FNM in Training #1: Getting Greedy

Hey guys, welcome to the first of my FIT series, here at TwoCats Comics. This week, I played a sweet Esper control list that was almost identical to Ben Stark's PT top 8 list. The only changes from his list were:
-2 Planar Cleansing,
-1 Ultimate Price
+2 Merciless Eviction
+1 Dramatic Rescue.
 The reasons for cutting Planar Cleansing were many. First of all, in a deck with 4 colorless lands, WWW was hard to acquire sometimes, even with such good mana. Eviction also just does what you what Cleansing to do. Ben stark said that the reason they ran Cleansing was that it not only answered the planeswalker they played, but also the thing that the 'walker did. Simply put, I found this wrong. It doesn't stop what Jace, Tamiyo, Domri Rade, Liliana or Vraska do. Specifically, it answers what Garruk* (any version) does, along with Garruk. But a 3/3 Beast from Primal Hunter or a Wolf from Relentless is not really a threat at all. Finally, Eviction exiles, not destroys, making it much better against Zombies and Humanimator. So anyways, as I walk in, I meet up with my friends Carl, Mitch, Tommy and Gabor. Out of them, only Tommy and Gabor have played in any standard tournaments before, and only Gabor has been playing standard fro a significant amount of time. This is Tommy's second standard. This is Carl and Mitch's first standard, and Carl thought I was bringing a deck for him, but I had to give it to my brother, so HE bought the Thrive and Thrash event deck to play. Mitch's deck was absolutely horrid, just made up of draft cards he got from drafting Selesnya, and the contents of a few G/W Innistrad Intro packs. So, trying to be helpful, I spent 12 bucks to buy him a bunch of commons and uncommons, and we put together a sweet(ish) Elder of Laurels humans deck with no Champions of the Parish and Hamlet Captains instead of Mayors of Avarbruck. Mitch is super calm, though, and he was just phsyced to play some standard, so he didn't care. The one thing I learned from this was that Elder of Laurels is actually decent, and I saw Mitch acticating it for like 5 or 6 at some points.  It's a little win-more, but in this standard, everything is win-more. :)

Round 1: Vs. my good friend Gabor
This was a disappointment, and mostly because I had to play against Gabor, who was playing a sweet brew. What? Keyrunes. Scuse me? Keyrunes! Say that again? KEYRUUUNES!! The deck is seriously 23 keyrunes, 8 wraths, Omniscience, Enter the Infinite, 2 Increasing Ambition 1 Clan Defiance, 1 Aurelia's Fury, 1 Door to Nothingness, 1 Elixir of Immortality. And 21 dual lands or Kessig Wolf Runs, Vault of the Archaengels, Desolate Lighthouse, Alchemist's Refuge, the whole 9 yards. While the deck seems bad, it's actually like playing Omnidoor Thragfire, except even if Esper or U/W/R can handle all your bombs, they still have to deal with a Boros Keyrune that got Wolf Runned for 9. Seriously, try the deck out, you'll be surprised.
Game 1:
This game was kinda long and drawn out, but it felt pretty boring for the most part, right up until the end. I kept Azorius Charming his keyrunes to slow him down a lot, and we both had active Drownyards, ao the game was coming down to decking. On a crucial turn, Gabor cast an Increasing Ambition, but got Aurelia's Fury instead of Elixir. This let me mill him enough to mill his Elixir in response to his next Ambition, so I decked him.
Game 2:
I sided in 4 Blind Obedience and 2 Duress out of the board (Yes I know, 4 Blind Obedience in the board. What? The card is good against EVERYTHING. Like actually everything. Against him when he drew his whole deck with Enter the Infinite, all his keyrunes would ETB tapped along with his Elixir, giving me a chance to Evict them and deck him.) I took out 4 Verdicts and 2 Devour Flesh. I had a turn 2 Obedience, but he had a Golgari Charm to kill it. I had a second though, and basically grinded him with Augur of Bolas and extort triggers while he attacked with Simic Keyrune. He made a mistake, I think, by not naming Meciless Eviction when he cast Slaughter Games, instead naming Blind Obedience instead of Merciless Eviction, even though I actually had one in play at the time. I think he was hoping to tutor for the second Golgari Charm to rid me of all my Obediences, but I milled it with Drownyard. I eventually Mercilessly Evicted 5 keyrunes, then cast a Resto to beat down for the win. The life totals were painful to write down. Dumb extort triggers. Look at this:
Me: 20, 21, 19, 20, 18, 19, 17, 18, 17, 18.
Him: 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 5 (I ast Resto),4, 9 (He activated Elixir), 8, 7, 2, 0
Jeez.

