Intro | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Closing |

Intro

The Romancing the Stones group out of Austin, Texas has been running online leagues throughout 2020-2021. For their latest installment, they hosted the Middle School Dance Party.

This is my tournament report from the six rounds of swiss; I didn’t make the cut to top 8. If you are interested, I have a complete Deck Tech written up here on the deck I played. Maybe my notes will be helpful, I hope to take better notes next time I play the deck. My recollection of the few combo victories is hazy.

I stole the deck pics from RtS website and Stu. A big thank you to them for organizing and all of my opponents for playing!

Week 1 – David Craig on Bant Armageddon, 34th overall

After having workshopped and tested the deck a bunch, I had a fair idea of the types of decks I didn’t want to see. Ok so of course, here’s comes my opponent opening on something like Mox Diamond and a Wasteland, which put me on to an Armageddon deck. Woo.

Duress and then a very early Entomb for Nether Spirit allowed me to block all day. Removal got rid of some guys, I probably cast more than one Innocent Blood. Cursed Scroll closed out the game.

Game 2 I got smashed by an early Enlightened Tutor into Compost. I got buried by cards. In Game 3, I recall I lost mainly to sequencing. With an opener including Unmask, Animate, Scroll and Therapy, I held the Animate to cast Therapy first, naming Armageddon. He showed Armageddon, but ALSO 2x Swords. So I really needed to Unmask first and not value the combo so highly. He kept the Swords because of how I won in Game one with Nether Spirit, he REALLY wanted to remove it!

0-2 Games, 0-1 Matches

Week 2 – Luke Tooker on Deadguy Ale, 23rd Overall

This one was bad for me. His games really went to plan while my deck didn’t deliver the goods. Game 1 was to his script, if I recall something like, T1 Duress, T2 Hymn, T3 Gerard’s Verdict, T4 Nantuko Shade. I just couldn’t recover. Game 2 was basically the same story, with him attacking my hand early, removing my removal spells and then playing dudes.

1-4 Games, 0-2 Matches

Week 3 – Chris George on The Rock, 41st overall

Another Duress deck but I was able to battle through it. His deck did do some nice things for him, but I was able to play the one-for-one game mostly. This was the first matchup where I was able to profitably use Animate Dead on something of my opponents. Blastoderm is still very big. It might be a little counter-intuitive but Animate Dead targets the creature card in the graveyard, and then attaches to it once it enters the battlefield. So it can and does allow you to target things with shroud.

Games 1 and 2 were similar-ish IIRC in terms of ‘normal rack plan’ coupled with ‘removal’. I *think* I combo’ed in this game, but I don’t recall. I only combo’d twice, so it must have been this match and the next one.

3-4 Games, 1-2 Matches

Week 4 – Joe Kington on FEB (Dreadnought), 27th overall

I don’t recall how exactly this one went. Maybe I combo’ed in Game 1? I think I recall in Game 2 he had a Dreadnought hand and I was able to Duress and Unmask.

Wish I could recall more but basically his deck didn’t do what it was supposed to do.

5-4 Games, 2-2 Matches

Week 5 – Andrew Webb on BUG Control, 26th overall

This deck was awesome. I had a very difficult time navigating the games and they were a ton of fun. If I recall correctly I held him off in Game 1 by chipping away and blocking with Nether Spirit.

Game 2 I’m pretty sure was mainly me getting smashed by early disruption into Call of the Herd tokens smashing my face.

Game 3 Andrew got land screwed. I think I remember him Entombing Deep Analysis to draw 2 on his next turn and then still not drawing any lands, and going to discard Gigapede and a Naturalize. On my side I didn’t have much going on, but I had seen his hand and got his last Naturalize via Duress. At that point, I was able to cast the previously useless Animate Dead in my hand on his Gigapede! After that, I was able to beat down with Gigapede and eventually close things out.

7-5 Games, 3-2 Matches

Week 6, Tim Everett on Merfolk, 29th overall

This match was a hoot. Game 1 he was able to stick a Rootwater Thief and was swinging and extracting things. So he immediately removed the Dragon combo. Then he removed all my Cursed Scrolls.

I was using removal and hand control to keep any of his Lords off the table. I was able to use my Animate Dead spells to keep up blockers for his non-Rootwater Thief attackers and my Nether Spirit and Factories were bigger than his dudes.

In Game 2 it was basically the same story. I brought in more removal and took out combo stuff and maybe a Therapy. In this game I was able to race by bringing back his Lord of Atlantis and attacking for a few turns with 2 other Island walking zombie Merfolk. This time, Cursed Scroll closed it out.

9-5 Games, 4-2 Matches

Closing Thoughts

Losing the first two rounds put me in the bottom tier of the points each round, so I didn’t have a great chance to make the cut. After having workshopped the deck a lot, I’m super happy with the positive overall result in the league. I think I learned a lot about some of the nuances of sequencing with the deck and now I have some thoughts on how to iterate.

This deck is very fun to play with some great options and I look forward to seeing other folks takes on the deck. Check out the full deck tech here.