Lorwyn League: Week Two

A rookie makes his mark while the contenders adjust their decks.

Having cemented his place last week as the final boss of Friday Night Magic, Dom returns to Bath TCG as the league leader. This week’s contenders are surrounded by cardboard boxes and Pepsi Max cans. Martin sits in the furthest corner, evaluating a stack of bulk cards. Next to him, Alex is gushing over how hard the flavour text goes on Forked Bolt, a red uncommon from 2010’s Rise of the Eldrazi:

Sami, the league champion, is flicking through Josh’s binder. “Dom, have you opened any Deceit?” he asks. Dom shakes his head.

“I have,” says Derek, a contender making his league debut tonight.

“Do you have a trade binder?”

Derek hands one to Sami as Dom picks up a red binder from the middle of the table. The group quietens to evaluate the assorted plastic pocketed pages.

Lorwyn Eclipsed, the newest set of cards in the game, is already reshaping the room. Most have already introduced Lorwyn’s cards to their decks, or are attempting to find them before the night begins. Sat off to the side is Roland, one of the only people uninterested in the flurry of trading activity, as his off-meta colorless control deck is seemingly doing fine without any help. In the far corner, Alex and Martin - who have already added the set’s new toys into their decks - fire up a game of Dandan.

Derek asks Brandon, another league rookie, when he started playing the game.

“Playing since Duskmourn,” he replies. “My first prerelease was Avatar.” Brandon has brought Allies to the league, a deck formed mainly of cards from Magic’s latest crossover set. Before Derek can reply, synchronised buzzes and bells indicate round one pairings are up.

Derek checks his phone. “Looks like I’m up against Dom,” he says, unaware of what this means.

The binders are cast aside in a flurry of scraping chairs. Deck boxes thump down on playmats as the players take their seats. In an echo of last week, Sami starts the first round shuffling his angels against Alex’s aggro deck, and when the champion keeps a one-lander in game one and concedes after failing to draw a second, it officially becomes a ‘two nickels’ situation.

While they sideboard, Sami looks over at Dom’s game with Derek and sees something unexpected; Dom is scooping up his cards. Derek has sleeved up a deck full of dragons and opened his debut night by serving them directly at Dom’s face. The two players collect their decks, swap cards in and out, and reshuffle for game two.

When they draw, Derek keeps his original seven, but Dom knows this isn’t Commander, and if the hand is bad, a reshuffle isn’t free.

He pauses, then mulls to six. He looks again. He mulls to five.

Resigned, Dom plays a Llanowar Elf, and passes the turn.

As he goes through the motions of playing out his hand, Derek hits a bad spot of his own as he draws land after land, keeping Dom in the game. Soon after, Dom plays an uncontested Ouroboroid and scatters a set of huge white dice across his creatures. These are the same dice used in the European Regional Championships, large enough for the numbers to be seen on feature match streams; Dom is the only one of the league to compete at the RC level. Derek draws another land, and Dom takes the win, sending them to a tiebreaker game.

Unfortunately for Dom, the loser goes first, and Derek’s deck is fast, sending a flight of dragons to beat down on Dom’s life total before he can muster much of a response.

“So you’re on 13?” asks Derek a turn later, and Dom knows how ominous it is when the opponent asks what you’re on, especially when it seems like a comfortable amount.

Dom sighs as he takes another strike, looking at the top of his deck. “What are my options?” he says out loud. He thinks for a moment, then just says, “pray?”

Dom reaches out, draws his card. Looks at it. Looks at the board.

“It’s your go.”

And Dom loses his first match of the league.

Across the table, Alex capitalises on his early win and beats Sami 2-0, joining Derek in the winner’s bracket with the only other aggro deck in the room.

“New additions feel good,” says Martin after taking out Roland with his refreshed blue-black deck. Lorwyn’s new faeries show up and put in the work for him, despite Roland managing to summon Sire of Seven Deaths, a 7/7 for 7 with seven keywords, one of which being a ward trigger that costs 7 life to pay. It’s one of only two Eldrazi legal in Standard, and Martin is forced to cast Shoot the Sheriff to take it out, paying seven life for it to resolve. Roland finds no follow-up; he draws five lands in a row, and Martin wins the match.

Round two pairings are up.

“Oh no, am I playing Dom?” asks Martin.

“Nope,” says Alex, “you’re up against me.”

“Nice, that’s easy!” says Martin. Despite Alex’s protests as they sit down, Dimir has a lot of good answers for aggro decks, with even more after sideboarding, and Martin typically crushes Alex with such brutal beatdowns that he’s been known to apologise afterward.

