Hexdrinker Stompy
Modern
SCORE: 4 | 166 VIEWS | IN 5 FOLDERS
July 15, 2021
My first tournament in 6 years!
Round 1: Won against Dimir Mill, 2-0:
The matchup seemed pretty favorable. We don't rely on just 1 or 2 key cards to win, so Surgical Extracton doesn't hurt as much as it does for some other decks. Having a bunch of tramplers made their defense plan of Lurrus of the Dream-Den recasting Hedron Crab every turn pretty useless, so it was a pretty straightforward win. Easier to count to 20 than 53, right?
Round 2: Lost to a sweet Mardu deck featuring General Ferrous Rokiric, 1-2:
The General is kind of a beating for us, as he turns removal spells into board presence, and he's impossible for us to interact with. I managed to force a game 3, but lost to Nahiri cheating in an Emrakul. The General is so annoying I ordered a playset of Thrash / Threat to deal with him. Glaring Spotlight is pretty terrible, but I added it to my board while I wait to Thrash to arrive just so I have SOMETHING against this guy.
Round 3: Won against Rakdos, 2-1:
Really happy with this win. Ragavan, Dauthi Voidwalker, Dragon's Rage Channeler, and Kroxa, backed up by tons of removal and the Lurrus + Bauble card advantage engine make for a pretty sweet deck. Scavenging Ooze shines here though, and I'm actually super happy any time my opponent goes fetch, shock, Thoughtseize on turn 1. Whatever card they take feels like it becomes "Discard this card from your hand: target player loses 5 life." I'm usually good with that. The game I lost was to Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer stealing a Hexdrinker on turn 2, which is kind of a beating. Matchups like this are the reason I increased my Dismember count to a full playset in the 75.
Round 4: Lost to Simic Merfolk, 1-2:
This is another matchup that I want more Dismember for. Both losses were essentially ground stalls that were eventually broken by islandwalk when my opponent had built up a board that was lethal in 1 shot. Being able to reliably kill Tide Shaper might just have made the difference in one of them, as Hexdrinker can break through a stall given enough time. I also boarded too heavily against Aether Vial, playing a lot of cards that were bad aside from their interaction with that one card. Next time is just +2 Gemrazer/ -2 Scavenging Ooze, +3 Dismember/ -3 Blossoming Defense and call it a day.
Round 5: Lost to Yawgmoth Combo, 0-2:
My opponent was running a single copy of Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons that he drew both games and used with Yawgmoth to keep my board clear until he could assemble the combo. I drew exactly zero of my interaction, so yeah, another push in the direction of having access to full playsets of Dismember and Scavenging Ooze in the 75.
Overall it was a fun night, and I feel like I learned a lot, which is always a win. I will be back, more skilled and more fine-tuned, if even just a tiny little bit, to take another stab at the prize pool...