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Cascade Valley Regionals Report - May 20, 2006
I have been looking forward to the black red Rakdos guild since the Ravnica block began. I've always favored aggressive decks and I figured this guild would suit my play style well. I was somewhat dissapointed that they didn't include a reprint of Terminate but I got over it (Wrecking Ball is no Terminate).
I playtested for a couple of weeks and settled on this build:
Spells (14)
----------
3 Char
3 Demonfire
4 Ignorant Bliss
4 Rise // Fall
Enchantments (4)
-----------------
4 Seal of Fire
Artifacts (3)
------------
3 Umezawa's Jitte
Creatures (16)
--------------
4 Gobhobbler Rats
4 Jagged Poppet
4 Lyzolda, the Blood Witch
4 Rakdos Augermage
Land (23)
---------
4 Blood Crypt
5 Mountain
3 Rix Maadi, Dungeon Palace
4 Sulfurous Springs
7 Swamp
Sideboard (15)
--------------
4 Cranial Extraction
4 Hit // Run
3 Pithing Needle
4 Rain of Gore
I didn't run Dark Confidant because I have other card drawing abilities in the Ignorant Bliss and Lyzolda, and without Jitte (which is often hated out of a game) I don't have any way to gain life. Maybe I should have run him anyway, I'm still undecided.
We had 133 players which meant 8 rounds of Swiss.
Round 1 - Stefan Hoover - Gruul
Stefan looked a bit nervous and admitted as we played game one that this was his first big tournament. This didn't make me feel any better as he beat me down with Scab-Clan Maulers and Dryad Sophisticates after I mulliganed (a theme which would continue all day). I didn't mount much of a defense as his red green beaters, well, beat up on me.
Game two I boarded in Hit // Run, which did it's job quite well. Stefan's version was a bit of a budget version and included Viashino Sandstalker instead of Giant Solifuge. The Sandstalker hit me once but I Hit him back the next turn. He cast another one the next turn and that got Hit as well. Then he cast a Streetbreaker Wurm and I was out of Hits. The next turn he put Moldervine Cloak on the Wurm and swung for 9. I had an Augermage equipped with Jitte but I chose not to block. I probably should have in case he had burn but I hadn't seen any burn in the first game, just creatures and Cloaks. I top decked a Demonfire and swung with the Augermage. Between Jitte counters and Demonfire I was able to kill the 9/7 Wurm and he never got another creature into play.
Game three I had a fast start. Two Fall's, one on turn two and one on turn three, netted two Burning-Tree Shamans, a Scab-Clan Mauler, and another critter. He had one card left and I had a full grip. I started playing Augermages and Rats and they killed him off.
I will note that Stefan had to mulligan in both games two and three. There was a LOT of mulliganing this day.
Games: 2-1
Matches: 1-0
I was happy to finally win round 1. I usually lose round one. Unfortunately it wasn't a good sign of things to come.
Round 2 - Dave Doffing - Gruul
Dave had a better, fully tricked out version of Gruul with Solifuges and Flames of the Blood Hand main. Game one I mulliganed once and then missed two early land drops in a row. I never did a point of damage to him as his bugs were followed by two Flames. Game two I lasted longer and at one point had cleared the board of all non-land permanents. Then he cast two bugs. I responded by losing my life.
Games: 2-3
Matches: 1-1
Round 3 - Ryan Evens - Roxodon Hierarchy
Ryan led with a Swamp and I was happy to be facing something besides Gruul. Game one was great, it must have taken at least 30 minutes and we went back and forth many times. He wound up Fetter'ing my Rix Maadi because I was using it to keep both our hands empty. But eventually he found and played an Arena and started to gain card advantage. He maxed out at 31 life but I started getting Lyzolda and Augermages and whittled him down to 7. Then he cleared the board with another Wrath, then used Crime to steal one of the Augermages from my graveyard. Eventually the little traitor killed me because I couldn't find a creature or burn.
Game two, I mulliganed (surprise). He quickly established card advantage with another Arena and laid down Kokusho. He said he had them main but just didn't find it game one. I had boarded in Rain of Gore, which was in the board just for this matchup, but naturally I couldn't find it. Kokusho took it home.
Games: 2-5
Matches: 1-2
Round 4 - Tyler Lang - UB Control
Tyler was piloting a deck played by Josh Beck, a nice guy who I've played against at States and several GPT's and who qualified for PT-LA last year. Despite having swept Mike Hall in round one (currently the top ranked Constructed player in Oregon), Tyler was not happy with the deck and kept telling Josh that Darkblast should have been included. Josh was sitting next to us as we played our match. In game one I played Lyzolda. Tyler pointed to it, turned to Josh and said, "See, Darkblast!" I played too many threats for him to deal with and killed him with 18 life left.
