I wasn't able to participate in the main Magic Game Day for Mirrodin Besieged event due to the Emerald City Comic Con, but I was able to squeeze in a Mini Master Tournament for Game Day!
For those of you who do not know what mini master is, it basically boils down to the MOST limited event you could play in. You get one booster pack and are told to make a 25-card deck consisting of the cards that you open in your single booster. For every round you win, you get and additional booster pack to add to your pool. Every match is a single game, every match is single elimination. You may use a full 7 card mulligan once. After 4 rounds, when you receive your 4th booster, you must play best of 3 games and have a 40-card deck using the cards from your boosters.
These events are always fast paced, exciting and very fun. I qued up for my first mini master which 1st was a prize of a factory sealed foil set. My pack consisted of Kemba, an equipment and various playables. Sadly even with getting Kemba in play with an equipment on her, she just couldn't get there. So what did I do? Que'd up for another one!
What did I get in this pack? Something dreadfully worse! Seachrome Coast! When opening a mini master booster, you do not want a non-bomb rare. Even so, I was not about to let this keep me down, as the commons and uncommons were very good. The pack consisted of three pieces of equipment- Darksteel Axe, Accorder's Shield and Sylvok Lifestaff and the best partner to go along with them Trinket Mage. I also had a few good men such as Sylvok Replica, Blight Mamba, Fume Spitter, Neurok Invisimancer, Alpha Tyrranax, and Blade-Tribe Berserkers. The rest of the fray seemed to be lackluster: Vigil for the Lost, Whitesun's Passage, and Turn Aside. All in all, I played every single card in my deck because I wanted to play with 27-28 cards.
ProTip: When playing mini master, a large number of games come down to who can survive before the the first person draws the last card in their deck. If you can out survive your opponent, you can win games! Build decks that have a higher number of basic lands than needed for the 25 card minimum. This is especially true if you have card drawing effects.
As good as this gets for my first pack, it didn't even come to what my round one opponent had opened.
Round One... FIGHT!
My opponent won the dice roll and decided to play first. We both took our free mulligans to see if our hands could get better. Mine was about as good as it was going to get, had a few critters and land to play them. He started off with a Glit Hawk Idol and an artifact to get the damage started. Thankfully he never landed a plains to keep it going or it would have been game fast. We both spit creatures into the game and I landed a Blight Mamba with Darksteel Axe and Sylvok Lifestaff. At this point I was pretty sure that I was going to win this game. To my surprise he tossed down his SECOND rare, a foil Engulfing Slagwurm. At that point, his creatures outnumbered my own and he had a blocker that would never let anything of mine get through. Luckily, I drew the card I never thought would help me win an event.... Vigil for the Lost. In this game state, it saved me. I was at 9 life and my opponent went all in and attacked me with everything minus one blocker. That blocker was not Engulfing Slagwurm and had it been, I may have lost that game at that play. I was able to block Engulfing Slagwurm with my Blight Mabma choose not to regenerate it to gain 3 life off the Sylvok Lifestaff and tap out to gain 7 life with my Vigil for the Lost. The 10 point gain put me out of death range and allowed me to kill several key critters he had. After that, it was stay untapped and play land. He eventually drew all his cards in his deck and I claimed the victory.
Round Two
My second booster was just ridiculous. I mean, it was just not even fair for anyone else to play me. I cracked a Wurmcoil Engine, Leaden Myr, Myr Galvanizer, Exsanguinate, Horizon Spellbomb, Corpse Cur, Vector Asp and a couple other cards. This made it so I could make a 34 card almost pure colorless deck with cards that double green and double black with a splash of blue for trinket mage and turn aside. I curved out with Vector Asp, Leaden Myr, Myr Galvinizer, Trinket Mage for Darksteel Axe. My opponent just could not survive the quickness of my deck.
Round Three
We were given our first Mirrodin Besieged booster, to which I kept playing GBu. Tons more artifacts, more beats, more accell. With over 70% of my deck being colorless, playing 3 colors with methods to fix was no issue at all. This game resulted with me accelerating my fatties and playing the limited removal that I did get. I slammed down a wurmcoil engine and there was little my opponent could do.
Round Four: Revenge of the Mini Master
This opponent knocked me out of my first que and I needed this win. We also had to play 3 games, so I had some room for designing a less consistent but more powerful deck. I switched up the deck a bit and took out blue for my 4th pack bomb: Sunblast Angel. Now this set me at quite a disadvantage as I was playing again a deck with 3 colors, but I increased the around of colored spells. We ended up playing all three games, as game one and two were blowouts in each direction. I was able to shore up the final win after running his two tumble magnets dry.
Round Five: The Draw
My buddy ended up facing me in the final round and we just drew and split the Foil and Non-Foil set. We're just putting both on ebay and splitting the cash. We spent more time deciding what set we wanted then deciding for a draw. This has to be the best ending for a Mini Master Tourney!
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