The Un-Wound (Delayed) Tournament Report

Hey there guys! Sorry for the lack of tournament reports. School's started back up and, honestly, I just haven't had the energy to get reports up.


But I figured I better get this up since, well, that was part of the reason for this blog: to get interest built up from those who don't know about us.

So after a week of waiting...here's the Un-Wound Tournament Report!


(Duh-duh-Duuuuuhhhh!)

Tiff set this up as a Sealed Deck tournament: She split her Un- set stuff (along with a few oddball regular cards) into 5 piles, one for each color (plus some random artifacts for each deck). We determined our colors by random die roll. After we got built up and shuffled up, it was off to Crazy Town!

Of course, a visit to Crazy Town wouldn't complete without a soundtrack. Included for Tiff's Crazy Town? Well, when "Bananaphone" makes the soundtrack, expect some crazy song choices!

You know what else was crazy? Butt-Head  from the cult classic Beavis and Butt-Head decided to play!

Heh..Heheheeeh!!

Oops! Sorry folks, it's just Mick. It's so easy to get the two confused. :p

So we start, and you'd think in a format where we're forced into one color it'd be apparent after the first turn what everyone's playing.

Julian: Plains
Tiff: Mountain
Preston: Swamp
Mick: Forest
Wayne: ... Swamp?

Ha! Trickery is among us. If only Tiff hadn't put a Hooded Kavu in my Red pile...

We're also doing a mix of Planechase and Archenemy (everyone starting at 40 life). Everyone remembers the Archenemy scheme flip, no problem! It's the Planechase we're having issues with. It took a full turn around the table until someone remembered to roll the Planar Die...and Planeswalks off the bat! (Except we don't really use the Planes that much, so they don't pop up unless it was game-breaking for one of us).

So we're all getting set up. Mick starts his creature horde with Vile Bile thanks to his Marionetting skills. Still in the early stages, we even saw a nearly 100 Life total! Wayne flipped My Wish is Your Command and looked at Mick's hand...and Mick happened to have Granny's Payback ready and waiting. All of a sudden Wayne shoots from around 40 to over 90! Already we're worried; we've said we'd base tiebreakers on kill count first and life points second, so if the game goes to time Wayne just won it.

All of a sudden, we've all got a new target.

I start the assault by taking out one of his Swamps with Touch and Go, trying to delay his land setup. Of course, I'm a serious player. I don't expect to get the weird and wacky stuff off. I mean, usually everyone's pretty guarded with "Gotcha!" cards.

Not today...

Gotcha!

So of course, I go after another land trying to stall him again. As we're going around the table, I've got a 5/5 Dragon token, 5 1/1 Saprolings, a couple other creatures, all ready to take to the red zone against Wayne.

Then I have to Behold the Power of Mick's Destruction.

As I'm starting over, Julian's building up Cardpeckers and a Bosom Buddy to help gain life, Wayne's got a few creatures out, and Tiff's not doing so hot with just a Carniverous Death-Parrot and/or a Bursting Beebles. It looks like we can put a pretty good hurting on Wayne...

Then Mick Masterstrokes everyone but still tosses what he can toward Wayne. Still, with time starting to run out, he's still got too much life for us to do much to him.

I try building up again, getting a couple Dumb Asses on the board, Julian has a Cardpecker and a couple other creatures out, Tiff's still hurting for creatures. We're ready to go at it with Wayne, but nature shields its enemy instead of its own. Julian also gets this scheme going, giving the Eanes clan a near-permanent protection from most attacks.

But that set-up was just in time for Mick to Masterstroke again. This time, though, all our life totals are fairly low and Mick decides if he's going to lose based on life totals he'd just do whatever damage he could and take out whoever he can.

Which is a great way to accept defeat...if it wasn't defeat at all. By this time, we've Planeswalked all the way to the Kamigawa plane and landed in Sokenzan. The attack power's definitely in Mick's favor.

Mick attacks and takes out no one. Which would be fine by him, as he's just doing whatever damage he can do.

Mick takes his free Planechase die roll...

(drum roll...)

CHAOS!

Mick untaps and gets ready to attack. I'm around 5 life, maybe a bit more, so I do something unorthodox.

I touch Vile Bile.

That takes me to within 5 life, enough for the Dumb Asses alone to kill me.

Why do that?

Guess what happened at the end of Mick's turn?

TIME!

Mick took out Tiff and Julian before time was called, but 1 kill was all he needed.

Final score, 3-0-0-0-0, Mick's favor.

Mick wins Un-Wound!


For his effort, Mick got a Jace Beleren out of an M11 pack split. That's one of the few Planeswalkers he has, so I was happy he got a card he could use.


I hope you enjoyed the first tournament report in a while! If you've got any comments, complaints, questions, oddball mumbo-jumbo, anything, feel free to E-mail me: CardGameNut@gmail.com . I've finally got my junk filter sorted out so I'll see your message fairly quickly.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy your weekend!

