The Sky Falls Upon Crystals

I suppose that if I scrolled through my posts, I could find the last time I played a tournament game. It feels like it has been a while. Today, I put together a crystal creature type deck for May tournament. In the end, I think the deck only has six creatures that don't have crystal in their name, three each of Akkar and Urigant. A lot of the crystal creatures seem appropriate for defense. While that isn't really my style, I was hoping that I could still get some good use out of them with Strag's Claws and a mix of Underneath spells that I seem to have grown rather fond of.

Shortly after getting the deck put together, I played Frosty Ninja. I went first with Ulmi, only selecting the Crystal Goblet and Crystal Jile. It was a dream start of crystal creatures and tossed down something that looked good. Frosty Ninja flipped over Lady of the Sky and played out her Cyclone Xyx plus a Xyx Elder. Xyx Elder almost wiped me out in a single shot. It took a couple turns, but Lady of the Sky would defeat Ulmi. Fossik, Ringsmith would finish off Lady of the Sky. She was practically left wide open for Fossik's single Akkar. He used his power to make it big enough. Defender of the Sky came next. Suddenly, it was a massive swarm of mighty xyx. It was hard to choose what needed to go. There was at least four xyx, with one being the impressive Xyx Minor. That little beast had to go before it got too big and destroyed my deck one creature at a time. Fossik fought well, but in the end, he fell beneath the xyx onslaught. Fortunately, he had paid the price. Celebrated Hero was going to aim for some serious card draw with his spade. Plus, he got lucky with a Crushing Fungus. This really cramped the Defender's style. This would be very deciding for the Hero. With Strag's Claws, he would crush the Defender's creatures. He did have to waste a Gorgle's Curse on a Xyx Minor. It was huge. Sorreah's Dream combined with its own power had made it huge. Attacking the minor quickly made sure another spell didn't fix the curse. With Defender hurting, Celebrated Hero would finish her off to face Sorreah. He had placed out my second copy of Crystal Goblet, so getting my creatures crushed or Shockwaved at this point didn't really hurt too much. Sorreah did eliminate all his creatures. However, I knew I had the cards to finish off Sorreah on my next turn. I just had to think it out so I didn't mess up. I played out a Crystal Jile, Crystal Arboll and one more creature. Crystal Jile used its power and then I bounced the jile and Sorreah's single creature using Attekia's Gift. I should've used Impact on the bigger creature, but we had forgotten about Sorreah's increased energize from the Lady of the Sky. An Impacted Crystal Arboll would've finished off Sorreah if not for that. Frosty Ninja remembered the increased energize and added the one energy to the magi to reflect it. Impact fell short by one. So, a quick check of my hand revealed that I still had a Resonate available. All in all, a good game. While this blog might not reflect it, the xyx swarm looked like it should have had me as a goner. I may have won, but I have a healthy respect for xyx decks. It is a powerful creature type. I got hit by the Xyx Elder at least twice in this game, and it wrecked me something terrible. Part of the reason I went after the Xyx Minors with such vengeance was so that they couldn't be used at some point on the Xyx Elder for repeated thrashings on my non-xyx creatures.