Livin' it large at the Magic Weekender!

Before we start I feel I have to mention that I think Mark Rosewater is reading this.  I note that he has stolen the name for his article today “Setting the Standard” from my first proper blog on 5^th July 2012!  Of course there is always the chance that “Setting the standard” is a fairly obvious pun, when you are talking about a game which has a format called “standard”.  Check out MaRo’s article here.

While on the subject of standard I will be blogging my deck list for the standard FNM relax on Wednesday this week but I wanted to do a slightly different approach from previous blogs today, especially as it is “Standard” week on the mother ship. 

On the 9^th June 2012 I decided to give Magic a rest for a while.  I was disillusioned with Avacyn Restored, especially in limited.  I also felt standard had become stale and was not worth bothering with.  I didn’t want to totally quit like I did in 2001, for 8 years, but I needed to get away from it all.  The full story of this can be found in an epic thread on facebook here.  From that decision has come at least to a point, the creation of FNM Relax, which seems to be going pretty well at the moment.

Last Friday we had 14 players for our first FNM Relax Legacy tournament and a great time was had by all (well nearly all Liz and Andrew felt it was still a bit too much for them but they were cool about it).  Apart from one person who didn’t quite get what we were doing, everyone de-powered their decks to produce a positive play experience for those attending.  Congrats to Adam Pollard and his Elves for winning in the final, seems your opponent's Show and Tell backfires when they play Hive Mind and you play Progenitus. 

These two added together spell ouch!

Friday quickly became Saturday and Games Day M13.  This was the first time I was going to a competitive event in 2 months and I really wanted to make top 8 as I wanted the Magmaquake promo (its soooo pretty....). 

Hi I have great art work and I kill things - what more could you want?

I have a thing for enemy colours, most notably green/blue but red/blue is there too.  I liked some of the things Rob Tinsley/Mike Boon and Sam Ro Fi did with their PTQ decks and decided to build my own Mono-Purple Wizards deck. 

Blue and Red make Purple Wizards baby!

I liked the idea of Talrand and getting value in the form of 2/2 Drakes for all the spells you play while he is around.  Augur of Bolas is just a great card for 2 mana, oh and there is Delver of Secrets.  Delver is terrible and easily the worst card in the deck it sits there and does basically nothing until in 4 turns time I can ponder to put an instant/sorcery in the right place so that it flips and someone kills it.  I have now done a search for wizards in standard and will be replacing this card with the infinitely better Wingcrafter in future which actually gives me flying wurm coil engines (oh my),  but I digress.

So much better than Delver of Secrets, here's to flying Wurm Coil Engines!

So I built a deck in my head and posted it on a facebook group to see what people thought, they didn’t get it but their comments were appreciated.  So I called the best person at Magic I know – my son Rob Tinsley and ran it by him, he really liked it but pointed out all the things that were wrong with it and told me to change a few cards and eventually I came to a deck.  So here is the list that I ended up playing and going 3 – 1 with on the Sunday:

3 Cavern of Souls

4 Sulphur Falls

1 Desolate Lighthouse

8 Islands

4 Mountains

20 Lands

4 Delver of Secrets (soon to be Wingcrafter)

3 Augar of Bolas

4 Snapcaster mage

3 Grand Architect

2 Talrand, Sky Summoner

2 Wurmcoil Engine

18 Creatures

2 Pillar of Flames

4 Vapour Snag

2 Mutagenic Growth

4 Ponder

4 Mana Leak

3 Rune chanter's Pike

2 Brimstone Volley

1 Devils play

22 Spells

Sideboard

2 Pillar of Flames

3 Gut Shot

3 Spellskite

1 Batterskull

2 Ratchet Bombs

2 Smelt

1 Grand Architect

1 Brimstone volley

The results were very good, I dropped turn 3 Wurm Coils, I swung with 11/7 first striking Wurm Coil engines, I got value out of my Grand Architect when it got Vapour Snagged back to my hand by tapping it for mana and playing a Pike.  I even got to beat Mike’s Delver deck 2-0 in the Swiss on Saturday (you know the guy who runs FNM Elite)!

This card has value - tons of value!

I only lost on both days to Grzegorz Fils, in the top 4 on Saturday and in the final on Sunday – I just couldn’t beat his deck before he dropped Elesh Norn and ruined my day!  Never mind if I get rid of that terrible delver thing I can make all my guys flying and kill all his men with my Magmaquake – seems fitting. 

Hello my name is Elesh.  I'm the personification of evil in white,

and I am going to ruin your day...

Thanks for reading will be back with more altered starter deck fun for FNM Relax in two days, and don't forget its extended this Friday – see you there.