Game two was back and forth (after my obligatory mulligan). I got a couple of good Fall's but he was able to recover and start playing blue Legends. He played Meloku which I tried to kill with Demonfire. He Hinder'ed that but the Hinder tied up the mana he would have used to make flying tokens. He got me down to five with Meloku before I could kill it, but then cast Keiga. I had a land in my hand. I drew---Demonfire. I played the land and cast it at him for 7. He was at 6. He looked at his three untapped lands, looked at his hand, and looked at Demonfire, and back and forth for what seemed like several minutes. Finally he extended his hand and said "Good game" as Josh looked on and shook his head.
Tyler wound up 1-5 before dropping. The only guy he beat was Mike Hall. It was that kind of day.
Games: 4-5
Matches: 2-2
Round 5 - Romain Hughes - UGW control
Romain, proprietor of our competitor KardKastle but still a nice guy, was playing a hybrid graft/blue-white control deck. I don't know if this is a net deck or not but I had never played against it before. He had total control of game two as he countered everything relevant and Mortified the creatures which did hit the table. Game two I brought in Pithing Needle and Rain of Gore and kept an openin gseven of this: one Mountain, two Rain of Gore, two Fall, a Rat and a Poppet. I kept. I figured at 2-2 I didn't have much chance at Top 8 anyway and it was a good place to take a chance. If I did get a source of black it would totally shut down his game.
Naturally I missed land drops for the first three turns and wound up discarding the Poppet. This was my deck telling me "Don't do that again!"
Romain, meanwhile, was laying down his defenses including a turn three Ivory Mask, then Story Circle on Red a couple of turns later. I got a Pithing Needle through for the Story Circle but Ivory Mask made much of my Fall-filled hand dead cards. I started swinging with a Rat but I wasn't doing much damage and I actually said, "I'm giving you way too much time---I'm just waiting for you to rip Meloku." He did, the next turn, and Meloku killed me.
Oh yeah, I mulliganed game one. Again. I think that's part of why I kept in game two; I just didn't feel confident that my next six cards would be better than the seven I started with.
Games: 4-7
Matches: 2-3
Round 6 - Ben Oden - Rakdos
Ben built his deck differently than mine. He used the Rakdos Guildmage and Hellhole Rats. The Hellhole Rats weren't very effective. As I saw in my playtesting they are a bit slow against any aggressive deck. He cast his in game one while I had two cards in hand. I responded by casting the Char to kill one of his other critters and discarding what would have been my sixth land.
But of course I had mulliganed in game one, making it at least one mulligan in every single round. Boy that was frustrating. No excuse for that in a 23-land, two color deck which curves out at three. But I digress
Game one went back and forth as we played critters and killed our opponents critters. Eventually he out-crittered me and he used the Guildmage to create a Goblin token (he even had the Unglued Goblin tokens for the occasion) which was one more creature than I could block.
Game two was pretty even until he found two Hit // Run in a row. He killed both of my creatures, did six damage to me, and swung with the creatures he had left. It was just ugly.
Games: 4-9 (!)
Matches: 2-4
I dropped after that. Wow, I just realized that I got swept in all four rounds I lost. Ouch. I still feel that this deck is much better than it showed today.
Final thoughts: Rise // Fall is awesome and a must include in any Rakdos deck. Even if it gets countered it's still a one for one and I hit for two, Hymn to Tourach style, way more often than I missed.
I think three Rix Maadi was too many. Having more than one is unnecessary and it sometimes gets in the way of the heavy color requirements of the deck. You really want to get to two black so you can get the Augermage out there.
Ignorant Bliss was a good trick and got me out of a couple of Castigates in round three but overall I don't think it was needed. I think I'll make these changes and try again at the next Friday Night Magic:
-1 Rix Maadi
-4 Ignorant Bliss
-4 Gobhobbler Rats (I only regenerated them in the Hierarchy matchup, to defend against Descendants. Otherwise it was a Grizzly Bear with more difficult mana requirements.)
+1 Swamp
+4 Rakdos Guildmage (I need more early beats/threats/blockers---the deck just starts too slowly and doesn't finish people off quickly enough, giving them time to draw threats.)
+4 Ravenous Rats (More disruption than the Gobhobblers but they can still carry a Jitte.)
I expected UG Graft to be big but I'm not sure that any of those made the top 8. I know good guy and fellow Rainy Day Gamer was able to draw into the Top 8 with Ghazi-Glare, and there were several Zoo decks, a Ghost Husk and a Ghost Dad deck all near the top 8. I know one Ghost Dad deck piloted by Jason Schumacher wound up qualifying for Nationals.
