Okay if you read the last entry, you'll know what a FONMP section is. This entire post is a Fuck off non-magic player bit. There is very little interest in this entry to anyone outside of the gaming hobby unless you like reading my reading that is.

M11 Pre-release weekend review

I love pre-release weekends. Without a doubt they are the most fun you can have in a sanctioned event. There's a lot of reasons why. Firstly you get to crack open fresh packs that haven't even been released in the shops. You get to see the artwork of cards up close rather than just on website previews. Then of course, loads of characters pop out of the woodwork to see some new cards and sling some spells. There are some people that only ever play at pre-releases because they know how fun they can be. It's always good to know how people are doing and know that they're still up for a bit of the game of kings err.. planeswalkers.

Booster draft Friday

Usually the store in Belfast (Serenity) has midnight drafts on the Friday night. These function as a lock in the same fashion that a pub would whenever its open only to its staff or its regulars. Although anyone is allowed the door is locked so as ne'erdowells don't wander in on the way home from a night out and asking stupid drunken questions such as "whats that do? whats this?". Although we do let Gary play in the shop despite these issues.

On that Friday night I ended up turning up to said booster draft. Although this was after having a few pints with an Australian girl on a failed date, a session of muay thai and a few more drinks. Magic, beer and talking shite - the cornerstone of a Northern player. Anyway in that draft I ended up drafting a bit of a mess of a deck. Having opened nantuko shade and being passed Captivating Vampire I did my best to draft a mostly black deck with a splash of red for Act of Treasons, goblin tunneler and a few red cards with Chandra's something in their title - a slightly more costly searing blaze and a 1/3 flyer for 3 with a kiln fiend style ability. Now apart from the fact I could make the shade unblockable or attack with the opponents creature only to fling them or sacrifice them to bloodthrone vampire, the deck wasn't particularly good. I got beat by Dave Robinson, currently number two in Northern Ireland for beating kids in FNM every week for the last five years (or so the rumours go). Dave beat me soundly for the two games of the match though in the games that we played after my deck seemed to largely outperform his. That could be largely down to the fact he had little or no answer to the powerhouse that is nantuko shade but it didn't worry me too much. Third place in the pod still hit prizes, everything was to play for and if I won out I got a couple of packs.

Match 2 I come up against Conor McVarnock packing some kind of G/W stompy build. His deck ramps up impressively first game landing two aciding slimes off the back of a bird of paradise. He sets me back a land with each of the slimes, wrecking my tempo and forcing me to trade unfavourably to avoid taking four points of damage a turn. His deck also seemed to have a number of pacifisms and other gems. Second game becomes much more of a battle and here I got a glimpse of what a core set draft is like: typically back and forth removal spells, often piquing with moments where both sides of the field have no actual threats leading to a stalemate broken by the first creature. This is kind of how the second game went although with me refusing one of Conor's takebacks that might have given him the game. It was quite strongly settled by me equipping my warlord's axe to a bloodthrone vampire and laying the beats. The third game largely involved better board positions and effeciencys of creatures with nantuko shade living up to its bomb potential.

Third match was up against the Prince of Persia himself Niall Graham. Aside from being the guy that runs the shop and doing a good job at it, Niall is one of those good players who have always been cheated out of victory at big events by some bad bit of luck. Things like having the deck that beats 80% of the field but being paired against the other not so favourable 20% three matches in a row. This was a great match up until the third game. We had both put a considerable amount of pressure on each other with Niall using his Squadron Hawks and Honor the Pure to swarm out. I'm not so sure if I'd be bothered trying to grab multiples of Squadron Hawks. Without the aid of mass creature pumps having a 1/1 flyer is largely underwhelming where the hill giant has been a staple of the core set format. That being said one can't complain too much about multiple 2/2 flyers for little card disadvantage. Game two had me using nantuko shade and goblin tunneler to carve up Niall's life total and finish him with a fling. Game 3 had us both mulliganing to 5 and me being stuck on one land despite the constant pile shuffling, rifling and redrawing. A second swamp should have set me up for a decent go of things as I was packing Sign in Blood. Unfortunately it never came and Niall landed with tempo, kicking my tar in in less than six turns.

Trent and I played a few games after this and he consistently kicked my tar in with his blue/black deck. We found Jace's Ingenuity to be an unsurprisingly phenomenal card in this format. Having drafted ZEN/ZEN/WWK only a few times I never really got to see how mysteries of the deep was. Whilst I assumed it would be pretty good, the fact it relied on landfall meant usually playing it as a sorcery to get its full effect was a pretty limiting factor, particularly as zendikar was such a fast format with most decks relying on packing multiple 2 drops. With almost every colour having good removal or bounce spells games can spin out almost as long as they do in straight ROE drafts.

