Hello all, it's been a long time. Too long in fact. My last article, Rainbow tongue of doom was published on November 1st of last year. To this, all I can offer are my humble apologies in regards to an abrupt ending. I had lost the spark, so to say. All that I had strived for was coming to fruition in Classic and then it all came tumbling down.

As most of you know WotC had changed the PE structure and effectively killed top 8 Classic events. For those wanting to know, there was a stretch of 5! Months without a Classic Premier Event firing. This put a serious constraint on classic as a lot of the senior player base could not accommodate the now random time slot the event got or could very easily string together the minimum 33 players. The Classic player base just was not big enough to take this hit. The good news? WotC views Classic as a "core" format. Which means that they treat it with the same respect they treat Standard, Block, and Extended. Fantastic! I won’t need to worry about it ending so that’s grand, however it also hurts that they cannot show preferential treatment to us, such as a consistently timed event or a lower minimum amount of people. Apparently this would equate us to a "weekend" format such as Pauper and 100 Singleton. Shortly before my last article the Daily Events stopped firing, and did not catch up again until a month’s time had passed. At the end of that month though there was something that awoke within the Classic format. That thing? Exodus.

The printing of Exodus gave the format something to be excited about. It gave us Oath of Druids. It also gave us one of what I think is the greatest cards of all time in (Survival of the Fittest). That's not all though. There is (City of Traitors), (Sphere of Resistance), (Manabond), Price of Progress, (Recurring Nightmare), and a host of other fun cards for all kinds of players. This may be the rarest set online due to the fact that none of the major stores and bots bought into the product as it is impossible not to take a loss on it due to no price breaks on large orders or reduced prices on out of print, and non redeemable sets. You wouldn't know that from looking in the classic events though. Since Exodus we have fired 3 Top 8 events and about 6-7 daily events a week. That is just huge. It's an exciting thing, even exciting enough to try and actually get back into the writing saddle.

I would like to now just play a quick round of get to know ya real quick. It’s been a while and I’m sure there are new readers out there, so here goes.

My name is George Efelis and I go by the Modo name whiffy penguin. I'm 27 and work full time in a grocery store called Trader Joe's, just outside Philadelphia PA in the United States. I have been playing Magic since the release of Alliance's and started playing Modo with Champions of Kamigawa. My preferred format online has been Classic since the end of 2007 when Master's Edition was released and gave me back Force of Will among other cards from my heyday in the game. I also enjoy limited because I really like the decision tree while actually drafting or constructing your sealed deck. For those interested, my constructed rating is usually in the 1670-1740 range depending on streaks and what not. I topped out at 1891 for a short stint after making Top 4 of the Gaming in the Gulf tournament back in December of 2008. My limited rating is in the 1720-1790 area topping out at a nifty 1864 during Lorwyn/Lorwyn/Lorwyn drafts. I loved me that format so much.  I am a tournament player at heart and love the thrill of competition while playing for "keeps". As such my articles cater more to the tournament players out there then the casual fans. I do try and interject relevant magic news and humor into these things though to compensate for that fact.

Ok so, all caught up? Good. To all the new readers out there and all the familiar faces, welcome to the Lunch Box.

This week I want to talk about Oath of Druids. Yes I know Fatman did a round of articles and many of the Classic event players know pretty much all there is to know about it. But I would like to talk about Oath as a control deck instead of a combo deck though.  For those that don’t know Oath of Druids is an enchantment for that will let you pull a guy from your library if your opponent controls more dudes then you do. Tuned Oath lists only have two creatures though, and both will win the game whether it is (Iona, Shield of Emeria) or another of a half dozen fatties.  Oath of Druids has been almost unanimously paired up with Helm of Obedience and Leyline of the Void in decks turning it more combo then I feel is necessary. Another almost auto inclusion is Lotus Petal. I really do not like Helm/line in the deck as I find it far too clunky, taking up a minimum of 5 slots and then almost forcing you to play Tinker and a robot. My buddy Walkerdog asked me about Pernicious Deed in the deck as it really is a control deck that combos out, kind of like Bomberman of years gone by. One of my favorite decks by the way. I had already been experimenting with cards like Spell Snare to hit Qasali Pridemage's and other bears that mess up my game plan. I took a look at the following list by TimtheHappy and was sold that a more controlling build could work.

