Magic: The Gathering - Page 626

1st match:
Experienced dude running the Abzan deck that won the GP.
First game surprised me: I hit both Disregard early and exile a Warden of the First Tree and a Hangarback, while draining some with a Kalastria Healer and a Serene Steward. He ends up getting Murderous Cut back from the graveyard to kill his other Hangarback when I put a Malakir Familiar out, to kill it with the Thopters, Silk Wraps the second Healer, while I exile the first Siege Rhino he plays. I end up using "tap mode" on Citadel Siege to prevent his Anafenza from attacking. Because of all the drain he actually ends up very low, at 1 HP at some point (post-rhino), but when I make the mistake of attacking with Zulaport Cutthroat in a "die from him or the drain" fashion, he upgrades his second Warden to get lifelink and remains at 2 HP. From here he puts counters on it and kills me with his board, after the lifelink lets him stabilise. I'm really surprised, and he tells me he hit almost all his lands (he played fetches for the first 3 turns basically, and a couple more later).
Game 2 was indeed a lot faster, I don't draw enough to exile him and he makes his Warden a 3/3 on turn 2 (my deck can't even deal with a 3/3 without hard removal), he plays a Rhino, Anafenza, makes the Warden big, I'm dead. I hoped to make it a 0-1 'cause we were on time but forgot it had trample.
0-2

2nd match:
I kill the guy pretty fast in the first match, as he says he had a mana death (with was only partly true). Because of this, I see almost nothing of his deck, apart from the 1R card that says "discard a card, then draw two cards" which according to him is a big tell. Yeah but I told you I'm a beginner, so I don't know about them.
I sideboard some envoys and emissaries out for Duress as he obviously doesn't run many creatures. Using it on the first turn shows me Languish, Sphinx's Tutelage, Pyromancer's Goggles and Negate. I exile the Tutelage.
He later casts Languish on my board, leaving me with only 3 thopters while he drew another Tutelage. He seems all stressed out and convinced that I'm in a dominating position. He's got 12 HP left, I only have lands, vampiric rites, 3 thopters, and useless cards in end (another rites, and Altar's Reap). I keep drawing lands and get wary of using rites of altar's reap because it'll give him another 2 turns before I win if I don't draw a creature with at least 2 power with it. People are watching us play, wondering who's ahead, and while the guy keeps stressing I tell them that because my board is slow, it's actually hard to call as it'll depend whether I play another creature or he draws an answer to the thopters first, making is fairly balanced. He instantly kills the Grim Haruspex I topdeck, and mills me after 4 turns of my thopters pinging him (he was dead next turn). He didn't get lucky on the tutelage, often milling a land and a creature, so he doesn't keep doing it. He's running treasure cruises so he can mill pretty fast once he hits his mana, and he started randomly giggling while watching his hand after he started drawing draw cards. See, no need to be so agitated earlier.

Now that I actually know about his deck, I sideboard in the Felidar cubs and the Transgressions of Mind to deal with what appears to be his only wincon (he has a single flip Jace too).
My opening hand has a cub, Duress, 2x Transgression, and on my third turn I draw Utter End.
What I never draw of the whole game, though, is a source of black mana. Rogue's Passage (added for Mortuary Mires, since putting a card on top of the library is useless as he'll mill it), 3 plains, a 4th before he ends me (Alhammarret's Archive makes things pretty fast).
It was in poor taste to tell me he's sorry about my mana death if it's to giggle twice later while watching his hand. What's the point of lying if he's bad at it, and even show his hypocrisy himself right after (he wasn't being smug while saying sorry, tried to appear genuine)?
I'll be honest, although I didn't let it show I was pretty darn salty at the mana death, after I sideboarded I think decently, and kept a good hand to deal with his deck. I didn't play the cub because I don't really have recursion (and it needs black anyway) while the guy has both creature destruction and exile.
1-2 for the match, I'm now 0-2.

3rd match:
Another beginner like me, then 0-2, and who built a deck the previous day with what he had. It was UB with fetches, mostly eldrazi, and a few cards like Silumgar and a blue dragon which taps a creature of mine and prevents it from untapping on upkeep while it's in play.
He won the first game with a mix of combat tricks, Silumgar having hexproof (means I can't use the khans mode of the citadel siege to tap him, right?) and his ability killing all my 1-toughness creatures when he attacks. My stasis snare went on his ghostfire blade.

Second game looked like the first, with my foolishly blocking with Drana's Emissary then playing a Mortuary Mire to put her on top of my library, then not casting Complete Disregard when his Dominator Drone attacks. Forgot it had ingest. Bye, Emissary!
I stabilised with a Palace Siege in recursion mode and using Hangarback Walker and 2 Zulaport Cutthroats. Use the walker to create tokens, bring him back on upkeep, do it again+Cutthroat, drain from the tokens+cutthroat when Silumgar attacks, block another thing with the walker to generate token, repeat. I had more HP but a dismall board state, I ended up draining him to death for whatever HP he had left, though.
After this, with two minutes remaining to sideboard, shuffle, draw, play and both our decks being slow, we called it a draw. 1-1, I'm not 0-2-1.

4th match:
Atarka Red "budget" (he still had fetches and other stuff). Rolled me in game 1 through combat tricks to prevent me from killing his swiftspear, and the creature that needs 2 power to be able to block it (1R 2/1, gets a counter through Raid).
Rolled me in game 2 because I didn't draw a Healer, thus making Serene Steward useless, and Zulaport cutthroat can't do shit. He drew 5 of his goblin token-generating spells between both games so it's not the same tempo. Blow-out.
0-3-1.

At least I got a Foil Prairie Stream from my pack, I guess...?