Pre-release Saturday

Having packed it in about 4 am, I got about seven hours to sleep before I had to get up and get my stuff together for the pre-release ahead of me. If you read my last tournament report, you'll know that I took a less than stellar sealed pool through to the finish GPT. On this occasion I wasn't required to play average packs at all. This time I was given -the nuts-. Whenever we sit down to draft or play sealed we are given the opportunity to pick what pile of boosters we are going to be ours. In a gaming kind of superstition sometimes you get a good feel for a pile of boosters. In my case I had a good feeling about the pile with the dragon on the first booster. To this Niall laughed at but when I popped a Baneslayer Angel, a Vengeance Archon, Conundrum Sphynx, Dragonskull Summit, Foil Haunting Echoes and Stormtide Leviathan.

Not only that but my commons and uncommons for blue and white looked like they had been selected for a pre-con deck.

8x Islands
8x Plains
1x Mistifying Maze

1x Stormfront Pegasus
2x Aether Adept
1x Maritime Guard
1x Palace Guard
1x Roc Egg
1x Cloud Elemental
1x Assault Griffin
2x Azure Drake
1x Conundrum Sphynx
1x Serra Angel
1x Baneslayer Angel
1x Tireless Missionaries
1x Vengeful Archon

1x Mana Leak
1x Ice Cage
1x Inspired Charge
1x Sleep
1x Foresee
1x Mind Control

1x Crystal Ball

So other than a few other cards (arguably sideboard options) this deck was the nuts. About half the non-land cards were bombs and I can only complain about a few of these cards could I complain about. Maritime Guards is pretty underwhelming as a two drop, I think I'd much rather have a bear such as Silvercoat Lion. Palace Guards was also a bit bland, however it could be argued that this is because of the defensive nature of the card when my opponent was usually too busy having to deal with my absolutely absurd threats. Lastly Tireless Missionaries is a watered down version of Angel of Mercy. Having started in Portal Second Age, I'm slightly disappointed not to see another reprinting of the 3/3 flyer/healing salve for 5 however this is perhaps a decision by R+D to avoid making white too strong in limited when they were doing the set design.

As you can imagine it was pretty awful sitting with me. I was like blastoise kid opening Baneslayer Angel, having made the money of the sealed back in one card. When the rest of the cards showed themselves my only fear was the ridicule I would be on the end of if I scrubbed out due to constant misplays. Indeed, I made a few throughout the day but thankfully the deck was so good it didn't really matter.

Without further ado I'll give you the breakdown of the match ups.

Conor Holmes: U/W
I tried taking a picture of the former Irish champ but in his tired and hungover state he wasn't having any of it. Indeed taking pictures of the whole thing was a bit of a joke. Our good friend Sherlock wasn't too happy with his sealed pool, from what I could see of his deck his only bomb was triskillion, which only became an issue in the third game. By his own admission to win the match up he needed me to get mana screwed, unfortunately for him he was the one that suffered the mana screw in the first game. The second game seemed to be running smoothly for my deck, whilst both of us were building up board position and trading blows Conor surprised me with a Mighty Leap, Armoured Ascension blow out. This meant I felt like a complete fool as I was left with a sleep in hand. Nice. The third game involved a board build up again but with me landing Baneslayer Angel. Conor almost killed it by mighty leaping a Cloud Crusader and using his last triskelion counter to do the damage. I countered this with an Inspired Charge, pretty much ending the game from that moment on. No skill involved ladies and gentleman just mythic rares.

Inbetween match ups I fix a kid's G/B deck for him, show him why Dark Tutelage is good in limited and that Cudgel Troll and Acidic Slime or brilliant in a deck with two Llanowar elves.

Cubby - R/W/B
Jokingly trying to persuade me into an ID before the match, Mr. Walker bragged about his deck having 5 mind controls and 6 Pacifisms. Of course it had none of these things and instead was a bit of a mesh of three colours in order to use its two mythics: Chandra and Grave Titan. Whilst the first game went pretty swiftly to me curving out and winning with flyers, Cubby landed the red planeswalker in the second game. Between this and a blinding mage slowed me down considerably as I fought to keep him from getting eight loyalty counters on Chandra. It meant mind controlling a three drop just to have another attacker, whilst holding back bigger threats that he could destroy by removing x counters and dealing x damage. With the help of Crystal Ball I was able to stack my deck and draw enough smaller threats to swarm out. Without the scry mechanic Cubby found himself drawing an abundance of lands by comparison and had to keep his ready for tapping down Baneslayer. After building up a board Cubby can't really compete with I do the dirty and reveal sleep. Utter bomb.

