I finally was able to play Round 2, by sneakily downloading Cockatrice at work and playing the very nice mrbrightside (currently in Finland). Here's how it went down:
Game 1: We had our god draw, with Metalworker + 3 artifacts in the first 8 cards. He played Gravecrawler, I Chain Lightning'ed it. Metalworker stuck while he played Elite Vanguard and another 2/1 (Problack with flying? Odd card...) Fire Imp shot one and stabilized our life, and the Metalworker mana allowed for an Avalance Riders to kill his only black source, Sword of Fire+Ice, equip, swing. After casting Triskelion next turn, he scooped.
I probably should have sideboarded in Pyroclasm after seeing a ton of 1-2 drop creatures, but didn't change anything. Game 2 was epic.
Game 2: I had Metalworker, Triskelion, Fire Imp, Solemn and 3 Mountains, I think, and happily kept. Unfortunately, I had no plays the first two turns, and he went T1 Elite Vanguard, T2 Fledgling Djinn, T3 Grafted Wargear. So we were at 11 life before we cast anything. Fire Imp shot one and chumped the other. Avalanche Riders killed his only Swamp, which was the key play of the match. He ended up with 4 black 1-2 drops (and Undead Gladiator) in hand at the end! Still, I couldn't deal with the 5/3 Elite Vanguard easily, until Kher Keep saved us. I had been skeptical, but those Kobolds chumped like champs and saved our Bacon.
I got mana flooded, though, and wasn't putting on much pressure. Triskelion came out and shot another creature, I got in with a Blistering Firecat to get him down to 8. Then he drew another swamp and Gerrard's Verdict'ed me when I had two Mountains in hand. Arg! He went back up to 14.
Finally, I drew Sword of Fire and Ice, stuck it on Metalworker, and attacked with him and Triskelion. The Elite Vanguard died, and our board position looked good, with a sword-equipped (tapped) Triskelion with 1 counter on it and two 0/1 Kobolds to his empty board. On his turn, he said, "I think I got it." Reanimate my Firecat, equip it with the Wargear... and even if I make a Kobold, I can only block with three 0/3s and we are at 7 life, so he gets us exactly...
I say, yeah, you got me. No, wait!
And the almost overlooked Triskelion pings the Firecat before the equip. We laugh, he scoops. I have to say, I screwed up the Cockatrice interface about a dozen different ways, and would do stuff like ending my turn before making a Kobold or reequipping the Sword. mrbrightside was very, very easygoing and nice about everything.
We should have lost to a very fast WB deck like that. His hand at the end was Dark Confidant, Gravecrawler, Carnophage, Undead Gladiator, and another 2 drop. We needed perfect draws and lucky disruption to escape.
An exciting game two, and a game one that showed off the strength of our archetype. Congrats on piloting to a second win!
How cool to be in the finals. Good luck, and thanks for the updates. These are fun to read.
One thing that strikes me about these logs is how collectively powerful three FTKs are (imp, ftk, trisk). Although you'd think we'd struggle against the agro deck, instead we're getting value out of our early plays and extending the game.
Game 1: We had a very slow start. I mean, very, very slow. We had a suspended Gargadon, but Hicham wasn't doing much. I got stuck on two lands for about five turns... but still he wasn't doing much except playing lands and Mana Vault. Finally, I started to get some creatures, but everything got removed or countered. (Call of the Herd, Solemn Sim, Sword). He had enough mana to play Whispers of the Muse for 5 most endsteps. His hardcore UB control with thrice our mana was rough for us! Still, he didn't really have any threats.
I eventually got a Fire Imp and Avalanche Riders and an Elephant out, he countered the Gargadon as it unsuspended and got Morphling out. I got him down lowish, but Morphling was making it hard. Stomphowler took out a Phyrexian Arena and bashed him down to 10. Then Blistering Firecat got him down to 3. He played Juzan Djinn, attacked with Morphling to get me to 6. He went to 2, I chumped the Djinn leaving me with no creatures and 6 life. He goes down to 1. If I draw a creature the Djinn kills him... but I don't. A very slow, fun game.
Game 2 starts better for me, and he's just barely holding on. Our LD is working well, and I kill his only island with Riders, then Boom/Bust another. Still, he Smothers and Innocent Bloods my only threats, and he starts building up his mana while I'm not getting creatures. Eventually he Upheavals floating 4, but only gets a Talisman back down. I start aiming burn at his head, and he has to counter ZoZu and other threats as his life dwindles. Still, he gets Tombstalker, Snapcaster, and Venser out while I have no creatures, although he gets down to 3 life. I have two turns to end it... and am able to resolve a Triskelion to ping for exact damage. If he had a counter, we would have lost.
Game 3 was anticlimatic. He mulled to 5, and never got an island. I had lots of threats and a good curve, with Burning of Xinye to finish things off if he ever drew an island.
The first two games were fantastic, though. Our artifact tricks never showed up at all, and we were just able to squeak through.
Wow, it sounds like our back was against the wall both games, with a few late-game draws deciding things one way or the other. I'm glad we ended up with enough durable threats to win a long game against such a strong control deck.
It's also nice to see that we didn't need our combos to win, but could lean on the overall strength and efficiency of our cards.
I'm looking forward to checking out the other teams' drafts.
It's funny--our single best card that saved us again and again was Triskelion, and we only picked it by mistake--we didn't change our pick to Survival of the Fittest in time!
Yeah, I'm interested in how others drafted. The last two decks we faced were very, very streamlined for their archetype. I'm wondering how quickly they locked in.
