Match1, Game1 - Opponent Lawrence Green tribal snakes. (Splash white, red or black) Played some critters, drew nothing but swamps, played the akuba, lost control of the field. Played MTG: Horobi Deaths Wail and used MTG: Glacial Ray to good effect. Flipped MTG: Nezumi Graverobber. He killed nezumi. I had a remaining bolt, so splatted his last creatures and rolled over him.
Match1, Game2 Used the rays early, possibly unwisely. Got out critterred. Night dealings doesn't save you against your opponents MTG: Annointed Seshiro. Evil evil regeneration.
Match1, Game3 Manascrewed. Critters rolled over me, though I managed to drag it out. I just don't have any big defenders.
Lunch break. I now designed a secondary deck from my sideboard. Green was obviously going to be a force to be reckoned with - everyone seemed to be playing 'green and a splash'.
Match2, Game1 - Opponent Chen Green Black, splash red. I misplayed early trying to keep the board clear to whittle him down. Drew nothing but land therafter and died.
Match2, Game 2 I changed to my green deck. Foolish play of indomitable will nearly lost me the game, but I came back with the vine kami to win on one life due to his red honden.
Time out.
Match3, Game 1 - Opponent Glen Green White and Black. He had lots of forestwalkers and other 1/1 critters. I had manascrewdom. Eventually I got some midsized critters (2/2 and 3/2) and was able to trade 2 for 1. Used my arcane to finally clear the board and smashed in.
Match3, Game 2. I had to mulligan, and was forced to play first. I saw no swamps for ages, and had high cost black stuff in hand. I didn't even get to cast the night dealings - he killed nezumi as soon as he hit the board. I didn't play the hoshi. I just held him off and used MTG: Dance of Shadows for the win.
Time ovah!
Match4, Game1 - Opponent Dominic He was playing a blue-white control deck, with the MTG: The Unspeakable combo, that he built at the same table as me. He got manascrewed. We traded off 2/2 attackers for a while, dropping in life - eventually I got akuba, crazy horobi and yamabushi through a dance-of-shadows to win.
Match4, Game2 I was forced to play, but he had to mulligan. Twice. Then I got no swamps. He got no islands. An early ray deciever did nasty damage. Eventually the game started going normally - I almost beat him down, but he had a blue creature 'return three lands to your hand to make target untargetable' - and then he beat me to death with a MTG: Kitsune Healer.
Match5, Game1 - Opponent Richard He was playing a seemingly identical deck - right down to the ronin, the akuba and the honden. His deck was perhaps a bit more red than mine.
First game, I quickly splatterred him with an early akuba.
Match5, Game2 I had a mulligan, he was off to a quicker start than me. Almost recovered, but he pulled up an earthshaker and killed off my defence. I went splat.
Match5, Game3 I switched to my WG deck (which I should have done for game2) MTG: Mothrider Samurai beatdown! I got the MTG: Samurai Enforcers out and got him down to six. Then he killed the MTG: Innocence Kami. Then he played MTG: Earthshaker. Then he played an arcane sorcery that gives everything -2/-2 and used something or other to save his shaker. Then I died.
Dunno what happenned to my mana, I had 10 sweamps, 7 mountains in a 43 card deck.
That's verging on the light side - generally it's recommended to have 17 in 40, or even 18 if you have heavy mana committments. Still, you got screwed perhaps more often than might be expected. --CH