Tapping for 2 colorless at the Buckeye Brawl

I finally got around to putting together an actual website for this domain, and what better way to kick things off than with a tournament report for the Buckeye Brawl! Signups for this came shortly after Lobstercon sold out in seconds (still 21st on that waitlist), and I was excited to get to actually travel to a Premodern event for the first time in a while. The first outing of the Pitt Imps (name pending) was mostly a success, with 6 of us making the trip out to Columbus, OH. For better or for worse, I chose to register my pet deck, heavily featuring City of Traitors itself - Prison Breach. A brew of my own design, the deck seeks to leverage Exploration and Horn of Greed to generate insane card advantage before replacing those draws with Words of Wind and leveraging Sphere of Resistance to Upheaval the opponent and lock them out. Sylvan Library also combos with Words to nice effect, and Mana Breach helps to both keep the opponent off balance and return your own lands to your hand to keep the draw engine humming. Here’s the decklist.

The Tournament

Round 1: June with BR Ichorid

The event started out with a bang with a quick 2-0 against June’s sweet BR Ichorid list. Game 1 ended pretty fast after I locked her out with Words of Wind, and game 2 was similarly over when I dropped an Oath onto her board of Grim Lavamancers. Akroma and Nishoba made short work of her life total from there!

Round 2: James with Zoo

Next up was James with Zoo! Not a deck that I’m used to seeing a ton, and it definitely went off in G1 when he killed me quickly before I could establish the lock on him. Unfortunately for him, though, being on the play in G2 allowed me to return all of his permanents to his hand in short order, and G3 ended with a quick Oath onto his board of creatures.

Round 3: Kodie with Hermit FEB

I’d seen Kodie playing HFEB at the tables next to me, and I went into this match terrified. I play a TON of this deck myself, and I knew that, in general, he’d be a bit faster than me and be able to flood the board with permanents. I also knew that the manabase for HFEB is absolutely terrible, so when I kept an opener with some Wastelands and backed it up with Words of Wind, G1 ended pretty quickly. Kodie put up a good fight in G2, but when I once again Wastelanded him into oblivion and backed them up with some Spheres, I was able to take the match 2-0.

Round 4: Turner with Reanimator

Turner sat down from me with Reanimator, and in G1, he was able to slam an early Akroma onto the battlefield despite my best efforts to disrupt him with my maindeck Blessings. Knowing what I was up against in G2 and G3, though, I was able to leverage Spheres and Wastelands to disrupt his game plan before ending the game with Words.

Turns out, creatures in the graveyard don’t do as much with nothing in play!

Round 5: Ben with Terrageddon

This match was… not close. Ben showed up with maindeck Naturalize effects, and chaining those into Terravore into Armageddon was a nightmare. Game 2 was more of the same, where a combination of 4 Naturalizes and an Armageddon ended the game in short order. Losing my win and in sucked, but we carry on.

Round 6: Josh with TerraOath

Similar to round 5, my deck simply neglected to show up in this one - to the point where my opponent had to ask me what I was actually playing. 3 Wastelands on Josh’s part in G1 gave me a taste of my own medicine when I ended the game with a hand full of spells and zero colored mana sources in play, and G2 saw me draw exactly one (1) spell on a 5 land mull to 6 before dying.

Round 7: Ryan with U Dreadnought

Finally, Dreadnought. The boogeyman of the format, this is definitely something that I had anticipated being pretty popular going into the event. Dreadnought, you see, tends not to put too many permanents onto the battlefield, and is a deck full of cheap spells - all things that Words of Wind and Sphere love to stomp all over. G1 ended with an early Library/Words combo, and a Swords to Plowshares plus Words again slammed the door shut in G2.

The Result

All in all, a 5-2 finish led to 13th place - good for a Powder Keg and some great memories. I was a bit frustrated that I missed T8 by losing in R5/R6, but you can’t win them all. I also got absolutely savaged later in Premodern cube, but that’s a story for a different time! This event was honestly great. It was well organized, the venue was nice, and the community was fantastic. I’m already looking forward to next year!