Sunday, June 15, 2014

MTG: Modern, UWR Kiki Midrange, PTQ Syracuse June 13th Report

This weekend (June 13th) I trekked down to a PTQ in Syracuse New York where I finished in 15th with a 6 wins 2 lose record. I'm taking a small sabbatical from Splinter Twin and sleeved up UWR Kiki Jiki at the recommendation of Daniel Fournier.

Modern - UWR Kiki Midrange

last minute change of 1 Lightning Helix in the board for 1 Sphinx's Revelation
Quick Tournament Report

I started off the day with a quick and decisive loss against fellow grinder buddy Leonard Laratta on Mono Blue TimeWalks+HowlingMines.dek. Afterwards I rattled off 6 straights wins against. . .

1 UR Delver: all you have to do is sit back and play a hard control game and eventually you'll tucker them out. Helix was obviously sweet. I'm definitely the control in this match up.

1 Living End: apparently counter magic + mvp Relic of Progenitus makes this easy peasy.

1 Kiki Pod: piloted by Ryan Goslings step brother/recent PTQ winner Paul Dean who fell victim to mana flood and frequent mulligans.

1 UW Control: won g3 in turns thanks to Kiki Jiki, I found I had to be pretty aggressive in this match up to take it down. I'm definitely the beatdown in this match up.

2 Scapeshift: lost g1 each time and then boarded into a UR Fae style game plan of burn, counters, and flash based beatdown aka the sweet things in life. I got tricked at one point, my r7 opp played Scapeshift with 5 lands in play, after some humming I let it resolve and he fetched a Boseiju!! Thankfully I had V Clique + Resto to snipe his second Scapeshift ant bring the noise. I'm definitely the beatdown in this mu.

Going into the 8th & last round I was in 10th place and unable to draw. I played against traditional Jund.

Game 1: Everything fell into place and I controlled the game completely with tons of value provided by Wall of Omens, Snapcaster Mage, Electrolyze, Path to Exile, and Restoration Angel. Despite having drawn 3 more lands than my opp who was on 4 I still had more in play and in hand than him.

Game 2: I lost to a triple discard + Liliana of the Veil draw. I made a few mistakes here. I didn't try to maneuver the game to a point where I could Cryptic Command bounce+draw Liliana into my opponents empty hand with her +1 on the stack. Instead I prematurely discarded Cryptic Command. Also I kept in Kiki Jiki for games 2-3. I think it's a pretty big mistake since they're going to be loading up on discard+removal, what you want is more cards that draw cards or removal to stall the game out so your independent card advantage engines can come online, not a 5 drop in your hand that does nothing by itself.

Game 3: I had a t1 relic containing my opponents t1 discard into t2 Goyf. I went for Vendilion Clique on turn 3, which saw another Goyf, Maelstrom Pulse, Courser of Kruphix, and 3 Lands. Since I had tapped out I made him cycle his Pulse since I wouldn't be able to cycle Relic and contain his double Goyf.  Unfortunately I was greeted by Lilianna of the Veil off the top. From there I was just a bit too far behind on the board and eventually was knocked out of the tournament.

Changes I'm considering are . . .

Maindeck
Serum Visions: This is mostly to support the 4th Snapcaster Mage I'm considering, as well as helping dig to those delicious Restoration Angels and other absurdly powerful cards.

Telling Time: Lets you keep open mana and play a draw go game. Probably bad, my experiences with it is that it's horribly mana inefficient. But Snapcastered Telling Times are actually pretty potent.

Sideboard
1 Negate: I found my hard counter count a little lack luster vs Scapeshift, I figure that same would be true for RG Tron and other combo mu's.

Somewehre
3rd Vendilion Clique: Probably belongs in the sideboard. By itself it's really powerful, in conjunction with Restoration Angel it's amazing (much better than with Splinter Twin :P).

4th Snapcaster Mage: My only reservation is that my deck isn't currently set up well for the 4th Snap. It's hard to fit a strong supporting spell selection when your primary game plan is creature based and combined with lands eating up about 40 slots in the maindeck.


I really like the deck right now. I've been having problems winning with Splinter Twin as of late so I'm going to stay on UWR for a while. I've got a ton of tournaments lined up this summer, and I'd really like to quality for the first pro tour of the new pro year so I'm going to playing and practicing a lot more. That's it for this short report, thanks for reading. If you've got any questions or suggestions feel free to ask.