Second Taste of the Tournament Cherry

Its been a couple of weeks since I last wrote again and lots has been going on gaming wise. I hope to get a couple more posts written this week detailing what I have been up to, and what with, but for this post I want to talk about my second experience of playing in a Magic:the Gathering tournament. It has been over a week since the tournament, so the experience isn't as fresh in my mind as I would have liked it to be, so please forgive the lack of detail on some of the matches.

This tournament once again took place at Nebula Custom gaming in Walsall, on Saturday the 27th of September, and was a casual tournament, meaning that the metagame would be wide open to all sorts of different decks, both in power level and in style. I wracked my brains for a week or so before the tournament wondering what deck to play in this event, and even had a stab at building a new Soldier deck in White/Red but did not get enough chance to play test it before the day of the tournament. In the end I decided to go with what I know was decent and reasonably fast (learning from my last experience) and went with my Hellcow's Hammer deck.

My first round match up was against Kate, who was playing an Elf deck. this was the first time I had met Kate and so I didn't know what to expect from her deck. The first game got underway and I got very lucky on my draw, with a great hand coming together in my first seven. We both played lands for a our first turn and second turn. This allowed me to start getting minotaurs out early on and they started to swing for damage straight away. Kate was playing a deck which allowed for a decent amount of lifegain, so whilst I kept on swinging in for damage, she was able to bring her total back up some to mitigate this effect. However, her elves were unable to put much of a dent in the minotaurs that were building on my side of the board, and once I hate got a pair of Rageblood Shamans and a Kragma Warcaller out to boost my creatures I was able to swing in for 21 damage in one attack ending this game.

The second game was much closer than the first, with the minotaurs not coming out as quickly as the first hand, and the elves getting off to a better start. However, the stronger minotaur creatures, and the judicious use of Doomblade, were able to swing things in my favour and I finished up the match 2-0.

The second round brought me up against Rich, one of Nebula's Co-owners. He was playing an Izzet-based Red/Blue deck with a lot of Instants and Sorceries which inspired his Nivix Cyclops' to fly (yep) over and hit hard. The first hand got of to a great start for me and a bad one for Rich, as I got a minotaur out on turn 2 and was able to start causing damage from turn three. Rich however, was stuck mana-screwed and unable to do anything, discarding cards for the 2nd and 3rd turns. By the time he got anything out is was pretty much over and I won the first game. The second match was a whole other story. This time I struggled for mana, and when I did get creatures out they fell foul of Rich's spells, which in turn powered up his Cyclops. This one was a short, brutal and in my case lethal game, tying it at 1-1 going into a decider.

The deciding round was the best game I played in the whole tournament, with blows being traded on both sides, and the pendulum swinging back and fourth several times, before I  was lucky enough to get a Kragma Warcaller out and keep him out, whilst using two minotaur tokens from Flurry of Horns to swing in for enough damage to seal the game and the match. I was left on 2 life in this game and it was a real close call, but I had really enjoyed it.

This brought up the third and final round. I was one of two players who had won their opening 2 matches, and this brought me face to face with Duncan and his mono-black Vampires deck. I had seen how he had chewed through his other opponents and I knew I needed to be very fast to beat him. the first game didn't bode well as he managed to get vampires out quickly, and I was stuck with my ground pounding and somewhat slower to cast minotaurs. What is worse is that as the Vampires were mono-black, my Doomblades were worthless in this game. We both swung in aggressively, with Duncan knowing I couldn't block his fliers and me knowing that there was little point holding my forces back. However, his vampires were also providing him with copious amounts of Lifegain, meaning all I was really doing was stopping his life from building up too fast! The inevitable happened and I lost the opening game.

The second game brought my sideboard into play, and out went the Doomblades, to be replaced by Dark Betrayal, and Drown in Sorrow came in for Sinister Possession. I was determined to try and give a better showing formyself this hand... However my opening hand really let me down and I had to mulligan down to 6 cards. This gave me a mono-red hand with a decent amount of burn and mana. Hoping this would prove enough to keep me in it until my minotaurs came out of the deck I went with it. Duncan's vampires quickly established a decent board presence (although my Searing Bloods proved useful at removing one or two of his really big threats), and I traded burn spells to his creature damage, reducing his life total as he hit mine. Unfortunately, I quickly ran out of spells and was reliant on topdecking creatures... and the only ones I was able to pull was the ever reliant Kragma Warcaller, who proved too expensive to cast. Duncan quickly finished me off and left me defeated 0-2.

With this defeat in the final round I ended up placing 3rd overall: not too bad considering my 7th place in the last tournament, and also left me with a healthy respect for Vampire decks!

