My First Tournament Experience

So I finally played in my first Magic: the Gathering tournament this past weekend (12th of September) over at Nebula Custom Gaming. It was a Pauper tournament and had a pretty decent turnout as there were 10 other players and me. I didn't have long to prepare for the tournament itself, as I didn't have a pauper deck and had never built one before so I went into it a little blind. I managed to rebuild one of my current decks to Pauper by simply replacing much of the nifty Rare based tactics and keeping it about one core card. The deck was a variation on Mono-Black Devotion, using Gray Merchant of Asphodel as its core, and then built around cheap but hopefully effective creatures that had 2 Black Mana in their summoning costs, and some cheap Enchantments to help out on the Devotion front too. As something of a finisher, and to take advantage of the high devotion going on, I included a playset of Marshmist Titan too. The decklist is as follows:

Land
24 x Swamp

Creatures
3 x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
2 x Faerie Macabre
4 x Severed Legion
4 x Marshmist Titan
2 x Disciple of Phenax
1 x Ghoulraiser
1 x Wicked Akuba

Enchantments
4 x Sinister Possession
2 x Unholy Strength
2 x Eternal Thirst
2 x Claim of Erebos
2 x Font of Return

Spells
2 x Victim of Night
2 x Vendetta
1 x Disentomb
1 x Raise Dead
1 x Ghoulcaller's Chant

Sideboard
4 x Pharika's Chosen
2 x Claim of Erebos
2 x Font of Return
2 x Renegade Demon
2 x Death's Approach
3 x Cast into Darkness

With the tournament played out in the Swiss format, I got seated in the first round and met my opponent (Oli).

Round One
In the opening round my deck performed reasonably well, giving me plenty of land to play and allowing me to start getting creatures out as fast as I could, with a Wicked Akuba on turn two, and a Severed Legion turns three and four. What I hadn't really noticed in all the excitement was that my opponent was struggling for mana. We traded a few blows but he only had one creature and I hadn't really notcied what his creature was doing, concentrating on my own deck (big mistake...). I won the first game and felt confident that my deck would perform ok.
In the second game, I again got a decent starting hand with 4 land (perhaps a little high but no bad thing) and a Severed Legion. However it started to go wrong quite quickly as all I drew was more land. Meanwhile, Oli had started to get his Infect deck going, hitting the required 2 mana he struggled to get last game. By the time I got creatures down (turn 3) I was already in a spot of bother, with 7 infect counters already clocked up. The Severed Legion delayed things for a round before I was dispatched.
The deciding game was even more painful than the second game. Oli had now got his deck into its stride and I was struggling to keep up the pace. It was a pretty one-sided affair and by turn 4 I had lost the match entirely. Not a great opener to the tournament, but at least I had managed to win one game!

Round Two
The second round saw me get a bye, due to their being 11 players. Handily this goes down as a win in the stats, meaning I wasn't looking too bad in the standings by the start of the 3rd round.

Round Three
Having sat out the second round I was eager to dive back in on round three and play smarter than I had in the first round. I had realised at this point that there were a fair number of mono-black decks at the tournament (I counted 4 including my own), and none of them had fared too well in the first or second rounds. I hoped I could change that!
I sat down to meet my second opponent, Fish. I hadn't seen what he had played in the first two rounds, and so was unprepared for what he would play. He got the roll, and started on the play, with both of us playing lands in the first turn and nothing else. His second turn saw his first creature, a Kiln Fiend and that's when I realised what he was playing: Red-Blue. This match turned into a massacre very quickly at this point. The Kiln Fiend was followed by a second next round, and that's when things got rough. First Fish bounced my Severed Legion, removing my only blocker. Then, as a Sorcery has been cast, the Kiln Fiend got stronger and swung in. This tactic was repeated for the next 3 turns before I was done. I realised at the end of this game I was sorely miss matched in this round.
The second game started much like the first except that I got out my Pharika's Chosen early (sideboarded in) and hoped to even things up. However, this simply meant that I had given Fish targets for his Instant and Sorcery spells and he proceeded to beat me down with Kiln Fiends pretty quickly. By turn 4 I was destroyed and the whole match had taken less than 12 minutes, the quickest in the round!
This left me floundering down at the bottom of the rankings, and looking at a pretty humiliating start to tournament gaming. However there was one round left.

