After struggling with my own creations in the last leagues I decided to copy a N00bCoN deck and try to discover how to win with Swedish rules. As I didn’t feel the TwiddleVault deck that won the last tournament is a good option to learn, I decided to take a 5 color LionBurn approach based on Seth Roncoroni’s mix of [scrylink]savannah-lions:4ed[/scrylink], typical burn spells [scrylink]lightning-bolt:4ed[/scrylink], [scrylink]chain-lightning:leg[/scrylink] and [scrylink]psionic-blast:leb[/scrylink] as well as all the best cards available in each color. A journey with quite a bad start was ahead of me!
Here is my deck:
As usual the finalist’s deck photos and available videos are embedded below.
My first match-up was Nicolas’ Troll Disco and I got completely destroyed by Nicolas’ Blood Moons. I can tell you my Mana base is already difficult to manage without the [scrylink]blood-moon:drk[/scrylink] but he drew two moons quite early in each game. Yes he plays them main! I started my second game making sure that I could remove the moon, but two are a lot early on and no, I didn’t drew into the right Moxen either to cast my [scrylink]disenchant:leb[/scrylink] or [scrylink]blue-elemental-blast:leb[/scrylink]. It was quick and bloody.
The next match was against Julian with TwiddleVault (no joke, we were nearly replaying the N00bCoM final 😀 ). I was starting ok and the games were quite close. I would very likely have been able to win if I would have known the exact rules for [scrylink]sylvan-library:leg[/scrylink]. Unfortunately I discovered only later – when watching a legacy match played on MTG Online- that multiple copies trigger after each other. This means with the first trigger you draw two more cards and put two back, then the next library also draws you the exact same two cards unless you pay 4 life to keep one before. This means you see 2 and not 4 more cards than usual with 2 libraries in play during one draw step.
Usually this would have meant I wouldn’t advance to finals, but luckily Julian couldn’t further attend the league and dropped from our group.
My third match was set against Chris, who also lost before and was rather unmotivated to play on. Finally he couldn’t make it to our match appointment and he decided to drop, too! What a strange “Swiss” group I had. I was more used to people that play to play and never drop in our D A Ch community. On the other hand this meant I was super lucky to reach the play-offs and I was happy to play the deck a bit more. 🙂
In the play-offs I was facing Phil, still having zero expectation to win against a real group winning deck. Finally I had a very good draw and I figured out how to play my deck and how it can go when I draw the right cards. I don’t remember the details but I had a blast going 2-0 and the match is still on Twitch if you want to watch it: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1134142948
The semifinal was set versus Andreas playing Trolls. I was not very sure what to expect and played a carefully and not too aggressive. Maybe I was really scared about seeing [scrylink]blood-moon:drk[/scrylink] again. My play was good, my draws even better and I remember that Andreas was very unlucky in one game. It ended 2-1 for me and I jumped for joy in my house. Real Lion Happiness. I was in the final again!
After realizing that a video of Andreas’ and mine match would have been great to review and share, I asked the other semifinalists if I can stream their match. Seppi and Nicolas agreed immediately, even though it could give me information about my next opponent. At least my deck was on stream already, too so I think it was fair. Please watch yourself on YouTube how Trolls deal with Robots.
And now on to the final! Please watch the nicely moderated video before reading on if you don’t want to see the spoilers. I really recommend it as Phil and Sven did a very good job commentating and providing extra info. In addition they are announcing the spice awards for the August league at the end.
Video alternative on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1143747793
So now that you have watched the video, not much more to tell from my side.
The games were not very close. Quite one sided good draws in the first two games and the worst case scenario for me in game 3, drawing only Mana sources after my starting hand. It ended two to one for Nicolas, making him the DACH August champion. Congratulations Nicolas!
Nevertheless I’m really happy to finish second, especially after such a bad start and I hope in October (my September deck is Spice not Spike) I will reach the final rounds again. One thing is for sure: I will practice Orb flipping in the meantime!
See you next month in our league 🙂
Further links to Phil’s videos:
https://www.twitch.tv/squachbird/videos