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Monday, April 20, 2015

Tournament Report: SCG 5k Premier IQ, Providence

I registered this 75:

4C Loam

Lands (26)
4x Verdant Catacombs
1x Windswept Heath
3x Bayou
2x Scrubland
1x Taiga
1x Savannah
1x Forest
4x Wasteland
1x Karakas
1x Dryad Arbor
2x Grove of the Burnwillows
1x Treetop Village
2x Barren Moor
2x Tranquil Thicket


Noncreature Spells (23)

Creature Spells (11)
4x Dark Confidant
1x Tarmogoyf
1x Gaddock Teeg
1x Scavenging Ooze
4x Knight of the Reliquary

Sideboard (15)
SB 4x Leyline of the Void
SB 3x Ethersworn Canonist
SB 1x Gaddock Teeg
SB 1x Relclamation Sage
SB 1x Phyrexian Revoker
SB 1x Thrun, the Last Troll
SB 1x Krosan Grip
SB 2x Golgari Charm
SB 1x Toxic Deluge

To my surprise, there were almost 200 people so it was an eight round tournament. I was only expecting there to be six based on the usual turn out for these types of events.

Round 1: Elves (0-2)
Kept a reasonable looking hand game 1. He played his whole hand on his second turn and I conceded shortly thereafter to conceal information.

-3 Loam, -1 Treetop, -1 Ooze, -2 ?
+3 Canonist, +1 G. Teeg, +2 G-Charm, +1 Deluge

Game 2 I had a 7 with turn 2 Chalice and Canonist. He got out a Nettle Sentinel before I could Chalice him, and next turn I played Canonist. He played Visionary his next turn. I was sandbagging a Liliana and decided to deploy a Knight first to have a blocker for his Sentinel since I thought the game would go long and Liliana would be better sticking around. Unfortunately, next turn he simply cast NO sacrificing a Dryad Arbor, and his Sentinel, Visionary, and Hoof actually presented lethal damage unless I chump-blocked with a Knight (I attacked with Canonist the previous turn) and went to 2. At this point I had Decay and Liliana in hand so I could survive another turn by killing a creature and chumping the Hoof with Canonist. I stupidly played Liliana and edicted the Visionary instead of Decaying the Sentinel, leaving me exactly dead. I'm not sure what my outs were there, but I definitely squandered another draw step. In hindsight, it looks like I handled this game very poorly overall. I should have prioritized simply trading cards after I stuck Chalice instead of playing creatures, which would have delayed the NO aspect of his deck rather than having Gimpse handled redundantly by both Chalice and Canonist.

Round 2: Storm (0-2)
Kept turn 1 Bob turn 2 Liliana. Unfortunately I was dead on his second turn. He flipped his deck with Ad Nauseam so at least I got to see he was on A.N.T..

-3 Loam, -3 P-Fire, -3 Decay,
+4 Leyline, +3 Canonist, +1 G. Teeg, +2 G-Charm

I kept a 6 with just Leyline game 2 and didn't get there. He had a pretty quick kill once again. I can't lie, seeing a beautiful foiled/signed/foreign Storm deck flipped off AdNaus is beautiful.

Round 3: Omni-Tell (0-2)
I had turn 1 Chalice on 1 on the play, which he Forced pitching Intuition. I put him on some kind of Show and Tell deck. On his 2nd turn he cast Show and Tell, put Omniscience into play, cast Dig Through Time, cast Cunning Wish-->Eladamri's Call, and cast Emrakul.

-3 Loam, -3 P-Fire, -1 Ooze
+3 Canonist, +1 G.Teeg, +1 Rec. Sage, +1 K-Grip, +1 Revoker

I didn't know if Revoker did anything but I brought it in anyway. Ooze might have been better because of Dig, but I figured he was generally casting it without paying its mana cost. I decided to take drastic action and mulligan aggressively to either Canonist or Rec. Sage. I ended up with a 4 of Chalice, Bob, and 2 lands. I managed to resolve Chalice, but was dead to similar shenanigans a turn later. After getting Annihilated I took another draw step and then conceded, joking that it wasn't Karakas, but then realized Karakas does nothing against Omniscience except give him infinite turns. This deck is super gross.

At this point I had played around 30 minutes of Magic total and lost every single game. I couldn't even be salty or tilted, just amused at the absurdity of Legacy. I had ample time to go and convert a pile of junk cards into a Containment Priest, eat, use the bathroom, and scout around. The meta was far less fair than the last big local Legacy tournament I went to in Worcester shortly after Bob Huang's win with UR Delver. There were many Lands, Post/MUD, Sneak/Omni, and Miracles decks in the room, with Delver and Blade looking less represented than usual. Of course, being a Legacy torunament in New England, almost everything was in the room including Moggcatcher Stompy and Zombardment. To my extreme surprise, I even saw someone else playing 4C Loam! turns out he is an active poster I have chatted with on The Source who plays a lot of the same decks as me. Its a small world sometimes, particularly in the Legacy community.

