Bardo
07-03-2008, 05:24 PM
... Gigapede kept me out of the Top 8.
Read on if you want to know how and why these mysterious events came to pass.
PART I
Up until last Wednesday, I had every intention of playing my “Vorosh” control deck (U/b/g Landstill with Counterbalance / Divining Top and maindeck Tarmogoyf) on Sunday’s Duel for Duals at the Batcave in Vancouver, Washington. Vorosh had been testing well against most of the things I expected to face and I’d been developing sideboard strategies for the deck since early May.
“Vorosh”
by Bardo
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Force Of Will
4 Counterspell
3 Counterbalance
3 Engineered Explosives
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Smother
1 Crucible Of Worlds
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Wasteland
4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
4 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Island
1 Breeding Pool
Sideboard
4 Hydroblast
3 Engineered Plague
3 Thoughtseize
3 Extirpate
2 Krosan Grip
But with a contingent of Team Unicorn making the trek from northern Virginia to the Pacific Northwest, a seemingly absurd yet awesome idea, and wanting to play a few games with these guys before the tournament, it seemed that a short-term change was in order.
On a lark, I put together 4-color Threshold for that purpose, starting Dave Elrod’s (Freakish777) test deck from the TES vs. FT Competition (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9535) thread.
In the Elrod list, Counterbalance #4, Thoughtseize #4 and the random Pithing Needle struck me as “flexible,” so I flirted with a couple of changes to those cards -- messing around with Meddling Mage (bad), Dark Confidant (better), Pithing Needle X2 (meh), Stifle (ditto) and Engineered Explosives (sure).
On the train to work two days before the tournament, the idea to play Threshold instead of Vorosh struck me as a Really Good Idea. The relative merits:
Threshold
+ Swords to Plowshares, (maindeck) Thoughtseize, DAZE
+ Man, I love Daze
+ Easier for me to play on auto-pilot
- Haven’t really thought about sideboard strategies
- Practically zero recent experience with the deck (I haven’t played Threshold in about a year)
- Shakier manabase
- More likely to see “Thresh hate”
Vorosh
+ Favorable match-up vs. Threshold and aggro-control
+ Better mana
+ Cooler (to me, anyway)
+ Loads of recent experience (many, many recent practice games in the last month and recent-ish tournament experience (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/15607.html))
+ Detailed sideboard guide written
- Requires more thought to play optimally; can’t be played in “auto-pilot” mode
Visualization and other mental exercises are all part of my pre-tournament preparation and the mental image of taking first place at the tournament came much easier with Threshold. Vorosh felt like the right choice if I wanted to make Top 8. But it’s not like I’m on the Pro Tour and need only four more points to make Level Five, you know?
On that basis I switched decks at the last minute. Since this was a very late change, I wouldn’t have the time to put together a sideboard guide for the deck and would have to improvise with my sideboarding between games more than I would like.
As for the list, I took the three flex slots and settled on double Spell Snare, which were strong all day long, and a singleton Engineered Explosives. Given the chance to play the deck again, I would drop the maindeck Explosives for Spell Snare #3 or Thoughtseize #4.
4-Color Threshold
by Bardo; et al.
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
3 Counterbalance
3 Thoughtseize
2 Spell Snare
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Mystic Enforcer
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
4 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
3 Tundra
Sideboard
4 Hydroblast
3 Engineered Plague
3 Extirpate
2 Krosan Grip
2 Pithing Needle
1 Engineered Explosives
In the sideboard, I would like to fit in Thoughtseize #4 (provided it didn’t make its way into the maindeck) and better mirror-match technology (maybe Threads of Disloyalty). If I was serious about gunning for Ichorid, things would need to change -- perhaps adding Wheel of Sun and Moon. Really though, you can’t beat ‘em all and you can’t carve out too much room in your sideboard for your bad match-ups before you starting giving up percentages against the things you’re already favored to beat.
As for its match-ups, Ichorid, Dragon Stompy and Aggro Loam are terrible; Goblins and Landstill are a fight, though certainly beatable; and combo and randomness are a cake-walk.
The Hydroblast in the sideboard are for any and all species of red deck (Goblins, Goyf Sligh, Burn, RDW-imports); the Plagues are gold against various tribal decks (Goblins, Slivers, Elves, etc.); Extirpates are primarily for recursion-based decks (Loam, Ichorid, Survival, etc.) combo and control decks; with the Needles, Grips and EE serving as general utility.
