Monday, February 24, 2014

Team Tournament Report - February 16th

It's the 25th now, so the details might be fuzzy, but I think I can remember enough to give at least an overview of how Divine Goblins has done.
And it wasn't well, but I think that's my fault.
I have gotten into a kind of pattern; during match one I am brimming with confidence and determination. I battle hard and come out on top. Match two ends in defeat, followed by every subsequent match. How does this keep happening?!
This past tournament was no different.
For a little background, Keita sat in the middle, flanked by Mike and myself. We prepped our sideboards, skewing mine more towards grave-hate as these things usually see a lot of graveyard shenanigans. We removed two Wastelands from my deck and stuck them in Mike's, since we'd probably be facing a lot of mono-colored decks.
See, in these kind of tournies, a team is only allowed four copies of the same card within the team itself. So, teams like to play different colors in order to avoid overlap. For example, I was mono-red Goblins, Keita was Ad Nauseum Tendrils and Mike was playing a B/W Aggro deck. B/W Aggro and Goblins both use Wastelands, so we split our Wastelands and felt comfortable doing so since a lot of decks would be playing basics in lieu of there duals.
My first match was against Elves. This was a deck people told me to be afraid of. Goblins apparently has a terrible time with it since Tarfire is my only removal and a lot of their creatures are 1/2s and 2/2s. However, I had very little trouble is dispatching him. In the second game, I put Thalia down, which kept him from attacking and bought me enough time to put my own swarm together. I had a few misplays, but I came out on top anyway. Goblins is forgiving like that.
Match two was an entirely different story. Enchantress is a terrible deck to play against. I beat him game one by resolving Krenko and then attacking with the swarm. But, in game two he put out Elephant Grass and killed with me Helm of Obedience. Game three saw two attacks from a hard-casted (shudder) Emrakul and I was dead.
Match three went about the same way, but with Wild Nacatl and a big angel with Jitte putting me to 1-2.
Match four against MUD went a little better. I won with the swarm, but then lost the subsequent games to his own swarm and then an ultimated Karn.
All in all, it was a rather disheartening experience. I'm not sure what it is exactly, but I doubt it's just one thing. People come loaded for decks like Goblins so it always has to fight through a lot of hate. Goblins also has a tough time dealing with unfair decks. It has to establish a board presence first before it can win. But, decks like Show and Tell and Enchantress with Helm of Obedience can go from no-board to victory rather quickly. I sideboarded with Keita's help (and a big help it was), but I wasn't able to draw the right amount of hate when I needed to.
Going forward I think means being more careful with my keeps and sideboarding. I hate sideboarding. I think I always will, but I have to get better at it specifically if I want to get better generally.
The next time I write might just might be a report about my first FNM. I expecting you're thinking "You've played Legacy for years but you've never been to an FNM?!" Well, it's true. So, we'll see how this goes.

No comments:

Post a Comment