My first Magic: The Gathering tournament.

Written by Neil Jones, you can find his profile here

I've been playing magic for about a year and a half now and have usually played either casual games or commander games with friends. Having been told by a friend that there was a standard tournament going on at one of our local magic haunts (Dark Sphere) I was curious to give it a try.

My first obstacle, building a standard deck! All of my 60 card decks would certainly not pass in a standard decks tournament with many of them laced with cards from Return to Ravnica, Journey into Nyx and Oath of the Gatewatch. However I had remembered building a pretty kick ass Red/Green Werewolf deck from my collection of  cards from Shadows Over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon. So after reviewing this deck and ensuring that all nonbasic lands and other cards were up to Standard rules I was ready to go!

Walking into Dark Sphere the setup was totally different from usual. All the tables were arranged and numbered so that those who were competing against each other would be sat opposite each other. As a newbie to taking part in tournaments my first error came more or less straight away! I had forgotten to register on the Wizards of the Coast website to get my DCI number which you need in order to compete, doh! But thanks to modern technology I was quickly able too sort this on my phone! Once I was registered I payed £5 to take part in the tournament and gave in to temptation (like I always do) and got 3 Hour of Devastation boosters, from which I pulled a lovely Nicol Bolas, God Pharaoh planeswalker, valued at around £15.. luck was on my side (but would it stick around?..) 

My second mistake came as I sat down to familiarize myself with my werewolf deck. The realization that I had not prepared a sideboard dawned on me! Luckily I had bought a box full of Red burn cards (such as Incediary Flow) and happened to have some green Life Goes On instants in case I got stuck with life gain. From these I was able to conjure a 15 card sideboard which matched the standard rules. Phew!

So during the tournament, each competing pair play 3 times and whoever gets the best out of three, wins the set, then you move on to play someone else. Matches are determined at random for the first round but are the planned so that stronger decks end up playing against each other in subsequent rounds. In my first round, I played against a mono red burn deck and I didn't win a single game, however luckily my opponent quickly came to my ego's aid and informed me that he was playing one of the top decks from the hour of devastation standard pro tour, which made me feel better! He was also very friendly and made some suggestions for changes I could make to my deck to give it a better chance (basically take out some creatures and put in some cheap burn cards).

In my second round I lost all my games, yet again! Though werewolves can be strong, they only really become formidable when they transform and the issue here is that for the Innistrad werewolves to transform, they require the opponent to not cast any spells on their turn and for the Eldritch Moon werewolves to transform a lot of mana is required! Though I had some Weirding Wood enchantments in my deck to boost my mana, these cost 3 mana to cast themselves. I had put 4 Waxing Moon cards to help transform Werewolves and give them trample, I was getting unlucky on drawing these. My opponent played another couple of games with me but his Zombie deck was wiping the floor with me and was doing a lot with very little mana.

Finally! I won the third round! I did feel sorry for my opponent during the first game as he was only able to get 2 lands out and this wasn't doing much for him and I was fortunate to not only transform a werewolf (Tangleclaw Werewolf) but it also had a Neglected Heirloom equipped to it, which also transformed and I had a couple of Invigorated Rampage in hand. Long story short, for two turns I was swinging in with a 11/9 with trample and first strike that had to be blocked if it could. My opponent was playing a token deck, which was getting creatures out but he wasn't drawing the cards he needed to boost his servo's power and toughness. On the second game I was able to get out a village messenger, smoldering werewolf and Ulrich of the Krallenhorde. This combined with the fact I had blood mist out and managed to transform all the werewolves meant that I was swinging in with some pretty heavy hitters with double strike. Village messenger is also a great standard card as it is only 1 mana to play and it has haste, I only wish I had 3 more!

So after coming to the tournament thinking that I was going to get trounced I left feeling quite happy that I had won one round. My deck had played well but was clearly requiring too much mana to be effective in a short space of time. In September my werewolf deck will fall out of rotation as Ixalan is released on the 29th of September. At this point Innistrad and Eldritch Moon will no longer be in circulation in the standard format, I'm hoping to get another couple of plays out of this werewolf deck before then but more importantly, I've taken some great ideas from this tournament for my next standard deck! My final mistake from the tournament, I forgot to claim my free booster at the end of the evening for taking part! Now I know for next time.