I can't speak for Hicham's Team (I haven't read the Team B-H drafts yet), but our draft was an almost train wreck; luckily, Altaurus noticed we could go into aggro, and after a P2P5 Dark Confidant and a P2P7 (!) Grafted Wargear we were able to get enough playables in the end.
Game 1: We had our god draw, with Metalworker + 3 artifacts in the first 8 cards. He played Gravecrawler, I Chain Lightning'ed it. Metalworker stuck while he played Elite Vanguard and another 2/1 (Problack with flying? Odd card...) Fire Imp shot one and stabilized our life, and the Metalworker mana allowed for an Avalance Riders to kill his only black source, Sword of Fire+Ice, equip, swing. After casting Triskelion next turn, he scooped.
I probably should have sideboarded in Pyroclasm after seeing a ton of 1-2 drop creatures, but didn't change anything. Game 2 was epic.
Game 2: I had Metalworker, Triskelion, Fire Imp, Solemn and 3 Mountains, I think, and happily kept. Unfortunately, I had no plays the first two turns, and he went T1 Elite Vanguard, T2 Fledgling Djinn, T3 Grafted Wargear. So we were at 11 life before we cast anything. Fire Imp shot one and chumped the other. Avalanche Riders killed his only Swamp, which was the key play of the match. He ended up with 4 black 1-2 drops (and Undead Gladiator) in hand at the end! Still, I couldn't deal with the 5/3 Elite Vanguard easily, until Kher Keep saved us. I had been skeptical, but those Kobolds chumped like champs and saved our Bacon.
I got mana flooded, though, and wasn't putting on much pressure. Triskelion came out and shot another creature, I got in with a Blistering Firecat to get him down to 8. Then he drew another swamp and Gerrard's Verdict'ed me when I had two Mountains in hand. Arg! He went back up to 14.
Finally, I drew Sword of Fire and Ice, stuck it on Metalworker, and attacked with him and Triskelion. The Elite Vanguard died, and our board position looked good, with a sword-equipped (tapped) Triskelion with 1 counter on it and two 0/1 Kobolds to his empty board. On his turn, he said, "I think I got it." Reanimate my Firecat, equip it with the Wargear... and even if I make a Kobold, I can only block with three 0/3s and we are at 7 life, so he gets us exactly...
I say, yeah, you got me. No, wait!
And the almost overlooked Triskelion pings the Firecat before the equip. We laugh, he scoops. I have to say, I screwed up the Cockatrice interface about a dozen different ways, and would do stuff like ending my turn before making a Kobold or reequipping the Sword. mrbrightside was very, very easygoing and nice about everything.
We should have lost to a very fast WB deck like that. His hand at the end was Dark Confidant, Gravecrawler, Carnophage, Undead Gladiator, and another 2 drop. We needed perfect draws and lucky disruption to escape.
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How cool to be in the finals. Good luck, and thanks for the updates. These are fun to read.
One thing that strikes me about these logs is how collectively powerful three FTKs are (imp, ftk, trisk). Although you'd think we'd struggle against the agro deck, instead we're getting value out of our early plays and extending the game.
Here's how it played out.
Game 1: We had a very slow start. I mean, very, very slow. We had a suspended Gargadon, but Hicham wasn't doing much. I got stuck on two lands for about five turns... but still he wasn't doing much except playing lands and Mana Vault. Finally, I started to get some creatures, but everything got removed or countered. (Call of the Herd, Solemn Sim, Sword). He had enough mana to play Whispers of the Muse for 5 most endsteps. His hardcore UB control with thrice our mana was rough for us! Still, he didn't really have any threats.
I eventually got a Fire Imp and Avalanche Riders and an Elephant out, he countered the Gargadon as it unsuspended and got Morphling out. I got him down lowish, but Morphling was making it hard. Stomphowler took out a Phyrexian Arena and bashed him down to 10. Then Blistering Firecat got him down to 3. He played Juzan Djinn, attacked with Morphling to get me to 6. He went to 2, I chumped the Djinn leaving me with no creatures and 6 life. He goes down to 1. If I draw a creature the Djinn kills him... but I don't. A very slow, fun game.
Game 2 starts better for me, and he's just barely holding on. Our LD is working well, and I kill his only island with Riders, then Boom/Bust another. Still, he Smothers and Innocent Bloods my only threats, and he starts building up his mana while I'm not getting creatures. Eventually he Upheavals floating 4, but only gets a Talisman back down. I start aiming burn at his head, and he has to counter ZoZu and other threats as his life dwindles. Still, he gets Tombstalker, Snapcaster, and Venser out while I have no creatures, although he gets down to 3 life. I have two turns to end it... and am able to resolve a Triskelion to ping for exact damage. If he had a counter, we would have lost.
Game 3 was anticlimatic. He mulled to 5, and never got an island. I had lots of threats and a good curve, with Burning of Xinye to finish things off if he ever drew an island.
The first two games were fantastic, though. Our artifact tricks never showed up at all, and we were just able to squeak through.
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Wow, it sounds like our back was against the wall both games, with a few late-game draws deciding things one way or the other. I'm glad we ended up with enough durable threats to win a long game against such a strong control deck.
It's also nice to see that we didn't need our combos to win, but could lean on the overall strength and efficiency of our cards.
I'm looking forward to checking out the other teams' drafts.
Yeah, I'm interested in how others drafted. The last two decks we faced were very, very streamlined for their archetype. I'm wondering how quickly they locked in.
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Congratulations on your win!
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