Breaking Dawn - Friday Night PTQ
06 Apr 2010 | Jack Ding
‘Apparently Easter is for Magic’ – Kuan Tian
For this week I thought I would take a break from Extended as, to be honest I am somewhat tired of the format. There is a limit to how much Bad Legacy one can play before it gets old. So I thought I would report on a T2 event this week instead. It was a miracle that I was even at this week’s FNM as I normally do not play FNM. The last minute cancellation of a family engagement left me free and when a friend of mine asked if I wanted to play FNM I thought, why not? Apparently I was not the only one who had that idea and the average DCI rating at FNM was higher than at the PTQ which prompted jokes about how it was the Friday Night PTQ. Here is the list I brought:
Lands: (27)
2 [M10] Dragonskull Summit
4 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
3 [ZEN] Forest (2)
3 [ZEN] Swamp (3)
3 [ZEN] Mountain (2)
4 [ALA] Savage Lands
4 [WWK] Raging Ravine
2 [WWK] Lavaclaw Reaches
2 [M10] Rootbound Crag
Creatures: (19)
4 [ALA] Sprouting Thrinax
4 [ARB] Bloodbraid Elf
3 [LRW] Garruk Wildspeaker
2 [ALA] Broodmate Dragon
4 [ARB] Putrid Leech
2 [10E] Siege-Gang Commander
Spells: (14)
4 [M10] Lightning Bolt
4 [ALA] Blightning
3 [ARB] Maelstrom Pulse
3 [WWK] Explore
Sideboard: (15)
1 [ARB] Maelstrom Pulse
2 [M10] Mind Rot
4 [ZEN] Goblin Ruinblaster
4 [M10] Great Sable Stag
2 [FNM] Terminate
2 [WWK] Chain Reaction
You have all probably looked at an infinite number of Jund lists so I will only comment on some of the more unusual card choices.
27 Lands + 3 Explore – I have been wanting to run Rampant Growth in Jund without it being a horrible topdeck in the lategame for a long time. The Worldwake manlands and Explore gave me the perfect excuse. Explore is huge in the mirror match and against any deck trying to attack your manabase without being a dead draw/cascade in the late game.
2 Chain Reaction in the sideboard – I have heard rumours that Zendikar limited decks have been making their way onto the Constructed scene. By that I mean that apparently Allies.dec actually exists and I wanted a slightly higher powered sweeper than Jund Charm just in case. Losing to that deck would be embarrassing right? I found out after the event that Juzza had also come to the same conclusion and can thus safely say that it was probably the right choice.
Round 1 v Vampires
My opponent led off with turn 1 Vampire Lacerator, turn 2 double Vampire Lacerator. Even my Sprouting Thrinax, which is usually your best card in this matchup was not enough to stop that start as his Gatekeeper into double hasted Bloodghast overran my attempt at a Broodmate Dragon. My mulligan to 5 did not help either.
Sideboard: +4 Great Sable Stag +2 Chain Reaction -3 Explore -2 Broodmate Dragon -1 Maelstrom Pulse
Game 2 I had the option of going turn 4 Garruk or Great Sable Stag. I played the Stag as this forced him to have Gatekeeper as his only out. He did not have it and my Garruk started churning out beast tokens until a 2nd Stag joined in and finished the game in quick order.
Game 3 my opponent kept a 1 land hand on the play and was duly punished. The only spell he played all game was a Gruul Draz Vampire.
Round 2 v Blightning Aggro
Blightning Aggro is usually a bad matchup for Jund. However if your opponent plays Bloodchief Ascension and continually forgets to put counters on it, it becomes less of a problem. Both games were basically identical and he would cast some early drops which I would trade with and the card advantage machine that is Jund would kick in and finish the game off.
Sideboard: -2 Broodmate Dragon -2 Maelstrom Pulse +4 Great Sable Stag
Round 3 v Jund Jacky ‘The Dragon’ Zhang
The Jund mirror is notorious of its randomness and YuGiOh like qualities. Despite casting Broodmate Dragon twice, the repeated Abyss-like activations of Raging Ravine eventually ran him out of resources and Sprouting Thrinax tokens cleaned up.
Sideboard: +4 Goblin Ruinblaster +1 Mind Rot -3 Maelstrom Pulse -4 Putrid Leech +2 Great Sable Stag
Game 2 I had the nut draw with Explore Goblin Ruinblaster Broodmate Dragon Forest Mountain Swamp Raging Ravine. For some reason, I was thinking of playing around my opponents Goblin Ruinblaster and did not play the Raging Ravine turn 1 or turn 2 off the Explore. Obviously this meant I could not cast my Ruinblaster on turn 4 and could only play Raging Ravine and pass. My opponent punished me with his own Ruinblaster and I was never in the game. OK maybe I was slightly off, the Jund mirror isn’t totally random. If you play like a retard you will probably still end up losing the game as I just demonstrated so well.
