Welcome to my newest article. Recently in my area we have started having qualifying tournaments for the NAC (North American Challenge). The NAC is a tournament held in Massachusetts each year and is sponsored by T J Collectables ( http://www.tjcollect.com/). The way to qualify for this tournament is by winning a qualifying tournament held at select stores (around 25) in the Northeast. Each store has 5-6 qualifying tournaments with the prize being an entry into the NAC. Each store also gives out one additional entry to the player at that store with the most amount of matches played during the NAC Qualifiers (Kind of a lovable loser prize). The NAC will have approximately 75-100 players. Every player that plays wins a draft set or more. First prize is $1,000.
The store I was going to attempt to qualify at was Flights of Fantasy in Loudonville New York. Of the 5 Qualifying tournaments 2 were held on Sundays and 3 were held on Saturdays. The First Tournament was a Sealed Deck tourney, the second and third were Block Constructed, and the remaining three were Standard. I work Saturdays so I was unable to attend those qualifiers. That left me with only two tourneys to qualify at. Those two were Block Constructed and Standard. Here is the deck I chose for the Block Constructed tournament:
Blue/Green Pickles
Creatures (25):
4 Vesuvan Shapeshifter
3 Willbender
3 Brine Elemental
4 Mystic Snake
4 Wall of Roots
2 Thelonite Hermit
1 Fathom Seer
2 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
2 Aeon Chronicler
Instants (3):
3 Cancel
Sorcery (8):
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Search for Tomorrow
Land (24):
2 Urza's Factory
4 Zoetic Cavern
5 Forest
7 Island
4 Tolaria West
2 Calciform Pools
The first card I think stands out is the Zoetic Cavern. I like this because many times people will think this is a Shapeshifter or Brine Elemental and will try to kill it and I'll unmorph it to get a land. It also ups the morph count in this deck to 20. 1/3 of the deck comes into play as a 2/2. That will leave your opponent guessing the whole night.
Mystic Snake and Cancel give you a few options to save your creatures and stop your opponent's key spells.
Search for Tomorrow helps speed the deck up along with thinning the deck out. Hopefully you can get one of these suspended on turn one every game.
Between Fathom Seer, Aeon Chronicler, Ancestral Visions you have 7 card drawing spells. If you include Vesuvan Shapeshifter with the Fathom Seer in play then you are up to 11.
Wall of Roots helps you survive the early rush of creatures while at the same time speeds you up.
The idea behind this deck is pretty obvious and well known, get the Brine Elemental in play and unmorph, then use the Vesuvan Shapeshifter to repeatedly shut down your opponent. When that doesn't work or if your opponent gets too many creatures in play you can use the Thelonite Hermit to make lots of tokens when combined with the Shapeshifter.
I ended up going 1-2 with this deck. I didn't really know what to expect or who to expect. I had looked for some decks online to give myself a feel for the format but it seemed like a wide open format. I found that the Thelonite Hermits were very useless. I never once cast them as a morph then unmorph them. I also lost one game due to no green mana and then I lost another one due to no blue mana so if I was to replay this deck it would look like this:
Blue/Green Pickles
Creatures (28):
4 Vesuvan Shapeshifter
3 Willbender
3 Brine Elemental
4 Mystic Snake
4 Wall of Roots
2 Riftwing Cloudskate
1 Fathom Seer
2 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
2 Aeon Chronicler
3 Venser, Shaper Savant
Sorcery (8):
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Search for Tomorrow
Land (24):
4 Zoetic Cavern
7 Forest
9 Island
4 Terramorphic Expanse
Urza's Factory never came into play. If I even came close enough to use it it would just get bounced with Venser. Although I didn't do so hot in Block Constructed I feel I have a decent shot at Standard and will be trying out a R/W control deck for the 2nd qualifier. Check back in a few weeks to see how I have done and I hope you enjoyed reading my article.
Billy Moreau
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