Alan - U/W
Last time I came up against Alan he was the one who had opened the bomb mythics as his ROE pool included Gideon, Sarkhan and Consuming Vapours. We had an interesting match up as both decks shared a few cards in common: Mistifying Maze, Ice Cage. These two plus what seemed like three Pacifisms meant that the game was going to be going into eight or nine land territory as I was often forced to use my Aether Adept to bounce Sphynx with a Pacifism. Once he was out there he really was MVP. Combined with Crystal Ball he netted me an extra card per turn whilst often moving Alan's bombs to the bottom of his deck. Eventually I see Alan's Leviathan but I chose just to fly over it and finish up with an Inspired Charge. I sideboarded out Maritime Guard for my copy of Leviathan seeing as this game went so late. Unfortunately I never saw it as Alan lands a combo of Air Servant and Leviathan. During this game I make a pityful mistake, bouncing Air Servant one turn then Ice Caging Leviathan. With a number of ground attackers and an Inspired Charge it was totally the wrong play. My failure to read the "no activated abilities" it on Ice Cage acts as my downfall and despite having gained about twelve life from Alan using Mistifying Maze on my Tireless Missionaries early on in the game, Alan keeps me locked down with Air Servant and beats me to death. Third game I just plain draw better and Conundrum Sphynx prevents him from the same Air Servant win by sending the card to the bottom of his deck and my Baneslayer too. That seemed to fix his cockyness for a bit.

New Guy with Glasses - G/W
I do have to apologize to this guy as I have completely forgotten his name. This guy was playing a pretty good build of Green White stompy, with Fauna Shaman, multiple copies of Cudgel Troll and Serra Angel. Pretty impressive considering he hasn't been playing for too long. Unfortunately for him I took a Roc Egg start both games meaning that to push any damage through at all he would have to give me a 3/3 flyer token. Mean while I pushed on through with Azure Drakes and Cloud Elemental. Game two was much the same. This time showing how Sphynx was almost more of a game winner than Baneslayer.

Irish/American guy - U/B
With us both sitting on twelve points, we're only playing for a bit of pride, DCI points and me wanting to keep the OP of those that I had played. In fairness this guy has a pretty good deck. No rares, no mythics but it's well constructed and packs Two Air Servants, Multiple Lilliana's Specter, Gargoyle Sentinel and a pretty nice removal base in the form of Diminishs and Doom Blades. After a fairly lengthy Aerial Battle and me having to discard cards I really wish I got to play I cast Forsee and grab Vengeful Archon. After the turn after it attacks, he plays Sleep, intent on finishing me off but he makes the mistake of attacking into me whilst I have open mana for Archon's ability and I retaliate viciously. Game two sees him control the board successfully with Air Servant, something which is futile to put an Ice Cage on as he controls a Warlord's Axe. With no spot removal and no good ground threats he puts the beatdown with the 7/5 flyer and wraps the game up. Game three I'm mana screwed but not too concerned as I'm through to the top 8.

With the top 8 booster draft starting at about half four and my shift starting at six, I figured the only point in playing was to rare draft. And rare draft I did, I managed to pick up an Ajani Goldmane, my second Dragonskull Summit of the day, foil Silence, Birds of Paradise and Dark Tutelage. When I went about picking cards for the actual deck I originally was planning on some sort of green deck that could utilize the BOP. When I got passed a Jace's Ingenuity on the second pick, I figured DJ on the right of me was going to keep blue open for me so he could use whatever bomb rare he drafted. However Blue dried up and I began taking multiple cultivates and any random bits of green fat along the way. Late Garruk's Companions were great picks and I moved into Red as I got a fifth pick lightning bolt. What was in that pack I do not know but never one to look a gift horse in the mouth I took it and went into red. To be honest my draft felt like I was almost picking random cards. Random cards that I liked but I didn't expect the deck to be any good.

What was ironic about the top 8 was that apart from Conor everyone I played managed to make top 8. I'd like to think that's down to my near perfect OP but I don't want to brag about that, the deck was the one that did the work.

What I ended up with was a messy mesh of Green, Red and Blue.