So between rounds, my friend Tommy, who was playing a sweet Izzet Control hombrew, came to talk. He won his round, but it kinda sucks how it happened. Tommy was up a game against a regular at the store, Sergio, playing Omnidoor Thragfire. Tommy only started playing Standard a few weeks (Maybe a month by now?) ago, so most of the info he gets about the meta is from me, and doesn't know a lot of the cards. So obviously, if someone is playing Omnidoor, he has no idea what's happening. So anyways, Tommy has just nearly tapped out for Niv-Mizzet (3 mana untapped) with a Counterflux and a Searing Spear in hand, and his opponent is at 14. His opponent casts Supreme Verdict, telling Tommy it destroys all creatures to spare Tommy from having to read the card. Tommy Counterfluxes it, not knowing (or remembering) it's uncounterable, and neither of them catch it. Tommy untaps, smashes with Niv Mizzet, fills his hand with burn, and finishes the match. After the match, Sergio realizes what happened, but it's too late. Sergion definitely would have won that game, he had 14 mana and his opponent had 1 card, so he was obviously pissed. Yeah, that really sucks, but it happens to everyone. One time in an M13 draft, I lost with an Akroma's Memorial and plenty of mana, because I forgot it gave trample and missed like 14 points of damage.

Anyways, enough sob stories, time for round 2.
I'm playing Greg, another regular at the store, and one of the best players. He's been playing for a long time, and has been piloting Joel Larrson's U/W/R recently. I know all the Channelfireball guys say U/W/R is a good matchup for Esper, but I don't think it is. It feels like mirror where he has inevitability because when he Revelations, he fills his hand with burn to kill me, but when I revelation, I get a bunch of Devour Fleshes and wraths. Maybe he just runs more burn, as I did see all 4 Spears in addition to 4 Boros Charms and some Pillars. Another thing that makes the math hard is Slayer's Stronghold, witch effectively turns all his creatures into burn spells.
Game 1: This game goes exactly like I was talking about. He beats me down to 7, and I play some Restos at the end of his turn, so that if he plays a Resto and Slayer's Stronghold it, I can Azouris Charm to gain life. I think about attacking, and I probably should have, but that Stronghold was intimidating. It ended up no mattering, as he Revelationed for 5 EOT, then saying looked at his hand as he untapped. "You are so dead" he says. "Am I?" I reply. I really hope so, he says as he casts Boros Charm and Searing Spear to kill me, with an Pillar and a Snapcatser in hand, just to make sure I stay dead.
Game 2: I was greedy. I took quick Reckoner/Angel beats, stabilized a little with a Revelation for 3 to go to 7, then had the opportunity to cast another Revelation for 4. I decide against it as I had 6 cards in hand and didn't want to discard, but he then hasted up a Resto and Speared me to death. After the match though, I felt completely fine, as I knew there was no luck involved there. That was entirely me being greedy, and I can learn something from that.

Nothing super interesting happened between matches, except hearing how Gabor traumatized some guy by looping Enter the Infinite with Elixir to cast Aurelia's Fury twice to kill his opponent. ;) Keyrunes, you be silly.