I playtested for a couple of weeks and settled on this build:
Spells (14)
----------
3 Char
3 Demonfire
4 Ignorant Bliss
4 Rise // Fall
Enchantments (4)
-----------------
4 Seal of Fire
Artifacts (3)
------------
3 Umezawa's Jitte
Creatures (16)
--------------
4 Gobhobbler Rats
4 Jagged Poppet
4 Lyzolda, the Blood Witch
4 Rakdos Augermage
Land (23)
---------
4 Blood Crypt
5 Mountain
3 Rix Maadi, Dungeon Palace
4 Sulfurous Springs
7 Swamp
Sideboard (15)
--------------
4 Cranial Extraction
4 Hit // Run
3 Pithing Needle
4 Rain of Gore
I didn't run Dark Confidant because I have other card drawing abilities in the Ignorant Bliss and Lyzolda, and without Jitte (which is often hated out of a game) I don't have any way to gain life. Maybe I should have run him anyway, I'm still undecided.
We had 133 players which meant 8 rounds of Swiss.
Round 1 - Stefan Hoover - Gruul
Stefan looked a bit nervous and admitted as we played game one that this was his first big tournament. This didn't make me feel any better as he beat me down with Scab-Clan Maulers and Dryad Sophisticates after I mulliganed (a theme which would continue all day). I didn't mount much of a defense as his red green beaters, well, beat up on me.
Game two I boarded in Hit // Run, which did it's job quite well. Stefan's version was a bit of a budget version and included Viashino Sandstalker instead of Giant Solifuge. The Sandstalker hit me once but I Hit him back the next turn. He cast another one the next turn and that got Hit as well. Then he cast a Streetbreaker Wurm and I was out of Hits. The next turn he put Moldervine Cloak on the Wurm and swung for 9. I had an Augermage equipped with Jitte but I chose not to block. I probably should have in case he had burn but I hadn't seen any burn in the first game, just creatures and Cloaks. I top decked a Demonfire and swung with the Augermage. Between Jitte counters and Demonfire I was able to kill the 9/7 Wurm and he never got another creature into play.
Game three I had a fast start. Two Fall's, one on turn two and one on turn three, netted two Burning-Tree Shamans, a Scab-Clan Mauler, and another critter. He had one card left and I had a full grip. I started playing Augermages and Rats and they killed him off.
I will note that Stefan had to mulligan in both games two and three. There was a LOT of mulliganing this day.
Games: 2-1
Matches: 1-0
I was happy to finally win round 1. I usually lose round one. Unfortunately it wasn't a good sign of things to come.
Round 2 - Dave Doffing - Gruul
Dave had a better, fully tricked out version of Gruul with Solifuges and Flames of the Blood Hand main. Game one I mulliganed once and then missed two early land drops in a row. I never did a point of damage to him as his bugs were followed by two Flames. Game two I lasted longer and at one point had cleared the board of all non-land permanents. Then he cast two bugs. I responded by losing my life.
Games: 2-3
Matches: 1-1
Round 3 - Ryan Evens - Roxodon Hierarchy
Ryan led with a Swamp and I was happy to be facing something besides Gruul. Game one was great, it must have taken at least 30 minutes and we went back and forth many times. He wound up Fetter'ing my Rix Maadi because I was using it to keep both our hands empty. But eventually he found and played an Arena and started to gain card advantage. He maxed out at 31 life but I started getting Lyzolda and Augermages and whittled him down to 7. Then he cleared the board with another Wrath, then used Crime to steal one of the Augermages from my graveyard. Eventually the little traitor killed me because I couldn't find a creature or burn.
Game two, I mulliganed (surprise). He quickly established card advantage with another Arena and laid down Kokusho. He said he had them main but just didn't find it game one. I had boarded in Rain of Gore, which was in the board just for this matchup, but naturally I couldn't find it. Kokusho took it home.
Games: 2-5
Matches: 1-2
Round 4 - Tyler Lang - UB Control
Tyler was piloting a deck played by Josh Beck, a nice guy who I've played against at States and several GPT's and who qualified for PT-LA last year. Despite having swept Mike Hall in round one (currently the top ranked Constructed player in Oregon), Tyler was not happy with the deck and kept telling Josh that Darkblast should have been included. Josh was sitting next to us as we played our match. In game one I played Lyzolda. Tyler pointed to it, turned to Josh and said, "See, Darkblast!" I played too many threats for him to deal with and killed him with 18 life left.
