My Visayan Regionals

Going into Regionals 2017, I actually didn't have high hopes to do well. School kept me busy, and i didn't have a good deck ready, most tournaments going into the event I was playing fun decks like UW Cycling drake's, Approach  of the second sun, and UW God Pharaoh's Gift, and although i was getting good results, none of these decks felt like the best deck for the tournament

Most of the time in the testing process I was playing a printed stocklist of Temur energy that we thought was the best version of the deck.

This was Kelvin Chew's deck list for GP Shanghai, we were really comfortable with this deck as it had enough of everything in removable and utility while still being incredibly strong on power level and consistency due to 4 of's of all the best creatures. With 2 weeks left before regionals I probably played around 60 games of Temur against Ramunap Red. My playtest partner Denzel Ang gave in a TON of work with our red deck, watching videos, trying out tech and always playing consistently, just trying to find the edge against Temur, as we felt that it was the toughest matchup. Enter Invigorated Rampage

I read from Yam Wing Chun that Tomoharu Saito thought this card fixed the matchup, and its hard to disagree with him!, On the Temur side, playing against this card is incredibly diffiicult as you can A. play around it thus resulting in a bad block or B. Ignore it and get blown out by it. Imagine this scenario, Your'e Red opponent attacks with just Hazoret, u have 4 Thopters and 1 Whirler virtuoso, your'e life total is at 10, do you block Hazoret with just 1 Thopter and take 8 damage if he has the rampage and lose to a Hazoret discard, or do you gang block with more Thopters and lose your Thopters naturally? Although this is a very simplistic scenario, I feel like it has enough application to show the difficulty of going up against the surprise rampage.

This was Seth Manfield's deck list for a GP the weekend before regionals, it was incredibly close to the decklist we had in mind, mainboard we just had -1 magma spray, -1 Ahn Crop Crasher, +1 Rampaging Ferocidon, -1 Chandra, +1 Soul Scar Mage, and +1 Shock. We felt that this list had the best chance to beat Temur and was still great against everything else, Going into it, I thought Denzel had the best Red deck for the tournament, and that I was going to play Approach or God Pharaoh's Gift

2 Days before the tournament I was pleasantly surprised when Denzel told me, she was able to secure an exact 75 we had from Dino Cabanag. This was great as we had done a lot of games with Red, and even though I was always playing Temur, our sideboard plans, matchup data and overall feel with the deck was that it was the best deck for the tournament.

My matchups for the day were 2 Sultai, 1 Esper Tokens, 1 Ub control, and 1 Mardu vehicles, I only played 5 rounds as I won all my games and was able to offer a draw on the last 2 rounds. Our deck did exactly as we expected it to, killing all the other decks that had a "good" matchup with Temur while still beating Temur. Denzel's matchups where 4 Temur, 1 Sultai, 1 Ub control and 1 Monored,  and she beat ALL the Temur decks, sadly losing to Ub and Sultai due to some bad draws. Combined we had a 9-2-2 record, incredibly decent!


Some notable things and trips that happened during my rounds,

• against Sultai, I was able to kill a Winding constrictor with a shock, because I had a Soul Scar Mage on the board. I always thought everyone knew that interaction already, but its still incredibly important to remember
• I took 11 Mulligans in 12 games, don't be afraid to mulligan with this deck. Denzel faced the monored mirror and mulligan'd to 4 and still won her game, with a decent 7 card draw from the opponent. Mulligans are your friend
• Sultai has a really hard time answering flyers, we boarded in our Glorybringers and Aethersphere harveter's to force them into using Vraska's contempt on our flyers, thus limiting their answers to Hazoret
• Hazoret is insane. Just insane
• Remember that this deck isn't your granddad's old red deck, even if your opponent gains a ton of life, this deck can fight the board and just beat you with creatures effectively transforming into a sort of midrange deck
• Most "slow" matchups we swap out all the 3 drops main board and board in harvesters and Pia's, Pia Nalaar is honestly the best pilot for Harvester
• We played the one Chandra main because we honestly never like drawing Two. Two Chandra's make dropping and attacking with Hazoret a little bit slow, but you still want one main as it solves both drought and flood games by giving u virtual card advantage, damage, and two red mana to help spit your whole hand unto the table, its ultimate is also no joke, finishes the game in two turns on average 
• Although we felt like our deck had a great Temur matchup, Temur is still probably the toughest deck to play against, avoiding it throughout the day was my secret strategy to top 8'ing

