch with - it sat in my hand for an entire game once while the werewolves just didn't show up.

I remain unconvinced that Delerium is any good as a mechanic. Unless you're specifically building a deck to turn it on (Vessel of Nascency seems good for that) I saw it activated twice, in a match-up between a pair of control decks. This made the Paranoid Parish-Blades essentially just vanilla 3/2s for 2W, which was ... fine, but unexciting.

Ulvenwald Mysteries either did a lot or did stone nothing, but then this wasn't the green-blue investigate deck (which I still want to make). Strength of Arms was a blowout occasionally (an opponent put Skin Invasion on my Hinterland Logger to force it to attack into his blockers. I went in and ate his blocker with Strength of Arms!) but the second ability triggered once and did nothing; With only one equipment it just wasn't relevant. I suspect that the "produces a human conditionally" effect is just stone worse than Lithomancer's Focus.

With the necessity of tapping down another creature, Town Gossipmonger didn't seem all that good. Silverfur Partisan seems like a good fit in the werewolf deck, but didn't do much in this one. Neglected Heirloom never transformed, though it was useful when it showed up. Intrepid Provisioner is just a very good card - when it came down on curve it was a savage beating.

Hanweir Militia Captain was good, but not great - it either sat around doing nothing, or transformed and took removal to the face. A solid bear-with-an-upside, though, of which this deck had a lot.

The real stars of the show were Always Watching and Ulvenwald Hydra. Always Watching's anthem effect was super relevant, and the vigilance meant that it turned off the black sorcery which destroys a tapped creature. The hydra was just a bomb, getting bigger and bigger and beating in unstoppably. In one game I had it up to a 13/13 with Always Watching and Neglected Heirloom (how does a hydra hold a sword? Don't question it), abyssing my opponent every turn until he ran out of creatures to cast.

Werewolves seem super strong. They don't always flip reliably, but I only saw them flip back once. Humans are also strong if you can get the right ones; they seem quite synergistic.

I'm about to go open my prize packs - I'll let you know if I pull anything bonkers!

Edit - the rares from my prize packs were Tireless Tracker (seems very good in the Investigate deck), Flameblade Angel, Harness the Storm (meh), Eerie Interlude (ehh) ... and The Gitrog Monster. I pulled Gitters!

[Booster]

Went 4-0 at my first of three, with a sweet R/W build.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/rw-nahiri-2/

As you can see, I opened a Nahiri, and she was an all-star. Other spicy rares not in my deck included my promo, Prized Amalgam, and Choked Estuary. Overall, this seems like a very fun limited environment.

Also, someone at my event won 3 games off the back of Triskaidekaphobia. It was a glorious thing to see.

[RadioshackRaider]

Went 2-1 to come third at my first of two pre-releases this weekend. Played an okay R/G deck that splashed white for Angel of Deliverance and the green human that can make other human double-strike. With 2 Warped landscapes and two Stoic Builders I was pretty happy to only play 2 plains. I had some Delirium aside from my angel, and I managed to trigger it fairly often. My last match was pretty close, but my opponent had all the removal to deal with my creatures. Oh well. My pool itself was pretty uninteresting and weak compared to everyone else at the event, but I got the Hydra that gets a land when it ETBs so I'm not too bothered about it. I'll add the decklist for this pool and tomorrows when I can.

[eostby]

Played in a midnight prerelease at my local store. Went 1-2 with UW Mediocre stuff, featuring promo Startled Awake. I tried to make a red/anything deck come together (primarily because I opened a Sin Prodder and wanted to use it), but I just didn't have enough to make Vamps, Wolves, or UR (too few creatures, all), and didn't really consider RW because I didn't really have any synergy there. A bunch of people at my store opened Nahiri and Arlinn Kords (some people opened both of them, which is insane), but no reports of either Sorin or the Gitrog Monster anywhere.

Things I "learned": Red is by far the best color in SOI, and if you can't play red, you'd better hope you've got the nut Zombies deck, or you're gonna have a bad time. Depending on your deck, Delirium can either be the easiest thing in the world to achieve or borderline impossible without help. Investigate seems like a decent mechanic, but I don't really know how strong it actually is, even having played with it. And finally, Odric, Lunarch Marshal is just as good to play with as I suspected he would be.

[fantôme]

Went 4-1 with W/G fliers/equipment, 3rd place overall. This set is so much fun, everybody I played against and deck-built with had lots of cool stuff going on in their pools, and everybody had a bunch of cards they were excited about for their respective constructed environment of choice.

