Culling the Peasant Rebellion
Game 1
Keegan – Teysa | Ryan – Kami | vs. | Sean – Muldrotha | Alex – Shrines
For our second week of the 3rd quarter we had our first 2HD night. Due to ta 3 way tie for 1st, we used yearly standings to come up with the teams for the night. Funny enough we ended up with the yearly 1+2 vs. 3+4, a true Monarchy vs. Peasant battle. We saw no new faces, and both Keegan and Sean took their free mulligans. Ryan and Keegan won the roll to go first.
Alex started off the game raving about the use of growlers to drink craft beer and forgot to shock in this Temple Garden and Hallowed Fountain on the first two turns. Sean started off by getting his mana base setup, as well as using a Strategic Planning to get an Craterhoof Behemoth into the bin during the early game. Keegan ended up sandbagging a turn to discard a Wurmcoil Engine into the bin to get it back with a Persist. Ryan got the mill engine running early with an on curve Jace’s Erasure followed up by Kami.
The game did not have an explosive start due to all of the decks at the table being more of mid to late game snowball/engines. Shrines was able to assemble an early Sanctum of Stone Fangs and a Honden of Infinite Rage to get some drain and burn rolling. By the time Sisay arrived on the scene, Alex was able to activate her on the next upkeep to grab Sanctum of All. Ryan tried to steal Sisay with a Mindflayer, but Alex shut it down with a Calix, Destiny’s Hand exile.
Keegan was able to get his board built up once Teysa arrived, setting up the best sac outlet in the deck in Ashnod’s Altar. He was able to double the Wurmcoil tokens, as well as a handful of spirits off of a Lingering Souls. Ryan was playing a slower roll of a game, leaving mana open to protect or deal with threats while Keegan setup. It was a great pairing for them in hindsight.
The game saw a lot of foreign fingers (<– my mans is serious, that is a wild subculture I did not know exsisted) touching graveyards, and Sean had started the game with an Animate Dead in hand. The unspoken agreement between Alex and Sean was that they were gonna animate the hoof in the yard and swing in for big damage. Anxiety rose in Alex’s mind when he kept seeing Keegan finger through graveyards, but never decided to act on the emotion. Which ended up being their downfall.
After Keegan snapped off the Lingering Souls, he also cast Reanimate on the hoof, which hit his board and buffed everything by a metric fuckton. They were able to swing in with enough to knock Alex and Sean down to a point where a sac out from the Altar, plus a stack of Bastion of Remembrance triggers, sent Alex and Sean to the shadow realm.
Greed and indecision was the downfall for the peasants in this game.
Game 2
Keegan – Lt. Dan | Ryan – Marisi | vs. | Sean – Omnath | Alex – Phylath
The second game on the surface was a pseudo 1 vs. 2 due to Marisi not really being able to Goad well. The peasant’s also had a fantastic dual landfall pairing, and Omnath’s power is nothing to be scoffed at either. So the deck draw was hopeful for the lower caste. Alex, Sean, and Ryan all took their free mulligans. Surprisingly Alex actually won a die roll against Keegan so him and Sean were able to go on the play.
Sean sat thinking about wonderful ideas with a vertical smile on his face, not fully conscious that he did not shock his Hallowed Fountain in on the first turn of the game. Alex and his abysmal mental state had him still caught up on the previous game and he was starting to his path to the final game tilt that he has had been suffering from the last couple of weeks. He made the very wrinkly brain decision to keep a hand with no ramp.
The other side of the table we saw some early game ramp from Lt. Dan, which was aided by a T1 Cosi’s Trickster, which ended up being a behemoth against the landfall deck and their fetchlands. Marisi started slowly but was swift to find all of her colors in abundance.
The game continued to progress, but lack of ramp from Alex had Phylath being exceedingly slow to get his engines going, in turn eliminating his biggest pro in the deck. The largest Mickletit came from a T2 Cleansing Wildfire targeting a basic Plains on Sean’s lands. This was done to find a basic forest, which was not available in the deck. Only Plains and Islands. So Alex essentially timewalked himself, and his brain ate that up and sent the tilt locomotive down the tracks.
