Derivative
01-26-2010, 04:42 PM
No names; for some reason I consciously decided not to deal with that, though usually I at least get them from the slip. Its possible I might've mixed up minor details from some game 1s and 2s (mostly against Thresh/Bant). Came in having not played the format for a few months with a lot of Goblin experience and some Thresh experience from times past & Extended. Anyway, this is what I was handed to sleeve up just before the tournament:
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Lackey
4 Aether Vial
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Goblin Chieftan
4 Goblin Ringleader
3 Siege-Gang Commander
3 Stingscourger
3 Gempalm Incinerator
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
1 Lightning Crafter
1 Warren Instigator
16 Mountain (I wasn't happy when I realized how few this played, but the list was turned in by then)
4 Wasteland
SB:
4 Pyrokinesis
3 Magus of the Moon
2 Pyroblast
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Summoner's Trap
r1 survival
I had t1 lackey on the draw both games, and my opponent keeps hands with no t1 play, t2 survival both games. One of the games involed a t3 goyf which got Stingscourged for superb value. I think the first game my opponent was stuck on 2 lands after waste/gempalm->bird while I had an active vial. Nothing particularly nuts here on my end, just a turn or two of unanswered Lackey.
r2 reanimator Scott Seitz
Combo - oops, goblins loses this one!
Game 1 is sorta close, but he gets Iona a turn before I can try to set up vial->Stingscourger off of Matron. Its possible I could've tried to mull into a better hand with Lackey instead of Vial here, but I'm not sure it would've made much of a difference.
Game 2 I get him with a clock & Relic.
Game 3 I have t1 relic, t2 vial or lackey & activate, but... T1 iona on the play >>> non-leyline SB.
r3 dragon stompy
I keep a hand with t1 lackey... and my opponent plays tomb, SSG, 3 sphere. He follows sphere with gathan and then Mauler, while I Matron for Scourger (and have Gempalm in hand). He lets me search off of Matron, and I don't let him get the Mauler counter (hit play, i'm searching, etc). He swings, I don't block, then he plays a Jitte off Tomb. I had to think about how to deal with that one...
I attack with Matron (mistake - should've held it back so I can block, cycle on Gathan pre-dmg and kill it, resetting Mauler with Scourger). Instead, I Gempalm the Mauler, planning to Scourge the raiders after he pitches a card to it (and deal with Jitte by overwhelming him with SGC and other stuff while I chain Scourgers). This goes as planned, and since he's been using Tomb all game I end up using (2 I think, might've been all 3) Stingscourgers to tempo him out, costing him 2 life repeatedly while I advance my board with 2 spells a turn. I drew 6 mountains this game, which is... absurdly lucky on my part.
Game 2 I keep mountain, lackey, spells and learn a hard lesson that Dragon Stompy actually does play Chalice (at 1). I don't draw a third land for 3sphere before he gets Raiders and Deus.
Game 3 I get t1 lackey against my opponent's morph. I Stingscourge it back (hello Akroma!), get a hit and that puts me very far ahead. My opponent didn't draw SB cards for g3 apparently.
r4 Dream Halls
I know he's playing dream halls b/c there was talk about someone needing Shows, and he was the guy's "friend who actually had them" or somesuch.
Game 1 I develop into racing his combo with Lackey. On the critical "go off or die" turn, I tap my wasteland to play a Warchief - I already had lethal next turn with Chieftan in hand, and while Wasteland wouldn't have stopped the Lim-Dul's Vault, it would've killed the Underground Sea as the 3rd land for Show&Tell. (My opp said it didn't matter, still a mistake though).
Game 2 I keep a hand involving a Pyroblast, Vial and Magus. Vial hits 3 counters and Magus kolds him. I don't recall what Pyroblast countered in this game, probably the Force he telegraphed when I Vialed in Magus.
Game 3 my opponent mulls, Forces (Lackey or Vial, unsure), then gets his EOT Brainstorm Pyroblasted (judgement call, seemed fine as he had a fetch up and was down major cards from mull/Force). I end up racing a Shown Progenitus and winning.
r5 UGr thresh
Thresh is pretty simple, at least to me. Play it slow, most dorks are expendable, and just get value out of the good cards in the deck (mostly Ringleader, really). I'm sure I got things mixed up here, since I have myself taking damage in game 1 (where I believe my opp had goyf on offense with Goose on defense) but not game 2.
