I don’t think I was wrong, but I don’t really have the results to prove it.
Last time, I wrote about my predictions for Scryings. Now I played the Scryings event in Arvika, Sweden, trying to put that to the test. My deck of choice was this Twiddlevault list:
I had goldfished it a lot with impressive results. I was more unsure how good it would be against real disruption, chiefly the suite of disruptive creatures I wrote about in my post, but I really wanted to put it to the test. If people were on slow and durdly control or combo decks, or even aggro decks with not much disruption, I liked my chances. The power level of the deck is very high.
It turned out that I was maybe wrong. The top 8 consisted of 1 Twiddlevault, 1 Mirrorball, 1 Mask-Nought, 1 UR, 1 RBg disco, 1 GBu Nether Void, 1 Bu midrange, and 1 RUGb snake troll disco. Very few disruptive creatures at all, just one deck with Miners and one with Uktabis. But I still believe in my metagame predictions. The fast aggressive disruptive decks should be the forerunners, just too few people were running them.
And my results? I don’t really feel like writing a detailed report at this point. I started out 4-0, beating Åland on BWu tax/tower (an incredibly good matchup), a mono-black deck that missed an important orb flip and where I lost a game to multiple Sinkholes, Olof Robertsson on a UWx Abyss/Autumn Willow control deck that won one game with Mind Twist + Sylvan, and Hardy on the Mask-Nought deck he then played all the way to the finals where he lost to Thomas Nilsen’s sweet Mirrorball list. However, then I was paired down twice, losing first to Fork’s UR with probably no scryings cards, in three close games, including an insane one where I went off with Sylvan early, going down to 1 life before finding Timetwister as the third Sylvan card, having cycled a bunch of Twiddles to get there, and then finally going off, but then losing once to an insane start to him and once to too much disruption. And then, fittingly, a win-and-in against GaJol, where he got to avenge me beating him in the same role at n00bcon last year. He’s on Bu midrange, and just draws too many Underworld Dreams for my Emerald Charms to handle. But I might also have taken some questionable lines, and should maybe have mulliganed more. Oh well.
At this time, it’s 1 am and I don’t really feel like playing Twiddlevault for three more hours, so when I find out I’m 9th on tiebreakers, due to the double down-pairing, I’m not really unhappy. Which is of course a problem: not happy to lose, not happy to continue winning. Now, the tournament started unusually late because of bad weather complicating travels for people, but it’s still late enough that I probably will skip this one tournament going forward. The logistics just don’t jam with me.
I would like to have proved that this list is broken, but I can’t really say so. It takes a lot of mental effort to play, even when not drinking heavily, and fits better for shorter tournaments. But I do think my list is better than most other ones out there, and I will likely revisit it.
For n00bcon, though? I don’t think so. I sort of feel like aggro is the way to go here, some kind of focused deck with Lightning Bolts and Serendibs and a smattering of Scryings cards. I would like to find the best Dwarven Miner deck, or just jam some kind of pure RUG aggro as I’ve done before. I still stand by what I said in my last article. We’ll see what happens.
So, what else is there? Any interesting Scryings tech from the tournament? Not a whole lot, unfortunately. The finals was Mirrorball vs Mask-Nought, as I mentioned. The Mirrorball list uses Zuran Orb and Lat-Nam’s Legacy to great effect. The sweetest thing out of Mask-Nought, which was in a URb control shell, was a single Sword of the Ages. I saw lots less Uktabis than expected. Very little Atog and little true control, but that was more along with expectations. Almost no Reanimator but Tormod’s Crypts everywhere. I have hopes for n00bcon to be simultaneously more spiky and more brew-centered. Anything could be viable. It will certainly be fun! However, there will probably be radio silence from me on here from now on until then, except possibly on twitter. That shark isn’t going to come swimming my way by itself. But don’t worry, there is more content coming anyway.
Stay safe out there. Remember there is always a deeper #mtgunderground to escape into. Love, not law.
End of turn, draw a card 
One thought on “Scryings Follow-up: Arvika 2020”