Curby
08-16-2008, 07:43 AM
... in spite of me being an idiot again.
As before (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10639), but again with 35 players and 6 swiss rounds (without a top-X cut). Any Legacy meta that can draw 3 dozen players per week is a pretty neat environment to play in, especially if you're out in the boonies like we are.
I was thinking of playing Merfolk with Thrashers and Gollums, but I wasn't sure about Countertop in the side, so I went with a slightly more familiar deck: Death and Taxes. Here we go:
Death and Taxes
11 Plains
4 Karakas
4 Rishadan Port
3 Flagstones of Trokair
4 Serra Avenger
3 Isamaru, Puppy
3 Mangara of Corondor
3 Stonecloaker
3 Flickerwisp (Takes the place of True Believer)
3 Samurai of the Pale Curtain
2 Jotun Grunt
4 Aether Vial
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Oblivion Ring
3 Cataclysm
Sideboard:
4 Orim's Chant
3 True Believer (used to be mainboard)
3 Hokori, Dust Drinker (used to be Tividar)
3 Glowrider
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Jotun Grunt
Explanations: Hokori was used to improve against control matchups and against land-heavy opponents. However, this could probably be Cataclysm #4 and achieve mostly the same effect.
Tividar of Thorn was removed because no one plays Goblins here. There were two people with optimized Goblin decks, but they either lost interest or stopped coming. For the newbies, it's easier to build an elf deck than a Goblin deck because of relative cost. Perhaps some Spectral Lynxes are in order...
True Believer is one of the more contested slots in the deck, and I decided to try Flickerwisp. It comboes nicely with Oblivion Ring, Mangara, Cataclysm, and assorted trickery, but absolutely relies on a Vial at 3 because it doesn't have Flash.
Round 1 vs UW (r?) (g?) Helm of Awakening/Top combo
Game 1: He shows me how his deck works, and my brain gets frozen. Life totals are 20/19 as I dive for the True Believers in my board.
Sided: +3 (True Believer, Glowrider), +1 Ring, +4 Orim's Chant, -3 (Flickerwisp, Samurai), -4 StP, -1 Stonecloaker. I wanted to slow/stop his combo and his finishers, and his apparent lack of removal and total lack of creatures explains my side-outs. Samurai were taken out because he didn't use the yard, and I was adding some bears anyway. I think I tried Hokori for one game, but it didn't do anything useful. (I tried to side in Hokori a lot cause I wanted to see how it worked. Probably not smart in this match, but Countertop could kill a Chant pretty easily too.)
Game 2: He gets Countertop out, but I take advantage of his tapped-out status to cast a True Believer. It's a slow beatdown until he searches for his EtW, finds that he doesn't have it, and says "Game 3." This guy's usually pretty good, but he forgot to put his wincon in? Hmph.
Game 3: He lays a Tundra and passes, and I stare at my Vial, wondering what to do. Daze+FoW mean he has 8 playable solutions to counter my Vial (a.k.a. only real solution to Countertop), and I can wait a turn to lay another land and pay for Daze, but I bite the bullet and cast Vial. It hits! He gets Countertop out again and counters relevant stuff, but two Glowriders overpower his singleton Helm, and the weenies swarm for the win.
So creatureless white control but no StP, Wrath, or Disenchant effect, blue but no bounce... he said this is an experimental build made just for speed, so I guess that explains why he had no removal. Unfortunately, this made him quite vulnerable to MY disruption.
1-0, 2-1
Round 2 vs loveisgreen playing BG Rock
Ugh, Loam to recover from Cataclysm, Raven's Crime+Bob+Loam to pull apart my hand, Deed to blow everything up, and Goyf to win.
Game 1: I must have done something good, cause I win. He was holding three Grips with no targets at the end.
Sided: forgot
Game 2: I StP a 1/2 Goyf, and I get him to 12 before he takes control and starts beating my face very gently with Sakura Tribe Elder. LftL dredges out 2 more Goyfs (he has no creature recovery), and the slow dance continues as we trade tricks. Eventually, his late game Wasteland recursion, cycle-land recursion, and Raven's Crime recursion leave me without answers. I'm at 8 and he's at 7 when he finds his last Goyf. After game 2, I realize that the match has been over for several minutes already. There was a chance I could have won that match 1-0 had the time been kept more stringently, but so it goes...