Round 4: Reanimator (2-0)
I had turn 1 Chalice in my opener which I hoped was good against whatever he was playing. Turned out to be pretty good-he discarded a Tidespout Tyrant to hand size. I was able to resolve two Knights but he found an Exhume for his Tyrant. However, he conceded, probably being unable to cast spells to bounce my Knights with one unblocked being lethal.

-3 Loam, -3 P-Fire, -1 G. Teeg
+4 Leyline, +2 Canonist, +1 Toxic Deluge

Game 2 I mulliganed to Leyline. I kind of drew dead from there but managed to land a Chalice on 1 and cobble together a clock of Arbor + Treetop to finish the job.

Round 5: Burn (1-2)
My car buddy! We had been joking around about getting paired since we were both doing poorly. This is a very poor matchup for me but I managed to snag game 1 by aggressively mulliganing to Chalice. We were kind of messing around and playing loose, I forgot a Chalice trigger on a Lavamancer and he forgot an Eidolon trigger.

-3 Loam
+3 Canonist

Games 2 and 3 I got wrecked.

Round 6: Shardless (0-2)
I have seen this player before on Shardless and kept a hand appropriate for the matchup. Surely enough he started with a suspended Ancestral Vision. He Thoughtseized my Knight and Decayed my Library and Chalice on 0 to snag his Vision. I drew a Liliana but had only one Black source.

-1 G. Teeg, -1 Chalice
+1 Thrun, +1 Deluge

I kept a hand with no removal but pressure in the form of two Knights which I could start deploying on my 2nd turn. I got totally blown out by Maelstrom Pulse and he Thoughtseized my Thrun. I proceeded to draw multiple Lilianas but had only a single Black source.

Round 7: Bye

Round 8: Team America
I saw this player earlier and knew he what he was on. As we shuffled and presented out decks to be cut we got distracted by something and then realized we didn't know which deck was which since we had the same sleeves. We called a judge who decided to resolve this odd issue by taking us each aside and asking for a description of our deck and then examining each deck. Anyway, Game 1 he flipped two Delvers I couldn't answer.

-1 G. Teeg, -1 Chalice
+1 Thrun, +1 Deluge

Games 2 and 3 he was a bit slow out of the gates and I was able to answer his board and then Loam lock him. This is a very poor matchup for me in my experience thus far so I was pleasantly surprised, and able to end the tournament on a semi-high note at least.

Final Record: 3-5

So, the tournament ended in tears for my LGS's contingent. One guy had started 4-0, with Goblins no less, but ended 4-3-1. Another guy on Miracles had 3 no shows throughout the day and was able to end 5-3. We joked that he might make Top32 and cash, but he ended up in the 40's. My buddy playing Burn was 3-5 as well I believe, though he might have had a bye too. We went out for some drinks in downtown Providence after, lamented our bad beats and the even worse service at the joint, and then headed back to Boston. All and all, we still managed to have a good time. At the end of the day, having fun is important than anything else in Magic.


Tuesday, April 14, 2015

"Teaching" Decks

A friend in one of my classes expressed some interest in learning to play Magic, so as an exercise I decided to make three 40-card "teaching decks" out of cards in my bulk box. I ended up with a Mono-Red Aggro Deck, a GW Midrange deck, and a UB Control deck. I was restricted to what cards I had available, so none of the decks are quite basic enough for teaching a new player. However, I hope they could be somewhat effective at exhibiting different strategies and mechanics.

Me and my roommate played a few games with the decks and made some tweaks to them, but again the card pool is quite restrictive as I only have a single fat pack full of cards not in/for decks that is more biased towards some strategies than others. I think they might be horribly unbalanced but oh well.

Mono-Red Aggro:
2x Monastery Swiftspear
1x Rakdos Cackler
3x Valley Dasher
3x Goblin Shortcutter
1x Dragon Hatchling
1x War-Name Aspirant
1x Keldon Marauders
3x Bloodfire Expert

2x Shock
1x Burst Lightning
1x Lightning Strike
2x Madcap Skills
1x Act of Treason
2x Hordeling Outburst

16x Mountain


GW Midrange:
4x Elvish Mystic
1x Avacyn's Pilgrim
4x Centaur Healer
2x Wayfaring Temple
1x Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
1x Soul of the Harvest
1x Mikaeus the Lunarch

4x Call of the Conclave
2x Farseek
2x Selesnya Charm
1x Unflinching Courage

2x Selesnya Guildgate
7x Plains
8x Forest

UB Control:
3x Augur of Bolas
1x Archaeomancer
1x Talrand, Sky Summoner
1x Sphinx of Uthunn

2x Ponder
3x Terror
2x Essence Scatter
2x Agony Warp
1x Ultimate Price
1x Disperse
1x Distress
2x Consult the Necrosages
2x Dissolve
1x Domestication

1x Dimir Guildgate
1x Evolving Wilds
6x Swamp
9x Island

Monday, April 6, 2015

Local Legacy: 4/6

Only 2 weeks left until the IQ. At this point in my playing the only big matchups that feel extremely unfavorable are Team America and Elves. Today I played the same list as last week. We had 12 people show up tonight so it was 4 rounds again!