Things I learned from my deck: a lonely Odric is the saddest thing, Hanweir Militia Captain gets out of hand very quickly, Topplegeist is my new favourite pet card.

Things I learned from other decks: combat tricks in B/R will indeed kill you out of nowhere, the Clue deck is real, and synergy is more important than bonkers rares (imho).

[Kapol]

Went 5-1 the first prerelease. I went U/B agro with black delver, relentless dead, the 3/3 skulk that lets you ditch your hand for a new one, the 4-mana instant bounce rare, the 5-mana counter rare, Prized Amalgamation, and good zombie synergy. Multiple games I was able to drop the 3/3 skulk spirit on turn two or play black delver, play the zombie horse with 2B, Discards two cards: Put it onto the battlefield tapped' and just kill them by swinging seven on turn 4. Also lucked into pulling two Thing From The Ices, which I didn't play due to weirdly low count of instants and sorceries. I was really just agro value. It was a ton of fun, but it has a problem I'll mention in a minute.

Today was much worse. Promo was Slayer's Plate. Got another Slayer's Plate. Got two Triskaidekaphobia that I couldn't even play due to bad black. I got some decent white rares, but nothing special. The Plates made me go W/G evasion since my blue didn't really offer much extra. I went 3-2, and just couldn't keep up. My card pool was just bad, I think. Like it wasn't even 'here's three or four decent colors to work with.' It was 'here's a couple decent cards and a lot of chaff.' But it was fun anyways. Got to make the 2/5 spider a 10/9 thanks to two plates on it.

But both my pools had one major problem between them. I got no really good removal. During the first one, I had the sleep enchantment and Throttle, which were fine. But I didn't get a single bounce spell, or murderous compulsion, or anything that the deck desperately wanted. I would have even played the 5 mana investigate bounce if I'd gotten it. The second deck had literally no way to interact with my opponent's creatures. Not a single spell in white or green. Red had the 'fight yourself' spell, black had dead weight, blue had a couple of the lesser bounce spells (the five mana one mostly), and... literally nothing else. I had a couple medium combat tricks. But all and all, the deck had to win by giving fliers +4/+2 and hoping they weren't able to outrace me.

I'll admit, I'm annoyed by how screwed I've been on removal. It feels like both decks would have been substantially better with even some of the common ones. But the decks still played well and were fun to pilot. So despite some lackluster pools, I was happy with how things turned out.

[Booster]

Just got home from my second prerelease... won again. Much larger turnout, 21 people this time, went 4-1, came first on tie breakers. Went RG this time. So far I am LOVING SOI, lets see what tomorrow brings

[square1]

Went to two Saturday events. Went 1-2 drop playing GB werewolves in the first event and 3-0-1 with RB madness/delirium in my second event. Got to play with both Ever After and Seasons Past in the first event, which were both quite fun, but the deck didn't have much removal, so got stomped by Sorin and then Avacynian Missionaries with no way to really deal. RB deck in the second event didn't have any bombs, but lots of madness vampires and lots of murder, so just killed their stuff and beat down with cheap aggressive vampires. Did get a promo Elusive Tormentor, which was quite the beating.

[Omega Lairon]

Went to a couple of events today. On the whole, good times were had, but there were a few small annoyances. The big one is that of the 8 rounds, *half* of them were just off-the record fun games since my official opponents had dropped out without bothering to inform the store owners. It's like... I get that life's messy and scheduling and all that, but if you must leave (or are just standard / modern players who don't even care and just want to pick up the boosters and f*** off), then at least have the decency to say something so your would-be opponents aren't just left awkwardly sitting around waiting.

(what? MtG players are socially awkward? Who'd have thunk it!?)

*ahem*


POOL 1 highlights:

Click to Expand

Promo:
Angel of Deliverance

Rares:
Flameblade Angel
Descend upon the Sinful
Westvale Abbey // Ormendahl, Profane Prince
Odric, Lunarch Marshal
Devil's Playground
Triskaidekaphobia
Tireless Tracker

Shinies:
Nahiri's Machinations
Fork in the Road

Double-Face Cards:
Kessig Forgemaster // Flameheart Werewolf
Avacynian Missionaries // Lunarch inquisitors
Solitary Hunter // One of the Pack
Hinterland Logger // Timber Shredder (x2)
Autumnal Gloom // Ancient of the Equinox

So the first pool I opened was pretty uninspiring across the board - no one colour really stood out. I ended up just cramming the two "best" options together (W/R) and actually winding up with a halfway decent pile of cards, albeit one without any real synergy. Basically the game plan was "do Boros stuff and maybe get Ormendahl and Odric on board at the same time, that would be neat."

