Hour of About-Average-Actually

Alright, first off - sorry it's late. Again. I realised on Thursday that I should have posted, so... yeah, sorry. I'll have another post - a longer one - next week, and then possibly something the week after. We'll see.

So, the big question - the prerelease. How did it go? My flatmate says 'who cares?', but I hope you do... anyway it went pretty well. About the same as ever - possibly slightly better? I went two-and-two, but it was a lot closer.

I deckbuilt a hell of a lot smarter this time round. I decided from the get go that I was only going to play two colours, and when I didn't open any fixing that just helped me stick to my convictions. My Prerelease foil was an Angel of Condemnation, which was a) ridiculously good, and b) what helped me settle on white as my second colour. After blue - yes, blue was actually my first choice. Which is weird both for me, and in general. Since I've started, it's been a bit too slow for limited, but this time... well, between Aerial Guide and Unquenchable Thirst, you can get in for some good damage while your opponent has a decent board presence. Then a Dauntless Aven, a couple Aven of Enduring Hope, and Oketra's Avenger... well, I was in with a Azorius Soft-Control Deck.

Or so I had thought. Then, about turn six of my first game, when my opponent was on 8 life, I came to realise that I was in a blue-white flyers deck, with a slight life-gain sub-theme. Not a great deal, but through a combination of Aven of Enduring Hope and Angel of Condemnation, I could eke out advantage if the game went on too long.

Anyway, Round One went... I mean, I lost. But they Junded me out, so I'm fine with that. I lost 0-2, because I could knock them down very quickly, but then I had nowhere to go... in no small part due to them having the Scorpion God. Even if they don't have anything that can block Flyers, -1/-1 counters are great against cheap flyers...

Round Two was against one of my friends (Team Wansbeck Represent!), who had built a Mill deck... somehow. He had Fraying Sanity and a couple of spells that milled, plus a bit of recursion to bring back old spells. When you have to dump 20 cards from a 40 card deck, you know things are going badly. Anyway, this went better, in that I won. I killed him the first game cos he was mana screwed, won the second round when he assembled his Milling Engine (he was on 3 life when he decked me), and won the third game due to wasting ludicrous amounts of removal on anything that could mill.

Third Round I also won, though my opponent wasn't really into it. They were playing a similar deck to mine - Orzhov, rather than Azorius if I remember correctly - and I ended up having to withhold my Angel for several turns because he had his own out. That was a close couple of games, but I was playing a slightly better deck in that kinda match-up - or possibly I'm just a better player than someone who starts the game by telling me they're going to lose. Who knows?

Round Four was came down to the skin of my teeth, and is also the one I remember the least about. I remember scooping in the first game when he played out three different 5/5's, and I remember winning the second game - though I don't know how. Third game was very close too - I believe that I died due to garbage topdecks, though I can't remember the exact circumstances... but that's my fault for leaving it too late. Shame, the third guy was canny. Second best opponent that day.

Anyway, that was my prerelease, in not all that much detail. Perhaps I oughta start making notes between rounds... that's not actually a bad idea. I might try that for Ixlan. Ixilan? Xilan?

... Yeah, that's gonna be an easy pun. Look forward to that.

Volodanti out.