R/W Valakut Control

This is what I'm currently running, I am open to and looking for suggestions

FNM At My Place - Round Two

So we're doing FNM at my place again tonight which should be fun. Going to have a slightly bigger turnout which will be cool. I'll have to set up an additional table.

I'm going to continue to playtest the Eldrazi deck and I have made the following change based on some comments.

-4 Kazandu Refuge
+4 Rootbound Crag

I don't need the life and this deck doesn't want to have lands come into play tapped. As Big Head Joe said this deck tolerates Oran-Rief only because of what it does. I think this will increase the deck's power by quite a bit. I kept quite a few hands in the tourney that contained more than one refuge and those turns where I can't do anything because of mana are killers.

Eldrazi: The Bloodraided Tourney Report

So I've determined that this deck really only truly fears one deck type and that is Jund. Jund obliterates me if I don't start off super fast. If I can start fast and pull off an Eldrazi Monument early enough, it's game in the bank. Same thing goes for control decks. I got hit with three, count them three Day of Judgement and still won the game.

During the tourney this past weekend everyone had trouble with Noyan's TurboFog deck and I didn't seem to. I was patient, waiting until he had tapped out and made my move, winning the round 2-0. I lost in the top 4 to Jund and Noyan beat Gary who was running Jund in the final.

So what does this tell me, it tells me to continue tweaking my sideboard.

Right now I have the following

4x Pyroclasm (to deal with tokens from Sprouting Thrinax)
3x Windstorm (for Sphinx)
3x Acidic Slime (to beat down on manabases for Jund and Cruel Control)
3x Mold Shambler (for the same reason and also has a way to deal with Planeswalkers)
2x Vines of Vastwood.

By the way, I also made the following change:

-3 Burst Lighting
+1 Lightning Bolt
+2 Sarkhan Vol

Let me tell you what a difference Sarkhan makes in this deck, it's unbelievable how awesome he is. Also popping off his ultimate, and then laying down another Sarkhan to give 5 dragons haste = win.

Friday Night Playtesting

So we're all getting together at my place tonight for playtesting. I'm sure I'll see plenty of different archetypes so I'm very excited. I have made one minor change before playtesting tonight

-2 Overrun
+2 Ant Queen

I didn't feel I was getting enough synergy with using just the Chosen to power the Monument. We'll see if this makes the deck any better, I think it will and honestly with three Garruks, I don't need another Overrun in the deck.

Will post detailed results of playtesting later this evening.

Playtesting

Okay so did a bit of playtesting last night. Unfortunately only got one round in against Vampires but it was encouraging data against another aggro deck.

I played first and played a Kazandu Refuge, going to 21 life. My opponent played a swamp and passed the turn. On turn two I played a Forest and played Birds of Paradise. On their turn two, she dropped a swamp and played Vampire Hexmage. At the end of her turn I Burst the Hexmage for two. On my turn 3, i dropped an Oran Rief and played an Elvish Visionary, sticking a counter to it with Oran Rief. On my opponent's next turn they kicked a Gatekeeper and I sacrificed the Visionary. On turn 4 I dropped another Kazandu Refuge going to 22. I played Garruk, untapping two of my lands and passing the turn. On their turn they played a Bloodghast and hit me with Duress, although i had nothing of note. On the next turn I played an Oran Rief and passed the turn. On their turn they played a Vampire Nighthawk and swung in with the Bloodghast, taking me to 20. On my turn I played a Forest and did the following. Tapped to play Bloodbraid Elf, drawing up a Burst Lightning I used to get rid of the Bloodghast. I then used Garruk's ability to untap two lands and cast another Bloodbraid Elf drawing up a Lightning Bolt which I used to take out the Nighthawk. I swung in for six. On their turn they played a hexmage and used it to take out my Garruk. On my turn I stuck another Refuge going back to 21 and proceeded to play a Nissa, which I used to draw up a Chosen and hit it with two counters courtesy of the Oran Riefs in play. I swung for an additional six damage. On their next turn they hit another Hexmage, which they unfortunately used again to get rid of my planeswalker, I say unfortunately because I feel it was the wrong move. On my next turn I stuck another Oran Rief and hit for lethal damage.

Not a pretty game and definitely not indicative of the vampires deck, but I really love hitting Bloodbraid Elf and drawing up burn.

Eldrazi: the Bloodbraided

Okay so I asked a few people to look at my deck list and tell me what they thought. The general consensus I got was that splashing red was taking away from the synergy of the deck. I disagree with this. The only things I took out of the deck were Ant Queens and I dropped some of the 4 ofs down to 3 and took out Noble Hierarch and repalced with Birds. Eldrazi Green has no removal in the main board and honestly with what I've done I've added Bloodbraid Elf which will add another dimension to the deck and added main board removal/burn. It's possible to win with this deck without getting off an Overrun or Garruk's ultimate.

What do you think out there?

Sunday Magic at Legends

So let me start this off by saying that this will be a casual player's blog on Magic. I'll be talking about my standard meta and the things that affect me in local FNM and other similar tournaments. You more than likely won't see me talking about the Pro circuit, but who the hell knows.

I played in two tourneys over the weekend, my normal Saturday morning exchange over at the Amazing Spiral at the Rotunda Mall (shoutout, do I get cash from this?) and also at Legends in Towson (there it is again, free advertisements folks) and decided to run my mill deck with I affectionately refer to as "The Esper Crab Mill". I had great luck with this last week getting to the finals and being beat my Big Head Joe, however this week I just got horrible draws. This unfortunately continued when I played at Legends as well. I did not take notes although for future reference I will be doing so. Suffice to say, I went 1-2 at my normal tourney and went 2-3 at Legends. Joe helped me make some changes and while i'm not sold on what was done, I do think that it made the deck better.

Currently I am in the middle of building my version of Eldrazi Green although mine has red splashed and I call it "Eldrazi: The Bloodbraided". Here it is for your information and comment.



I am open to suggestions, but this is what I have come up and am going to run next tourney at the Rotunda.

Tourney Reports and other tidbits coming next week, now i'm going to bed. Goodnight all.