Record: 1-1-0 (2x bye)

The deck performed reasonably well, but no, I never did get to flip the abbey. Shame that. Odric did at least see some game time... not much of it though, and there was never anything with an ability on board for him to interact with. *shrug*. Basically, a lot of little neat interactions which never paid off, but apparently brute forcing it was good enough?


POOL 2 highlights:

Click to Expand

Promo:
Foreboding Ruins

Rares:
Confirm Suspicions
Eerie Interlude
Nephalia Moondrakes
Hanweir Militia Captain // Westvale Cult Leader
Falkenrath Gorger
Cryptolith Rite
Foreboding Ruins

Shinies:
Skeleton Key
Vampire Noble

Double-Face Cards:
Aberrant Researcher // Perfected Form
Neglected Heirloom // Ashmouth Blade
Kindly Stranger // Demon-Possessed Witch
Gatstaf Arsonists // Gatstaf Ravagers
Duskwatch Recruiter // Krallenhorde Howler
Solitary Hunter // One of the Pack

A similar story to the first pool - but the difference was this time, the rares were a little more focused for the colours I ended up playing (W/U). As an added bonus, the Militia Captain in particular gave me a great focus for the rest of the deck - namely to go wide in general, and huge specifically on this one creature. Helping with that were cards such as "Hope Against Hope", which essentially doubled the Cult Leader's effect, and True-Faith Censer / Ashmouth Blade artifact combo to make it nigh untouchable. Failing that, the blue half of the deck had it's own weird thing going on involving spirits, flying stuff, and lots and lots of Clue tokens. Yet despite that, it felt oddly in sync with the primary plan (or at the very least, I was never directly impeded by the B plan). And yet despite that...

Record: 0-2-0 (2x bye)

I guess it doesn't matter how good the blue cards were if I still have no clue (heh) how to play blue. To be fair, during the bye rounds I had some friendly games where I was a lot more dominant. In particular, living the dream of transforming both the Militia Captain and the Forgotten Heirloom simultaneously and ending up with a 13/12 utter monstrosity running amok.

Still, I think I learned a lot about how the Blue's Clues deck is supposed to work. I even managed the rather impressive 5 clue combo with Confirm Suspicions while both Trail of Evidence and Erdwal Illuminator were on the field. So that was juicy.



...And of course, it just wouldn't be a pre-release without the traditional tearing open of booster packs for next to no value, because f*** it, it feels fun.

BOOSTERS highlights:

Click to Expand

Rares:
Foreboding Ruins
Descend upon the Sinful
Asylum Visitor
Eerie Interlude
Diregraf Colossus
To the Slaughter
Thing in the Ice // Awoken Horror
Inexorable Blob
Corrupted Grafstone

Shinies:
Convicted Killer // Branded Howler
Hound of the Farbogs

Double-Face Cards:
Gatstaf Arsonists // Gatstaf Ravagers (x2)
Convicted Killer // Branded Howler (x2)
Town Gossipmonger // Incited Rabble
Duskwatch Recruiter // Krallenhorde Howler
Accursed Witch // Infectious Curse
Hinterland Logger // Timber Shredder

[Antitonic]

Finished off a couple of prereleases that saw me going 2-1-1 (the draw would've been a win for me in the next turn) and 3-1. This is immensely surprising to me, as I felt my pools were absolute garbage.

Pool and Deck 1 - Jund Life
I only really had the one on-colour playable rare: To The Slaughter. I just ended up getting too much aggro out for what most of the decks were trying to do at the top end? Who even knows?

Pool and Deck 2 - Jund Life: This Time It's Red
I honestly should've cut the Deathcap Cultivator for a Stoic Builder or Olivia's Bloodsworn. I never saw it, and I don't think this is the right deck for it. As you can see, there's a Rare AND a Mythic in this deck. It also felt a lot better to play with. The only loss was due to mana problems. I mulled to 3 in two games, and 4 in one. And still got screwed with either flood or screw. Good times had by none.

After the insufferable dredge that was Zendikar (in my opinion), I'm actually looking forward to drafting this set, and maybe even playing some games.