Oath with Counter Top

3wins and 4wins in Daily Events

Creatures 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria 1 Platinum Angel 2 cards Other Spells 1 Balance 4 Brainstorm 2 Counterbalance 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Enlightened Tutor 4 Force of Will 1 Gaea's Blessing 1 Imperial Seal 1 Mana Crypt 4 Oath of Druids 4 Ponder 3 Sensei's Divining Top 4 Spell Pierce 3 Stifle 1 Vampiric Tutor 35 cards

Lands 4 Forbidden Orchard 1 Island 4 Misty Rainforest 4 Scalding Tarn 2 Tropical Island 1 Tundra 2 Underground Sea 1 Strip Mine 4 Wasteland 23 cards   Sideboard 3 Ancestral Vision 1 Chalice of the Void 2 Duress 1 Emerald Charm 3 Hydroblast 2 Life from the Loam 1 Pithing Needle 2 Ravenous Trap 15 cards

I really like the more controlling stance he has taken with the Counterbalance control being fantastic as well as the pair of Life from the Loam in his sideboard to recur Orchards and land destruction. I personally do not enjoy playing the Counterbalance combo and find that it takes up too much space in a deck that needs to adjust for so many different circumstances.

I found my self modeling a control build after Tim's and through the last 2 weeks have been testing it out a lot. I have tweaked it a lot for the Daily Event metagame with what I would like to say are successful results. I may have only placed in the money 1 in 4 times with the deck, but I learned something about its weakness and strengths as a control build with every match. I also have noticed that I made a few game altering mistakes while watching my replays. I would just like to say that no matter how many times you have heard its good practice to watch your replays, and no matter how many times you do. You should keep doing it. It helped show me games I threw away and I have learned from them and hopefully they won’t happen again. 

Here is the current build you would find me playing in the next event.

Oath

A more determined control deck

Creatures 1 (Progenitus) 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria 2 cards Other Spells 1 Mana Drain 1 Imperial Seal 3 Thoughtseize 1 Vampiric Tutor 3 Swords to Plowshares 3 Spell Pierce 1 Enlightened Tutor   4 Force of Will 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Mystical Tutor 1 Gaea's Blessing 4 Oath of Druids 2 Sensei's Divining Top 1 Life from the Loam 1 Balance 4 Brainstorm 2 Pernicious Deed 2 Mox Diamond 36 cards

Lands 1 Island 2 Underground Sea 1 Tundra 4 Misty Rainforest 4 Forbidden Orchard 2 Polluted Delta 1 Forest 2 Tropical Island 1 Strip Mine 4 Wasteland 22 cards Sideboard 1 Spawning Pit 3 Mindbreak Trap 2 Duress 1 Empyrial Archangel 2 Pithing Needle 1 Inkwell Leviathan 4 Ravenous Trap 1 Tinker 15 cards

So here we are. Taking a look at it, it does look extremely similar to most builds of Oath. The most shocking departure is most assuredly the large presence of crowd control in Swords to Plowshares and Pernicious Deed. The reason for this is pretty simple. For every Oath deck in an event there seems to be two Merfolk decks. For every Ad Nauseam there is also a Dragon Stompy. Bant and midrange are also popular in the daily events. Surprisingly low in turn out is Dredge so that is a plus of not having the built in Helm/Line combo and instead focusing on smashing synergy bears, and sweeping the board of lock pieces or excess Orchard tokens. This list originally started life has an anti Oath list because of the high volume of mirror matching I had been doing with the Helm/Line version of oath in events. Over the last two weeks however, more and more hate is creeping out of everywhere. Whether it be Greater Gargadon's, Karakas's, or Forbidden Orchard's coming to stymie your game plan. Oath is being pushed out of the format with the amount of deck space people are using up to combat it, and either you play something else that can beat up on Merfolk or Bant or you keep at it and tweak, tweak, tweak. So you have the above deck list and chances are that most if not every reader just makes a cursory glance and notices my creature package and not really retaining any information. That’s fine; I do it all the time as well. In order to combat this and give a meaningful reason to include a deck list I have also gone about arranging this particular list in to groups of functionality to helpfully express in an easier fashion why I have made the choices I have made. Oh and it's in a picture too, so some of you may be able to retain the information better.

