SA: Store Championship Dragon’s Lair Salisbury, Adelaide (14 Players) 09/01/2021 | Deck Lists & Tournament Report

Tournament Report by Torin Kelderman

During the end of 2020 both Dragon’s Lair stores in Adelaide held a series of events that gained points towards a top eight, who would then battle it out on January 9th to be selected as the Highlander representative for the team event between the two Dragon’s Lair stores (on the January 10th). The top eight was single elimination with the higher seed picking play/draw. I went to the event with my usual Jund midrange list (see below for the list).

Click here to read the parallel tournament report from the other store.

My experience in the Top 8 for the Salisbury Championship

First round I was up against a blue moon control deck, Klothys, Robber of the Rich and Meren were key cards in this match as my deck gained great value to take out this round in two games. Second round found me facing down a BUG Yuriko deck. This deck was using one drop flyers or unblockable creatures to ninjitsu in Yuriko and other ninjas for value before damage, as well as using them to bounce value pieces like baleful strix and coatl. This deck saw the value of glorybringer shine in game one and Wrenn and six and strip mine go to work in game two to seal this match for me. The final saw me up against Wil’s Jeskai Miracles/ Balance deck. Game one saw Wil balance and then stick Monastery Mentor to win the game. Game two saw me lock Wil out with a turn one wrenn and six, followed by klothys and ashiok eventually winning the game through Klothys triggers and a W&6 emblem using inquisition of Kozilek and abrupt decay. Game three saw me resolve an early sylvan library and saw us exchange cards before his Bonecrusher giant into Price of Progress for 10 killed me in short order.

Wil then went on to face James Arthur in the inter-store match (I was playing on the team for modern) who was on his classic 4c (non-black) aggro/midrange deck. Unfortunately for our team Wil went down in two.

Learning Lessons from the Store Champs Series

Lessons I learnt and were reinforced in this event were that haste is very important. Threats such as Glorybringer, Questing Beast, Rankle, Robber of the Rich and Gruul Spellbreaker really pull their weight and provide a large tempo advantage. Also Karakas is really good against my deck as more than a third of the creatures are incidentally legendary and a ‘one’ mana repeatable bounce spell is really good.

See below for the Top 8 Placings and deck lists: