First off, the Coldsnap prerelease was a great success. All that talk I spewed about dominating, yeah, my girlfriend and I totally came through on it. Out of eight teams, ours totally took second!
Second! Whoo!
And I don’t want to hear anything about there being only eight teams either, because we definitely didn’t lose a game. The winning team went 3-0-0, we went 2-0-1, and everyone else lost at least one game. I give us credit for strong play, our opponents for either poor deck construction or poor luck drawing, and Coldsnap for having some sweet cards.
I ended up going against everything I knew about limited deck construction and putting 54 cards in each deck. I’ll admit it; I was afraid of being decked. I wasn’t sure what kind of milling cards there would be, and I didn’t want to fall victim to something stupid that could have been prevented. Anyways, the extra cards are definitely bad form, since I’m pretty sure the Ripple mechanic would have been huge, had I used smaller decks.
Surging Might
2G
Enchantment – Aura
Enchant Creature
Enchanted creature gets +2/+2.
Ripple 4 (When you play this spell, you may reveal the top four cards of your library. You may play any revealed cards with the same name as this spell without paying their mana costs. Put the rest on the bottom of your library.)
Fortunately, we didn’t have all that many Ripple cards. I did use all four of the Surging Mights we pulled, and when the Ripple worked on our snow-walking Zombie Musher, that suddenly 6/7 unblockable beatstick took over the game.
Anyway, probably the only other mistake I made in deckbuilding was using three Sun’s Bounties instead of three Thermal Fluxes.
Sun’s Bounty
1W
Instant
You gain 4 life.
Recover 1W (When a creature is put into your graveyard from play, you may pay 1W. If you do, return this card from your graveyard to your hand. Otherwise, remove this card from the game.)
Thermal Flux
U
Instant
Choose one – Target nonsnow permanent becomes snow until end of turn; or target snow permanent isn’t snow until end of turn.
Draw a card at the beginning of the next turn’s upkeep.
That extra card draw could have been a secret bonus most of the time since I built my deck UW to be more controlling, and her deck BRG aggro all the way. In the end, those Sun’s Bounties were a huge boon, though, since we kept ourselves alive for quite a while with their help.
So, my deckbuilding, though somewhat lackluster and unprofessional, worked out.
I know you won’t recognize the cardnames and what the do quite yet, but here it goes:
My girlfriend’s deck, BRG Aggro:
3x Chilling Shade (Eh, good threat, but we mostly used him for holding off weenie flyers.)
1x Chill to the Bone (Solid removal, though you discover that there are a lot of snow cards that you’d rather remove than their non-snow counterparts.)
1x Krovikan Scoundrel (Decent early play.)
2x Tresserhorn Skynight (Every team needs a thumper, Johnny, but this guy was disappointing when he showed up.)
3x Zombie Musher (This card is and will be a house in Coldsnap limited, an all-star every time he showed up.)
2x Aurochs Herd (Nice for having two solid plays at the sixth land and after.)
2x Into the North (Really good with the snow duals.)
2x Ronom Hulk (Never saw him, unfortunately, but I bet he’d be pretty good.)
4x Surging Might (When it Rippled once, it was huge; when it Rippled none, it put a bunch of our threats on the bottom.)
1x Cryoclasm (I would have loved more of these. My girlfriend was less impressed.)
2x Goblin Furrier (I don’t think we saw these, I wanted more early threats in this deck.)
2x Goblin Rimerunner (Making blockers into not-blockers is great in limited. A solid 2/2 for 3.)
1x Icefall (My girlfriend pointed out that this has the Recover ability, and I think we should have used it more often. My fault, since it could have been great for keeping people off of mana.)
1x Lovisa Coldeyes (This shouldn’t have been in there—not enough Barbarians, Warriors or Berserkers.)
1x Martyr of Ashes (Another early threat, but this one didn’t ever show up early enough, and there were never red cards in my girlfriend’s hand when it did.)
