Elves - Eternal Weekend Pittsburgh 2018

Seeing as how CardTitan hasn't posted results, player profiles, decklists, or even the name of the winner from the event I figured I'd briefly write up something about my experience at Eternal Weekend Pittsburgh 2018.

So if you remember my last tournament writeup, prior to the Deathrite ban, you'll recall that back in July I wanted to quit legacy. Well the ban happened and things did change a bit, so here we are. Sadly the Deathrite/Probe ban didn't really help my local store, if anything it reduced interest by the grinders and led to decreased attendance which reduced interest by everyone else. I think the decks are a bit more interesting right now, but that's just an opinion.
Regardless of what the field looked like I was going to be on Elves for this event. I've been playing some Death and Taxes in the year since the last Eternal Weekend, but ultimately I've always found Legacy to be a format where if you just play what you know and play it well then you can usually make it work.

There are some pictures of the deck in the other thread so if you want a visual look there. Nothing has changed aesthetically since.

I don't take notes during matches (aside from hand information), so this is what I have off memory. I used to write down my sideboarding and some brief notes after the match, but I haven't cared to do so in the last few large events I've played.

Spells (28+12=40) Land (20) Sideboard (15)

1 Elvish Mystic
1 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Llanowar Elves
2 Birchlore Rangers
4 Heritage Druid
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Elvish Visionary
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Craterhoof Behemoth

4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order 1 Dryad Arbor
2 Forest
2 Bayou
2 Cavern of Souls
1 Pendelhaven
4 Gaea's Cradle
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs 1 Pithing Needle
2 Surgical Extraction
4 Thoughtseize
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Assassin's Trophy
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Choke
2 Nissa, Vital Force

Round 1 vs Patrick (2-0)
Lands

Game 1: I win the roll and lead on a Nettle Sentinel. He fetches into a Taiga and Crop Rotations into Tabernacle. I wind up with 3 Nettle Sentinels, another elf or two, and a Cradle. He has a Punishing Fire and a Grove, but with the turn 1 Tabernacle crippling his mana there's not much going on from his end.

Game 2: He has half of everything going on. He has a Punishing Fire with no Grove, he has a Stage with no Depths, he Gambles for a Life from the Loam - the only reason I can guess being that he was afraid of the 33% chance he'd discard Depths if he got that? He winds up casting the Loam to get back a single fetchland, then doesn't dredge it? He apparently either soul read that he was drawing a Crop Rotation or risked discarding it on his gamble... so on the end of my turn he rotates into Depths and has mana to make Marit Lage. Rather than do that he untaps and dredges his Loam. I kill him on my turn through the Marit Lage on defense.

Round 2 vs Matthew (2-0)
Grixis Delver

Game 1: He has a Bitterblossom on turn 2 and I just ignore it. He takes a few points of damage, but I'm able to assemble Wirewood + Visionary and draw into Craterhoof off Cavern of Souls.

Game 2: He left in his Bitterblossoms and plays one on turn 3, he has little other action going on so I again durdle with Visionaries and pull far enough ahead to risk a Natural Order.

Round 3 vs Patrick Green (2-1)
Miracles

Patrick goes on a tear and Wins the event despite the early loss; congratulations to him.

Game 1: dunno. I believe he gets a Terminus on turn 3 to hit 3 creatures and I fall behind.

Game 2: dunno. Definitely involves two Chokes though which forces him to bring in Disenchant game 3 if I'm not mistaken.

Game 3: We grind for a while, but I have action Visionary. He's low on resources and Entreats for 4 Angels to play defense and eventually try and win the game. I've been ahead on cards all match and he's just run out, so I'm able to Assassin's Trophy and Abrupt Decay 2 Angels and swing for a lethal 3 or 4 damage through the remaining two.

Round 4 vs Rick (2-0)
Moon Stompy

I expected I'd be seeing this deck a fair bit this weekend, it was a pretty popular choice in the previous year. I debated playing 3 forests to try and combat it, but wound up nixing the idea.

