FNM

[tigertoy]

FNM at the Gopher last night.  For Standard, I looked through my spirit/tokens deck and realized that I'd cut all the blue out of it but the Drogskol Captains, and the three color mana base was being difficult, so I decided to try cutting the blue out entirely.  (Really, without Geist of St. Traft, which I don't have and which is $22 today, blue isn't that compelling in the deck anyway.)  It was pretty easy.  I decided to throw in two Nevermore, thinking of it as a preemptive Oblivion Ring.  If I can guess what the key card in my opponent's deck is, it seems like it's worth a card slot.  Match 1, Damon Hebert was playing his Frites deck.  Game 1, I mulled to 6, then kept a 1 land hand instead of going to 5, didn't draw enough to come back.  Game 2, I still had land in hand when I won on turn 9; I had a Nihil Spellbomb out right away and he never got a big creature into his yard anyway.  Game 3, my 7 card hand had no land, my 6 card hand was unplayable, and my 5 card hand had no land but a couple of key one drops.  I decided my odds were better keeping it than going to 4, it didn't work.  Game 2, against Austin Griswell, I didn't write down anything about his deck and I don't really remember it, but I beat him up; the one Blood Artist I threw in did quite a lot for me when I got it out early game 1.  Game 3, Andrew Forbes had something with a bunch of fogs and control, but he only slowed me down, never locked me down, and I won two games easily enough.  Match 4, James Manrique was playing U/W Delver, with Geist, Snapcaster, Restoration Angel, and a lot of bounce effects.  Game 1, I didn't get enough land and it wasn't even close.  Game 2, I wrote something down and I can't read it at all.  I wore him down a little, but then he pulled a Runechanter's Pike for his second Restoration Angel and swung for way more than the 10 life I had left.  2-2 overall, my tiebreaks were good and I was 6th out of 20 for 1 pack, with a promo Nearheath Stalker as my door prize.

Stayed for after draft.  I drafted AVR-DKA-M12.  Pack 1, I had an awful rare but a Nature's Blessing, so I took it.  I was quickly in green and black.  Saw almost no removal -- aside from deathtouch creatures, I had one Parasitic Implant and one Wretched Banquet.  Some decent creatures but nothing really amazing.  It looked awful, I expected to be crushed.  Ended up winning match 1 against someone whose name I can't remember and couldn't hear when pairings were announced, then drew against Tom, we each won 1, had 3 gentleman's mulligans, and went to time in the last game, for a match record of 1-1-*4*.  Game 3, I walked over Lanie, who's still playing like a beginner.  I hope she gets better before she gets tired of being crushed.  2½-½ overall, which somehow only made it to 4th place in the 10 man pod, got an ISD pack and a Chronicles pack.  And my draft pool included an Undiscovered Paradise ($8) that I didn't end up running and a Korlash, Heir to Blackblade ($7), so I came out OK.  But it didn't start until nearly 11, didn't finish until 2:30, and I was a bit tired by the end.