MTGO Amsterdam PTQ

After kind of whining that I didn’t want to PTQ without a plan against NLB, I decided to do it anyway. Here’s the list I ran:

I decided to go with the Ruinblasters main, since I feel like it gives you one more chance for a free win, and is good against planeswalkers even unkicked. Everything else is pretty standard. I went with the dragon over Siege-Gang because I think he’s gotten a little worse with the amount of removal everyone is running. In the board, I went with Forked Bolt over Sparkmage and settled on Slave of Bolas for the mirror. Nothing too crazy there, although there is a huge amount of variety in Jund sideboards these days.

I ended up 6-3 in 32nd at 5 am this morning. Overall, I was pretty happy with my deck. I definitely drew well (and won the die roll I think 7 times). On the other hand, I think I mulliganed quite a bit- definitely more than my opponents. I played:

Round 1: Jund (2-0)

Round 2: Vampires (2-0)
Nothing to see here. My opponent was playing Lacerator and Guul Draz Vampire, and I never saw a Nocturnus.

Round 3: Jund (0-2)
This one was heartbreaking. Three bloodbraids in a row off the top will preeeettty much break the mirror.

Round 4: NLB/Mythic Hybrid (Does this deck have a name? 0-2)
Another pretty painful one. Game 2 (after one mulligan) my first black source was 30 cards in. Whoops.

Round 5: RDW (2-1)
My sideboard is obviously pretty dedicated to this matchup. I think it’s fairly good, and I rarely lose when I win game one.

Round 6: UW Control (2-1)
This matchup played out in a fairly typical way, although I think my opponent didn’t have very good draws. He won when I couldn’t answer a Baneslayer, and I won otherwise.

Round 7: Naya Monument (0-2)
This guy destroyed me with a turn 3 Siege-Gang game one into Monument, and a Monument game 2 while I was stuck on the 4 lands. Oh well.

Round 8: Jund (2-0)
I Bloodbraided and Blightninged more. I think these were my best draws overall.

Round 9: Mythic (2-1)
My sideboard did its job here. I was really happy about this match.

I still think I need a better plan (…. and better draws) against Vengevine decks, but they are not as big a part of the meta as I had thought. I was pretty happy with my sideboard- I brought in every card at least once.

On a side note, does anyone know where replays are stored on your machine? I know it’s locally, but I’m not sure where. I played this PTQ on a different machine than the one that has Camtasia, so I wanted to see if I could copy the replays over and make a video from that.

Standard 2-man vs. Next Level Bant

Hmmm. I really feel like I can’t win with Jund vs NLB. Does anyone have any pro tips? Sideboard tech? I feel like even really good draws with lots of Bloodbraids and Bit Blasts don’t get the job done. I’d really appreciate any advice- there’s an online PTQ tomorrow that I’d like to play in…. but at the moment I just don’t feel I can with such a big part of the metagame feeling this unwinnable.

Standard 2-man vs. RDW

Here’s a video of a recent 2-man I played with Abyssal Persecutor Jund. After Craig Wescoe wrote about his experience with the deck, I decided to give it a try, but I quickly decided that I wasn’t ready to give up Sarkhan entirely. I ended up cribbing a list from a recent Daily Event, and then changing the sideboard to address the huge (HUGE!) amount of RDW online currently. I’ve really liked the deck so far, and haven’t missed Broodmate or SGC as much as I thought I would. I do really miss Bit Blast though- I think I will try to fit a pair of those in. I have absolutely loved Nest Invader in this deck- I think any version of Jund I ran from now on would include those guys. Turn 3 Bloodbraid is good, and turn 3 Ruinblaster is hellish. Seriously gross.

Standard Daily 6/25

I recently started playing standard online and thought I would try making some videos to document the experience. This event made me change some things about my deck, but it was also interesting for me because I got to go through the weird experience of completely misidentifying a deck after game one. Unfortunately the video for Round 3 wasn’t saved, which is a bummer because it was long and pretty interesting. I think I could avoid that problem by stopping the video during sideboarding if a game was very long.

Please let me know what you think! Is it better to have multiple shorter videos? Is the quality ok? There’s a few things I know I need to do better- speaking more clearly, not tapping my fingers, ect- but if you have any other suggestions or comments, let me know. Thanks!