Writings by Ravus #2: "Baneslayer Beatdown"

[Ravus]

Welcome back to Writings by Ravus. This week ("Core Set Week"), I'll be going into my experiences at the Magic 2010 (M10) prerelease. It's worth noting that I had some fights to attend on Saturday night (both in person and on pay-per-view... UFC 100 didn't even slightly go my way ), and so didn't even try to make it to the early-morning individual sealed event on day one of the prerelease. Instead, I woke up late on day two and didn't even get to leave for the event until after one. It goes without saying that I missed the individual-sealed event at approximately too-early-in-the-morning, but we (my teammate and I) still had time for some drafts and maybe some Two-Headed Giant...

Much to our immediate bemusement, upon arrival there were only about twenty people attending day two, and as of yet, no one else had signed up for Two-Headed Giant (registration had opened at two, and we had arrived at about 2:30). With only a half-hour to get at least three more teams, we weren't particularly encouraged we were going to get in any sealed on this day, so we opted to each sign up for a draft (either way, we weren't leaving without some M10 product), and in the meantime went off to the back and played some Mini-Wars--or whatever you'd call it--with Alara Reborn (I remember opening a Behemoth Sledge and a Bloodbraid Elf. I win.).

By the end of our third ARB-packs, Chris (the head judge for the store, who you might recognize as SCG's "Ask the Judge"-judge) came to us informing that we'd gotten six other teams already, and inquired whether he should take us off the draft-lists (since we couldn't be in two places at the same time, we agreed that'd be the best course of action ).

Our cumulative sealed-pool was pretty sick, we cracked an Ant Queen, a Siege-Gang Commander, a Capricious Efreet (turns out he's good in limited. Like, really good), a lot of good removal, a lot of simply savage beats (something like three Cudgel Troll and a couple forestwalkers? Seems good in 2HG), and a completely irrelevant-to-limited Pithing Needle. We ended up easily deciding that he'd play a red-green aggro deck to chip away at the opponents' life total, while I played a blue-black control variant to disrupt their gameplan as much as possible. I'd ordinarily post the decklists below, but my memory is **** and I didn't have the presence of mind to write it down at the time (). Let's hope that doesn't happen again.

Game one, one of our opponents mulliganed down to five on the play (even with the free mulligan; must've been bad), and still wound up stuck with only one swamp, in a predominantly black (with some red), removal-heavy deck. I'm not going to complain however, as I was fine with their lack of removal. His partner, on the other hand, wasn't having such troubles. He had apparently opened two Ajani Goldmanes, one of which was foil, and was able to get it out early with some Captain of the Watch tokens to feed counters to.

It's worth noting here that I had a chance to let my partner's Ant Queen jump over his soldiers and kill Ajani right then and there, but I either forgot or had convinced myself it'd be more prudent to save it for later. Well, no. I forgot. But it was worth much more later in the game! We ended up winning by making the very same play, plus or minus a great many evasive creatures on our end, only attacking them instead of the long-dead planeswalker (it eventually died to a burn spell).

Game two (the next round) was pretty close, as we were pretty much left to racing eachother for the better part of the game. At one point, I recall my partner casting Siege-Gang Commander, and in response to a Doom Blade targeting it, he sacrificed all the tokens and itself to deal them six damage (and killed one of their pesky little blockers), and the next turn I reanimated it to my side of the table with Rise from the Grave. It may not have been as good (I couldn't sacrifice the tokens, afterall), but it was still an awesome play, I thought.

Unfortunately, we lost that game, due to an utterly amazing topdeck on their part. My memory doesn't serve to remind me the exact board-position or whatever (I'm writing this what, two weeks later without notes?), but I remember we had determined to make two final alpha-strikes that would be guaranteed to win us that game barring anything crazy. But after the first, almost-lethal swing, we passed the turn knowing the worst they could do would only put us at one.

As it turns out, I wasn't expecting to re-meet a certain Sparkmage Apprentice that had long since died in a block, and that would be our downfall. Our opponents were able to topdeck a Rise from the Grave of their own, and squeaked that last point through with a Sparkmage Apprentice!

I was upset.

Oh well, we thought. We only had one more game to win and we'd have some product.

Round three started out pretty promisingly, as our opponents weren't anywhere to be found (we later determined they were down the street getting some Subway subs, and didn't do us the courtesy of picking us up anything ) for the first seven or so minutes. This was going to be an easy game-win, we thought (not that we really wanted to win it like that). But they showed up just in time and on top of it, taunted me with their sweet, sweet, delicious subs before shuffling up.

As it turned out, there was nothing, and I mean nothing we could've done to win that last game. Both or our opponent's curved out perfectly, one of which I do remember: Turn one Elite Vanguard, turn two Veteran Armorsmith, turn three White Knight, turn four Divine Verdict one of our blockers, turn five Baneslayer Angel. All this while the other guy throws two Ice Cages on our only remaining blockers while playing some irrelevant creatures of his own. We didn't enjoy that game in the slightest bit, but they certainly deserved the win. Maybe not the subs, but the win.

Pretty broken up about not going home with some draftsets of M10, we skulked out to get some food of our own, and each go home to brood over our misfortune.

Looking back, I really enjoyed the M10 limited format, but still have a bitter taste in my mouth from that epic (or should I say "mythic") Baneslayer-beatdown. I'd love to go back and play a lot more with M10, but due to the small print-runs, our playgroup only ever saw two M10 drafts, neither of which I was able to attend.

Come back in two weeks to hear my take on "Control Week". It should be an interesting stroll through Memory Lane for this blatant combo-player...

[Ravus]

Again, I apologize for my lateness (it was excused ), and will say I was a little rushed in posting this even late, so there may well be some considerable errors in it.

I just hope it's worth the time reading it.