Game 1: These games are fuzzy, but I'm reasonably sure he Moons, but doesn't have any pressure and I already have a Forest in play to work with. I play a couple points of power and beat him down while his side of the board is clear.

Game 2: He has a Sorcerous Spyglass and gets to see my hand with Wirewood, Quirion, stuff, and 2 Misty Rainforest to go with my one land in play. He names the Wirewood and I get to make more land drops. I think he gets a Chalice on 1 or something, but again doesn't have a threat to follow it up and I get to take some time to find an answer.

Round 5 vs Cyrus Corman-Gill (0-2)
ANT

Cyrus gets 2nd in this event with an undefeated record into first seed of top 8.

Game 1: I play an Elf, he kills me on his turn 2 with a Cabal Ritual, LED, Past in Flames, Dark Petition hand.

Game 2: I have a fairly quick hand with a Surgical, on the play this is fine. He Duresses me then kills me on turn 2 with a Ritual, LED, Past in Flames, Ad Nauseum hand.

Last year I took my loss in round 7, so it was unfortunate to pick one up earlier this year. We finish fast enough though that I can get food.

Round 6 vs Christopher Walton (2-0)
Czech Pile

Christopher gets 3rd this event. He's a bit bummed to be paired down against me this round though with his x-0-1 record.

Game 1: I have a solid start and I'm able to out value him.

Game 2: I slam a Choke and he has to burn some blue lands as lotus petals to cantrip. I know he has a Snapcaster stuck in his hand due to the mana constraints. He's unable to recover from the loss of tempo and I pull ahead.

Round 7 vs John (1-2)
Grixis Control

Game 1: I mull to 4 and he has a Hymn into Last Hope to lock me out.
Game 2: I choke him.
Game 3: He has Hymn into Kolaghan's Command (shock, discard) into Kolaghan's Command (shock, discard) and I just never recover.

Rough loss. I start looking forward to losing a third so I can drop, get food, and guarantee myself being at the Eternal Central Old School event on Sunday.

Round 8 vs Brian (2-1)
Mono Blue Painter

Game 1: He kills me on turn 2 or something silly with natural Painter + Stone and some acceleration.

Game 2: He mulls down some and has a hand that can make a Karn, Scion of Urza on turn 2 or 3. He makes a creature and I'm able to Natural Order him.

Game 3: He again mulls down and leads on a Painter. I Thoughtseize him to not die and see a hand of lands, a Mox Opal, and a Preordain. I take the Preordain and just have to cross my fingers for the two turns it takes me to Zenith for a Reclamation Sage to kill his Painter. He finds a cantrip at some point, but it's not enough to get him somewhere relevant in the game once I start looping a Visionary and eventually find a Pithing Needle on turn 4 or 5 if I'm not mistaken.

Round 9 vs Colin (2-0)
Grixis Delver

Game 1: dunno.
Game 2: dunno.

---

Unfortunately I finish the day x-2 with highest breakers and a slim chance at top 8, so I commit to playing at least round 10 rather than dropping and heading straight to Old School. With highest breakers I'm reasonably sure it's worthwhile to play out the event in its entirety for prize since I'm basically guaranteed top 32 if I finish x-3. I intend then to finish the event out and try to join Old School with a first round or two loss.

I head on out for food with some Atlanta and California guys at an Italian place across from the hotel and order a sampler meat/cheese plate where I don't like half the items - whoops. I go destroy the restroom at the hotel and watch the second half of Talladega Nights.

Day 2 starts with me waking up far too early due to Daylight Savings. I walk to an ATM a few blocks away and stop in at a local convenience store (since CVS was closed on Sunday) where I'm able to purchase my first Coke of the weekend. Pittsburgh is a dirty Pepsi town. I walk past the finish line for the 10 mile Bike Race going on in town and the remnants of the stage from the Kesha concert that happened a block away the night before. I get to the convention center with about an hour to spare and lay out Old School to submit a decklist photo.

https://i.imgur.com/RDlCaLw.jpg

Sadly this is the first day of the trip that the sun has come out, so glare wins out and I have a shit photo.

