Written by BitBeaker
Underground Games held an RCQ on January 4th, 2025, and I decided to bring Temur Otters. It’s a strong deck, and can be pretty complicated to play. I haven’t been able to get nearly as many reps in with the deck as I would like, but this was my experience on the day.
Round 1 Bye
It’s nice to have an easy R1 win, but I came to play Magic. It gave me a little time to walk around the event and it seemed pretty heavy on Dimir Midrange, followed by a lot of various aggro builds.
Round 2 - Dimir Midrange
Game 1, My opponent was on the play and started with a T1 Spyglass Siren. I followed it up on My T1 with a Torch the Tower. The next few turns were essentially me playing a creature, and my opponent removing it. My Valley Floodcaller got hit by Anoint by Affliction, followed by my Enduring Vitality being removed by a main deck The End, exiling all four copies and removing my combo win condition. The game was at a point where my opponent would play Kaito each turn, attack with Soulstone Sanctuary, and activate a loyalty ability. All I could do was play This Town Ain’t Big Enough repeatedly and throw up blockers. Eventually I pulled ahead on mana, activated the third ability on a Stormchaser’s Talent and start making multiple Otters per turn. My opponent conceded the game, and being that game 1 went almost to time, he proceeded to concede the match.
2-0 win v Dimir Midrange
Round 3 - Golgari Midrange
Game 1
The game went pretty quick, I played an early talent with my opponent playing an early Mosswood Dreadknight met with a Torch the Tower. My opponent couldn't get off the ground against my removal and I found the combo pretty quickly. 1-0
Game 2
I knew I’d likely be seeing Glissa and Preacher of the Schism so I brought in some extra removal for the matchup. My Golgari opponent dropped an early Glissa that I couldn’t answer and won pretty quickly as they removed my enchantments. 1-1
Game 3
This was essentially a copy of game 2. Glissa hit the board followed by Unstoppable Slasher. I never saw my removal and the game felt unwinnable. 1-2
Round 4 - Gruul Aggro
Game 1
My opponent got off the a quick start, as aggro tends to do. The threats kept coming faster than I could answer them and I couldn’t turn the corner. 0-1
Game 2
Sided in a bunch of removal to answer the threats I was seeing. I was able to answer a couple waves with back to back Pyroclasms, but again, the threats were dense and my draws felt clunky. 0-2
Round 5 - Boros Mice
Game 1
Opponent was on the play and lots of mice were hitting the field and my opponent never tapped out. Any removal I attempted was answered by Shardmage’s Rescue, and my threats were answered with Sheltered by Ghosts. Honestly felt like a non-game. 0-1
Game 2
I brought in NINE cards from my sideboard but game two went almost exactly like game one. My biggest frustration with this game is out of the almost 20 pieces of interaction I had to close the gap on my opponent, I saw almost none of them. 0-2
Overall on the day I finished 3-2. I know Temur Otters is an incredible deck, but it felt very clunky at this RCQ. I didn’t play perfectly, and I could’ve made better sideboard decisions against Golgari that may have made a difference, but I don’t think there was anything I could’ve done differently against the aggro decks that would’ve put me in a winning position. It was a fun day and I met some folks from Team 312 out of Austin. The first RCQ of the season was a little rough, but I’ll keep grinding to achieve my goal of qualifying this year. Looking forward to getting more miles out of Otters.
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