Round 3 I played against I guy who I hadn't seen around the shop before named Arthur. He was part of a group of really nice guys who decided to start coming to our FNMs. We debated theory for a while, and I asked if it was O.K. if he was in this report. He said yeah, and then his Random Miser friend asked to be mentioned in my report. If your reading this, Random Miser, you know who you are.
Game 1: This game was really boring, and it played out exactly how Esper should. Defend then deck with Drownyard. The only interesting thing was a slight life total discrepancy that ended up not mattering at all.
Game 2: We had another discrepancy, but by working back figured it out. Eventually, I got greedy again, this time when I was at 2, by casting a Revelation EOT. The last card in his hand was a Searing Spear, so I was just target practice, like always.
Game 3: We had like 10 minutes left on the clock when we started, but he spent a while shuffling (no offense to him, maybe I just shuffled too fast) so we only had like 7 minutes to play. I kept an opener of Resto, 2 Blind Obediences, Terminus, 2 Drownyards, and 1 Isolated Chapel. I know this hand is bad, but I really didn't want to mull it. First of all, the shuffling would probably take too long and we couldn't get started. Also, if I drew an untapped white source, I might be able to actually kill fast enough or race with 2 Blind Obediences and the Resto. Also, I didn't want to draw, because we were both 1-1 and that would make it really tough for both of us to get prizes if I mulled into a defensive hand and made it 1-1-1. As it was, I didn't draw a land, therefore I didn't draw the match and I died to his perfect nut-draw turn 4 kill, even through Blind Obedience shutting off haste Lighting Mauler. I was pretty upset with myself, but realized that it was my fault, so just kinda smiled and tried to act nice, thinking I really, really should have played for the draw.

In retrospect over the night, I got greedy a lot and lost because of it. I think this was because in the previous tournament, Game Day, I played too conservatively, and lost in the finals because of it. Hey, maybe now having played on both sides of the spectrum, I'll strike the right balance next week. You'll just have to keep reading.

After my round, I again talked to Tommy, who had some incredibly close games against his opponent who was playing U/W Tempo. His opponent was at 4, and he topdecked Searing Spear, leaving him at 1 when he died. Jeez, too close.

Round 4, I played against my brother PJ, who the DCI computers can never spell. He's had 3 DCI cards, and they've been AJ, then DJ, then AJ, which he's using now. Anyways these rounds were really fun, and we were seated next to Tommy, so we just chatted and spectated as we played, since we were both out of prize contention. PJ was on mono-white humans, because he's in the process of getting the lands he needs for Boros.
Game 1: I locked him up hard after wrathing twice, and show him my stacked hand of:  Double Supreme Verdict, Double Revelation,Resto, Augur,and Azorius Charm.
I had Double Nephalia Drownyard and a bunch of lands, to his no cards in hand, 25-15ish cards in deck and a bunch of plains, so he scooped.
Game 2: I had a perfect opener of Verdict, Hallowed Fountain, Isolated Chapel, Glacial Fortress, Snapcaster and 2 Restos, but he had a nut draw of Champion into Gather into Silverblade. Fourtunately, I topdecked Augur, and even though it whiffed, I used it and Snapcaster to chump his 4/4 double striking Champion twice in a row. Then I wrathed and beat down with Angels.

After I was done, I went to hang out for a while with some of the guys, because we still had like 40 minutes
till the event was over. I talked to Austin for a while. Austin is the guy who runs all the events, and has a collection more valuable than most houses. He's literally 1 Volcanic Island away from completing Legacy Rug delver, and 1 Verdant Catacombs, 1 Jace TMS and 2 Thoughtseizes from simultaneously completing Legacy shardless BUG. He has a Mimeoplasm EDH deck that is all either foil, signed, full-art (sometimes all at the same time) or to old to be foil. He could literally sell the deck to pay off all his student loans. So, enough admiring his collection. We debated card choices in Standard Jund, talked about some trades and hung out. Afterwards, I needed to talk to some fellow Modern specialists ,George and Nick, about my sweet Living End brew. Not going to reveal it right now, as I'm going to play it in a modern FNM soon. Eventually, I wound up at the counter, where the guy who manned it let me start writing this report on the computer.
The End.
I'm now bringing back Props and Slops from old Mike Flores articles, if you remember that. 
Props:
Aaron: The guy at the counter who let me start this report on his computer. Cool guy, just starting to play magic, and likes casual Vampires tribal.
Tommy: For using a planeswalker card he designed to mark his life total.
Gabor: KEEYRUUNES!!!
Arthur from round 3: For being super nice.
Slops:
Tommy: Countering the uncounterable. :(
Robert, Tommy's brother: C'mon, play in the event dude.
Me: Getting to greedy? Who doesn't Revelation for 4?
*Ok, fine. Also Sorin.
This is the real The End.