 Ok so starting with the top left row we have our "reactive" disruption or protection. Spell Pierce is an amazing card and it allows you to do a lot of things that Daze can't. On the play it will protect your hand from targeted discard and stop a Brainstorm or a Ponder same as Daze, but you still have your land drop and you can still counter the same spells on turn 2 that you would on turn 1. It is vital to having a little bit of game against combo decks as well. Even if you can't hit an Ad Nauseam with it for full effect you can at the very least "Stifle" there mana development for the turn. For example, if they play a ritual that will give them 7 mana when it resolves, you should probably Pierce the ritual and keep your fingers crossed. Mana Drain is your other purely reactive spell and I like the fact that it is a hard counter. The extra mana rarely comes up but the just certainty that the offending spell on the stack is going away is worth the doubled cost of the Pierce.
 
Next up is the "proactive" disruption. Thoughtseize was for a long, long time missing from my builds. The reason why, is that for a long while it was unattractive to discard one of his dudes since they enable my combo. After creature match up after creature match up Seize has shown me its importance and the only matches where it is worse than Duress are RDW and Dredge. The ability to fight Qasali Pridemage, Meddling Mage, Wispmare, Trygon Predator, and Greater Gargadon to name the most egregious of offenders is well worth the 2 life payment. I label Force of Will here because if your protecting your combo then chances are you're about to get aggressive, of course it fills both reactive and proactive slots but that’s because it is pound for pound the best card you can have for its function.  Rounding this out is Life from the Loam; henceforth referred to as LftL. LftL is becoming one of my most favored/despised cards in the format. Getting to make sure I have an endless supply of Orchards is key since Wasteland is so prevalent. Also recurring Waste/Strip is good enough to beat almost any deck but combo and Dredge, if you can protect yourself. There are also Mox Diamonds in this list, something we will get to later but should be noted that LftL interacts pretty favorable with that card as well.

 Moving over to the right one column we have our crowd control so to speak. I'll start with Balance; it's super good and super cheap. Often times a resolved Balance will win the game. In this deck it is a Wrath at 1/2 the cost, a Mind Twist for their entire hand, and an Armageddon all rolled into one little package. Of course game state will greatly depend on its effectiveness, but this list is geared towards getting the most it can out of this card. Pernicious Deed is the likeliest head scratcher in the deck. For 3 mana you get to set a rest button down on the board. What does it do to combo? Nothing except get shuffled back in with *Brainstorm. Against everything else though, it is a game altering card that can either give you room to breathe or just wipe the board. It is also an attractive target for Krosan Grip something that can matter greatly against your ability to win. Deed also has the luxury of interacting with enchantments and artifacts, something the rest of this deck can't do. Did you know that it is almost impossible to lose to Dragon Stompy if you resolve this spell? No combinations of lock pieces or beat down guys are going to survive the board wipe, save Gargadon. This can also go ahead and blow up man lands or reset a board of tokens for just the investment of the spell. I have also found that creatures are going to kill you. Oathing up a fatty and clearing the board of all 3 or less drops is always a good way to win.

The other strange addition is the very high count of 3 Swords to Plowshares. As I have stated, Classic is still to creature centric to try and ignore spot removal. We don’t live in the land of Vintage (yet...), where the inclusion of nearly a dozen pieces of fast mana not available to us make creatures only matter when they do something incredible. Examples of this are Dark Confidant and Goblin Welder. Of course there are a few creature decks in Vintage but they are considered underpowered since they almost unanimously abuse Null Rod to make that fast mana a liability while they ping away for 4-8 turns with bears or Goyfs. Here in Classic there are still a lot of guys that just suck for an Oath player, whether they are utility strapped to a 2/2 body or just a big dumb beater. Swords allows freedom to play out an Oath in the mirror as well, since players will rarely name with Iona, and most builds incorporate Platinum Angel as their 2nd duder. The utility of StP is fantastic in the current landscape and I don’t see its useful ness dropping anytime soon.

