Tournament of n00bs (Day 5)

Another loss drops my total win percentage down to 33.3%. I’m not quite sitting dead last but I am indeed in trouble and the odds are against advancing beyond round-robin play. The fourth and final play-off position is 2 wins away and I need to count on at least 2 other players to lose their remaining match-ups in order to leap-frog them. And this does not address the current dark horse – one fellow who so far has played and won his only game. I’m told that particular match-up was nothing short of “epic” clocking in at a whopping 45 minutes.

I entered a 50/50 chance match today. My opponent, like me, also had 2 wins under his belt but had only played 4 games thus far. His win percentage was therefore higher. There was nothing particular I could put my finger on if I were to lay blame other than, “some days the cards just don’t come up.”

I started with a fairly strong hand but in general, I have very few cards that cost less than 3 mana to cast. I would only start playing cards in the third turn (other than a reasonably healthy supply of Lands). It was just a matter of attrition for this game since my opponent (playing a Naya-styled deck) started to drop several Saprolings. This effectively caused a stand-off against my Sprouting Thrinax. My only luck this game was to be able to play an Onyx Goblet (which strangely, made its first appearance since I started in the tournament).
When the Sprouting Thrinax died in combat, it left me my own army of Saprolings (the stand-off continued). I had a decent combo in my hand which unfortunately was too early to play. Without enough mana, I had no choice but to play a Dragon Fodder for a couple more tokens. But I wouldn’t last another two rounds to collect enough mana to use a Predator Dragon’s Devour ability. Which in any case, having lost nearly half my life in the early turns, my build-up to larger creatures could not keep up with the Naya growth.