Magic (Saturday) Recap #24 - PART 1

(I found this image when I googled, 'Mimic Vat')

Magic is a very fluid game. There is not one way of playing it that rises above the rest, and defines the game as the way of playing it.
Take for instance Saturday. Paul was out of town, so Don was hosting as the interim Snape's apartment. We were expecting a turnout roughly the size of the previous Saturday; instead we were surprised to find that it would only be myself and Don playing. If we were playing Baseball, that would have been the end of the fun right then and there, but with Magic we were able to play, just the two of us, for quite a few hours with competitive back and forth games.

Let's get right to the action!

The night started out with Don bringing out his deck that dominated the scene last week 'When Elves Attack' which features a lot of elves, sun titans and mimic vats, along with some mana ramping and a few planeswalker friends.
Don was matched up against my vampire themed deck 'Vampirehouse-5'. I had retooled the deck from the previous week after getting smacked down by Paul's white knight deck. My deck now splashes red give me access to lightning bolt, burst lightning, and mark of mutiny. The creature base was reconfigured to feature more spot removal and direct damage with some new faces added to the mix, and some old friends leaving to do bigger and better things. Sorry Vampire Lacerator.
The first match saw me jump out quickly in game one with a vampire board presence, and a blade of the bloodchief. Don dropped some elves, and a blinding mage, but by turn 6 I was coming across for lethal damage.
Game two saw me throw a blade of the bloodchief out first thing. Later it was attached to a captivating vampire. Soon after that I was bringing out the Viscera Seer and sacrificing my friends and giving my vampire a lot of extra power which was eating away at Don's life. Whenever Don had a creature out it seemed that I had a quick answer for it. Game two ended two turns longer than the first game, but still in my favor. Much to my delight, I did not see a single Mimic Vat the whole first match.

After the dust settled we reshuffled and started a second match. I was eager to keep my luck rolling so I continued to play the vampires. Don was either a glutton for punishment, or eager to redeem himself, and continued to play his green and white Mimic Vat based deck.

The second match saw Don with a bit more of a board presence to begin with as he ramped into a poisonous elf early on, but my dark tutelage was helping me get card advantage while he was busy poisoning my for a few turns. By that time I had out my third captivating vampire and Kalastria Highborn as well. The game was on a see-saw, until I was I top-decked a Gatekeeper of Malakir which opened up some room for me to get through. Once I put Anowon, the Ruin Sage out it was all but over for game one.
Game two saw me out on the board with creatures pacing Don's elves. Nobody attacked, but then I got my blade of the bloodchief out again, and started going after Don trying to force him to chump block. He did not, but then my lightning bolt saw to it that his creature made it into the graveyard for me, giving my creature some nice bonuses. The blade of the bloodchief was promptly naturalized, but my board presence remained strong. Don saw his first Mimic Vat at the twilight of his life points, but did not get the draw to combat the vampire onslaught.

With enough of the Mimic Vat deck getting beat Don pulled out his black and red direct damage deck: 'Fire and Brimstone'
I kept with my vampire deck, and we found that suddenly we were playing mirrored colors. In game one I was lucky to get one of my blade of the bloodchief cards out early again. It continued to be a different maker, and Don no longer had a supply of naturalizes to get rid of it. I waded through Prodigal Pyromancers and Brimstone Mages to get to victory, but not before succumbing to many a lightning bolt, and the occasional ping from a pyromancer.
Game 2 played out very similar, but we Don striking heavily in the early game with lots of direct damage. Later I was able to gain some back with Vampire Nighthawks, and Kalastria Highborn, and then had the game thoroughly in hand.

After six victories in a row with my newly remodeled vampire deck I was thinking that I must have been some sort of deck building demi-god in the past week to have created something so powerful. I was scared to continue playing it so I put it away for the rest of the night.

So next Don brought out his new mono-green deck 'Force of Nature'. It does not feature Force of Nature, although it has plenty of other big bad dudes going on.
I played my Pyromancer Ascension deck, which was former an extended legal deck, but had recently been overhauled to be legal in standard play.

We started game one of the match and it began poorly. I was quick to get pyromancers ascension out, but Don was quick to let me pump it up, and tap myself dry before naturalizing it. Naturalize, my mortal enemy! I never recovered as Don swarmed in with Garruk's Packleader, for the kill.
Game two saw me feebly attempting to control and bounce Don into submission but he was drawing too strong, and eventually got ahead of me in creatures, and then soon life, and when I couldn't seem to draw a pyromancer's ascension if my life depended on it (and it did!) I was brought down again in short order by giant swings by Don's creatures.