 

Most of my friends where able to win something off the raffle, I got nothing but at least I get to come back for day 2!

Top 8!

Quarter finals

My first matchup was against Temur Pumeller, I made a big mistake as i thought his build was more all in, I thought all he ran was Volcanic Brawler's and Pummeller's, When he dropped the two Bristling Hydra's I knew I was in for a long day. Somehow I won game 1 against a board of 2 Bristling Hydra's and 1 Rhonas, the Indomitable due to an active Hazoret just discarding and blocking, almost died to a Samut, Planeswalker though, double striking trample hexproof Bristling Hydra is pretty strong. Game 2 I was brick walled by a Bristling Hydra, but I was able to get his life down to 9 due to Aethersphere Harvester and Invigorated Rampage, 7 power lifelink, trample, flyer was such a good life swing to give me a big life cusion before he started to take over the game with his big creatures and pump spells. Near the end of the game I had a shock and abrade in my hand, with Hazoret and Soul Scar mage on the board while his board was Bristling Hydra, Rhonas 4 energy and a Hashep Oasis. He used a Hashep Oasis on the Hyda so I responded with a shock, I really wanted him to use the enrgy, and I thought that the threat of 2 minus 1 counters on his Hydra would be enough to trick him into using the energy, after a while of thinking, he used the energy and I immediately cast the abrade on his Bristling Hydra to win the game! Hats off to James, he just started Magic less than a year ago and already he made top 8 of his first regionals!

Semi's against Matt

My last game for the tournament was against Matt and his Temur deck, I had avoided Temur all day 1 but finally I was paired against the menace, after reviewing both games I had to concede to the fact that we had no misplays, and there was no avenue to outplay Matt throughout the game, he was very technical and he didn't miss a thing, we both saw the same game state and we knew what were the important cards of the game. Game one he was on the play due to him being the higher seed, and he honestly had a lot of removal, he hit me with 2 abrades and 3 harnessed lightnings, he even dropped a Whirler, a Bristling Hydra, and finally the Glorybringer which was the nail in the coffin. Game 2 I was incredibly close, but again he smashed me with 3 harnessed lightnings and 2 abrades, turn 4 he just went abrade into harnessed lightning but he missed his 5th land drop. He immediately found it the following turn and proceeded to confiscation coup my Hazoret, I dropped him down to 1 life and he had a 2 turn clock on me, I dropped a Pia Nalaar and threatened lethal with the thopter, after a few seconds in the tank he used a confiscation coup on the thopter, i sacrificed it to deny him energy and a thopter but on the following turn I could not find my lethal, my outs were Sunscorched desert, lightning strike, shock, Glory bringer, and Ramunap Ruins but on top of my deck was instead a Soul Scar mage. He untapped and attacked me to 0, I made a rookie mistake of looking at my top deck, only to find Ramunap ruins on top, my advice is to never look at the top of the deck, you will only feel bad. It was still a great game though and I couldn't ask for more from this regionals, I believe I made all the best plays throughout the weekend, and honestly as a magic player that is all you could ask for, consistency over everything

 

Congratulations to everyone who made top 8!, the finalists Matt and Craig and a huge thank you to Ludus Distributors and Magus games for giving everyone in the region a chance to showcase their skills!, We honestly need more big tournaments here in Cebu and this was a big step to accomplishing that goal

Ludus Distributors and Magus Games