As soon as I heard that Star City Games was stopping by LA, I knew I wanted to go. I unfortunately wasn’t able to go to the San Jose one, with the unfortunate part being it as soon as school was starting. So anyway, my brother and I manage to find a ride with Edwin and Fletcher, so we leave Friday at about 5:30pm or so. We arrive at the hotel at about 12:45am, where we turn on some movie (forget what it is), then promptly crash for the night.
When we wake up, I promptly 1-2 drop from the Standard event with RDW. Here’s roughly how the rounds went:
Round 1: Playing vs. Caw-Blade. Yay favorable matchup! Nope, triple Gideon, GG.
Round 2: Playing vs. Valakut. Yay favorable matchup! Nope, triple Obstinate Baloth, GG.
Round 3: Playing vs Mono Black Control with Phyrexian Crusader! Yay…uh I don’t know how this match-up works. Win. Drop.
After scrubbing out of the Standard event, I decide to do the Legacy challenge even though my car kind of just wants to leave since the rest of us scrubbed out as well. I sleeve up Zoo, which happens to be the same as the deck I end up playing the next day, so here is the list in all its glory.
| Creatures (23) 4 Wild Nacatl 4 Tarmogoyf 3 Grim Lavamancer 3 Noble Hierarch 3 Knight of the Reliquary 3 Qasali Pridemage 1 Gaddock Teeg 1 Mother of Runes 1 Terravore Spells (15) 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Swords to Plowshares 3 Green Sun’s Zenith 2 Sylvan Library 2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant Lands (22) 4 Wooded Foothills 4 Windswept Heath 2 Arid Mesa 2 Taiga 2 Plateau 1 Savannah 1 Horizon Canopy 1 Dryad Arbor 1 Mountain 1 Plains 1 Forest 2 Wasteland | Sideboard (15) 2 Krosan Grip 2 Path to Exile 2 Umezawa’s Jitte 2 Pyroblast 2 Ethersworn Canonist 2 Null Rod 2 Tormod’s Crypt 1 Karakas |
For the Legacy Challenge though I don’t think I had the Karakas, and it was another Pyroblast instead.
A quick recap:
Round 1: Andrew with Eva Green with White – He gets manascrewed game 1 so I beat him, then game 2 he tries to keep me off land with Sinkhole, but I land Elspeth, Knight-Errant and that gets me there.
1-0
Round 2: Rob with Team America – Both games we end up getting into a top deck war, which I manage to pull through with my high density threats.
2-0
Round 3: Raymond with Merfolk – Game 1 is a stalemate with him stealing a Goyf with a Gilded Drake, but my Lavamancer keeps him at bay. I get out Jitte early game 2 and with him keeping a land-light hand with no Vial, I take it.
3-0
Round 4: Robert with Belcher – We draw, thank God. We play it out and he is my only losses for the event.
3-0-1
So I get 3 packs and $25 dealer credit, so I get my first Thoughtseize. My brother gets 6 packs and later in the hotel night, we do Type 4 pack wars with Fletcher and Edwin. I manage to lose with a Thrun with Phyresis enchanted on it….oh well, that means we got a Thrun.
Onto the real event! I register the list above and promptly face 2 High Tide decks.
Round 1: Adam with High Tide
Game 1 is relatively close, as in I Green Sun for Teeg, he bounces it and goes off. Game 2 is better as I get out a Canonist with Pyroblast backup. Game 3 involves me mulliganing into nothing that great and he beat me. Not exactly the way to start the day unfortunately. Apparently he’s from Kansas City, so he traveled quite a distance to get here.
0-1
Round 2: Nathan with High Tide
Yes, the Nathan from AZ. He played Billy from AZ the round before, so I guess his luck hasn’t been so great. Fortunately for me, a Green Sun turn 3 for a Teeg manages to snatch game 1 from him. Then the gods shine on me game 2 as I bring out a Canonist with double Pyroblast backup. I don’t think High Tide decks can beat that.
1-1
Round 3: Jeff with Zoo
The gods decide to laugh at me and my brother, as it is apparent that we traveled all the way to California just to play each other. I don’t even feel like covering this, but I end up getting the win.
2-1
Round 4: Vidianto with Team America
You can view the feature match here.
So I get called up to the feature match table. Fortunately we are the third feature match. One is being covered by SCGLive and the other is being written up. However, one feature match has Affinity and the other has Burn, ensuring a quick match. Team America and Zoo? Not so quick, meaning that since both of the other feature matches get done quickly, we are called up to play on SCGLive.
