Report GP Ingolstadt 9 - Devotion

We decided to take it upon ourselves to travel to Ingolstadt once again to battle our way through in the nearest Peasant tournament there is! We already did this once at the very beginning of our Peasant careers back in 2011 and I ended up in the rather ungrateful 9th place with a rather suboptimal version of a mono black control deck.

This time I wanted to give myself the best chance to end up in the top 8 while also playing a deck that I enjoy. I went forth and back between Affinity Control, Faeries and MBD and finally signed up for the dark side of the force only a couple of days before the tournament. I like that the deck has solutions for close to anything the opponent could throw at you and that it can make the transition from defense to offense very quickly. The meta in Ingolstadt has always been stacked with aggro and burn decks and I have a good matchup against every one of them. I chose the mono black version over the black/blue one with the Mnemonic Wall + Ghostly Flicker combo partly because of that too. Ghostly Devotion plays a lot more tapped lands and less Gray Merchants, which makes it weaker against aggro and stronger against Midrange and Control.

Here is the list I went for:

Round 1: UW Fliers by Valleyey

G1: My opponent plays a T2 Soulcatcher’s Aerie and I figure it should be pretty good against my deck. I progress my board without killing any of his Stormscape Familiars or Squadron Hawks and deal with his hand via a Hymn. As soon as all of the Hawks are on the battlefield I clear the board with an Engineered Plague, putting a lot of counters of the Aerie. I start to hit him with a lone Chittering Rats and he topdecks two gigantic Aven Riftwatchers, which subordinate to a Chainer’s Edict. I am flooded but manage to topdeck Skeletal Scrying, which finds me two Gray Merchants.

G2: He plays an Aerie T2 again, I follow with a Hymn which gets two Welkin Hawks. He manages to come up with Familiar into Squadron Hawk and I plan to go with the same plan as in G1, saving Plague in my hand. But he plays Cloudfin Raptor and Riftwatcher and I am stuck on 4 lands. I even draw into Crypt Rats, which could kill the Raptor as well, but not with only 4 lands. The turn before the Riftwatcher would die I am forced to play Plague and wipe the rest of his board, planning to shut his Raptor offence the turn after with Victim of Night. Riftwatcher dies in his upkeep, Aerie has 6 counters and Cloudfin Raptor 6 power. He hits me down to 8 and plays the topdecked Battle Screech.

G3: He for once doesn’t have the T2 Aerie but I have the T3 Plague. He continues to not find any Aeries or Favorable Winds and I can develop my board. At some point, Gary. He didn’t bring in his Disenchants and a second Oblivion Ring, which he correctly identifies as a mistake after G3…

2-1

Round 2: Mono Green Ramp by RoyBlack

G1: I keep a weird hand with 3 Witches and hope they are good. He starts with Forest + Wild Growth and I am intrigued! The following turns he plays out a couple of midrange creatures in the form of Llanowar Sentinel and Nylea’s Disciple and starts hitting me for some amount of damage. But he doesn’t find any of his payoff cards and I have enough time to play a Chittering Rats and follow that up with two Gray Merchants to drain him for 10 and 12.

G2: I keep a two land hand and he plays elf into Utopia Sprawl (red!) and Sylvan Library. I strip his last two cards with a Hymn which turn out to be another land and another elf. He then starts to Library into two Thermokarsts, which set me back significantly. I manage to draw some lands though, so I kind of manage to hang in there. Then he comes up with Aurochs Herd and things get serious. I kill two with Edict and Oubliette and take a third with another Hymn, the fourth one I doubleblock I think. He finds a Nylea’s Disciple and gains some life to draw more cards with Library, which finds him two more Disciples and I mentally prepare myself for a third game. But he converts only few life points into more cards which surprises me. I still get beat down drastically by Disciples and two Llanowar Sentinels. I play a Gray Merchant for 3 and fall down to one from his next attack. I have to topdeck another Gray Merchant to survive and I do so! Suddenly the board is neutral and I draw into a Demonic Tutor which finds me yet another Merchant which puts the game away. I got very lucky but if he had drawn more cards with Library and even found 1 more Elf, he would have won despite my topdeck. Anyway, this was a super intense and sweet game!

2-0

I forgot to ask him if the Utopia Sprawl for red was of any purpose (maybe a Sideboard card) or just a Troll… 2-0 in matches

Round 3: GR Aggro by Mathias Tolle from Oer-Erkenschwick

G1: He sits on only Mountains for a lot of turns but gets out Wild Nacatl anyways because of Manamorphose and Burning-Tree Emissary. Then we both make a hilarious mistake and think that Nacatl would die from my Engineered Plague, since he had only 1 kind of land out. Usually that means that Nacatl is a 1/1 but in this case he had only mountains in play and Nacatl was in fact a 2/2. We only noticed a couple of turns later when he drew the second Nacatl and the judge couldn’t fix the situation so the first one stayed in the graveyard. Fortunately it didn’t change the outcome of the game since he had no pressure, only dealt 3 damage the whole game and Gray Merchant cleared things up soon.

