if there is an angrath in play, yes.

But Angrath is going to make me discard it right away... I can understand holding against Grixis... for Nicol Bolas...

Anyway I´m continuing my trials and I´m hating DJ´s deck!
more detail in a few

Oh man..., I’m sorry buddy. I was hoping it would work. I was going to do a UG build, but others beat me to it, so I thought I’d try something totally unproven.

nono, you had a Roalesk, Apex Hybrid in your hand and a land.
you played the land and on the opponents turn you had to discard the creature.

Oh yeah just saw it... I dunno what was I thinking you are absolutely right...

Ok DJ´s deck run is over... I won the first match then accidentally abandon the event... So I had to make a new one... we went 2-3 + one previous win.
I think the big problem with the deck is that it eats its hand far too early... and more often that you would like and then topdecking 1 drops in a stalled board. on the other hand I should have holded March in more than one occasion but trying to be mana efficient I made some mistakes, also I should have being more picky on my initial hands... one of the losses was just an awful keep against a dreadhorde opponent who mulled to 5.

Anyway the deck felt a lot more underwhelming than my initial score. I think a 5/7 is more accurate wins and fun interaction
Total Score

deck BELETED!
Vid Uploading

Opening with faith no more - Easy was a great touch.

I messaged CGB, let's keep our fingers crossed that he can judge this round.

Singing In Elvish by Haven


Ok so Havens deck is by far the hardest one to pilot followed closely by Darkstar´s but this thing needs for you too really secuence things correctly to take full advantage of your triggers and Ramp, I took it a couple more times vs Sparky to get things right before I send it to the slaughter house.

Mana, the deck has a nice curve full of 2 drops and8 6 one drops which I think is the best number in a Freyalise deck, this way you are going to be able to ramp to 6-7 mana for T4, and this deck can ramp, it also has top end payoffs Ugin, Nissa and Vivien are all there + Ajani that synergies with the counters theme, 21 lands seems a bit low IMO for a 2.8 Average CMC, if we take all the mana dorks as half a mana source (4+2+3)/2 =5 so about 25 lands sources, that sounds better... Freyalise I don't know how to evaluate in this but it should at least solidify the feeling that this deck does not need more lands to function. I could be prove wrong tho and would love to hear opinions on this

As almost all your early drops are producing mana you will end up stalling the board as they get bigger and bigger but you almost never have a clear way to attack and Freyalise does wonders in this scenario giving you that free attack phase, Marywin is bonkers I didn't really played her till now and I'm in love, she alone can cast Ugin sometimes fantastic addition!

The elves theme works wonders, lets you draw cards, have anthem effects and ramp very good choice

Overall the deck is quite powerful and was very intricate ways to take advantage of how you sequence your spells, the PWs top I loved coz it adds even more complexity to the board states.

The deck is very susceptible to black based removal and RDW is a match up we don't want to have, but at least for the red part.. it is par of the meta, and in events I would think that in 9 matches we should expect at least 2-3 RDW deck, so decks should consider the field for future contests.

We have not one single removal spell, just Ugin and Vivien to some extent and that I don't like coz 5-6 cmc removal piece is not where you want to be but if you manage to ramp up you can drop your whole hand in a hurry and then stall the board until you got a clear shot, I missed some sort of evasion I think combat math is going to be huge and the only trick we have there is to surprise pump the team with Clancaller other than that it's just raw power.

I will give this a solid
Good job Haven!

I'm trying out Darkstar's build.

Unfortunately, I had to make some adjustments due to lack of a few cards:





So the games:

Vs Sultai midrange (Win)
Triple llanowar, Polenbright, 2 lands hand with a song.
T1 elf, T2 smack with elf and drop song. T3 Draw Krasis and play out all the elves and polenbright (should maybe have waited for after chapter 3 to proliferate).
Opp plays a Jadelight.
T4 smack with indestructables, cast krasis for 5.
Opp scoops

Vs Izzet wizards midrange (Win)
I get T1 elf again, T2 incubation druid. Plenty of land and bioesence and sharktocrab early.
He plays a bunch of 1/3 wizards and an adeliz and smacks me.
I adapt sharktocrab, shut down adeliz and evolution sage helps sharky keep adeliz and friends from getting trigger happy.
I deliver 7/7 sharky beats and his tiny wizards couldn't keep up.

Vs Bgr Reanimator (Loss)
Botched this game... Missed lethal because I got greedy and wanted to play a big bioessence hydra.
All he did was bedevil my big dudes and reanimate a ghalta.
Should have won this one...

Vs Funky combo deck (Loss)

Dude pulled off some crazy combo T4 with double cast into neoform into naru meha into total bullsh*t... Wow and I had a decent start too...

Vs Dimir control (Win)
T1 elf, T2 druid, T3 adapt druid, T4 Krasis for 6 (which got countered... But I still got the cards and life).
Opp scooped next turn...

