down with the quag sickness

This last weekend was the US Nationals tournament in Minneapolis, MN. Like last year, I traveled out just to play in side events and surround myself in Magic. Nothing as exciting as last year happened (Alan winning an Xbox), but it was still a lot of fun. Details to follow!

Friday morning saw us eating breakfast at Hell’s Kitchen, a fast favorite. At 2pm, Adam and I signed up for the 2HG Xbox sealed. We did get passed a pretty bomby pool (Sun Titan, Inferno Titan), but had a lot of bad luck (too many details to remember), so we ended up 3-3, dropping the last 2 matches in a row to first miss out on any chance of top 4, and then any consolation prizes as they only went down as far as 12 points. After Matt dropped from Super FNM, we ran out to Chipotle for a late dinner, then EDH’d back at the hotel.

Saturday morning was the Sealed PTQ. Adam had a migraine, so he downgraded to drafts for the morning instead. I was passed a decent pool with Day of Judgment, Fauna Shaman, Overwhelming Stampede, Nantuko Shade, and I didn’t really have a bad color, so I went with an aggressive BW build. I got screwed my first match by not drawing a second plains 2 games in a row, so I just dropped to draft rather than attempt to go 8-1. Matt at least had a sweet pool (Grave Titan, Inferno Titan), but still went 0-2 and dropped to draft.

Adam and I ended up sitting next to each other in my first draft, and he passed me a pretty ridiculous black pool, after taking Blinding Mage over Corrupt. I ended up with a black/red deck running 2 Quag Sickness, Assassinate, Fling, 2 Chandra’s Outrage, Bloodthrone/Reassembling/Treason combo, Howling Banshee, some other solid creatures. First round I played a guy who went for the mill deck with Tome Scours, Jace’s Erasures, a couple Wall of Frost and an Aether Adept being the only creatures I saw. I was able to get rid of his walls with Chandra’s Outrage after attacking with Nether Horror, then just beating him down before I milled out. Second game, I sided out most of my removal and put in… Lava Axe and 3x Blood Tithe, muahaha.

Second match, I was lucky enough to see the guy Overwhelming Stampede for 46 when his opponent was at 35. Good stuff. Sat down to a pretty close match and, of course, lost to the top-deck Stampede. Second game, he went for broke and kept a 2-lander only to not draw into land, so he resigned and we moved to game 3. Again, he was stuck on 4 land, 1 off from Stampede (which he hinted he had in his hand the whole time), but still got me down to 6 life before I was able to stabilize. I was able to do some damage with my Howling Banshee, which was eventually dealt with by KILLER COMBO: Diminish + Hornet Sting (lol). However, by that time, I got him low enough force his Sacred Wolf to block (unless he had a Fog or something) while sandbagging another creature to stay alive should he somehow not die. However, he did block, so I was able to pull off the win.

Meanwhile, Adam also was 2-0 with a pretty crazy 4x Squadron Hawk deck, pulling off multiple victories with Inspired Charge in a blue/white deck. We split the finals to get 6 packs each.

That afternoon was also the Archenemy sealed event, where pods of 4 play 3v1 Archenemy. According to the program, there were unique playmats to be given out to all registrants, but Steve Port said there was some sort of shipping mixup with Wizards and they never arrived. Which sucks, since we explicitly signed up for it for the playmat. I got the green/white deck and was also chosen as the Archenemy; I rolled over my group pretty handily and won myself another 3 packs. Adam was able to lead his group to victory over their Archenemy, which got each person 1 pack (lol). Matt’s group, however, was burnt to a crisp from a crazy turn 1 5/5 dragon token, turn 2 put Hellkite Charger into play for free. Gross.

My friend Liz picked us up for dinner and we ate near campus at the Loring Pasta Bar, which I had never actually been to. It’s kind of an odd place, but the food was good. Afterwards, we walked around campus, got accosted by Christians, and went back to the hotel to tuck in early.

Day 3 was the Team Trios event, a 3-person team sealed with 10 packs where a team victory of 2 individual matches wins the team match. We opened absolute crap and also played the wrong decks probably (I took the “play big creatures, attack” deck while Matt had the burn/combo deck, where he made quite a few misplays, so it would’ve been better if we played each other’s decks), so we went 1-1 and dropped to head home early.

Overall, it was a fun weekend, and I got a bunch of cards signed and also bought Abyssal Persecutors for $8/each. Side note, Sunday morning, I opened my prize packs from Saturday. First 6 had crap, I was about to save the last 3 for draft… then said “Screw it!” and cracked them anyway. First pack, Obstinate Baloth. “Nice, my fourth one! Too bad it’s the only unsigned one now.” Second pack… Primeval Titan. “Sweet deal! Definitely glad I didn’t save these.” Hooray for investments towards another Jace! Or I might just save it so I don’t need to take the titan in my EDH deck out if I make a standard deck with 4 Titans.

Thus finishes the weekend review. I’ll just leave off with a few choice words:

Card alturations: $5

Seismic Shutter

MATALIC