| Player’s Standing | Player’s Name | Player’s Deck List Link |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Cara Fox | Mono Black |
| 2nd | Martin Davis | UB Doomsday |
| 3rd-4th | Daniel Stoney | UBGw Nadu Flash Reanimator |
| 3rd-4th | Patrick Warnes | RG Delirium Aggro |
| 5th-8th | Raj Tokhi | GWB Midrange ‘Junk’ |
| 5th-8th | Dean Kolpin | 8 Point ‘Big Boros’ |
| 5th-8th | Shane Cutting | Jund Delirium Aggro |
| 5th-8th | Steve Lowe | 4c Initiative |
The Event:
Dragon’s Lair Salisbury capped off a brilliant year for 7 Point Highlander in SA with a fantastic event! 20 players rocked up to battle it out for some high roller prizes: A Zendikar expedition Ancient tomb, a box-topper Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth; an Alliances Force of Will and an extended art The One Ring!
It was (a sword day) a RED day! With many players choosing to bring Red based midrange and aggro decks, with combo being the natural predator of such archetypes also seeing a big uptick, we saw Thoracle, Flash/Reanimator strategies, Tinker storm and even big mana decks like Eldrazi coming out to meet the challenge. The coolest innovation I saw for the day were Shane Cutting and Patrick Warnes’ Gruul based delirium decks utilizing a lot of new delirium pay-off cards like Ursine Monstrosity, Wildfire Wickerfolk and Omnivorous Flytrap to ensure a dominant boardstate and being able to murder your opponents in only a few swings.
My Deck Choice:
With Adelaide’s meta shifting from slower midrange grind-fests into fast-paced aggressive decks such as Rakdos, Moonshine and Gruul decks rising to the top I decided to bring in a midrange deck that can fight for the board and then stabilize though life gain and card advantage, the deck also plays a variety of disruptive elements such as 5 creatures that interact with the graveyard, maindeck artifact/enchantment hate and creature based removal. The Birthing Pod/Ritual element combined with creatures that search for lands such as Wight & Knight of the Reliquary and Elvish Reclaimer round round off the toolbox element of the deck and provide some much needed consistency. A decklist can be found in the top 8 table!
My matchups through the day were very back and forth and I feel like in the swiss stage I made a fantastic deck choice facing 3 aggressive red decks (Adam on RW burn, Shane on Jund Delirium Aggro and Dean on Big Boros) with my other two matchups being vs more grindy midrange decks (Leigh Dugan on Nono Blue Lurrus and Tallula on Abzan Maverick Lands), With my build being tuned to beat more aggressive decks I was able to go toe-to-toe vs the red decks. In the Top 8, however, I got absolutely ran over in games 1 and 3 by Patrick’s RG Delirium deck. In game 2 a Scavenging Ooze and an Umezawa’s Jitte held the line, but games 1 and 3 proved that good deckbuilding and piloting can overcome historically challenging matchups!
The Top 8:
The top features a very diverse range of decks on display, we had 3 aggro decks, 2 midrange decks, 2 combo decks and a hybrid combo/midrange deck. Every top 8 match was fiercely contested with some very long closely fought battles and other games, despite being faster, had a lot of decision points for both players.
The Winning Deck:
Cara Fox on Mono Black took home the goods beating Martin on UB Doomsday in the finals! Cara has been a new member of SA’s 7 Point Highlander community and is also relatively new to the format. She has been championing her signature Mono-Black deck for the past few months tweaking card choices, sideboard tech and points spreads to fine tune the list and it paid off on Sunday! Looking closely at the deck highlights some really cool deckbuilding choices, firstly making it a hybrid deck means it can attack you on multiple axis using a mix of classic black disruption, solid black midrange threats and a reanimator package, hell even the sideboard has a plan D in it: the Leyline + Helm combo! Mono black decks historically did poorly against more aggressive archetypes but the recent printings of life-gaining threats such as Barrowgoyf, Sheoldred the Apocalypse and Metamorphosis Fanatic have helped a great deal!
Cara mentioned that the deck has a high ceiling but the floor is deceptively low with the deck not doing much when drawing the wrong halves of the deck together.
Lake of the Dead was the stand out card according to her and also playing her copy that she has had for a while was the biggest reason she decided to dip her toes in the format. Being able to generate 4 mana in a single turn simply off a land drop won her quite a few games. Honourable mentions also go out to: Emperor of Bones, Dearthrite Shaman and Reanimate! The maindeck Opposition Agent also single handedly clutched the one of finals for her when she flashed it in vs Martin putting Doomsday on the stack.
Cara’s pro-tip for piloting the deck is to be disciplined with mulligans, chuck away mediocre but playable 7s and look for broken 6s, this goes back to leveraging the higher ceiling the deck offers. She is also considering adding an expedition map to the deck to find her beloved Lake of the Dead and is considering testing a Recurring Nightmare in the future.
The Spoils of War:
