Win one

Success! My first 3-0 since I started attending these damnable drafts. It seems almost as if the universe consipred to help, as I mentally review each of the games, each of my draft picks. My first pack doen't give me a clear indication as to which way to go, I believe I first pick a blightwidow as that card is great even in decks that aren't infect. 

The guy next to me is actually a relic from my past, in my early attempts to win a PTQ during the pitiable season of Kamigawa block constructed, he had sat on the motel floor with andrew and myself, and expounded on the pitfalls of not taking serpent skin of orichi trap weaver. oh yes, back in the day my brothers. however, he sends me a strong signal to go green infect by passing through a viridian corruptor. come into play destroy effects are extremely strong in limited. i'm a morbid plunder away from making it a real monster. 

by the end of pack one, I feel like i'm screwed. while im resolved to follow my infect strategy, i only have about seven infect guys, solid beaters like the afore mentioned blightwidow, but i'm also able to pick up blightsteel juggernaught, the garbage flestermite, phyrexian digestor, and two viridian shams to smooth out my mana. pack two is merciful to me, as the guy to my left doesn't have a real strategy in place, and is visibly struggling to make heads or tails as to which colors he's in. i feel like the only way that i recognize this face is having been there myself countless tims. or maybe he doesn't feel that way at all, and i'm just attributing my only past feelings to him. maybe i'm just seeing in others what i see, what i have seen, in myself. 

in any case, the kind gentleman passess me solid infect guys in picks 7, 8, and 9 consisting of blightwidow, scourge servant and the ichorclaw imp. in the packs where there are no infect guys to be had, and these occur quite often, i relied on equipment to round out my team. living weapons are great to mitigate the tempo loss that is inherent in playing something that's not a dude. imagine, they drop two creatures, and you drop one creature and one equipment, without enough mana to attach that turn. having the ability to hold off an attack is great, and it's almost as if you want them to run headlong into your germ, to avoid wasting resources to equip and lose it when it becomes a 0/0 again. a health sprinkling of equipment like piston sledge, bladed pinions, skinwing and bonehoard, which was my pack 1 pick 1 i believe, really went the distance for me. if i didn't have the three blightwidows, i would have taken cards like strand strider much higher for it's ability to block fliers. i receive a gift in pack 3 in skinrender, also awesome like viridan corrupter. i wasn't able to pick up any morbid plunders, so extreme blow outs of using each of those twice are not in the cards for me. 

final deck list

9 forrest

8 swaps (subbed for islands, this store is land poor)

3x blightwidow

1x phyrexian digestor

1x flestermite

1x darksteel juggernaught

2x viridian shaman

1x viridian corruptor

1x skinrender

1x blight mamba

2x scourge servant

1x ichorclaw myr

1x sceptic rats

1x myr sire

1x proliferate beastie

1x bonehoard

1x skinwin

1x bladed pinions 

1x piston sledge

1x lux cannon

match 1

round 1

my opponents name is jason and hasn't played magic in a long time. this is a common byline that is often a rouse, but is actually the truth, and becomes somewhat of a theme for the guys at our table. this can be a mixed blessing but more on that later.

i don't remember too much of either of these guys because he essentially got rolled. i have a draw of double viridan shaman in the beginning which trades with his flestermites and he's dead to blightwidows equipped with piston sledge and bonehoards in short order. he's happy enough with his draft, having pulled hero of oxid ridge and mox opal. he proceeds to crush my monoblack vampire/mimicvat constructed homebrew with his day of the dragons/warp word ramp deck. 

match 2

this guys name is andrew and i mistake him for a woman before he opens his mouth. the effect might not be completely unintentional. i don't mind losing the die rolls in this format and am more than please with going second, escpailly if i don't know what my oponent is running. i feel like the format is slow enough for it to be more important to hit all your land drops and curve out rather than gaining an incremental benefit of dropping a few guys earliest. a mulligan on the play can really spell doom for a number of decks. 

this guy was sitting next to me last round and was doing a strong amount of rules lawyering on his opponent who had made his first return to the game since apocolypse kitchen table format. combined with my recent self deprivation of cigarettes means i'm already not in the best of moods when the guy asks if he had drawn a card for his turn after he cracked a white spellbomb to block my viridan shaman. my policy on this is, if the ask if they dropped a land, if they drew a card, the answer is always yes. there's an important difference here. drawing a card is mandatory triggered event, and is not something that is governed by a 'may clause.' you WILL draw a card, such that if you run out of cards that will kill you to.