Game 3 my opponent had turn 2 Rampant Growth into turn 3 Goblin Ruinblaster while I could only sit and watch. Fortunately he missed a land drop and could not follow it up with anything so I managed to resolve my own Ruinblaster which set him back another land. A Blightning cleared out my hand except for the Garruk I was saving, hoping that he did not have another Blightning. Luckily he did not and it started to churn out beast tokens. Another Ruinblaster from my opponent was not enough to stop the horde of 3/3s building up and he died before finding his 5th land to cast his Siege Gang Commander.
Round 4 v Allies Andrew Kerrigan
Game 1 I kept a hand of Lightning Bolt Sprouting Thrinax Broodmate Dragon and 4 lands. I then proceeded to not draw any non-land spells for the next three turns and promptly died to a horde of terrible limited cards.
Sideboard: +2 Chain Reaction +2 Terminate +1 Maelstrom Pulse -2 Broodmate Dragon -3 Explore
Game 2 was about as one sided as the first game. Maelstrom Pulse hit a pair of Akoum Battlesingers while Lightning Bolt hit a Freeblade and my opponent died with a pair of Bloodbraid Elves in hand and no green mana.
Game 3 started with my taking a some early damage from a Talus Paladin while a Blightning hit a Kabira Evangel and a land. A Chain Reaction cleared the board of another Kabira Evangel and left behind three Sprouting Thrinax tokens and a very large Talus Paladin. With no cards in hand, Andrew (hereafter Fro) rips his 3rd Kabira Evangel like a pro and attacks me down to 1 life. I Lightning Bolt the Evangel and cast a Garruk to stabilize the board. Eventually I quadruple block his huge Paladin and remove the last real threat. Unfortunately I seem to be unable to draw anything other than land so I make beast tokens and continue to attack with Raging Ravine which goes to work on his 47 life total. All he can do is cast some Oran Rief Survivalists which look more at home in my draft deck than a Constructed match. At this point my Raging Ravine had 7 counters on it and he was going to be very dead in two turns. So the only out he has is to draw his 4th Kabira Evangel. Needless to say Fro is pretty good at this game. Must be nice to mise someone twice in the same game. I guess even draft decks can beat you if you don’t have enough respect.
Round 5 v UW Control Martin Kiss
Game 1 was textbook. I cast Putrid Leech and Thrinax which got sweeped. I followed up with Bloodbraid Elf and another Thrinax and Maelstrom Pulsed a pair of Everflowing Chalice. Unfortunately he was on the Baneslayer Angel plan rather than the Martial Coup for a million plan and a pair of them ended the game really quickly.
Sideboard: +2 Mind Rot +4 Goblin Ruinblaster +1 Maelstrom Pulse -2 Broodmate Dragon -3 Explore -2 Lightning Bolt
Game 2 was similar to the first game except there was no doubt as to which plan he was on. I had a Putrid Leech and Thrinax while he tapped out for a 2nd Everflowing Chalice for 4. Martial Coup much? At this point I had 2 lands in hand and needed Maelstrom Pulse to stay in the game. So I flip the top card and show Martin the Maelstrom Pulse at which point he went on a serious bout of nerdrage. After about 30 seconds he calms down, looks at his top card and scoops.
Game 3 started out with my opponent churning out some serious mana acceleration. Borderpost, Knight of the While Orchid, Chalice for 1, hardcast another Borderpost. All I had done was Ruinblaster one of his lands in an attempt to slow him down as well as a Bloodbraid Elf into Blightning which got Flashfreezed. At this point my opponent decided to get greedy and cast Chalice for 4 and passed the turn with 1 card in hand. I cast Garruk, untapped two lands and aimed a Blightning at his face which hit the Martial Coup. Greedisnotgood. Fortunately for him his top card yielded a Baneslayer Angel which I did not have an answer for. So I could only cast Bloodbraid Elf and roll the die so to speak. Martin said he did not want to look and covered his eyes. That didn’t seem to help as Maelstrom Pulse killed his Angel and Garruk’s ultimate dropped him from 17 to 2. He drew, tapped about a billion mana and showed me the Island.
The FNM promo I received was Bloodbraid Elf. WotC has a nice sense of humour sometimes but I’m not complaining. FNM would be so much more awesome if it was Friday Night PTQ every week but alas it seems like that only happens on Easter.
For discussion.