They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that’s the case, how many words are thousands of pictures that sequenced together with audio commentary worth? What I’m actually saying is that I got a case of writer’s block for this week, so I thought I’d share some of the Magicing I’ve been doing in the last week. I ended up missing out on Monday Night Legacy at Twenty Sided, thanks to some urgent deadlines to meet at work, so the only Magicing I got to do was on MODO. Not having else new to write about, I thought that maybe now would be a good time to actually edit my videos (there’s a LOT of fat to trim when I play a Daily!) and label them. Here are some matches for your viewing pleasure, along with my commentary. If you enjoy it, please come check out the stream, as I love chatting live with everyone while I make silly plays. I play the 11pm EST Daily at least twice per week, but usually more often than that. Anyways, sit tight. We’ve got a couple 3-1s, some special guests in my roommate, Charles, and opponent, Todd Anderson, and a boatload of blue decks!
Here’s a Daily where I 3-1 with Miracles. One of the wins was a no-show, but we played some two-man queues in between.
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This guy was playing a weird Jund Nic Fit deck, where he also has a Scapeshift-Valukut plan. Jace and CounterTop were not enough to get him to scoop in game one (And why should it? He’s got lots of wacky huge converted mana costs that I can’t stop!), so Venser goes the distance. I think I throw everything including the kitchen sink at him in game two, with Clique, CounterTop, Jace, VenserRakas (can we make that a thing, like CounterTop?), and ALL the angels.
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Todd Anderson gets us in round two of the Daily, playing Esper Stoneblade (I was surprised to see him not playing Deathblade). One of the viewers, Rob Pompa, and myself disagree over my land-heavy keep in game two. I stand by that, as the deck is mana-hungry, and has eight Brainstorm-effects to later turn those into real cards. It’s when you don’t have enough lands where it can be more of a problem, but we have eight one-mana tools to dig our way out of that sort of mess. TL;DR-Miracles does not like mulligans. The real killer was where I gave him a free Time Walk in game two!
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We get a no-show in round three, so we take to the two-man queues. First we play a really fast match, if you can call it that, against RUG Delver. Homie keeps ZERO lands the first game, and he never finds one before we can resolve our one-of Jace. That was that. I’m not so sure if the second game was “real Magic,” either, as I get to go off on turn two with Force protection.
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Guess we have to time to play another one. It’s not risky trying to fit two matches in during your bye round, right? What could go wrong? We could end up having to multi-queue with Miracles, that’s what could go wrong! Fortunately, at least we weren’t playing both matches with Miracles. I played UWR Delver in the non-Daily match against Sneak and Show and he makes me eat spaghetti in game one. Despite him having multiple removal spells, I just power through with Delver after Delver, Stoneforge after Stoneforge; I guess he had a very reactive hand, but I had too many threats. AND THEN THE DAILY MATCH STARTED (around 19 minutes in)! Luckily, it turned out to be Elves, one of the most favorable matchups for Miracles. I win my game three against Show right after my game one against Elves by going turn one Delver, turn two Meddling Mage, backed by a fistful of countermagic in one match while a Jace and Counterbalance (sans Top) were enough to put the Elves down. Sometimes you don’t need the Top if you can just keep leaving a one-drop on top. VenserRakas is able to stall for the crucial Terminus in game three, and then keep the Elves player from ever getting back into the game.
Here’s a less successful Daily, where I finished 2-2 (again, with a no-show, where I played a two-man queue in between). In this Daily, I played against some very unorthodox decks, such as Faerie Stompy:
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uG Elves that uses Lab Maniac and Genesis Wave (!!!):
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Lejay’s take on UR Midrange/Control
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During the intermission (I played UR Delver), and the classic grudge match against RUG Delver.
I made some awful plays against Faerie Stompy, partly due to unfamiliarity with the archetype. Charles makes an entertaining guest appearance during the Elves match (which I win, but it’s worth checking out for the game where he combos off). The RUG Delver match is a heartbreaker, where I appear to have stabilized, but manage to lose.
I have one last UR Delver match that I played:
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Since I was having fun with the deck. I hadn’t put it together until a couple of days ago, but it actually plays more like a burn deck than a Delver deck. This one is against some weird BURG Depths deck.
Anyways, if you enjoyed my videos, like I mentioned earlier, please come check out the live show! I’ll often solicit votes for what to play on my twitter account, and also love taking requests between rounds.