I’m writing this at the 11 am prerelease for the newest set of Magic: the Gethering, Born of the Gods. Apparently the midnight prerelease got 45 players here, and there are quite a number here for the season, about 28 by my count.

The final number turned out to be 33. I chose Green as the colour of my pack, and ended up with the following deck:

10 Swamps, 7 Forests
1 Forlorn Pseudamma
2 Insatiable Harpy
1 Mogis Marauder
2 Servant of Tymaret
2 Spiteful Returned
1 Graverobber Spider
1 Leafcrown Dryad
1 Nessian Wilds Ravager
2 Nyxborn Wolf
1 Pheres-Band Tromper
1 Opaline Unicorn
1 Satyr Wayfinder
1 Witches’ Eye
1 Asphyxiate
1 Necrobite
1 Pharika’s Cure
1 Fade into Antiquity
1 Fated Intervention
1 Karametra’s Favor

Not being played for some insane cards – in blue, I had 2 Griptides, a Voyage’s End and a Sea God’s Revenge. I may end up using it before the event ends, but I’m very interested to see how my deck does in the first round. For the first time I’m main-decking Witches’ Eye, primarily as a way of triggering the Inspired creatures when they can’t attack.

Round 1: vs Jordan

This round went 2-1 in my favour, with the two wins coming courtesy of the Inspired creatures – the Servant of Tymaret in particular. (Servant of an uninspiring rare!) Jordan was playing Blue/Green, and had the new planeswalker, Kiora. She came up in two games, both ones I won. She could have been good, but I managed to finesse a few tricks so that she was eliminated – Jordan made the mistake of targeting one of his creatures in the first game, which I killed in response and left Kiora undefended. In the third game, I just had enough intimidate to deal with it.

1-0

Round 2: vs Shane Fowler

Shane and I were delighted to be playing each other again, since it has been quite a time since we last played each other. Shane’s deck didn’t think so, his Blue/Red deck that was full of removal decided that it would give him mountains and blue cards in both games. My deck really didn’t give him any time to recover, with Necrobite coming into play (deathtouch+regenerate) when Shane looked like he had one creature that would work. Just layering on bestowed enchantments onto the Forlorn Pseudamma or Servant of Tymaret was enough to keep up the pressure, and when the Spiteful Returned came out, the clock started ticking very loudly.

2-0

Round 3: vs Chris G.

This round was over very quickly, and not in my favour. Chris was running a Red/White deck of surpassing speed, good removal (he used Divine Verdict against my Nessian Wilds Ravager!) and some really big bombs – and he was drawing brilliantly, so the land/spell ratio was excellent. Against that, I drew my 1-toughness creatures and died a lot. I really, really wanted to see a Servant of Tymaret this match, but none were forthcoming. Chris’s Forgestoker Dragon in the final game was something I couldn’t deal with, although I was pleased with my Pheres Band Tromper with two Spiteful Returned on it – my clock just started too late, and Chris won 2-0.

2-1

Round 4 vs Caitlin

Caitlin, a relatively new player, started by playing an Omenspeaker and putting an Oracle’s Insight on it. This was rubbing it in, if appropriate. Unfortunately for Caitlin, I got a really good start in both games, with Spiteful Returned landing on my cheap creatures; she countered some, but she couldn’t counter enough of them, and she was quite creature-shy, despite playing Oracle’s Insight in both games. The second game, the Oracle’s Insight ended up on a creature I could kill, and so I did! A Cavern Harpy with a Spiteful Returned kept me above 20 life and quickly depleted Caitlin’s life, and so ended the second game.

3-1

Thoughts:

Born to the Gods was a lot of fun to play with in this game; Inspired was the most interesting mechanic I experienced – only one Tribute card was played. The interactions with untapping and tapping effects made for some very interesting game states and decisions, and made this a sealed pool I wish I could play more of.