Ravnica Allegiance just came out which means another prerelease! Last time I did the midnight prerelease, and I regretted it enough to try a different prerelease this time around. After talking with some friends and figuring out what time worked best for them, we all decided that 8 pm 2 Headed Giant was what we wanted to do. I was really excited about this, as the only times I had ever played 2 Headed Giant were during Commander and Battlebond, and it was going to be neat to see how that changes the gameplay in a normal draft set.
I decided to go with my fiance to the event, and she wanted to play Rakdos. (Probably because that was the same guild her character was part of in our Dnd campaign). Choosing which guild you wanted to be a part of ended up becoming more strategic because of 2 Headed Giant. I initially wanted to play Orzhov, as I believed that would have good synergy with Rakdos and we could build a busted Mardu deck with both of the pools. But then I realized if we opened up any powerful Simic cards, we wouldn’t have a good base to support them. I ended up going with Simic for 2 reasons: I wanted to make our pool more open, and I wanted several Simic cards for my cube.
We were rushed for time because we showed up at the event late, so we had to quickly tear our packs apart and start building our decks. Our promos were Gutterbones and Guardian Project, which I wasn’t initially excited about but proved to be all-stars in our respective decks. (Unfortunately, I did not open up many cards I wanted to play with in cube). I ended up playing Temur, to play 2 Rhythm of the Wilds, and Emily went with Mardu to play a Seraph of the Scales and an Angel of Grace. We had a little time left over, and so I began to explore the store.
One of the first things I noticed was the massive castle that had been put up in the back. There was a TV inside with some people playing a Nintendo Switch. This castle was awesome and made the store feel more like a game store than a warehouse which is what it felt like at the last prerelease. The castle also had an amazing reference to the Magic card 1996 World Champion, which I personally loved. There was a lot more art put around everywhere, and the store just felt more complete. Our pairings were then made and we sat across our first opponent.
Round 1: Temur/Bant
Our opponents lead off with a very aggressive start and began pummeling us with a lot of creatures. Our hands were much more late game oriented, requiring us to resolve Guardian Project and Priest of the Forgotten Gods. Once we were able to do this, however, we began to take over the game slowly but surely, as every one of my creatures drew another card, and she could make them both sacrifice a creature and then bring Gutterbones back using the mana that the Priest made. Our value engine eventually overtook the game and gave us the victory. Priest of the Forgotten Gods was nasty in 2 Headed Giant, as it made our opponents sacrifice 2 creatures, lose 4 life, and still gave us mana and drew her a card. Was very pleased with it, and hope to see it in future games. One thing we did notice is that our pool had very little enchantment removal, with only 1 card that can do blow up enchantments being Sunder Shaman. Hopefully, that doesn’t prove to be too much of a problem. 1-0.
Round 2: Mardu/Azorius
Not having enchantment removal was a big problem. Our opponents almost played 2 different control decks, with the aim being to resolve a Captive Audience and take over the game from there. Our gameplan ended up not being fast enough to compete with this, and everything started to go downhill once they killed my Sunder Shaman, untapped and cast Captive Audience. We started with the first mode and discarded the single Mountain in my hand. Our next mode was going down to 4 life, which we negated thanks to our Angel of Grace which had been countered earlier. (That counterspell also milled our Seraph of the Scales, unfortunately). Then when they made 10 zombie tokens (the card says each opponent), they swung in for lethal and we responded by using Macabre Mockery to bring back their Detention Deputy and exiled all of their zombie tokens. As cool as that play was, they still had 10 power worth of flyers in the air which was our downfall. 1-1.
Round 3: Simic/Orzhov
This was honestly just a fun game. Our opponents were very friendly, and we discovered that we had opened up very similar packs. Our opponents took the play and lead off the game by casting slightly bigger creatures than us. We traded and did normal things until they cast a Revenge on us putting our life down to 13. They swung in and brought us down to 6 while they were at 38. What they didn’t know is that we had our own Revenge, and we cast it right back at them bringing us back to 12. They then flashed in an Angel of Grace on our end step and swung with it, which we responded with by flashing in our own Angel of Grace which brought us to 1 life. The correct play was to actually have our Angel of Grace killed, so that we could go back up to 10 life in the face of 2 flyers, but we did not make that play and ended up losing. We still had a blast and had a good game of Magic. 1-2
Round 4: Rakdos/Azorius
Both teams had very slow starts, which eventually led to them hitting us for 3 and us hitting them for 4. This went on for several turns, and when someone would cast something meaningful, it would get countered or killed. I was stuck on 2 lands for 5 turns, while my fiance could not find the white source to cast her evergrowing collection of white cards in her hand. Fortunately, we were able to eventually drag ourselves out of this situation and got to the point where they had used Macabre Mockery on the Steeple in my graveyard and were trying to kill us. I cast Faerie Duelist, rioted it with a +1/+1 counter, made their 2/1 useless, and then cast Applied Biomancy to bounce my Frog Snake Lizard to my hand and make blocks so that we would only take 3 damage. They then cast Rakdos, the Showstopper and fortunately killed most of their dangerous creatures, and left our biggest ones alive. This gave us the tempo we needed to swing the game in our favor and we won just as turns started. 2-2
Final Conclusion
Our decks weren’t anything special. We didn’t have any crazy good mythics, and our pool was lacking in a lot of areas. (Where was our enchantment removal!!) Regardless, we still had some very tight games of Magic and it was a lot of fun being able to play with my partner instead of seeing her go play on the other side of the store. Game Grid Lehi was also great as usual, and my only complaint was not understanding the table system at all. I had a few people explain it to me and I was still lost every round. There were papers with numbers on them, and then more numbers underneath and I got lost when trying to find my table. Enough people understood how the system worked to make it work, I just needed to ask people a lot of questions.
Ravnica Allegiance is super fun, and I’m happy I got to play it in a completely different format. Magic Arena gave me the fix I needed for a normal prerelease, so from now on I might try to do more prereleases as 2 Headed Giant. Game Grid Lehi was also great, and the store looked incredible. I would like to thank them for providing for my entry again, as I got to have a great weekend with my friends. Thank you all for reading, I hope you have a great week and an amazing Tuesday!