The tutors make up the core of the next column, and I have split them by functionality. The black ones are a no brainer. They get any card in your deck, be it a combo piece lock piece or sweeper, or even a land. Never underestimate the ability to just make sure you hit your land drops. This is a control deck after all. Imperial Seal is not the most common card in Oath decks but I like it in this build since it is more methodical and runs some permanent source of card filtering. Enlightened Tutor and Mystical Tutor both fill similar rolls in the deck. They enable a small tool box to be assembled between the main deck and the sideboard. Targets and why for Enlightened are Oath, because having 5 is better than 4. Deed to blow up the world, Sensei's Divining Top; or SDT is a great card to land in the mirror or against land control strategies, as filtering for the best cards is always nice. Finally in the main deck it can search up a Mox Diamond for reliable mana. In the sideboard it also gives a virtual extra copy of Spawning Pit for the mirror and Pithing Needle for everything else. There is also the hail mary play of tutor for Inkwell and cast it for 9 mana. Mystical will fetch you any other tutor to chain into a combo piece again upping the Oath count. It fetchs LftL to enable a lock or to recoup a savage Waste/Strip opening from the opponent. It will also let you get any piece of disruption or removal, spot or mass. The sideboard offers us Tinker as an additional out and target for Mystical, as well as the Storm and Dredge hate in the traps.

Next is the filtering for the deck. Brainstorm and SDT perform a vital function in Oath, keeping our fatties out of our hand. On top of this there are a high number of shuffle effects in between five tutors, six fetch lands, Oath, and LftL, so you can consistently bury the rubbish from your hand or see a new top 3 cards almost every turn. SDT is so very good, I don't like Counterbalance but I love the other half. It lets you dig for land, dig for combo parts or keep disruption on top of your library just waiting for the right time to, say spring a trap? SDT is really important in the mirror as well, I have spent tutors finding it many a time instead of Oath. I would much rather filter my draws for 10 turns then play out Oath and half to fight Orchard tokens.

I'm going to skip the creatures for a second because I would like to elaborate on them. So I’ll jump straight to the actual combo in Oath of Druids+Gaea's Blessing+a big boom boom. The name sake enchantment will let either player reveal cards from their library until they hit a creature. That player bins all the non creature cards and then puts the dude into play. A player may only activate this ability at the beginning of their upkeep, and only if their opponent has more men in play then they do. So as the Oath player you run a nearly creature less deck and attempt to give your opponent 1/1 guys with your Forbidden Orchards, if they're not playing along with you. So once you can activate your enchantment you will normally mill between 10-30 cards with 2 creatures in your deck. If you only have 1, it's normally closer to 20-45 cards milled. When you mill that many cards it is highly likely that you will hit a Gaea's Blessing and barring a Stifle affect or graveyard hosing you will get to shuffle your graveyard into your library. This is important because it will give you an endless supply of everything in your deck. You may as well always have 4 Force of will in your deck, no matter how many you have played in the game. Blessing is also best friends with Brainstorm, because it really likes being in your deck.  In a pinch, if your Blessing is in your hand you can always cast it to either shuffle your library, or put a few more cards into an otherwise nearly empty deck.

Almost at the end of the article we finally hit the creature part. I wanted to skip them as now seems like a nice place to put a break in the text. Oath creatures fill some number of three vital roles. They all will win the game by attacking. Some are there to just keep you alive, and some are there as a back up plan with Tinker.

The options of Oath
This angel will allow you to continue attacking with out the risk of dying to the counter swing. The shroud on her makes her an excellent option when trying to play around spot removal like Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile Two Oaths mean that you get an infinate fog with her.	Not only is it a Tinker target it will gain you back 12 life through every turn rotation where combat happens. It is also immune to Ancient Grudge, Qasali Pridemage,  and Krosan Grip.	One of my favorite sideboard options for a heavy dredge meta game. It allows you to let them develop their forces on the ground with little fear, as they will never swing in.
Another Tinker target as well as just being untoucable by removal it is effectivly unblockable with two kinds of evasion.	The main big huge monster in the deck. Her ability to turn off removal, combos, or counterspells is huge, and she will often win on being flipped up.	Its the 2nd most popular main deck creature because it is Tinkerable and it will not let you lose the game. It is however quite fragile and the easyest creature to spend actual mana on.
It,s huge. It's devastating. Its the soul of the world. Nothing doing. Three turns and they have been dealt 20 damage, he is probably the most reliable finisher in any build.	Its huge and it can't be destroyed, like it's other automated brethren it can be cast for and the sacrifice of an artifact.	The haste on him and the firebreathing make this the fastest kill to flip up. Often they will lose the turn after you flip this beast. Being able to regenerate and also being gigantic lets him rumble with any other creature a mirror can spit out.

