Step's Amonkhet League Report - Week 2 (It was all brand new!)

So, I opened my pack after week 1 and let me tell you, was I surprised and conflicted. Let’s just jump right in and explore the pack.

So, planeswalkers.

Planeswalkers tend to be really good in limited, unless they’re really strange or have obscure combo abilities. Liliana, Death’s Majesty is simply a good value threat which can slot into any creature heavy deck (read, any limited deck). I obviously wanted to play her, and after last pack, I had considered taking another look at black, so I did so again.

This is what I came up with.

This build, it seemed to me, had a lot of late game power. In making the switch to black, I was giving up my early game and good removal, but I was getting a planeswalker, and some less good removal. The deck seems weaker overall, but I decided to try it anyway, because I wanted to.

I admit that I thought about going Esper, but I’d seen the amount of trouble other decks were having with their mana bases, and I wanted to have the best chance to get a clear idea of what all the pieces were doing. I might change my mind later, but for now, I wanted to see what would happen.

Round 1 saw a return of the Garrett. I wish I could say that his improvements due to our trade made him an unstoppable force, but unfortunately in our second game, he lost to his mana base. In our first game, it was a real competition. I had gotten in some early hits, and he still wound up at 26 with a large board of creatures. Thankfully, he dropped a scaled behemoth, which I could then copy with my Vizier, giving me a way to stall until my Glyph Keeper came down. As he then proceeded to draw five lands in a row, while I found my second Vizier, who became a second Glyph Keeper, the tables quickly turned.

I do believe that was my first win in 2 for this league.

In round 2 I played a newcomer to the shop, a young player by the name of Tristan. I love seeing new faces, and especially young faces at the shop, and his father was there to keep an eye on him, but was hands off enough that he actually got to play, himself.

Unfortunately, I got to see a lot of Liliana, which I think may have made for some unfun games for him. I do like to win in good games of magic, but when, through luck as much as skill, you completely overrun your opponent, it feels bad to me.

I did discover something about Splendid Agony. Up until this point I’d have thought I’d feel bad about just putting two counters on something and not killing it, but it turns out that shrinking an Emberhorn Minotaur when you’ve got a 1/4 and a 2/4, as well as a threat in the air, feels just fine.

Round 3 my opponent was even bigger and meaner than me, so it was basically a battle of the teddybears. Everything seemed to be settling in for a long game board stall. I was at 20, he was at 23, and we were both satisfied to sit back, and then he had to go and insult me.

Okay, time out here. I want to talk about Insult to Injury. Yes, it’s a bomb. Yes, it’s annoying to go from 20 to -12, with blockers soaking an additional 20 damage, but you know what? I don’t think it’s broken. If he’d have had two creatures instead of eight, he would have attacked, everything would have traded, and I’d have had four cards in hand to his one. He spent a lot of resources building a board out so that it would work. My Glyph Keeper would have done (on its own) in four turns what he spent seven turns and six cards to do.

Game two also went long, but as I knew he was on the insult//injury plan, I made sure to trade creatures and kill things as often as I could. In the end, he made a key error and played too many resources into my Liliana ultimate, and though I probably would have won that game anyway, I was also at a very real risk of decking myself.

Game three, unfortunately, I had trouble getting cards on the table, and in situations like those, Insult//Injury really shines, as he let me see. My first loss, oh well, at least they were good games.

On to round 4 with two wins, one loss. Time to finish this! My opponent, who I don’t believe I’ve ever played against, was playing a black red deck, and though I think he was meant to be aggressive, it was very much a Johnny/combo/jank build. He was running some impressively bad cards, but somehow, against all odds, he managed to make them work.

In both games he played Trespassers Curse against me, and in both games it was responsible for killing me. I can tell you, that felt really bad, but I was proud of myself that I not only played well, but that I also maintained a friendly demeanor, even though on the inside all I wanted to do was flip the table over.

I really don’t blame my opponent. In retrospect, the match was fun. I would gladly play against that stupid curse again, and struggle and hope and board into white so I could exile it. It’s certainly memorable.

The other thing I was impressed by (if impressed is the word), was the Consuming Fervor which he put on a Soulstinger. The whole match was like a balancing act between playing out enough creatures so that I didn’t die, without putting out so many that his Curse killed me, and I had to wait to put out my good threats until his Soul Stinger killed itself, so he didn’t just wipe them out.

Final record: 2-2. Huh, look at that, same as last week. At least I’m consistent?

After playing both the W/U and the U/B decks, I’ve decided to try combining them, after all, it’s not like I’ve seen four separate decks have trouble getting their third colour or anything… What could possibly go wrong?

Join me next week, to find out what goes wrong.

Thanks for reading,

-Step.