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By: Felorin, Dr. Cat
Feb 03 2012 9:19am
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I want to start this article out by thanking Mike of Anime Imports in Pacifica, for hosting a staggering six sealed deck events at his store last weekend. And I want to thank my buddy Dave for telling me about it, and inviting me to crash at his house for the weekend. Even though he only played in half the events himself. Also he brought me TACOS Saturday evening, which was awesome!  Thanks Dave! 

So, after driving down from Mill Valley & meeting up with Dave, we headed over to the store for the Friday midnight opener. There was free pizza for everyone (woot!) which we both availed ourselves of.  I had preregistered for all 6 events for the price of 4 (value!). The boosters got handed out, and we were ready to start.

My first pool had a lot of good white, and a (Mikaeus the Corrupted). Unfortunately the other black was thin and weak, and there was no way to splash a triple-black cost card. My choices to fill the last five slots after white & artifacts were in would be green for Elder of Laurels, great with my five token-making cards plus a prey upon & 3 decent creatures, or the more removal-y red with three burn spells including a Geistflame and a (Boiling Oil) that could do double duty. Removal is always good, and this set continues the theme of having plenty of 1 and 2 toughness targets, so even the smaller removal spells are good value. I also had a Bonds of Faith, the new Burden of Guilt which is actually pretty awesome, Blazing Torch, Into the Maw of Hell, etc. If you count flash creatures and instants that make creature tokens as potential removal, I had up to 13 removal spells I could play in red/white, several of which would repeat - including a nice Wolfhunter's Quiver. Verdict on that card - yes too expensive and thus just bad sometimes. But very good other times, even if they're not running werewolves. Dave totally dominated a game against a spirit-token making deck with one of these.

Speaking of tokens, I had 3 Gather the Townsfolk, a (Divine Haunting), and a nice bomby Thraben Doomsayer. I never got Fateful Hour on him, and only once on a Gather, but still making infinite tokens from the Doomsayer usually meant I'd win if they didn't have removal for him. When building I mistook my Avacyn's Collar for the old Mask of Avacyn. But in round 3 I realized my mistake and kept it in forever after - that things' great in a human deck, and even better in one that makes a lot of human tokens!  Getting free spirit tokens is just so good.

There were more casual players at this event than I've seen at a lot of other stores - I guess I was the shark in this tank. The event was prone to a lot of draws as people had to read new cards a lot, and there are a lot of ways to stall the board with tokens and the like in the set. Dave was set to play the first few rounds and drop so he could get to a bar mitzvah and party the next day with some sleep beforehand. Unless he kept winning in which case he'd stay and deal with no sleep - a true gamer, Dave is. He had the new Sorin Markov, and a Charmbreaker Devil plus a bunch of powerful instants and sorceries. While nobody managed to beat him, he picked up a draw, a win, and another draw, then decided to call it a night.

I ended up with a draw, heading into the final round at 4-0-1 and playing at the top table against the only 5-0 player for undisputed first. We ended up with a draw in the final though, so I finished 4th for seven boosters - not bad.  Dawn was approaching, and everyone who wanted to play in the morning event scurried home for a few hours sleep. Oh, and verdict on the Burden of Guilt - awesome.  A lot of tapper effects like Master Decoy require you to decide whether to skip attacking for a turn so you can tap their new fattie on their turn, saving attacks as well as getting in there...  Or tap it right away to stay more aggressive, but knowing it may well hit you back. With Burden you tap it now, then tap it again on their turn!  Do they have an untap effect to set it up to attack or block? No problem, pay one more money and tap it some more! Fun for all ages, and really cheap to cast as well.

I swung by Safeway for food, and then crashed at Dave's. There was a board game on the other side of the bed, so I felt right at home. Then it was back to the store for more Magic action!  My second pool wasn't as awesome as my first, nor as heavy in any one color - the goodies were evenly spread across all five.  I used two sets of sleeves, and brewed a red/black splash blue concoction, and a probably just better green/white build. With the intention of bringing over the always good Falkenrath Noble and the Traveler’s Amulet to help splash him.  I lost almost every game with the red/black/blue build, switching to green/white in game 2.  Still I was at 1-0-1 going into the third round, where I decided to start green/white and swap the other way in game two. I finally took my first match loss of the weekend in this one. My opponent was playing a red/green wolf & werewolf deck, but those guys always ended up in board stalls against me.  Then his one card blue splash for Increasing Confusion milled me out, both games.I almost stuck with white/green game 2 to sideboard in Purify the Grave, but I was committed to the janky "switch colors after each game 1" plan. Rounds 4 and 5 I stuck mainly with the green/white, and was able to get two more wins to end up 3-1-1, good for 9th place and two more prize boosters.