Game two was back and forth (after my obligatory mulligan). I got a couple of good Fall's but he was able to recover and start playing blue Legends. He played Meloku which I tried to kill with Demonfire. He Hinder'ed that but the Hinder tied up the mana he would have used to make flying tokens. He got me down to five with Meloku before I could kill it, but then cast Keiga. I had a land in my hand. I drew---Demonfire. I played the land and cast it at him for 7. He was at 6. He looked at his three untapped lands, looked at his hand, and looked at Demonfire, and back and forth for what seemed like several minutes. Finally he extended his hand and said "Good game" as Josh looked on and shook his head.
Tyler wound up 1-5 before dropping. The only guy he beat was Mike Hall. It was that kind of day.
Games: 4-5
Matches: 2-2
Round 5 - Romain Hughes - UGW control
Romain, proprietor of our competitor KardKastle but still a nice guy, was playing a hybrid graft/blue-white control deck. I don't know if this is a net deck or not but I had never played against it before. He had total control of game two as he countered everything relevant and Mortified the creatures which did hit the table. Game two I brought in Pithing Needle and Rain of Gore and kept an openin gseven of this: one Mountain, two Rain of Gore, two Fall, a Rat and a Poppet. I kept. I figured at 2-2 I didn't have much chance at Top 8 anyway and it was a good place to take a chance. If I did get a source of black it would totally shut down his game.
Naturally I missed land drops for the first three turns and wound up discarding the Poppet. This was my deck telling me "Don't do that again!"
Romain, meanwhile, was laying down his defenses including a turn three Ivory Mask, then Story Circle on Red a couple of turns later. I got a Pithing Needle through for the Story Circle but Ivory Mask made much of my Fall-filled hand dead cards. I started swinging with a Rat but I wasn't doing much damage and I actually said, "I'm giving you way too much time---I'm just waiting for you to rip Meloku." He did, the next turn, and Meloku killed me.
Oh yeah, I mulliganed game one. Again. I think that's part of why I kept in game two; I just didn't feel confident that my next six cards would be better than the seven I started with.
Games: 4-7
Matches: 2-3
Round 6 - Ben Oden - Rakdos
Ben built his deck differently than mine. He used the Rakdos Guildmage and Hellhole Rats. The Hellhole Rats weren't very effective. As I saw in my playtesting they are a bit slow against any aggressive deck. He cast his in game one while I had two cards in hand. I responded by casting the Char to kill one of his other critters and discarding what would have been my sixth land.
But of course I had mulliganed in game one, making it at least one mulligan in every single round. Boy that was frustrating. No excuse for that in a 23-land, two color deck which curves out at three. But I digress
Game one went back and forth as we played critters and killed our opponents critters. Eventually he out-crittered me and he used the Guildmage to create a Goblin token (he even had the Unglued Goblin tokens for the occasion) which was one more creature than I could block.
Game two was pretty even until he found two Hit // Run in a row. He killed both of my creatures, did six damage to me, and swung with the creatures he had left. It was just ugly.
Games: 4-9 (!)
Matches: 2-4
I dropped after that. Wow, I just realized that I got swept in all four rounds I lost. Ouch. I still feel that this deck is much better than it showed today.
Final thoughts: Rise // Fall is awesome and a must include in any Rakdos deck. Even if it gets countered it's still a one for one and I hit for two, Hymn to Tourach style, way more often than I missed.
I think three Rix Maadi was too many. Having more than one is unnecessary and it sometimes gets in the way of the heavy color requirements of the deck. You really want to get to two black so you can get the Augermage out there.
Ignorant Bliss was a good trick and got me out of a couple of Castigates in round three but overall I don't think it was needed. I think I'll make these changes and try again at the next Friday Night Magic:
-1 Rix Maadi
-4 Ignorant Bliss
-4 Gobhobbler Rats (I only regenerated them in the Hierarchy matchup, to defend against Descendants. Otherwise it was a Grizzly Bear with more difficult mana requirements.)
+1 Swamp
+4 Rakdos Guildmage (I need more early beats/threats/blockers---the deck just starts too slowly and doesn't finish people off quickly enough, giving them time to draw threats.)
+4 Ravenous Rats (More disruption than the Gobhobblers but they can still carry a Jitte.)
I expected UG Graft to be big but I'm not sure that any of those made the top 8. I know good guy and fellow Rainy Day Gamer was able to draw into the Top 8 with Ghazi-Glare, and there were several Zoo decks, a Ghost Husk and a Ghost Dad deck all near the top 8. I know one Ghost Dad deck piloted by Jason Schumacher wound up qualifying for Nationals.
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