It is Christmas tradition in Coventry that every year we have a big crazy draft, in which about 15 players make their way downstairs at Bishop Games, buy 3 boosters of the set(s) of their choice, crack them open and draft the hell out of them in one big chaos-pod, where hoping for one of the cards you want to table isn’t such a great plan. However with the addition of Tuesday Night Magic (TNM), we needed to think of something new to do on the final Tuesday before Christmas, to prepare ourselves for the super-draft on Friday. Because of the eternal love many Bishop gamers hold for the beautiful set that is Coldsnap, it was suggested that we break our bonds with the set, and go for all out destruction with an Ironman event (explanation later). Though some opted out at the thought of ripping up precious paper, 9 people decided to take on Coldsnap in a mental and physical battle: while fighting through the mental anguish of running Coldsnap cards, some joy could be found in ripping up any cards unlucky enough to hit the graveyard.
Before I start, I’d like to point out that any appreciators of Coldsnap should stop reading now, and/or remove any sharp objects from the proximity.
Oh yeah – for those of you who don’t know, an Ironman event is a knockout event (generally sealed) in which you build a deck of at least 40 cards as usual, but then every card that hits your graveyard gets mercilessly 
ripped up in whatever manner seems appropriate. The loser of the 1-game match (try playing game 3 with about half the spells but equal number of lands you started game 1 with) then hands over his remaining deck and pool of cards to his opponent, who gets to rebuild their deck with the new cards they’ve acquired. In a set therefore with ripple, this can become quite ridiculous…
While some went to find lunch/dinner after 3 hours of hardcore drafting (which Scott won, but that’s a story for another day), others eagerly cracked open their packs of Coldsnap, hoping to open as many Sun’s Bounty as they could, jus to get the pleasure of ripping them up as soon as they hit the ‘yard. Upon laying out my cards, my pool seemed fairly mediocre – Going for the 3 Kjeldoran Warcry plan seemed pointless, considering they are only ever +1+1 (I was told ripping up does not use the stack, so you can’t discard a Warcry, then with the rip trigger on play one, giving +2+2 for only 2 mana (though I’m not sure how many things in Coldsnap allow you to discard without a mana cost)). I decided to settle for a fairly average RG build, with a couple of the dreaded Aurochs Herds, the even more dreaded Ronom Hulk, and the slightly under-dreaded Ironfoot. While people around me cried with glee at opening 3 Stalking Yetis and Rimescale Dragons, I got a few extended test games in before moving onto my first match.
Round 1: vs Matty Norton
Matty, like me, wasn’t delighted with his pool, but wasn’t complaining nonetheless. We started playing and it became apparent that he too had built RG – the 4th person I had seen so far. Maybe we’d broken the Coldsnap sealed metagame? Ah well, too late now. I won the roll and chose to play (which I don’t always do in sealed, but because there is only one game per match, racing seems the best plan), and started well with a 3rd turn Earthen Goo into a 4th turn Phyrexian Ironfoot. Matty however started with an Into the North, accelerating him into an Ohran Yeti. The yeti however, by the time I had 2 age counters on my Goo, was smaller than both my creatures and the best he could do was unsuccessfully race me. Matty, seeing his life was dropping rapidly, turned Yeti into chump mode and threw it, alongside a Boreal Druid, in front of my Ironfoot. A sneaky Skred on my part, however, foiled this plan, and took out the Yeti, leaving the Ironfoot to snack on the remains of the Druid. At realisation that he was about to die, Matty decided that the best plan was to make sure my deck was as bad as possible in the next round, and shot down his 2nd Boreal Druid with Surging Flames, then proceeded to rip them up with much glee. B******.
After this round Master Chris told me I had the Bye. Now under normal circumstances, in a knockout tournament, I wouldn’t really mind, in fact, I’d be happy. In an ironman, however, this means I get a much smaller card pool, and in a set with ridiculous multiples synergy, this means I could have a serious disadvantage going into the 3rd round. At First I assumed I would just stick to RG, because seeing as Matty and I had both build decks in these colours, the strongest cards were surely in RG. I then realised that as we’d each ripped up quite a few good cards, there may be only a few good cards remaining. I laid out all my cards into each colour and pondered over them for a good 30 minutes (while doing other things – I had the bye and got quite bored). I could see no ripple cards in more than 3 copies, which upset me somewhat, and there were no particularly spectacular colours. Black had a few Mushers, blue had a few Taskmages, white had a few soldiers, green had the odd fatty and red had the odd burn.
Though green was perhaps the most powerful of the two colours in my first deck, and I now had a 3rd Aurochs Herd, a 2nd Ronom Hulk and an Arctic Nishoba, I decided, after much agonising, that it would have to be cut. This was on the basis that my next round opponent would have an extra pool of cards over me, and was therefore certain to have more powerful cards overall. I decided my only hope was to build as fast a deck as possible, and therefore chose the classic colours of all out aggro, and made a type-2 worthy Boros Deck Wins (using the phrase ‘type 2 worthy’ loosely). With triple Skred, 3 Outriders and 2 Field Marshall, I hope to race straight out of the blocks with a few 3/3 First Strikers, then Skred away any unwanted blockers with my manabase of 10 Snowy lands.
