RC Milwaukee rolled around, and I went for one of the rare non-RC Milwaukee reasons. One of my friends qualified (The first of our friend group to do so) so we decided to take a trip together. My friend got to play in the tournament and take some buddies with him, we all got to take off work and either chill or play magic. The vibes were immaculate, the tournaments were flowing, and we played a lot of other games between rounds or at our rental house. I had already decided to play anything Pauper or Modern that could qualify me for the next round of RCs, which pretty much limited my weekend to just two or three tournaments I could play in. I already owned all of Domain Zoo, so I decided to sleeve it up and play in the Saturday ReCQ.
My list of Domain Zoo is a little particular. My manabase uses Xander's Lounge and either Temple Garden or Lush Portico to get Domain because I think it's more important that the first land you fetch for can cast Lighting Bolt or Stubborn Denial instead of Leyline Binding. My list plays a mix of Doorkeeper Thrull and Tribal Flames because I think I only need maybe one in most games I play. I do sideboard an extra Doorkeeper Thrull because I find it useful in some matchups. My final spicy card is Shadow Prophecy. Some lists play Winternight Stories as their three mana card advantage card, and Shadow Prophecy is that but instant speed, sees more cards, and can be a three for one since it can find Phalge, Titan of Fire's Fury. My full thoughts are in my Moxfield, but without further talk, let's game!
Sitting down for round one is always a treat. Everyone's on the same record, and no one really knows who is playing what. I sit down across from my opponent and promptly loose the die roll. Turn 1 my opponent casts an Ignoble Hierarch off of basic Forest - I'm immediately thinking Jund or Goblins. My hand of three lands, Ragavan, Kavu, Phlage, Lightning Bolt seems pretty good against either scenario. I cast my Ragavan T1, my opponent's T2 follow up is Birthing Ritual, basically confirming Goblins for me. I attack my Ragavan into their Ignoble Hierarch, thinking they won't trade, but my opponent opts to block for no value other than stopping my Ragavan for a turn. I shrug and cast a Territorial Kavu, and it all just goes downhill from there for Jack. They finds his combo kill too slow for G1. G2 I have Leyline/Scion in my opener, but a timely Thoughtseize gets my only Scion for the time being. They has a strong hand for this scenario of lands, Ignoble Hierarch, 2 thoughtseizes, and a Magus of the Moon. I fortunately remembered they played that, so I fetched my basic early on so I still had Domain. They didn't find a value piece and I eventually found a Scion, so my opponent dropped and moved on to play other things. In talking with my opponent, they described that they basically only play Goblins in any format ever. Here's their list for this event because I found it pretty sweet!
I again loose a die roll, and this time I'm playing against an opponent on Eldrazi Ramp. G1 is sort of a non-game because I have Ragavan and my opponent gets stuck on 3 mana as I get to keep piling on the pressure. G2 is only a bit more balanced, but I drew all of my Consigns which tips it back in my favor. I don't get to start with Leyline, and my opponent wisely got rid of most of my blue sources. However, importantly, in their end step they had the choice between trying to remove my green white land or my red blue land with Ghost Quarter. I thought the obvious choice was the Red Blue land since it can cast Consign to Memory, but when they cast their Ugin I kind of understood what they were going for - Leyline Binding can answer Ugin just enough to where I would win the game, and I hadn't cast any Leyline Binding yet. However, I had cast two of my Consigns. They just guessed wrong and I punched my ticket into the third round.