3x Thermopod (It’s a slug! An internal-combusion powered swifty slug!)
1x Sek’Kuar, Deathkeeper (When he showed up, he helped keep us alive.)
1x Wilderness Elemental (Nobody ever had enough nonbasic lands. He ended up being a blocker the one time he showed up.)
6x Swamps
4x Mountains
2x Snow-Covered Mountains
3x Forests
3x Snow-Covered Forests
1x Arctic Flats
1x Tresserhorn Sinks
Yeah, that’s right, it was the dreaded 6-6-6 manabase, but the snow lands ended up being key in a lot of games. I didn’t count up cards or mana when I write down what lands we needed, but I probably would have dropped a Forest for a Swamp in hindsight. Oh well, we came in second anyway.
Here’s the UW Controlling deck I played:
1x Adarkar Valkyrie (I really, really, really wanted to see this hit play, but it never did.)
2x Boreal Griffin (Usually this was played against us.)
3x Gelid Shackles (Just what the doctor ordered every time. It kept big guys from attacking and blocking, and it showed up just in time to break one opponent’s Kjedoran Javelineer lock on us.)
1x Glacial Plating (This was also a poor card choice. It did let one Frost Raptor attack for five, though.)
1x Jotun Grunt (Another card I looked forward to playing—never happened.)
1x Kjeldoran Gargoyle (Ditto.)
1x Kjeldoran Javelineer (Ditto.)
1x Martyr of Sands (In one game where I didn’t have any Plains to play my white spells, this card gained us 15 life.)
2x Squall Drifter (I was surprised this guy didn’t draw more removal. Whenever he showed up, it was great.)
3x Sun’s Bounty (The one team that used these against us probably gained 32 life from them. Then they died to Zombie Musher.)
2x Swift Maneuver (A good combat trick and a card draw, what could be better?)
2x White Shield Crusader (Didn’t see this guy either.)
1x Adarkar Windform (In the one game it showed up, it traded with an attacker right away, so it's good for that I guess.)
4x Frost Raptor (Solid flyer. I was sad I didn’t get to use the untargetability ability.)
1x Frozen Solid (I’m sure this would have been good, had it shown up.)
2x Martyr of Frost (THIS was the guy who drew fire for the rest of the team. Even better was that every time he died, I had no blue cards in my hand. I might try it in UB Fish, though.)
1x Rimewind Cryomancer (Saw it once; it attacked for damage.)
1x Rimewind Taskmage (When it came out, it was even better than Squall Drifter. Nobody seemed to care about the little guy who completely neutralize the big guys.)
1x Surging Aether (I forgot I even had this card until I found it just now. We only had one, so its Ripple wouldn’t have come into effect.)
1x Ronom Serpent (I was too busy playing Sun’s Bounty to put this into play when I had it in hand.)
1x Rune Snag (This is the best counterspell in standard as of Coldsnap’s legality. Everyone will want four of these for every format.)
1x Vexing Sphinx (A decent blue aggro threat, but I didn’t get to use him too much.)
1x Mouth of Ronom (I really wanted to use this but never had the chance. Oh well.)
1x Scrying Sheets (Could be really good in the right deck. I never really got a chance to use it, but it could theoretically draw a lot of cards.)
7x Island
1x Snow-Covered Island
8x Plains
1x Boreal Shelf
1x Frost Marsh
It worked out pretty well. I slowed them down, and my girlfriend beat them to death. It was like on Knight Rider when the super semi Goliath had to have the little wussy decoy car lure KITT and Michael into position. Just call me the little wussy decoy car. Heh heh.
Anyway, I’ll go into some of the new cards and my impressions of them in the next couple days, but this is already getting kind of long, so I’ll just get on with the reports of our three rounds.
Round 1
We played against two friendly OSU students from Cincinnati. Right from the beginning they had the advantage, since apparently they had been practicing Two-Headed Giant for the past few weeks.
