Faeries has never done well in these tournaments. I worried that maybe this was due to pilot error. I mean, Faeries has got to be one of the greatest decks ever, no? And it can be a bit tricky to play. The pros were almost always winning with it with their life total at 1, always a nerve-wracking situation. However, I had always used a February 2008 build of the deck from PT Hollywood. Maybe a 2009 version of the deck would do better? I had high hopes. This time, I was hoping to steer Faeries to at least the quarterfinals so it could get seeded for the next tournament.

However, there was a problem with this plan. Goblin Chainwhirler! One little goblin could kill all my little faeries. Not a good prospect. Well, let’s just hope I got some good starting hands.

G1: Kept a four land hand with no Bitterblossom. Managed to get out a Vendilion Clique and rob RB of a Chainwhirler, so that felt good, but I saw two Hazorets in his hand. Played Bitterblossom on turn 4, then Hazoret hit me and I was down to 7 – no, 6 after making another black faerie. Resolved a Cryptic Command and a Sower of Temptation on Hazoret to buy some time, but by then I was at two life, and a Goblin Chainwhirler got me down to 1. I died to my own Bitterblossom. RB Aggro 1-0

G2: This looked better, as RB had a slow start and I was able to get Mistbind Clique into play. With another Clique in my hand, I made a plan… attack with one faerie.. he’d be at 10 life, and then I could add Clique #2 before end of turn, untap with 2 Cliques and 2 faeries and do 10 damage. Only problem was, he dropped Hazoret, did a big attack and I was forced to block with one of those crucial faeries. My only hope was to topdeck Cryptic COmmand or Scion of Oona, and still win… but instead I drew a counterspell. RB Aggro 2-0

G3: Wasn’t even close. Doomfall stole a Cryptic Command from my hand, and I drew about 7 lands. Mana flood. RB Aggro 3-0. Faeries got crushed.

Before this matchup, I really couldn’t tell who was the favorite. At first, I assumed any deck with “storm” as a mechanic had to crush something from 2002, one of the slowest eras of Standard. But I played out a few practice matches and Squirrel Opposition was crushing instead – turns out all the win cons in Gassy Knoll are sorcery speed, and Opposition taps down all the lands during upkeep. There’s one way around this: Spinerock Knoll, but that gets tapped down too. So after my practice matches it was clear to me that the match would be decided by whether or not the Opposition deck could get Opposition and Squirrel Nest into play. When it does, it wins.

G1 was as expected… Opposition and Squirrel Nest came out fairly quickly, and about 8 turns went by as squirrels propagated and held Gassy Knoll off mana, then finally the Opposition deck could start sending in attackers too. Opposition 1-0.

G2 the Gassy Knoll player decided to try out burning birds and merfolk looters. Although this definitely interfered with the Opposition deck gameplan, it also hurt the storm gameplan. The Opposition deck never even drew Opposition this game, but the Gassy Knoll player never found an Empty Warrens either, so the Opposition deck switched to attacking and surprisingly this eventually resulted in a win. Opposition 2-0.

Sideboarding brought in some huge players. The burn deck got Martyr of Ashes. Although it couldn’t hurt birds, it could wipe clean a board full of squirrels and open up a window of opportunity to storm off. The Opposition deck had two copies of Simoon that could wipe away a team of 1/1 goblins.

G3 and G4 went to Gassy Knoll, as Simoon never made an appearance, and Opposition and Squirrel Nest never teamed up. One game Opposition made it onto the board, but without Squirrel Nest, and with Gassy Knoll hitting lots of land drops, the red deck was able to burn away some weenies and make goblins. The key factor in the defeats were actually pain lands! 4 pain lands and no basics was not a good situation for the Opposition deck, against burn. That sideboarded Martyr of Ashes also had an impact.

