Sunday 22 April 2018

Magic Pre-Release: Dominaria

By: Dozer

So along with five other friends, I ended up at Wizards Tower to play at the late night two-headed giant pre-release. I was partnered with Luke while Wolf and Forgotten were paired up, and Linna and Molotov were partners. I was leaving the next morning for Toronto for work but I was alone and I needed to get my nerd on after a intense two weeks in St Jean, QC.

I was only in town for less then an hour before I sped down the highway and traveled from the east of Ottawa to pick up Luke. This was also his first pre-release event.

Man did I ever need this.

Nerding it up with my mates after two weeks of intense training... all I needed was my wife with me but she was already in Toronto and I'd be seeing her the next day to play some Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 with our friends from the area. I had just driven for three stressed filled hours, gotten home long enough to snag a snack and refuel my car before, ignore my four hours of sleep to go play Magic the Gathering.

All images are owned by Wizards of the Coast and used without permission



Our combined pools led to Luke sticking with his most comfortable colour Green and putting down a mono coloured deck. We pulled a Marwyn, the Nurturer, with a pair of: Song of Freyalise, Grow from the Ashes, Gaea's Blessing, and Adventurous Impulse. He also added a full play set of Primordial Wurm and Corrosive Ooze. One Thorn Elemental and a Blackblade Reforged added some bombs to his deck in the late game.


The idea was pretty simple, mana ramp, load the board with some big scary creatures, and swing heavy. Three of our games had Luke looking like a scary monster but boardwipe effects and stalling mid game due to drowning in mana were Luke's largest issues during the event. Mono green went really well the cards failed us once and they weren't cooperating when we needed to quickly recover.


I followed suit with a mono Blue deck. With two Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive with a Forebear's Blade and a pair of Relic Runner I felt that the deck was going to go around an unblockable fast moving and aggressive deck. The idea seemed to link up well while Luke build up his board of big scary monsters. I added a lot of non-creatures and getting three Unwinds helped out a lot. I even played Unwind back to back and our opponents were flabbergasted.


With a few more tricks I was going to go in low and fast while protecting Luke's creatures with my counter spells. My bomb was Zahid, Djinn of the Lamp who when paired with my Forebear's Blade was a very scary flying 8/6 ready to attack on turn five.


Our first match was against Wolf and Forgotten. Forgotten was sporting a Black-White deck and Wolf went Green-Red. A early game Goblin Chainwhirler nuked Luke's small mana generating creatures and we just couldn't get back on track.


Our second game was all on our side. Luke had two Primordial Wurm in play, while I had Tetsuko and a Forebear's Blade in play. They were down to 16 life and we were at 24 life (you start at 30 in two-headed giant). We killed a Jaya and were about to start some major attacking but they dropped a Phyrexian Scriptures. I had my second Tetsuko in my hand with a Relic Runner so I felt we were in an ok spot.


Before we could rebuild to full strength they dropped Teferi, took control of two of our best creatures and we were done in within a few rounds before Luke could jump in and swing the game back in our favor.

Our third round was awesome. I dropped a Unwind followed by another Unwind against a pair of players who were also sporting mono coloured decks; Black and White respectively. Two bad plays on my part, Luke drowning in 10 lands (he had only 14 in his deck), and we were overwhelmed... done like dinner.

Last game was against the ladies. Molotov and Linna who took us into overtime and a draw.

All in all a great time and just what I needed.

Hope you all had a great time if you got out to your local game shop for a pre-release.

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