Post-Scars Prerelease

Note: post prerelease, I consider nothing Scars-related to be spoilers. Click image for a larger view of my 40 card prerelease deck.

I either had an 80% or 72% victory rate at the prerelease tournament depending on whether you're going by rounds or games, respectively (best 2/3 games in a round). I won three packs and am suffering the sin of pride.

The round I lost was the first one. I was up against someone who had somehow managed to make a fully functional Black/Green Infect deck, complete with Putrefax. Not only that, but he had a Sword of Body and Mind. A well made deck by a good player with good cards and I don't recall making any particular blunders against him, so I don't feel too bad about it.

Well, I feel a LITTLE bad about it. If I had won every round, my prize would've been fifteen packs instead of three. But still, three extra packs is nice, and one had a Myr Battlesphere! Oh yes.

I am not going to link to every card in my deck just because it would take a while to do, but I will list it here and you can look any of them up yourselves with the Gatherer archives (apologies in advance if there are typos; they use weird words). Cards are ordered by color, then by casting cost from lowest to highest.

Blue - 7

1 Screeching Silcaw
1 Thrummingbird
1 Plated Seastrider
1 Stoic Rebuttal
1 Neurok Invisimancer
2 Lumengrid Drake

Artifact - 9

1 Origin Spellbomb
1 Infiltration Lens
1 Copper Myr
2 Silver Myr
2 Glint Hawk Idol
1 Snapsail Glider
1 Tumble Magnet

White - 9

1 Salvage Scout
2 Revoke Existence
1 Auriok Edgewright
1 Soul Parry
1 Myrsmith
1 Arrest
1 Tempered Steel
1 Razor Hippogriff

Land - 15

6 Island
1 Seachrome Coast
8 Plains

And yes, thanks to Origin Spellbomb and Myrsmith, I did get to use my Myr tokens! In fact, I don't recall a single game where I didn't get to use them. Not one person commented on them, however. It makes me wonder if anyone mistook them for the genuine article, which seems unlikely, but I guess it's possible given that nobody looked at them up close.

Origin Spellbomb proved more useful than I thought it would be. I used Salvage Scout to retrieve and reuse it in multiple games just for card advantage, as it was common to reach a point of being stalemated and just looking for that one card to turn the tide, like Tempered Steel or Tumble Magnet.

Speaking of Tumble Magnet, it's VERY potent in limited. If you look at my deck list, none of the creatures are big finishers on their own, and there was the occasional fatty I had to stall in order to win. It combos well with Thrummingbird, which allowed me to get 4 uses out of it. Would've been more, but counters are removed from cards when exiled and my opponent cast a Glimmerpoint Stag that effectively removed the last charge counter, leaving me with nothing to proliferate.

EDIT: It's been pointed out to me that the Tumble Magnet should've gotten three new charge counters when it entered the battlefield again from exile, meaning I screwed up and should have actually had an easier time winning that game than I did. I blame being tired for the oversight, though I should probably also spin the wheel of blame... *spins* Paul Reubens! How could you, Pee-wee?!

Seachrome Coast was a very lucky draw. Most of the cards I got were actually red and blue, but white gave me better options even if I did wind up using almost every white card I got. I included Copper Myr in spite of having nothing green to cast simply for additional mana acceleration, and it worked out well.

Anyway, I could ramble on about this for pages, but it reaches a point where only I would care (assuming I didn't reach that point several paragraphs ago). Anyone have their own Scars of Mirrodin prerelease experiences / decks to share?

FNM September 17 - Wrath of The Stalemates

Knight Exemplar: "Knights know no
fear! Wait, what does that new
ability in Scars do? ...Son of a..."

Last night was probably the most fun I’ve ever had at Friday Night Magic (FNM). I had a 50/50 win/loss record over five rounds, but for most of the games I lost, I went down swinging. Or, more accurately, went down sitting with a solid defense that my opponents simply couldn’t get through.

I was playing mono-white knights. Strangely for a white deck, it has zero life gain in it, but it can still be very difficult to kill off. Between Knight Exemplar, Brave The Elements, Day of Judgment, Condemn, and Journey to Nowhere, I could set up a defensive position that could keep me alive via stalemate long past my opponent’s will to live, particularly if I managed to get two Knight Exemplars into play.

These stalemates resulted in some fun “I just won’t die” scenarios. One stalemate against an ally deck with life gain lasted long enough for my opponent to reach 142 life. It would have been more, but I kept fruitlessly clawing away at him with a Cloud Crusader.

My last game lasted 32 turns, over two-thirds of which was spent with me effectively untouchable while at 4 life. A Day of Judgment would have ended the stalemate in my favor, but he managed to give a twice-pumped Steppe Lynx protection from white with Emerge Unscathed first, dealing just enough damage to finish me.

Speaking of Steppe Lynx, I might have to make a cat deck after the release of Scars. Granted, some of these cats would have to be humanoid, but I’ve wanted to make a cat deck for a while and this could be my chance. Assuming there are enough white cat creatures for it, it will be a white-blue deck. The reason for this is a suggestion from that last opponent who said that Diminish should be included for its artwork alone.

Many minutes later, long after the discussion regarding my cat deck had supposedly ended, I commented that Mighty Leap would also be mandatory. You can't have a kitty deck without cats jumping around and getting where they're not supposed to be, darn it!

I won’t be playing FNM next week, as the Scars Prerelease is that Saturday and Sunday. I only plot to play one day, but I might play in as many as two tournaments on Saturday just because I already have a deck in mind based on spoilers and it’s almost exclusively stuff from the new set. Crafty Wizards…