Platinum Angel + Whispersilk Cloak = Win

I blog about what I do. I haven’t been on WoW since Thursday, and all I did then was completely redo my addons. Again. I deleted my whole addon folder (I did save my altoholic datastore files) and then redownloaded everything I wanted.

I still have a little tweaking to do, and I will post my updated UI when it’s done.

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I went to the Magic 2011 Prerelease on Saturday. It was a blast. And I am going to blog about it.

There were 2 events at this Prerelease, a Swiss Sealed and a Single-Elimination Draft. I’ll talk about the Sealed first.

In case there are some of you out there who are unfamiliar with Magic tournaments and who aren’t as smart as Lyssi, I will explain.

There are 2 main types of sanctioned tournaments in Magic: Constructed and Limited. In a Constructed tournament, players bring their own custom 60-card decks to play with. In Limited, you are given the cards you play with when you get there.

Within Limited, there are 2 main types of events: Sealed and Draft.

In Sealed, you are given 6 booster pack which works out to 84 cards. You then decide which ones you want to use, normally about 22-24 of them, and then you add 16-18 basic land to make a 40-card deck.

In Draft, you are seated at a table with 7-9 other people. Each player starts with 3 booster packs in front of them. At the same time, each player opens their first pack. They each select 1 card from that pack, then pass to the left. Pick up the pack from the right, pick one, pass to the left. Continue until the pack is empty. Pack 2 then passes to the right. Pack 3 passes to the left again. You end up with 42 picked cards, and you again build a 40-card deck with 22-24 cards plus 16-18 basic land.

I love drafts. They put everyone on a mostly-even playing field to begin with, and it comes down to skill and decision making. It’s not a contest to see who can spend the most money or the most time refining their Constructed decks.

I will pause in my description to provide a somewhat-accurate WoW analogy.

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Constructed Magic tournaments are PvE. You prepare, refine strategies, gear up, then play against mostly-scripted events. There are a few random variables, but you can basically assume that opponents will do certain things depending on which deck they are playing.

Drafts are PvP. Any card you pick is a card that you are taking away from your opponents. You have to be able to react and adapt if you notice that your colors are being picked up by someone else, and then decide whether to cut them off on the next pack or switch colors yourself.

/endhorribleanalogy

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I get to the card shop at the time I thought was 40 minutes early. Turns out I was 20 minutes late. I wasn’t disqualified, but everyone else had already been opening packs and building decks for 20 minutes, and I now had half the time to build my own deck. I rush as fast as I can, just barely managing to throw in my basic land right as time is up and the first round is starting.

I didn’t have time to sleeve my deck (put in card protectors, for the uninitiated), but the store owner let me slide for the first round as long as I sleeved right after.

Here were the cards I opened and the deck I built with them:

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Sealed Pool – 84 cards
61 sideboard
Gargoyle Sentinel x2 (u) Juggernaut (u) Ornithopter (u) (4 artifact cards)	Assault Griffin (c) Goldenglow Moth (c) Infantry Vereran (c) Inspired Charge (c)* Palace Guard (c) Safe Passage (c)* Solemn Offering (c)* Squadron Hawk (c) Tireless Missionaries (c) (9 white cards)	Armored Cancrix (c) Azure Drake (c) Call to Mind (u) Harbor Serpent (c) Ice Cage (c) Jace’s Erasure (c) Mind Control (c) Phantom Beast (c) Water Servant (u) (9 blue cards)	Barony Vampire (c) Blood Tithe (c) Bloodthrone Vampire (c) Child of Night (c) Disentomb (c) Nightwing Shade (c) Reassembling Skeleton (u) Unholy Strength (c) Viscera Seer (c) (9 black cards)	Ancient Hellkite (r) Berserkers of Blood Ridge (c) Combust (u) Earth Servant (u) Ember Hauler (u) Fling (c) Goblin Balloon Brigade (c) Goblin Tunneler x2 (c) Incite (c) Lava Axe (c) Lightning Bolt (c) Magic Vandal (c) Pyretic Ritual (c) Volcanic Strength (c) Vulshok Berserker (c) (16 red cards)	Brindle Boar (c) Garruk’s Companion (c) Garruk’s Packleader (u) Hornet Sting (c) Hunter’s Feast x2 (c) Llanowar Elves (c) Plummet (c) Runeclaw Bear (c) Spined Wurm x2 (c) Sylvan Ranger x2 (c) Yavimaya Wurm (c) (14 green cards)
40 maindeck
Condemn (u) Inspired Charge (c)* Pacifism (c) Safe Passage (c)* Serra Angel (u) (5 white cards)	Aether Adept (c) Augury Owl x2 (c) Conundrum Sphinx (r) Ice Cage (c) Jace’s Erasure (c) Jace’s Ingenuity (u) Mana Leak (c) Sleep (u) Stormtide Leviathan (r) Wall of Frost (u) (11 blue cards)	Grave Titan (m) Howling Banshee (u) Liliana’s Specter x2 (c) Mind Rot (c) Stabbing Pain (c) (6 black cards)	Platinum Angel (m) Whispersilk Cloak (u) (2 artifact Cards)	Glacial Fortress (r) 5 Plains 5 Swamps 6 Islands (17 land cards)

I had bombs. Boy, did I have bombs. There was some decent green in there, good acceleration and all that. But I just could not ignore how good blue/black looked. And white for good measure.
Now, I haven’t seriously played Magic since the Alara block a year and a half ago. There was a ton more mana-fixing then. Almost every single card was mana-fixing then. I almost instinctively threw together a 3-color deck because that was just what you did back then. It almost cost me a game when I didn’t have the colors I needed, but I did alright.

