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Wednesday, September 19, 2012

MTG Gameplay - Mono Black Vs Black/Red Zombies

Hello everybody, this is Kevin from KlotzProductions and welcome to my first gameplay commentary blog. I plan on starting to do a written version of each of the games I do videos for and see how people like it. The biggest difference is that I will add my input on the game and decisions made and then I will also add the video at the end so you can go watch it if you like.

So let's get started.
For this game we have Jesse playing Mono Black and he is going up against Lars who is playing Black/Red Zombies. Some of the cards featured in Jesse's deck are Vampire Nighthawk, Duress, Sign in Blood, Geralf's Messenger, Disciple of Bolas, and Phyrexian Obliterator. Lars' deck features Geralf's Messenger as well along with the normal zombie package of Gravecrawler and Diregraf Ghoul. He also carries burn spells like Galvanic Blast, Brimstone Volley, and Incinerate and he rounds his deck off with Falkenrath Aristocrat and Zealous Conscripts.

Lars ended up taking a mulligan down to six for this game and then Jesse was on the play. Both players just started out with basic lands, swamp for Jesse and mountain for Lars and then Jesse played a turn two Duress. He took a look at Lars' hand which contained a Dragonskull Summit, Diregraf Ghoul, Galvanic Blast, Incinerate, Falkenrath Aristocrat and Zealous Conscripts. Jesse chose to have Lars pitch the Incinerate which seemed like a good choice to me.

For turn two Lars played his Summit and cast his Ghoul. Jesse then used a Sign in Blood on himself going down to 18 and drawing himself two cards. Lars picked up another Summit and then attacked for 2 with his zombie taking Jesse to 16.

Jesse then played a Phyrexian Obliterator which set up quite a road block for Lars who unfortunately missed his next land drop and just passed his next turn. Jesse then took Lars to 15 with the Obliterator and then followed it up post combat with a second one which Lars didn't seem very excited to see as he currently had no solid way of dealing with either of them.

Lars did draw another land however and was able to play his Aristocrat and attack for another 4 damage in the air taking Jesse to 12. Jesse then attacked with both of his Obliterators so Lars blocked one with his zombie and sacrificed it to the Aristocrat to keep damage from being dealt and then took the other 5 from the second one going down to 10. Post combat, Jesse played a Disciple of Bolas and chose to sacrifice one of his Obliterators to gain 5 life going back to 17 and drawing 5 cards. This is a play that I personally feel was a mistake. Sure, he gained a lot of card advantage off of it but keeping the pressure on with 2 obliterators seems like a lot better board presence to have. Especially knowing that Lars had a Conscripts in his hand to take one of the Obliterators and then sacrifice to the Aristocrat. However, that is the play Jesse made and then he followed it up with a second duress revealing a newly found Skinrender and Brimstone Volley in Lars' hand so he chose to pitch the Volley.


Lars top decked his 5th land on his next turn which allowed him to cast the conscripts as I mentioned and take the Obliterator. He bashes with the team and Jesse chose to chump block with his disciple on the Conscripts and take the other 9 damage going back down to 8. Lars then sacrificed the Obliterator to his Aristocrat leaving him with strong board presence.

Fortunately for Jesse he had a Mutilate which he used to wipe out Lars' board and then follow it up by playing a Vampire Nighthawk which Lars ended up killing with his Skinrender. I was watching the game and saw that Jesse actually had Geralf's Messenger in his hand the turn before and feel like it would have been a better play over the previous duress or at least better than the nighthawk after finding out that Lars had the Skinrender in his hand.

Jesse then played 2 Geralf's Messengers on his next turn taking Lars down to 6. Lars then attacked with his Skinrender taking Jesse to 5. He then killed one of the messengers with the Galvanic blast in his hand triggering morbid which allowed him to use his newly acquired second Brimstone Volley to do exactly 5 damage to Jesse and finish him off giving Lars the win. Alternatively Lars could have just burned Jesse out for 5 points of damage, 2 from the blast and 3 from the volley. I am not sure which was the better play but either way, it got him the win.

So that is it for this gameplay. Unfortunately game two Jesse ended up taking a mulligan down to 4 and it wasn't much of a game as Lars just ran him over so I will not be doing commentary for that game.

This made Lars the winner of the match and took him to the finals against Mono-Green Infect.

Be sure to check out KlotzProductions on youtube to watch all the gameplay covered here for yourself.

2 comments:

  1. Why on earth would he sac the Obliterator? The game would have had a totally different outcome if he hadn't.

    Did he think that he had it in the bag? It was a foolish mistake that could have been avoided.

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  2. But, I do like this type of commentary and hope to see more like it from you!

    ReplyDelete