The LiquidLegends Lounge - Page 1737

He's got removal and I've got 2/2s, so he wins game 1.
Then game 2 he goes 2-drop -> Rhonas, but can't risk racing me because he can't develop his board while paying for an activation and I luck into a couple flyers.
Game 3 I resist using Desert's Hold on a 5/4 first strike lifelink camel, and am rewarded by playing it on Rhonas when it comes down and Saving Grace on a 1/3 to lose nothing when I triple block the camel (I'm lucky he didn't have removal). I start slowly pinging him in the air and force removal on Gustwalker to reduce the clock, because I'm at 5 life or something. 5/5 hexproof stabilises the board and my 1/6 can bounce his Steadfast Sentinel without letting him eternalize it.
He ends up drawing Unraveling Mummy and has a 3/3 flyer to my 2/2, so I may have to chump soon, but he attacks with the Sentinel without less than 6 mana available to I kill it, drop to 2, crack Shefet Dunes and win.
1-0 I got lucky he lacked removal in game 3 'cause I saw most of my good cards, and Desert's Hold was clutch.

So today what does he play? Well he took more ramp, but he's only got 3 ramp targets, including a Bitterbow Sharphooters, and he's got no removal. Because he's going straight 3c for Torment of Venom and Stinger (he's got fixing: 2 Evolving Wilds, a Ritualist, a Beneath the Sands, a Spring // Mind, but he's splashing for double-costs even if he has 2x Hope Tender and a Vitalist). That's a fucking pile of a deck that can chump a couple turns but needs him to draw one of his 3 cards to actually start doing stuff.

So game 1 he casually draws his ramp and drops Scaled Behemoth turn 4 off a single forest, then Chaos Maw once I'm threatening lethal, and because I brick 3 turns in a row on lands he wins. I would have killed him or forced a chump if he hadn't topdecked Sharpshooters for my flyers on that exact turn tho.
Game 2 he doesn't have his ramping 2-drops in hand and since he doesn't have removal when I get Dauntless Aven + Gustwalker I clock him fast enough to just ignore him dropping 12 power on board. He complains that he drew his ramp creatures turn 3 and 4—well tough luck, if you want them so bad mulligan?—especially since I had chump blockers so a single turn wouldn't have saved him.

Game 3 he avoids getting trounced again by playing his P2P1 Grind // Dust on Gutwalker + Dauntless Aven (do note that his only W source is the ritualist and he thought he was BG when he picked it), sure run some random rares that fit perfectly against my deck when you could have played Splendid Agony instead if you're gonna be B without W.
He draws a bunch of lands and argues that he's got a ton on the field—no fucking shit Sherlock, you play more than 16 of them and used Spring + both evolving wilds, of course your board+yard has more lands than mine! And don't take note that you're at 11 and me at 15 because my only W source is the painland in my starting hand and I'm only drawing my W spells, so I hurt myself that much just to get there and can't play 2 spells a turn with 6 mana.
Since his creatures are shit outside of the 3 ramp targets, I punch him a bunch and am ready to push lethal. He topdecks Scaled Behemoth and plays it, blocking my ground creatures and saving himself from lethal.
I hit with my flyers, play Aerial Guide and next turn between recurred Gustwalker, the Guide, and the Mighty Leap in my hand I can have all my creatures fly over for more than lethal.
Don't worry, empty handed he topdecks Chaos Maw and wipes my board then hits.
So I steal the Maw with Kefnet's Last Word to have a blocker. It'd still be exact lethal with Leap next turn, if not for the fact that he's got a 6/7 to my 6/6, I'm at exactly 6 life, and I don't have another trick in hand, so he's denying me the win by either one point of P (or T) or life, how fucking convenient.
I'm also sitting on Hour of Revelation since almost the start of the game but no fucking plains in sight so I can't just wipe him and steal whatever medium-size stuff he plays next to kill him.
So tries to kill, trades the creature for my trick, plays something to block with (Stinger). I force the Stinger to chump, he topdecks Decimator Beetle (one of these cards that made me think "yeah I should have been B, I'd have splashed that too") so I have to lose the shrinked maw to double-block it next turn.
He's desperate, and goes to cast Survive to shuffle the libraries.
Over the next couple of turns he topdecks sunset pyramid, then Torment of Venom when I have an Aven of Enduring Hope threatening a 2-turn clock and, while I again have lethal with Riverwinder + Mighty Leap in hand, he topdecks Sharpshooters with the very last sunset pyramid draw and an empty hand so he can chump the lethal attack. And I can't attack on the ground either to bait him since he went super wide with all his 1/2 and 1/3 shitters.

