Dec 30, 2012

Season V.3: 28th of December 2012

Apparantly people like to play (Peasant) Magic in between the holidays! 17 people attended last friday's tournament, awesomesauce!

Rob de Jonge took the evening in a 4-0 sweep piloting Black Fish, congratulations! It is often times true that an aggressive deck exploits the weaknesses in the opponent's plays or draws. Black Fish, however, is the kind of deck that not only exploits those moments, but creates them! This power comes at a price though, as the deck is quite suicidal

The top 6 of this tournament is complemented by more disruption in UB Rack, one pure aggro deck (Boros) and three decks I would label as 'combo', reanimator being the most obvious of the three. Elves in my opinion is not a pure aggro deck as most of its critters have a supporting role. You might thignk Desmond's UR Tempo is an aggro deck, but as of this moment I label it as combo... I mean if you can manage a turn three kill with nothing but a kiln fiend you are 'comboing out' right?

As a sidenote: Due to several requests to have all decklists available here I will simply post all of them from next month on (reason for not doing that this months is that a significant number of decklists have gone AWOL). But this means that starting next year you will have all the more decks to study for do's, don'ts and perhaps that one card you hadn't considered just yet

Enjoy these last 2012 decklists, see you in 2013!

Rank
Player (click * to see decklist)
Deck
Colors
P/W/D
1.
Rob de Jonge *
Black Fish
B
4/4/0
2.
Jasper Boelens *
Black Unicorns
U B
4/3/0
3.
Desmond Scholtens *
UR Tempo
U R
4/3/0
4.
Martijn Beljaars *
Boros
W R
4/3/0
5.
Martijn Labohm *
Reanimator
U B
4/3/0
6.
Mathijs Hoogeveen *
Elves
G
4/3/0

Dec 9, 2012

Untouched gems in Peasant: Qasali Pridemage

Hello fellow players, interested in Peasant magic! I'm planning on putting a series of articles on the blog about strong cards in Peasant Magic that rarely see play. Why is it with some cards that we can see the potential but they never end up in our decks? This time let's look at Qasali Pridemage.

What do we see? It's a 2/2 Cat Wizard for GW. That's a bear. It has Exalted and for one colourless you can sacrifice him to destroy an artifact or enchantment. I think we can be quick to conclude that it is a strong card: a bear that boosts solitary attackers and holds an answer to opposing enchantments and artifacts.

So, why didn't we see a single Pridemage in any Peasant decklist for ages? I think the answer lies in the fact that there wasn't a deck in which he could fit. GW decks weren't good enough because they weren't able to cope with decks like Faeries, Blink or Storm. GW decks fight fair combats where other decks pack things like Hymn to Tourach, Mulldrifter or Spellstutter Sprite. Now I'm not saying that those cards are unfair, but they are powerful and put the opponent on a disadvantage in an aggressive way. They do 2 for 1 and most GW cards don't. The Pridemage is a support card that can fix certain problems, but it won't put you on cardadvantage and isn't a part of your winning combo.

But I think it is still possible to build a quite competitive GW deck with Qasali Pridemage. Martijn Beljaars played Midnight Presence on the Peasant tournament of october. Possibly maindeck and certainly in the sidboard he could have played some Pridemages. Let me inspire you to look further into GW.

Deck (click deck to see decklist)
Colors
GW Beats
W G

This deck is pretty straight forward and play decisions are not too difficult. It has got a few reactive cards in Vines of Vastwood and Swords to Plowshares, other than these it's just play creatures and put them sideways.

Something with a little more perseverance:

Deck (click deck to see decklist)
Colors
GW Populate
W G

These are just example decks in which Qasali Pridemage fits. I'm sure you can do better than this and I'm looking forward to see some reactions!

Hope you enjoyed, see you next time,

Johan

Nov 25, 2012

Season V.2: 23rd of November 2012

And another great tournament in the Purperen Draak!

The top 6 of this tournament was aggressive, in your face and very very unfair with three faeries decks, MBA, a soldiers deck and the aptly named 'Can't touch this' of Sepp Jansen.

Let us first address Sepp's deck, some stats:

- Only two non-land card types, creatures and... ENCHANTMENTS!

- An enchantment to creature ratio of 27:14.

- Maybe the largest creature in peasant by turn three?

- I believe no one has played a portal: three kingdoms card before?

But all jokes aside, I think Sepp has showed his opponents that hexproof is a really good ability. Bring out your edict effects players!

Maarten saved my skin on my statement about discard from last tournament's blog. :) He also brought out one of the crown jewels of Peasant Magic, Sinkhole. His deck and performance persuaded me to finally get a playset of Sinkholes. Turn two Hymn or Sinkhole after a turn one dude will probably set you up beautifully for a win right then and there.

Jolmer played white weenie, as did Jan Rigter (not in top 6) and both players showed that white weenie will punish a player who misses a beat. This is the clear-cut sign of a good aggro deck, although I fear that sometimes white weenie is still too 'fair' to take on some of the other decks in the format.

Three faerie decks fill the remaining slots in top 6 and, although each player brought his own version of the deck, they proved that faeries remains a top contender in this format.

After two tournaments Desmond leads the charts of the competition with two very solid performances, good job! To all other seeking to gently drop-kick him from his throne, friday the 28th of December you will have the chance! I know I will try my hardest! :)

Le roi est mort, vive le roi!

Siebe says bye!

Rank
Player (click * to see decklist)
Deck
Colors
P/W/D
01.
Siebe van der Veer *
Faeries
U
4/3/0
02.
Sepp Jansen *
Can't Touch This
W G
4/3/0
03.
Desmond Scholtens *
Faeries
U
4/3/0
04.
Maarten Jacobs *
MBA - Black Fish
B
4/3/0
05.
Sven Smit *
Faeries
U
4/2/1
06.
Jolmer de Grijs *
WW Soldiers
W
4/2/1

Nov 13, 2012

Set Review: Return to Ravnica

So perhaps a little overdue, but still! A review of Return to Ravnica and its impact on Peasant Magic.

Johan Rots, Martijn Hennink and Martijn Beljaars have taken a look at the set and voiced their opinions in a card by card fashion (Comments preceded by R, H and B respectively). In addition to their opinions they have rated the cards according to the system defined below. (I have left out all cards with a value of 1.0 and lower)

My personal opinion is that at first glance the set does not seem to hold a lot of cards that will see play in Peasant... Apart from the guildgates, of course. I had underestimated their potential at first, because of the existence of evolving wilds, terramorphic expanse and karoo lands (such as Golgari Rotfarm), but after playing with them for a bit I've simply come to love them!

Enjoy and please comment!

Siebe

*********************

4.0: Format staple. (Journey to Nowhere, Delver of Secrets, Hymn to Tourach, Lightning Bolt, Terramorhic Expanse)

3.5: Good in multiple archetypes, but not a format staple. (Kor Skyfisher, Chittering Rats, Rancor, Ulamog´s Crusher, Desert)

3.0: Archetype staple. (Spellstutter Sprite, Corrupt, Grapeshot, Muscle Sliver, Seat of the Synod)

2.5: Role-player in some decks, but not quite a staple. (Icatian Javelineers, Trinket Mage, Grim Harvest, Vines of Vastwood, Prophetic Prism)

2.0: Niche card. Sideboard or currently unknown archetype. Bear in mind that many cards fall into this category, although explanation of why is obviously important. (Benevolent Unicorn, Hydroblast, Faerie Macabre, Flaring Pain, Relic of Progenitus)

1.0: Unlikely to see play, but still offers something new, so it might be playable one day. (Judge of Currents, Wings of Velis Vel, Bleak Coven Vampires, Aftershock, Hunting Cheetah)

0.0: There are better cards than this that never see play, so this card is pretty much doomed to sit out its miserable life in shoe boxes, unemployed for eternity (Aurora Griffin, Bone to Ash, Serpent Warrior, Shock, Grizzly Bears).

*********************

Set review RTR Click HERE to open

Oct 30, 2012

Peasant Magic Season V: October 26

Season V is a-rolling!

The first tournament of season V was a success, 19 players attended and they brought a wide variety of decks with them. Congratulations to Arjan for taking the win!

The metagame of this tournament was as said very, very diverse and some decks I personally considered to be in the category of has-beens. Kudos to Henri for bringing Dr. Teeth (Psychatog's pet name, seriously every time I see this card I'm singing 'Calling Dr. Love' by Kiss but replacing the Love with teeth :P)and posting a good result with it. In the end he couldn't quite cope with High Tide. In the final game I saw Henri had all the tools he would theoretically want, scepter-counterspell, a hindering touch and plenty of mana, however, a well-timed early frost caused Henri to cast the Touch to signal Allard he knew he had lost the game. Speaking of High Tide, I loved seeing this take on storm, nice.

Another two decks I didn't expect to be posting a good result these days were the Affinity decks, how we live and learn... :) By the by, I love how these two decks, which on paper have such similar strategies, can still be so different.

Special attention obviously has to go to the U/B the Rack deck wielded by Arjan. I am pleased to see a deck with a heavy discard package and black's solid removal suite taking the night (I played black for the very same reason, so I can say that at least I had an inkling of a good idea, right? Right...?:P). To be honest I think that we can expect a variety of decks supported by the controlling power offered by discard and heavy removal in the future.

The top 8 was complemented by two decks both running its own kind of annoying little critter ;) On one hand we had the very well known Faeries buzzing around everyone's head and needle-pricking them to death, on the other hand Martijn's soul sisters let his life total reach for the heavens (Gods, why didn't I play mass removal...)

All in all, a good tournament so sayeth Johan and I! Lots of peepz and cool decks. Looking forward to next month!

Siebe out!

Rank
Player (click * to see decklist)
Deck
Colors
P/W/D
1.
Arjan Struik *
U/B The Rack
U B
4/4/0
2.
Desmond Scholtens *
Faeries
U
4/3/0
3.
Allard van der Made *
High Tide Storm
U R
4/3/0
4.
Henri van der Bij *
Psychatog
U B
4/3/0
5.
Walter Fuglistahler *
Affinity
U B R
4/3/0
6.
Jasper Boelens *
Robo Unicorns (affinity)
U B R
4/3/0
7.
Martijn Beljaars *
Midnight Gond
W G
4/2/1
8.
Siebe van der Veer *
Rockpost
B G
4/2/1