[RadioshackRaider]

Okay, so Pre-release 20 didn't happen, and I'm kinda okay with that. The pool I got for it was kinda bad. So I'm just gonna put pool number one here and go over the games I played with it. List as follows:

Angel of Deliverance
Ulvenwald Hydra
Kessig Dire Swine
Watcher in the Web
Hulking Devil
Intrepid Provisioner
Mad Prohpet
Silverfur Partisan
Stoic Builder
Bloodmad Vampire
Convicted Killer
Howlpack Wolf
Veteran Cathar
Ember-Eye Wolf
Hinterland Logger
Moldgraf Scavenger
Deathcap Cultivator
Village Messenger

Reduce to Ashes
Inner Struggle
Vessel of Votality
Rabid Bite
Lightning Axe

Warped Landscape x2
Plains x2
Mountain x5
Forest x6

I decided to splash whit because I had two of the Warped Landscape and a lot of humans in my deck, so giving the double strike with Veteran Cathar seemed good. Then I saw the Angel of Deliverance and decided to splash it also. The pool was fairly weak, but I managed to come second so whatever. Only reason I didn't come first was a Jace ultimate while I was top decking. Still got to play some real sweet games of Magic so the day was good. Kinda sad I didn't get to actually play a pre-release, but I got two packs for showing up and I've walked away from the weekend with most of what I need for mono red Standard, so I'm happy.

[Kapol]

Did a third prerelease. Got some decent pulls, including an Olivia. Ended up with a decent W/G with a splash of red. I didn't have much power. Instead, my plan was flood the board with creatures, then use one of my two Tenacities or the +2/+1 sorcery to win.

I went 3-0-1 and won the 'for fun' match, didn't drop a single game. Then went into cut to top four and my deck completely screwed me over. Got 10 lands game one and five spells, and then mulled to five and got half of my non-creature spells. Opponent had answers for the two creatures I did draw. It was rough.

Also, I got pretty bad promos all three nights Eerie Interlude is meh at best. Slayer's Plate is solid in limited, but bad elsewhere I think. And my last promo was Harness the Storm. A cute little card, but not one I wanted to see as my promo.

Overall though, had a lot of fun this weekend

[Ladsworld]

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/rakdos-s ... rerelease/
In the first round I had Angel of Deliverance in the deck, but I cut it for Hound of the Farbogs because 8 mana is a LOT. I had great fixing with 3 on-color duals, so I splashed white for 2x Pious Evangle and Puncturing light, because my pool had barely any removal. Went 3-1, got third, opened Eerie Interlude, Odric, Prized Amalgam, and Fortified Village.
What I Learned:
Pious Evangel is NUTS. Especially when you have 2 out and cast From Under the Floorboards to gain 9 life and get 3 2/2s.
If you have enough card draw, werewolves aren't a problem.
Insolent Neonate is great.
Thing in the Ice + Uncaged Fury is a beating.
Skin Invasion is good, but worse than you think.
Wolf of Devil's Breach is just a 5/5 beater most of the time, but that is fine.

[demiteddybear]

Well I was amazed and went 3-1, at my only other 2 prerelease I never won more than one. So my list was a BW deck with murderous compulsions (couple of those), accursed witch, dead weight,and a mixture of spirit and zombie summons to gain life. My big notables were West Vale abbey (which was my promo) and splashing green for Sigarda.

So my first game in my first round and I summon Ormemdahl (spelling?) And completely trashed the opponent with it, I was mildly disappointed that my opponent had countered Odric so I couldn't get all the bonuses.

My second was nothing special, the first round my opponent only got half his mana and the second round I managed to get Sigarda and some spirits hitting in every round to win. A note here, I summoned the mukrot necropod who is a beast; this format is really small compared to BFZ so a 7/7 can do so much, I was able to keep back my opponent with the size of the slug while my fliers did damage.

My third match was against werewolves, the one I lost, we both had matches where we got mana screwed, and then in the last match I have all my murderous compulsions and he puts down....arlinn lord, no more tapped werewolves and my removal is hurt so badly.

Fourth match, my opponent plays mind wrack demon and doesn't hit delirium because I use shamble back to remove his creature and then stern constable to tap down the demon. He wins the second match with Avacyn, I get to turn Avacyn but don't bring up a murderous compulsion. However in the next match I have my stern constable and MC so in my turn after he brings down Avacyn again I tap down Avacyn and then get MC to kill her.

