GP Oakland: Part 3: Day 1 (Part 1 of 2)

My list was more or less Gerry's version from channel fireball's newsletter -1 Extripate main for a duress. I liked being able to turn 1 thoughtseize into turn 2 extripate, without having it in my opening it felt like a dead card pre-board. The extripate went into the board as an answer to scapeshift, usually forcing them to have to draw into rude awakening. Before I go further on choices...

MAIN
* 4 Dark Confidant
* 4 Vampire Hexmage
* 4 Thoughtseize
* 4 Muddle the Mixture
* 4 Thirst for Knowledge
* 3 Thopter Foundry
* 2 Sword of the Meek
* 1 Engineered Explosives
* 2 Beseech the Queen
* 2 Duress
* 3 Repeal
* 4 Chrome Mox
* 4 River of Tears
* 4 Sunken Ruins
* 4 Dark Depths
* 4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
* 3 Island
* 1 Swamp
* 3 Tolaria West
* 1 Academy Ruins

Sideboard

* 1 Slaughter Pact
* 1 Echoing Truth
* 3 Deathmark
* 2 Sower of Temptation
* 4 Leyline of the Void
* 1 Duress
* 1 Dark Blast
* 1 Chalice of the Void
* 1 Extripate

The third tolarian west was crucial as reseting the combo and tutoring for ee or ruins made or broke games. And the basic land 2-2 was changed to 3-1 to help reach the double blue. For the board 4 leylines were an obvious answer to dread and thopter, so the extripate would of been overkill to say the least. Dark Blast for elves which got alot of attention the week prior. Chalice for hypergen, living end, elves, anything where 1 or 0 would do more harm to my opponent than me. Echoing truth was more of a hurkyl's recall that could do more than just shut down a wave a thopter tokens. Deathmark, slaughter pact, and sower's for zoo. Sower for the mirror as well. The Duress was more of anti-sideboard sideboard card.

Prior to signing up I went over to the channelfireball booth to go pick up a free t-shirt that they were offering when you purchased $20 worth of merchandise. The motivation behind it was that if you were in a feature match or if you won and wrote an article you would get paid. I got some dice and a binder. I had trouble trying to figure out what else to get, and then I saw the box of future sight, I saw it as a free gamble at goyf so I bought 3. I don't remember what was in the first 2, but the over priced creature himself came out of pack 3. It was mine for all of 2 minutes as I sold it back to them for 65. Looking back at that now since goyf's over inflated price dropped back down, it was a good decision. Seating went up for introductions. And the first of many mobs of people at different corners of the building began.

GP Oakland: Part 2: Grind

I wake up from floor with about 3 hours of sleep on me. We all get ready and go across the street to Marie Calendars. Unable to eat due to being overly anxious I spend my time at the table re-sleeving. From there we head to the hotel. Parking at 26 a night, joy. We check in and head to our room where we find no fridge, I received a phone call while the guys bickered about something, turned out to be "who has to wait for the fridge to show up", me not paying any attention got suckered into doing so. Luckily it didn't take more than 10 minutes at most. I really wished I knew where I was suppose to go. I met a really nice girl on the elevator who shared my predicament, she turned out to being Blaine Rybacki's girl friend, I think...I didn't invest any time trying to verify that, the only thing I could think about was trying to get some quick byes.

My list was fairly close to my previous post, side board looked something like:
3 Threads of Disloyalty
2 Sower of Temptation
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Duress
1 Extripate
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Vendilion Clique

Grinder 2 Round 1
My opponent was a nice guy, he seemed really relaxed and could care less how he did in our match, I wish I could of said the same. His tiny green men started doing what they did and I lose turn 3 both games, signing the result sheet I prayed to not see another of these at all over the weekend.
Grinder 4
I had some solid matches against plenty of decks I didn't expect. 2-0 Gabe Walls round 1 not even knowing who he was til yesterday. 2-1 against a living end deck thanks to my leylines. 2-1 to a heavy control version of AIR, when bloodmoon and magus isn't enough its time to call in the chalices and pithing needles. End up going 2nd only to lose to Doran agro. I win 18 packs of worldwake and rip a Jace, I sell that along with most of my loose cards and compensate for most of my travel expenses for the weekend.

I'm not sure which grinder it was but Alex managed to knock out Matt Nass with his hypergen deck. If you go through the interviews he whines about it briefly, I got a good laugh.

GP Oakland: Part 1: my day 1

One of the benefits of having no readers is that I can take my sweet time and not have to worry about apologizing for a report that is well over a week late.

