Tournament Report: Zendikar Game Day
Posted by gatch | | Posted On Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 2:29 PM
I brought the Naya Ascension deck discussed in an older post, with some changes to it. I added black for access to Maelstrom Pulse , Blightning, and Bituminous Blast.
Here's the list:
Naya Ascension v2.0
Lands:
4 jungle shrine
4 savage lands
4 sunpetal grove
4 arid mesa
2 rupture spire
2 exotic orchard
3 plains
1 mountain
Spells:
4 lightning bolt
4 pyromancer ascension
3 celestial purge
4 naya charm
4 blightning
3 maelstrom pulse
4 captured sunlight
4 day of judgment
4 ajani vengeant
2 bituminous blast
Sideboard:
4 bloodbraid elf
4 goblin ruinblaster
3 devout lightcaster
2 luminarch ascension
1 maelstrom pulse
1 celestial purge
Round 1 vs. Mono Red (0-0-0)
Game 1: I lose the dice roll and he goes first. Goblin guide and Hellspark Elemental are fast out of the gates, followed by hell's thunder. Fortunately the guide lets me draw into my lands and I play a turn 4 Captured Sunlight into a celestial purge. I stabilize and play my pyromancer ascension. Captured sunlight while the ascension is active gives me +8 life, and i cascade into blightning this time. Naya charms tapping his unearth dudes down while redrawing my graveyard win me this one.
Game 2: I side out slow removal for more cascade. I get two lands, one of which is Ruinblasted. We go to game 3.
Game 3: I get four lands, but no Captured Sunlight or Ajani Vengeant meant my life went from 20 to 0 faster than I could say 'where the effing eff are my life gain cards?!'
Round 2 vs. Jund (0-1-0)
Game 1: My maindeck purges pay off. I get hit by a blightning, but his Thrinaxes were exiled and double blightning on him sent him to topdeck mode while I Naya charm a Naya charm in my graveyard at EOT to get my pyromancer online. I recur my blightning for the win.
Game 2: I side in my anti-jund package of 4 bloodbraid, 4 ruinblaster, 3 devout lightcaster. Too bad for him, he sided out a lot of his removal seeing my creatureless game 1. Double ruinblaster on Savage lands messed with his curve. I lost my hand to a pair of blightnings, but maintained board position with bloodbraid into devout lightcaster. I win.
Round 3 vs. Mono-White (1-1-0)
Game 1: The celestial purges maindeck hurt me bad, drawing two of them in the course of the game. Fortunately I was able to get pyromancer online easily with captured sunlights. I'm able to clear his board just in time, and blightning him to death.
Game 2: I side out the purges in favor of more Maelstrom Pulse, luminarch ascension and some ruinblasters for Emeria the sky ruin, just in case the game goes that long. It did, but i didn't draw the goblins.
Game 3: I play a turn two Luminarch ascension that gets up to 3 tokens. I have two naya charms in hand to tap his guys out and activate the ascension, but I have no green mana sources in play (damn Exotic orchards). 14 green sources in the deck and I have none in play by turn 6...just awful. I lose this one due to Elspeth going ultimate before I draw my day of judgement.
Round 4 vs. Mono-White (1-2-0)
Game 1: Celestial purge bites me again, but my opponent gets mana flooded. Well he was, until Ajani went ultimate on him, twice.
Game 2: Same sideboard as the last matchup. Pyromancer was online by turn 5, and I had way too much removal for him to maintain a formidable board. Ajani goes ultimate again and I win.
Round 5 vs. Bant Midrange (2-2-0)
Game 1: What were those maindeck purges for again? Anyway this game was close, due to Rafiq smacking me a good ten damage on turn 4 with the help of noble heirarch. He gets a total of 3 lands though, and Day of Judgement takes out his fighters and mana dorks. I activate my combo for the win. He reveals a hand full of Baneslayers that he couldn't cast.