Sadly, I never got the chance to hang-out with the out-of-towners before the tournament. On the night before the tournament, I took my 4-year old twin girls on a wild goose hunt to find Kiki’s Delivery Service, before we settled on watching Laputa (Castle in the Sky). After they crashed, I was up watching Anne Hathaway in Havoc until about 1:30 AM. The movie was crap, but she looked fine.
Sunday; June 29, 2008 -- Vancouver, Washington
Confession time: “T is for Tool” (Mike) is my favorite moderator on this site. So meeting him 2,500 miles from his home of Lexington, Kentucky was awesome. It’s funny, the mental images you have of people you know only through their online personas. Mike is quieter, more reserved and taller than I imagined. The Hatfields (Obfuscate Freely and Mad Zur), on the other hand, were quite a bit shorter than expected. Anwar (AnwarA101) actually has a very nice smile and I learned Dave Price (Quicksliver) does, in fact, have an unusual affinity for unicorns. Standing about five yards away from some random Type 2 match, I overheard Dave mutter under his breath “Is that a unicorn?” Referring, I would later find out, to Ronom Unicorn. When I asked him about this, he apologetically said he has “Uni-dar,” which is apparently some kind of radar for all things unicorn. People are weird.
MTS Crew, Pic 1:
http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c391/Bardo49days/29Jun08_MTS1a.jpg
MTS Crew, Pic 2:
http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c391/Bardo49days/29Jun08_MTS2.jpg
I challenged Anwar to a game of Street Fighter II (circa 1992), since the Batcave recently acquired an arcade-version, but we weren’t able to play it out.
Forty-seven people showed, making this a record Legacy tournament in the Pacific Northwest! Massive pre-props-section-props to Chris Lennon for the turn-out.
Round 1: Dan with U/G/b Threshold
My round one opponent looks really familiar, but I’m struggling to place when an where I know him from.
Game 1
After I lose the die roll, our first game plays out typical for both sides: do some Pondering, Brainstorming, Daze stuff, etc. I’m slowly falling behind, but mustering a decent defense. To save time for games 2 and 3, I scoop when the writing is eventually on the wall: opposing Counterbalance, Top and Dark Confidant, while our ground-pounders look across the table at each other.
Sideboarding: Out, Daze; in, EE and some Extirpates.
Game 2
In our second game, I Spell Snare his first Tarmogoyf and Extirpate the rest, while two of mine go the distance.
Game 3
In game three, my eyes focus on my opponent’s basic Islands and I think “cool.” They were foreign and I didn’t recognize the edition. Then it hits me: “this is the guy I played in my first round at a GPT (Philly),” the first Legacy tournament I played in nearly three years ago. In one of our games nigh-three years ago, Dan remarked on my “good taste” (referring to my APAC Island (http://www.magiclibrarities.net/44-rarities-apac-lands-english-cards-red-booster.html)), gesturing to his APAC Swamp. While we both went on to the Top 8, I remember losing a heart-breaker to his mono-black aggro deck with my dodgy U/W Fish-like piece of trash. Three years later and, well, you know what they say about Payback. GIVE ME BACK MY SON!!!!
Oh wait, that was Ransom. No matter.
As for the game, it’s ugly for him. Thoughtseize and double Ponder, clear the way and keep the goods flowing while a single Nimble Mongoose inflicts a whopping 18 points of damage.
1-0
Round 2: Shane with U/w/g CounterSliver
Game 1
Okay, this game is the low-point of the whole day for me. In the last turn of the game, with him at 1 life, me at 16, my 3/3 Mongoose and 4/5 Tarmogoyf are ready to go in for the kill. I’m holding a Force and a land in hand. All I need to do is keep turning my guys sideways and I have the game put away. I’m really stoked about the situation. My enthusiasm gets the better of me when I replay my Top and pay another mana and spin it to look at the top three cards of my library. Like an idiot, I pick up my three Top cards with my left and bring them next to my two cards in hand, held in my right hand. My opponent calls “Judge!”