Game 1 he has Fire for Lackey after EOT Brainstorm (personally I hate that play a lot), I walk Piledriver into Daze, after which I start resolving dudes. Sharpshooter pings him when he bolts one of my guys, and suddenly I can alpha for exactsies past his tapped 3/4 Goyf and Goose.
Game 2 he has Bolt for my Lackey. Past that I don't recall; I never took a hit, and my opponent went -2, -5, -7, -1, -2, 0.
My opponent made some strange plays, such as using bolt before I declare attackers. I believe one such situation involved 2 matrons, Piledriver and Warchief and his 3/3 mongoose on defense (goyf tapped from attacking). He bolts warchief before I declare, where it seems like letting me try to go for it, bolting my Driver and killing the Chief with Goose would've been much more productive (his life was mid-teens, so the 2 dmg wouldn't really matter there I wouldn't think).
r6 bant id
Would end up being my t4 opponent, but for now I'm glad he didn't want to play it out (he was already 4-0-1).
t8 UGR thresh - Eric Dupuis
We went to get dinner, and though I probably should've listened to the inner voice of "sitdown restaurant? its only an hour at most til the round ends" I went along anyway. We end up paired in the t8, both get gamelosses for being late, and I'm favored "game 1".
"Game 1" I get Vial Dazed, Lackey Forced (RFG Rushing River) and then resolve the second Vial. None of this matters a whole lot, as Waste on Eric's Volcanic (leaving him with Waste) seals it when he never draws another land. Lame way to win what would've been an otherwise fun & interesting match.
t4 bant
Game 1 lasts quite a while; Lackey (or perhaps it was Vial) gets Forced. My Waste turns out not to be terribly relevant, as he has plenty of land and a Hierarch. I curve with Piledriver and lords, racing a 5 power Vendilion Clique which drops me dangerously low (3) until it gets Gempalmed, letting me run the attrition game and win from there.
I almost side in Relic, but only board in 3 Magus since I didn't see Goyf and wasn't sure of the last 2 cards to take out. In hindsight, taking out Sharpshooter was relatively awful since I knew he had Vendilions and Nobles, but I wanted to minimize the number of conditional dudes in my deck. The potential use of 3 magi, 2 relic (& even Pyrokinesis, though probably overkill) had me a bit confused on what to do here. In hindsight, he would obviously have Goyf, which would make Relic very, very good against that and Knight.
Game 2 is another go-long slugfest. One particularly interesting point involved my opponent casting Vendilion and me Stingscourging it back to his hand (via Vial), both to stall the Exalted beats for a turn and to let him cycle me into more land. The board stalls out, my Warchief, Lackey and Siege-Gang staring down his giant Knight of the Reliquary for a few turns. I rip Magus and he fetches away 2 Pondered Goyfs (I was told this after the match). He plays a Goyf and attacks with Knight, while I find another Siege-Gang to force the Goyf to block a Piledriver and burn him out next turn.
I'm not sure my opponent played Vendilion quite well in one or two cases; I would have a hand of 3-5 drops with 2-3 lands and he'd cycle an expensive card away. I got there twice when he did this, where I was more afraid he wouldn't let me draw. Clique with all the exalted triggers was quite the beating, and made me wish I had Sharpshooter or Pyrokinesis. He also seemed surprised in game 2 where I let Knight hit me for 6 down to 6, though my plan was never to let it hit me again via the goblin attrition game. This matchup is much more annoying without Weirdings.
t2 belcher
Game 1 I race him decently. He gets his out on the critical turn for the lethal Belch (infernal-> belcher. Tendrils or Empty wouldn't have been lethal; I was still at 20, and had Matron->Sharpshooter to clean up a goblin mess).
Game 2 my hand is a little weak. I drop Lackey and get Belched.
In hindsight, while I missed Warren Weirding easily dealing with fat things there were several times where I was superbly glad I didn't have fetches to play around Stifle. Seeing my opponent's useless Wastelands was also very satisfying. Stingscourger is usually "good enough", though my attempt to play attrition against Bant in the t4 was much more difficult without Weirding. If it seems like I had Lackey/Vial a lot, I went to 6 pretty frequently, and got there on 5 in r1. Sharpshooter didn't do much, though I'm not sure what I'd replace it with. Probably another mountain, since 16+4 seems absurdly low.