[demiteddybear]

Edit: whoops, double post

[Atifexe]

My girlfriend and I went to Yellowjacket's Two-Headed Giant prerelease, and our record for the day was 2 losses, a bye, and a last-round opponent concession because they were 0-3 and couldn't get packs either way, but we could thanks to the bye. We gave them each a pack and kept four for ourselves, each opening two.

Nevermind the way the games went, nevermind who won and who lost and how that last game we played for fun after our opponents conceded was more fun than every previous round combined, nevermind me calling and pulling Sorin in my first pack, the only part that sticks out in my mind right now is my girlfriend opening two packs with nearly identical sequences of cards - including Descend Upon the Sinful in each. I jokingly called it a few minutes earlier, but that was seriously hilarious.

[Phi]

I went 2-4. My pool had good cards in all colours, but not enough creatures. I went White-Black splashing Blue, and had Sorin and Mindwrack Demon carry my wins for the most part. I was flooding a lot, and had bad draws, but whatever

Oddly, quite a few people were in a situation similar to mine: opened ridiculous bombs but had bad draws. Sometimes the variance factor of the game really gets to me.

[phlip]

I have my full pool typed up, but I'm still waiting for my decklist repository of choice to add SOI... in the meantime, here is a photo of the deck which took me to 5-0 at my prerelease.

[edit] Full pool here. A bit late, but w/e.

Full tournament report behind collapse tags, because let's face it, no-one really wants to read that whole thing.

The Build - Click to Expand

I opened a lot of red/green rares (plus a promo Eerie Interlude I forgot to put in that photo). But my red commons/uncommons were pretty weak, and I looked at my rares and even though there were a bunch of them, they weren't that amazing. Devils' Playground is good, certainly, but it's not a bomb. Goldnight Castigator definitly is strong... as effectively a 4/5 flhaste for 4 with a pretty major downside... but it's not enough on its own to drag me into red. And Falkenrath Gorger looks fun, but my RG build didn't really have many discard outlets, and anyway it only included one other vampire, and it already has madness.

My black, on the other hand, looked pretty sweet. Decent removal, plenty of solid creatures, my other rare. Plus I had the BG dual land and the UG dual land, which made it really easy to splash for Altered Ego. Early black value cards like Ghoulcaller's Accomplice and Rancid Rats let me beat in if my opponent stumbles, but play defense if my opponent gets and early start and hold the ground until I get my big green beef down and out-midrange my opponent's board.

Other considerations: Warped Landscape seems... bad in a two-colour deck, it's certainly no Evolving Wilds... being usable for mana the turn it comes in is not worth the additional 2 it costs to go fetch a coloured source. But with a splash I think it's playable... it beats running a second Island, but only barely. I ended up using it to fetch my splash colour once, which was nice, but awkward... and once to fetch a Swamp when I was stuck on only Forests, which really sucked, because the one thing you don't want to have to do when you're crimped on land is spend 3 mana to not affect the board. But then, if it was just another Island, then I wouldn't have gotten any black mana that game at all, which would have been worse.

My deck turned out to be really low on synergy... Madness is in black but not green, Investigate shenanigans are in green but not black, so I didn't really get to play much with either. In my potentially-playables I had maybe 2 or 3 discard outlets, and 2 madness spells... not enough of either to warrant running the other. Sinister Concoction and Macabre Waltz (which I still can't hear the name of without thinking of Danse Macabre, and then of Jonathan Creek...) were both out, being not enough value without some madness spells to discard... on the same hand, Twins of Maurer Estate was out without a way to discard it at least a reasonable percentage of the time. Murderous Compulsion stayed in, though, as even without being able to instant-speed it with madness, it's still a good card.

On the green side, I ran Graf Mole as my 23rd card essentially just as a 2G 2/4, which isn't amazing, but it held its own. Never gained life off the thing, and only had two cards in the deck that could investigate.

Where green and black do overlap is delerium... but I didn't really have any Delerium cards that made me want to go out of my way to enable it. I certainly could have... the aforemenetioned Sinister Concoction and Vessel of Nascency could have gotten an enchantment into the bin quite easily, and adding a discard outlet or two could have gotten a land in the bin, but I didn't think it was worth it. As a result I only got a delerium activation once, when I was already way ahead and didn't really need it.

On the whole, though, I think the deck was quite strong, and I was very happy with it.

