C'est la peste! Sauve qui peut!

Went to Atlanta for a magical dude-time at the StarCity this past weekend, but while drippily pacing back and forth between the bed and the sink at 4 a.m. on Sunday I decided it was better to sleep in than agonize over what to sideboard against Pox for the Open.

We all dropped a round to Pox in the Challenge the day before - me salvaging a 3-1 finish with Deadguy by beating Maverick, Death and Taxes, and Ad Nauseum Tendrils*; Sterling with Reanimator losing to my having loaned Carlisle the deck's Elesh Norn; and Quinten with Enchantress... all hating Pox by the end of it.

[* Slaughter Pact cannot target Tidehollow Sculler, even when it is holding your one copy of Tendrils, sir.]

Pox goes to top-deck mode by about turn four, and its plan is taking you there with it.  Then it needs maybe ten or more awful turns to actually kill you, but in the meantime you have no grip and no land.  I randomly windmill-slammed my one-of Elspeth off the top against the deck, and then spent a good 15 turns playing draw-go against an active LilianaOTV and Cursed Scroll, unable to maintain enough land to cast and keep a dude alive to just swoop in and kill his stupid third Lily, eventually unable even to afford Vindicating it.
Anyway that opponent said he dropped two rounds to Stoneblade, presumably because he can't do anything about Planeswalkers or artifacts, and I guess if blue keeps him off Smallpox or Sinkhole long enough it can resolve JaceTMS and handle top-deck mode quite nicely thank you.

A year or two ago my rationale in preparing for StarCity events was two-fold: 1) don't play blue; it's hard** and Merfolk is[/was] everywhere AND 2) actively fuck over people for making the obvious choice to play blue.  Also, while in the abstract JaceTMS is the best planeswalker, ElspethKE not only trumps him but pulls her weight in a vacuum as well.

[** I know I've said before and continue to believe it is very hard to Hymn to Tourach (read: Force of Will) yourself in a profitable way, and I prefer to leave such meta-sustaining moves to keener players.]

Anyway.  Adam Cai's list from the event does a lot of the things I wish I'd been doing last week while sighing over how linear G/w Maverick felt.***  But then I wasn't testing post-board, where Choke is pure Wayne Brady.  I guess Cai thought so too, even though the card clearly hurt him as well. 

[*** The urge to avoid the expected--Punishing Mav--was admittedly a totally off-with-the-nose-to-spite-the-face type of situmation.  D'oh.]

The top lists that day packed a few surprises - when was the last time you saw Goblins vying for single-elim?  Me, I left Death and Taxes for dead years ago.  Now I'm wondering, could he just drop the Stoneforge Mystics for maindeck CatBoss, and instead of choosing among SwordOfs just play three Jittes?  CatBoss is part of this dream I have where I Piss Some People Off.

And I like this micro-Zoo list, though his board-hate felt thin and left me wondering if he sometimes mulls to oblivion.  Maybe because he can theoretically kill on three he just crushes[/ed] dreams anyway.

In other news, Past in Flames placed 2nd in a 156-man event, and didn't even run black to do so.  Well, okay, yes, it did cast Burning Wish for the Tendrils, hitting the cost's BB via I guess Manamorphose or LED.  It's interesting to me he went into White for Silence when black provides discard and more rituals, but thanks to his cheaper mana-base I'm planning to take this build for a spin soon, though I barely know how.

Also in that top-8, someone cowboyed up and made Back to Basics awesome in a Stoneblade shell.  My one complaint is once your manas are boned the deck seems likely to then need two geologic epochs to actually dead your life to zero, but clearly that wasn't holding back others in contention that day.

Outside that, I just wanna get down with weird stuff like Elspeth Tirel, Volt Charge and Bloodgift Demon.  Maybe I'm still sick...