 I have chosen to go with Iona for obvious reasons. I paired up the soul of the world with her after a long time of playing with the hasty dragon. The reason is that more and more people are playing Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Sower of Temptation, and other cards to kill, steal, or bounce my targets. Progenitus will have none of that. He will come into play and the game will be over in 3 turns, one way or another. My sideboard has two more shroud men because of the same reason Progenitus is in the main deck. They can't be touched. I also sideboard the Tinker when I feel I need the Inkwell. It is for nearly every Island playing deck, and decks I feel will make my life miserable when trying to activate Oath. The Archangel is really a Blazing Archon, but the shroud and the fact that she functions similarly against Dredge and more favorably against Rdw, and Zoo make her a better all around choice.

Last is the land and mana distribution. This list runs a full land destruction package to help abuse the LftL. It is sometimes correct to go and grab a Strip Mine with a tutor because it can completely cripple them. There are six fetch lands and they are there to not only help cast 4 different colors they will help get your basic lands, enemy fetch lands are just swell. Fetch lands also have an application late game when you have LftL and Brainstorm. You can hide 2 fetches and crack the third to shuffle away. That rare occurrence makes LftL busted in my humble opinion. The duals make sense, I need to cast my spells and have to counter things. The orchards are not only a compliment to your combo, they are rainbow mana which is important for your color diversification. Lastly are the basics and the (Mox Diamonds). The basic lands are important because there is a lot of Wasteland out there, and there is not a good reason not to include a Forest when you have Misty Rainforest and a game winning enchantment that costs one . Mox is a desperate attempt to emulate vintage. I find it better then Lotus Petal because while 22 lands isn’t a very large amount it will often give me the ability to play the Mox. Also with only two in the deck my risk of multiple Mox and no land is very small. On top of all that it is the best mana producer in the deck. It makes any color mana and it can't be Wastelanded, Strip Mined, or Stifled. It can give you the speed of Petal but with longevity if you’re willing to lose a land. Petal, Orchard, Oath is a savage opening, but Mox pitch a fetch, Orchard, and Oath is better. Even if you don't have a third land you still have two mana on turn 2. At best you play a land destruction land and then Thoughtseize them with Spell Pierce back up. I have always been a huge fan of Mox Diamond you just have to build your mana base around it, and I think that I have found a comfortable ration in this build.

Whewwww, that was really a lot longer than I had intended. I'm happy with it though and there is only the sideboard worth going over left. Obvious cards go in against obvious match ups like Mindbreak Trap always comes in for storm decks. But I also side them in against RDW as another hard counter if the game goes long. Ravenous Trap is purely for Dredge but I could see siding one in against the mirror. Spawning Pit is for the mirror. The reason I use this over Greater Gargadon is that it doesn't require a color investment, and if it resolves it is infinite. I can also make dudes with it to attack the opponent with and then re-sacrifice them before the Oath trigger. I already explained the Tinker and duo of dudes, that leaves just Pithing Needle and Duress. Duress comes in for combo and Dredge match ups primarily, but I would side them in against the mirror too if I were taking out any Oaths. Needle is your catch all, it stops most of the commonly played hate cards that look to debilitate Oath. They come in a lot.

Well that’s it. I'm going to cut off the article here as it is very long, and for those brave souls that stayed with me to the end, I salute you. As a bonus I also have an unfinished Ptq tournament report. I played in my first online Ptq and the format was Zendikar block sealed. I managed to go 7-0 in the first seven rounds then lose 8 and win 9. I drafted a very very bad mono deck that had a Vampire Nighthawk and an Ob Nixilis, the Fallen and lost in the quarter finals for a win of 18 packs. I have to say though that after spending 50 bucks to play the event and then playing for 12 hours straight, the payout was a little week. All I can ask is that WotC maybe bump it up some more in light of what a grueling task it is to place in one of these.

George Efelis
whiffy penguin on modo
Member of Clan Magic Eternal.
 

And the unfinished unedited tourney report.

