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Hey Gamers! This past weekend, after I did The Steveston Grand Prix of Art, my roommate Andrew treated me to a brand new gaming experience: being one of the heads in a Two-Headed Giant Bloomburrow Prerelease!
That’s right, Magic the Gathering’s newest expansion is here and players can get their fix of cute Mouses, Ratses, Otterseses, and of course, Forgs. Love those critters too? Check out this post I did last week about building decks around them!
I have to mention that while the set contains Birds, it’s very light on Birbs, Borbs, and Hummingbirds. I know I’m not alone in thinking this. But I am a Hummingbird enthusiast, so….
…I might be a little biased.
Two Heads are Better than…
In Two Headed Giant Prereleases, players combine their card pools, build two decks and face off against 2 opponents simultaneously. We share 30 life points, share a combat, and can show and discuss our hands. We don’t share hands, mana, or effects that say ‘you’ and ‘yours’.
It was very fun, and a totally unique way to play Magic. Who knew this popular format that’s been around since the beginnings was actually good?!
Deckbuilding
Both Andrew and I had had a full day, so we probably didn’t build the most optimized decks. I know we were sort of faked out by opening 2 copies of Sunspine Lynx. This is a pretty good card, though not as optimal in a limited format with few non-basic lands. It’s still a powerful 5/4 for 4 mana that shuts off life gain from stuff like Food tokens, but it isn’t a source of card advantage. We ended up playing them.
We also had 3 copies of Take out the Trash and plethora of other red removal, and I built a Green/Red spellslinger deck. I didn’t have a ton of synergy to work with, and we didn’t get much card-draw stuff of any kind, but there were a few cool tricks to pull.
In the past, cards like Kindlespark Duo have done their damage to each opponent, which would have been very good in Two-Headed Giant, but combined with Valley Flamecaller, it was still a strong clock that got better with every spell I slung.
Andrew built Blue/White Birds, focusing on evasion, synergy and tokens. With a couple of copies of Plumecreed Mentor, a Jackdaw Savior, a Salvation Swan and Kastral, the Windcrested as the starting point, it was pretty obvious.
It also seemed like a good pairing with my deck. It reminded me of Delver of Secrets decks in several 60 card formats, that puts an evasive threat out early and protects it with removal.
But I mentioned above that Sunspine Lynx faked us out. What it did was turn us off playing our handful of non-basic lands, and not really considering a splash for Black somewhere. The Black cards were heavy on 1 and 5 drops, with not much in between, so tough to fit in, but they might have made a difference. We did have some unconditional removal and exile. Maha, Its Feathers Night was the best card we couldn’t justify.
Round 1
The first game got off to a hot start… by our opponents. Within the first 3 turns, they had 5 creatures between them.
Unlucky for them, all of those creatures had a toughness of 2 or less, and I had Wildfire Howl and cleaned them all out on our third turn. After that we were able to apply constant pressure while removing our opponents’ threats, and won convincingly. Record 1-0-0.
Round 2
In Round 2, Andrew had troubles with mana, but we kept in the game for a while until…
…Our opponents played Ygra, Eater of All. After that, it was us against the Cat. Every creature that died made Ygra bigger, and my choice to go with Red removal over Black really fell short. I could never do enough damage to the Cat to kill it. It got huge, and we chumped until Andrew reset things with a Run Away Together, a Two-Headed Giant allstar that can target one creature from each opponent.
But the Cat was not to be denied, and came right back, and the opposing Giant had a few other tricks, like Nettle Guard. Ygra makes all other creatures into Food Artifacts, and turns Nettle Guard into premium removal. They were able to recur the guard a couple of times, and could sacrifice it at instant speed to dodge removal, so I couldn’t exile it.
We lasted a long time, but ultimately were overwhelmed. Record 1-0-1.
Round 3
Round 3 paired us up with a couple of decks that were similar to ours: a creature type synergy deck, supported by a spellslinger. The pairing had eliminated our Round 1 opponents, and we heard they won by looping Frogs. Boy did they ever.
They quickly leveraged cards like Dour Port-Mage to gain a ton of card advantage on us. The Port-Mage has a ton of potential in other formats. Commander Ninja players should take a look, for sure. But I digress, the Frogs were bouncing in and out of play, and the Frog player was drawing through their deck at a fantastic rate.
While Andrew stalled on Blue mana, I kept the board manageable with removal. Our life total was under constant threat though, and we relied on Lifecreed Duo to keep us going. At one point we were at 4 and things looked pretty grim.
We’d swapped out a couple of cards between rounds, in case of another bomb like Ygra. I added 2 Bumbleflower’s Sharepot and Andrew added 2 counterspells, including Long River’s Pull. The Sharepots both saw play, and the life gained from the Foods and the removal all mattered.
Andrew cast both counterspells in the round as well, and Long River’s Pull made the extra and final difference. Not only did Andrew counter a key spell, he Gifted the card.
One of the opposing heads had drawn nearly their entire deck, and were on their last couple cards. They mathed it out to kill us the turn before they drew out, but Gifting a card is not an optional draw, and we were able to force them to draw out with Long River’s Pull, giving us a surprise come-from-behind win! Record 2-0-1.
Round 4
The final round was almost the same decks as Round 3. Spellslinger plus Frogs. Between both Giants, we cast 4 copies of Take out the Trash in the first 3 turns. But this was my game to fail on mana.
I have flooded out before, but not like this. The long game in Round 3 probably clumped my lands, but even so, I saw 16 cards in the round, and 11 were lands. I had 5 of my 7 Forests, and 6 of my 10 Mountains. And 5 other cards. I started with 3 lands in hand, so I only drew a single non-land card all game. Ouch.
Andrew did really well to hold off the other Giant, and we might have competed had I drawn anything at all to help. Each turn I’d draw the land and show him with as little emotion as possible to try and convince the opponents that I was just holding back. Not so much.
The Frogs had us on synergy and card advantage anyway. Clement, the Worrywort was the lynchpin of the strategy, returning smaller creatures to hand for replay value. With lots of Enters triggers, they quickly pulled ahead and were able to match every threat we played without losing many of theirs.
I could only watch as our life totals dwindled and our board presence got wiped away or tapped down. Record 2-0-2.
Wrap-Up
With that, we were just out of the prizes. We were lucky to get 4 games in, with a legit chance until the very end. Considering how we lost, I think we did very very well.
Some of the cards surprised me, like Dour Port-Mage, and the very playable Clifftop Lookout. The set is definitely fun, and the cute critters contribute a lot of that.
I would certainly do more Two-Headed Giant in the future. I think it combines very well with a Prerelease format, and I invite you to try it yourself!
Thanks for reading!
I pushed for my LGS to do 2HG prerelease but sadly not to be. A shame otherwise I’d have taken my daughter in with me: what better set for a 7 year old?
Right? I bet 2HG is great for parents/kids.