Also eager for punishment I opted to play my deck again in a match and Don's obliged by playing his mono-green again. I was certain I had had bad luck, and I could turn it around. I was wrong.
Game one saw me cower in the face of more naturalizes and more Garruk's Packleader and more death for me.
Game two saw me finally get a Pryomancer's ascension activated and I chanced playing Call to Mind to retrieve my counterspells, but it was one turn to late and while I was tapped out Don played a creature I would have no answer for. Pelakka Wurm. My new mortal enemy! The creature stole all hope from me and my only play to save myself was to bounce the creature. I waited to counter it, but Don naturalized my ascension, which I only had a mana leak for, which was useless with how much land he had available. Soon he had enough land to cast the creature and stay out of range from my mana leak. I really wished I had Flashfreezes sideboarded.
Minutes later I was dead, and Don was feeling much better about the evening.

Next Don and I battled Mimic Vat against Mimic Vat. This battle was epic. Both games Don won taking the match, and his natualizes were just to good for me to keep up with especially when he was backing up his Mimic Vats with a Sun Titan. The tide of the game swept back and forth with Don taking control of the field only to see a Black Sun's Zenith or Day of Judgment destroy everything and then I put out my own Sun Titan, to grab a Mimic Vat. Then more naturalize. The both games lasted so long that we had nearly decked ourselves. After the games were over we both had to stand up and stretch and take a break before jumping back into the game.

So after 12 games I had won six, only to watch Don win the next six. What a strange evening!

After the break Don pulled out his 'Force of Nature' again and I grabbed my 'Parity of Parody' deck which as some of you have become familiar with, is focused on poisoning you with pumped up artifact creatures that you may not be able to prevent. With the release of Mirrodin Besieged the deck is even more fleshed out and possibly more powerful than it had been.
Game one saw Don creeping in for some early damage only to see me drop a tempered steel enchantment on turn three and turn four, with no creatures out. Then on turn 5 I dropped a Necropede (pronounced Necropenis) and suddenly had a 5/5 infect out. Don was thinking, "no bueno." On turn six with Don's threat diminished I dropped an armored ascension on my necropenis and suddenly it was a 10/10 creature that was flying over for the win.
Game two saw a similar beginning with tempered steels leading into a Plague Myr and a Necropenis. Then I drew an armored ascension on turn five and dropped it on necropenis, and came over for the win.

The next match was my Mill-kill deck based around Bloodchief Ascension, and Don's 'Fire and Brimstone'.
Game one was put into control quickly when I got a turn one ascension out, and then a turn two ascension. On turn 4 I had them both pumped with a turn three necrogen censer and a lightning bolt. On turn 5 I had a Tome Scour, and the game was over.
Game two saw me searching my deck frantically for my bloodchief ascension, which had just come so easily in game one. I cast sign in blood on myself twice, and I had a dark tutelage running, and nothing was giving me my card. Soon I was doing more damage to myself than I could handle, and Don was creeping in with direct damage with lightning bolts and pyromancers. Without the engine to run my deck, I was a sitting duck.
Game three I sideboarded heavily using land enchantments and Wrexial, the Risen Deep. The second turn I put a spreading seas onto his swamp leaving it useless. He played a turn 2 mountain which I responded to on turn 3 by playing contaminated ground on it. Don was befuddled. "You turned my swamp into an island, and then my mountain into a swamp?" Yes I did. Yes I did. I turned his next mountain into a swamp as well with another contaminated ground and added a bloodchief ascension to the field. Soon he was forced to tap his land and set off my ascension, and then I milled him when he searched his library with a surprise archive trap.
The final match we play I brought out my previously defeated Mimic Vat based deck and he played his 'Force of Nature' against it.
Game one saw me Baneslayer and Skinrender my way to victory.
Game two was more of a slog, and Don seemed to have answers and defenses for everything to start with. Then I was able to destroy a Pelakka wurm and put it on the Mimic Vat and that was the end for Don. Killed by his own Pelakka wurm, which seemed fitting in a way since he had killed me earlier with my own Massacre Wurm.

The was the end of Saturday. It was an epic night.

The game of the night was game two of "When Elves Attack" against "A Tale of Two Mimics" where we almost decked ourselves and finally Don stole a Massacre Wurm from me onto his vat, and slowly killed me with it.

Stay tuned in for part 2 (Monday)...