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Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed the last article
because this one is a little bit different. I’m
going to give you a tourney report to show how the deck
works its magic (get it?) and then let you know what
Odyssey cards would have helped out at least a little. The
Deck
Well, since I hadn’t played at this place for about three
years, (and even then, I was a scrub) I had no idea what
was going to get played by everyone else.
So, I just packed up good old White Weenie (no
blue splashed) and had my friend Jeff come over to do a
little testing and pick up my friend Erik (who played
Draw-Go). He was playing Sligh while testing and I
was losing horribly in the first game. I knew that
after sideboarding it was going to be a slaughter,
though. Which reminds me, here’s the deck list: 1 Ramosian Sergeant Sideboard: 2 Disenchant Now, let me explain the deck. The lone Ramosian
Sergeant was great all night. He drew all sorts of
burn out, along with Steadfast Guards. Tithes are
pretty obvious. Originally, there were only three
Swords in the deck. That changed immediately after
I played a few games against a 3-Deuce deck. One
Sergeant was pulled to put it in. Seal of
Cleansing were also pretty good all night. I
noticed how the deck just died to Morphling (doesn’t
everything) saw that these guys could block fliers (and
were pretty efficient) and in went three. The
Soltari Monks should have been Priests but I couldn’t
find any. Steadfast
Guard just owns Stasis and is great with the Sergeant.
The Warriors are excellent when you have a Paladin out
against Sligh or Empyrial Armor against everything else.
The Paladins were another great critter all night long
(there seem to be a lot of those). The Empyrial
Armors are great against everything and get even better
when put on the Honor Guard. Speaking of whom,
they were probably the MVP of the night. A few
people had to try kind of hard to play around them and
others just didn’t want to play anything, which was
great for me. Cataclysm is the card that everyone
just hated. It saved me from dying quite a few
times and helped me kill people a lot of the other
times. The Disenchants and the Seal in the
sideboard are pretty self-explanatory. The
Honorable Passage was another attempt to stop the Sligh
decks I expected so much of (two of them showed up from
what I saw). The Story Circle was the MVP of the
sideboard. I
believe it came in every match except one (3-Deuce) and
even stopped a Morphling from killing me. The
Lashknife Barriers were there to help against the random
Counter-Phoenix deck that I might play, although they
did help out against something a lot harder on my
critters (how’s that for foreshadowing?).
The Armageddons were there to put in against
Draw-Go in place of Cataclysm since it lets me leave
more creatures on the table afterwards. The
Tourney
Since it took about an extra hour and a half or so to get the
tourney started (we couldn’t find enough people to get
to the 18 limit) I had a chance to do deck changes (see
above), play, and trade. First round pairings went
up and I was playing against (drum roll, please) my
friend Jeff. I know, I know, every report has the
match where you play against each other to get into Top
8, but since you could still get in at 3-1, it wasn’t
such a big deal. Round 1 Jeff (Sligh) Game 1 went according to plan with him beating the crap out
of me with Pups and the rest of the gang while I tried
to regroup. I cast a Cataclysm on turn four which
slowed the bleeding but still sent me to the sideboard.
In came four Story Circles and three Passage. Game 2 was the opposite. Turn three I had the Paladin
out, turn four I armored him, and turn five was the
Cataclysm. He couldn’t race with me and it was
off to game three. In game 3, I was taking Pup beats while he took the bear
beats. When he was at eight and I had an Honor
Guard out with another guy, he decided to cast a Ball
Lightning and swing with everything. I blocked the
Pup, Passaged the Lightning, and that was game. Round 2 Erik (Draw-Go) Wow, two friends in a row. This must be some sort of a
record! Anyway, this was the match I feared the
most (Powder Keg kills almost all of my guys). In
the first game, I hit him with critters early and then
he Kegged em all away, dropped a Morphling with a few
extra blue mana out, and I entered the Scoop Phase.
In came the Armageddons and Story Circles. Game 2 was something else. He got me down to ten with a
Morphling and said go. I drew a Story Circle and
smiled on the inside. I already had a critter out,
so I decided to cast the CoP: Morphling. He
started to remove a Force Spike when I said,
“Morphling cant be targeted.” He asked me what
I meant and I said, “Have you read Story Circle?”
I told him again that Superman couldn’t be targeted
and he let the Story Circle through! I quickly
named blue and said go. He untapped, drew, and
then attacked me with the Morphling. I told him I
would use the Circle and he made the shapeshifter
untargetable. I told him that Story Circle
didn’t target like the CoPs and he conceded. In game three, he didn’t see a Keg or Disk and a Longbow
archer went all the way after killing a Morphling (he
didn’t see that the Archer could block fliers and had
tapped out to play an Ophidian, which I sent farming). Round
3 Eric WW variant
Eric was a really nice guy and I had a great time playing
against him. He was playing a White Weenie type deck that used Marble
Diamonds along with Armageddons to disrupt the opponent
while being unaffected. Game 1 went fairly easy.
All we did was attack each other until I armored a guy,
Cataclysmed, and quickly ended the game. In game 2 I brought some Story Circles in since they were all
I had for the mirror match. This game was a lot
closer than the first. I was slowly pecking away
at him with my guys until he put a Serra’s Embrace and
Spirit Link (I think) on one of his guys. I put an
Empyrial Armor on a guy and we raced. A Swords
helped out and we were done with the match shortly
after. Round
4 Lee 3-Deuce
Lee recently got a Top 8 at GP: Minneapolis so I was a little
worried. Before the tournament we were playing and
it seemed that his deck was slightly better than mine.
