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Feature Match! (or at least it was to me)

To supplement my previous pre-release article I thought I would give a brief account of what was an entertaining match-up which I had the opportunity to check out… pojo's own Michael Taggart and Tim Stoltzfus!
Tim had a red/black/blue/green deck and Mikey was sporting black/blue/green himself.

Game One:
Mikey goes first, keeping a 2 land hand, and Tim keeping a three or four land hand covering his colors fairly well. They both lay land for the first couple of turns, then mikey drops a gaea's skyfolk, to which tim answers with a penumbra bobcat. Mikey then lays a 2/3 ember golem (he misses his 4th land drop) and serves for 2 flying. Then Tim gets out his 4th land (and is now representing all 4 of his colors with his land drops), and lays a razorfin hunter. Mikey gets his 4th land and flies over again. Then Tim drops a geothermal crevasse and a ceta disciple. Mikey lays his 5th land and serves for 2 more in the air. Finally Tim lays an answer to the flier, and a pretty good one at that: crosis. Mikey probes without kicker on his turn (which seemed questionable at the time) but on Tim's next turn he jilted the crosis when it attacked. Crosis gets relayed. And next turn attempts to serve; Mikey blocks with the skyfolk and explosive growths it, only to have it repulsed by Tim. Little else of note happened past this, Tim pings with razorfin some more and serves with crosis and they both lay some supplementary critters, but crosis goes all the way.

Game Two:
Mikey sides a couple cards, including a kavu climber out and a hyp cloud in, and chooses to go first again. Mikey keeps a couple forests as the land in his hand and drops an apprentice first turn. Tim keeps a hand with a forest, swamp, and 2 razorfin hunters. Mikey lays the cross color elf on his second turn and a zombie recruiter on his 3rd, netting a llanowar dead with it, to which tim responds by not having a land for his 3rd turn. He gets land for the next 4 turns, but none of it is red, which he desperately needs, and watches as mikey lays critter after critter, attempting to hold the stoltzfus fort with only a penumbra bobcat. Finally on his 6th land drop, Tim gets red mana and attempts to recover by laying a couple guys, then next turn a couple more, but Mikey's hoard is far too large by this time, especially considering the reckless spite that sealed the deal in mikey's favor by about the 9th turn.

Game Three:
Tim goes first, keeping a 4 land hand with a harrow to boot. Mikey, in contrast, gets one land, mulligans into no land, mulligans into one land and has to keep it. Tim lays land and is done. Mikey lays his land and is done… looking bad for mikey as he drew no land that turn. Tim lays a land and casts lay of the land on his 2nd turn. Mikey draws and… Land! And casts ravenous rats! Tim lays his third land and casts kavu glider. Mikey draws and gets his 3rd land! And it's the r/u pain land too! Tim casts guided passage (mikey gives him opt, rager, urborg uprising; because tim isn't showing any real black mana sources on the board yet) and serves for 2. Mikey draws a lay of the land! An excellent comeback so far from the double mulligan. Tim goes and lays a swamp, much to Mikey's dismay. Tim tries to cast a gargant but mikey excludes it. Mikey pulls a mana elf off the top of his deck. From here on the game goes back and forth, but Tim lays crosis on turn 8 (and hadn't missed a land drop in that whole time) and gets a couple of razorfin hunters out in the next couple of turns which help crosis in finishing Mikey off around turn 12.

Hope you enjoyed this brief supplement/side note to my previous report! The match was entertaining to me at least. J