Last Saturday was the final gameday of our beloved LegaPauperLipsia and it was truly a blast. The gameday before I even made Top16 (which was a first for me) and I was appropriately hyped to show up (and turn up!) again. It was freezing outside, but I was able to weather the storm and arrive without bruises and broken bones.
DEKK TEKK:
We let the Rats out da Crypt and the Plants out da Garden again to enjoy a few matches of the second-best Basilisk Gate deck – Golgari TurboFog. I was once again doing some funky 69-card-business with Crop Rotation shenanigans and other tomfoolery. The second Toxin Analysis in the sideboard never came up, so it’s on the bench for now…
Side note:
One Thursday at Libelle when I cast Mycosynth Wellspring in my test game against Faeries, Selen leaned over and called it “Microsoft Wellspring”, which already was hilarious. So when I got home I painted a Windows 95 logo on the card and then exclusively referred to the card by “Microsoft Wellspring” that Saturday, which got a lot of laughs. Therefore I think that by proxy Selen made the funniest pun of the league!
Match 1 against Colin (Jund Wildfire):
This was a great game! The matchup is always fun, because there’s very little chance for me to be dead by turn 3 or 4 and grindy games is where I wanna be. To be fair, I have no clue about playing midrange myself, but I can recognize a good midrange pilot by the way they look me through and find the exact line with which to outgrind me and by that metric Colin was an excellent opponent, which I immediately noticed. Also, he’s just great to play against!
I can also pinpoint my loss to one exact misplay, which still haunts me: He played his first Refurb while I had Eviscerator’s Insight in hand, mana open with nothing else to spend it on and an Ichor Wellspring on board…and I just discarded my Eviscerator’s.
I’m sure this was the game-deciding (mis)play, because I was then poked by many pesky Refurbs (5 to be precise) and had to discard my Crypt Rats the turn before I wanted to blow the whole board up – truly a poor showing of solidarity among Rat cards…0:1
Match 2 against Richard (Blink Dredge):
The magic gods – praise be upon them – really decided to test my faith that day by giving me three combo matchups. Fortunately the first one was Dredge, which I’m built to handle well, packing a lot of graveyard hate mainboard and all and against someone, who is a very pleasant and funny opponent.
Game 1 I just foiled any attempt on my life by popping spellbombs or weathering at the right time and eventually they drew on an empty library without me milling them for a single card. Nice!
Game 2 I packed all the hate: 1 Faerie Macabre, 2 Heritage Reclamation, 2 Cast Down. This time we played a very similar game, which was concluded by a Stream of Thought (though for very little)…1:1
Note to self: Those Molten Gatekeepers really put in some work, watch out!
Match 3 against the Champion Pit (Inside Out Combo):
This was combo matchup number 2: The Tireless Tribe.
Game 1 was over in no more than 5 minutes (stopping a turn 3 combo kill is not my strong suit).
Game 2 I boarded in 3 Red Blasts (for the Inside Out), 2 Cast Down (for the Tribe), 1 Murmuring Mystic to close out the game, 1 Raven’s Crime and 1 Last Rites to attack the hand. Turn 3 combo kill deck meets turn 3 “pwease discard your hand uwu” deck. I was able to pull a bunch of goodies from his hand and stall the game. Finally I got down a Crypt Rats and a Mystic, cast a few spells, attacked with a 6/6 bird (thank you Basilisk-Gate-sama) and then burned him out with the Rats.
Game 3 I switched the Red Blasts for Hydroblasts (to counter the Flaring Pain and the Inside Out). I just stared at the board while he was digging so hard to assemble his combo, which he didn’t find, so we drew…1:1:1
Match 4 against Max (UB control):
I finally got some breathing time, but this deck can really put out a lot of power fast, while keeping the reigns tight, so I knew to be careful. Also, this wasn’t our first rendezvous (and hopefully not our last).
Game 1 he assembled the army super quick and fought over my fogs, but fortunately he was milling himself with most of his cards and the dilemma was apparent: Either he mills himself digging for interaction or my fogs remain uncontested and I get enough time to prepare a wincon. In the end it worked out for me and he drew on an empty library purely by his own milling. Nice!
