Originally posted on livejournal, and shouldn't differ much aside from comment potential.
So, I attended an Elder Dragon Highlander tournament yesterday. It's a newer format as well as one that doesn't appeal to many tournament players, so all in all the turnout was a grand total of ten players, including the store owner and his wife (it was an unsanctioned event).
To make things easy (and fun), the ten players were separated into two groups, who would then hash it out until two remained from each group, who would then play a four-for-all to determine the winner. So, I'm going to put up a picture of my decklist, talk about a few cards and their function in the deck, then do a brief overview of the people I played against and how the rounds went. Forgive me, for I have little practice actually talking about my decks and tournament play. Also, I commend you if you've read this far and am not a tournament player, but I assure you that everything after this is all Greek.
Apologies for the big picture, but it is a singleton deck, after all. Highlighted is my general, Captain Sisay. Hopefully the theme of this deck is all-too-apparent; Legends. So, most of these are stand-alone in use and hopefully easy to obtain with the Captain's help, but I'll list a few notables:
Captain Sisay - Fairly obvious. She's capable of tutoring nearly half of the deck, one tap at a time. Definitely makes up for her lack of combat capability.
Æther Vial - Handy when I can search my deck for legends of particular casting costs.
Candles of Leng - In this format, it's Jayemdae Tome at half the casting cost.
Crop Rotation - It's nice being able to put any land into play, especially when one's chances of drawing a particular one aren't great. Makes me wish I had a better land to use this with.
Flickerform - Very awesome when combined with either Magus of the Disk or the fetchable Mangara of Corondor.
Glissa Sunseeker - Recurring artifact destruction with a nice body.
Hall of the Bandit King - In case Sisay needs to use her ability the turn she's put into play.
Helm, Shield, and Sword of Kaldra - These are fetchable. 90% of the time in one-on-one play, this is my win condition.
Mikokoro, Center of the Sea - In a multiplayer game, this is good for diplomacy.
Oblation - Hi there, annoying enemy general.
Reki, the History of Kamigawa - Just had to note his synergy.
Yomiji, Who Bars the Way - Handy in regards to replaying a general. Just have to be wary that it helps my opponents as well.
My general strategy is, as noted above, to fetch the Kaldra pieces before administering a smackdown. Given that fetching pieces would have revealed such an attempt in a multiplayer game, I choose not to follow this strategy in order to not scream "KILL ME NAOW!" in an Austrian voice. That, and I don't have the muscles to go with such a vocal impression. Moving on.
Alright, onto round one.
I was up against four other players, running Niv Mizzet, the Firemind, Reaper King, and Ambassador Laquatus, respectively. I can't remember who the last player ran, but it was monoblack. I opened up with Gemstone Caverns in my hand, probably in the only time I'll ever see it at start. An omen, maybe. Anyways, I decided at the start that I wouldn't seek my usual victory method, especially if there were four people that could chomp at my life. Nivvy-boy didn't have that good of an opening, while everyone else seemed okay. I dropped my general first, but compared to the others, that was expected. The early game involved most of us watching Reaper King's player raise his threat level by creating a massive amount of token critters (mostly scarecrows x.x ) fairly fast thanks to a Seedborn Muse. Laquatus and I played defense, especially after Nivvy-boy got Tezzeret out. Mid-to-late game boiled down to Reaper King and Nivvy duking it out. Monoblack, who seemed to favor much mass removal, was first out of the game, not that anyone noticed (my being unable to remember his general, for example) too much. Nivvy-boy, in spite of his excessive cantrips, long turns, and interruptions, was next out; milled to death via Reaper King player's Alter of Dementia and all of his army. Shortly after that, the round time limit was hit, so we were given notice that after the next five turns, sudden death would be in effect. I dropped Defense of the Heart, Reaper King started slowly rebuilding his forces sans Muse, and Laquatus started to be annoying with his Merfolk Wizards. Laquatus dropped Back to Basics, nearly shutting down my other opponent's and my deck. My Defense of the Heart popped, allowing me to play Atalya, Samite Master and Gerrard Capashen from my deck. Due to some convenient timing and the nature of the sudden death rules (increase in life total counts as victory), my victory was set as soon as the five-turns ran into sudden death. After the other two players realized this, I watched them try and fail to do something about it, winning the round with 52 life. The game continued without me, as the other two had to determine which on of them was to go onto to the second round.
Onto round two.
Here I was a bit more nervous, mostly from having to go up against the apparent betters of the other group as well as against that annoying Reaper King deck who had experience facing me in the prior game. My opponents' generals in this round were Reaper King, Grand Arbiter Augustin IV, and Niv Mizzet again (It didn't matter here, but I feel I should note a houserule for the tournament, "Superlegendary," which basically let's players use the same generals without the legendary rule killing them. If a nongeneral of the same name is played while the general is out, the nongeneral is the only one to die from the legend rule.). The early game was nuts. Arbiter's player dropped a Sol Ring on turn one and I dropped an Æther Vial. As fun as the vial was, it was nothing compared to his turn two Elspeth. Just nuts. What was even more scary was how none of us managed to deal with her until after she used her best ability, making all of that player's artifacts, enchantments, lands, and critters indestructible for the rest of the game. The new Nivvy-boy and Reaper King didn't do much during this time aside from taking a few hits, while I saw how broke the vial was with my Captain. Gerrard helped Rune-tail pop, and it became apparent that without a world changing effect, I stood the best chance of taking down the "indestructible evil." Even then, it would have been me picking at him with flying Gabriel and Yosei until he'd have managed to do something about it eventually. But to my surprise, Neo-Nivvyboy eventually managed to pull something out of his hat; the infamous Niv-Mizzet + Ophidian Eye combo. Even a fully-used Elspeth can't help direct damage, and we immediately saw Arbiter's player take lethal damage. Reaper King's player and I watched to see who was next, seeing as neo-Nivvyboy had enough cards to take down one of us before needing to drop a predictable Reminisce. He chose to take down Reaper King's player. His reasoning: I had (1) enough life (76 at the time) thanks to Gerrard to barely survive such an attempt, (2) had Darien out, meaning he would have had to take a huge smackdown before a chance at restocking his library, and (3), I also had Michiko Konda out, limiting the amount of damage he could have dealt to me to however many of the ten or so permanents he was willing to sacrifice. To his dismay, on my turn following the death of the two other players, I had enough creatures out to smack him to death in one attack anyway (32 damage, the exact amount needed to kill him after accounting for all blockers). The game ended with me at 83 life.
And that's how my five dollar entrance fee turned into roughly twenty-five dollars in prizes and one heck of a fun time on a Sunday.
Thanks for reading those huge blocks of texts. Hope you got something out of it. If not, I'm sorry.
Lek Tol.