I say, “What?” My opponents says I put the Top cards in my hand. I say, “No, these are my Top card” [holds out three cards in my left hand], “this is my hand” [holds out two cards in right hand]. The cards never directly came into contact with each other and never “mingled,” but I can see how it might have looked that way from his side of the table. And indeed, if I was a cheating scumbag, and wanted to screw myself out of a game that I could not have otherwise possibly lost, I could have used some sleight of hand trick to switch cards between my left and right hand. I’m given a game loss for drawing extra cards, since there were no witnesses watching to corroborate what happened.
To make matters worse, while we’re sideboarding, he goes on to tell me his many tales of woe and all of the times he’s been lawyered into game losses. Um, thanks.
Sideboarding: Out, Daze; in, Engineered Plagues and Explosives.
Game 2
Game two goes quickly, as a Plague on “slivers” keeps his guy small while a Tarmogoyf beats him silly (curiously, I wrote as “Tarmogod” in my notes; that makes me smile).
Game 3
My notes for this game read: “game 3 doesn’t come together.” I’m not sure what happened, but I think it had something to do with a Crystalline and one too many Muscle Sliver effects. So it goes.
1-1
Round 3: Scott with mono-red Burn
My third round opponent was clearly the nicest guy I played all day. Quick wit, bright, good grasp of the rules and timing; though, he was playing Burn, so you never know.
Public Service Announcement: To anyone considering taking a Burn deck to a tournament, let me tell you about this card they printed in Coldsnap. It’s called “Counterbalance” and the art looks fantastic in foil.
Game 1
My notes for this game read: “’Combo’ed’ me from 6 with lethal dmg on board; Chain Lightning x2, Fireblast x2, last one got me.”
Sideboarding: Out, Swords to Plowshares; In, Hydroblasts.
Game 2
Counterbalance / Top with Hydroblast back-up make this a somewhat long but inevitable game. He tries to go for it, gets me down to 2 life, but can’t punch through my wall of counters.
A weird game note: “Spell Snare es muy bueño.”
Game 3
Our last game goes much quicker and Counterbalance keeps my life at a healthy 16 until the end. I make a curious play in casting an un-threshed Enforcer, which supported by a 4/5 Goyf, is a quick enough clock.
2-1
During the hour-long lunch break, I drive the Hatfields and T is for Tool to a nearby Burgerville. They’re a small, regional chain that has superb locally-sourced food. We chat about the game, road-trips, the Q&A forum, notable posters and a few other things before heading back.
Read on if you want to know how and why these mysterious events came to pass.
PART I
Up until last Wednesday, I had every intention of playing my “Vorosh” control deck (U/b/g Landstill with Counterbalance / Divining Top and maindeck Tarmogoyf) on Sunday’s Duel for Duals at the Batcave in Vancouver, Washington. Vorosh had been testing well against most of the things I expected to face and I’d been developing sideboard strategies for the deck since early May.
“Vorosh”
by Bardo
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Force Of Will
4 Counterspell
3 Counterbalance
3 Engineered Explosives
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Smother
1 Crucible Of Worlds
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Wasteland
4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
4 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Island
1 Breeding Pool
Sideboard
4 Hydroblast
3 Engineered Plague
3 Thoughtseize
3 Extirpate
2 Krosan Grip
But with a contingent of Team Unicorn making the trek from northern Virginia to the Pacific Northwest, a seemingly absurd yet awesome idea, and wanting to play a few games with these guys before the tournament, it seemed that a short-term change was in order.
On a lark, I put together 4-color Threshold for that purpose, starting Dave Elrod’s (Freakish777) test deck from the TES vs. FT Competition (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9535) thread.
In the Elrod list, Counterbalance #4, Thoughtseize #4 and the random Pithing Needle struck me as “flexible,” so I flirted with a couple of changes to those cards -- messing around with Meddling Mage (bad), Dark Confidant (better), Pithing Needle X2 (meh), Stifle (ditto) and Engineered Explosives (sure).
On the train to work two days before the tournament, the idea to play Threshold instead of Vorosh struck me as a Really Good Idea. The relative merits:
Threshold
+ Swords to Plowshares, (maindeck) Thoughtseize, DAZE
+ Man, I love Daze
+ Easier for me to play on auto-pilot
- Haven’t really thought about sideboard strategies
- Practically zero recent experience with the deck (I haven’t played Threshold in about a year)
- Shakier manabase
- More likely to see “Thresh hate”
Vorosh
+ Favorable match-up vs. Threshold and aggro-control
+ Better mana
+ Cooler (to me, anyway)
+ Loads of recent experience (many, many recent practice games in the last month and recent-ish tournament experience (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/15607.html))
+ Detailed sideboard guide written
- Requires more thought to play optimally; can’t be played in “auto-pilot” mode
Visualization and other mental exercises are all part of my pre-tournament preparation and the mental image of taking first place at the tournament came much easier with Threshold. Vorosh felt like the right choice if I wanted to make Top 8. But it’s not like I’m on the Pro Tour and need only four more points to make Level Five, you know?
