By random determination, I played Shantak's deck first.
Game 1 (shantak): My opening hand has one swamp and a lot of high cc cards, so I mulligan it. My six card hand has mana and
Bitterblossom and
Duress, but two
Ivory Tower that I predict will be totally useless. (I'm right :p) I keep the hand anyway, hoping
Duress and
Bitterblossom are enough. I
Duress turn 1 and see the AI is stuck with a 1 mana hand
I gank his
Hymn to Tourach, leaving it with swords, edict, baneslayer, vindicate, land, and some other card I forget. (
Tombstalker maybe? I'd have to check video) Anyway, it's a fairly interesting game, since we're both short on resources to start. The AI could've done a little better if it had used the
Vindicate once it got 3 mana out, but never cast it, and ended the game with 4 lands.
Game 1 (discoransom): My opening hand is awesome. Turn 2
Tidehollow Sculler ganks
Bitterblossom, and the rest of AIs cards cost 4 or more mana. My turn 3 Hymn knocks out
Grave Pact and
Forest, and
Shrieking Grotesque knocks out another forest. AI casts nothing but
Ivory Tower all game; easy win.
Game 2 (shantak): I'm off to a pretty good start with 2
Bitterblossom, despite the early Hymn I have to eat. When I try to
Regrowth Tendrils of Corruption, the game starts doing some really weird shit, and I try to debug back to the state it should be in, but it locks up.
Game 2a (shantak): Lots of land, pulse, tendrils, and monument start me off. I lose
Eldrazi Monument and a land to
Gerrard's Verdict. A couple
Tidehollow Sculler make life difficult, but somehow I manage to work around them.
Bitterblossom comes down, but all the faeries have to chump
Tombstalker. Garruk comes out and manages to get one beast token out. The next few turns I keep debating whether I should cast
Damnation or not. I chose not to, and despite eventually losing them to a Hymn, I win, and that lone beast token gets the kill in the end.
Game 2 (discoransom): Awesome opening hand. Turn 2
Tidehollow Sculler sees AI with huge mana flood, and I gank
Maelstrom Pulse. Turn 3
Gerrard's Verdict, and he discards tendrils and a land (he now has only land in hand) It's an easy win from there.
Game 3 (shantak): AI gets manascrewed at 2 for awhile, while I have
Bitterblossom turn 2 and Garruk on turn 4 or maybe 5. Then AI goes into a land glut, but strangely still doesn't play much. I throw a
Duress down, and to my shock see
Vindicate, Hymn,
Tombstalker and Baneslayer, none of which it is playing, with six mana down! *facepalm* My token army just rolls over the AI, and all it plays from then on is a useless swords on a beast on its last turn. It could have done a lot better had it used
Vindicate on either bitterblossom or garruk, but I did have a tendrils waiting for baneslayer.
Game 3 (discoransom): AI manascrewed at 1 land for several turns. All it casts are two
Ivory Tower, which are useless as my discard keeps his hand small. Easiest win of the day so far.
Game 4 (shantak): I get two
Bitterblossom and Garruk, and end up with a massive token army for the win. AI did stall long enough that I did tendril my own faerie in response to a tidehollow sculler at one point (AI had no targets) since it was my only card in hand and I was nervous I might die to bitterblossom if I didn't. It turned out that I won at 9 life (would've been 3 without tendrils) so I could've just made it.
Game 4 (discoransom): I keep a one mana hand, hoping I'll draw more, and my spells are pretty nice. Disco's deck has 25 land, which is good in this situation. I get a second land on turn 3. AI ends up doing most of the damage to itself with *three*
Bitterblossom and a
Phyrexian Arena. My
Tidehollow Sculler got a couple hits in, but the rest was all self-inflicted
Game 5 (shantak): I keep a one mana hand, hoping for that second so I can cast the
Night's Whisper. I topdeck the land, play whisper, get a 3rd land, and play my
Phyrexian Arena turn 3. Turn 4 I draw another land and Tendrils a Sculler. When I try to
Regrowth the tendrils a few turns later, the game does the same bullshit it did back in game 2, and I get locked out.
Game 5a (shantak): Okay, lesson learned. DO NOT REGROWTH TENDRILS OF CORRUPTION
This game is probably the most intense so far. AI figures out the power of
Vindicate, and takes out my
Phyrexian Arena. I take some early hits, and am starting to get rather worried, but I manage to stabilize, just barely, and the AI has stopped playing spells. When I get
Duress, face smashes into palm, hard, as I see a hand full of goodies that would have probably kicked my ass had it used them. As it is, I win due to AI error.
I have to go for awhile, so I will continue Bracket G:
Sudden Death later tonight. Video will be uploaded later, and I'll split it into parts, the first one ending here.
Posted: 12 Jun 2010, 10:06