---

Round 10 vs James (2-1)
Goblins

Now here's a matchup I hadn't expected to play day two.

Game 1: James has a turn 2 Sparksmith and we both spout some praise for the two mana pinger. Sadly a pinger isn't going to win the game against the Beast that is Craterhoof Behemoth so I let him know what's up and have a turn 4 kill?

Game 2: He has a turn 3 Ensnaring Bridge to keep things from getting too out of hand and is able to get a Warchief down and Matrons into Chainwhirler to mop up a few creatures on my side. I make some board presence, but he winds up with a Krenko Mob Boss in play so I'm basically on remove the Ensnaring Bridge or bust. He mops it up with some very large Krenko activations.

Game 3: He has a Damping Sphere on his 2 which sets me back. I have a Decay for it a turn later when I need to start using my Cradle and he immediately sticks another one. I extend with my colorless Cradle and wind up just tapping 4 lands like a normal deck to Natural Order him.

Round 11 vs Alexander (2-1)
UW Stoneblade

The standings in this event were all screwed up. Going into day two there was like 7 draws throughout the top 16 players, which made for some weird math that required all but the top 2 tables to play in the last round. Alexander is in the draw bracket above me so we're both on a win and in since my breakers are above 70%. We're on the backup feature match, but I don't think they aired it.

Game 1: He leads on Flooded Strand. I have a Misty Rainforest and immediately crack it. He fetches in response while mentioning getting Stifled. He finds a basic Island, puts it into play and begins shuffling his deck. I ask if I'm getting Stifled and he says no, that I'm good to resolve my fetch. So I go find basic Forest and put it into play. At this point he turns to the table spotter/judge and asks if he can "choose a different land." I stare at the judge in case I need to start making an appeal, but the judge is on it and tells him that he's already made and confirmed his decision.
Well turns out he doesn't have another fetch in his hand and plays like 4 islands in a row. I run him over with Visionary and a pile of creatures and he finds a White source on the last turn before conceding.

Game 2: I put him on Miracles with Back to Basics and sideboard accordingly, this involves bringing in the two Nissas. This game he shows me a Stoneforge, Jitte, and 2 True-Names. He plays his Batterskull a bit weird and I'm able to nuke it, but it doesn't do enough to combat the 6 power of Latch Seekers.

Game 3: I get to revise my board now and slide the Nissas back into it, putting 2 Natural Order back into my deck. He has a turn 2 Jitte but doesn't have a creature to pair with it. I find an Abrupt Decay and play it patient. I'm able to take out the Jitte and when he Stoneforges into Batterskull I Choke him back to 1 land and he never recovers.

---

So at this point I'm locked for 7th seed. It's quickly approaching 11:30 in the morning thanks to the 30 minute delay starting the tournament. I've missed the start of Old School and now it looks like I'll be missing the event as a whole.
When they finish the round and announce the top 8 it's already Noon. I'm told to return at 1:30 to do player profiles and photos, so I meet up with Christopher on the way out and we grab pizza. We get back at 1:30 and do the photos and are told that they're expecting vintage top 8 to finish somewhere between 3:30 and 4:00PM. God damn.
I settle in and watch some friends crush the Team Trios while I wait. By the end of today I'll have played a total of 3 matches in 9 hours.

I don't play in main events usually. Ever since GPs grew to two day affairs and SCG followed suit I've avoiding playing them. It's just too much time to waste playing one event and I hate the feeling when you're on the bubble and have to suffer through a bunch of rounds only to miss out. Splitting the Legacy event to two days again meant that I had to burn a whole day not entering side events (notably the EternalCentral Old School event). I understand that last year was a slog with all 11 rounds in one day, but at the end of that day I knew where I stood. I knew I'd come up short and was done with the event.

Anyways, I knew my opponent was on Sneak and Show so I just relaxed and avoided thinking about how much of a waste of time it was to sit around for 4 hours just to play an awful matchup I was probably going to lose in 10 minutes.
I got some congratulations from people on facebook and twitter, as well as a few warnings about my opponent in the coming match. I don't usually stare into my opponent's soul and mash shuffle their deck for 20 seconds, but with that many people giving me a heads up it felt necessary. I should add that I have no reason to suspect anything influenced the outcome of our match.

