Standard FNM, 3/29/13

Greetings and/or salutations!

Okay, so I was going to go to Misty Mountain to draft at FNM, but I got an email from the Level 2 Judge I'm working with, and he wanted to talk to me about getting me ready to judge at a PTQ coming up in a couple months. Okay, sure! I wasn't sure if the Judge thing was gonna happen anymore after not getting a lot of nibbles on requests for opportunities to get some judging experience, but it seems like things are falling into place.

Serious Owl is serious.

This is an interesting dilemma, because I had been mentally shifting into "competitive player" mode. I was all set to jam 2-3 Standard events a week until the Star City Games open in Milwaukee later this month, but I'm not sure anymore. The deck I wanted to play is Esper Control, but it's hard to play that and judge in the same event. So, I tossed together a R/g Aggro deck to play while on Judge Duty. Assuming I continue to be on Judge Duty during some of the next Standard events I play, I won't get as many reps in with Esper Control. But, I'm hoping that playing R/g Aggro will give me a better feel for how to better stop it.

Anyway, so I tweaked my deck some, and ended up with something like this:

3 Nephalia Drownyard
1 Swamp
1 Island
22 (other dual lands)

4 Augur of Bolas
1 Snapcaster Mage
2 Restoration Angel
1 Obzedat, Ghost Council

4 Azorius Charm
2 Devour Flesh
2 Dimir Charm
1 Ultimate Price
1 Syncopate
3 Think Twice
1 Forbidden Alchemy
2 Detention Sphere
2 Dissipate
4 Supreme Verdict
1 Terminus
2 Sphinx's Revelation

Sideboard:
1 Appetite for Brains
1 Duress
3 Negate
1 Dispel
1 Jace, Memory Adept
2 Rest in Peace
2 Purify the Grave
1 Planar Cleansing
1 Psychic Spiral
1 Murder
1 Witchbane Orb

And here's how it played out:

Round 1: vs. ... R/G Aggro. My plan worked very well. He didn't get super aggressive draws, and I killed a bunch of his creatures. I don't remember more about how the match played out, though. 1-0.

Round 2: vs. Mono-Red. Lost in 3 games .. in 20 minutes. WHAT. Okay, so game one, I killed his first 3 doods, flashed in Resto to block Hellrider, followed up with Obzedat, and won 2-3 turns later. Second and third games, he played a bunch of doodz and I died. 1-1.

Counterspell wars! Mill race! I love control mirror matches. :)

Round 3: vs. Esper Control. Mirror match, yay! So once again I got a little too excited to jam my Obzedat, and he got Devour'd. I ended up winning the game because I hit two Drownyards and he didn't, once I stopped his Augur + Resto beatdown. He ended up taking the match, but I don't remember much about how it went down. I know Jace was involved on both sides of the table (sadly, mine got Planar Cleanse'd), and that the last game we both played really rushed and made a lot of mistakes, and I think Psychic Spiral was involved. 1-2.

I full admit, my deck is kind of a jerk, and this card fits right in.

Round 4: vs. R/G Woofs. Cool, more werewolves. Well, this time I was a little better prepared. And there were no Full Moon's Rise shenanigans. My opponent seemed to be new to the tournament scene, and I kept apologizing for my deck: "Sorry, my deck's kind of a jerk." He was very understanding, though, and seemed not to mind having all of his doodz killed and/or countered while I plinked his library to death 3 cards at a time. 2-2.

Well, I missed the cutoff for prizes by tiebreakers, and I made sure to light-heartedly chastise my previous opponents for not winning out. So, I didn't do that great, but I had a lot of fun. My Esper mirror opponent is a guy I've played in the past at Misty, but haven't played against in a while. He seems like he's always in a good mood, and seems to enjoy talking strategy. So that was fun.

And, it looks like I'm gonna get some serious Judge experience for the next few weeks at Standard and/or Modern at Mox Mania. So I'm looking forward to that. The L2 I'm working with said that he hopes to get me tested either before or at the PTQ coming up. Hopefully within the next month or two then, I'll be certified. Looking forward to it. :)

So, the deck .. I like it. I've started calling it my "I HATE CREATURES" deck. Although it's not strictly true, because I do run a handful of doodz that do useful things (such as facilitating the killing of other creatures). Some thoughts:

* I like Dimir Charm quite a bit. It's worse than Azorius Charm, but I like that it straight-up kills something rather than just delaying. It's also great as a finisher once I get my mill going: "EOT mill you, Charm you. Oh, you drew a land? So sorry. :3"
* 2 Restoration Angels feels about right. I certainly wouldn't mind having more, but it's not quite as strictly necessary with more early-game removal.
* I might cut down to 3 Augurs. Most of the time he cycles and digs for something cool. Which is fine, but I don't really want multiples stuck in my hand when I'm waiting to wipe the board.
* Syncopate isn't quite as bad as I thought it was. It seems like it's much better on the play than on the draw (more mana available to Sink). And it seems pretty good late game regardless.
* 27 lands feels like the perfect number. Several games, I never missed a single land drop. Which, of course, is important on turn 12, when I wanna counter something, flash back Think Twice, and mill EOT. The singleton basic lands are for opposing Ghost Quarters. But I don't really see a lot of Quarters, so I might just swap in my own Quarter instead of the Swamp.
* Devour Flesh and Ultimate Price still suck. Can we *please* get Doom Blade back? :(
* I toyed with the idea of putting some planeswalkers in there, but ... I just don't like it. Too expensive, and too fragile. I don't run Lingering Souls, so Liliana and Sorin would each lose effectiveness. I do like using Jace MA as both a draw engine and win condition, though. I think I'll put him in maindeck instead of the 4th Augur. Or maybe I'll try Jace AOT for earlier card-digging. Hmmm .. yeah, actually I kinda like that idea.

Welp .. I think that's about it for now. Thanks for reading!