Eternal Weekend Trial for a Tabernacle: 2nd with UWr Landstill

Bryce, the owner of Sports Cards Etc, held an insanely value packed EW trial last Sunday. First place gets an English Tabernacle, second a mint Underground sea etc. Having fallen ass backwards into a free entry to the tournament the day before I decided to inform my mother that I had to skip her birthday dinner to sling cardboard (I made up for it, I’m not that bad of a son).

Up until the tournament I was going to play this very bland Grixis Pyromancer list, but I wasn’t too happy about it. Having played Miracles since the printing of Terminus I am very sad that Tundra is almost unplayable, and no other control deck offers the unbiased removal of Swords to Plowshares. So, like all the best deck decisions I last second audibled to UWr Landstill list my friend found on Magic Online, because I had been playing various Standstill piles since Top got banned also APT.

UWr Landstill:
4x Brainstorm
4x Force of Will
4x Standstill
4x Swords to Plowshares
3x Snapcaster Mage
3x Ponder
2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2x Counterspell
2x Spell Pierce
2x Spell Snare
2x Supreme Verdiction
2x Engineered Explosives
1x Council’s Judgment
1x Enlightened Tutor
1x Humility
1x Emrakul, the Promised End
1x Search for Azcanta//Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin
4x Flooded Strand
3x Scalding Tarn
1x Arid Mesa
3x Tundra
2x Volcanic Island
2x Island
2x Plains
4x Mishra’s Factory
1x Karakas

Sideboard:
1x Circle of Protection: Red
1x Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1x Abrade
1x Disenchant
1x Celestial Purge
2x Flusterstorm
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Vendilion Clique
1x Pithing Needle
2x Pyroblast
1x Red Elemental Blast
1x Blood Moon

The deck is super sweet. I have been playing Emrakul in all my Landstill lists because the deck has all the card types and wants a card that ends the game as soon as it’s cast on turn 20. The Search for Azcanta was a last second 61st card addition because a guy I know who has been playing 2 in his BUG piles was only playing 1 that day so I decided the correct move was to jam it in with no testing (Spoiler: it was).

Round 1: BG Pox with Depths combo
Don’t have the best notes for this match
Game 1 He has an awkward draw and doesn’t do too much. I kill him with Factories and Snapcasters while he tries to assemble his combo.

+2 Surgical Extraction +1 Blood Moon +1 Pithing Needle +1 Celestial Purge
-2 Supreme Verdict -2 Engineered Explosives -1 Counterspell

Game 2 His draw is a lot better and is able to get his combo out on the field. End of my 3rd turn he jams and makes a 20/20, I swords him and tell him these Factories are going to have to pull overtime now, he goes to Loam on his turn but I Force of Will it because I am going to slam Jace next turn and try and find a Surgical asap. My turn naturally and very skillfully draw Surgical for the turn, get rid of his Life from the Loams, play Jace tick up, he does nothing, I Snapcaster on Surigical to get rid of Depths and Jace him out from there.
1-0

Round 2: Bryan on Blood Moon Stompy
Bryan top 8’d last month’s EW trial so I knew he was on Blood Moon Stompy.
Game 1 I have natural basics, some removal spells for his Magi and Engineered Explosives for his Chalice of the Void. He does a lot of nothing while I eventually find Emrakul and put away the game.

+1 Abrade +1 Disenchant +1 Elspeth +1 Pithing Needle +1 Celestial Purge
-2 Counterspell -3 Standstill

Game 2 Is this insanely long grindy game where I needle his Chandra’s, have basics, have Humility out (Which was a fun exercise in layer knowledge and the new rule change) and an active Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin. The game is all but over while I’m sitting at a comfortable 4 life with infinite mana and 2 Force of Wills in hand. Problem is he draws and casts Cursed Scroll which I debate countering, but decide that I can just take care of it with Snapcaster. So I let it resolve and go to my turn to Snapcaster Council’s Judgment it when a bystander informs me my 1/1 does not do that. Sick combos. So now I’m digging for a removal spell for his scroll. I miss on my Azcanta this turn and have to pass it. He goes to his turn and nugs me for 2 and plays his land. I search again on my next turn taking a Ponder to keep digging. There I find Abrade and Jace, perfect easy game as always. I decide for whatever reason to take Abrade and destroy his Cursed Scroll and to wait till next turn to get Jace and lock up the game, figuring I’m fine with my Force of Wills in hand. Obviously he rips Sudden Shock off the top and I can’t believe what I’m seeing.
Game 3 Obviously he runs all over me and my deck gives up on me this one. Whatever, guess I deserved it. Fucking Sudden Shock man, come on.
1-1