Oh, well. In the first game, I got a turn 3 Armor
on a guy followed buy a turn 4 Cataclysm. The game
was over shortly after since he couldn’t find any
Swords. Game 2 was probably one of the best games of Magic I think I
have ever played. We were going back and forth
killing creatures and casting them (although I seemed to
be losing way more creatures than him). He started
to break through with Cursed Scrolls (this is where the
Lashknife Barriers came into play, even though he Sealed
it) and soon was attacking for damage. He had a
Scroll and a Granger Guildmage (has the Fireslinger
ability) out when I drew my card. I was quite
happy-Coalition Honor Guard. I cast it and said
go. During my endstep, he pinged me with the
Guildmage and I looked at my life, saw it was at 2 and
scooped. As soon as I started to shuffle I
realized what I had done-he had to target the Guard.
Oh, well, it was my fault since I conceded and was
guaranteed to make Top 8 anyway. In game 3, it was pretty much a slaughtering as he beat me
down with just about everything he possibly could.
I think I cast a Cataclysm some where but I’m not
sure. This brought us to the Top 8. Quarterfinals
Steve (Pud) R/W Ponza
This match was kind of humiliating for me. I don’t
think that his deck had any rares in it and he was
really hurting me with stuff like Squee’s Embrace and
Goblin Gardener! Game1was pretty bad. I kept a one-land hand without a
Tithe just because I had some really nice stuff in my
hand. Oops. He started to play the depletion
lands and popped pretty much every land I played.
I think I scooped when he put a Squee’s Embrace on a
Gardener. Game 2 went according to plan. I got out a couple of
quick guys and on turn 4 dropped an Empyrial Armor on
one of them. He didn’t have the burn in response
and it was on to game 3. In game 3 I had to play a little more carefully around his LD
since my hand had a few more expensive things in it.
I got out a couple of guys to match his and we started
trading. He kept popping my land, but I was
winning the damage race and didn’t really care.
I finally killed him with only a land or two in play and
without casting an Armor or Cataclysm. Semifinals
Ben Stompy
Sorry, but after my quarterfinal match I stopped taking notes
for some strange reason, although I do remember the
match fairly well. Game 1 went fairly easy except for his River Boas that wanted
to step in front of my guys and regenerate. A
Swords to Plowshares took care of that problem. An
Empyrial Armor ended the game soon after. For game 2 I boarded in a few Story Circles just in case
things went sour for me. I had three guys and was
attacking him after a few Swords when I cast a Story
Circle and attacked. That turn he tried to cast
two Avatar of Might. It got to my turn when I
realized that he couldn’t do that. He thought
that my Story Circle was a creature so we went back to
his turn. I think he cast another guy and said go.
An Empyrial Armor on a shadow guy finished the job. Finals
Lee 3-Deuce
Since it was 1:30 in the morning we decided to split and I
gave him the win so he would go along with the plan.
We each wound up with 21 boosters so it wasn’t too bad
for a $10 entry fee. Odyssey’s
Effect
And now for the strategy part. For this conversion, why
don’t we use my deck as a model? Throughout the
night I saw that the game would probably have been over
a turn or two earlier if I had some sort of Crusade
effect. This is where Pianna, Nomad Captain caught
my eye. She’s not too efficient by herself being
a 2/2 for three mana, but she is great with a couple of
other guys out. She also gives the bonus of not
working for your opponent in the mirror match, although
they can just block and kill her. Another new
Crusade is Divine Sacrament. This deck often has
threshold with the Cataclysms in there, but they don’t
give you the advantage in the mirror match. This
is one of those choices that comes down to the metagame.
I saw a few other WW decks up there so I
personally would go with the Pianna’s. Two
should suffice and can replace a Cataclysm and a
Coalition Honor Guard. This will also help round off the mana curve. One non-Crusade card that jumped out at me was the Mystic
Penitent. He’s pretty efficient at a 1/1 for one
mana and only gets better. He also makes the deck
less vulnerable to Powder Keg. We can take out the
Steadfast Guards for this guy and take care of the
Sergeant later. Another creature that would have
been great at the tournament was the Beloved Chaplain.
Since every bit of removal I saw did two points
of damage anyway and there were so many creature decks
up there, we can take out the Sergeant and the Soltari
Monks to drop four of these guys in there. This
might not be a great idea if you don’t expect a lot of
creatures in your area, although Extended is starting to
see more and more of them lately. The sideboard is where Odyssey is going to help the most, I
think. The Spheres are great against a variety of
decks and are pretty efficient. The ones that will
help the most are the Sphere of Law and the Sphere of
Duty since Sligh and Stompy will get destroyed by these
things. I am going to take out the Honorable
Passages for three Spheres of Law and two Lashknife
Barriers for the Spheres of Duty. One of the creatures that I decided I wouldn’t put in was
Lieutenant Kirtar. He has a nice ability but
isn’t worth taking out another set of creatures for a
few of him when the Swords to Plowshares are already in
there. Balancing Act was going to replace
Cataclysm until I saw that it was number of permanents
and not one of each. Graceful Antelope, while
extremely fun, has no place in a deck like this.
Aegis of Honor was going to go into the
sideboard, but I have already made a lot of changes to
the deck to stop red and felt that this would make it
overkill. So, here’s the new beatin’ machine: 4 Tithe Sideboard: 2 Disenchant Well, that’s all for this week’s (actually 3)
installation. I will be back next time with an
article on who knows what. If you have any
particular deck-type that you would like me to look
over, just send me an e-mail and I will see what I can
do. Until
next time, keep ‘em legal
Robby
P.S. Sorry this report was so late but it was
interrupted by a family trip during which I had neither
an internet connection or a computer to type on.
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