Hello all and welcome back to the Lunch Box! It's been a weird month for me, in-between real life obligations and the utter lack of Classic content I have just not had the time or energy to write in a while, and you know what? I have missed it more then I thought I would. Sure the credits that Heath doles out for these articles are great and I also noticed a lack of those in my reserve pocket, but what I really missed was sharing my thoughts and opinions with you the Modo community. So this week as the heading should have clued you in, I am going to be writing about the Friday 11/27/09 PTQ that was using Zendikar limited. I decided that I would give it a try as I had the weekend off and the PTQ was at an actual ok time for me to play in, it started at 8pm est. and I figured that if I was lucky enough to have to stay up into the wee hours of the morning then it would be worth the lack of sleep, also I had no plans for Saturday so it was like a perfect storm. I sold off my Foil Warren Instigator and extra fetch lands I had accrued in drafts and sealed decks to participate in the 30 event ticket tourney.

As for preparation, I had done 19 sealed decks and 29 drafts of Zendikar as well as following most coverage I come across for the limited format. I feel as though that is a pretty fair amount of preparation for the event as even though I feel I’m just an average Zen limited player, my exposure to the format and the tricks in it had me comfortable with the fact that I could do well. I also decided that it would be a good idea to play some "cutthroat" Magic to prepare for the event so I jumped into a Standard daily event with Naya Light saber (an exact copy of the winner of worlds list) and preceded to 1-2 drop the event. This got me in a competitive mindset and allowed me to relax for a few hours before deck building time.

Once 8 o' clock rang I was in the thick of a 360 person 9 round event with a couple of clan mates who decided just as I did, "why not?".  Here is what I opened up.

So I am looking through my pool and as most people do I immediately sort by rarity and notice 2 Roils and the 2 huge flyers in Bloodwitch and Hellkite. Next I sort by color and pull payables into my main deck. I do this for all colors to determine density or how deep each color is. A quick first pass kills off white and green as I just don't see enough action. A second pass weeds out the blue cards as I notice a very aggressive build. I go up and down the curve a little and like what I see. I then put every thing back into the sideboard and try to build the base deck to try and abuse my twin copies of Roil Elemental, unfortunately for fun magic I decide that the aggressive build will give me a better shot in a 9 round tourney where a few mana stumbles by the opponent may result in a top 16, 32, or 64 for prize packs. When I entered the tourney I had no real aspirations of making top 8, but I did think I would be able to hit the money and then when I saw my pool I was certain that it was capable of nailing at least 3 packs for a top 64 finish. Here is what I decided to play in the event.

2 drop.dek

Getting the right tools

Creatures 1 Hellkite Charger 1 Heartstabber Mosquito 1 Geyser Glider 2 Goblin Bushwhacker 3 Goblin Shortcutter 1 Malakir Bloodwitch 3 Surrakar Marauder 1 Vampire Hexmage 2 Plated Geopede 1 Mindless Null 1 Blood Seeker 17 cards Other Spells 1 Disfigure 1 Hideous End 1 Zektar Shrine Expedition 1 Spire Barrage 1 Inferno Trap 5 cards

Lands 8 Mountain 8 Swamp 1 Teetering Peaks 1 Akoum Refuge 18 cards Sideboard 1 Ruinous Minotaur 1 Highland Berserker 2 cards

Land fall control

 

Creatures 2 Kor Skyfisher 2 Mold Shambler 1 River Boa 2 Roil Elemental 2 Hedron Crab 1 Baloth Woodcrasher 1 Gomazoa 1 Oran-Rief Recluse 1 Kraken Hatchling 2 Welkin Tern 15 cards Other Spells 1 Cobra Trap 2 Whiplash Trap 1 Expedition Map 1 Harrow 1 Ior Ruin Expedition 1 Into the Roil 7 cards

Lands 9 Island 1 Plains 6 Forest 1 Graypelt Refuge 1 Kabira Crossroads 18 cards Sideboard 1 Spreading Seas 2 Lethargy Trap 1 Timbermaw Larva 2 Tanglesap 6 cards

I really like this build but fortunately I never had to make a switch and I was able to ride my 2 drops to some glory. On to the tournament proper we go!