Round 3: Jacob Redfern on TES
Jake’s a good friend who always plays TES so that gives me a pretty good advantage going into game 1.
Game 1 I keep a hand with maybe one piece of counter magic and Engineered Explosives. Play the Explosives turn 1 on zero to preemptively stop gobos. He strips my counter magic and I top deck Spell Snare for his Burning Wish the next. Storm 2ez

+2 Flusterstorm +2 Surgical Extraction +1 Vendilion Clique +1 Abrade +2 Pyroblast +1 Red Elemental Blast
-4 Swords to Plowshares -1 Humility -1 Emrakul, the Promised End -1 Council’s Judgment -2 Supreme Verdict

Game 2 I keep a hand with some blue cards and no interaction because I don’t feel like it’s worth mulling to Force of Will or something similar. My thought is my sideboard cards aren’t really impactful enough to mulligan to, so just keep a decent hand if it has any Ponders/Brainstorms/Standstills. He looks at my hand, sees there is nothing and passes. I play a land and pass. He then goes for it on his turn to make a bunch of goblins. I Brainstorm and Ponder on my turn and get Engineered Explosives and wipe his goblins. Eventually kill him some point down the line after Vendilion Cliquing him and then Surgicaling Burning Wish out of his deck after he Brainstormed and didn’t shuffle.
2-1

Round 4: Cassie on Death and Taxes
Cassie is a local who usually plays at Mr Nice Guys on Fridays and is almost always on DnT.
Game 1 I joke about never being able to beat an AEther Vial and for once in my life she doesn’t have it turn 1. She plays Mom and 2 Stoneforges getting Sword of Fire and Ice while I play lands and durdle looking for a wrath and getting Search for Azcanta out. She hits me 2 or 3 times with the Sword and doesn’t add much else to the board while she ports my white sources. Luckily for me I flip Azcanta into an Island drawing Arid Mesa for the turn for me to get my 2nd white source and having exactly 4 mana thanks to Search and cast Supreme Verdict. Game goes on a little longer after that but it’s all a wash because Azcanta, the Sunken Ruins is drawing me so much action and I eventually draw Emrakul and she makes a questionable attack into her and then Wastes her own Cavern.

+1 Abrade +1 Disenchant +1 Elspeth +1 Vendilion Clique +1 Pithing Needle
-1 Standstill -2 Spell Pierce -2 Counterspell

Game 2 Her draw seems even worse and I draw a nonzero amount of Swords to Plowshares and have Engineered Explosives for her AEther Vial down the line. She draws approximately one million lands while I play a Humility and an Elspeth to eventually beat her down.
3-1

Round 5: Undomain on Dack and Black (Tezzerator)
Very exciting round where we decide to draw even though 4-1-1 is needed to make top 8. We decided to car split since we drove to the tournament together, so we figured it was best to draw this round and just both try to win round 6 so there is no feel bads from one of us knocking the other out.
3-1-1

Round 6: Franklin on ANT
I played Franklin a few weeks before in Wheeling where he beat me do to some incredible suspect play by me (Have you ever Snapcaster’d a Ponder looking for a wrath effect only to count your graveyard to see how many are left in your deck and see the very wrath effect that you might have wanted to flashback instead? Not recommended)
Game 1 is typical storm versus a deck with 10 counterspells main deck. He does some stuff and I counter the only relevant thing and hit him with some factories for a while.

+2 Flusterstorm +1 Vendilion Clique +2 Surgical Extraction +2 Pyroblast +1 Abrade +1 Red Elemental Blast
-1 Humility -1 Emrakul, the Promised End -4 Swords to Plowshares -2 Supreme Verdict -1 Council’s Judgment

Game 2 I keep one blue land Flusterstorm and other irrelevant things. Play land pass, he plays land petal and passes. On my main phase I cast Brainstorm, in response he guns off rituals and an Ad Nauseum soul reading my lack of Force of Will. Sweet play by him, he draws a million cards and kills me next turn.

