A month's worth of mediocrity...

Not many great finishes since Mother's Day, hence the lack of posts.  Here's a quick run-down of my performances across several formats.

FNM 5/17
I played the same list I played Mother's Day, but went 3-2 at G&S, losing to little kids playing bad decks poorly.  This was enough to push me away from R/G and I picked up the cards to play BUG Aggro which looked like a ton of fun...

Super IQ 5/18
Playing BUG Aggro, went 2-3 drop, going 1-3 vs R/g Aggro with Pillar of Flames... ugh, not a great metagame call by me to be running Strangleroots and Young Wolves.

FNM 5/24
Playing BUG again, I start off 2-0 then ID'd with Nick (also at 2-0).  I then lose round 4 after being up a game and throwing away game two on a horrible math mistake (shocked myself to play an untapped land thinking he had enough on board to put me to 1... he had enough to put me to 0).  I leave after this round at 2-1-1 to head to the beach.  I don't drop since I expect to be paired against a friend who is also 2-1-1 so he can get the free win.  So technically I finish 2-2-1.

SCG Open Baltimore 6/1 & 6/2
I play BUG once again on Saturday to a 3-3 finish.  I still love the deck as it can be both fun and explosive at times, but I think it's just underpowered in this metagame.  The other grindy/synergistic decks like Aristocrats (both BWR and BWG) at least have powerful cards like Sorin and Skirsdag High Priest mixed in with their "Young Wolves".  I haven't played Standard since this tourney and am having a hard time finding a competitive deck that I actually like (the same reason Mike has been absent from every Standard tourney for over a month).

I joined a Commander Pod after dropping from the main event.  Don't play in SCG open Commander pods without a buddy!  My pod had two guys who were friends, a random dude who never did anything of relevance the entire game, and myself.  The entire game I have to hold up counterspell mana to stop one of the friends from going off.. I'm able to do this for several turns, even with his non-combo friend attacking me and killing my Talrand and my planeswalkers.  Eventually I run out of counterspells (I only play like 7 in the deck) and the combo deck kills us while he's at 7 life from a combination of Necropotence and Drake beats.

Sunday I'm super excited to play Omni-Tell w/ Enter the Infinite.  It's a deck that had been getting results online the week leading up to the open and Baltimore was a breakout tournament for this deck, with 3 copies making the top 16.  Unfortunately, I lost the last round to finish 5-4 and out of the money.  Some Defense Grids in the side would have been nice since all my loses were to opponents with more counter-magic than I - at least on the turns I cast Show and Tell.

FNM  6/7
I decided to play in the modern FNM since G&S is increasing their prize support by $100 for every Modern tournament the rest of the year.  The tourney also starts at 7 instead of 6, and is only 4 rounds instead of 5.  Playing my Esper Aggro Mill I win the first round, then lose the next 3.  I think I'm going to try out Storm in modern over the next month.  I still love beating down with Jace's Phantasms and Nihiliths but the deck is too inconsistent. My records in sanctioned tournaments with the deck have been 0-4, 4-4 (started 4-0), 0-2, 3-1 (second place) and this 1-3.

I didn't get to play any magic this past Saturday, but Sunday morning I headed to Xanadu actually hoping to draft, even though they had a GPT (Standard) scheduled.  Luckily, not enough people showed up for standard and we drafted Modern Masters instead.  For prize we would draft cards to keep from the entire pool in order of finish, so there was no point at all in rare drafting.  I opened a weak pack and took Frogmite tihnking maybe I could pull a few more.  Second pick Shrapnel Blast, third pick Frogmite and I was set.  I finished with a ton of modular guys, 2x Faerie Machinists, 3x Frogmites, 4x Etherium Sculpters and a good amount of burn, including the Shrapnel Blast, Rift Bolt and Electrolyze as the best of those.  I even had a Pyrite Spellbomb and Academy Ruins! Oh yeah, and a Keiga too. I 3-0'd the draft and got the obvious first choice of Elspeth from the pool.  I got a handful of other goodies as well, including 2x City of Brass.  These cities look so cool that I immediately dusted off the Dredge deck when I got home and plan to play it this week.  I looked over recent Open finishes by Dredge and found a list with 3x Winds of Change in the side.  I have no idea what they're sided against, but the card alone looks fun as Hell.  I think I'll pick up a couple to try out.

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