Originally Posted by
LLCoolDave
Played a list with 4 Ancient Stirrings, 2 Ugin, 3 Revoker and on a whim, 4 Repeal over the Brainstorms in a 6 round event on Saturday. Wasn't particularly impressed, but the metagame felt rather hostile.
Round 1 vs Ritual Reanimator 0-2: Lose the die roll, concede to the discard trigger of the turn 1 Sire of Insanity. Great start. Game 2 lasts a whopping three turns until he gets a Jin-Gitaxias in play with double counter back up.
Round 2 vs Dredge 2-1: Game 1 he mulligans to 5, I open on Expedition Map, he casts Faithless Looting, I Bojuka Bog on my turn, he Lootings into Careful Study into another dredger, I search up a Vesuva to Bog him again, he has another Careful Study into Looting into dredger, so I copy Bojuka Bog again to leave him at no Graveyard and no Hand. Game 2 I fail to stabilize under Chasm, Game 3 he mulligans to 3 and fails to do anything, but my hand was good anyway.
Round 3 vs Merfolk 0-2: Fail to draw lands in game 1, Chasm does its usual impression of being not good enough to actually improve the situation after you have to let go of it in game 2. Ugin would have been good if there was ever a realistic chance of casting it.
Round 4 vs Punishing Jund 1-2: 3 very interesting and interactive games. Ugin would again have been great all the time, but I just never got to the mana to cast them. Got blown out by Krosan Grip on my Top in Game 2 when I stacked the cards wrong and was 1 mana short from Emrakul looping in game 3 after suffering a Liliana ultimate earlier that game.
Round 5 vs MUD 2-0: He got mana screwed, I naturally found Emrakul both games. Terribly matchup, I got super lucky.
Round 6 vs UR Painter 1-2: Game 1 his deck has no real way of doing anything at all as long as I don't draw or search for Emrakul. Having only one Eldrazi in the deck meant that he got to combo out with Surgical in games 2 and 3 before I could get anything useful going.
Ugin was way too clunky, the Revokers failed to be impressive or attack decks in an angle that didn't just turn on their dead cards (like Punishing Fire), Ancient Stirrings seemed better than Ponder on Average, but wasn't really very impressive. It's a fine card in a build that is heavy on colorless threats/bullets but nothing more. Repeals were a lot better than Brainstorms would have been in any situation where I drew them, so I'm glad I made that swap, although I probably would have preferred Brainstorm to the Revokers that day. Boarded up to 4 SnTs in all but the Reanimator match, which I feel is a very strong indicator that the core idea of the deck just isn't good in the metagame I faced. While there was a wide variety of decks around the room, the traditional fair decks that we prey upon by default were fairly rare.
Only redeeming aspect of the tournament is that Postman managed to somehow have an even worse experience than I did. (IIRC: 1-1-1 vs Reanimator, 1-0-1 (!) vs Reanimator with an insane game 2, 0-2 vs MUD, 2-1 vs Oops, All Spells!, 1-2 vs UWR beats (maybe Delver?), 1-2 vs Jund) Got some pretty radical ideas I want to test out in the coming days, but I have a feeling that if the metagame in this area stays the way it looked this weekend, the time might have come to shelf the list for a while until things change again. When you have to hope to get paired against the Dredge player in the room, things are a bit awkward.