The Meta was:
2x Miracles
1x 4C Loam
1x Junkblade
1x Death & Taxes
1x Goblins
1x Merfolk
1x Burn
1x Team America
1x RUG Delver
1x Reanimator
1x MUD

Round 1: Reanimator (2-1)
I know this player is usually on Reanimator. I made a kinda sketchy keep Game 1 of T1 Zenith->Arbor T2 Knight in a hope to get there with Karakas somehow, but I knew my chances of winning weren't great anyway. Didn't get there.

-1 G. Teeg, -2 Loam, -3 Punishing Fire
+4 Leyline, +2 Canonist, +1 Revoker

Games 2 and 3 I mulled to Leyline which got there. This player doesn't play Show & Tell and leans on Decay for permanent hate so Leyline is pretty good against him.

Round 2; Team America (1-2)
Don't really remember game 1 but I clearly was short on answers since he had 3 Tarmogoyfs when I died.

-1 Chalice, -1 G. Teeg
+1 Deluge, +1 Thrun

Game 2 I managed to trade 1-for-1 then landed a Deluge to wipe his board. We both went into topdeck mode and I drew out of it first with a Tarmogoyf he couldn't answer. Game 3 I kept a sketchy 6 with Chalice and Liliana. Didn't draw into enough removal to answer his stuff. Overall this is a pretty worrisome matchup from my side and one that is hard to fix. I asked one of the players there who is familiar with both decks about it, and the only additional suggestion he could make was maybe bring in some G-Charm. That seems ok against builds with Bob and I'll try it in future.

Round 3: Burn (1-2)
Ahh, the Nightmare Matchup. Every Legacy deck has it. For Miracles its 12-Post, for D&T its Elves. For 4C Loam it might be Burn. Its a similar matchup to Elves in that you need to cobble some kind of lock together while keeping their board clear/irrelevant, but is even harder to interact with. Chalice on 1 seems amazing against Burn until you realize they still have Rift Bolt, Price, Eidolon, Fireblast, and Vortex. You're kind of hedged against Price with Moxes, but on the other hand they are awful against Eidolon. Game 1 was over quick.

-3 Loam
+3 Canonist

You can't actually afford to take out Bob in this matchup since you need to draw a bunch of specific cards. Game 2 we were both on 5 cards. I lived the dream of answering his board then sticking Chalice on 1 and Teeg. That basically put him on Price, which I was insulated from, and Vortex. He got Vortex but I was able to kill him first. First game I've won against Burn with a Loam deck! Got wrecked again game 3 though. Its kind of sobering to have your $3,000 deck get trounced by a Burn deck. To add insult to injury, he was an inexperienced player on a WIP build with no fetches, no Blazes, and only 2 Goblin Guides. Every deck I play in Legacy loses to Burn, so I'm pretty used to this by now and was a good sport since he was a cool guy. I know this kind of thing drives some Legacy players up the wall but its just part of the format, and maybe one that contributes to its greatness.

Round 4: RUG Delver (2-1)
I saw this player was on RUG earlier and drew a God hand on the play with Chalice and removal.

-1 G. Teeg, -1 Loam, -1 Treetop Village
+1 Deluge, +1 Thrun, +1 G-Charm

Game 2 I kept a hand of P-Fire, Deluge, and lands. I decided to go for P-Fire on my second turn for his Delver but it got Dazed. I had to use the Deluge to kill his flipped Delver after he Forced my Library. He drew another Delver but I had Decay into Ooze. Ooze is a house in this match-up and I felt favored at a healthy 8 life and both of us low on cards. I knew he had a Bolt from his Delver flip so I planned on leaving up GG for the rest of the game to eat his 2 Delvers and basically kill him with a 2/2. He somewhat surprisingly went for Bolt on the Ooze. I figured he had Stifle or something but I went to eat a Delver anyway. In response, he cast Surgical targeting his Delver...welp, he got me. We both went into topdeck mode. I found a Bob which unfortunately took me to 2 hitting a Knight. He drew a Bolt to kill me! Game 3 I had a God hand again with Thrun action to back up my Chalice. Thrun is a good man.

Final Record: 2-2

I already had 2 losses but he was live for prizes still so I conceded at the conclusion of the last match. Good night and good games overall even if I didn't perform the best.