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Editor: Joe Tobin - 12th July 2006
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On a Razor's Edge - Adelaide Regionals 2006 The Adelaide Regionals have come and gone. A top 8 have been decided who shall represent South Australia at the Australian Nationals. Here is the journey of one player in the pursuit of Australian Nationals qualification. With Ravnica block complete the cardpool available was quite diverse. There were many playable decks and the format was ripe for something different to break open the metagame. Since I had no dual lands I decided I would take a single colour and focus it by playing cards either too single colour intensive to play in a multi-coloured deck, or potential undiscovered gems. I playtested three different decks in preparation for Regionals. Well, playtested is a word I use loosely because nulike last year I had very little playtesting as I moved house recently and had other personal issues eat up a great deal of my time. The decks that were tested included Mono-Blue Owling Mine, Mono-Black Aggro/Discard and a B/G Greater Goods combo deck that was consistant enough not to need shock or pain lands. In the end it came down to Blue vs Black as Greater Good was fun to play but it seemed slow and lacked any disruption other than creature removal. I loved playing the blue deck and it won most games I played but in the end I decided to go with the 'safer' option in black discard. I prefer to attack a player's resources instead of playing around/manipulating them and the black deck seemed to do that very well. Here's the deck I played - On A Razor's Edge...
As you can see I'm running a lot of cards that require double black mana to play. Fast, heavy discard and efficient weenies paired with card draw and a little creature removal. Just the sort of deck I like to play. Anyway, onto how I went...
Round One - James Crockhart - Red/Green Land Destruction James' deck being land destruction
with few creatures and a lot of burn meant I had to hit him with discard
hard and not over commit to the board with creatures. Since I can run on
2-3 mana with ease it was simply a case of managing resources, drawing a
little extra land and using discard to remove immediate threats/board sweepers.
I lost game 2 where I drew few land all game and his Djinn
Illuminatus made land destruction hurt more and kill me. Games one and
three I won and it was simply a case of early creatures, mid game discard
to remove critter kill and a little extra card draw to keep my deck ticking
over. Sideboarding was fairly easy - extra land, less creature removal and
Arenas
for more draw.
Round Two - Raymond Loi - UR Tron First game my plan worked perfectly
to a point. I put him in topdeck mode with heavy discard and he topdecked
Tidings
to recover and win. Game two a turn three Arena followed by turn 4 Extraction
for Repeal
put Raymond in an interesting position. Turn 6 Extraction to hit the 2 Keigas
in his hand made things worse for him. UR Tron being the draw engine it
is weathered the storm and he hit Wildfire
right when he needed it. In the end I was killed by my own Phyrexian Arena
the turn before I would attack for the win.
Round Three - James Austin - BW Husk All three games James managed
to hit first turn Isamaru.
In game one the dog and its frends took me down with ease. Game 2 was almost
the complete opposite of game one as I took James down with ease. Game 3
I blackmailed
James first turn and he showed me 2 Plagued
Rusalka and a Swamp. I hit the swamp (which he told me he didn't expect
me to do) and then proceeded to be black screwed. From that point it was
easy for me to dominate the game with an early Hand
of Cruelty.and numerous other creatures. James' top card once we finished
was a swamp!
Round Four - Phillip Dittlebacher - RG Heezy Street The bane of my deck is Burning-Tree
Shaman because of its higher than power toughness. I learned this the
hard way as Phil won with ease backed up by other beaters. Might
of Oaks + Silhana
Ledgewalker is definately bad for me.
Round Five - Andrew Deanovic - Mono-White Tron Took me five rounds but I finally
hit a matchup biased in my favour. Heavy early discard managed to wipe out
andy's hand each game a turn before he drew into Ivory
Mask. Hand of Cruelty was the MVP as he couldn't stop it.
Round Six - Yi Fei Ruan - BW Aggro This was such a good matchup
and the closest thing to a mirror match I faced all day. Each game was tight
and hard fought by all. In game three Yi Fei managed to tap out to play
Eight-and-a-Half
Tails and I stupidly didn't kill it while he was tapped out. "No
problem," I thought, "He can't have enough mana to protect it
forever. I'll play my Jitte and swing!". Facing Eight-and-a-Half Tails.with
a Hand of Cuelty and a Jitte
its a losing fight - hew simply turned the Jitte white so it fell off. Yi
Fei then proceeded to get mana flooded. This is the only time I've ever
seen a mana flood actually help someone as my 2 removal spells in hand were
not enough to break through the protection. I was beaten to death by Paladin
en-Vec.
Round Seven - David Mariner - UR Tron Game one I draw a no land hand. Mulling to 6, I draw an all land hand. Screw it I'm keeping it. I was able to tell what David was playing but all he knew was I was in black. Game 2 I sideboarded accordingly for UR Tron but my draw was bad all game and David burnt me out for the win. 0-2 .Loss, 3-4-0 overall.
Oh well, looks like I miss out on Nationals again. What suprised me the most was how every player I played needed to stop and read Blackmail - including the players who should have known the card from Onslaught block. The metagame was pretty much what I expected (UR, BW and RG mostly) and I ended up playing against the most common decks. I really should have taken more time to prepare as Leylind of the Void turned out to be a bad sideboard choice. I would have been better off running more Phyrexian Arenas and creature removal instead.
Anyway, here's the end standings for Adelaide Regionals 2006 - 1 - Shane Anastasi - RG Beats
Good luck to everyone who is going to Nationals 2006!
Joe Tobin (Aytakk2 at MTGParadise) |
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