This time we have guest post from Joakim Jansson from Växjö, Sweden, who took his Full English Breakfast deck to a local tournament. Enjoy! / Martin
My deck of choice: Full English Breakfast. For those of you who don’t know how this one functions it basically goes like this. You want to land Volrath’s Shapeshifter (and this guy forces you to manage the top of your graveyard with care). Drop a hasty Angel named Akroma, Angel of Wrath, to get past the blockers. Finish off by searching up Phage the Untouchable and win at the spot. All other creatures in the deck either act as disruption, graveyard management or protection for the Shapeshifter. And there’s Squee, Goblin Nabob, of course.
SIDEBOARD
The five-person field of decks was as follows:
- Full English Breakfast
- WUG Control
- Enchantress
- UG Madness
- Tour de France (Fluctuator combo all French cards, pun intended)
We played four rounds (Round Robin).
Match 1 vs Simon with Enchantress
Game 1
I open up with Birds of Paradise and follow up next round with a Mesmeric Fiend, to snag the only enchantment on his hand. This crippled him quite a bit as he didn’t draw another enchantment during the whole course of the game. I find my Survival of the Fittest,play it andstart doing my thing. But! He draws his one-off Tormod’s Crypt (nice meta game call!). I play around it though, by attacking with my Volrath’s Shapeshifter and turn it into a Phyrexian Dreadnought, knocking him down to four life. He patiently sits on his Tormod’s Crypt… Next turn, a new attack with my “Dreadnought” forces him to crack the Crypt. After, I discard my Iridescent Angel and the attack is lethal.
Game 2
This game ended in a relatively fast combo win. Simon plays some enchantments and draw some cards, but no relevant cards. Phage the Untouchable turn him to dust quite fast.
Match 2 vs Erik with Tour de France
Game 1
I’m on the play.
Me: Birds of Paradise
Erik: Cycleland (tapped)
Me: Volrath’s Shapeshifter
Erik: Fluctuator → cycle, cycle, cycle, cycle, cycle… pass!
Me: Land, Diabolic Intent, get Phage the Untouchable, attack with Volrath’s Shapeshifterdiscard Phage. Game!
Game 2
I got the nuts turn one Cabal Therapy taking two Fluctuators, into Survival of the Fittest and Tormod’s Crypt. Then a Shapeshifter-turned-Phage made it a fast matter.
Match 3 vs Ajdin with WUG Control
Game 1
This one is a bit blurry as it gets grindy and I have an active Survival of the Fittest and keep getting threats with the help of my best friend Squee, Goblin Nabob.
Eventually I go for a threatening attack and Ajdin is forced to play his Mystic Snake to block. I have other plans however. My shapeshifter turns into an Iridescent Angel and all of a sudden Phage deals lethal damage to him.
Game 2
This game turned out quite funny. When Ajdin tried my deck the week before he and Erik looked into my sideboard, saw Hypnox and laughed. They didn’t really get why I had that big dude which is lousy to reanimate. Little did he now the interaction with Volrath’s Shapeshifter.
I started my turn by playing a Duress, snagging one of his two Counterspells. The second one is force to handle a Mesmeric Fiend. This helps me stick my Survival of the Fittest, fetching Hypnox, then discarding it to get my Volrath’s Shapeshifterr. Then my Shapeshifter disguised as a Hypnox steals his whole hand, whereafter it turns into an Akroma, Angel of Wrath (so that he doesn’t get the hand back). From there is was easy riding to a combo win.
Match 4 vs Lucas med UG Madness
Game 1
This is the match I really don’t remeber correctly, but something like this: UG Madness lacks removal, which is very good for me. Mesmeric Fiend is an amazing card and helps me land my Survival of the Fittest. With that on the board I have a huge advantage, “survivaling” to my combo with ease.
Game 2
Lucas has Wild Mongrel, Basking Rootwalla, Circular Logic and Daze. He goes on the offensive quite fast. I am forced to tap out for my Volrath’s Shapeshifter, but it gets Dazed. When he has lethal on the board I have my Survival of the Fittest and I only need to top deck a land to win. But no such luck, I have to get my Spore Frog to buy me a turn but he has Circular Logic and we go to game 3.
Game 3
To be on the play is good. I land turn one Spore Frog (no removal, remember 🙂 ). This bought me a lot of turns so that I could assemble my contraption in order to have Phage come and visit his side.
I ended up undefeated in matches, losing only one game. So I’m really happy about the result and the deck is shaping up quite good. I’ve been tweaking it for a while now and I have managed to improve it piece by piece after playing it for four tournaments now.
