Double fisting, pt 1
In keeping with my longstanding belief in Progress (uppercase P) and Improvement (uppercase I), I checked out the Pioneer format for the first time.
(The first part of that sentence is only partially sarcastic; have you read the DSM-3? But also, have you seen the fucking world at the end of 2019?)
More accurately, though, I was motivated by the shop's end-of-year FREE EVENTS!!! promotion. I get to play Magic with some number of at least vaguely like-minded people without coughing up ten American dollars at the start. It's glorious.
The night prior, I ransacked my pile of red cards to piece together a ramshackle aggressive deck. Every piece was at least reasonably Standard-playable in its era, but I'm not feeling great about cutting Soul-Scar Mage for a split of Zurgo and Rakdos Cackler. I throw up a request for the actual cards I want on the Facebook group and am pleasantly surprised to get everything covered via loan from Antonio, the owner and operator of Syracuse's (assumedly) only cube that consists entirely of 1-drops.
I re-sleeve the "better" version of the deck with 13 of Antonio's cards at 12:50, then at 1:00 get the pairings page on which I get... a round one bye. It's good news for my odds of turning the $0 entry fee into some amount of store credit, but usually bad news for me enjoying the next 30-50 minutes of my life. Today, though, I'm able to jam a bunch of mainboard games of my Sneak & Show versus Dom's Sultai Oko pile during the otherwise dead time -- thoroughly rewarded for the ongoing good decision of owning and carrying around two thousand bucks worth of cardboard inside a little red box inside my backpack. I mostly beat him up with Emrakul triggers, but once I did get a 3/3 elk Griselbrand and thus died a little bit on the inside.
Round 2 I'm up against Mono-Black. The games are pretty sweet and the competing piles of 1-drops lead to a lot of key decisions that are mostly made irrelevant by one player drawing either two or nine lands. I lose.
Round 3 I'm back for redemption against a homebrewish Jeskai prowess deck. I out-prowess him by strategically not owning or using any copies of Wee Dragonauts. He comments that he's borrowing the deck from his son, which is awesome and adorable. I win.
Round 4 I'm up against Lotus Field combo. Absolutely zero interaction with each other, unless you count Yavimaya Coast pings. I feel smart for going for a potential kill G3 by sacrificing my Bomat Courier mid-combat to try to set up lethal prowess triggers, but my 20% out doesn't come and I lose on the following turn ten minutes later after a bunch of twiddling. I "win" anyway because Mister Lotus Field doesn't gain anything with a victory and I wind up with a sweet, sweet twenty-five dollars for winning one match of Magic in about three hours.
(The first part of that sentence is only partially sarcastic; have you read the DSM-3? But also, have you seen the fucking world at the end of 2019?)
More accurately, though, I was motivated by the shop's end-of-year FREE EVENTS!!! promotion. I get to play Magic with some number of at least vaguely like-minded people without coughing up ten American dollars at the start. It's glorious.
The night prior, I ransacked my pile of red cards to piece together a ramshackle aggressive deck. Every piece was at least reasonably Standard-playable in its era, but I'm not feeling great about cutting Soul-Scar Mage for a split of Zurgo and Rakdos Cackler. I throw up a request for the actual cards I want on the Facebook group and am pleasantly surprised to get everything covered via loan from Antonio, the owner and operator of Syracuse's (assumedly) only cube that consists entirely of 1-drops.
I re-sleeve the "better" version of the deck with 13 of Antonio's cards at 12:50, then at 1:00 get the pairings page on which I get... a round one bye. It's good news for my odds of turning the $0 entry fee into some amount of store credit, but usually bad news for me enjoying the next 30-50 minutes of my life. Today, though, I'm able to jam a bunch of mainboard games of my Sneak & Show versus Dom's Sultai Oko pile during the otherwise dead time -- thoroughly rewarded for the ongoing good decision of owning and carrying around two thousand bucks worth of cardboard inside a little red box inside my backpack. I mostly beat him up with Emrakul triggers, but once I did get a 3/3 elk Griselbrand and thus died a little bit on the inside.
Round 2 I'm up against Mono-Black. The games are pretty sweet and the competing piles of 1-drops lead to a lot of key decisions that are mostly made irrelevant by one player drawing either two or nine lands. I lose.
Round 3 I'm back for redemption against a homebrewish Jeskai prowess deck. I out-prowess him by strategically not owning or using any copies of Wee Dragonauts. He comments that he's borrowing the deck from his son, which is awesome and adorable. I win.
Round 4 I'm up against Lotus Field combo. Absolutely zero interaction with each other, unless you count Yavimaya Coast pings. I feel smart for going for a potential kill G3 by sacrificing my Bomat Courier mid-combat to try to set up lethal prowess triggers, but my 20% out doesn't come and I lose on the following turn ten minutes later after a bunch of twiddling. I "win" anyway because Mister Lotus Field doesn't gain anything with a victory and I wind up with a sweet, sweet twenty-five dollars for winning one match of Magic in about three hours.
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