1-0-1, 3-2
Round 3 vs Monoblack Aggro
A little dude with a bunch of little black guys and big black guys. He had gotten a bye and I (with 4 points) was paired down to him (with 3). StP/Ring on the fatties, Jitte for the weenies, and the match is won.
2-0-1, 5-2
Round 4 vs RG Block Constructed Shamans
After GP Denver, some folks were playing their Block decks to good effect. This was a pretty nasty deck with Wolf-Skull Shaman, Chameleon Colossus, Leaf-Crowned Elder, Masked Admirers, Rage Forger, and Flamekin Harbinger.
Game 1: My deck refuses to give me any Cataclysms, so I start playing land and overextending to match him. Both of our armies have tons of tricks, and we battle it out. Jitte saves my ass by killing his weenies before they can get Rage Forged, and again when he threatens to kill me with Lash Out and critter damage. Eventually I pull ahead.
Sided: -1 Samurai, -3 Flickerwisp, +1 Oblivion Ring, +3 Hokori (I dunno what I was thinking. What would you have used?)
Game 2: I mull to 6 and keep a shitty hand that gets worse. I end up drawing dupes of Karakas, Flagstones, Isamaru (which he stubbornly refused to kill), Jitte, etc. My hand is filled with unplayable Legendary cards and he quickly smashes me with a Rage-Forged combination of Elder, Colossus, Admirers, etc.
Game 3: We go to time and I'm feeling a bit rushed. I get the Mangara lock going, and Cataclysm+Mangara should mean the game is won. However, we're at turns and I don't see the win, and play sloppy. After we tie, my opp. from round 2 shows me the win. Damn.
2-0-2, 6-3
Round 5 vs slow RWG aggro
He was 2-2 in rounds, so once again I get paired down. Bad for tie-breakers, but hopefully nice for matchups. It turns out that he's using basics and green search spells, so he needs a lot of land out.
Game 1: I resolve two Cataclysms and get the Mangara recursion going.
Game 2: I resolve two Cataclysms and get the Mangara recursion going.
3-0-2, 8-3
Round 6 vs GW Land Destruction
I've played him before (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10332), and he placed second last time, so I have a healthy respect for his deck. His green land destruction starts at 3 mana, and he's got geddons at 4. More annoying are the Ghostly Prisons and Trinispheres. However, my deck has plenty of tricks too, so it should be a fun match.
Game 1: He doesn't have a bird to accelerate, so I StP his Bear and start tapping his land with Port. By the time he recovers enough to start blasting my land, I have Mangara up and running (and running...) and he scoops at 20 life.
Game 2: We're the last match running so some folks are watching, and it turns out to be quite a show. I mull to 6 and make the mistake of keeping a Plains+Port hand. I lay my Vial and manage to StP two birds, which annoys him to no end. My Port gets Wasted and my Plains get eaten, but MVP of this match will be Vial. Right after putting my Vial to 2, I draw Isamaru. I Vial in an Angel and set it to 3, whereupon I draw nothing but Samurai. No really, Vial's awesome. We play draw-go for a few turns, and I start having Vial>Stonecloaker burn away all the land from our yards, fearing Terravore. I draw and Vial Mangara, then use a Stonecloaker trick at his next end of turn to kill his Prison. On my turn, I swing in with Samurai, Stonecloaker, and Avenger to put him at 9. On his turn, he taps out to Wrath of God, and I see my chance. Vial goes up to 4 for Hokori, and then it's a matter of playing out my land until I can hard-cast Mangara and start blowing things up again. He tries to Wrath my Hokori, but changes his mind as I tap Karakas in response. We play pretty casually so I didn't make a big fuss out of it. He casts something else, which eats up his mana for the next few turns: enough for me to hard-cast Mangara and do tricks with Karakas for the win.
4-0-2, 10-3
Top 3 from Swiss (I forgot the rest)
1st: Insane talent playing block constructed Kithkin (6-0)
2nd: UG Madness I think (5-1)
3nd: me (4-0-2)
Lessons learned
This is a deck that really grows with you. At least it can really grow with me. There are a lot of interactions and I still suck at spotting some of them. :\
Screw everyone else wanting to go home, and play carefully even when you go to time.