Vs Sultai Midrange (Loss)
Opp got triple wildgrowth walker into double jadelight nonesense with help from a hydroid krasis.
Not even a 13/13 Bioessence hydra saved me...

Vs Golgari Midrange (Win)
Slow draw, but was ready to get the nonesense started when opp scoops due to lack of green mana (He played double 1/2 black explorers with only 2 swamps and found jadelights twice...)

7 games and a 4-3 record in unranked (should have been 5-2 but I had a brainfart there...).

Not too shabby... Deck is pretty quick, especially with T1 elf, but lack of interaction can really be tough when you get a slow start. Don't think the changes I had to make would have made a difference in the games I lost, because they mostly seem strong mid-game cards and none of my games actually went that far. Could be due to playing unranked, but it seemed to me like the deck either goes overboard really fast or just can't keep up.

I'll second that.

Singing in Elvish by Haven_PT

I took the deck for a constructed event an I got the results ready!
G1 Vs .... RDW... sight

G2 vs Esper

G3 Vs Dimir

G4 Vs RDW again...

G5 Vs Gruul

G6 vs mono green it seems

G7 Vs Jeskia Superfriends

G8 Vs WW


G9Vs Bant


FINAL SCORE


Vid uploading

Right out of the oven!

Nice!

Oh man, YouTube blocked the recording because of copyrights... Bummer

Damn!
I hit on Erase the audio... It should work later... maybe... I dunno really, next time I think I will just use headphones

Yeah, that worked. Awesome plays vs that mono-green deck.
Against mono-white it would probably have been better to just sit back and ride the beast masterer/evolution sage card advantage and create a really ridiculous board state. Could have gone both ways anyway, but attacking ended up giving him the edge.

As for removal, I found that this deck usually only really wants to pick off key cards that make your life difficult (PWs and flyers). Ugin is a really versatile answer, that can also develop your board if you have the mana for him. Protecting is often hard though...

Bonus round with Darkstar's deck in the Commence the Endgame event:

Vs Gruul Mid-range counters (Win)
Bioessence hydra going 17/17 was just too much with vivien making him have vigilance, opp just gave up when he had to trade nearly his whole board....

Cucho up next





Game 1 vs Mono-green merfolk? (Win)
I get a T1 chamber sentry, he plays forest and kumena's speaker.
T2 I play huatli's raptor, proliferate and attack.
He scoops... Wow... Chamber Sentry doing some intimidation there.

Game 2 vs RDW (Win)
I mull a really bad hand with all the expensive stuff and no creatures even though it had 3 land and all my colors.
Keep 6 which is much better (double baffling end, raptor, benalia, 3 land)
I decide to hold the raptors and go for baffling end on the firebrand and get pinged for it. Then I benalia and draw into second benalia (benalia doesn't work well with proliferate) next turn. He's burning through lightning strikes, wizards lightnings and stuff to kill all the tokens. Then I drop the raptors and proceed to smack him.
He starts to risk factor me. I'm at 19 life so I don't give him cards.
Sentry shows up, I drop him for 2 and another raptor to get him to 3. He eats a strike.
He pulls out a second factor and zaps one of my raptors.
I find a song! Now, if only I can get 3 more creatures, then I can ressurect my sentry!
Grateful Appartition next turn and it's a race against the double factors (he's in top-deck mode).
I get there with 1 life because he discarded his last card to the factor and I've got lethal next turn.

Game 3 vs Esper control (Loss)
Did this game go bad...
T2 thought erasure nabbed my benalia. Kept a decent 2 lander, bricked at 2 lands and never got passed 4 with 3 loxodons in hand and 0 creatures. Drew both the useless baffling ends.
He flipped azcanta. Baby teferi bounced my last raptor and it got thought erasured too. When he azcanted up big teferi I scooped, because I couldn't be bothered to wait for that obnoxious deck to do it's thing and pretend it has a wincon.

Game 4 vs Dimir Control (Win)
Kept a decent 2 lander and drew into the 3rd land.
T2 guardian, T3 benalia into T4 benalia + loxodon (he only had 2 swamps untappped).
The loxodon play was clutch because next turn he cast carnarium (not doing jack...) and scooped.
I was gonna play song next turn, but so far I've been having very little song action...

Game 5 vs Grixis Walkers (Loss)
He has everything, exactly when he needs it.
I pulled off some funky crab people shenaningans but he has perfect removal (inluding a clutch ritual of soot), perfect mana and perfect thought erasures.
Still no song action.

Game 6 vs Grixis Walkers (Loss)
I got a strong opener with crab into benalia into ajani. But he has a perfect answer in T4 ritual of soot (second game in a row)...
Then, I've got him on the ropes again and double angrath's rampage gets rid of my raptor and sentry and it was all downhill from there...
Did get a song to go off, but angrath shut down the festivities the turn after.