If you haven't guessed the trend yet for this tournament, it's loosing die rolls. I start on the draw against Amulet Titan, not a good place to be. Luckily, I again have a Ragavan start and they don't have a Grazer, so I get to cast Kavu on turn two and hold up cheap disruption. A timely Doorkeeper Thrull stops my opponent from comboing off, and thanks to the fast pressue and disruption, I'm able to kill them the turn before they go off. I curse myself for cutting Ashiok from my board and end up hoping my Consigns, Damping Sphere, and Wear//Tear are able to get the job done. For matchups like this, I have two guiding principles that have served me pretty well in linear matchups: 1. Take out the Leylines 2. Don't keep a hand without a hate card. Leyline/Scion is only really good when your opponent is also playing creatures to the board. Sure, Titan is technically one of those matchups, but all of their creatures either kill you when they hit the field or are Arboreal Grazer. If your opponent isn't playing threats to the board that matter in combat, Leyline doesn't matter. Linear decks often fold to the right hate card, and this deck plays enough good ones that it can afford to mulligan to one most of the time. The linear decks will stumble just enough to hate cards that you can close the game with your big threats. That is sorta what happened here, as Doorkeeper Thrull and Damping Sphere are good' enough to slow down Titans and Thrull helps cheat out Phlage, all of which happened this game. The turning point was me casting a Scion of Draco to give my Phalge first strike and vigilance to start attacking into their Titans. Suffice to say, I somehow punched my ticket into round 4.
Ok, so I'm playing against neoform and I die on turn two - big whoop. Oh, and I lost the die roll, but you already knew that. G2 I draw into Ragavan, 1 mana disruption, and Damping Sphere. I don't really like it in the matchup, but I was operating on the philosophy of if I slow them down just enough to where I can make them expose their guy to removal, I can take it out and continue on with my life. It worked for G2 and we shuffle and move to G3. I personally find it really funny that we both kept greedy hands - I kept Ragavan, Damping Sphere, 1 mana disruption, 1 land on the draw. I keep and hold up Stubborn Denial on t1. My opponent plays land, I play land. My opponent draws their card on t2 and just says "go". I fetch for my Xander's Lounge. On t2 I cast Ragavan and hold my breath. My opponent fails to topdeck a land. I majorly tilt them when Ragavan keeps hitting lands off the top of their deck. I draw my second land on T3 and cast a damping sphere, holding up all the disruption I need against them. The game doesn't last much longer and I'm in the finals!
There are 4 decks in the finals here: Affinity, Infect, Prowess, and me on Domain Zoo. Through the matchup lottery, I get Affinity which is probably my worst out of the three possible outcomes. They're a linear deck that can just cast a Turtle on T1 if they really want to. My opponent isn't quite that lucky, but they still get the Kappa out on T2 and I die a swift death. You should know by now I lost that die roll, so we truck on to G2. There's an interesting dynamic in this matchup where Doorkeeper Thrull is actually good. It turns off Kappa and Weapon's Manufacturing ETBs, so the only rectangle creators you kind of have to worry about are Pinnacle Emmisary and Urza's Saga. I'm also sideboarding Wrath of the Skies, which is pretty good against those cards. My opponent also ended up mulliganing a bunch, because they're only playing 13 lands plus Mox. Which is just so, so greedy. Anyways, they mulligan this game and I wisely leave up land to bolt their warped Pinnacle Emmisary. This buys me enough time to develop a bit before they cast a Kappa. Luckily I have the Doorkeeper Thrull to prevent it from getting a counter, which is critical for my Kavu to engage in combat. G2 is the most interesting of games, becasue G3 is just very slanted in my favor. My opponent mulliganed to 5. My hand was 2 lands, Leyline, 2 scions, Wrath of the Skies, and Leyline Binding. The best play of this game in hindsight was using Leyline Binding in their end step to snag the Shadowspear they played on turn 1. The oft-unread activated ability of Shadowspear turns off indestructibility and hexproof, which is pretty important to affinity dealing with Leyline/Scion. They counter my first Scion with Metallic rebuke - that's fine. They make no plays t3 or t4 as I play second Scion into Wrath of The Skies to clean up the remainder of their artifacts and Urza's Saga. They concede, and now I have an RC to contend with.
I honestly wanted to crawl into the corner of this tournament hall because I didn't know how to comprehend winning an RC qualification. After the obligatory celebration with my friends and figuring out how an RC qualification kinda works logistically from the player side, I retired to playing even more games of Love Letter and loosing every game of Catan we played.
A quick shout out to said friends, without whom I wouldn't have had the lunch to power through Round 4 or the gassing up to make it through Round 2. And someone had to put in my place through Catan after I won so much Magic!