Magic: The Blogging-Mirrodin Besieged Prerelease

As usual, if you don’t care for magic then skip this post. I’m just going to recap the Prerelease tournament.

Deck building:

The initial pack opening was a little different then usual to prevent cheating. I’m unsure why Topps bothered with this since even Get Your Game on doesn’t but whatever. You opened 6 packs (3 Scars of Mirrodin, 3 Mirrodin Besieged) and then wrote down all the cards in the packs. These aren’t the cards you get to keep though. You put these cards into a bag with the list of all the cards and pass it in to the organizer. He then mixed them up and handed them out again. So basically you don’t keep the cards you opened, you cards someone else opened and catalogued. I really disliked this since there’s a certain special feeling that goes with opening a fresh pack and slowly scrolling to the rare in the back. Robbing us of that feeling on Prerelease day seemed kinda shitty.

My pool of cards wasn’t too bad though. I ended up with a G/B infect deck that was quite potent. My all star cards were “Inkmoth Nexus,” “Skinwing,” and “Massacre Wurm” mixed with a bunch of little poison dudes. I stole many of the games by wiping the board with my worm then sticking equipment on a poison dude. Skinwing in particular was awesome at pushing through the last few poison counters. I don’t think I really made any mistakes in my deckbuilding this time.

Match 1:

I don’t remember much about the specifics of this match. He was G/B poison too but his cards just didn’t match up to mine and I played pretty tightly. I won both games fairly quickly due in part to Massacre Wurm giving me massive amounts of card advantage.

Match Record 1-0 Game Record 2-0

Match 2:

My opponent this round was definitely the best I played that day. He was playing an aggressive R/W Metalcraft deck. He generated tons of 1/1 myr tokens and bashed me as fast as he could. Game one I lost, but slowed him down a lot with my infect guys with big toughness. He finished me off with his Mirrian Crusader which really should be an auto win against my deck. I think if hadn’t played that card I could have taken him down. Game 2 I won by slowly gaining card advantage with beneficial blocks. I also wiped the board twice, Once with Creeping Corrosion and once with Massacre Wurm. Both those cards came at very good times for me, though I did do my best to slow roll them. The Creeping Corrosion killing his Wurmcoil Engine tokens and the Massacre Wurm took down his Mirrian Crusader when I needed it to. I finished him off with a 5/5 infecter. After game 2 there were only 3 minutes left in the round. We did our best to play fast but the clock ran out and we were forced to draw. I think I could have beat him and Dan Buck agrees. This draw came back to haunt me.

Match Record 1-0-1 Game Record 2-1-1

Match 3:

I was paired against a 12 year old and I was happy to come into an easy win that round... Oh fuck. Game 1 I beat him easily, he misplays all over the place by making terrible blocks and playing crappy 1/1 dudes. Game 2 gets interesting. He plays his crappy dudes and hits me for about 3 before I get my sweet infecting blockers out. Then he plays 2 “burn the impure” on my guys, killing them and doming me for 6. He then hits me for another 3 or so. I play a giant 5/5 infect dude and stabilize my board. On his turn he draws and immediately plays “Red Sun Zenith”, which is a fireball that shuffles back into the library, to kill my big dude and hits me for 3 again. Ok that sucks, but whatever. I set out more blockers and stabilize again. He draws Red Zenith again and fireballs me for the last few damage. Fuck! So this kid still can’t play for shit but he’s got a kick ass deck against me. Game 3 happens much like Game 2 “Red Sun Zenith you for 5” Draw it again “Red Sun zenith you for the win.” Dumb.

Match Record 1-1-1 Game Record 3-3-1

Match 4:

With my record diminished I face a meatball in my 4^th round. He makes mistakes then tries to take them back. I let him because he’s not going to win anyways. The only time I don’t is when I’m about to win the game and he trying to rearrange his blockers after he declared them already. But he’s a nice enough guy and the matches are decent. I beat him both games fairly easily.

Match Record 2-1-1 Game Record 5-3-1

Match 5:

I’m facing off against poppa magic this round. This is actually my round 3 opponent’s dad. Shit, now I better beat him. His deck is mediocre, he plays some good cards but also some really terrible ones. You can tell he has some trouble figuring out what’s good and what isn’t. He does, however, play much better than junior so I still have to keep it pretty tight. I beat him both games by wiping the board and hitting him with a 5/5 infect. Good shit.

Match Record 3-1-1 Game record 7-3-1

So my odds for top 8 right now are decent. Unfortunately there were a good number of people with a record of 4-1. Only one person with my record can get in but it unfortunately isn’t me. Both my round 2 opponent and my round 3 opponent (nice job kid…) make it into the top 8 so I don’t know how someone with my record had better tiebreakers than me, but sometimes that’s just the way it is. I ask the organizer my place in the standings. Apparently I was 9^th, shit.