3x Island
9x Forest
6x Mountain

1x Birds of Paradise
2x Garruk's Companion
2x Augury Owl
1x Awakener Druid
1x Manic Vandal
1x Brindle Boar
1x Giant Spider
1x Canyon Minotaur
1x Vulshok Beserker
1x Azure Drake
1x Garruk's Packleader
1x Yavimaya Wurm
1x Earth Servant

3x Cultivate
1x Lava Axe

1x Thunder Strike
1x Lightning Bolt
1x Unsummon

1x Volcanic Strength

As you can see it's not too great and whilst it was never a problem on the day there is little point having scry mechanics from cards such as Augury Owls when you are running multiple deck-shuffling Cultivates. I ran 41 cards for some strange reason and I possibly could have ran the Jace's Ingenuity but I thought it would be stretching myself thin. I'll have to learn to draft this for nationals, no doubt.

First game I come up against the father of the guy that came top of the Swiss after beating me. Seemed like a very intelligent man, a lecturer of English in the states apparently. Had a lot of respect for Lancaster University too. Good to know I didn't go to a useless hole after all. He was a little burned out by this point and had been surprised to make the top 8. He said his sealed deck was better than he played it and he hadn't drafted in years. Anyway, Game one I cultivate and play Garruk's Packmaster, followed by Yavimaya Wurm and Canyon Minotaur. He's playing R/W and his board is mostly made up of smaller critters, I quickly overrun him with the fatties and we go to game two. Game two seems like a pretty sure for me as I've built up an arsenal of big creatures again but he declares "If I get a land on my turn this could get interesting" and I point out he'd need to pop his terramorphic expanse on my end step so his basic isn't tapped the turn he needs it. Thanking me for my advice and chuckling about his oversight he does so, shuffles and draws his land. Boom. The board is wiped after he casts the new Wildfire: Destructive Force. Now if I had sacrificed the right lands I might still have stood a shot of taking the game but I sacrificed down to a forest and a mountain thinking that I wouldn't hit any more blue spells. Unfortunately the next card I drew was Azure Drake which would have been a perfect counter to the Silvercoat Lion he dropped the next turn. My six points of life total quickly disappeared and we went to game three. This game was going pretty much like the first game until Platinum Angel was cast on the other side of the table. With an Azure Drake and a Giant Spider under my control he wasn't attacking with his angel. I used Garruk's Packmaster and the multitude of power 3 or greater creatures in my deck to cycle through and grab the answer to the angel. Slapping a volcanic strength on Yavimaya Wurm meant that with a couple of swings, his life total was in the negative. Casting Manic Vandal got rid of that "Opponents can't win the game" clause pretty well.

With a shake of a hand it was onto a much quicker round two.

At this point I was dangerously close to being late for work and I decided I was going to feign ignorance as to when my shift was supposed to start and show up an hour late. Due to the fact it was the weekend of the twelfth and a ridiculous heavy bout of rain there were very few customers about. DJ was also trying to avoid being late for his bingo calling job so we shook hands shuffled and drew.

Game one consisted of me casting an early cultivate, following up with a Vulshok Beserker and a Canyon Minotaur consecutively. DJ also had to answer my Awakener Druid with a Bee Sting. I soon slapped a volcanic strength on the minotaur and went to town, ending the game with a Lava Axe. Game two went much the same though this time I'm playing Packmaster on turn 4. DJ answers this by attacking with the very gay looking Prized Unicorn, utilizing the allure ability and employing a Giant Growth to dispatch the Packmaster. I was slightly sad about this - Packmaster is an absolute beast of a card and I think will define

DJ tries to race with a Shiv's Embrace on an Ember Hauler but I Unsummon the Goblin in response to the aura. Minotaur + Volcanic Strength combo materializes and Lava Axe fixes the remaining five points after three swings of the minotaur. DJ goes to work and the final is on.

For the third match I'm paired up against the same guy who was on twelve at the end of the swiss. Before we play we agree to split the boosters with the winner getting the remaining booster, the t-shirt and pre-release champion title. Again he's playing U/B so there won't be any easy victories with Volcanic Strength. In fact for me there would be no victories at all. First game I kept an awful hand. At that point I couldn't really give a damn, I could hardly be bothered mulliganing. In the second game I create some problems with fat creatures such as Yavimaya Wurm and spend a turn Lava Axing with no other relevant plays. My big creatures quickly become irrelevant as he develops his board with two Azure Drakes. He also clones his Captivating Vampire and begins amassing an army of minions. As soon as he hits five that's pretty much game over, I scoop and he reveals a Doom Blade and an Unsummon. I was pretty happy with the shared booster pile and I get ready for work, looking like a sexy bastard in a white shirt black tie combo.

Moral of the story: U/B is pretty good in M11 limited and try and open a good sealed pool.