The 5PM tournament was starting almost immediately, and I'd left my wallet at Dave's place.  D'oh! But he drove out with it & half a dozen taco bell tacos - I should have asked for an extra huge root beer to wash those down, but Mike's store sells cold sodas and drinks, so it was all good.  I had a stronger pool, building it black/green splash red. With a Bloodgift Demon plus Sever the Bloodline and some other strong cards, I was able to go 3-0-2 for a 7th place finish with no actual match losses. Would have liked to finish one of those game 3s for a higher finish, but still won 3 boosters from this one.

At midnight Dave was back to try his luck again. With 13 player, this was only expected to be a 4 rounder.  My pool practically built itself as a strong red/green werewolves deck, with Immerwolf, Pyreheart Wolf, Mondronen Shaman, Kruin Outlaw, some green werewolves, and even a Markov Blademaster for more beats - yeah, three red rare creatures. I had two Shimmering Grotto, so I could easily splash my Sever the Bloodline, Smite the Monstrous, and Bonds of Faith. I even got to live the dream of having two powered-up werewolves on board, and playing out Immerwolf and Young Wolf on the same turn, but not having to flip back because of Immerwolf's ability.  Sweet!

I won the first two rounds fairly handily, had one insane draw against that went turn 3 Markov Blademaster, turn 4 removal, hit for 1, hit for 2.  Turn 5, he has murder of crows, I have to choose between Bonds of Faith and Smite the Monstrous. I drop the Bonds, hit for 3, hit for 4, drop mm 3 mana vampire lord and realize I coulda played him before combat for 2 extra damage.  Turn 6 he has one creature, I topdeck Sever the Bloodline and he scoops, facing 13 damage from the blademaster plus two more from my other guy!

Round 3 I was up against a strong green/white aggressive deck.  Game 1 I got an aggressive draw on the play and ran over him.  Game 2 he had Travel Preparations, flashed it back, then another Travel Preparations plus flashback!  I dealt with that with removal plus trading with creatures.  Then he threw Increasing Savagery  on a green guy, and I took that out. He flashed it back on a 1/1 guy to make an 11/11!  Using a Briarpack Alpha plus his flash-in bonus plus 2 other creatures, I managed to trade 3 for 1 and clear the board, but he managed to get more stuff out than me after that and mop  me up.  Game 3 I managed to roll him again with a crazy aggressive draw.  We were expecting one more round, but because of draws I was the only 3-0, so they called it there and I got five boosters for first place!  Then it was back to Dave's place for a longer sleep than the night before.

The morning's pool had insane amounts of mill-yourself blue, plus plenty of guys that need to remove something to be played. There was also a Stitcher's Apprentice, a Spider Spawning, a foil Parallel Lives that I would normally never play, but had to here, Reap the Seagraf, Wakedancer, and the superstar of the deck, Havengul Runebinder. That guy is the stone cold nuts, and it seems like half my games I got him out with the Parallel Lives. Sometimes with the Stitcher's Apprentice to make extra sure there was always something dead for my Runebinder. I bought 12 zombie token cards, 8 Homunculus Tokens, and 20 spider token cards. While horrible mulligans in round 3 and a strong opponent in round 5 with his own Havengul Runebinder left me at 2-2-1, I had more fun with this super powerful deck than any other in the tournament. The number of blue mill enablers made it mostly very consistent (except round 3), and rounds would often end with a bunch of other players gathering around to see my dramatic endings. Once a guy was swinging at me with a Trepanation Blade and milling me further, which delighted me as I had Spider Spawning in hand!  I made 10 spiders. He gave his whole team protection from non-humans and swung me down from 15 to 1 life!  I swung back for 20, but he was at 26 from a lifelinker, so I made 12 more spiders for a total of 22 on-board.  He couldn't get through that, so next turn was Massive Spider Alpha Strike Time (tm)!

Dave was 3-1 going into the final round, but lost that one & ended up 3-2 for three boosters.  I decided that was enough, so we picked up our paid-for boosters for tournament 6 and headed out to get BBQ, check out the beach and the awesome Pacifica taco bell, and then we tried Winston Drafting at Dave's kitchen table.  Never done that before, and it was a lot of fun! My overall record was 15-3-7, and after the first 20 rounds I actually had only 1 match loss.

All in all I found Dark Ascension to be a blast, with a lot of fun card interactions, interesting deck-building decisions, and memorable matches.  (Though I could have done without getting crushed by Charmbreaker Devils plus Alpha Brawl.  Yow!)  Games can be quick or can be stallish and controlling, so if you're in a situation where you might get draws (in paper) or clock losses (online), you might want to err on the side of going for a more aggro build. But learning the cards and getting to the point where you can play quickly is your best bet. Also Wild Hunger was a beating in my Winston draft with Dave - that thing can be a green Lava Axe in a racing situation, so keep an eye out for it!

Hope you enjoyed this, and maybe I'll see you in one of the online DA release events.  Till next time, keep slinging those spells!