Dark Ascension Pre-Release
So it is Monday, and that means the Dark Ascension Pre-Release has already happened. There was a midnight event on Friday, and a much more reasonable one Saturday at 4pm. I did not go to the one at midnight mainly because it would go until about 7 – 9 in the morning. Which I would then have to make a 35 minute drive home without falling asleep behind the wheel. Some of my friends went though, and they told me the next day that they didn’t get home until about 11 in the morning. I was geared up for the Saturday one! Shockingly most of the people who went to the midnight release had beaten me to the store the next afternoon.
There were 36 people there total for the 4pm event, which meant it would be 5 rounds with a top 8 cut afterwards. For only $20.00 to get in we all basically paid for 5 packs and got the 6th free with a chance to win soo much more! Since I was one of the last people to actually sign up, when they called my name to pick my packs I was left with the last three packs in both boxes. No being picky for me! But I felt good, I was pretty sure at least 2 of the packs had foils due to how thick the packs felt compared to the others.
When I opened my packs I was right there were at least 2 foil cards in the 6 packs. Both were commons but they were pretty cool since hey were both from Dark Ascension. My rare pulls weren’t amazing but they were decent. From Dark Ascension I pulled a Thraben Doomsayer, a Requiem Angel, a Fiend of Shadows, and a Mondronen Shaman which wasn’t too bad! From Innistrad I pulled an Angel of Flight Alabaster, Tree of Redemption, and a Witchbane Orb. Along with all my other pulls I was leaning heavily towards White/Black tokens. I mean seriously I had so many token generators. I had pulled 2 Lingering Souls, a Gather the townsfolk, 2 of my rares were token generators. On top of it all I even pulled an Intangible Virtue. Not to mention a few of my black cards produced tokens if something died that turn. the black side was mostly removal and what not.
Over all I think my deck was pretty nifty. After I looked at the remaining pool I even made another deck out of the rest. I created a decent Red/Green vampire/werewolf deck that featured the Shaman werewolf and Tree of Redemption which is ridiculous in limited. I wasn’t aware that I was able to create an entirely different deck from the remainder in a sealed event. When I went to the Grand Prix in Orlando, someone pulled this on me and I was totally unprepared. It was an amazing strategy, play against them with one deck and let them sideboard for it then BAM pull out an entirely new deck for them to deal with. Pretty genius if you ask me!
Anywho! I was confident with my W/B token deck so I just waited for the pairings.
ROUND ONE:
I got paired up against a new guy in town, he was there with a few of his friend and this was his first actual tournament. I felt bad for the guy, I could clearly tell he was nervous his hands were shaking and everything. But this was war! I didn’t pull any punches, I did tell him however to just relax and stop apologizing for everything. We were both playing almost the exact same deck W/B tokens. But mine just happened to have some better token support. We both had a Requiem Angel on the field so we were getting nowhere. In the end I beat him 2-0 due to a very lucky drawing of Lingering Souls. In one turn I had an extra 4 flying 2/2s with Vigilance. So I was able to hit him with extra 8 damage next turn for the win.
ROUND TWO:
Omg let me tell you, this guy was the LUCKIEST SOB in the room. Out of 6 packs of cards this guy managed to pull 4 mythic rare cards one of them foil. He pulled a foil Beguiler of Wills, a Garruk, a Havengul Lich, and a Drogskol Reaver. He also managed to pull not one but two Lumberknots. His strategy was amazing, he played Green/Black/Blue. Once he had out a lumberknot he would just summon a wolf with garruk, sacrifice it next turn with garruk to search for a creature. Since a creature died he would put a counter on his Lumberknots. I was holding him off, I happened to have 2 typhoid rats on the field so he didn’t want to attack with his pumped up Lumberknots. Near the end of the game his creatures were 17/17 and I was at 19 health. He activated Garruks ability which gave all his creatures X/X and trample to finally wipe the floor with me. Over all it was a very exciting game he won it 2-0 but that was fine with me, he had an amazing deck.
ROUND THREE:
This time I played against a guy running a Red/White Vampire deck. I crushed him in two of the fastest games I ever played. The round was 55 minutes long and when we were done there was still 44 minutes left. He had a good deck, but he didn’t do anything with it. He let me get momentum before he really did anything, and by then it was too late. When we were done he showed me his game finisher. It was curse of bloodletting and that blademaster vampire that had double strike and gets +1/+1 counters whenever it hits me directly. That card is pretty broken I think because when it first hits you it gets a counter and then hits you again and gets a counter. So let’s say that it is just a 1/1 and it swings, the first time it hits it will only hit you for one but then it gets a counter. On the swing back it will hit you for 2 and then get a counter. So the first time he even swings at you it will do 3 damage, next turn if you can’t block he would hit you for 7. And then it just gets nasty from there out.
ROUND FOUR:
I lost to a great player who was undefeated the entire night, so I don’t mind. He was playing Blue/White Flyers, which is good since most of the decks that I had seen tonight barely had any fliers at all. It was close and I made him sweat and I beat him in the second game. Which was his first game loss all day, so I was happy with that. He later went into the Top 8 but I didn’t see who won overall because it was late and I had to get the wifey.
ROUND FIVE:
I will admit I lost but I lost to an arrogant cocky person, I hate that. I don’t really like the guy because he is one of those players that always has an excuse for why they lost, and that they shouldn’t have lost and blah blah. Whatever if you lose you lose. It was the last round of the night and since I had two loses already I didn’t care because I knew I wasn’t in the top 8 anyway. So I had fun with it. Our first game lasted almost 40 minutes because my deck was good at stalling out a lot. I was making my opponent frustrated because he thought he was going to win quickly. He did end up winning the game but I had fun. The second game I remembered that I had a completely different deck to play with so I broke that one out and played with it. This game lasted until time with no winner because I happened to get out tree of redemption and just kept switching life totals. It also helped that I had 2 gnaw to the bones in my deck so whenever I was close to dying I would just cast one and instantly gain anywhere between 10-20 life. With the flashback ability I was able to do this 4 times. The look on my opponents face was just priceless. But as there was no winner of the second match and since he won the first game he got the game win.
The next day, I heard one of the top 8 in his prize support happened to pull a regular Sorin AND a FOIL Sorin from the SAME pack. Talk about luck, that is about $150.00 right there. So tell me how your Pre-Release went and what were your pulls. Thanks for reading, until tomorrow!