On that basis I switched decks at the last minute. Since this was a very late change, I wouldn’t have the time to put together a sideboard guide for the deck and would have to improvise with my sideboarding between games more than I would like.
As for the list, I took the three flex slots and settled on double Spell Snare, which were strong all day long, and a singleton Engineered Explosives. Given the chance to play the deck again, I would drop the maindeck Explosives for Spell Snare #3 or Thoughtseize #4.
4-Color Threshold
by Bardo; et al.
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
3 Counterbalance
3 Thoughtseize
2 Spell Snare
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Mystic Enforcer
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
4 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
3 Tundra
Sideboard
4 Hydroblast
3 Engineered Plague
3 Extirpate
2 Krosan Grip
2 Pithing Needle
1 Engineered Explosives
In the sideboard, I would like to fit in Thoughtseize #4 (provided it didn’t make its way into the maindeck) and better mirror-match technology (maybe Threads of Disloyalty). If I was serious about gunning for Ichorid, things would need to change -- perhaps adding Wheel of Sun and Moon. Really though, you can’t beat ‘em all and you can’t carve out too much room in your sideboard for your bad match-ups before you starting giving up percentages against the things you’re already favored to beat.
As for its match-ups, Ichorid, Dragon Stompy and Aggro Loam are terrible; Goblins and Landstill are a fight, though certainly beatable; and combo and randomness are a cake-walk.
The Hydroblast in the sideboard are for any and all species of red deck (Goblins, Goyf Sligh, Burn, RDW-imports); the Plagues are gold against various tribal decks (Goblins, Slivers, Elves, etc.); Extirpates are primarily for recursion-based decks (Loam, Ichorid, Survival, etc.) combo and control decks; with the Needles, Grips and EE serving as general utility.
Sadly, I never got the chance to hang-out with the out-of-towners before the tournament. On the night before the tournament, I took my 4-year old twin girls on a wild goose hunt to find Kiki’s Delivery Service, before we settled on watching Laputa (Castle in the Sky). After they crashed, I was up watching Anne Hathaway in Havoc until about 1:30 AM. The movie was crap, but she looked fine.
Sunday; June 29, 2008 -- Vancouver, Washington
Confession time: “T is for Tool” (Mike) is my favorite moderator on this site. So meeting him 2,500 miles from his home of Lexington, Kentucky was awesome. It’s funny, the mental images you have of people you know only through their online personas. Mike is quieter, more reserved and taller than I imagined. The Hatfields (Obfuscate Freely and Mad Zur), on the other hand, were quite a bit shorter than expected. Anwar (AnwarA101) actually has a very nice smile and I learned Dave Price (Quicksliver) does, in fact, have an unusual affinity for unicorns. Standing about five yards away from some random Type 2 match, I overheard Dave mutter under his breath “Is that a unicorn?” Referring, I would later find out, to Ronom Unicorn. When I asked him about this, he apologetically said he has “Uni-dar,” which is apparently some kind of radar for all things unicorn. People are weird.
MTS Crew, Pic 1:
http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c391/Bardo49days/29Jun08_MTS1a.jpg
MTS Crew, Pic 2:
http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c391/Bardo49days/29Jun08_MTS2.jpg
I challenged Anwar to a game of Street Fighter II (circa 1992), since the Batcave recently acquired an arcade-version, but we weren’t able to play it out.
Forty-seven people showed, making this a record Legacy tournament in the Pacific Northwest! Massive pre-props-section-props to Chris Lennon for the turn-out.
Round 1: Dan with U/G/b Threshold
My round one opponent looks really familiar, but I’m struggling to place when an where I know him from.
Game 1
After I lose the die roll, our first game plays out typical for both sides: do some Pondering, Brainstorming, Daze stuff, etc. I’m slowly falling behind, but mustering a decent defense. To save time for games 2 and 3, I scoop when the writing is eventually on the wall: opposing Counterbalance, Top and Dark Confidant, while our ground-pounders look across the table at each other.
