M14 Prerelease

Following my now somewhat tradition of sporadic Magic playing, I went along to the M14 pre-release in St Albans earlier today. My preparation had been going over the visual spoiler a few days before and listening to most of the Limited Resources set review. 

As it was a nice hot day, the tables were outside instead of in the shop, in a sort-of-tunnel that goes from the road to the shop, so we had some shade to play in. A nearby shop seemed to be doing well by selling slices of watermelon, which was welcomed on the hot day. I had wandered around the farmers market before the tournament started, picking up a small lavender plant for Liz to cook with. 

When I opened my boosters, I came to the conclusion that all my colours were fairly strong. Blue was less strong and a colour I don't play much anyway, so set that aside. I set aside most of black as there wasn't too much there either, and half my white cards, so started putting together a red/green deck. 

I originally build the deck splashing just Doom Blade for black, but also splashing three white cards (2 Pacifisms). Just before the first round started, I decided that it was being a little too greedy, so took out the white. 

Here is the deck I played at the end of the day:

1 Shock
1 Wring Flesh - this performed a lot better than I thought it would. Mainly helping out in combat as opposed to killing a creature outright
1 Rangers Guile
1 Lay of the Land - I mainly played this because I wanted to limit the number of lands I had for the splash, and also I had a lot of double colour costing cards in both Green and Red
1 Scavenging Ooze - This did really well - I got 12 or so counters on it one game
1 Doom Blade
1 Green Doom Blade Deadly Recluse
1 Kalonian Tusker
1 Goblin Shortcutter
1 Predatory Sliver
1 Flames of the Firebrand
2 Advocate of the Beast - The main issue I had with this is that I usually wanted to attack with it and a beast to keep the pressure up, so often lost this in combat before I could get something really big
1 Rumbling Baloth
2 Chandra's Outrage
1 Marauding Maulhorn
2 Pitchburn Devils - My opponents didn't block these very often, or attack into them. Not complaining too much about that
1 Enlarge - I can haz trample?
1 Woodborn Behemoth
1 Shivan Dragon

End result: I went 4-1 and came 4th overall. I'm happy with that result considering I don't usually perform well at sealed and had done minimal preparation (the one opponent who did beat me had an agressive red/blue deck that had a lot of good tempo plays; they had also played in two or three other M14 prereleases beforehand so knew the set a little better).

Modern Masters Draft 2

I was lucky enough to play another draft of modern masters the other week. Kaleb was being looked after, so both me and Liz could go which was nice. Also nice was seeing everyone from Hemel as we hadn't been for a while.

I started off the draft with a bit of OK blue cards, but also picked up some green, to keep my options open. In the second pack, I stopped seeing blue, but got some good black and green cards, including a Worm Harvest, so kept an eye out for other support cards. In the third pack, I continued on like this, picking up a couple of blue cards again.

While putting the deck together, I could just about do a two colour green/black deck, but would either have to play a bad 23rd card or an 18th land, or splash a third colour. I took the later option as some of the blue cards I wasn't playing were good even later on.

The deck looked a bit like this: Bonesplitter, Executioner's Capsule, Thallid, Peppersmoke, Mothdust Changeling, Rathi Trapper, Blightspeaker, Echoing Courage, Nacromeba, Death Denied, Stinkweed Imp, Moldervine Cloak, Mulldrifter, Kodama's Reach, Auntie's Snitch, Syphon Life, Nantuko Shaman, Greater Mossdog, Penumbra Spider, Worm Harvest, Giant Dustwasp, Riftwing Cloudskate, Sylvan Bounty, Tombstalker, Walker of the Grove, Dakmor Salvage, Vivid Grove, Terramorphic Expanse

A fairly small graveyard theme, but some fun cards nonetheless. I had more than enough fixing to support the blue splash too, which was nice.

I lost the first match playing against faeries plus Skeletal Vampire, and lost the second match to an aggressive black/red deck with a lot of goblins. Ended one game with Oona too.

I had really fun games in the last match. I got the worm harvest on the graveyard by dredging a stinkweed imp, and got to retrace it using a Dakmor Salvage, ready to retrace again. At one point, my opponent made all his lands, which were all forests into creatures to attack with, then playing Echoing Courage on them...

My main focus with drafting the set has been to play something I'd find fun. It's a shame the set is so hard to get as if I could draft it more, I would try out some of the other archetypes.

On the way home, I had a weird realisation with Liz. We were walking to our house from the train station and I realised that whenever I have walked that bit of road previously, it was either on my own, or with her and Kaleb - I had never walked that bit with just her, which I found novel for some reason.