The Matches - Click to Expand

Round 1 was against a kid who seemed to be rather new to the game... didn't know a bunch of how the game worked. But, on the other hand, he had both Arlinn Kord and Nahiri, the Harbinger and was running both, so good for him. Beat Arlinn in the second game, but it was a lot of work to do so... he never drew Nahiri. Tried to be nice and friendly with the new kid, but still, it wasn't really a fair fight, and won 2-0.

Round 2 was against a UB deck that seemed pretty similar to mine - we had quite a few rats trading against rats in this matchup. His finale was Thing in the Ice, but unfortunately never got it up due to getting very heavily mana flooded twice. I on the other hand only got a little bit mana flooded, and my deck was built to have a use for late-game mana with the Ghoulcaller's Accomplices to grind. Got to play Altered Ego for X=4, copying One of the Pack... turns out an 8-mana vanilla 9/10 is a pretty good deal against an opponent on 11 lands and a Thing in the Ice that still has 3 counters on it. Winning against mana troubles always feels bad, but I'll still take it, 2-0.

Round 3 was against BR. Tended to be quite aggressive, but kept running into my 2-drops. Game 1 I had to race against Elusive Tormentor, and that card is definitely real. One aspect I didn't quite realise until I was in the game is that they can flip it to give it hexproof in response to spells, so as long as they have the mana up and a card in hand they have threat-of-activation protecting it from removal. I had my Murderous Compulsion in-hand basically the entire time the Tormentor was doing it's thing, and never could use it. But my old friends One of the Pack and Altered-Ego-copying-One-of-the-Pack swung the race, and eventually opponent was having to block with the Tormentor and then flip it to get indestructible, which isn't what you really want to be doing (you're still down a card, just like chumping, and you have to attack with it to flip it back before you can do it again). Second game I had to face down Morkut Necropod with, you guessed it, One of the Pack and Altered-Ego-copying-One-of-the-Pack... neither of them quite big enough to take down a 7/7 (the original was a 5/6, the copy was a 6/7) but I had my Might Beyond Reason, so I was attacking anyway. He could tell there was a trick, so he wasn't blocking with the 7/7... but he couldn't attack with it either, as it was holding back the rest of my board. Eventually he was forced by life-totals to block with it, had to sac a land, died to the combat trick, and the game was basically over. 2-0.

Round 4 was against a WG weenie strategy with a ton of investigate cards. Game 1 he went wide, voltroned up a flyer, and chipped away at me and there wasn't much I could do about it. He had a Graf Mole with a +1/+1 counter on it that he put Gryff's Boon onto... to make a 4/5 flyer. Meanwhile I'm staring at Throttle in my hand, being sad that it wasn't something slightly better. I end up having to burn the Throttle on a 1/1 spirit from Not Forgotten wearing some sort of equipment... which made me sad, and then I died to the Graf Mole anyway. At this point I did my only sideboarding of the night: out came Vessel of Malignity (even with a lot of investigate procs, he was regularly hellbent) and To the Slaughter (edicts being pretty unexciting against weenies) and in came Root Out (saw 2 equipment and 2 auras in game 1) and Sinister Concoction (I really wanted more point removal, and if it's killing a voltronned flyer I'm less sad about having to discard). Game 2 progresses in a pretty ordinary fashion except that the game is ended by me sacrificing the Sinister Concoction by discarding Murderous Compulsion for madness, to kill my opponent's only 2 cretures, and add enchantment and sorcery to my graveyard to turn on delerium for my Inexorable Blob to attack for exactsies. Game 3 I don't remember much about, except that it was another case of land flood for my opponent. 2-1.

Round 5 was against BR, with a heavy madness theme. Game 1 is the game where I kept two forests and a Warped Landscape, which I eventually had to use to fetch a swamp... but my opponent had mulled to 5, so neither of us were doing much of interest, and we were both stuck on 3 for some time, and my larger collection of 2 drops got me the early lead, and then after we'd both drawn out of the land screw, it started to be a real game. Toward the end, he started getting fancy, using Macabre Waltz to bring back Incorrigible Youths and another decent creature, then pitching the Youths to madness them in... which was nice, except the next turn I drew the island I needed for Altered Ego... and I'm thinking "well, I can pass the turn, then cast the Ego copying the backside of a werewolf yet again" but then I realise I can just copy the Youths, with haste, and with enough +1/+1 counters to be lethal and force the chump from the original Youths... get through with my day-side werewolves, get opponent down to 1, with basically no options. So I did that instead. The only time the entire night that my Altered Ego copied something other than One of the Pack. Second game, opponent got mana screwed, while I topped out at 5, got down and then transformed both One of the Pack and Werewolf of Ancient Hunger (the latter, thanks to my opponent's mana screw, being a 9/9 vigilance trample) and steamrollered. That was also the only game I got Ulvenwald Mysteries online and generating clues, and was the only time all night I actually got to sacrifice a clue token. It feels good. 2/0.