Sideboarding: Out, Daze; in, EE and some Extirpates.
Game 2
In our second game, I Spell Snare his first Tarmogoyf and Extirpate the rest, while two of mine go the distance.
Game 3
In game three, my eyes focus on my opponent’s basic Islands and I think “cool.” They were foreign and I didn’t recognize the edition. Then it hits me: “this is the guy I played in my first round at a GPT (Philly),” the first Legacy tournament I played in nearly three years ago. In one of our games nigh-three years ago, Dan remarked on my “good taste” (referring to my APAC Island (http://www.magiclibrarities.net/44-rarities-apac-lands-english-cards-red-booster.html)), gesturing to his APAC Swamp. While we both went on to the Top 8, I remember losing a heart-breaker to his mono-black aggro deck with my dodgy U/W Fish-like piece of trash. Three years later and, well, you know what they say about Payback. GIVE ME BACK MY SON!!!!
Oh wait, that was Ransom. No matter.
As for the game, it’s ugly for him. Thoughtseize and double Ponder, clear the way and keep the goods flowing while a single Nimble Mongoose inflicts a whopping 18 points of damage.
1-0
Round 2: Shane with U/w/g CounterSliver
Game 1
Okay, this game is the low-point of the whole day for me. In the last turn of the game, with him at 1 life, me at 16, my 3/3 Mongoose and 4/5 Tarmogoyf are ready to go in for the kill. I’m holding a Force and a land in hand. All I need to do is keep turning my guys sideways and I have the game put away. I’m really stoked about the situation. My enthusiasm gets the better of me when I replay my Top and pay another mana and spin it to look at the top three cards of my library. Like an idiot, I pick up my three Top cards with my left and bring them next to my two cards in hand, held in my right hand. My opponent calls “Judge!”
I say, “What?” My opponents says I put the Top cards in my hand. I say, “No, these are my Top card” [holds out three cards in my left hand], “this is my hand” [holds out two cards in right hand]. The cards never directly came into contact with each other and never “mingled,” but I can see how it might have looked that way from his side of the table. And indeed, if I was a cheating scumbag, and wanted to screw myself out of a game that I could not have otherwise possibly lost, I could have used some sleight of hand trick to switch cards between my left and right hand. I’m given a game loss for drawing extra cards, since there were no witnesses watching to corroborate what happened.
To make matters worse, while we’re sideboarding, he goes on to tell me his many tales of woe and all of the times he’s been lawyered into game losses. Um, thanks.
Sideboarding: Out, Daze; in, Engineered Plagues and Explosives.
Game 2
Game two goes quickly, as a Plague on “slivers” keeps his guy small while a Tarmogoyf beats him silly (curiously, I wrote as “Tarmogod” in my notes; that makes me smile).
Game 3
My notes for this game read: “game 3 doesn’t come together.” I’m not sure what happened, but I think it had something to do with a Crystalline and one too many Muscle Sliver effects. So it goes.
1-1
Round 3: Scott with mono-red Burn
My third round opponent was clearly the nicest guy I played all day. Quick wit, bright, good grasp of the rules and timing; though, he was playing Burn, so you never know.
Public Service Announcement: To anyone considering taking a Burn deck to a tournament, let me tell you about this card they printed in Coldsnap. It’s called “Counterbalance” and the art looks fantastic in foil.
Game 1
My notes for this game read: “’Combo’ed’ me from 6 with lethal dmg on board; Chain Lightning x2, Fireblast x2, last one got me.”
Sideboarding: Out, Swords to Plowshares; In, Hydroblasts.
Game 2
Counterbalance / Top with Hydroblast back-up make this a somewhat long but inevitable game. He tries to go for it, gets me down to 2 life, but can’t punch through my wall of counters.
A weird game note: “Spell Snare es muy bueño.”
Game 3
Our last game goes much quicker and Counterbalance keeps my life at a healthy 16 until the end. I make a curious play in casting an un-threshed Enforcer, which supported by a 4/5 Goyf, is a quick enough clock.
2-1
During the hour-long lunch break, I drive the Hatfields and T is for Tool to a nearby Burgerville. They’re a small, regional chain that has superb locally-sourced food. We chat about the game, road-trips, the Q&A forum, notable posters and a few other things before heading back.