I still suck at sideboarding. D&T players, how would you have sided in my matchups?
Vial at 3 and Hokori in hand is a wonderful feeling. If they ever tap out against you and you don't have enough mana, you can up the Vial to 4 and Vial in Hokori after your untap step. Since Vial often ends up at 3 for Mangara, Flickerwisp, and Stonecloaker, it's an easy move to make.
In the face of heavy control, this deck lives and dies by its Vial, especially this version with Flickerwisp. Wait 'til the second turn, and use a Chant to bait counterspells. Don't just blindly race it up to 3, especially if you need early aggro against Chalice, Counterbalance, etc. Many of our solutions are creature-based, so Vial lets us not only get troops on the field, but also annoy our opp. with those guys' abilities.
When you know exactly what cards they're playing and have a resolved Winter Orb/Cataclysm, you can often predict their options based on available mana, and in turn control the game based on those possibilities. (I'm afraid this explanation kind of stinks, but it let me turn around the last game.)
Stonecloaker screwed me in tourneys before by being a dead topdeck, but I was hoping to see more of him tonight. He could have burned away recursion cards in Rock's yard, most important of which were Raven's Crime and LftL. He could have bounced my Mangara when I didn't have Karakas, and saved some of my guys from Smother/Lash Out. I wonder if I should run 4 Stonecloakers and take all the Flickerwisps out. Flash and the grave-burning ability let us do more without a Vial, though it is a dead topdeck after a Wrath effect.
Cataclysm is a beating in a Threshless environment. I think I even used it against Rock to good effect. I'm seriously considering a 4th in the side. Hokori is amazing when he works, but I'd rather just kill the land instead of playing Karakas tricks. Having to set Vial to 4 makes it dead for every other critter in your deck, and hard-casting it with Karakas takes 5 land, which is usually more than we'd like to commit. Any other opinions on Hokori?
Possible Sideboard Change:
-3 Hokori
+2 Seal of Cleansing/Aura of Silence
+1 Cataclysm
Thanks for reading!
As before (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10639), but again with 35 players and 6 swiss rounds (without a top-X cut). Any Legacy meta that can draw 3 dozen players per week is a pretty neat environment to play in, especially if you're out in the boonies like we are.
I was thinking of playing Merfolk with Thrashers and Gollums, but I wasn't sure about Countertop in the side, so I went with a slightly more familiar deck: Death and Taxes. Here we go:
Death and Taxes
11 Plains
4 Karakas
4 Rishadan Port
3 Flagstones of Trokair
4 Serra Avenger
3 Isamaru, Puppy
3 Mangara of Corondor
3 Stonecloaker
3 Flickerwisp (Takes the place of True Believer)
3 Samurai of the Pale Curtain
2 Jotun Grunt
4 Aether Vial
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Oblivion Ring
3 Cataclysm
Sideboard:
4 Orim's Chant
3 True Believer (used to be mainboard)
3 Hokori, Dust Drinker (used to be Tividar)
3 Glowrider
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Jotun Grunt
Explanations: Hokori was used to improve against control matchups and against land-heavy opponents. However, this could probably be Cataclysm #4 and achieve mostly the same effect.
Tividar of Thorn was removed because no one plays Goblins here. There were two people with optimized Goblin decks, but they either lost interest or stopped coming. For the newbies, it's easier to build an elf deck than a Goblin deck because of relative cost. Perhaps some Spectral Lynxes are in order...
True Believer is one of the more contested slots in the deck, and I decided to try Flickerwisp. It comboes nicely with Oblivion Ring, Mangara, Cataclysm, and assorted trickery, but absolutely relies on a Vial at 3 because it doesn't have Flash.
Round 1 vs UW (r?) (g?) Helm of Awakening/Top combo
Game 1: He shows me how his deck works, and my brain gets frozen. Life totals are 20/19 as I dive for the True Believers in my board.