dropping a land is completely contingent on the other guy, and you not remembering to play a land is your own perogative. if they have let a turn pass that they didn't not play a land, pass the turn and seek to rewind to drop one, the answer will be a resounding no. your opponent may have handed you the game. if there is anything on the line, then you should take every advantage you can get.

strangely enough this guy asked me to to help him cut one card from his deck during deck construction. i suggested cutting the fake tutor distant memories. 

his deck includes things like steel sabotage, halt order, stoic rebuttal, 2/4 vigilance guy for white, 3/5 metal craft guy that loses defender and bombs like precursor golem and true conviction. i opt to go first, visualizing a situation in which his true conviction is a blank and he's not able to swing for being on too much poison. at one point he rules lawyers me about the timing of a block on his metalcraft serpent guy, when i attempt to sacrifice it with my green proliferate beastie, and the charge counters on lux cannon. the judge rules in my favor, that my timing is correct and that the other guy is a cock. i vindictively hold him to an attack in which he forgets to pay a white mana to activate his vigilence guy and swings in, leaving no blockers back and dying in a subsequent swing. 

in the first game, i curve perfectly with ichor claw myr, phyrexian digestor and blightwidow, running over his blockers and a skinrender eating his metal craft serpent down to a 0/2. game two is a little bit more of a fight with his spell bomb trading with my viridian shaman. my draw is slower, and the board eventually becomes clogged with blightwidow, sceptic rats, myr sire, skin render, bonehoard, green proliferate beastie and lux cannon on my side. his board is 2 precursor golem tokens, one had eaten the skinrender counters, 3/5 metalcraft serpet, 2/4 white vigilence guy and perhaps one or two other duche bags. 

my deck keeps serving up threats, and inevitability is in my favor, as lux cannon continously accumulates counters at an acccelerated rate tanks to proliferate beastie. i remember stalling on a clogged board, as he continously represents his counter spells, and i have a heavy fear of losing it to a counter spell. eventually i resolve to drop both bonehoard and lux cannon on the same turn, bonehoard first, thinking he'll counter that, but both resolve. there is one point in which he's able to bounce my bonehoard and then halt order's it on the way in. he doesn't ask if he drew a card for his turn after the halt order resolves, thankfully. 

round 3

greg is the guy that's sitting next to me. smart as a razor with a dry sense of humor, he works close by for some reasons i invision him making tons of money. he says apologetically that he would offer to draw if his deck wasn't so good. i don't blame him. he's packing peace and pierce striders, phyrexian ragers, massacre wurm, precursor golem, flameblast, myr sire, perilous myr and culling dias. not a single janky card to be found. 

round one he opts to draw first and i cure perfectly; ichor claw myr, phyrexian digestor, which trades with a guy, blight widow, scourge servant and phyrexian juggernaught. i drop a piston sledge on one guy and he's dead in short order.

round 3 he opts to draw again for round two, and the board gets clogged as i keep a slow draw and am not able to apply enough poison fast enough. he's on one counter with a clogged board and i can no longer swing all out. phyrexian juggernaught is forced to keep attacking and i equipp it with bonehoard to make sure it still comes through profitably. eventually he double blocks with ogre resistor and something else and i think i can start breaking through. the main problem here is that i feel like i can't swing all out with my army profitably, he can't not block, but the only problem is that he might still have guys alive when the dust settles. it proves to be my downfall as a massacre wurm comes and eates my face and takes me down to 8, killing everything on my board except for blight widow, he wins that game.

game 3 i choose to draw first to mess with his game plan, hoping to catch him with a mulligan, no avail, he keeps and i mull to six. i reveal the first hand of 5 lands, blight mamba and piston sledge and he wholeheartedly agrees that it's the right choice.

i drop spellbomb, ichorclow myr, viridan corruptor for his mana myr, and blight widow. followed by piston sledge and skin wing. the critical play here is that i'm able to to play and equip a bonehoard for +4 when he's already at two poison counters. since viridan corruptor is already wearing skinwing, he has no flying blockers. in response to my attempt to equip, things get scary, he sacrifices perilous myr to culling dias, deals 2 damage to the corruptor then sacs culling dias to draw 4, digging for his flameblast, he doesn't find it and the match and the tournment is mine. 

my packs contain, myr incubator, contested battlefield, and two other garbage rares.