Game 3 is a little more exciting as I durdle around and stop some early interaction. He confirms the inability to alt cast flashback Force of Will and proceeds to attempt going off while I have 6 lands untapped. I watch him do a bunch of stuff until he finally casts an Ad Nauseum with mana floating and no cards in hand. I cast Brainstorm, see nothing, shuffle, flashback Brainstorm with Snap and hit Force of Will on the third card down. #ezgamezlife
I was informed after Undomain won his 5th round that no 12 points could make the top 8 and I should have asked my opponent to concede because he had 9 points currently. However, I never pay attention to that kind of stuff and luckily don’t lose and don’t go on life tilt if the opposite happened.
4-1-1

Good for 8th seed, now I get the sick card advantage of going second all top 8 long !~!~

Top 8: Brian Coval on Grixis Delver
Not the person I want to face in the first round of eliminations, but if I gotta beat him might as well do it now.
Game 1 I mulligan and keep a medium hand if things play out right. Kill his first 2 threats and try to land a Standstill, however he has got the Snapcaster to go under it, I attempt a Spell Snare but he’s got the Force. Snap hits me for like 12 damage before I embarrassingly break my own Standstill and concede a turn or two later.

+2 Flusterstorm +2 Pyroblast +1 Red Elemental Blast +1 Abrade +1 Celestial Purge
-4 Force of Will -2 Counterspell -1 Humility

Game 2 A pretty standard game. I killed literally everything he put on the board and eventually stuck a Jace and Brainstormed until he conceded.

Game 3 Insanely grindy and long game. I end the game with 7 cards left in my deck off the back of Azcanta drawing me at least 7 cards and killing absolutely everything he played. He was priced into keeping his Wastelands for my Factories which were making quick work of his life total, so it let my Search go absolutely wild. At a certain point I basically knew the order of my deck and had to stop digging so I could hit the Emrakul on my draw step and cast it for a cheap 7 mana. Emrakul plus Council’s Judgment on 1 of his 2 Deathrite Shamans sealed the deal while I was at 5ish life. Search for Azcanta easily won me that game, card is so sick.

Top 4: Blood Moon Stompy rematch
Round 2 against Bryan (Mono Bryan elimination rounds) and I pray that “win in the swiss, lose in the top 8” holds true.
Game 1 I keep a hand with blue fetch, white fetch, Tundra, Volcanic. He plays turn 1 Blood Moon and I lose. Undomain inquires how I am so bad to keep that hand.

Same sideboarding

Game 2 I have Island in my opening hand and Spell Pierce in my opener. He exiles a Simian Spirit Guide and I start chanting for Blood Moon, he does and I counter and have no mana problems and can close the game out fairly quickly with Factories and Snapcaster.

Game 3 He has a very slow start and I am able to setup a comfortable position with multiple basics in play. We get into a topdeck war and I have Jace. After he draws several Ensnaring Bridges, Jace puts the game away.
Whew dodged the Sudden Shock this time.

Top 2: Infect
Another local player from Mr Nice Guys, who is in fact, a nice guy. He mentions his 4th Force of Will is in the sideboard, but as I look at the decklist I don’t see it listed. After some investigation he wrote 1 Hydroblast twice and was not allowed to play with his Force of Will anymore.
Game 1 He kills me with some random dork because my deck does not offer much to me in terms of interaction.

+1 Abrade +1 Disenchant +1 Pithing Needle +1 Blood Moon
-4 Standstill

Game 2 My deck will not give me a red source after multiple Ponders/Brainstorms. He has the absolute slowest draw I’ve ever seen, involving attacking me about 7 times with Noble Hierarch. Unfortunately he has Krosan Grip for my Needle on Inkmoth and eventually hits me a few times to win.

Probably the most anticlimactic finals ever, but opponent is a good guy who then was happy to say he could finish his RG lands deck. Which is certainly much cooler than me trying to sell a Tabernacle, so no bad feelings other than I wish we had a more exciting finals. More little kid luck on my side when he tells me might not make it to Eternal Weekend so he passes the invite to me.

So, free entry to a tournament for an Eternal Weekend bye and a near mint Underground Sea. Not a bad Sunday. Decklist felt super great and I am excited to bring it to EW, I am definitely considering cutting a Standstill for the second Search of Azcanta. The sideboard needs work, but I was insanely surprised with how good Abrade was. I wish Blood Moon was almost anything else, pretty sure I would have been happier with a singleton Wasteland.

Props
Undomain for driving me to the tournament because I’m a lazy shit
Bryce for helping to revitalize the Pittsburgh Legacy scene. Seriously if you are in the eastern PA tri-state area and aren’t coming out to these tournaments you are massively punting
Only play against Deathrite Shaman/Probe decks once

Slops
Sudden Shock
Mad Mex closing to earlier and disallowing a celebratory Gobblerito
Deathrite Shaman and Gitaxian Probe not being banned yet