All in all, a good night, and not bad for not having really played Magic in months (and not having played on any regular basis for over a year)...

[The Martini]

3-1 at 2-Headed Giant with my 10-year old daughter (her first organized event). We had a great time, and she is the BIGGEST LUCKSACK EVER when opening packs

Ended up with her in red-green werewolves (not great in 2hg, but not the worst) with Burn From Within, Sage of Ancient Lore (great in 2hg if he flips), Hermit of the Natterknolls, and NAHIRI (splashed with two white-red duals and the creature that taps itself and another for any color). She also packed some combat tricks and what little red damage spells we had.

I was in black-white humans/goodstuff. Odric (he's SO GOOD), Thallia's Lieutenant (had lots of humans but never her and them at the same time), From Under the Floorboards (great at all times!), Westvale Abbey (with zombie tokens and spirit tokens, but never had to/got to use it), Avacynn (WOOOOO!) and Sorin (his +1 is STUPID GOOD, especially in 2hg).

Game 1 we both kept reasonable hands - she had 4 lands, but decent plays, I had no white, but 4 playable cards. She drew nothing but land, I drew nothing but white spells. It wasn't a non-game, but it also wasn't a real contest either.

Game 2 we won a very tricky, huge board state brawl, stabilizing a bad situation with the now-infamous +3/+1 and lifelink and +1/+1 double strike to do 18 and gain 18, then surprise Avacynn, then barely pulling off the win thanks to Odric giving my guys first strike, meaning they died before the rest of their blocks gained them life from their cultist.

Game 3 was vs. two players with a ton of removal and control. Empty board through 20+ turns. We won via Sorin flipping a 5-drop one turn before the blue-green player decked himself (clues FOR DAAAYS).

Game 4 was vs. two very very aggressive decks - low-drop humans + Avacynn and madness vampires. We went to 11 before stabilizing and then just wrecked them from there. They were also 2 and 1 by that point, so it had obviously worked before, but there's a good reason that you don't play a ton of one-drops.

6 packs each! Good job on her first event and she had a blast.

[ebMusicMan]

I ended up 3-5 over two days (1-3 and 2-2).
Day 1: Pool & Deck
Day 2: Pool & Deck

Day one was a midnight release, played RG stuff. The highlight was two Flameblade Angel which really put in work when I could get them down. I had the final match won with them until my opponent topdecked a Sleep Paralysis Overall I was pretty disappointed with my performance, I missed so many triggers and misplayed a bunch, I don't know if my record would have been any better but such is life.

Day two I had a GW humans theme going on. I feel like I played a lot better and was pretty close to winning my final match to pull out a 3-1 but just couldn't find enough of my removal to deal with my opponent's big threats.

Prize payout was a pack per win, the only thing I really got of note out of my three packs was a Sigarda. If anyone has the inclination to look through my pools and decks and make comments I would be appreciative. I'm comfortable blaming my losses on punts instead of deck building but I'm still pretty inexpeienced at both

[4dSwissCheese]

So I did three of them, went 2-1 in all three, winning 15 packs total after various splits. The most interesting pool was yesterday's. Promo Jace, Nahiri, Startled Awake, lots of madness, but not a lot of removal or good creatures. As such, the games I won were via mill (x3), Jace ultimate, and stealing an opponent's Avacyn via madnessed Welcome to the Fold. Such goofy fun.

[Randus2003]

now that this set has finally hit MTGO (and the fact that my LGS went under ) I finally got to play w/ these cards and god was it fun...4 of the 5 (the other 1 was quickly won do to my opponent having mana issues 2 games in a row) matches came down to extremely close (both players below 5) game 3s but in the end I came out of it 5-0 with this pile .

Click to Expand

FYI - promo Avacyn is extra broken.

[hacofo]

First prerealease I played today is at 0-4. (but at least i've got to game 3 every Round)
So not a good day so far.