FNM Fail or How to write about improvement

So I took my planeswalker Genesis Wave deck to the FNM at TOGIT. This did not work out so well. Remember how I mentioned that the deck has difficulty with early aggro creature rush? No? Well it has problems with threats faster than its own.
Let's rewind a bit to last weeks FNM. Last FNM I played one artifact aggro, which I beat in game one and would have beat in game two if we hadn't gone to time, and then I beat two consecutive U/B decks who both resolved multiple Jace 2.0, but I still took those games, and it wasn't close. I hadn't lost a game let alone a match and was feeling pretty good having bested two of the better regular players our store has to offer. Then I ran into allies: Naya allies with a splash of black for Bala Ged Thief and Hagra Diabolist. Needless to say the combination of explosive early game possibilities and recurring hand disruption is bad for my deck. I won game two on the back of turn two Ratchet Bomb, turn three Tumble Magnet, turn four Day of Judgement ready, but lost the match. I got paired against the ally deck again in top four, and almost the exact same sequence happened, losing games 1 and 3 but winning game two off multiple Days. The match really came down to whether or not I had the Day. If I did, I won. If not...
Back to the nearer past at this FNM. I played allies in round one, elves in round two had the bye in round three and won against artifact aggro in round four. I did not make top four.
So, I've found the flaw in the deck: fast creature based decks. It's a pretty big flaw. Not really addressed by bringing in 15 cards in games two and three either. So lets talk about the matches a bit more precisely.

Round 1 - Dave with Allies
Dave is an FNM regular. He almost always in my experience plays aggressive but off the radar decks that are fairly well tuned to have consistent aggressive pressure from turn one. I always know when sitting down across from Dave that I better have a hand that can deal with a lot of pressure fast. Almost all of my most effective ways to deal with fast pressure resided in my sideboard, so I knew game one was going to suck. It did.
I had a turn two contagion clasp but he was on the play and I was entering my scoop phase facing a turn one Hada Freeblade turn two Kazandu Blademaster which got the clasp -1/-1, turn three Kabira Evangel, turn four double Akoum Battlesingers. Yeah I lost that one.
I was able to pull out game two with multiple Day of Judgements and my management of my life total. I kept my life high through Ajani Goldmane, and lots of chump blocking. I was finally able to gain board control and I began attacking. This is what his side of the board looked like at the end of game two:














Yes he had started to rebuild, but with my life climbing into the high 20's and him having no cards in hand, he scooped when I started attacking with:















A vigilant Stirring Wildwood with 4 counters and Ajani at 5 counters with enough mana to activate twice a turn so I could block and attack. He recognized my inevitability and we moved to game 3.
This is what game three's opening hand looked like:

Now I think that, looking back at my decision making, that this was a major mistake hand to keep. I really should be mulliganing for the Day since if I play it my chances of survival are like 200% bigger. If I DON'T draw the day, I might kill a dude turn two on the draw, have a blocker (chumper most likely) on turn three and Garruk + beast token turn 4 for another blocker. This is basically what happened. I used Sea Gate Oracle to dig for answers, but none were forthcoming.








At the end of game 3 his board looked like:



Yeah protection from multiple colors a turn.










I lost that one.

Round 2: Paul running Ascension Elves
Game one can be summed up like this: Active Beastmaster Ascension with multiple creatures. I have nothing main deck to deal with that before turn 5 at the earliest, but I didn't live that long.
Game two went long off the back of two Contagion Clasp, some proliferation and a Wurmcoil Engine. But his board looked like this:


(I'm not sure why this pic is showing up sideways, but yeah, I'm still new at this, sorry.)
Let's see what's going on here... An active Beastmaster Ascension (no the counter doesn't mean it's at one), Garruk at three counters, a Wolfbriar Elemental with two wolves, one Nest Invader, one Kozilek's Predator, three eldrazi spawn, and Eldrazi Monument.
Oooof.
What a beating.









Round 3: Bye - or as Eric, the person running the event, so kindly put it: "Stop sucking, so you don't get the bye!"