It all came down to G5. The green-blue deck had to mulligan, then keep a hand with counterspells but neither Opposition nor Squirrel Nest. A well-timed counterspell stopped a Lotus Bloom, which really slowed down Gassy Knoll who had only two lands. Many, many turns passed with no clear threats. Martyr of Ashes had to blow herself up early on to keep things under control. Squirrel Nest entered the fray, but Gassy Knoll had already started finding some lands. It was tense. The opposition deck drew an opposition, but didn’t have a second blue source. A few turns later, the Yavimaya Coast appears, and Opposition is slammed onto the table. But… the Gassy Knoll player goes into the tank… “in response…” (thinking) … (do I have it?) … in response, cast some burn spells, deal 7 damage, and use Spinerock Knoll to play Empty Warrens, using the opponent’s Opposition as part of the storm count. 10 Goblins! It was victory in two attacks, unless the Opposition player could find Simoon. Nope.

Gassy Knoll took the match 3-2.

But I suspect that if this match was replayed, Squirrel Opposition might win instead. Such is the luck of the cards.

G1: Long grindy match. Tezzeret made a 5/5 artifact. Satyr tokens killed off Tezzeret before he could start pumping up an Inkmoth Nexus. Monsters started generating lots of tokens and looked good to win it until Batterskull came down. Once Batterskull was equipped on the 5/5, it was gain 9 life each turn (because Rabblemaster made goblins that must attack). Monsters had the opportunity to gang block with everything and kill the 9/9, but declined… a mistake since a few turns later Black Sun’s Zenith completely wiped out all of Monster’s tokens. Batterskull MVP FTW but it was the only game it made an appearance. Monsters 0-1.

G2: Tezzeret mulliganed, regretted it, then struggled on mana and Monsters had a fast start. Quick game. Monsters 1-1.

G3: Tezzeret adds 4 Flashfreeze to the deck and Monsters takes out some planeswalker copies. Consume the Weak helps slow things down, but 3 consecutive Rabblemasters overwhelm Tezzeret. Monsters 2-1.

G4: Monsters has a slow start and Tezzeret becomes the aggressor with Creeping Tar Pits and a 5/5 artifact. Flashfreeze protects the lead. 2 Creeping Tar Pits swing in for the win. Monsters 2-2.

G5: Inquisition strips away what would’ve been a turn 2 Rabblemaster – whew! Tezzeret decides to tap out to play Sphinx given how few removal spells Monsters has, but Monsters has the perfect answer – end step Putrefy from the sideboard. Then Monsters plays Vraska and Tezzeret has to sacrifice 3 consecutive Tar Pits just to eventually get rid of Vraska. Monsters bloodrushes a mana elf to get Tezzeret down to 2 while he’s tapped out. In the end, there is only a mana elf and a Tumble Magnet. A second mana elf. A second Tumble Magnet. Several draw steps. Attacking mana elves for the win! Monsters 3-2. Monsters advances.

G1: Close game. Domri Naya went first. T&N was at 4 life with one Colossus out. Attacks Domri down to 8, then plays Tooth and Nail to get a Duplicant that exiles a Restoration Angel threatening lethal next turn (thanks to Gavony Township) and another Colossus. Turns out to be a mistake, should’ve gotten Ravenous Baloth for the lifegain instead of Colossus #2. Restoration Angel #2 flashes in during endstep, then attacks with a +1/+1 counter on it FTW. Domri 1-0

G2: Domri keeps a bad hand with 4 lands but no green mana sources and is kept off green spells for a long time. It takes forever for T&N to win, though: 4 Mindslavers (featuring back to back plays forcing Domri to make his own creatures fight each other) and 3 Oblivion Stones into a topdecking race that eventually found a Tooth and Nail. Domri 1-1.

G3: Ridiculous mulligans – Domri to 4 cards, T&N to 5 cards. Domri gets a perfect 4 card hand. Turn 1 Pilgrim. Turn 2 Boros Reckoner. Next two turns 2 more Boros Reckoners. Turn 5 Blasphemous Act from the sideboard. Domri 2-1.

