6th at january NELC with T.E.S.

Got a short tournament report for you degenerates. Top 8'd the January NELC with:

4 dark ritual
4 rite of flame
4 lion's eye diamond
4 lotus petal
3 chrome mox
4 infernal tutor
4 burning wish
1 ad nauseum
1 empty the warrens
4 brainstorm
4 ponder
4 gitaxian probe
3 duress
4 silence
2 underground sea
1 volcanic island
2 misty rainforest
1 scalding tarn
4 gemstone mine
2 city of brass

SB
1 past in flames
1 ill gotten gains
1 time spiral
1 tendrils of agony
1 empty the warrens
1 revoke existence
1 grapeshot
3 cabal therapy
3 abrupt decay
2 dark confidant

Matches:
Round 1 Jeremy Tibbets on stoneblade
Game 1: He goes t1 brainstorm, I play a misty. He plays a land, I play land, infernal tutor, it gets spell snared. He plays stoneforge mystic, gets batterskull. I play infernal tutor, get LED. Next turn I play silence, it gets FOW'd. I then play brainstorm, LED, LED, petal, petal, duress, burning wish, tendrils of agony.
Game 2: I keep probe, ponder, misty, city, RoFx2, dark rit. He goes land go. I probe, then city, then ponder, see infernal and burning wish. He plays karakas, go. I play ponder. I duress away a flusterstorm. I burning wish for cabal therapy, I know his hand is snapcaster x 2, force, spell pierce. I pass, then cabal therapy him, he plays snapcaster in response, targets flusterstorm in his yard. I name spell pierce. I then play another cabal therapy I drew, he flusterstorms (play mistake on my part). His turn, he plays sword and swings for two with snappy. My turn I play silence into RoFx2, dark ritual, infernal tutor, ad nauseum from 10 life, I stop at 1 with exactsies enough to kill him.
1-0

Round 2 Nicholas Herbs on burn
Game 1: he goes arid mesa into goblin guide. I probe into ponder on my turn. He attacks for two. I draw, go land, mox (ponder), petal, LED, wish, ETW. He suspends two rift bolts. I draw silence...on his upkeep I silence his rift bolts. yum.
Game 2: he goes goblin guide, attack. I ponder, then play mox (duress), duress. He casts lava spike. I infernal tutor for a lotus petal. He plays another goblin guide. I play LED into infernal tutor into Ad nauseum from 10, no mana floating, no land drop. Doesn't get there.
Game 3: I probe, his hand is fireblast, lava spike, and lands. I duress a lava spike away, next turn go infernal tutor for RoF, lotus petal, RoFx2, LED, ETW. It wins.
2-0

Round 3 Damon Whitby on dredge
Game 1: I go ponder, go. He plays a putrid imp. I have a turn 2 ad nauseum through a dark rit and a rite of flame.
Game 2: He mulls to 4, my hand is a turn 3 ad nauseum (2x rite of flames, lands, and ad nauseum). Unfortunately, he kills me on turn 2. Insane. His 4 carder was land, dredger, LED, something, and he drew a draw spell.
Game 3: I go t1 ponder, drop 2 LED's. He mulls to 5, but then explodes on turn 1 with LED and faithless looting and a dredger. He dredges infinite cards but doesnt hit a narc so he cant cast therapies. On my turn I play land, chrome mox, dark rit, burning wish, crack 2 LED's into time spiral, untap two lands, LED, LED, ponder, hit the tutor, lotus petal, rite of flame, infernal tutor, burning wish, tendrils.
3-0

Round 4 Jeremiah Rudolph on 12 post from here on out my notes suck cuz I lost motivation
Game 1: I time spiral, but I draw the ETW. I Empty for a lot, and upkeep silence him, but he cracks expedition map, gets glacial chasm, then has all the time in the world. Would've won if it had been a tendrils main, but what can you do.
Game 2: He taps out on turn 1, I duress on turn 1 see blue blast, brainstorm, he brainstorms in response, i see nothing of import so I ad nauseum. It gets there.
Game 3: He plays something turn 1, I probe and then ad nauseum turn 1 to get there.
4-0