Game 7 vs Grixis Arclight (Win)
That's more like it! God-draw time.
T1 tapped shock land.
T2 2/2 sentry
T3 benalia
T4 loxodon, into polenbright druid. Got an army of 4/4 and ajani in hand ready to roll next turn.
T5 We didn't get to T5... hehehe
All he managed to do was play electromancer T2, dump a bunch of phoenixes into the yard T3, but that was far from being enough.

So, 4-3... An ok record, but it was annoying that control kicked my butt so hard. Deck felt a little like a watered-down Mono white, because it has less 1-drops for loxodon. When it worked it could go bonkers, but that only really happened in half the games.
The removal felt pointless. I think this deck wants to flood the board and go crazy real quick (and song of freyalise likes full boards!). The only creatures that can slow it down are the big ones and baffling end can't really hit those.
The power card here felt like history of benalia and not really song of freyalise. I'm sorry cucho, although I did have some fun games, I didn't feel you really broke song. It feels much like an after-thought in the deck, than a real build around. To be honest, unbreakable formation is probably a better fit than song.

Bonus game(s) in the endgame event:
Game 1 vs Mono-red (Loss)
On the draw, mulled a 2 forest all white cards into an ok hand.
He had the upper-hand and just burned my dudes and amassed into an 8/8 army with menace thanks to angrath before I could really set-up, so I did another game.

Game 2 vs Selesnya (Win)
Decent hand, on the play.
T1 sentry
T2 Song
T3 Benalia
T4 pollenbright and he scooped.
He played some stuff, but I always managed to be ahead.

4 Sentry´s is a bit over the top TBH, but yeah the deck can sometimes work better without Freyalise, that said the deck can very much make use of it and ramp into big boards. Baffling ends were there to deal with RDW mainly, Chainiboys and Steamkins, spending your tribunals there and tapping out sounds awful and this way you can remove a blocker for the big swing after Freyalise or Benalia resolves.

Benalia and Freyalise can work quite ok, first you get two bodies to put counters on and you can curve into T1 Pelt, T2 Raptor, T3 Freyalise into Benalia wich sounds bonkers to me.

I think Song is more a T3-T5 play more than a T2, If you with your land drops and deploy T1-T2 threats song can be absurd, I think I missed a couple 5 CMC drops like Nissa or Ugin.

I had a very good run with the deck on the event to back this up, I did Darkstar run also and I´m only missing Heff´s.
I will upload the vids ASAP with the comments on the builds.

Funny enough I have quite decent results against control with the deck, my biggest problems are WW and RDW.

After playing the other decks it becomes quite obvious the the deck wants Nissa as the top end, in fact... I don't think there's a reason not to play Nissa in a green deck ATM.

Thanks for the input Haven!

ok you bastards! I finished the trials!
Write ups and vids incoming

DARKSTAR Hail Hydra


Ok so this deck is way fun! I love it it for the most part, sure it can go wrong but it was snappy, fresh and janky so +1 already! nice deck Darkstar

The deck has Elves and Druids, Spirals and Kiora as Ramp enablers, your big spells are Nissa and Kraxis so it seems a bit like the Mass Manipulation, but this deck takes Hydra into the spot light and my god that thing takes people off guard, Teferi owns it but who cares!
Nissa and Kiora work great here and Druids + Pollengring shined in more than one match.
Kraxis is a very good choice with all this mana floating around, Vivien felt underwhelming overall and there are not that the proliferate part was not at its best, I think Darkstar aimed for the PWs on the proliferate and that is fine but this deck wins with board... I missed Pelt collector here or Chamber Guardian both of those cards cares for counters and can easily feed them self some counter love.
Other than that the deck felt for the most part very fun.
Mana seemed fine and if you flooded around you basically just had more fuel for a huge Kraxis.

I think the build could have used a few more 2 drops to hold the board but overall the deck is all about ramping so maybe that is not at all were you want to go, please do share some piloting tips when you got so many synergy going! it was a hard time getting to know the deck and I lost my fair amount of warm up rounds because of it.
On the breakage of Freyalise I think the deck lacks a bit of breakage, the deck is fun to pilot, but there are not that many things you can pull off your sleeve with Freyalise, and sometimes the third chapter resolves on a very weak board. Chamber guardians should have being here

I will give this deck a 5,5 good job Darkstar I had the most fun piloting the deck.
Vids in a few.

Darkstar game play



Damn is time consuming being a judge!!
ok let me check the vid for cool plays and award some extra points final score during the evening, I will try to end things up today, I want to climb to frigging mythic before the end of the season and I´m stuck pretty bad on Plat...
G1 vs Dreadhorde invation

G2 vs Esper Walkers

G3 vs WW

G4 Vs Jund

G5 VS Commad the Dreadhorde

G6 VS ESPER

G7 vs RDW


wins, extra points .5 from the Build
FINAL SCORE 12.5