Magic Prerelease

Sorry to those who don't play Magic:tg but I just felt like writing about my recent tournament conquering. Today was the Prerelease for the new Magic set and I drew for first place. My grand prize? $75 store credit at get your game on, not too bad! So what made this time different to help me win? 1. I played with the right cards. Usually I open good cards and then don't play with them because I can't see how great they are in a limited format. This time I opened mediocre cards but I only played with the good ones. 2. More tournament experience. It's easy to get some nerves at these things, all the nerds start to make you jumpy towards the end. But I played a lot of successful tournaments over the summer and that experience really makes a difference in your play. 3. No Ian Winkelstern to beat me in the last round. I swear you've beaten me all but maybe one time. Match by match analysis. You might want to skip this if you don't know magic stuff. Match 1: He was a playing an infect deck so I was on the defensive often to make sure I didn't have a quick poisonous death. Eventually I started generating an infinite stream of cat blockers with "kha, rhemba Regent" (or something like that....) and I finished him with flyers. Match: 2-0 total: 2-0 Match 2: Shit, I always lose to the guy I'm paired with, Kurtis something or other. He plays bomb ass card after bomb ass card and I die to planeswalkers. Fuck. Match: 0-2 Total 2-2 Match 3: Game 1 I crush, Game 2 I'm mana screwed, Game 3 I crush. Match: 2-0 total 4-3 Match 4: Oh snap I'm against Brendan. He's got a tricky deck that aims to win with by dealing ten poison counter in one swing. He gives me eight but I pull some fancy tricks like playing glimmer stag flickering his sunblast angel killing all his creatures. I pull the win but was at 8 poison counters and I would have lost next turn... close! Match: 2-0 Total 6-3 Match 5: Last round, I'm currently placed 7th so a draw won't put me in the top 8. I recognize my opponent so that means he's good. He might be the guy that touched Caitlin's hand once to up his creepiness. Don't worry, he's got a girl friend now that he met while playing Arkham horror. And he traded for Arkham Horror with Magic cards. He tells me he traded a magma phoenix for Arkham horror and a girlfriend. Our matches are really good. Game 1 I take him down by hitting him with multiple 2 for 1's and establishing card advantage by making him take bad blocks and lose creatures. Game 2 he plays a planeswalker and wrecks with it. Fucking planeswalkers, I can't beat them! Game 3 He's land screwed. I publicly lament the loss of another possible good game but silently I cheer for a top 8 place. I also killed his venser in game 3 after he makes a mistake, take that you stupid card type. Match 2-1 total 8-4 Games: 4-1 I'm in top 8 and so is Dan at this point with me at 2nd place (behind my 2nd round opponent) and Dan . The 8 of us discuss a split but one guy wants to play so we got to play. Last match: Tight play on both sides. he's playing a lot of good cards, but I am too. Game 1 I take him down with flyers hitting for 4 damage a turn. Game 2 I've got control but he's starting to take over. I'm out of creatures and he's still got 2 left. They're crappy but if I don't don't get some awesome they'll get there. Luckily he punted the game for me. He's at 2 life due to the beats I was laying down earlier. He attacks with his two creatures leaving no blockers, but I have no creatures. He had forgotten about my equipment though which gives the creature haste. I top deck that creature so hard and hit him for 3. Shit yeah. Dan wins his game too in a close and long one. In top 4 we convince the other two guys to split. It's already 8 at this point and we're all wiped...We gladly take our 150 credit between the two of us. One of the other guys brags about how he would have won. Yeah whatever, next time I'll have to beat his face in. P.S. Ian I did not face that short guy but he was there (Brian?) He got into top 8 but not top 4. I really wanted to beat him this time! But I placed higher than him so that'll have to do... for now.