---

Top 8 vs Brandon De Vera (1-2)
Sneak and Show

Brandon's on that hybrid list or whatever it's called. He's got a Jace, Mind Sculptor, a V Clique, and a pair of Omniscience in his deck. 0 Cunning Wish, 0 Intuition. All things considered this is one of the easier builds for me to steal a game off since it's less dense in cards I care about.
This is a camera feature match, so I'm sure it's somewhere online.

Game 1: I keep a respectable hand that can produce a relatively quick kill with a lucky draw or two. Luck favors me and I rip a Birchlore so I can go nuts on turn 2 and put a bunch of power in play. I don't have a way to kill him on the spot, but he bricks on a third land and passes it back. After he whiffs on a land again he scoops to a Glimpse of Nature with a large amount of mana floating. Personally I think that's premature, but whatever works for him.

Game 2: I keep a lukewarm hand that has a Thoughtseize and a Natural Order. If I draw a 1 drop creature I can definitely pressure him to do something about the Natural Order. Ideally even if it's not for lethal I can get him to a low enough life total where a Griselbrand can't draw cards against the Assassin's Trophy in my hand. I know the hand looks weird, but this is a 15 land deck with a lot of bad 1/1s and 2/2s, you can't really gamble with your mulligans when you have a piece of interaction already. The odds that I find a better hand on 6 or 5 with a Thoughtseize, black source, and a clock are slim so I'm counting on my top 2-3 cards being any warm bodies.
Being able to have him forced to draw with Griselbrand when I go to Assassin's Trophy it, then forcing him to have the answer to a lethal Natural Order is a big deal and you don't always get that opportunity.

Game 3: Stuff happens and there's a Grislebrand in play. I have some live draws, but I've already been exceptionally lucky to have him draw so dead and my luck runs out. To the people asking why I didn't put in a fetch and get a second arbor, well I only have 1 in the 75. As for why I sandbagged the Fyndhorn Elf I miscounted the damage and thought that the 6 damage from drawing a Natural Order if he Pyroclasm'd me would be sufficient, but he's at 7 at that point I think. It also leaves me open to draw a Glimpse and potentially have that matter.

---

So overall not the most exciting finish, but I was definitely more in that last match than I expected to be. All the Hex Depths decks were vanquished in top 8 so I had a fairly realistic shot if I had gotten through that match. My next round would have been the Miracles I had already beaten in the swiss and finals would have been a 35/65 or something matchup again.

I walk with $700 store credit and a pile of Ultra Pro product including a draw string bag that perfectly fits my dirty underwear from the trip.
I go out to Fogo with some of the Roanoke crew and my Atlanta hotelmate and we gorge on meat.

Props:
- Jeff Laubenstein for drawing me an awesome mat last year and gifting me a print to go with it when I went to thank him in person.
- Vintage being fun to watch on Friday.
- All of my opponents playing at a reasonable pace unprompted and none of my matches going to time, which let me having plenty of time to get food between one of the rounds.
- Jefferey Krasnozon getting 29th with a sweet Cloudstone Curio elves list including Beast Whisperer and Essence Warden.
- CardTitan proactively calling an event recess when whichever event reporter (WLTR?) they were using had some issues.
- The History Center being an awesome walkthrough feature Apollo 11 and Mister Rogers among other things.

Slops:
- Missing EternalCentral Old School.
- The event schedule putting 3 round events two hours apart.
- Team Trios overlapping multiple events, including the legacy main event. With some adjustments that could have been it's own main event and I would have loved to play in it.
- Wizards not paying to make a stable piece of TO software.

Thoughts:
- Wren's Run Packmaster needs to come back.
- Cabal Therapy deserves a slot again.
- I should play Maverick again for a bit.

https://i.imgur.com/7UsP5VK.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/jnvgb2q.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/dkrXccR.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/OaUCpQI.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/XAJjihO.jpg