Sided: +3 (True Believer, Glowrider), +1 Ring, +4 Orim's Chant, -3 (Flickerwisp, Samurai), -4 StP, -1 Stonecloaker. I wanted to slow/stop his combo and his finishers, and his apparent lack of removal and total lack of creatures explains my side-outs. Samurai were taken out because he didn't use the yard, and I was adding some bears anyway. I think I tried Hokori for one game, but it didn't do anything useful. (I tried to side in Hokori a lot cause I wanted to see how it worked. Probably not smart in this match, but Countertop could kill a Chant pretty easily too.)
Game 2: He gets Countertop out, but I take advantage of his tapped-out status to cast a True Believer. It's a slow beatdown until he searches for his EtW, finds that he doesn't have it, and says "Game 3." This guy's usually pretty good, but he forgot to put his wincon in? Hmph.
Game 3: He lays a Tundra and passes, and I stare at my Vial, wondering what to do. Daze+FoW mean he has 8 playable solutions to counter my Vial (a.k.a. only real solution to Countertop), and I can wait a turn to lay another land and pay for Daze, but I bite the bullet and cast Vial. It hits! He gets Countertop out again and counters relevant stuff, but two Glowriders overpower his singleton Helm, and the weenies swarm for the win.
So creatureless white control but no StP, Wrath, or Disenchant effect, blue but no bounce... he said this is an experimental build made just for speed, so I guess that explains why he had no removal. Unfortunately, this made him quite vulnerable to MY disruption.
1-0, 2-1
Round 2 vs loveisgreen playing BG Rock
Ugh, Loam to recover from Cataclysm, Raven's Crime+Bob+Loam to pull apart my hand, Deed to blow everything up, and Goyf to win.
Game 1: I must have done something good, cause I win. He was holding three Grips with no targets at the end.
Sided: forgot
Game 2: I StP a 1/2 Goyf, and I get him to 12 before he takes control and starts beating my face very gently with Sakura Tribe Elder. LftL dredges out 2 more Goyfs (he has no creature recovery), and the slow dance continues as we trade tricks. Eventually, his late game Wasteland recursion, cycle-land recursion, and Raven's Crime recursion leave me without answers. I'm at 8 and he's at 7 when he finds his last Goyf. After game 2, I realize that the match has been over for several minutes already. There was a chance I could have won that match 1-0 had the time been kept more stringently, but so it goes...
1-0-1, 3-2
Round 3 vs Monoblack Aggro
A little dude with a bunch of little black guys and big black guys. He had gotten a bye and I (with 4 points) was paired down to him (with 3). StP/Ring on the fatties, Jitte for the weenies, and the match is won.
2-0-1, 5-2
Round 4 vs RG Block Constructed Shamans
After GP Denver, some folks were playing their Block decks to good effect. This was a pretty nasty deck with Wolf-Skull Shaman, Chameleon Colossus, Leaf-Crowned Elder, Masked Admirers, Rage Forger, and Flamekin Harbinger.
Game 1: My deck refuses to give me any Cataclysms, so I start playing land and overextending to match him. Both of our armies have tons of tricks, and we battle it out. Jitte saves my ass by killing his weenies before they can get Rage Forged, and again when he threatens to kill me with Lash Out and critter damage. Eventually I pull ahead.
Sided: -1 Samurai, -3 Flickerwisp, +1 Oblivion Ring, +3 Hokori (I dunno what I was thinking. What would you have used?)
Game 2: I mull to 6 and keep a shitty hand that gets worse. I end up drawing dupes of Karakas, Flagstones, Isamaru (which he stubbornly refused to kill), Jitte, etc. My hand is filled with unplayable Legendary cards and he quickly smashes me with a Rage-Forged combination of Elder, Colossus, Admirers, etc.
Game 3: We go to time and I'm feeling a bit rushed. I get the Mangara lock going, and Cataclysm+Mangara should mean the game is won. However, we're at turns and I don't see the win, and play sloppy. After we tie, my opp. from round 2 shows me the win. Damn.
2-0-2, 6-3
Round 5 vs slow RWG aggro
He was 2-2 in rounds, so once again I get paired down. Bad for tie-breakers, but hopefully nice for matchups. It turns out that he's using basics and green search spells, so he needs a lot of land out.
Game 1: I resolve two Cataclysms and get the Mangara recursion going.
Game 2: I resolve two Cataclysms and get the Mangara recursion going.