I would definitely like to make several notes here as games 2 and 3 are covered.
I manage to take game 1 somehow, as he draws into a ton of blanks while I beat with Noble Hierarch, then drop a Knight of the Reliquary. Course I get my first ever warning in a feature match. I forget to trigger the Exalted for Knight, so I call a judge on myself. He was at 7, and the Knight was supposed to swing for 6 the turn before (which would have put him at 6, for exactly lethal the turn I call the judge on myself). That puts him at 1 and I’m fortunate enough for him not to draw a removal for it and I take game 1.
Game 2 I keep a sketchy hand. I believe I had Swords x2, Grim Lavamancer, Elspeth, Savannah, Goyf, and Wasteland. I probably got torn apart on the SCGLive Chatroom for that. I’m pretty sure I ran out my removal too early. Drawing 3 Swords was pretty sweet but it’s unfortunate that Sylvan Library couldn’t get me there.
Game 3 I completely misplayed by playing the Green Sun’s Zenith on the second-to-last turn. I kept thinking that, if he had the Sower of Temptation, Sower would grab a creature, and that creature would be able to block (even though it is tapped from the alpha attack). I didn’t realize that he had Deed until I cast the Zenith, at which point I realize that Team America decks run Deed and that is his only out…yeah go Jason! During his turn I call it, but he doesn’t Deed and I take the win.
Regardless, looking at the footage he did have the double Force so Green Sun’s Zenith would not have resolved then. I truly got lucky from him not drawing a land because he had actually Brainstormed a land on top with a Deed in hand. When I Path’d his Goyf, he shuffled. You can see him pause in the middle of shuffling, and that ended up causing him the game as he failed to draw a land.
3-1
Round 5: Joseph with Junk
Game 1 he Tops like crazy, manipulating his library to draw 3 (!) Vindicates to remove my guys. However he doesn’t draw a Knight and I get him down to Bolt range to kill him. Game 2 wasn’t even close: he was able to Vindicate my lands to keep me out of the game. Game 3 was pretty bad for me too. Elspeth came down twice (the second one after ultimating)….not on my side, but his. His Knight was able to swing in as a 14/14 flyer for 2 turns.
3-2
Round 6: Keith with NO Bant
I keep a pretty solid hand game 1 but no removal…and T3 Progenitus does it for me. Game 2 however I remove his early mana dorks and get in with Knight enough to make it not worth it to cast Progenitus, especially since I get an Elspeth out. Game 3 he does the fatal mistake of keeping the 1-land, 1 mana dork hand while I keep a X-card, 1 removal spell, and he doesn’t draw a land for the rest of the game. It was ugly, but I’ll take it.
4-2
Round 7: Joseph with Dredge
Joseph was a cool guy, but he hit the worst dredges EVER. Neither game did I see any Bridges, and I saw at most 2 Ichorid both games. I take game 1 off the back of Elspeth and Wild Nacatl (Yes, it was that bad), and game 2 I remove his Imp with Bolt, Tireless Tribe with Swords, his graveyard with Crypt, his Narcomeba with Pyroblast, and finally shut off his Dread Returns with Teeg. Yes, he drew that bad and I drew that well.
5-2
Round 8: Alex with Wizards
You can see his decklist here.
Goyfs and Knights > Wizards in size. I saw the deck in action before and it looked pretty sick, but he just wasn’t able to keep up with my removal. With no Patron Wizard in sight, he wasn’t able to out-tempo me either. Azorious Guildmage looked to do the job as he brought me all the way down to about 4 life, but I drew removal at the right moment to start swinging back huge. Game 2 was much of the same – Jitte did the dirty work as Elspeth sat back and generated tokens.
6-2
So 6-2: Good for 26th and $50. Not too bad for my first big Legacy event. It was a pretty awesome event and I’m definitely glad I went.
Props:
- Getting Top 32
- The people I played in all the events were awesome and chill
- Winning a feature match (exactly one more than Prosak :P)
- Getting back home in only 5 1/2 hours
Slops:
- Getting paired up against my brother round 3
- High Tide Rounds 1 & 2
So that is my tournament report for SCG: LA. I’ll be glad to flesh it out some more. I won’t be a regular writer for AZMagicPlayers, but expect an article from me from time to time.
I forgot to add, welcome to the new AZMagicPlayers website! See you all this weekend at the AZMagicPlayers Open Weekend: Free FNM, $1000 Standard and $500 Legacy!
Jason Abong