Overdriven! 47

A Walk On The Wild Side

On a beautiful Saturday afternoon early in October, while sitting on the back porch contemplating the garden, watching golden leaves rain down off the trees, and daydreaming, I suddenly had one of those epiphany things. Or maybe it was a stroke. The basic premise was: run a tourney, but the winner gets to “double down” by “spellslinging” with a WotC employee. I hobbled back to my cave, and quickly fired off missives to Mssrs. Gibbons and Kiritz to see what they thought. Then I promptly forgot about it, as is my wont, and wandered back outside to enjoy the sunshine.

Flash forward to the evening of Wednesday the 17th. I’m sitting down here in cave, chillaxing and getting ready to get my game on. I heard the *clank!* sound telling me I had mail. What’s this? Who’s this? Then I noticed the domain. Then I read it.

After changing my shorts, I fired back, “of course I can do this in under a week!” After all, this Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug has Superhaste!

I quickly used my powers of persuasion to wrangle up some prizes. Actually, I didn’t have to wrangle too hard. Alphabot has always been keen on giving back to the community, and I know I can count on him for support in community-oriented events like this. My clan is known for their spirit, as well. A little over 24 hours later, the basic details had been hammered out, the foundations laid, and Pwn The Poobah was announced! Woo hoo!

While not an actual ad hoc invitation to the CCC, in my mind, it’s close enough for government work. This is going to inflate my already swollen ego, so you’ll have to pardon me if I strut about like a peacock for the next few weeks. I view it as an acknowledgment of, and testament to, my constant pimping and proselytizing, of Modern, and PREs, to the community at large.

Of course, others might call it selling out to the man. Bite me.

The PRE

So it was been a busy day for me. Besides my regular work-at-home job, I’d been fielding questions, updating the spreadsheet, dealing with the dog, hammering out the details of a new contract, getting a few games in, and trying to get the Poobah information organized all day. Just a few more hours to go! Woo hoo! It was getting hard for me to concentrate on my work. I slugged it out for another hour, then got dinner started. After dinner, spammage commenced!

The next hour was a furious blur of fielding questions and getting players ready. I was pleased at the turnout; we had 41 registered, but two of the players weren’t online at start time, and didn’t have decks submitted, so we started with 39.

And the carnage began. Several fell to the wayside during the tumult, but we finally had our Top 8 after six rounds of mayhem. A few people had smooth sailing in the last round: We had three Intentional Draws. Yes, I allow IDs in my events, even though the client doesn’t support it. (If you want to ID, DON’T make a table, and DO let me know!) There was some grumbling about the IDs, but oh well. IDs are a common practice in most tourneys.

Throughout the tournament, CerealKillaz was staging trivia contests, with all kinds of cool card giveaways. About a dozen and a half cards were given away, including some chase RTR cards. Some in foil! The crowd was rowdy all evening, but not unruly, so all went smoothly in that regard, and I didn’t have to read the riot act.

Anyway, after all the blood was hosed away, the four members of Team Blippy rose triumphantly from the ashes: slug360, pk23, leviatanCL, and xMiMx. (Alternates: Ranth, Malum) The alternates are there in case one of the T4 players can’t make it for some reason. The T4 did play on to determine their “seeding” for the Community Cup Challenge portion of this event.

The Community Cup Challenge

Being able to watch the Cube matches in the Anything Goes/Getting Serious room was a blast! I saw some cool plays, some meh plays, and a few wtf? plays. I must say, the Conley Woods/Billy Moreno match in Round 1 had quite the exciting finish! Moreno was beating down on Conley, but was very short on time. Moreno had Conley down to 4 life. Conley cast a Batterskull, and Moreno cast a Pact of Negation in response, then ran out of time on his upkeep while paying for the Pact. I heard the shouting and jubilation all the way out here!

Then the power went out. Oh, the joys of living in Middle-of-Nowhere, Saskatchewan in winter. (Yes, we had our week of autumn and flew straight into winter last week. We usually get at least a dozen or so power outages in the winter. A lot of the electric infrastructure here is vintage 60s equipment, and a heavy wet snow will take down wires, or a high wind will pull down a pole or blow a tree into the wires, or blah blah blah. We also have this irate drunken farmer who’s angry at SaskTel for taking some of his land for a right-of-way easement, and purposefully runs his tractor into the SaskTel junction box at least once a year. When this happens, the town shuts down and takes a holiday. Anyway, back to the CCC…)

Not sure which round it was, but I came back as Conley was getting mana-screwed against Chris K. Blarg! Two seconds after joining, Chris K won. My condolences, Conley!