Round Four
In the final round I was drawn against Vince, Nebula's Co-Owner, who was also playing a mono-black deck. We sat down and he started on the play, both of us getting into the swing of things and managing to play our decks. It was clear straight away that this was a much more even macth-up than my last match, both taking lives off each other and both being able to play. However I was ebbing lives more quickly than Vince and in fact he got me down to one life by turn 6. However at this point I had an Eternal Thirst on a Marshmist Titan and had managed to add two +1/+1 counters to it. This swung in and gave me vital life back, but I also had creatures left to block. This stabilised the board for a couple of turns, with the addition of a second Marshmist Titan. With the game evenly poised around turn 9, I finally saw a Gray Merchant arrive in my hand! This was the first time in the whole tournament my key card had arrived, and I played it as soon as I could. With  a Devotion of 10 and Vince only having 10 lives left, I played Gray Merchant and claimed the game. This swingy, close game had been the best of the tournament for me, very enjoyable and fun.
The second game was a straightforward affair: I had little in the way of creatures to summon (save one lone Severed Legion, which was quickly dispatched) and lost in short order, putting the match at 1-1.
The deciding game was all set to be a tense affair between two evenly matched decks. Alas, poor Vince never managed to get going, with  his deck not coming out quite right. I was able to build my board presence (once again with the Severed Legions, but also the Wicked Akuba), and once I had was able to go to town, swinging in and dealing damage with Vince only able to block one creature. The final blow came when the Wicked Akuba and the zombies swung in for 6, leaving Vince on 4 lives. I had 4 open mana and the Wicked Akuba had dealt damage, so I pumped its ability and dealt the final 4 points of damage to seal the game and the match, and end my involvement in the tournament.

All in all the tournament was great fun, and certainly thought me some valuable lessons about playing MtG in a tournament (namely, build faster decks!). The last match against Vince was really good fun and I am looking forward to playing regularly at Nebula again now I am back in the Midlands.

And my final tournament position? 7th. It could have been better, but also, could have been much, much worse!

P.S. Nebula now have a new website, as well as their Facebook page. Well worth checking out!

Musings: the Gathering ;)

Wow, what a busy time since my last post!

In the time since I last posted I went along to the Gathering in Spondon with my shiny new upgraded healer character Aurelian. He was the first character I had ever upgraded under the Lorien Trust system and was hoping to show off my awesome new healing abilities to help keep my group alive. This desire lasted about 3 hours, before being hacked down whilst on a rescue mission at our faction gate, dragged away and promptly killed. I knew I shouldn't have spent my OSPs! So with the untimely demise of Aurelian, it was time to get thinking of a new character sharpish.

I didn't want to repeat what i had already done (a heavy armour healer) and didn't wish to reuse the kit from the character, as to me, it would be too similar (not that I am recognisable in the Lions faction). So I decided to settle on a mage: enter stage right Pertinax: mage of awesome cosmic power. In a system like the LT system I always shied away from playing a mage, as it seemed to me that I would blow through all my (underwhelming) spells and be usefulness for the rest of the day. I can safely say (after 3 days of playing him) that this is not the case. i don't think i have ever enjoyed a LARP character so much. The tactical challenge of playing such a fragile character made for interesting fights, and my spells were far from underwhelming. The decision of what spell to use when is a lot of fun, and in many different situations, I felt I could have a decent impact on the fight. The highlight had to be stopping a member of the undead continuing his chant of wasting with a quick mute spell, thus saving his victim's life. That felt good!

This year's Gathering was probably the most enjoyable event I have been to. I think a combination of having more players (including a new one in the form of Anna's rogue type character), playing a character I really clicked with (despite my healer's death), and actually starting to do things as a group, have all combined to make it feel like we mattered as a group and that the event was a hit. Even leaving early on the Monday due to awful weather didn't dampen this feeling. Our group acquired it's first ever magic weapon (at a very reasonable price, thanks Ved!), and we were a useful and cohesive unit of the battlefield in both the set piece and the monster skirmishes. Our unit went along onto the plane of unlife on the Saturday morning, getting involved in some of the Lions plot of getting thoroughly beaten (but living). It was a fantastic event and I have come back with a renewed sense of keen for LARP and fantasy roleplaying. It was such a good event I only got one hand of Magic in!

The subsequent weekend has been taken up moving home to the West Midlands. I am now set up to work from home, and commute, meaning that I no longer have to reside in a flat on my own 5 days a week. What this means for gaming is hopefully a better focus on spending time writing/preparing for sessions and more chances to play. I got another session of Temple of Elemental Evil in this weekend and plans are afoot to get a second regular game on the go. Hopefully in my next post I should be able to provide more details on one or the other of these things.