Weekend Plans (Patreon)

I guess I owe you a tournament report from the Invasion/Planeshift/Apocalypse block constructed tournament I attended. If you don't remember, the deck I played is here. I actually updated decklist a little with the main difference being that I added 3 Disrupts to the sideboard. I don't know how many players we had, it was probably around 24 to 30. Anyway, we played 5 rounds.

Round 1, I played a Domain deck. If you don't know, this is a deck that plays all 5 land types with cards that care about land types. Since there aren't any true dual lands, this means the deck has to play a lot of basic lands. Going into the tournament, I debated whether I should have Tranquility in my sideboard but I eventually decided against it. Game 1 my opponent drops a Collective Restraint on turn 4 and then a Destructive Flow soon after. I got totally wrecked and was wondering if this was going to be a long day. Fortunately, game 2 I quickly tempoed my opponent out. Game 3 was super close. My opponent sideboarded a Legacy Weapon and started destroying all my lands. Fortunately, I drew enough burn to win 2-1.

Round 2, I played a Grixis tempo deck focused on attacking with Blazing Specter and recurring Pyre Zombie. Game 1 was super funny. From a Fact or Fiction, I knew my opponent had Urza's Rage in hand. So once I got to 10 life, we both knew I was dead if he got to 12 lands. I made a real show of this and every time he played a land I would count how close he was getting. Little did he know, I also had Uza's Rage! So the turn after he played his 11th land, I played my 12th, tapped all my lands, and surprised him with the win. Game 2, I think he had a slow start with too many tapped lands and I tempoed him out, winning 2-0.

Round 3, I played a virtual mirror match. The main difference was that he had Penumbra Bobcat and I had more burn. I considered that card but eventually decided against it because I wanted more instant speed stuff. I ended up really dreading that card. In game 1, I had a slow start and lost the temp game pretty badly. Game 2 was similar, but I at least tried to fight back. In fact, I had to cast 2 kicked Urza's Rages to kill his kicked Kavu Titan, otherwise I would have lost each time. That was pretty crazy! Even though I ended up losing 0-2, I never felt like I was out of the game. If I just would've topdecked differently, I might have come back. I think that's the sign of a great format when you always think you have a chance!

Round 4, I played Gixis again, but this one was much more controlling than the deck I played round 2. Game 1 I kept a hand that wasn't fast enough and I eventually succumbed to the card advantage he got from multiple Fact of Fictions. It didn't help that I was holding a bunch of Urza's Rage and he played Void and blind-named 3. Game 2 I won pretty easily. Game 3 was super frustrating. He decided to sideboard again between games and took forever shuffling. It was just casual, there was no reason to take it so serious! Anyway, we ended up going to time and drawing 1-1-1.

Round 5, I played Grixis yet again, this time with a controlling deck that was focused on playing a bunch of Lobotomy to take all the cards out of your deck (which can be played even more times with Yawgmoth's Agenda). I won 2 straight games pretty easily. If I get a couple early creatures out, I can usually keep the temp advantage and I won 2-0.

So overall I went 3-1-1, which was good enough for 5th place. If I were to play the deck again, I would definitely sideboard Tranquility instead of Disrupt. I didn't manage to successfully counter a spell with Disrupt all day. The format was so slow, people always had mana open. Overall, it was a super fun format. There are basically no good one drops, and no good cheap burn. So the first 2 or 3 turns are mostly development, and if you fall behind a little, you never feel like you're out of the game. And there aren't any really expensive cards, especially if you don't care about getting the original editions (which we didn't). You can probably build most decks for less than $60. I would argue that the wedge color combinations are a little stronger than the shard color combinations because you can play more pain lands rather than tap lands. That's one of the reasons I played Temur, and it worked well for me. Hopefully other people see this and try it out because it would be fun if this format took off!