Friday, April 27, 2012

Pseudo Newb and the Continuity of Delver

I'm always a week behind on these things,

Last weekI went to FNM and if I manage to get there tonight it will be 3 FNMs in a row.

I was planning on going but I agreed to help a classmate with a computer problem which required me going to the school to meet him and see what the problem was. We were supposed to meet at 2 which would give me plenty of time to see if I could put together Darwin Kastle's white deck.

Well we had to interact with the school's technical support and while we were doing that he realized his phone had been stolen. Having something stolen from you on campus is a Kafakaesque experience. I stayed with his computer and the Help Desk until we resolved things he went through a whole bucn of stuff and a police interview. End result - it was 5pm before we left (his computer was really hosed).

Now the night before I had packed three decks into my backpack because I was meeting a project teammate to give him something and I thought I'd be stuck there for a long time. So I packed a couple of decks for the Perfectly Normal Husband and I to play in case his family wasn't there for trivia night.

I had with me the Gleeful Flames event deck - which makes a nice teaching deck, my white deck that I don't really think is competitive and the same tournement deck I've been carting around without tweaking since GP Balt.

It looks like this:


DECK
Number Card Name 
4 Delver of Secrets 
2 Dissipate 
3 Drogskol Captain 
4 Drowned Catacomb 
2 Dungeon Geists 
2 Evolving Wilds 
2 Geist of Saint Traft
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Glacial Fortress
2 Invisible Stalker
6 Island
4 Lingering Souls
2 Moorland Haunt
3 Phantasmal Image
1 Plains
4 Ponder 
1 Revoke Existence
2 Runechanter's Pike
2 Seachrome Coast
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 Swamp
3 Vapor Snag

SIDEBOARD
Number Card Name 
1 Curse of Exhaustion
1      Demystify
1 Divine Offering  
2 Dungeon Geists
1 Geist-Honored Monk
1 Mana Leak
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Oblivion Ring 
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Revoke Existence 
1 Surgical Extraction 
1 Tragic Slip


60
Total Number of Cards in Deck:
Number Card Name 
13

So if I was going to play, I was going to end up playing my "Not Finkle's Delver" again. I was expecting to meet the mirror because I pretty much figured I was lucky the week before when I ran into everything else. 

Because I was coming straight from school and I hadn't eaten all day and I hadn't really rested ( because I am in finals and I've been working on long papers and major projects while still doing the "run a small business thing" I knew I needed to go straight to the store to make sure I had enough time to be relaxed and eat. 

Here are some things I learned. I had lots of time and was able to play some casual games to get my feet under me again before the actual FNM.

I should really keep a spare playmat in my trunk, I have enough now and I hate the store's tables with a light generic hate. I had no counters, dice or tokens with me, just the deck. I really like the accessories. I missed them, but I did have a nice time and got home early because it was a three round tournament. Actually that ended up being just about perfect. 

The other thing I learned because I activated my Planeswalker points password.  At my local store the proprietor doesn't really incentivize the prizes on FNM too much because he likes to keep games friendly and sells a lot of other active league games besides Magic. So Friday Nights you can play for free but if you play for free you aren't in the running for a prize, if you pay the 4.00 fee you get a booster pack no matter how you place 1st place gets 5 packs and 2nd place gets 3. 

So I can come in 5th for prize giving but I'm 8th for the event. But even if you play for free your numbers go into DCI exactly the way they go so if you're playing for points you don't get penalized for not spending money. 


So I came in both 5th for prizes and 8th for the night 

Preparation - well, none. 


Results - I played 8 games and won 4 of them. Game win rate is 50% Match win rate is 66.6%.

Takeaways.

I lost the first round 0-2 to a delver mirror match that had some sort of additional artifact theme. I sideboarded in the removal on the second round but never pulled any of it including the main deck removal before I died. I also made a play mistake by holding ordering my plays incorrectly and therfore limiting  my ability to respond to his plays. 

The second round was a slightly modded Spiraling Doom, that completely kicked my ass the first game but I sideboarded aggressively  and won the next two rounds easily. My opponent made one larger mistake in play that allowed me to overrun him with Lingering Spirit tokens, but the third game was tighter play on all counts from both of us.

The third round was against a birthing pod deck with primevil titan. It went the same way - I lost the first game, sideboarded properly and was able to win the second and third games. 

I'd still like to try Darwin Kastle's 100.00 deck tonight - it's only 3pm maybe I have time!

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