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Lackey
4 Aether Vial
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Goblin Chieftan
4 Goblin Ringleader
3 Siege-Gang Commander
3 Stingscourger
3 Gempalm Incinerator
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
1 Lightning Crafter
1 Warren Instigator
16 Mountain (I wasn't happy when I realized how few this played, but the list was turned in by then)
4 Wasteland
SB:
4 Pyrokinesis
3 Magus of the Moon
2 Pyroblast
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Summoner's Trap
r1 survival
I had t1 lackey on the draw both games, and my opponent keeps hands with no t1 play, t2 survival both games. One of the games involed a t3 goyf which got Stingscourged for superb value. I think the first game my opponent was stuck on 2 lands after waste/gempalm->bird while I had an active vial. Nothing particularly nuts here on my end, just a turn or two of unanswered Lackey.
r2 reanimator Scott Seitz
Combo - oops, goblins loses this one!
Game 1 is sorta close, but he gets Iona a turn before I can try to set up vial->Stingscourger off of Matron. Its possible I could've tried to mull into a better hand with Lackey instead of Vial here, but I'm not sure it would've made much of a difference.
Game 2 I get him with a clock & Relic.
Game 3 I have t1 relic, t2 vial or lackey & activate, but... T1 iona on the play >>> non-leyline SB.
r3 dragon stompy
I keep a hand with t1 lackey... and my opponent plays tomb, SSG, 3 sphere. He follows sphere with gathan and then Mauler, while I Matron for Scourger (and have Gempalm in hand). He lets me search off of Matron, and I don't let him get the Mauler counter (hit play, i'm searching, etc). He swings, I don't block, then he plays a Jitte off Tomb. I had to think about how to deal with that one...
I attack with Matron (mistake - should've held it back so I can block, cycle on Gathan pre-dmg and kill it, resetting Mauler with Scourger). Instead, I Gempalm the Mauler, planning to Scourge the raiders after he pitches a card to it (and deal with Jitte by overwhelming him with SGC and other stuff while I chain Scourgers). This goes as planned, and since he's been using Tomb all game I end up using (2 I think, might've been all 3) Stingscourgers to tempo him out, costing him 2 life repeatedly while I advance my board with 2 spells a turn. I drew 6 mountains this game, which is... absurdly lucky on my part.
Game 2 I keep mountain, lackey, spells and learn a hard lesson that Dragon Stompy actually does play Chalice (at 1). I don't draw a third land for 3sphere before he gets Raiders and Deus.
Game 3 I get t1 lackey against my opponent's morph. I Stingscourge it back (hello Akroma!), get a hit and that puts me very far ahead. My opponent didn't draw SB cards for g3 apparently.
r4 Dream Halls
I know he's playing dream halls b/c there was talk about someone needing Shows, and he was the guy's "friend who actually had them" or somesuch.
Game 1 I develop into racing his combo with Lackey. On the critical "go off or die" turn, I tap my wasteland to play a Warchief - I already had lethal next turn with Chieftan in hand, and while Wasteland wouldn't have stopped the Lim-Dul's Vault, it would've killed the Underground Sea as the 3rd land for Show&Tell. (My opp said it didn't matter, still a mistake though).
Game 2 I keep a hand involving a Pyroblast, Vial and Magus. Vial hits 3 counters and Magus kolds him. I don't recall what Pyroblast countered in this game, probably the Force he telegraphed when I Vialed in Magus.
Game 3 my opponent mulls, Forces (Lackey or Vial, unsure), then gets his EOT Brainstorm Pyroblasted (judgement call, seemed fine as he had a fetch up and was down major cards from mull/Force). I end up racing a Shown Progenitus and winning.
r5 UGr thresh
Thresh is pretty simple, at least to me. Play it slow, most dorks are expendable, and just get value out of the good cards in the deck (mostly Ringleader, really). I'm sure I got things mixed up here, since I have myself taking damage in game 1 (where I believe my opp had goyf on offense with Goose on defense) but not game 2.
