The Road to GP Cleveland: Part 3 - Trial By Fire

43 People showed up at Millennium Games and Hobbies to compete in an OBC slobberknocker. Initial sightings of the decks being entered showed a lot of U/G and U/W. Only a few mono-black decks were apparent, and of those only half were of the control variety. The winner of this would get a third round bye to Grand Prix Cleveland.

To review, the deck I played was as thus:

After Midnight (MBC) - an OBC deck
By Andrew Chapman

4x Morbid Hunger
3x Mutilate
4x Chainer's Edict
4x Innocent Blood
1x Mirari
1x Haunting Echoes
2x Decompose
4x Gravestorm
2x Mind Sludge

4x Faceless Butcher
2x Laquatus's Champion

3x Cabal Coffers
22x Swamp

Now, right into the match-ups…

Round 1 -vs- Bob Maxwell playing U/G Speculation with Cabal Therapy

Game 1: I begin by mulliganing to 5 (great start to the day, eh?) and then getting stuck at 3 lands for the rest of the game, even though I drew several cards off of a Gravestorm. His flashback creatures just pound my helpless deck into an early scoop.
Game 2: I start with another mulligan, but get a good 6-card start. I recover from an early game rush with a Mutilate. At this point, I was at 8 and he was at 20. Many turns and several Morbid Hungers later, I was at 20 and he was at 2. From this point on, I continue to only draw land, and he continues to only draw Roar of the Wurms (with enough mana to hard cast them). The rest is all simple math.

Match record: 0-1 Games record: 0-2

Round 2 -vs- Steve Saller playing MBC

Game 1: The mirror match is really dumb and very un-interesting. In any case, I mulligan (for the 4th time in 3 games for anyone who is counting) down to 6. However, Gravestorms on turns 3 and 5 provide me with way too much card advantage for Steve to recover. After I deplete his hand and graveyard, I lay down 2 Champions. They swing the next turn for the win.
Game 2: This was a long boring game, that saw lots of land destruction and hand disruption. Eventually, we both land a Haunting Echoes on one another. He later lands a Shade, and it only takes 2 turns to finish me off, not that I had any chance of removing it anyway.
Game 3: He gets the early start with a couple Mesmeric Fiends, but I recover after a few turns. Again, we kill off a bunch of land on both sides of the table. I then get 2 Gravestorms on the table, and that is where the game started to swing in my favor. He laid down Screams of the Damned and he clearly wanted to save his graveyard to try to finish me off with it. This just fed me loads of cards and I outran his Screams with Hungers, which eventually finished him off.

Match: 1-1 Games: 2-3

Round 3 -vs- Jesse LaBounty playing aggro mono-black

Game 1: Jesse is my teammate and we know each other's decks quite well. We really don't want to face each other, but we agree that drawing now at 1-1 would only hurt both of us in the long run (granted, if I drew here and continued to win, I would be in the finals). In any case, I start by taking a mulligan to 6 (see a theme so far?). He gets a characteristic fast start and I get a characteristic land screw. He simply continues to turn his creatures sideways and I lose very quickly.
Game 2: He casts 2 Cabal Therapies early on catching a Hunger and 2 Butchers from my hand. He then puts down Mindslicer and continues to beat me down. I continue to draw all the land I didn't see in game 1, and the loss of my starting 2 Butchers hurt me greatly. I lose a little slower than the first game, but not much.

Match: 1-2 Game: 2-5

At this point, it is really not looking good for me. I know I can't lose another match and I then need to have some luck with the math to make it in. My deck hasn't been giving me a healthy balance of cards at all, and I know it can perform better. Knowing that I am just having the bad luck that can come to any deck, I continue to trudge on in the tournament.

Round 4 -vs- Tom Vereln playing R/G

Game 1: Someone forgot to tell Tom that this was OBC, as he played mountains in his deck. I joked with him that they must all be proxies for islands. In any case, this was the first time I saw my opponent mulligan. I keep a starting hand with 2 Butchers. He plays a few creatures, but I draw another Butcher and a Champion, and he has no chance of recovering. My 4 creatures stomp him hard.
Game 2: We both start with lots of land drops which is really in my favor. He gets 2 Angers in his graveyard (with a mountain out, though I still swear they represent islands) and a Bearscape. I kill many creatures, but not until they nab me with the haste from the Angers. Bears end up finishing me off after a long fight.
Game 3: He gets screwed out of red mana for much of this game, and I left facing half of his deck. This gives me time to get Mirari through a Tutor, and this all but closes the game. 1 Hunger cast 4 times at him finishes the game.

Match: 2-2 Game: 4-6

Round 5 -vs- Ryan Klock playing U/G Threshold

Game 1: This is a bad match for me and I make note of it. I have to fight through 3 early Standstills, but 2 Mutilates let me recover at 2 different points in the game. Though I was waiting for the Echoes to help finish the game, I never saw it or needed it. A late game Champion game down and swung for the win.
Game 2: This game I only have to fight through 1 Standstill, but a barrage of Butchers and Hungers keep me in the game. I find 2 late game Champions and they kill him quickly thereafter.

Match: 3-2 Game: 6-6

Round 6 -vs- Steven Cuach playing U/G Threshold

Game 1: Oh great, another Threshold deck. I knew I needed this one to give myself any bit of a chance, but my tiebreakers were already horrible. In any regards, if I beat Steven and Jesse won, he'd be in, so I was geared up to get the win. We both miss early land drops, but he eventually gets past 3, but I don't. I don't really have to describe what came next.
Game 2: I recover early with a Mutilate and manage to keep fairly good control over the board. A late game Haunting Echoes all but seals things up for me and the rest is all academic.
Game 3: This was an interesting game as I came across 2 early Gravestorms which had him making some hard choices throughout the entire game. In order to keep himself at threshold, he had to give me lots of extra cards. This proved to be too much for him in the end, as a Champion came down on a controlled board position. He died very soon after.

Match: 4-2 Game: 8-7

Final standings showed me in 12th place out of the original 43. I had HORRIBLE tie-breakers and I missed top 8 because of that. A G/W deck went on to win the tournament. Despite the questionable results, I am very pleased with how the deck played. When I got past all the land issues, the deck played very well, and beat my opponents as it is supposed to. This is very reassuring to me and I have plenty of confidence going into Grand Prix Cleveland.
Until I never fight with land screw…

Andrew Chapman
Whitechrisrock@yahoo.com
IM: wchrisrock