Cube Draft #2 Tournament Report

For the second time in as many tournaments, we only had 3 participants. So again, we did a 3-way tournament. It was a "winner-take-all" event, as we were late enough starting and couldn't afford to drag out a second or third game at the place we decided to go for lunch.

Tiffanie drafted a U/W control deck featuring 3 Planeswalkers, including the ever-lovely Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Ajani Goldmane. Counterspells (including hard counters like Mana Drain to soft counters like Mana Leak) and strong defenders helped with keeping the board under control.

Wayne drafted a Naya-flavored Aggro deck with an Isochron Scepter + Orim's Chant lock possible. Most of the rest seemed to be a beatdown featuring efficient creatures like Tarmogoyf and Giant Solifuge and cheap powerups like Umezawa's Jitte helped to fuel his aggro advances.

I drafted a B/R aggro/burn deck featuring Ob Nixilis, the Fallen for a Lightning Bolt to a player per turn and trying Abyssal Persecutor for the first time for me. A slight recursion sub-theme (via Bloodghast and Corpse Dance), evasion (via the Persecutor, Ob Nixilis [in a way], and minor splashes for Lightning Angel), and 


The game starts off slow for Wayne. Tiff and I are building up our forces, Tiff with her Ajani leading the way and me with Ob Nixilis.

At one point still early in the game, Wayne says he's taking a gamble and shows us the payoff...

 +

=

The best multi-player negotiating tool EVAH!!

Now the wheeling and dealing is on!

As Tiff keeps making deals to not be hit by the ScepterChant combo, her Ajani builds up to 6 counters and she gets a 24/24 Avatar token off his ultimate. Tiff keeps gaining 2 life, I keep landfalling for 3 against Wayne (twice in one turn due to a misplayed Powder Keg on Wayne's part). Some counters come off Ajani while attacking, just to see them start back on. I try to keep pace, at one point getting Ob Nixilis back out from a kicked Corpse Dance to hit her Ajani for 3. But with Wayne casting Pulse of the Fields each turn and Tiff Instant-Casting Rout after my attack, my work's quickly made worthless. A few turns later I lose out from one of Tiff's attacks.

Now the game really gets going!

Tiff drops a Jace, the Mind Sculptor and starts going to town getting him built up and always choosing to look at the top of her library. A Nevinyrral's Disk when Wayne was tapped out ended any potential Scepter locks.

Meanwhile, Wayne starts running and gets Giant Solifuge out with Umezawa's Jitte...but the Jitte can't equip it because of Solifuge's Shroud! The Solifuge gets in for one good hit against Tiff. Wayne next turn tries to drop a Marshal's Anthem to get back one of his big creatures, but it's met with Tiff's Force Spike while Wayne had no mana. Wayne later tries an Enlisted Wurm, only to have it met by an Exclude and no immediate help off the Wurm's cascade (remember, even if the card with Cascade gets countered, the Cascade is a separate trigger that happens when you cast the spell with Cascade).


A Transcendent Master lands with no problems for Tiff as Wayne has no mana with which to respond. She immediately pumps 6 mana into the Master, turning it from an even 3/3 for 3 to a 6/6 Lifelink threat for a total of 9 mana. She has a Lightning Greaves but chooses not to use it.

Next turn, Wayne gets Tarmogoyf back thanks to a Regrowth and equips Umezawa's Jitte to it.

But it's too late for Wayne.

Tiff pumps another 6 mana into Transcendent Master, now making it a 9/9 indestructible lifelink creature. Even if Tarmogoyf attacks as an 8/9 and the Jitte gets 2 counters, he'd need 9 eventually to take out the Master.

A few turns later, Master wins the game for Tiff!


So from the 3 of us, and anyone who's reading this blog, what do you think was the MVP for Tiff? Was it one of Wayne's misplays? Did she make an awesome play? Did any one card contribute heavily to her win, or was it a combination of factors from all players? Leave your comments here!

Remember we have a free play day this weekend, so I'll probably use it to show off Archenemy in preparation for our Planechase/Archenemy free-for-all tournament next weekend. Please come by and enjoy some Archenemy craziness!

Until then, take care!

Cube Draft Report...3 Weeks In the Making

Our group had our first Cube Draft nearly 3 weeks ago, but school and other business has prevented me from putting together a report...until now.

We didn't use the whole Cube. I'd say less than half the cards we started with remained unused. We did 3 packs each of 20 cards per pack with a turnout of 4 people. (So think about that...with more people, more cards get used...just saying...  ;)  ). We upped the minimum deck size to 60 since we had 15 more cards go around than in normal drafts.

We based our Cube around Evan Erwin's list on CubeDrafting.com. My budget doesn't allow us to use Power 9 or some of the higher-end cards (dollar-wise), but I've stretched a bit for the betterment of the Cube power level. :)

See what happened...after the Jump!