Take a look at this combo:

I will translate: I now have a permanent Divine Shield. Short of a mass dispel, there is nothing my opponent can do to me.

Whee

The cloak is also great on a Serra Angel. I won 2 games just with that.
I never actually managed to play my Grave Titan until the very last game, but it completely turned the tables when I did. My opponent had just used up the last of his removal, and then I drop Grave Titan followed by Platinum Angel. I won of course.

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The Sealed tournament was Swiss, meaning non-elimination. You play until the end no matter how many times you lose. I went 3-1 overall, with my loss in the 3rd round.

Round 1: My opponent was playing a red-white aggressive creature deck. He didn’t even have good creatures. They were pretty much all commons with no abilities. If it was a creature, it was in. But even dumb 2/2′s and 2/3′s eventually add up.
Until I cast Serra Angel and Platinum Angel. And then nothing matters. He had no fliers, and that was game.

Round 2: My opponent was again playing red-white, but this guy had the goods. Lightning Bolts (I think 2 of them), Blinding Mages (again, 2), and an Inferno Titan.
The Blinding Mages made it difficult to attack, but my fliers eventually started getting through. He had some attackers of his own though, and I got down to 5 life. Then he casts his titan. It does 3 damage to me, I’m down to 2. All he has to do is attack, it doesn’t even matter if I block, and I’m dead.
I play Stormtide Leviathan. None of his creatures have flying or islandwalk. There is nothing he can do. I attack for lethal the next turn

Round 3: Nothing interesting happened. I played a total of 2 spells in the 2 games we played. I drew nothing but land. I had kept 3-land hands both times, and then drew nothing good the entire game. Admittedly, I’m still not sure I could have beaten this deck even if I had been able to play. He had a lot of kill spells and removal, at least 8 cards that could have dealt with Platinum Angel (he knew I had it, he was friends with my first opponent). Oh well.

Round 4: I remember this guy from before. He’s good. He also had a 2-1 record, and his deck was terrible. Terrible. His sealed pool was ridiculously underpowered, and yet he played amazingly well with what he had. He just wasn’t able to deal with Grave Titan and Platinum Angel at the same time. Or separately. But they were together. And I won this one.

The prizes were pack-per-win, so I ended up with 3 extra booster packs. Then I headed over to the draft tables..

I just barely managed to get into the first draft, I was the last to sign up so we got started right away. It was a good group, 4 people I would consider “pro” and 4 people I would consider “noob”. A good mix. (And yes, I’m pro)

I almost wish I had a pick-by-pick analysis of each card, but all I have for you is my decklist:

40-card Draft Deck
Aether Adept (c) Cancel (c) Foresee (c) Jace’s Erasure (c) Mana Leak x2 (c) Negate x2 (c) Unsummon (c) (9 blue cards)	Assassinate x3 (c) Corrupt x2 (u) Deathmark (u) Demon of Death’s Gate (m) Doom’s Blade (c) Gravedigger (c) Liliana’s Specter x2 (c) Mind Rot (c) Sign in Blood (c) (13 black cards)	Triskelion (r) (1 artifact card)	7 Islands 10 Swamps (17 land cards)

Look at that ridiculous amount of removal and counterspells. It just kept coming. I don’t think I even got any creatures until pack 3. The removal was just that good. 5 counterspells. 7 kill spells. In a 40 card deck. I was golden. There really was no excuse for me not going undefeated.

Round 1: I was up against a noob. A total noob. He was mono-blue. Because he felt like it. He literally did not pick any non-blue cards the whole draft. He threw them all in a deck.
I would have been very, very, very disappointed in myself if I had lost to him. His annoying little islandwalk creatures were almost a problem for me, but I managed to break out of my mana problems and squish him with a 9/9 flying trample demon. RAWR!

Round 2: This match was over very quickly. It was almost boring how much better my deck was than his. He played creatures, I killed them. I played creatures, I killed him. GG.

Round 3: Not surprisingly, the player I would consider the most “pro” of us at the table was my undefeated opponent. He had been sitting to my left during the draft, and so I had a fairly good idea that his deck had red in it. He had tried to go black, but I had cut him off pretty well. He ended up red-white.
Jace’s Erasure was the bomb in this match. He kept a risky hand with 1 land in the first game, and then my enchantment kept him from drawing another land until turn 6. Milling away 5 lands in a row was epic
He started burning my face, put out some annoying creatures and slowly was killing me. I managed to empty his hand and then dropped a 9/9 flying trample demon. It’s amazing how quickly that can kill people.
Game 2 was stupid. Meaning, I was stupid. In this matchup, with my deck as good as it was, and with the horrible luck my opponent had, there was no reason whatsoever for me to lose.
I got cocky. I made several mistakes. My opponent took advantage of them, and won.
I am still kicking myself over this. I would’ve been undefeated. And the victory would’ve been even sweeter because this guy is an obnoxious elitist. But he beat me in games 2 and 3 because of my bad plays.

I’m going to go cry in a corner now.

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Am I the only one that finds it sad that my longest-ever post on this blog is not even about WoW? /cry
Thanks for putting up with me. I’ll post something WoW related tomorrow. I promise. Well, maybe.
-Del

BTW, if this long and rambling post about nothing to do with WoW was not enough for you, there is a decently-sized post over at Dots and Hots that is a little about WoW. Check it out: http://dotsandhots.wordpress.com/2010/07/12/weekend-recap-3/