ROUND 1 trs playing
 

Game 1
I win the roll and we both keep our hands. Mine is 2x Swamp, Marauder, Hexmage, Shortcutter, Hideous End, and a Mountain. Swamp go for me and Swamp Quest for the Gravelord from trs. I make Swamp and Hexmage since he will probably be able to block my intimidator. He plays Island. I bash for 2 and play the Marauder. Swamp go again. I play a Bloodseeker, and bash for 4, but he plays an unkicked Into the Roil on my Hexmage. Island Living Tsunami is his turn . I play a Zektar Shrine Expedition and the Hexmage and land fall for 2 damage. He makes a Hagra Crocodile and passes. On my turn I kill the 4/4 and he takes 2 then I swing in for another 5 putting him at 5. He land falls in for 5 and then Paralyzing Grasps my Marauder. I play out my Shortcutter and bash him to 2. He scoops.
 

Game 2
We both keep and my hand is 2x Mountain, 2x Swamp, Teetering Peeks, Plated Geopede, and a Spire Barrage. Swamp and Expedition Map start the game. I make a Mountain and pass. Swamp pass. I make Swamp and Geopede, and trs finds an Island with his map. Island Welkin Tern and Quest for the Gravelord make up his turn. I play Peeks and landfall in for 5. Roar!. He bashes for 2 and then plays a 3rd Swamp and a kicked Gatekeeper of Malakir, my hand at this point is Barrage, Bloodwitch, 3x Swamp, and Mountain. I draw and play a Shortcutter. He bashes for 2 and plays a 2nd Island and a 4/4 Tsunami. I draw an Inferno Trap and play the Bloodwitch draining him for 1. On his turn he bounces a land replays it and bashes for 4. I bash right back for 4 and then play a Swamp and a Marauder, leaving 4 mana up. The life totals are 13-10 in my favor. He bounces a land and turns both guys sideways. I kill the Tsunami and take 2 from the Tern. I draw and drop a Swamp and bash for 4. He makes a Mind Sludge ripping out a Swamp and my Barrage, then passes with no attacks. I draw a Bloodseeker, play it and turn my team sideways. His Tern chumps my 4/4 and his Gatekeeper trades with my Marauder. This turns on his quest and I ping him for 1 when the 5/5 token rumbles in dropping him to 3. He unkicked Roils my seeker and then plays a Windrider Eel. I turn my team sideways again and he is forced to chump dropping to 1. I play out the bloodseeker and a Mindless Null. He attacks again and I put the Null in the 5/5's way and then he Roils my Bloodseeker kicked to dig and scoops them up.
 

Matches 1-0
Games 2-0

Round 2 larkblue playing splash
 

Game 1
He wins the roll and I keep a hand of Swamp, 3x Mountain, Teetering Peeks, Hideous End, and Marauder. Swamp go for him. I draw a Bushwhacker and play it out with a Mountain. Turntimber Grove go. I play out a Marauder and bash for 1. He makes a Vampire Lacerator and then plays and equips an Explorer's Scope with a 2nd Swamp. I play the Peeks pumping my goblin and he trades the vampire with my surrakar. I then play a 2nd one and pass. He makes a Plains and a Heartstabber. I bash in and he trades his flyer for my intimidator. I play out a Swamp and a Bloodseeker. He makes a Shepherd of the Lost. I end it and deal him 2 then swing for another 2 dropping him to 11. He makes a 2nd Shepherd and passes. I draw and drop my Geyser Glider. He swings and plays a Territorial Baloth before passing. I make a Shortcutter saying his Baloth stays at home and swing through the angel with my 4/4. He equips the scope and swing for 3 taking me to 14. He then plays a River Boa, and a Grim Discovery fetching the first Angel. He drops to 4 from the Bloodseeker. I top deck, yes top deck a land and play a kicked Mosquito killing his Angel and flying over for 4 with my Glider.
 

