Saturday 22 August. Four members of the LCOS (Yuse, Joe, Rubén and myself) arranged to go and visit the Zaragoza Premodern league.
My day starts pretty early — 3:30 in the morning, to be precise. Basically because without my morning coffee I am nobody, and because a quick shower before leaving is the only way to turn up properly awake to meet the rest of the expedition. I pick Joe up in Blanes and we head for the meeting point, Granollers, where Yuse and Rubén would get in the car so we could set off towards Zaragoza.
As we are leaving Granollers we take our eyes off it for a second and the phone’s GPS does its thing: it recalculates the route and sends us onto the Barcelona ring roads… 30 minutes later we are on the road to Zaragoza, and we arrive at around 9 with no further mishaps.
A light breakfast and we head to Doctor Ocio to register and start the tournament.
The deck
I am playing a deck I copied card for card from Diliz, which gave me good results last time out at the Premodern Fight Club, scraping a Top 4 and winning me an English Wasteland. One small tweak and back to testing.
[CREATURES]
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
2 Quirion Dryad
[INSTANTS]
3 Daze
2 Fire // Ice
2 Fling
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Mana Leak
2 Naturalize
2 Opt
3 Stifle
3 Vision Charm
[SORCERIES]
4 Portent
[LANDS]
2 City of Brass
2 Flooded Strand
1 Forest
2 Gemstone Mine
7 Island
1 Mountain
1 Shivan Reef
2 Wooded Foothills
3 Yavimaya Coast
[SIDEBOARD]
2 Annul
2 Compost
3 Hydroblast
2 Pyroclasm
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Tranquil Domain
2 Tsabo's Web
The Swiss
Round 1 — Mono Black
In the first game my opponent gets comfortable, thinking this is Madness, and when he sees the “prawn” his face drops. On to game two.
Not much of a story there: I play a couple of Mongooses and my opponent, with several creature removal spells in hand, cannot stop them. I take the game and the round 2-0.
Round 2 — MonoU Stiflenought (1-0)
A very hard round against one of the strongest decks in the format, and one where I am the underdog in a counter war. Which is exactly what happens in game one.
In game two I get luckier, and being on the play helps too: I manage to apply pressure and eventually land a Dreadnought I can defend, taking the game.
In game three I had no chance — MonoU brought out everything it had and barely let me do a thing. I lose the round 1-2.
Round 3 — Dead Guy Ale (1-1)
We all know Dead Guy Ale has a tropical mana base and that, on a bad day, it is a deck that leaves you stranded far too often. That is what happened to my opponent in game one.
In game two he had a bit more luck, but my Mongooses (they are very, very good) and some fortune of my own let me turn around a game that looked lost. A hard-fought 2-0.
Round 4 — RB Goblins (2-1)
This is a player I have faced a couple of times in Old School, since they have come down to Barcelona to play our league. He is on a Goblins list splashing black.
In game one I keep the Goblins under control until a Dreadnought closes it out. In game two, after sideboarding, Pyroclasm and Hydroblast handle his game plan very well, and a couple of well-timed Mana Leaks let me steer the game where I want it. I win the round 2-0.
Round 5 (3-1)
I talk to my opponent and, since we are 5th and 6th in the Swiss, we decide to draw the round and save our energy for the Top 8, where we will be facing the players at the top of the standings.
A little wander around the shop. I watch Yuse lose the Win and In to MonoU, which drops him to 13th. Rubén wins his round, but it was not enough and he finishes 9th. Joe, for his part, wins his and makes the Top 8 in second place.
A good result for the LCOS expedition: two in the Top 8 (2nd and 7th) and another two just outside it (9th and 13th).
Final Swiss record: 3-1-1.
Lunch
We stop to eat at a restaurant near Doctor Ocio, with manga-style murals on the walls and where pizza was the dish of choice for most of us. Buying and selling cards, and a few of us showing off some very pretty cardboard. Good fellowship over lunch with our friends from Zaragoza and, once we are done, back to Doctor Ocio so Joe and I could play the Top 8.
The Top 8
Top 8 — Mono Black
Oddly enough, something very similar to round one happens. My opponent, seeing me on blue-green, mentions that he is putting together the very same deck I am playing, thinking it is Madness — and gets a big surprise when a Dreadnought hits the table and he cannot deal with it.
In game two he makes me discard a Stifle while I have a Dreadnought in hand and a Compost, and that gives me a big advantage. I play Compost on turn two and then manage the game with two Mongooses. I take the round 2-0.
Top 4 — MonoU Stiflenought
Another MonoU. This time, the guy who beat Yuse in the Win and In.
In game one, strangely, everything is going my way, until just as it is ripe for the taking and I need almost nothing to win, I draw 4-5 lands in a row and he finds the Dreadnought that had not shown its face all game. It blows me out of the water.
Game two, on the play: I land a Dreadnought and handle his answers.
In game three there is a key moment where I am not sure I played a Daze correctly (my reasoning against Yuse’s — and in the end Yuse is right), with a Dreadnought on the table for each of us. He attacks and throws a Vision Charm at mine to phase it out and win the game. 1-2.
Once my tournament is over I find out that Joe lost in the Top 8 and has gone off to spend his store credit after finishing 5th. I get store credit too and, since there is no particular card I am after (that they have in the shop…), I pick up a couple of things — a Volrath’s Shapeshifter among them — and spend the rest on bits and pieces my travelling companions wanted.
The drive home
The drive home was very relaxed. While Yuse and I watched the Sudamericano (I was driving and Yuse was working the GPS), Joe and Rubén had a nap.
A couple of Osborne bulls later, and a few cars broken down on the hard shoulder, we cross into Catalonia (we could tell because the GPS would not stop warning us about speed cameras, something that never happened in Aragón….) and we stop to refuel, smoke and stretch our legs at a service area past Lleida.
From there, on to Granollers, Blanes and home, with a stop for a bucket of KFC fried chicken for dinner.
I am sorry I have not included my opponents’ names — I am hopeless at this, and I never remember them or write them down so I can put together the report afterwards.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Cheers!