Round 2. Table 1.
Curran DELAHANTY (USA) vs Brendan MCBAIN (CAN)
The second round of the tournament saw OUT OF TOWN RINGER Curran Delahanty (Portland) facing HOMETOWN DARK HORSE and MULTI-OBSCURE-FORMAT-SPECIALIST (Ice-Alliances) Brandon McBain.
Curran took the fast train from Portland yesterday to be here—left at 2:45pm, got here at 10:45pm, then crashed at Elliot’s place. I gave them a ride to the tournament and on the way Curran mentioned he was on ELVES tweaked to have a better matchup vs the consensus “best deck” in the format, Dreadnaught, by dropping the Tangle Wires and adding 3 Vigilantes.
“I’d take that matchup all day.”
Of course, as all tournament Magic players know,
“BEATING THE BEST DECK” and BEATING THE BEST DECK,
are two separate things.
MCBAIN is on (what looks to be) fairly stock DREADNOUGHT.
Final Exam.
Game 1—
McBain leads with Island, go.
Curran leads with Forest, Fyndhorn Elves.
McBain drops it Turn 2: 12/12, Stifle the trigger, go.
Boogeyman spotted.
Curran played Wooded Foothills into Morph and runs into a Daze.
McBain hits for 12. Doesn’t replay the Island. Says go.
Curran spins his wheels a bit with Elves, but it’s too little, too late.
1-0
Game 2—
Curran ships the first hand back; McBain keeps.
Curran leads Forest into Llanowar.
McBain has Island go.
Curran seizes the initiate with Symbiote, into Cradle, into Multani’s Acolyte.
Concerned that the rampant card advantage from the Symbiote/Acolyte draw combo will be too much to overcome, McBain throws a painful Foil at it, discarding an Island and more material, throwing a wrench in the gears at least for the time being.
But he misses his 2nd land drop.
Curran, however, is not out of gas—Turn 3 sees a Survival hit the board, with a searched out Squee ensuring the gas will never stop coming.
McBain misses his next land drop too, and when Curran consolidates his advantage on Turn 4, there’s no coming back.
1-1
Game 3—
McBain leads Island, go.
Curran leads Forest, Quirion Ranger.
McBain lands his second Island, and uses an Essence Flare (never-historically-played format tech discovered just last year!) to kill it off.
On Curran’s second turn, he lands a Survival, threatening inevitability.
Third turn, McBain plays Island. Ships. Curran develops his board. McBain plays Impulse end of turn.
Turn 4, McBain goes for it. Float 2, Gush, Dreadnought, Vision Charm, two islands untapped—go.
But Curran feints, passes it back.
On McBain’s Upkeep, when the ’Nought phases back in, Curran Naturalizes it. McBain casts Counterspell, but Curran has a second Naturalize, and the Dreadnought hits the bin.
On Curran’s next turn: a smattering of elves, a Priest of Titania, a Cradle, and an Anger in the Graveyard, a few searched up Quirion Rangers, a few Deranged Hermits later, and he’s attacking for 19.
Best deck down.
I repeat:
Best
Deck
Down
CURRAN DELAHANTY 2-1
After the match, McBain will reveal that on his Turn 4 he could have played a 2nd Nought—forgoing the opportunity to leave Counterspell up—which could have allowed him to create enough of a bottleneck to get at least one 12/12 across the finish line before it was too late.
Curran shared his Sideboarding plans with me after the match:
- -2 Masticore
- -1 Genesis
- -1 Wellwisher
- +4 Naturalize