Game 2: I didn't playtest this matchup so I had no idea what to bring in from the benches. I decided he would take out his removal so bloodbraids should go in as well as the ruinblasters to blow up duals and tri-lands. Maelstrom pulse go in for big bad angel removal and a singleton luminarch ascension would do me well as an alternate win-con in case my pyromancers get purged. I draw luminarch in my opening hand and play it asap. He drops a pair of rhox war monks that I kill with a pulse. I get luminarch active. He drops qasali pridemage and I thought he'd blow my enchantment up right then and there. He didn't, so I EOT make an angel..still no activation on pridemage..I make another angel...this goes on until I have 4 angels in play..wierd. I play nothing from my hand the next few turns worried about what he's got up his sleeve, relying solely on my luminarch ascension. 7 angels take him out a turn or two later. I asked him what he was planning to do with his pridemage sitting pretty and he goes..'oh yeah, forgot he could do that..' and we both laugh it off.
Final standing: 3-2-0
Not bad in my opinion, but I would have liked to make it into top 8 so my deck would be recognized as legit..then again, it's nice being under the radar going to events like that. I got my pyromancer ascension online more than a RGWU version did at the tournament. Cascade really works well, maybe even better than card draw in this deck. It allows you to be a bit more threatening and proactive rather than reactive like most control decks are. Captured sunlight is great vs Boros too (though I was lucky not to get paired up with it), and theres nothing like cascading into Devout lightcaster or Goblin Ruinblaster + kicker. Overall the deck performed well despite the numerous manascrews and celestial purge showing up in my hand in matches where it was a dead draw. If I would have made changes it would be to the manabase:
-2 exotic orchard, -2 sunpetal grove, +2 swamp, +2 marsh flats
since the black density is quite heavy I need more sources of black mana. Exotic orchard can be horrible and can be great..but for the sake of consistency I'm playing swamps over it next time. My brothers also attended the even, piloting Vampires (3-2-0) and our mono-white Anti-Jund deck that went 4-1-0 making it into the top eight. Unfortunately it got paired up against Boros, and with our deck sporting all the Jund hate main board it was bound to lose. All in all it was good times. Can't wait for the Worldwake game day!
Here's the list:
Naya Ascension v2.0
Lands:
4 jungle shrine
4 savage lands
4 sunpetal grove
4 arid mesa
2 rupture spire
2 exotic orchard
3 plains
1 mountain
Spells:
4 lightning bolt
4 pyromancer ascension
3 celestial purge
4 naya charm
4 blightning
3 maelstrom pulse
4 captured sunlight
4 day of judgment
4 ajani vengeant
2 bituminous blast
Sideboard:
4 bloodbraid elf
4 goblin ruinblaster
3 devout lightcaster
2 luminarch ascension
1 maelstrom pulse
1 celestial purge
Round 1 vs. Mono Red (0-0-0)
Game 1: I lose the dice roll and he goes first. Goblin guide and Hellspark Elemental are fast out of the gates, followed by hell's thunder. Fortunately the guide lets me draw into my lands and I play a turn 4 Captured Sunlight into a celestial purge. I stabilize and play my pyromancer ascension. Captured sunlight while the ascension is active gives me +8 life, and i cascade into blightning this time. Naya charms tapping his unearth dudes down while redrawing my graveyard win me this one.
Game 2: I side out slow removal for more cascade. I get two lands, one of which is Ruinblasted. We go to game 3.
Game 3: I get four lands, but no Captured Sunlight or Ajani Vengeant meant my life went from 20 to 0 faster than I could say 'where the effing eff are my life gain cards?!'
Round 2 vs. Jund (0-1-0)
Game 1: My maindeck purges pay off. I get hit by a blightning, but his Thrinaxes were exiled and double blightning on him sent him to topdeck mode while I Naya charm a Naya charm in my graveyard at EOT to get my pyromancer online. I recur my blightning for the win.