As they sit, Roland shuffles his deck against Sami, draws a seven-land hand, and throws it down in front of him.

Alex manages to take the first game. In the second, Martin plays a blue land and leaves it up. This represents Spell Snare, a new one-mana instant that counters any two-mana spell. Alex responds by plotting his two-mana Slickshot Show-Off, putting it into exile rather than into play. He can’t cast it safely from there while the counterspell’s up, but now Martin knows he has it, he can’t tap out and risk the bird taking flight. The game slows as the two cards point guns at each other’s heads. Each player considers their next move with care.

Alex decides it’s time to try and cast a new card of his own: Bristlebane Battler. It’s a 6/6, but it enters with five -1/-1 counters on it. The counters get removed over time as other creatures enter the fray. And it has ward 2, making it expensive to remove. But it’s a two-mana spell. Alex offers priority to Martin; if he has the Spell Snare, he can use it and stop the Battler. But doing so would let Alex bring in the Slickshot.

Martin considers his options, and lets it resolve.

What follows is the sort of scrappy game Sami later describes as ‘slugging each other with socks full of pennies’. Without wanting to walk into a trap, Alex just keeps swinging with his 1/1 and passing the turn. Martin doesn’t want to spend his entire turn removing the Battler, and doing so would open the door for the Slickshot to swoop in. So he lets Alex keep nicking him one damage at a time.

“This is a weird game,” says Martin, not sure how to react to an aggro player who refuses to put the pressure on.

Eventually, Martin builds up enough spare land to spend four mana destroying the Battler. Alex responds with Turn Inside Out; the Battler still dies, but Alex gets to replace it with one of the top cards of his library, face-down as a 2/2. If it’s a creature, he can flip it for its mana cost at any point to reveal its true identity.

Martin passes back to Alex, who taps two lands and flips the card; he manifested a second Battler. What’s more, because this one entered face-down, it’s skipped the trigger to generate its -1/-1 counters, making it a full-power 6/6 for just two mana. (And it being flipped, rather than cast, means it’s not vulnerable to the Spell Snare.)

“Oh, that is evil,” says Martin as Alex swings for six and, with a much faster clock, ultimately takes the match.

“This used to be an absolute walk in the park!” says Martin, scooping up his cards. “Good game,” he says. Then, after a pause, he adds, “fuck you,” and they both laugh.

While they’re finishing their match, Roland and Sami’s has ground to a halt. From a distance it’s not clear who’s winning, since Roland is on 30 life, Sami is on 50, and neither of them have any creatures in play, but Sami nonetheless tells his opponent, “I am gonna concede at some point. I’m just waiting for you to do the thing.” Sure enough, Roland soon lays down Ugin, Eye of the Storms, a 7-mana planeswalker from Tarkir, and without Sami being able to prevent it, Roland proceeds to trigger his ultimate ability:

Search your library for any number of colorless nonland cards, exile them, then shuffle. Until end of turn, you may cast those cards without paying their mana costs.

Sami shakes his hand and reports the results.

Final round pairings are up.

“Oh no!” says Martin, who finds Dom’s name next to his.

Next to them, playing for the night’s undefeated win, the only two red spellcasters in the room take their places opposite each other.

“Any cool plays in rounds one and two?” asks Alex.

“Just played dragons and smacked,” shrugs Derek. He wins the die roll and plays first. The two reset their life wheels to 20.

Derek starts by casting Momo, Friendly Flier, a lemur that makes other flying creatures cheaper, and gets bigger on the turn they enter. It’s currently a 1/1.

Alex plays Stadium Headliner, also a 1/1.

The next game action of this match is Derek casting Nova Hellkite, a 4-power dragon with flying and haste that kills other creatures when it enters. It normally costs five mana, but warps in for just two using Momo’s discount. Alex’s 1/1 dies, Momo grows, and Derek swings both at him for six total damage.

Alex starts his second turn of the game with an empty board and only one remaining land in his hand, Stomping Ground, which costs him two life to use when he plays it. He spins his life wheel down and stares at the cards in play, trying to comprehend how he’s fallen already from 20 to 12. Alex does something with his mana that turn, but it doesn’t end up mattering what it is; Derek plays more dragons, and Alex is dead two turns later.

In his second game against Derek, Alex declares a Leyline, plays a land, and offers up another Stadium Headliner. When Derek duly removes it, Alex’s face falters. He draws a card, looks down at his hand, and says, “your go”, and it becomes clear to the room that he’s kept a one-land hand, and then failed to draw the second one.