It all started Thursday evening where we were all gathered at Charlies house waiting for the last of our team to arrive. Our intention was to leave by 6:30, but last minute borrowing/woman aggro prevented most of us from coming close to our temporal goal. We set sail 8...ish on our 5 hour journey north. We managed to get pulled over roughly 3 hours in, Charly's intention was to allow a trucker pass before we exited, so he slowed and flashed his brights, the truck passed and we exited, seemed simple. Quota has to be meant and making a bigger fuss out of something small is normal in the tournament scene so I didn't mind to much, we explained to the officer what he saw and he let us be.

We got to Danny's buddy's house about 45 minutes outside the hotel, our room wouldn't be available until noon and sleep is good. I managed to get in a few games against Dustin's elf deck while keeping the cat there at bay. I was on the fence about vendilion clique both main and board, and without any real zoo to actually play test against these past couple of weeks, so me referring to them as "slow" is an understatement. At turn 3 with UU1 available I should be transmuting, thirsting, or holding a muddle. I managed to go to floor somewhere around 5, spending the next 2 hours trying to fall asleep amongst the orchestra of snoring, this was gonna be a long weekend.

Worldwake limited

Blue and white are obvious dominate colors. Even at a full 8 man table the hate draft is slim as most have fallen into a black rut due to zendikar. Cards like tideforce elemental and vaporsnare as 4th and 5th picks feel like cheating. Surrakar banisher and calcite snapper as 3-4 of's. White isn't as easy due to the ally hungry bads at your local FNM. Refraction trap gets overlooked quite a bit, can't say no to 3 dmg shinning shoals, mindlessly going into the red zone with one in hand soft locks the game early. Another gem that gets overlooked, Battle Hurda, 3/3 first strike is almost unblockable in this format. Cards like Iona's judgement, lightkeeper of emeria, and apex hawks tend to be slim.

Last week I saw 9 Roiling Terrain pass thru my hands, after I pulled my second Lodestone Golem, yes 2nd, I wish I drafted LD.

Thought into thirst

A lot of depths decks have been running this over thirst for knowledge.

Plunge into Darkness
1B
instant
Choose one - Sacrifice any number of creatures, then you gain 3 life for each sacrificed creature; or pay X life, then look at the top X cards of your library, put one of those cards into your hand, and exile the rest.

Entwine {B} (Choose both if you pay the entwine cost.)

Let me just say I side out at least one thirst every game, normally due to the fact I run into drawing 2 a lot. And 2 generally means Im holding one blank, by the time I would get the opportunity to play the second Im already dead. But does that mean I should play plunge? It costing 1 less allows you to do things like keep mana open for meddle much easier. Of course there is more to it than its mana, as you would need to pay at least 4 life at any given time to consider it taking up thirsts slot. Extended is a much faster format, and even fast combo decks like depths needs all of its resources to ensure it gets there. If playing plunge means setting yourself up for next turn bolt, tribal flames, 3-5 creature damage your more than likely dead vs zoo.

Waiting for Rise of the Edrazi.

The last 15 cards spoiled for worldwake were disappointing. Where are the 2 other planeswalkers we were apparently going to see? Where the hell is the card that R&D said "would make all your landfall cards make more sense", are you telling me that your hype card was explore, was it treasure hunt?

So glad I didn't preorder any of this. Buy a complete commons and uncommons set as there are some nice standard staples, but don't invest money into packs. Draft it and let your Zendikar fetch you anything you need.

Baneslayer wont go down.

I work in jewerly and since 2003 the market value of gold has more than tripled. And every couple months my boss would claim that this is it and it will finally stablize. Ive recently been saying the same with Baneslayer Angel, who is now slowly approaching 60 a piece. With worldwake slowly being spoiled I'm seeing the error of my ways and begin to cringe knowing that I wont be able to play anything competitively white for the next 2 years, assuming they reprint her.

I present exhibit A

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=100651&d=1264334829

Loam Lion
W
1/1

If you control a forest Loam Lion gets +1/+2

Its a white kird ape. Naya and GW in standard, zoo and GW in extended both have room for the kitty.

Exhibit B

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=100369&stc=1&d=1263877290

Hada Freeblade
W
0/1

Whenever Hada Freeblade or another Ally enters the battlefield under your control, you may put a +1/+1 counter on Hada Freeblade.

White weenie decks are already running Kazandu blademaster, I use to joke about how great it would be to run more than 4 muscle slivers in a deck and now I get to =D.

So now Im tempted to jump on the first one I find in the low 40 dollar range. With ebay being flooded with world wake pre sales I don't see this happening yet, the best time to strike will be more or less the week of the pre release where most will be more focus'd on man lands, bad Ally cards, and Jace's that will be horded in hopes to trade for playable Jund rares.