Round 1, 2-0 vs Jeskai Combo Breach - A perfect hand in game 1 and bauble fit in nicely to make the construct out of Ragavan/Heat/Spellbomb reach. Game 2 the keep is rather suspcious but i feel less pressure after having won the first, i have enough good draws, enough looks at cards and some interaction backup at worst, still it could've gone wrong.
Round 2, 2-0 vs Rakdos Blink - G1 is a 100% keep, i don't play the memnite into a bowmasters/fury and later on i don't block the orcs into an undying effect, bauble again is just a free pump while i use the sagas. Could've been decimated by a moon effect but Rakdos doesn't have sufficient card selection to find it often enough. Game 2 is a 100% keep, i can probably win in many different ways, i take an interesting decision to cut him off the future mana from the goblin token, i have exactly Hidetsugu in mind and the decision ends up preventing future complications.
Round 3, 2-1 vs Rakdos Blink - Game 1 hand's a keep because you have a turn 2 saga on the play, i always lead with saga in the match up. G2 simply a nut hand, scam on the play back up by moon, monkey and orc. Match up gets much better on the play in g3, we see some crucial utility of Tormod's Crypt.
Round 4, 2-0 vs YungDingo on Dimir Control - you can see how i carefully play around Orcish Bowmasters in g1 and find the right time to deploy the memnite, also i'm careful with cracking the bauble and the clearings, nettlecyst is bigger and safer than Kaldra as they can't deal with the artifact itself. Game 2 he just gets outplayed, although maybe at the end it's safer to Reprieve instead of tithe on Break the Ice but i can't risk him having such a card in hand, if he had another Force of Negation plus a blue card i wouldn't have had mana to repireve it BUT i would've been able to tithe it.
Round 5, 0-2 vs Rakdos Blink - In this round overall his cards lined up well against mine, i get punished by some of my card choices, more precisely not having Solitude in game 2 for example (i also didn't have a snow land for ice). Sword instead of Forge Anew in game 1, memnite into the orcs. And i don't think i played incredibly well either, blocking Ragavan with Stoneforge and tutoring nettlecyst when my hand is already clogged, it clearly should've been hammer.
Round 6, 2-1 vs Hardened Scales - G1 i'm on the draw and i have to mull to a slow hand, i can't answer his inkmoth nexus on t4, while game 2 he doesn't play around double hammer. G3 i managed to stabilize and advance my board thanks to Paradise Mantle. He doesn't draw a way to deal with the needle, i play paladin aggressively early on to cycle hammer hopefully into a land.
Round 7, 2-1 vs Temur Rhinos - g2 the mistake is obvious, i did not play around Force of Vigor, i should not risk the paladin and i should just play Stoneforge, draw cards and keep an equipped, out of burn range paladin around, i try to finish things too quickly. Game 3 it's the tricky decision to let saga go and have metalcraft on t2, it leaves me somewhat vulnerable to free spells like Force of Vigor and Subtlety but it's tempo positive otherwise.
Round 8, 0-2 vs the Control God Wafo-Tapa on Grixis Control - And again the maestro has something special in store for us exactly in the deciding match for the top 8. I can proudly brag that i've beaten Guillaume in the vast majority of our H2H but not that day, the combo of Flame of Anor with Snapcaster Mage is truly backbreaking and not once but thrice in a game, with all the modes. In g2 we see his choice of very efficient cards like Stern Scolding, Cast it into the Fire to deal with some of my best cards, Dress Down for my construct, i didn't draw surge. It's hard to anything against such a build and such hands, and i cannot expect some misplays and breakdowns like from Dingo earlier. Thankfully the Grixis Control did not gain any traction after the event and Wafo did not magage to repeat the result with the list afterwards.
So at the end i did not manage to top 8 with a 6-2 record, i finished 9th because all my previous opponents lost their last rounds. This just gets to show how incredibly hard it is to top 8 these events where you play against some of the best players of the game, evenw hen you do almost everything right.
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