At the end of the afternoon I placed an order with Nebula for a booster box of the new Khans of Tarkir set.This is my first ever time buying a booster box just for myself, and I am looking forward to what I get from it (more on that in the next post!).

The Hellcows Revisited

So, I have been using my Minotaurs deck for a few weeks now, playing it, testing it and trying to make steady improvements to it. It has played in games against my workmate, it has played in games at Nebula Custom Gaming, and it has played in games against my brother too. In all of these games the deck has held it's own, winning around 50% of the games it has played (perhaps even a little more). Why have I gone ahead and said all of that? Because I want to write about the deck list! So here is the decklist as it stands for my newly christened Hellcow's Hammers:

LANDS

• 4 x Rakdos Guildgate
• 11 x Mountain
• 7 x Swamp

CREATURES

• 2 x Gnarled Scarhide
• 2 x Ragemonger
• 4 x Kragma Warcaller
• 2 x Felhide Petrifier
• 3 x Deathbellow Raider
• 3 x Oracle of Bones
• 3 x Ragebood Shaman.

OTHER SPELLS

• 2 x Searing Blood
• 2 x Magma Spray
• 2 x Sinister  Possession
• 2 x Doom Blade
• 3 x Stab Wound
• 2 x Flurry of Horns
• 2 x Shock
• 2 x Fall of the Hammer
• 2 x Lightning Strike

SIDEBOARD

• 1 x Flurry of Horns
• 2 x Felhide Brawler
• 2 x Lightning Strike
• 2 x Drown in Sorrow
• 2 x Minotaur Skullcleaver
• 2 x Duress
• 2 x Pharika's Cure
• 2 x Dark Betrayal

So, there are three things that are immediately obviously different about this deck list from the original:

1) There is now a side board. The original was a 60 card Intro Pack deck, and so did not include a sideboard.

2) There has been significant concentration of cards. The numbers of certain cards have been upped considerably, whilst some that were only present as singles before have been removed.

3) The non creature spell suite has been altered considerably. Several of the previous Instant and Sorcery spells were very expensive for their effect, and some were down right bad cards (I'm looking at you Lightning Diadem).

The creature cards have undergone considerable revision whilst I have been playing the deck. One thing that quickly became apparent was that single cards (like the Fanatic of Mogis, Rageblood Shaman, and others) were not coming out often enough to make them reliable. My choice was either to acquire more copies of said card or cut them out altogether and replace them copies of other minotaurs. In the case of the Rageblood Shaman and the Felhide Petrifier, I upped their counts to 3 and 2 respectively, whilst removing the Fanatic of Mogis, and the Warchanter of Mogis altogether. I found both of these creatures to be somewhat expensive and their tricks too situational for my style of play.

Warchanter of Mogis: one of the cards removed from the deck altogether, as I found it too expensive and it's ability too situational to be useful.

A major change in the creatures was the decision to remove all of the non minotaur creatures altogether. This meant that the foil rare from Voracious Rage, Spawn of Thraxes, has been cut as it was very expensive. Whilst Spawn did give the deck some flying and it made a splash when it came onto the board, it had no real synergy with the minotaurs and so he was cut. Along with the unfortunate dragon, Insatiable Harpy and Pharika's Chosen were also removed: the harpy due to her being a single card that was replaced by minotaur duplicates, and Pharika's Chosen was directly replaced by Gnarled Scarhide in the one drop slot.

The non creature cards underwent a major overhaul whilst play testing. Flurry of Horns and Magma Jet stay as they were (although one more copy of Flurry was added to the sideboard), and Searing Blood was increased from 1 to 2 to make it more viable. However the remainder of the spell suite was removed for various reasons: like the aforementioned Lightning Diadem is just a bad card, over-costed, and weak. Other cards such as Rollick of Abandon or Pinnacle of Rage were just expensive for what they did, and were also only singles, so their utility was limited.

Poor old Lightning Diadem, just plain bad as a card.

There are still some areas for improvement I feel. I want to increase the number of Ragemongers as they really are a very handy card, both for reducing summoning costs and also acting as removal bait. The Boros Reckoner would be an obvious (but expensive) card to add to the deck. The fact it is a minotaur counts heavily in it's favour, but the fact it rotates out of Standard in October counts against it (since it is a £6 card, so £24 for a playset). The spell suite has a number of areas I think I could improve, with possibly getting rid of Sinister Possession and replacing it with something more deadly, such as  2 more Doom Blades. However, I do feel like this deck is nearing completion and is probably 95% of the way toward where I want it to be. Well, at least until Standard updates in October!