As the game continued to treck ahead Keegan was finding all of the support pieces in his merfolk tribal. He found a Herald’s Horn, Rhystic Study, and Smothering Tithe. This forced a hardcast Force of Vigor out of Alex, which delayed him from getting a Lotus Cobra onto the field. Again his mana was stunted to deal with threats. Sean was having a tough time getting any mana acceleration, but he was able to get down Omnath and start to get some value off of the beast. Ryan snapped off an Idyllic Tutor grabbing a War’s Toll. That enchantment ended up making things much harder the peasants, and forced them to play all their spells on a single main and essentially not attack in order to not lose any of their support pieces.
2HD really showed the strength of Sygg in our meta. On a fully open board he is often too open to hold his own against everyone else, but with protection at his side he was able to build and snowball. Leaving the Horn on the field after the Force of Vigor ended up giving Keegan an absurd amount of card advantage. Ryan also dropped a Mass Hysteria, which allowed a Seahunter to portal on the spot adding more issues to the field.
Eventually it was just that Alex and Sean were not able to move fast enough, and an overloaded Cyclonic Rift put them back to square one. Keegan was able to get a hastey Wanderwine Prophet in, and give it protection from green with Sygg. That gave them an extra turn, where Keegan found a Lord of Atlantis with the horn, making everything unblockable with islandwalk. Ryan had stolen a Phylath off the top of Omnath, and he brought the Craterhoof down on the timewalk turn. With little no blockers, and infinite turns for the nobles, Alex and Sean scooped it up.
Speed and tempo ended up killing the peasants this game.
Game 3
Keegan – Walls | Ryan – Jhoira | vs. | Sean – Shrines | Alex – Teysa
For the third and final game of the night we see all familiar faces. Alex was fully tilted now, mental health down the drain and into the Atlantic by now. He was forced to mulligan to 6, which did nothing for that lol. Sean also took a free mulligan. Keegan and Ryan won the roll to go on the play.
From the jump, the matchup here favored the monarchy. Jhoira is a midgame deck that does not do much in terms of interaction or board presence while it sets up. Which means that early pressure can put it into the grave without much contest. Walls on the other hand is basically a fucking swiss army knife. It has early game pressure, mid to late game finishers in one sided board wipes, as well as resilience with some minor reanimation (which is also a bonus from mill). Both Teysa and Shrines are mid to late game snowball/attrition decks, meaning that the beatdown of walls plus a quick storm will easily put them in the grave.
Alex kicks off the game hungry thinking about cabbage since he dropped his dinner on the floor before the night started, he ended up not shocking in Godless Shrine. Ryan was also hungry and ended up not shocking in a Steam Vents. The most amazing part of this entire game was that Ryan slammed down a T3 Jace, the Mind Scupltor and did not Brainstorm with it. I have seen this card played a million times through BoshnRoll’s videos, and I did not even know what the card’s +2 did. Truly a first for mankind.
Ryan ended up blasting off a super early Aertherflux Reservoir, which left the life totals at essentially single digits. I mean like a T5 Reservoir. It was bold. The following turn Alex slammed down some dweebs who made tokens on death, and Sean snapped off a Wrath of God. This setup a lethal attack from Alex next turn if the monarch’s could not rebuild. Well it is walls, so Keegan was able to get some dorks out and stem the bleeding for a bit.
Honestly, even with such an early activation, and then essentially a one sided board wipe, the power of Reservoir is too much for just about any deck in the early game. It is a card that always packs a punch when it makes an appearance, and 9/10 times it is in a deck that is meant to utilize it.
Eventually Keegan snapped off a Wave of Reckoning while he had a High Alert out, which meant a one sided wipe. He was then able to swing for lethal, finally culling the peasant rebellion with a clean sweep. The early lifelazer was risky, but the card played a huge part of letting them stabilize and keep their life total safe.