G4: Boros Charm from the sideboard was the MVP. T&N gets 2 Colossus onto the battlefield. Domri uses Selsnya Charm to exile one, and O-Ring to exile the other. T&N topdecks Oblivion Stone but Domri keeps Boros Charm mana open, saves all his creatures and even saves the O-Ring (permanents you control gain indestructible.) Domri 3-1. Domri advances.

I played Astral Slide and I was very nervous as this seemed like a terrible matchup. Company can make creatures indestructible which nullifies my board sweepers. Spell Queller can stop my Slides or Wraths. Company has main deck enchantment destruction. Reflector Mage can bounce Angel tokens. And yep, it was a blowout. Game 1 Company recovered quickly from a board sweeper with back to back Collected Company and quickly overwhelmed me despite my having two Astral Slides in play. Game 2 I waited to play Slide because of an Akroma’s Revenge in hand, figured I’d board wipe then take control with Slide, but the turn before I could afford the spell he played Selfless Spirit, so that ruined that plan and I wasn’t able to adjust fast enough. Game 3 Astral Slide won with Eternal Witness tricks, recurring Rude Awakening, but only because Company was stuck several turns on 2 mana so I had time to develop my mana base, and also I was able to cycle decree of justice with two Astral Slides in play and stack my triggers so that I blinked a Spell Queller with Wrath of God, played the Wrath, and then resolved the Decree soldier tokens. Game 4 Slide got flooded and Gideon from the sideboard was unstoppable. So long, Slide. Cool deck though, lots of tricksy plays, especially with Witness. Not an easy deck to pilot – I may have lost game 4 solely because I decided to play a cycling land on turn 1. When later I could not find a cycling card, I regretted that. Bant Company just had too many different kinds of answers and Slide needed too much time to build up the mana for the mana-intensive bombs.

The results are all up at past tournaments but I haven’t added blog entries yet. Coming soon.

I keep changing my methodology a bit, and this results in changes to my top seeds. I realized I hadn’t given Kithkin the points it deserved from a tournament long ago, so it ended up getting into the top 16 for this tournament – and it did great, making it to the semis! We gave Combo Elves a 2nd chance and it knocked out CawBlade in a very lucky game 5 with a Mirror Entity under a hideaway land. The quarterfinals were full of new decks, with Combo Elves, Infect, Rally, Kithkin, and 5 color bloodbraid making their marks. This would shake things up and knock several storied decks out of the top 16 for the subsequent tournament.

Winner: 2006 Dragonstorm
Runner-Up: 2010 UW Superfriends

Still doing single-elim, but now best-of 5, with sideboarding starting game 3. This is also the beginning of my new approach to seeds and challengers: I research decklists and put together a queue of decks from different years, so that there will almost always be a deck for each past year of magic entering the first round. (I couldn’t make up my mind on a few decks so I added a preliminary round as well.) Round one matches were randomly assigned, with the exception of not allowing any decks within a year of each other to battle. Then they moved on to the seeded decks. So, it’s random and unfair who those decks play in round two – could be the top seed, could be the 16th seed – but the idea is we have no way of ranking these new challengers, so we don’t. We just throw them to the wolves.

The third seed was Bargain, which lost to the discard spells of Solar Flare. Solar Flare, Angelfire, and Temur Marvel were the big surprises of the tournament, making it to the quarterfinals.

Winner: 2012 Delver
Runner-Up: 2011 CawBlade

Delver gets retired to the Hall of Fame now that it has won TWO tournaments that I participated in.

A return to single-elim, but this was my last best-of-three tournament. Winner: 2011 Shrine MonoRed
Runner-Up: 2011 CawBlade

This time Randy Buehler ran another Standard tournament but without Academy, Memory Jar, OR Bargain. This was the first time a non-combo deck won a standard Gauntlet of Greatness. It was Atarka Red.