Game 2 I don’t remember as vividly, but I do remember him milling me with Thought Scour and such to not lose to his own milling again while still drawing cards. I think he just put up enough heat and I burned through my fogs too quickly.
Game 3 I was on the backfoot again, but I do remember one ankle-breaking juke: I knew he had a few counterspells up and attacked me for lethal, but I had more than enough mana open and 2 Moment’s Peace in hand. But I really wanted him to waste his counterspells on something else, so immediately after he declared attacks I played a draw spell, which was promptly countered after which I played another draw spell. At this point he started a chain of draw spells to find another counterspell, which he didn’t find, so I drew my cards. After that I presented my Moment’s Peace, thus revealing my bluff, and to add insult to injury I also put a Weather the Storm on the stack. We didn’t finish that game, but I was very proud of that sequence of plays and he even commended me on my poker face ^^ …1:1:2
I had talked to Felix previously that day and knew he was on Cycling Storm. I was super hyped, because
- I love the deck
- I was very interested in the how the matchup would go for a long time, having already pondered it with Perdo before
- and Felix is always great to play with. Also, emphasis on “with”, since this game was a lot more cooperative than competitive!
Game 1 I kept a hand which allowed me to have an open Weather by turn 2 (turn 3 for Felix), so when he went for his combo during his 3rd turn I was patient. He was chaining ritual after ritual while I helped with mana and storm count, sometimes being incredibly close to fizzling (cracking a Lotus Petal for Songs of the Damned) and I remained patient. I play the deck myself every so often and know the pivotal points, by which I mean those points in time after which instant speed interaction becomes useless, because you’ll get killed on the stack. So, when he played his Stinger, I knew this was the time and I cast Weather the Storm as the 15th spell that turn, gaining me 45 life up to 65 total life while Felix was at 2 already from cycling Street Wraiths and resolving Rowan’s Grim Searches. At this point I half expected him to concede, but he knew exactly that game 1 was gonna be his best shot and in a display of great tenacity he recognized his last remaining line, which was to find the last Petal, cast a second Stinger, Reaping the Graves for at least my life total divided by 2 and then just cycle for the damage without letting the draw trigger resolve to not draw from an empty library.
At some point in his search I started just tallying up the life loss and then writing it down in increments of 5 or 10; picture of the life total block:
He ended up winning after we realized he had enough creatures in hand and enough mana in his pool. What a fantastic showing of this beautiful deck!
Game 2 was a lot uglier. I kept a hand with 2 Weathers this time, but he quickly realized I wouldn’t let him combo kill me again as easily and so he pivoted to a kind of accelerated midrange plan, casting the rituals and cycling stuff to enable Songs of the Damned and then bringing them back to cast them. Most of the cycler creatures actually have decent stat blocks for their costs and with the Horror of the Broken Lands getting +2/+1 every time you cycle, this could have been over quickly if I didn’t keep some fogs and board in kill spells. By this point a sizeable crowd had gathered to witness the madness that was happening. Fortunately, I was able to get a Basilisk Gate as well as a Crypt Rats on the field and in the first turn of overtime I was able to wipe the board. He replayed some creatures, but I played Crop Rotation for a Bojuka Bog, which served a dual purpose: (1) the Reaping for 4 heavy hitters fizzled and (2) I had the much needed additional black source to close out the turn after…1:1:3
What a day! Super fun matchups with great opponents, the vibes were immaculate and the whole thing ran smoothly. Huge shutout to everyone involved in organizing and putting together this awesome league, it always was a delight to attend.
Afterwards we had the ceremony for the League Winners (congrats Pit!) and the community/specialty awards. I can hardly describe the love and warmth I felt, being part of this awesome community, where everyone matters.
Luca actually nominated me for the fairplay award, which was already so sweet. But after I had to leave prematurely I received messages from a few people, saying I won the award by public vote, which made me shed a few tears of joy when I sat down in the train. How lucky I feel to know all these wonderful people!
Now I can’t wait for the next League ^^