I played a first turn Martyr of Sands and a second turn Martyr of Frost and then some blue cards and creatures every few turns. At any one time, I had a maximum of one white mana available, and usually, it was zero. My girlfriend’s creatures put up a valiant defence against theirs, but the big turn came when she played Surging Might and Rippled Lovisa Coldeyes and a Ronom Hulk to the bottom of her library. Oops.
The endgame saw us struggling frantically to stay alive as Martyr of Sands threw herself in front of a herd of aurochs and gained us fifteen life and Sun’s Bounty kept coming back and back again. We squeaked out the draw at one life to fifteen. It put us in the very middle of the pack.
Martyr of Sands
W
Creature – Human Cleric
1, Reveal X white cards from your hand, Sacrifice Martyr of Sands: You gain three times X life.
1/1
Round 2
Our opponents seemed somewhat dejected coming off a lost to an actually activated 20/20 indestructibly flying Marit Lage token. They were the guys we had sat across from as we registered decks, though, so we commiserated a little before kicking them while they were down.
I held up the early aggro with some Martyrs and Frost Raptors while my girlfriend built her mana and started dropping fat like Richard Simmons at a vomitorium. She kept one opponent out of the game with some well timed land-destruction on his islands, and they never had a chance. I’d like to pick an all-star creature from this game, but we saw a lot of everything so nothing really stood out.
If anything, I’d say pros for us were the tappers like Squall Drifter and Rimewind Taskmage and the Gelid Shackles. We got a lot of damgage through and prevented a lot of other damage with those guys. Holding down Drelnoch was huge, I think.
Drelnoch
4U
Creature – Yeti Mutant
Whenever Drelnoch becomes blocked, draw two cards.
3/3
See?
Round 3
Frankly, I’m not sure how our opponents were so highly ranked. We were at the second table; he seemed quiet and indecisive, she seemed distracted. Neither seemed particularly experienced and they made some novice mistakes. Obviously I can’t say for sure. Since they dropped Dark Depths late into the game, though, I suspect they beat our second round opponents with Marit Lage.
She didn’t miss a land drop for, like, seven turns and had her first turn Kjeldoran Javelineer up to a powerhouse five counters before I dropped Gelid Shackles on it. After that they didn’t play any very threatening creatures. Both of their decks seemed very controlling, and since I was able to counteract a lot of that with my deck while my girlfriend threw threat after threat at them, there was just no way they would have overcome.
Also, the Surging Might that Rippled successfully onto Zombie Musher didn’t hurt either. That was without a doubt the play that won us the game, since it’s likely that without it they could gain enough life with Sun’s Bounty to at least draw the game if not turn it around.
Zombie Musher
3B
Snow Creature – Zombie
Snow landwalk
S: Regenerate Zombie Musher. (S can be paid with one mana from any snow permanent.)
Also, I stupidly kept running our creatures into a Resize that kept being Recovered along with their numerous Sun’s Bounties. This is why I say they probably weren’t very good players. They lost to me and I’m not a very good player.
But that was it, we drew our first game luckily and won our last two no problem. In an eight-team flight, that’s good enough for second place and eight free packs as prizes.
Even my girlfriend was proud and pleased since she can now admit to having played well and coming close to winning a Magic tournament, rather than just dorkily having played in one.
We’re saving the packs we won to do a practice limited game on our own. It should be fun. I’m looking forward to it. I’ll tell you how it goes.
Also…
There’s another tournament at the Soldiery in Columbus next weekend if anyone is interested in coming down and having a Vintage good time. C’mon down and play for a Mox Pearl; we’ll go to Thurman’s afterward, maybe.
July 16, 2006
The Soldiery
4256 N. High St.
Columbus, OH 43214
$15 for entry gets you unlimited proxies.
Registration starts at 12:30; tourney starts at 1pm sharp.
Show up and have a good time!
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