Round 3 Vs Baz (round 2 was a bye)
Baz had probably opened the most ridiculously bomby pool in the room, and on top of this he had beaten Marco, my brother, who had the 2nd bombiest pool, gaining 2 of his Stalking Yetis amongst other beauties. On top of this, Baz hadn’t had a bye, and so had twice the pool I had. It was looking great for me then…
I lost the roll this time, and Baz chose to play. My first play was a Martyr of Ashes into a 2nd turn Squall Drifter – not the most aggressive of creatures, but fairly good ones nonetheless. Baz started off with an Into the North, which accelerated him (sort of) straight into a 3rd turn Ironfoot. This wasn’t too scary for me, as I just shackled up the Ironfoot. However, what was scary, was a 4th turn Ronom Hulk, and considering every creature I had bar the Martyr was snow, it could provide a slight problem. At this point I had 2 options: 1 was to build up the red cards in hand, perhaps draw a non-snow creature in the process, and send the martyr in the blow up the hulk along with the rest of the board. Plan 2 was to race. With only one Ohran Yeti in hand, the Martyr plan seemed week, and so race it was – Martyr turned to chump mode, and everything else starting hitting the red zone, including 2 Ohran Yetis and a Squall Drifter. Because Baz was constantly tapping down his own lands to his hulk, he wasn’t actually playing anything else. With me at 10 life and Baz with only a Hulk and 3 untapped lands, one of the best moments of the day was seeing Baz realise that a 4th turn Ronom Hulk on the play may not actually win him the match. He decided the Hulk would stay at home, played an Earthen Goo (deciding untapped lands are overrated), and passed the turn. I drew, played out my Stalking Yeti to kill off his Goo, played a Rimerunner, hasted it up, and swung for the win. All Baz could do was Block my Ohran Yeti, and as damaged resolved (stacking it so my Yeti died before he did, if that’s possible…) was eat my Yeti with much glee.
After having waited over an hour to play against Baz, it was a pleasant surprise to find that Tony was already ready to go as soon as I finished my deck, as he had just had a bye. After losing, Baz, in a rather depressed manner, went through his deck and pool pointing out to me all the good cards he had, and all the possible decks I could run, in a way that suggested ‘how could I have lost this?’. He showed me his 6 Surging Dementia, which, added to my 2, could effectively strip the opponent’s hand turn 2, but this didn’t seem like a very fun strategy, and I wanted to have fun. And though getting your opponent to discard cards isn’t fun, rippling stuff is – one thing that caught my eye was the fact he had 2 Thrumming Stones. After a brief spell of umming and ahhing, I decided I was going for a mono-white multiples.dec. As this was my final deck, I have the complete decklist. Enjoy. (The name is because it only has 7 different spells)
“7 is the lucky number!” |
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8 Kjeldoran Outrider |
6 Snow-Covered Plans |
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Round 4: The finals: Vs Tony Buttery (Arch Nemesis)
Though we had both had the bye, I had it a round earlier than Tony, which meant I had a slight advantage over him, as the person I played while he had the bye, Baz, will have had a larger pool than the person Tony played when I had my Bye. However, going by what happened in my last round, having the Bye, or having it at a certain time, wasn’t necessarily a disadvantage. I won the roll, and chose to play, leading off with a 2nd turn Outrider, followed by a 3rd turn outrider. Tony slowly built up some creatures, including a Boreal Centaur turn 2, an Ironfoot turn 3, and a Surging Sentinels turn 4 (he failed to ripple anything out). I decided not to play my 4th turn Outrider, as I was waiting to play it after I dropped my 5th turn Thrumming Stone, at which point I declared ‘Let the Fun begin’. Turn 6 I drew another Outrider, meaning it was highly unlikely I would fizzle. The first Outrider came down, and found me 2 more, then fizzled, at which point Tony chuckled and told me how unimpressive 2 was, so I merely smirked, and answered with ‘that’s what you think’, then played out the other Outrider, who provided me with 2 more, giving my full 8 in play. Next turn came the big attack – we traded a few creatures each, and Tony went to 10, but after that not a whole amount happened. His remark was ‘This is all cute, but it’s not like your Outriders are doing anything’. Having rippled through my whole deck, I knew that the Field Marshals were quite a way down, meaning no 3/3 First Strikers for me. However, I knew that my 4 Gelid Shackles were not only quite close together, but also quite close to the top. Lo and behold, I rip the top card of my deck, throw Shackles on his biggest creatures, then proceed to ripple out my other 3 Shackles on his other 3 Creatures, and swing in for the victory.
A couple of photos later, and the odd extra card ripped up for flavour, and I was left with a huge pile of Coldsnap and a box of ripped up cards (though some of it was cut quite artistically, I must say). However, there was an upside – I was the Ironman Bishop Games champion!!! I must quite frankly admit, I’ve never had that much fun with Coldsnap. Thanks Wizards!
(ps that’s a Sun’s Bounty stuck to my forehead)
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