Standard Corner #8: Dark Ascension Gameday Champion

On the weekend of Feb 25th, Wizards held their Dark Ascension Game Day, which is pretty much another Standard event with some nifty, set-related prizes-in this case, Strangleroot Geist and Zombie Apocalypse-with the intent of getting players excited about the set.

So I found out about this event at my local shop during FNM and figured I had time to squeeze it into my Saturday morning. Paladin is a nice enough environment with FNM averaging around 12 players and they're all pretty friendly. Players aren't hyper competitive, so it serves as a testing ground for deck ideas and a good place to bring my thirteen year-old brother who likes playing Magic with me. After gonig 3-1 with my Mono-Black Infect list the night before, I figured playing the same deck twice in a row would feel redundant. With that in mind, I sleeved up a variation of Todd Anderson's (of Starcitygames.com) Mono-Green deck and ran a few sample hands to see how the deck plays out.

I'm basically in love with Dungrove Elder, so it's really exciting to see a deck that showcases his abilities in a proactive manner. I played Wolf-Run Green for a few weeks, but it proved to be lackluster at Paladin, since the meta-game runs rampant with playsets of Mirran Crusader in their W/x Humans lists. The deck is strong, but it doesn't stem the bleeding particularly well against the 2/2 'unblockable' and having both the mana and the burn spell to stop him didn't come frequently enough for me. I knew Dungrove Elder thrives on playing something like 56 Forests, so my answers available to such a mana base are moderately limited. I hate being blown out, so I added a couple of maindeck answers to the new White Knight.

Spells: 36
2x Acidic Slime
1x Beast Within
1x Bellowing Tanglewurm
4x Birds of Paradise
2x Daybreak Ranger
4x Dungrove Elder
1x Garruk, Primal Hunter
4x Green Sun's Zenith
2x Gut Shot
4x Llanowar Elves
2x Perilous Myr
2x Phyrexian Metamorph
2x Strangleroot Geist
1x Sword of Body and Mind
1x Sword of Feast and Famine
1x Sword of War and Peace
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
1x Tumble Magnet

Lands: 24
24x Forest

Sideboard: 15
1x Autumn's Veil
1x Corrosive Gale
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Glissa, the Traitor
3x Naturalize
1x Nihil Spellbomb
2x Precursor Golem
2x Ratchet Bomb
1x Surgical Extraction
1x Tree of Redemption
1x Viridian Corrupter

Perilous Myr is the most elegant way of dealing with either Crusader you are having trouble with, while the Tumble Magnet and Metamorph (copying Mirran Crusader) can keep him from getting to my life total long enough to survive. This is kind of a budget version of this deck, since I don't have 4 Garruks or 4 Swords, but I figured this should work. The sideboard is a little haphazard (I wish I had another Thrun), but you work with what ya got.

Round 1 was against my buddy Cliffton playing Red Deck Wins (RDW). We both had standard openings with turn one Birds of Paradise and his Stromkirk Noble, but I had a Gut Shot to slow him down immediately. He took a few turns setting up a Bloodthirst-boosted Stormblood Berserker, so I took advantage of his slow start by laying the beats with Dungrove Elder and Daybreak Ranger and quickly won that race. Game 2 started exactly the same way, down to the Gut shot, but this time he played a turn 2 Shrine of Burning Rage. He followed up with a Shock-to-Stormblood Berserker again and the Shrine quickly got out of control. A second Shrine and Berserker followed by a Hellrider sealed that game. I quickly put in Viridian Corrupter as a quicker GSZ target and went to Game 3. My opener had a double Forest, Birds of Paradise, and a Sword of War and Peace (and other stuff) was a snap keep and I thought this would be an easy win. I played the bird, intending to play the turn 2 Sword, but it got burned by a Shock. The subsequent Llanowar Elves suffered the same fate, but the third one-drop creature I had survived. We traded blows between my Sword-carrying Elves and his Berserker and Hellrider until I was at 4 and he was at 8. I examined my hand and played a Phyrexian Metamorph, copied the Sword, equipped it to Elves and the double trigger eked out my Round 1 win. Phew! 1-0

My round 2 opponent was a player named Robert who got back into Magic recently and plays W/R/b tokens. I won the roll and my starting hand of triple forest, Birds of Paradise, Llanowar Elves and Acidic Slime pretty much spoke for iteself. Turn 3 Acidic Slime to knock out his Clifftop Retreat is brutal and he wasn't able to recover. For Game 2, my early Ratchet bomb scared him away from playing too many token creators and my pair of Dungrove Elders did the rest of the work. 2-0

Round 3 was against a young regular named Jordan playing B/W tokens. Although he's only about 11 or 12 years old, he's more reserved than some of the kids who come to FNM, so he's pleasant to play against. Game 1 was an absolute blowout where he curved perfectly with Champion of the Partish, Gather the Townsfolk, Midnight Haunting and 2 Intangible Virtues- not much I can do. In Game 2, I had a defensive start with Llanowar for a turn 2 Daybreak Ranger to kill off some tokens. A pair of Dungrove Elders got him down to 5, but his spirit tokens were doing as much damage after an Honor of the Pure, and a Fateful Hour-powered Gather the Townsfolk had me dead on board next turn. Fortunately, I'm a topdeck warrior and drew a GSZ. Nothing could have prepared my opponent for the subsequent Bellowing Tanglewurm to charge right around his enormous army. For Game 3, my opponent's risky one-land hand set him back two turns, which was enough for me to set up and take him down. 3-0

As there were only about 10 entrants, my opponent (another regular named Jules) and I decided to split the prize, but winner got the Game Day playmat. in Game 1, his U/B Control deck did as it was supposed to, countering my Strangleroot Geist and Dungrove Elder. I was able to resolve a Sword of Body and Mind, but it was one turn too late, as the Acidic Slime I was gonig to attach to it was tapped down by a Frost Titan.The following Grave Titan ensured my loss. In Game 2, my early Llanowar Elf and Strangleroot Geist did some early damage, which was impeded only by a pair of Reassembling Skeletons; but his Black Sun's Zenith cleared them out. Fortunately, he tapped out for his board wipe, which allowed my Sword of Feast and Famine to resolve, which I soon attached to a Dungrove Elder and sealed the game away. Finally, in Game 3, I landed an early Dungrove Elder thanks to a Birds of Paradise and was against stopped by a reassembling Skeleton. I wanted to play my Sword, but counterspells were too obvious as he passed with 5 mana open. Remembering a play our very own David Jetha recommended, I cast Beast Within on his Island at end of turn. He did not counter this, but it left him with only one blue source open, meaning I could play the Sword through a Mana Leak and not worry about a Dissipate I suspected he had in hand. This turned out to be the game-winning play as he couldn't draw another land and showed me his hand loaded with 6 mana Titans, a Steel Hellkite, and Mikaeus, the Unhallowed. 4-0

So I ended up in first place with 2 packs of Innistrad, 2 packs of Dark Ascension, a full-art Zombie Apocalypse, and a sweet Dark Ascension Game Day playmat. Cool beans! 'til next time Magic players!

Interested in more Magic content? Check out the Standard Corner series on the MTG Casual Network Archive! 

-Javier Remy

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