Bryan Haak Owes Me a Night on the Town

This past Saturday, I was at a tcgplayer.com 1K qualifier at the home store, The Game Castle, in Londonderry, NH.  The list I took was a slight alteration to Super Saiyan Shock I decided to try out, cutting two Bloodchief Ascensions and two Forked Bolts for a playset of Inquisition of Kozilek, the two forks replacing BSZ in my sideboard.  The fact is that while FB is a great way to kill two birds with one card, Inq does manage to kill four. I haven't been running them mostly because Blackleave Cliffs is my only land that comes down untapped on turn one and taps for black, but helps to deal with swords and counterspells that the rest of my maindeck simply can't handle.  It even helps my Valakut matchup by getting rid of GSZ pre-board.  The only real issue with Inquisition is that unless I'm facing down Kor Firewalker or Leatherback Baloth, I'd simply rather have the burn.  It's just more versatile.  A lot of times I'm just sitting there, waiting to draw the last point or two of damage, and Inq doesn't help me get there later on.  There's also some times when I get absolutely no value from it, albeit rare but it does happen. Nevertheless, Inq certainly did its job today and could have netted me a slot in top 8.

Tournament Report: TCGPlayer 1K Qualifier- Manchester, NH

This weekend, I headed down to a 1K piloting Super Saiyan Shock alongside Russel Keeler playing RUG, Raymond Cipoletti playing Elves, and Andrew Kiwatkowski with RDW.  The shop is Level Up Gaming in Manchester, NH, kindofa small space but with enough for the 61 players in attendance and a full six rounds of swiss.  However, the TO still had to turn back a good 20 players due to lack of space.

Deck Tech: Super Saiyan Shock

A couple months back, I had built a deck known as SuperShock, my adaptation of the original post-rotation vampires list as was introduced to me by Bryan Haak during the last States.  I apologize, for some reason I can't find the exact list, but a similar build by Caleb Durward can be found here, only with three Doom Blades over Vendettas and Dark Tutelage and Captivating Vampire beating out two Pawn of Ulamogs and the equipment.

Tournament Report: TCGPlayer 1K Qualifier

This weekend, I was at a 1k qualifier (for the TCGPlayer.com invitational in Chicago) over at Level Up Gaming, in Manchester, New Hampshire.  There was a pool of 63 people at the event, not that big but larger than some.  Honestly, space was a bit tight, so I'm happy there weren't any more contenders.

Tournament Report: Valakut Can Kiss My Moneymaker

This Saturday, the Game Castle held a Type 2 event, but it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing, so not a lot of people heard about it, so only nine people showed up, which means only three rounds.  The day actually turned out to be pretty lolzy, and I saw the whole thing with my round one bye.

Tournament Report: TCGPlayer.com Qualifier- Toys N' Games Type 2

So today I'm heading to the tournament with a group of local FNM players, the qualifier is less than an hour from our store.  I'm playing Super Shock, Austin Ruthermund is playing WW Quest, Chase Genge is running Valakut, Josh Windsor is using Goblins, and Andrew Kwiatkowski is using Caw-Go.

Deck Tech: Super Shock

Super Shock is a deck that initially came about when a friend of mine, pro tour veteran Bryan Haak first came to  us with his Vampire deck-the one that turned heads during his feature match at a SCG Open in Boston, the one that put vampires back on the map.  At the time, the deck was still in it's roughest stages, and ran some cards that never made it into the build we see today.  However, the deck still ran Dark Tutelage.  When we were talking back and forth about builds, I pointed out that the deck was weak to early disruption.  At the time, a Pyroclasm on the third turn was pretty much game, not like it is now.  However, I brought up using red as a focus, using a burn package instead of the vampires and running four copies of Finkel 2.0.  He liked the idea, and I set to work, building what I called Super Shock for running every shock effect in the format: Forked Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Galvanic Blast, and Burst Lightning.  And Super Shock was born.