The game ends in a draw because ironically, I gained too much life from redrawing Aven of Enduring Hope, and eternalizing Suncourge Champion, for him to try and kill me (he was playing super passive after his first 3 topdecks didn't win him the game, poor boy). With Saving Grace in hand I'd have killed the Sharpshooters on blocks without dying, then killing him next turn by flying.
Or, you know, since mister fucking pile over there topdecked the only card left in his pile that blocked flyers (especially hexproof flyers), I could have topdecked any of the 4 cards that'd let me win on the spot. Nope.
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He played super loose, trying to play 2 green dorks on turn 4 with a single mountain, not exiling his aftermath cards when he used them (he shuffled Struggle // Survive back in his deck and I had to remind him), getting blown out by every single one of my tricks even when he'd seen them before.
But I guess it doesn't fucking matter when you literally topdeck 3 times in the same game to save yourself from 100% lethal!
He's played ramp both drafts, last week he had a bunch of expensive cards but almost no ramp and won 2 matches via mana issues (I saw their round 1, the other guy had an as good or better deck but flooded (as in lands > spells) twice, then me getting stuck on 2 then 3 lands when he gets his magical christmas land hands of 2-of-3 ramp cards + payoff and drawing into Hashep Oasis + Excavator in the next 3 draw steps), and this week he's got a ton of ramp, too much for his land count actually, and only 3 pay-offs (Behemoth, Maw, Sharpshooters, nothing else was bigger than his single Ritualist or the Soul Stinger) but he topdecks like a fucking champ again.
That kind of sick joke is getting me tired (along with last draft where I'm RW, round 2 play v t2 Hoopoe twice, first game flood and he has a bounce spell in hand for my first 4 removal thrown at the hoopoe, game 2 I'm stuck on 2 lands and don't play; meanwhile I look at "moved into W which wasn't open because of a P2P6 Sunmare, have only 3 ways to gain life in the entire pool and one requires a desert, out of 5 games played have the horse + a way to gain life in the starting hand" smug braggard have the gall of whining when he loses because his 3 topdecks in a row to not straight die weren't enough—but obviously his ending first is a testament to his kill in drafting and playing).

Not much to say. He plays removal so he can kill my creatures and then later on he plays 4/2 or 5/4 menace or 5/4-put-a-counter and I'm still playing 3/3s.
I win game 1 despite him playing the god because he refused to use Lethal Sting on Sunscourge Champion with a U cartouche earlier, and we race... but I have other flyers and tricks, and with embalm creatures in the yard he decides to spend all his mana killing my Binding Mummy rather than alpha to force a chump, not leaving him with enough blockers to win. Retrospectively by the last turn he couldn't win anymore, but he should have won that game.
Game 2 is a slaughter where I don't get to keep anything on the board with Fervent Paincaster killing about half my creature pool by itself, and about half when combined with any stray -1/-1 counter; game 3 he 2-for-1s himself a couple times (2x Blur of Blades on a lifelink Camel) but a 5/4 with his incidental burn is too fast a clock, and the Merciless Javelineer he followed up with kinda means I'll lose 2 creatures for a card in his hand if I try blocking with everything.
Ridiculously hard match-up from the start and I didn't get to draft removal so I went in with no expectations.
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