Round 5 Nick on Ad nauseum tendrils
Game 1: He has a bunch of rituals but no disruption or tutor. I have an early ad nauseum.
Game 2: He plays turn 1 dark ritual, cabal therapy (miss), dark confidant. He draws a million disruption spells, then past in flames me for the kill. At the last turn, He cast cabal therapy and I could've silenced in response, which I should have (wasn't expecting to die on the spot), and he named silence. Still learning with this deck!
Game 3: We both have early bobs, but I have a silence that prevents him from going off. Bob draws me a lot of cards. We attack each other with bobs, but I don't trade because I can't find a tutor. I get low on life, but I finally find a tutor at 8 life. I cast dark ritual, dark ritual, dark ritual, rite of flame, burning wish, past in flames, recast rituals, infernal tutor, burning wish, tendrils.
5-0

Round 6 ID

Round 7 against Blayne Gibbons on hypergenesis
Game 1: He gives me infinite time, doesn't do anything. His hand has all hypergenesis cascaders, no fatties. He forces an infernal tutor, then I ad nauseum and kill him next turn.
Game 2: I keep a slow hand, duress away a show and tell. He draws another, puts emrakul into play. I don't have it the next turn.
Game 3: He starts with a leyline in play. He then show and tells griselbrand into play. I go off, he draws 14 cards, but can't find a force of will. My ad naseum isn't enough to both cast revoke existence and grapeshot him. I lose. Would've appreciated those chain of vapors I skimped on here.
5-1-1

Round 1 of top 8 against James Rynk on Jund
Game 1: I mull to 5, he rips my hand apart.
Game 2: My hand is probe, mox, duress, dark ritual x3, infernal tutor. I probe into a lotus petal, and ad nauseum into a win.
Game 3: He rips my hand apart. I was one short of casting burning wish into time spiral at one point, and it would've translated into a diminishing returns with one floating (20%ish win percentage). Diminishing returns would've been marginally better here, but I don't think casting it and passing the turn and hoping he didn't have a discard spell (3 duress, 4 thoughtseize, 4 hymn) would've won.

I end up with more Bayous. I think the dark confidant experiment is over and I am going back to chain of vapors. I did more testing against discard heavy matchups (jund), and concluded that leaving in silences is better than boarding in therapies. Trading discard spells with them always results in me losing, as they operate much better on low resources, where as using silence to stall and get extra setup turns ends up with a higher win percentage. This is out of maybe 6 or so games. Going to be doing a lot more testing this week on whether or not keeping silence in is right in these matchups.

Congratulations on your finish, Ning =)

From the perspective of a discard player (and one whom you've played Therapy vs), I can say that Silence would be a much better solution than boarding in the Therapies. Now, admittedly, since Therapy is my discard avenue of choice, my opinion might be slightly biased here -- by discarding my Therapy, you're taking away my information for the flashback...but I still get to flashback, and oftentimes, this ends up actually sparing me a mana that I can use for something else (since the flashback just costs a sacrifice, and not a mana). If you Silence me on upkeep instead, then you not only get an extra turn disruption-free to make your land and possibly storm off, but it will also cost me an extra mana to get that Therapy's first-use, which can make the difference between unloaded a Slaughter Games that turn or the turn after. Or a Huntmaster, or whatever.

I can't really speak as well to the benefits/drawbacks of the other discard spells, but I think that at the least it's better to keep Silence in vs Therapy decks.

I also see you won a certain mythic games invitational qualifier? What was that? How many people were there?

http://www.mtgdecks.net/events/view/9549

Quote:

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Originally Posted by akatsuki

I also see you won a certain mythic games invitational qualifier? What was that? How many people were there?

http://www.mtgdecks.net/events/view/9549

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Technically, we chopped. Ning was just in first after the Swiss (5-1).

the event had 30+ people, I battled back from losing round 1. Not much else to be said....there weren't any blue decks...