Game 2: I side in my anti-jund package of 4 bloodbraid, 4 ruinblaster, 3 devout lightcaster. Too bad for him, he sided out a lot of his removal seeing my creatureless game 1. Double ruinblaster on Savage lands messed with his curve. I lost my hand to a pair of blightnings, but maintained board position with bloodbraid into devout lightcaster. I win.
Round 3 vs. Mono-White (1-1-0)
Game 1: The celestial purges maindeck hurt me bad, drawing two of them in the course of the game. Fortunately I was able to get pyromancer online easily with captured sunlights. I'm able to clear his board just in time, and blightning him to death.
Game 2: I side out the purges in favor of more Maelstrom Pulse, luminarch ascension and some ruinblasters for Emeria the sky ruin, just in case the game goes that long. It did, but i didn't draw the goblins.
Game 3: I play a turn two Luminarch ascension that gets up to 3 tokens. I have two naya charms in hand to tap his guys out and activate the ascension, but I have no green mana sources in play (damn Exotic orchards). 14 green sources in the deck and I have none in play by turn 6...just awful. I lose this one due to Elspeth going ultimate before I draw my day of judgement.
Round 4 vs. Mono-White (1-2-0)
Game 1: Celestial purge bites me again, but my opponent gets mana flooded. Well he was, until Ajani went ultimate on him, twice.
Game 2: Same sideboard as the last matchup. Pyromancer was online by turn 5, and I had way too much removal for him to maintain a formidable board. Ajani goes ultimate again and I win.
Round 5 vs. Bant Midrange (2-2-0)
Game 1: What were those maindeck purges for again? Anyway this game was close, due to Rafiq smacking me a good ten damage on turn 4 with the help of noble heirarch. He gets a total of 3 lands though, and Day of Judgement takes out his fighters and mana dorks. I activate my combo for the win. He reveals a hand full of Baneslayers that he couldn't cast.
Game 2: I didn't playtest this matchup so I had no idea what to bring in from the benches. I decided he would take out his removal so bloodbraids should go in as well as the ruinblasters to blow up duals and tri-lands. Maelstrom pulse go in for big bad angel removal and a singleton luminarch ascension would do me well as an alternate win-con in case my pyromancers get purged. I draw luminarch in my opening hand and play it asap. He drops a pair of rhox war monks that I kill with a pulse. I get luminarch active. He drops qasali pridemage and I thought he'd blow my enchantment up right then and there. He didn't, so I EOT make an angel..still no activation on pridemage..I make another angel...this goes on until I have 4 angels in play..wierd. I play nothing from my hand the next few turns worried about what he's got up his sleeve, relying solely on my luminarch ascension. 7 angels take him out a turn or two later. I asked him what he was planning to do with his pridemage sitting pretty and he goes..'oh yeah, forgot he could do that..' and we both laugh it off.
Final standing: 3-2-0
Not bad in my opinion, but I would have liked to make it into top 8 so my deck would be recognized as legit..then again, it's nice being under the radar going to events like that. I got my pyromancer ascension online more than a RGWU version did at the tournament. Cascade really works well, maybe even better than card draw in this deck. It allows you to be a bit more threatening and proactive rather than reactive like most control decks are. Captured sunlight is great vs Boros too (though I was lucky not to get paired up with it), and theres nothing like cascading into Devout lightcaster or Goblin Ruinblaster + kicker. Overall the deck performed well despite the numerous manascrews and celestial purge showing up in my hand in matches where it was a dead draw. If I would have made changes it would be to the manabase:
-2 exotic orchard, -2 sunpetal grove, +2 swamp, +2 marsh flats
since the black density is quite heavy I need more sources of black mana. Exotic orchard can be horrible and can be great..but for the sake of consistency I'm playing swamps over it next time. My brothers also attended the even, piloting Vampires (3-2-0) and our mono-white Anti-Jund deck that went 4-1-0 making it into the top eight. Unfortunately it got paired up against Boros, and with our deck sporting all the Jund hate main board it was bound to lose. All in all it was good times. Can't wait for the Worldwake game day!
