Friday Night Magic: The Winner’s Circle #9

Hi Everybody! Bill Carrig here in the Winner’s Circle. I just got to catch up with our FNM winner from last week, Peter Bloomingdale. I’ve been super busy attempting to process all the awesome new cards that I picked up in GP DC. We bought a lot of awesome foreign foil cards to help pimp out your decks. Keep a close eye on our site for the next week or so and you could be the first to get your hands on things like Chinese Foil Zendikar fetch lands or Chinese Foil Supreme Verdict Promo cards.

FNM Winner Peter Bloomingdale

Peter played a Black, Blue, Green Control Deck or BUG for short. Here is his list:

4x Breeding Pool
2x Forest
1x Island
4x Overgrown Tomb
2x Swamp
4x Temple of Deceit
4x Temple of Mystery
4x Watery Grave
2x Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
3x Jace, Architect of Thought
2x Vraska the Unseen
3x Thoughtseize
3x Abrupt Decay
2x Dissolve
2x Doom Blade
1x Essence Scatter
2x Far / Away
2x Hero’s Downfall
1x Aetherling
3x Desecration Demon
2x Prime Speaker Zegana
3x Reaper of the Wilds
4x Sylvan Caryatid

Sideboard (15)
2x Devour Flesh
2x Golgari Charm
2x Hero’s Downfall
3x Lifebane Zombie
2x Mistcutter Hydra
3x Negate
1x Pithing Needle

Bill: Congrats on the big win, Peter! You are the first to repeat in the Winner’s Circle and I think that’s pretty awesome! So tell me a little bit about the deck you played to end up on top.

Peter: It’s a standard BUG deck. This deck is like midrange or control and is very powerful.

Bill: Yea, it looks pretty scary. Lot’s of really powerful spells, but they tend to cost a lot. So what’s you’re plan to win?

Peter: The plan is to stall out the game with removal, until you can resolve a Desecration Demon followed by a Prime Speaker Zegana. The planeswalkers make the deck a lot of fun and can spiral out of control if they are not dealt with early. Jace is a staple of the deck, seeing how it is the only source of card draw. Vraska is still underrated by many people. Ashiok, the new Dimir planeswalker in Theros, is questionable. She (or He?) is a lot of fun to play with, but she is either really really good or just awful.

Bill: Seems like it performed well for you this week, but maybe it could use a few revisions. We haven’t started the spoiler season for Born of the Gods just yet, but I’ll bet there’s a number of cards in that set that will make improvements for this deck. How are the matchups for you?

Peter: This deck is favorable against other midrange decks, such as Selesnya, Naya, Grull, and BWR. However, the deck can easily lose to agro, if they have a good start. I don’t have access to Supreme Verdict, so I can get overwhelmed by all their guys. It is also not favored against mono black devotion. I have yet to play against Esper control, but I feel that the matchup would be pretty even.

Bill: Alright, Peter, tell me how it played out for you over the course of the night. What did you do to win it all?

Peter: My hardest matchups were Round 1 (Monored) and Round 4 (Monoblack).

My Round 1 opponent was Joe Steet, so shout out to him. Nonetheless, I got destroyed first game. Second game I cast Thoughtseize and took his Burning Earth out of his hand turn 1 and he didn’t play enough treats fast enough, so I ended up winning. The third game was very close. He went first and came out very strong. He had me down to 2 life on turn 4. I ended up removing his creatures and Joe was in top deck mode. I played a Jace and just started digging. I was trying to dig for a Devour Flesh in order to eat my own Sylvan Caryatid in case he top decked a Shock or Lightning Strike. One of his turns, he ended up drawing a Burning Earth. I floated two mana (so I didn’t take the 2 damage) and cast Golgari Charm to destroy the Burning Earth right away. Eventually I ended up winning by beating him down with a Reaper of the Wild. I had a Devour Flesh in hand just in case he was to top deck a burn spell. In Round 4, against monoblack, I should have lost. I got extremely lucky in game 3 of this matchup. My opponent gained a ton of life early game by resolving a Grey Merchant and using Whip of Erebos to get it back after I killed it. He also gained a ton of life by using Devour Flesh on his own Desecration Demon. The life gain allowed him to use Underworld Connection several times. He had me down to 2 life (again) and all he needed to do was draw a Grey Merchant of Asphodel for the win. He didn’t draw one and he lost.

Bill: Wow! Some very close games there. Congrats on the big win, Peter! I can’t wait to see what happens this week and fortunately, I won’t have to wait very long because FNM is tonight! I hope to see you all there and one lucky winner in the Winner’s Circle!