G2: I keep a 2-lander because one of the lands is a Desert and I have 2 Fume Spitters, an Edict and a Spinning Darkness as well. He starts off with Emissary into Emissary into Young Wolf. I manage to stall with chump-blocks and damage from Desert but can’t find any more lands. He continues to play creatures and burnspells and my life total gets lower and lower. I draw my first land at turn 6 or so and die from his next attack.

G3: I keep a 2-lander again because the rest of hand is good with removal and Witches, also I plan on playing Tutor for land if I shouldn’t draw one T1. I don’t and go for the swamp with the Tutor to be able to play out my good hand. On T3 I draw another land of course and the next FOUR turns too. He goes Emissary into Emissary into some other random creatures again in the meantime and I just don’t draw enough nonland cards to stabilize.

1-2

After dying I flip the top card of my library and it’s Gray Merchant obviously which would have probably won the game because he had only 1 creature in the end, despite my horrible draw. I got incredibly unlucky there to lose against a two-color aggro deck because I think my win percentage is at about 90%. Luck is part of the game… or in this case, bad luck. 2-1 in matches.

Round 4: GU Madness

G1: Here I don’t remember much, I stop his early threats with removal and he doesn’t have much to follow up with. At some point, the Merchant arrives.

G2: He manages to get aggressive with Wild Mongrel and Arrogant Wurm, has Basking Rootwallas to throw in front of my Edicts and I don’t have enough kill spells to keep up with his aggression. His tempo plan works nicely there, well played too.

G3: I keep a very defensive hand with 1 Swamp, 2 Deserts and an Engineered Plague. He starts with a Careful Study and discards a Forest and a Rootwalla. Turn 2 he plays a second island and I don’t play Plague T3 because of a potential Daze. Over the course of the next turns he plays two Aquamoebas and starts to attack for 2 damage a turn, Rootwalla has to stay home because he doesn’t have any green sources in play to let him run across the Desert. I figure the only reason for him to discard the forest the first turn was a double Daze, so I play around that the whole game because I can afford to. I manage to stick Plague at some point to cancel his Aquamoebas while I am still at 11 life. He draws green mana eventually and casts Mongrel and Arrogant Wurm but I can answer them with Edict and Oubliette. I draw into my Bojuka Bogs and sided Gravehate so his Circular Logics do very little the whole game. With only a few minutes left on the clock I manage to find a Gray Merchant to drain him for a bunch and in the first extra turn I finish him off with Crypt Rats.

2-1

Very tight games which were well played on both sides. Madness is a tough matchup, if his tempo play works out I have a very hard time. 3-1 in matches.

Round 5: GU Infect by Vlalutscher

G1: He wins the roll and I keep a hand with a Fume Spitter, 1 Edict, 1 Swamp and a Mortuary Mire (rest I can’t remember and is pretty unimportant). We both knew what we are playing against. He starts with a Glistener Elf and has a Mental Misstep for my Fume Spitter. Turn 2 he attacks for 1, plays a Forest and Crop Rotation for an Island to play Blighted Agent. I fail to draw a Swamp and put my Fume Spitter on top with Mire. He attacks for two and plays another Glistener Elf. On my Turn I kill one of his creatures but he has Become Immense and wins.

G2: Unfortunately this is the game where my concentration takes a break after a short night, a couple of hours in the car and many intense games of Magic. I keep a hand with two Fume Spitters, Edict, Swamp and a Mire as lands and some other stuff and he keeps (as I know from after the match) Forest, Pendelhaven, Invigorate, Vines of Vastwood, Become Immsense and 2 Gitaxian Probes. I play Fume Spitter on my turn and he double Probes and with his draw for the turn draws 2 Lotus Petals and Blighted Agent. He plays out Forest, double Petal and Agent and passes the turn. I attack with Fume Spitter and then instead of playing the second Fume Spitter first, I sacrifice the one in play. He plays Vines to protect it and when I try to kill his dude with my follow up Spitter in his upkeep, he plays Invigorate and Become Immense and has exactly 10 power. I am close to hitting myself in the face.

He had unbelievably good hands in both games but I could still have won the second one with the correct play (or a topdecked Swamp). In the end I am 3-2 in matches with decent tiebreakers so I just end up in 8th place. The misplay left a bitter aftertaste but who knows if I would have even won this and the third game. My result was still good and I am happy to have made it into the top 8! I very much enjoyed the whole afternoon and a lot of close and exciting games. All the players I played against were very friendly and it was fun to finally meet some of people I regularly play and chat with on cockatrice! I certainly wish we had a Viennese community and could play paper tournaments more often.

As far as my deck is concerned, I am very happy with my choice. I had good matchups across most of the field and certainly against all the decks I faced. The meta in Ingolstadt was again not at all defined by the top tier decks which is probably typical for a non-competitive paper tournament. It’s a pity that the Shadows over Innistrad prerelease took place on the same weekend, otherwise more people would have shown up I’m sure. That said, 26 players is not that bad! My thanks go to RoyBlack for organizing the tournament and to all the players for a fun afternoon and a focused yet slack atmosphere!