“What did you keep?!” says Martin with horror from across the table as he sees Alex discard Giant Growth to hand size and watch his life total crumble to zero.

The entire match is over in thirteen minutes.

“Wanna play again?” asks Derek.

“Yeah!” says Alex, unable to resist the allure of an efficient aggro deck even when it’s crushing him under its heel. He loses for a third time.

For red-based decks, the round timer is never much of a concern. Each round is fifty minutes long, with each player having a couple final turns each to decide the winner once the time runs out. Playing a fast deck can be a competitive advantage, giving you time to have a break in-between rounds. Other players do not have this luxury. Thirty minutes in to the final round, Josh is still on 20, Roland is on 17, and it’s still game one. They last another few minutes before Josh swings for lethal and finally triggers game two.

Martin, meanwhile, is facing the biggest test yet of his tweaked deck list. He’s won his first game against Dom, but their second is going about as badly as it could go, with Dom casting Nature’s Rhythm to let him search for any creature in his deck and put it straight into play. He uses it to find his first Ouroboroid and then, when Martin removes it, slams another straight off the top of his deck, and then topdecks a third after Martin removes the second one. Dom’s only on 4, but has built out his board with care to protect the remainder of his life total and keep the pressure on, with a Quantum Riddler in the air and several more creatures on the ground, including his own new Lorwyn card, Formidable Speaker.

Martin looks at Alex. “How long on the round?”

Alex disappears from the back room to check, emerging a moment later. “Fourteen minutes.”

“Let’s go to game three,” says Martin, wanting to use his time where it can count more.

With Martin and Dom preparing for their final game of the night, the spectators in the room pivot back to Roland and Josh’s match just in time to see Roland tap six mana and cast Planetarium of Wan Shi Tong.

“Yikes,” says Alex.

“Very cool,” says Sami.

Every turn, this colorless planetarium lets you look at the top card of your library, then cast whatever you find for just one mana. Since Roland’s deck is full of expensive horrors from across the multiverse, it doesn’t take long for Roland to find an answer.

There are three minutes left on the round when Roland beats Josh; there’s not time for them to play out a decider, so they call it a draw. This is only the second time in the league’s history that a match has ended in a draw. (Both matches included Roland - another certified ‘two nickels’ moment). It means Roland and Josh both get one point each, nudging them forward in the standings.

With precious few moments left on the timer, Martin is trying to close out his final game against Dom, but the battle has stalled with both players presenting wide boards of creatures. Martin has a Bitterbloom Bearer in play, which makes a new faerie every turn, while Dom has another Ouroboroid, the card that distributes Dom’s unnecessarily large dice across every creature he owns. This increases their power on the ground, but won’t help him survive an aerial assault.

It’s Dom’s turn, and he activates Ouroboroid, reaching for his bag of dice. With the ability about to resolve, Martin casts Tishana’s Tidebinder, a creature that targets an ability and removes it from the game, intending to shut down the Ouroboroid for good. In response, Dom taps three mana to send out a Tidebinder of his own, which he uses to disable Martin’s Tidebinder. This lets Ouroboroid’s ability resolve and grow Dom’s creatures, but he still can’t break through the wall of faeries and survive a counter-attack. The two armies continue to stare each other down across the table.

Dom passes to Martin, who still has seven cards in his hand. Dom only has one.

And the round timer goes to zero.

Martin is on 13, but he’s out of time, and sends his faeries flying. He puts Dom to 1 life.

Dom has one turn left, and his only out is to find and cast Craterhoof Behemoth, an eight-mana beast reprinted into Standard last year. The Behemoth gives all Dom’s creatures (including itself) trample, and increases the power of each by the total number of creatures Dom controls. His only chance is to draw his copy of it, or call it forth with a Nature’s Rhythm. The rest of his deck is now full of dead cards.

Martin knows this and, after thinking it through, plays Deep-Cavern Bat before letting Dom draw. This creature lets Martin remove a card from Dom’s hand, sabotaging the answer if he already has it.

Dom shows the one card he has left, and sure enough, it’s a Nature’s Rhythm. Martin takes it out of play, and passes the turn over.

Dom untaps his cards, draws his final card of the match, and puts it down in front of him.

He’s drawn another Nature’s Rhythm. The Craterhoof is summoned. Dom steals the win with one life remaining.

Overall, Alex surges up from tenth to fourth in the league standings. Derek, the night’s undefeated player, comes straight in at fifth. Roland sits in second, his draw with Josh putting him ahead of Sami by a single point. Dom still leads the league, but he lost to Derek, and narrowly won against Martin.

“Play no favorites. Everybody dies.”

There are eight weeks left.