On February 23, the Horde held our 1st Two-Headed Giant tournament at the McMenamins Broadway Saloon in Portland, Oregon . To add a little intrigue, pairings were drawn randomly after all the players had arrived.

Quinn and Daniel drove down from Seattle to attend the event. By the luck of a the draw, they were paired together for the event. With their victory, The Horde asked them to describe how they prepared for the event.

Quinn (BR Winds/Dream deck):

I love trying to break unexplored variant formats, so when I hear that The Horde is running a “Two-Headed Giant / Unpowered Old School 93-94” mashup event, the wheels in my head start turning.

I figure out pretty quickly that I want to play a ton of cards that “double up” and affect both my opponents. My guess is that Underworld Dreams is the best of the bunch, as it’s already pretty playable in 1v1, both as “just a threat” in Mono Black Aggro, and as a full-on combo piece with Winds of Change and Wheel of Fortune. Pulling double duty in 2HG, Dreams should be amazing!

Rather than play crap like Howling Mine (which sucks without Dreams, and now draws their team two cards before getting Shattered), I continue on the “double damage” theme with Syphon Soul (an 8-point life swing!) and Earthquake. I play a lot of UR Tempo in 1v1, and I like to joke that Earthquake is a Fireball // Plague Wind split card depending on the matchup, so I’m pretty excited to register Double Fireball // Plague Wind split card as a 4-of for 2HG. We’ll just have to use the asymmetric effects like Dreams and Syphon Soul to stay ahead on life.

I’ve also always had an irrational love for Copper Tablet, as it’s an obvious, elegant design, and just about the crappiest possible spell that technically kills them first. If there is ever a day for Copper Tablet to shine, it is 93-94 Two-Headed Giant day.

I fill the deck out (to a spicy 61) with Lightning Bolts and some powerful singletons, figuring I can often shuffle the situational ones back with Winds of Change if they’re not good.

On the day of the event, I am happy to get paired with Scott (whom I know from Seattle) and his aggressive green deck. It pairs well with my “damage to each player” tribal deck, to the tune of 5-0 in the round robin. Underworld Dreams proves to be the best unrestricted card in my deck all day, and it’s not close. My goal for the day is a 14-damage Wheel of Fortune, and I exceed this with a 20-damage Winds of Change (turn 4 with double Dreams).

Daniel (Green-Mono Stomp):

When brewing up a deck for The Horde’s 2 Headed Giant tournament the first thing I considered was making a build that would not negatively affect my partner in any way. Since everyone was paired up randomly, I didn’t want to play any cards like Armageddon or Wrath of God that could possibly shut down my partners deck or end up as dead cards in my hand. That being said, I decided to go with a creature heavy deck.

I’ve slowly been working on a monogreen deck so figured that should work out nicely. I’ve always loved Gaea’s Touch, and with monogreen it can generate a lot of quick mana. With decent ramp I knew Erhnam Djinn would be great, but even better would be the big bad Force of Nature. Both Ernie and Force are great targets for Berserk so I threw a playset of those along with a Giant Growth. To help with ramp and gum up the board until I land a big threat, I threw in a good mix of 1/1’s that could also be pumped with Pendlehaven.

Another thought that came to my mind was that in 2HG cards that affect all players do twice as much damage so I threw in some Hurricanes. My thought was if I can get a couple swings in with Ernie/Force and maybe get my opponents down to 10 or 15 then a Hurricane should be able to finish them off. I put in one Ashnod’s Altar as a sacrifice outlet for the little guys to assist with pumping up the Hurricanes.

Both lines worked out pretty well as I was able to double Berserk a Force of Nature and swing for 32 damage to win one game. I was also able sacrifice some creatures to pump out an 8-point Hurricane doing 16 damage to our opponents.

All in all, it was great to try out a different Old School format, and I loved that no power was allowed. It made for some interesting decks and matches. Thanks again to the folks at The Horde for putting it together. Cheers!

For their 1st place victory, Quinn and Daniel received first choice from the prize options provided for the event..Make sense that they chose the CE 2-Headed Giants for themselves.