So I jumped into the Jackie Lee game, and the first thing I see is:

7:41 PM Face down creature #2 is dealing 0 damage; expected 2 damage!
7:41 PM Illegal attacker damage assignment.

This was after she unflipped Akroma, Angel of Fury during the declare blockers phase. Jason then pinged away the Akroma after being taken to 2 life. The next turn, Jackie killed him, taking the match with Slagstorm. You go, girl!

That was the last match for the Cube, apparently. At the end of the day, WotC led the Community 63-55. Blarg. But never fear, we shall prevail! I’m going to go ahead and do a “repair” on my client, to purge my alt art, so I can record some of tomorrow’s matches. I have to do this (the repair) because a lot of my art files are not suitable for general viewing. Anyway, these videos will be silent, unless I find some some appropriate music that corresponds to the time.

Blarg! I’m watching the Thursday coverage, and the Community Team is getting it handed to them on a platter! To quote my favorite philosopher: Oh me garshk! (That’s supposed to be Popeye, BTW.) Hopefully, Multiball will turn the tables.

Pwn The Poobah

The Matches:
slug360 vs Monty Ashley
pk23 vs Andrew Strauss
leviatanCL vs Willard Pierce
xMiMx vs Matt Smith

Alternates: Ranth, Malum

Blarg! After Sean told me we’d be starting at 5PM Pacific, the Poobahs jumped us at 4PM! I had to scramble to get the team together. I couldn’t get ahold of pk23, so had to tag our first alternate (Ranth) to play in his place. This was done, and by quarter-after, all games were underway.

XMiMx, running Infect, quickly took down Matt Smith, who was running Electrostorm, 2-0. He did this so quickly, I hadn’t even finished getting the alternate seated!

I didn’t get to catch any of Ranth’s (GBW Zombievine) match against Andrew Straus (Jund) – I was recording – but the report was that Andrew won it 2-0. This was the Poobah’s only win.

Slug360, running Doran, also had a relatively easy walk over Monty Ashley, who was running GB Superfriends, 2-0. Here is the vid for Game Two of that match:

LeviatanCL, who was on UW Control, had a long, drawn-out battle with Willard Pierce, who was running Black Jund. Levi took Game 1, Willard took Game 2. You can watch Game 3 here:

(Due to music content, this above is blocked in Germany.)

Decklists for Team Blippy (and all Pwn The Poobah PRE players) can be found here. And here are the decklists from the Poobahs:

Modern: Huge Tracts of Unexplored Land

It has been said of Modern: “The most important thing about Modern is diversity. It’s by and far the most open format right now, there are huge tracts of land no one has explored. It’s the new frontier of competitive Magic.“, and “The nice thing about Modern is that the format is very open. There’s a lot of room to explore and find decks that can work.” And just to hammer home that point, here are maps from some recent explorations:

Now this is what I’m talkin’ ’bout! Woo hoo! I was expecting to see something like this at PT Seattle, but I see it first on MTGO! A nasty ol’ Vengevine build packed chock full of cheap, recursive beaters and utility beaters that disrupt, tax, and offer discard outlets to toss Vengevines into the graveyard. At first glance, Diregraf Ghoul seems an odd choice, but think about it. Gravecrawler needs Zombies so it can crawl out of the grave. And Diregraf Ghoul only costs B.

Hats off to Smi77y for his performance at the CCC! Woo hoo! You go, boi!

While Jund itself is not new, this particular version is. This is the version of Jund run by David Ochoa, with Geralfs Messenger. At BBB, Messenger requires a heavy dose of black in the manabase. Hence the name Black Jund. I wonder how Death Cloud would work in this build…

This would appear to be the new “go-to” version of Jund, and I expect it to start showing in the meta in large numbers. I can’t begin to describe how awesome Deathrite Shaman is in this deck. Or any deck running BG for that matter. Mana dork, garveyard hate, lifegain, and pinger all rolled into one easy-to-cast package. Messenger does yeoman duty in this deck, as well.

For part 2 of this article, and to leave comments, follow this link: http://www.mtgoacademy.com/overdriven-47-part-2/