Nationals Qualifier Report Part 2

After a loss in Top 8 due to misunderstanding the deck, I was ready to redeem myself at the Qualifier in Flint on 4/30. Kurtis, Matt, and I showed up and again the event was 33 players, which meant 6 rounds of swiss. Kurtis was no longer playing R/U tempo, and was instead playing U/G ramp. Matt was on a list very similar to mine.



I played nearly the same list, but cut Spell Pierce main for a second Beleren and a Baneslayer. We had seen a lot of red decks, so the Baneslayer was a concession to that. I swapped a Condemn and a Sword  since we saw very few decks with maindeck ways to answer a Sword, and again there were aggro decks flooding the place.The Beleren in the board got replaced by an Elspeth to make the numbers work for sideboarding, and it was a really flexible card I could bring in against a lot of different archetypes.

I'm paired against monored Goblins in round 1. Goblin Guides and Bolts make very short work of me. Game 2 he has Guide again, but I stall with Condemn and some 1/2's. Gideon shows up, dies to a Bushwacker fueled alpha, though Guide trigger reveals a second Gideon. He is never able to kill the second, and I establish Gideon + Jace to lock him down. Game 3 I play 2 Firewalkers.

Two rounds, two red decks. Machine Red this time, with Koth, Kuldotha Phoenix, Inferno Titan, and maindeck Tumble Magnet plus Brittle Effigy. He takes game one with a Koth and multiple Phoenix while I can't defend quickly enough. I crush game 2 even though he has Ricochet Trap for my Volition Reins and a Perilous Myr against Firewalker. Game 3 goes to time and we draw. Should've called a judge to watch for slowplay, punted.

The rest of the swiss was relatively mundane, with some mirrors and a monoblack Vampires player who beat me. I drew pretty terribly and just flooded out and died. I end the swiss at 4-1-1 and am paired against Pyromancer's Ascension in the Top 8.

Yup, Pyromancer.

Anyways, I cruise to a quick victory game one as he literally draws only a bunch of filtering and some bolts. He never sees an Ascension and I kill him in two hits with Gideon and Colonnade. My opponent's pretty tilted by this point which is always nice. In game 2 I lead with Seachrome on one to bluff a Spell Pierce and he respects it. He doesn't go for Ascension until he has Pierce of his own, which gives my Flashfreeze value it would otherwise not have had. I land a Jace and fateseal him off his fourth land, and he shakes his head in frustration. I've found a Firewalker at this point and pay for the Leak. A slow clock begins after he kills my first Jace with his own, and the second starts Fatesealing again. I windmill a Celestial Purge on his Ascension sometime later and he is on life tilt. A second Firewalker joins in the fight, and multiple Foresees from him do nothing and he dies to 4 points a turn.

Next up: DJ Kastner. Only ringer remaining in the event. I win the die roll, but lose the game to mulling to 6 and running out of lands quickly. I eat some sword hits and actually have a chance still, but I mess up and fail to kill a Gideon by animating Inkmoth as well as Colonnade. Game 2 is a pretty quick affair where I bluff Leak on two, and he calls with a Hawk. I play Beleren and -1. He is DJ after all, and correctly attacks me instead of Beleren so I can't play Sculptor next turn. I +2 and play Hawk and Mortarpod next turn to defend my Jace from 2 Hawks. He unloads some more after attacking Jace. I have Gideon and the game is effectively over. Game 3 is a pretty back and forth affair, but I have the upper hand since he kept all Preordains and no actual cards that did anything. I land a Hawk and keep up Mana Leaks for a while. A second Hawk joins to start pestering his life total. He plays Beleren with 3 up, and I Leak. He pays and +2's. I play my own Beleren instead of Sun Titan since I had nothing to get back with it and I didn't want to lose to a Reins. His Mindsculptor next turn gets Leak'd since he didn't have a 7th land. He completes his turn with a Stoneforge Mystic. I play Sun Titan for Beleren, and pull ahead. He has the Titan under control with Tumble Magnet, and follows shortly with a Titan of his own. I land a Gideon, and due to the earlier Hawk attacks he is put under too much pressure and dies to Mortarpod activations.

The finals was a bit anticlimactic. My opponent did not have very strong draws in either game and he did not play optimally. I crushed game one with the nuts draw of Mystic, Hawk, Mindsculptor. Game 2 I kept Hawk, 3 Mindsculptor, and 3 lands. He had a Stoneforge Mystic but didn't follow up with Hawks. I was able to Condemn it before it did too much damage, and my Jaces traded with his until he had no more. I was able to win from there without too much effort.

The only good play I made on the day that I don't think a less experienced player would've made was play Sun Titan, get back Hawk, and not activate Beleren and let it stay at one counter. The reasoning was the Beleren staying in play stops my opponent from playing his own Jaces. However if I +2, he can Volition Reins the Titan, and I won't be able to play Mindsculptor to take my Titan back. The same logic applies to -1 Jace, Sun Titan, bring back Jace, -1 Jace, since that will also prevent me from playing Mindsculptor next turn.

I was very happy to have won the tournament, and also extremely tired. Playing Caw mirrors all day is a very draining experience. The best advice I can give to anyone who will be playing Standard in the near future is be prepared to face the U/W menace. And to anyone choosing to play with Caw, learn to mulligan. Hands without 2 drops are unkeepable on the draw in the mirror. Don't be fooled into thinking Preordain is good enough. If you miss, you will lose. Secondly, be more aggressive. Tap out, stop having the fear. I watched many players play scared this weekend, and often choose to just no play Hawks out even though their opponent couldn't do anything to punish them. You want to be the aggressor the in the mirror, since all your counters get better when you're using them to push your own spells through. Force your opponent to defend against your creatures, as this will let you force through planeswalkers more easily.

Kurtis, Matt, and I all Top 8'd this tournament. Kurtis, Matt and, Brian Chung Top 8'd Sunday, with Matt taking it down. Rusty was 100% to Top 8 and 100% to win, which was pretty sweet. Matt will be sharing his thoughts about the deck with you shortly, and possibly Brian Chung will write a feature article about his experience playing a 75 designed by me. Thanks for reading, and keep grinding.