Game 1 he has Fire for Lackey after EOT Brainstorm (personally I hate that play a lot), I walk Piledriver into Daze, after which I start resolving dudes. Sharpshooter pings him when he bolts one of my guys, and suddenly I can alpha for exactsies past his tapped 3/4 Goyf and Goose.
Game 2 he has Bolt for my Lackey. Past that I don't recall; I never took a hit, and my opponent went -2, -5, -7, -1, -2, 0.
My opponent made some strange plays, such as using bolt before I declare attackers. I believe one such situation involved 2 matrons, Piledriver and Warchief and his 3/3 mongoose on defense (goyf tapped from attacking). He bolts warchief before I declare, where it seems like letting me try to go for it, bolting my Driver and killing the Chief with Goose would've been much more productive (his life was mid-teens, so the 2 dmg wouldn't really matter there I wouldn't think).
r6 bant id
Would end up being my t4 opponent, but for now I'm glad he didn't want to play it out (he was already 4-0-1).
t8 UGR thresh - Eric Dupuis
We went to get dinner, and though I probably should've listened to the inner voice of "sitdown restaurant? its only an hour at most til the round ends" I went along anyway. We end up paired in the t8, both get gamelosses for being late, and I'm favored "game 1".
"Game 1" I get Vial Dazed, Lackey Forced (RFG Rushing River) and then resolve the second Vial. None of this matters a whole lot, as Waste on Eric's Volcanic (leaving him with Waste) seals it when he never draws another land. Lame way to win what would've been an otherwise fun & interesting match.
t4 bant
Game 1 lasts quite a while; Lackey (or perhaps it was Vial) gets Forced. My Waste turns out not to be terribly relevant, as he has plenty of land and a Hierarch. I curve with Piledriver and lords, racing a 5 power Vendilion Clique which drops me dangerously low (3) until it gets Gempalmed, letting me run the attrition game and win from there.
I almost side in Relic, but only board in 3 Magus since I didn't see Goyf and wasn't sure of the last 2 cards to take out. In hindsight, taking out Sharpshooter was relatively awful since I knew he had Vendilions and Nobles, but I wanted to minimize the number of conditional dudes in my deck. The potential use of 3 magi, 2 relic (& even Pyrokinesis, though probably overkill) had me a bit confused on what to do here. In hindsight, he would obviously have Goyf, which would make Relic very, very good against that and Knight.
Game 2 is another go-long slugfest. One particularly interesting point involved my opponent casting Vendilion and me Stingscourging it back to his hand (via Vial), both to stall the Exalted beats for a turn and to let him cycle me into more land. The board stalls out, my Warchief, Lackey and Siege-Gang staring down his giant Knight of the Reliquary for a few turns. I rip Magus and he fetches away 2 Pondered Goyfs (I was told this after the match). He plays a Goyf and attacks with Knight, while I find another Siege-Gang to force the Goyf to block a Piledriver and burn him out next turn.
I'm not sure my opponent played Vendilion quite well in one or two cases; I would have a hand of 3-5 drops with 2-3 lands and he'd cycle an expensive card away. I got there twice when he did this, where I was more afraid he wouldn't let me draw. Clique with all the exalted triggers was quite the beating, and made me wish I had Sharpshooter or Pyrokinesis. He also seemed surprised in game 2 where I let Knight hit me for 6 down to 6, though my plan was never to let it hit me again via the goblin attrition game. This matchup is much more annoying without Weirdings.
t2 belcher
Game 1 I race him decently. He gets his out on the critical turn for the lethal Belch (infernal-> belcher. Tendrils or Empty wouldn't have been lethal; I was still at 20, and had Matron->Sharpshooter to clean up a goblin mess).
Game 2 my hand is a little weak. I drop Lackey and get Belched.
In hindsight, while I missed Warren Weirding easily dealing with fat things there were several times where I was superbly glad I didn't have fetches to play around Stifle. Seeing my opponent's useless Wastelands was also very satisfying. Stingscourger is usually "good enough", though my attempt to play attrition against Bant in the t4 was much more difficult without Weirding. If it seems like I had Lackey/Vial a lot, I went to 6 pretty frequently, and got there on 5 in r1. Sharpshooter didn't do much, though I'm not sure what I'd replace it with. Probably another mountain, since 16+4 seems absurdly low.