Game 2
He is on the play and we both keep. I have 2x Swamp, Teetering Peeks, Marauder, Shortcutter, Glider, and Bloodwitch. We both lead off with Swamp go. He makes Swamp Hexmage go. I play Swamp Marauder go.  Turntimber from him and swing for 3. I can do one better. I play the Peeks and bash for 4. He makes a Frontier Guide and passes. I play a Zektar Shrine and Mountain Shortcutter, keeping his Hexmage at bay while I bash in for 2. He drops a Territorial Baloth and passes. I play my 5 drop in Bloodwitch and pass. He makes a Forest his Scope and puts it on the Baloth attacking for 6, and then plops down a land to make it 10. I throw away the shortcutter and he passes. I swing in with my Bloodwitch and play a Glider holding back a Swamp and a Hideous End. He plays a kicked Mosquito killing my big vamp and then swings in for 8 damage from the Baloth, again hitting with the Scope. I attack on the ground with my Glider and play out 2 more Marauders. I then pass with him having the Guide and a Verdant Catacombs on the table to possibly swing in for 12 with the Baloth if every thing goes right for him. During his upkeep he cracks the fetch and then plays Grim Discovery to get it and the Hexmage back and attacks with an 8/8, I throw away one of my triplets. He plays the first striker and passes. I draw and play a Mountain then pass. In my eot he Guides up a Swamp. He drops a Forest, attacks with a 6/6 and Scopes up another one. I make a risky play of no blocks to make him tap his Guide, he goes for it and then sacs his fetch land to make the Baloth a 12/12 which is my life. I pull the Hideous End out and drop him to 5. If he had a Vines of Vastwood I would have lost that game. I draw another land and decide it's time to make a 7/1. He blocks the huge man and drops to 1 from my Marauders. He thins out a land in his upkeep and then plays a Lacerator... at 1. I'm at 12. At any rate I drew a Disfigure for the turn but simply pass and let him die to his own spell.
 

Matches 2-0
Games 4-0

Round 3 ghettoninja playing allies

Game 1
I win the die roll and keep a hand of 3x Mountain, Swamp, Bushwhacker, Hideous End, and Hellkite. He mulligans down to 6. I lead with Mountain Bushwhacker go.  Mountain go for him. I play my Swamp and ping him for 1. He makes a Forest and a Highland Berserker. Marauder off the top sees play for me and I swing in for 1. No blocks. He makes a Forest and a Greenweaver Druid, then drops me to 18. I draw and play a 2nd Marauder bashing in for 3. On his turn he misses his land drop but accelerates into a Turntimber Ranger! Then bashes me for 2. I top deck a 2nd Swamp and can't play Hideous End fast enough on the awesome rare. I also swing in for 4 with my surrakars and drop him to 9. He plays a Lotus Cobra and a Trusty Machete then passes with no attacks. I drop my 6th land and table slap the dragon into play to attack for lethal damage. He has a Burst Lightning for one of my intimidators and I get through for 7 putting him at 2. A Tuktuk Grunts and equip are not enough and he leaves me at 5 then scoops them up.

Game 2
I mull a hand of 3x Mountain 2x Swamp, Inferno Trap and Bushwhacker. Into Refuge, Swamp, Bushwhacker, Geopede, Bloodseeker and Marauder. We both lay out Akoum Refuge on turn 2 he misses his land drop and I make mine as well as a Geopede. It's not long for the world though and he Burst Lightning’s it. He again misses hi land drop and I make a Marauder and a Mountain. He finally gets on the board with a Mountain and a Warren Instigator.  I take this opportunity to lay out Peeks and Bushwhacker rumbling in for 5. On his turn he gets a Forest and plays out the mana elf Druid and passes with no attack. I get a 5th land and point a 1 damage Barrage at the elf while swinging in for 2. He gets a lot of gas in his next turn playing out in succession off of 3 lands. Lotus Cobra, (Harrow), Oran-Rief Survivalist, and a Highland Berserker. He attacks me with his goblin and passes. On my turn I draw and drop down my Glider then pass with no attacks. He makes a 2nd Berserker pumping his green ally to 4/4 and my Bushwhacker dies a noble death. I play Bloodseeker and Shortcutter before passing the turn over to him again. He attacks for 4 and I drop to 15. He then plays a Vastwood Gorger, and I ping him to 13. I draw a land and can attack with evasion for 6 points of damage to bring him to 7. I then decide to play an unkicked Mosquito hoping to draw a land for the win on the next turn. My opponent draws his card and plays Torch Slinger precombat dropping to 6 from my vampire and killing my 2/2 flyer. He then turns the team sideways leaving the Instigator and Torch Slinger at home to block. I chump a couple of his fatties and stay at 7 life. At this point I type "cmon land" which gets a "he he" reply and sitting on the top of my deck is a beautiful basic land. I get evasive and swing in for his life total.
 

Matches 3-0
Games 6-0

At this point, I've went on a lot, I'll come back really soon with the rest of my report, and I hope that you enjoyed the article!