3-0-2, 8-3
Round 6 vs GW Land Destruction
I've played him before (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10332), and he placed second last time, so I have a healthy respect for his deck. His green land destruction starts at 3 mana, and he's got geddons at 4. More annoying are the Ghostly Prisons and Trinispheres. However, my deck has plenty of tricks too, so it should be a fun match.
Game 1: He doesn't have a bird to accelerate, so I StP his Bear and start tapping his land with Port. By the time he recovers enough to start blasting my land, I have Mangara up and running (and running...) and he scoops at 20 life.
Game 2: We're the last match running so some folks are watching, and it turns out to be quite a show. I mull to 6 and make the mistake of keeping a Plains+Port hand. I lay my Vial and manage to StP two birds, which annoys him to no end. My Port gets Wasted and my Plains get eaten, but MVP of this match will be Vial. Right after putting my Vial to 2, I draw Isamaru. I Vial in an Angel and set it to 3, whereupon I draw nothing but Samurai. No really, Vial's awesome. We play draw-go for a few turns, and I start having Vial>Stonecloaker burn away all the land from our yards, fearing Terravore. I draw and Vial Mangara, then use a Stonecloaker trick at his next end of turn to kill his Prison. On my turn, I swing in with Samurai, Stonecloaker, and Avenger to put him at 9. On his turn, he taps out to Wrath of God, and I see my chance. Vial goes up to 4 for Hokori, and then it's a matter of playing out my land until I can hard-cast Mangara and start blowing things up again. He tries to Wrath my Hokori, but changes his mind as I tap Karakas in response. We play pretty casually so I didn't make a big fuss out of it. He casts something else, which eats up his mana for the next few turns: enough for me to hard-cast Mangara and do tricks with Karakas for the win.
4-0-2, 10-3
Top 3 from Swiss (I forgot the rest)
1st: Insane talent playing block constructed Kithkin (6-0)
2nd: UG Madness I think (5-1)
3nd: me (4-0-2)
Lessons learned
This is a deck that really grows with you. At least it can really grow with me. There are a lot of interactions and I still suck at spotting some of them. :\
Screw everyone else wanting to go home, and play carefully even when you go to time.
I still suck at sideboarding. D&T players, how would you have sided in my matchups?
Vial at 3 and Hokori in hand is a wonderful feeling. If they ever tap out against you and you don't have enough mana, you can up the Vial to 4 and Vial in Hokori after your untap step. Since Vial often ends up at 3 for Mangara, Flickerwisp, and Stonecloaker, it's an easy move to make.
In the face of heavy control, this deck lives and dies by its Vial, especially this version with Flickerwisp. Wait 'til the second turn, and use a Chant to bait counterspells. Don't just blindly race it up to 3, especially if you need early aggro against Chalice, Counterbalance, etc. Many of our solutions are creature-based, so Vial lets us not only get troops on the field, but also annoy our opp. with those guys' abilities.
When you know exactly what cards they're playing and have a resolved Winter Orb/Cataclysm, you can often predict their options based on available mana, and in turn control the game based on those possibilities. (I'm afraid this explanation kind of stinks, but it let me turn around the last game.)
Stonecloaker screwed me in tourneys before by being a dead topdeck, but I was hoping to see more of him tonight. He could have burned away recursion cards in Rock's yard, most important of which were Raven's Crime and LftL. He could have bounced my Mangara when I didn't have Karakas, and saved some of my guys from Smother/Lash Out. I wonder if I should run 4 Stonecloakers and take all the Flickerwisps out. Flash and the grave-burning ability let us do more without a Vial, though it is a dead topdeck after a Wrath effect.
Cataclysm is a beating in a Threshless environment. I think I even used it against Rock to good effect. I'm seriously considering a 4th in the side. Hokori is amazing when he works, but I'd rather just kill the land instead of playing Karakas tricks. Having to set Vial to 4 makes it dead for every other critter in your deck, and hard-casting it with Karakas takes 5 land, which is usually more than we'd like to commit. Any other opinions on Hokori?
Possible Sideboard Change:
-3 Hokori
+2 Seal of Cleansing/Aura of Silence
+1 Cataclysm
Thanks for reading!