I used the time to trade a bit. I picked up a few cards I had been looking for, like my fourth Primeval Titan. Yay playset! I helped out a new player, Mike. Mike was only there with his older cousin, Joey, didn't know how to play Magic, but wanted to learn. He came up to me twice on the evening with cards he had found lying around leftover from old drafts that no one was claiming and asking to trade. I wanted to help him out so in exchange for one Contagion Clasp, which I didn't need, I gave him a budget red/blue deck so that he could get games in and learn the rules. It wasn't much, but it started him out with something that could be fun.

Aside: I've been playing at TOGIT for a LONG time. I know just about everyone who plays at the store even if they play games like Warhammer, that I don't play. If you are a person who likes to play this game, or enjoys game stores, then please help out young players. It is in your best interest to foster players and help them get better, learn the rules, and have fun. Why? It's not really some altruistic feeling of cosmic well-being or Karma. The reason we should all do this is that the more players this game, and game stores have, the more likely they are to keep going and to thrive in a very hostile financial time. Wizards will only keep making the game if it stays profitable. In the same vein, game stores will only stay open if they make money. If game stores don't make money, or Wizards decides that Magic is no longer a good bet, this game we all love will go the way of the Dodo, fast. So help out those around you, teach new players the rules, trade with them and maybe don't do so to make the best trade, but to make the best trade for them. Give people good feelings about this game or any game your game store sells and they will come back to keep playing. Gaming is about competition and interpersonal interaction. At its core it's a social experience. Like Facebook has found out with games like Farmville, the more you make it fun for others to play the games you like to play, the more fun you will have playing those same games, and the more likely those games and the stores you play them in will be able to keep supplying these tournaments and events.
End aside.

Round 4 - Zoltan running artifact/white weenie aggro
I honestly don't remember much about the first game except that Thrummingbird and Ajani allowed me to keep ahead of his damage output. The end of the game looked like this:

Yes, one of the main reasons I think this deck is so much fun to play is the ability to have a LOT of planeswalkers on the board simultaneously.
















His board looked like this:

That is Stoneforge Mystic wearing a Sword of Vengeance, a Basilisk Collar, and a Strata Scythe imprinting a Plains with 5 of his and one of mine on the field. The deciding play was when he attacked Elspeth at 6 counters and I blocked with all of my creatures. With the new rules regarding deathtouch and trample, he could have assigned one damage to each creature, killed them thanks to first strike, and then trampled Ms. Planeswalker to death. Instead, we both forgot this possibility, and he killed two of my creatures, gained 9 life, and the rest of my creatures killed his Mystic. This allowed all of my planeswalkers to get one final usage, die, and then Elspeth went ultimate, wiping his board but not mine thanks to lots of tokens and earning the concession.
He decided to give me the match then and there since we had only 10 minutes left in the round and neither of us was going to make top four anyway.


All in all, not quite the evening of planeswalker face bashing for which I was hoping.
What did I learn from it?
First - My deck needs to be better able to deal with creatures main board, but having the Days main kills too many things I want to keep around for my liking, so the main deck needs some adjustment to deal with the larger pool of fast decks like the two RDW I saw or the three weenie decks I played against.
Second - I can't believe this actually happened but it did. I've just started this blog. It's been active for less than a week. One of my readers, you know who you are, changed his deck, at least in part, because he knew what deck I was playing, and knew it was a bad match-up for the U/B deck he most likely would have been playing instead. This is my first experience with the idea that by writing down my own thoughts and publishing them to the web, I actually have the ability to influence the decisions of others. The power, the POWER! So that's cool. But I now have to be aware that my opponents might be reading my blog and preparing for my deck. Hehe, it's a new world.
Third - I need to make better mulligan decisions against decks that put on fast pressure. I know what I need to survive, and I think I need to be a bit more effective in deciding when a hand is likely to get there or not.
Fourth - Blogging is fun! Seriously, everyone I talked to who had heard about or seen the site liked it. It is also a great way for me to help myself improve by focusing more closely on my play choices.
Anyway that's it for this weeks report.
Hope you enjoyed it.
- Rogue Insight

P.S. I submitted my decklist to the Deck Doctor (Conley Woods & the Channel Fireball crew) and I'm interested to see what they say. However I suspect I'll be brewing a new deck this week so stay tuned!