An Ape in Atlanta - A Top 16 Story

This past weekend Star City Games decided to come to Atlanta for the Team Constructed Open. Upon hearing I initially messaged a couple of people I wanted to team up with. Once it was determined that I would be the standard player my interest dwindled more and more each day. Eventually a week ago I decided that I would rather do anything in my life besides play standard so instead of that I got drunk on the river. Backtrack to days before when I was discussing with someone how easy it is to win with Sneak and Show. He disagreed and I said any competent person who could simply cantrip properly and not be a complete donkey could win. Message teammate Big Red (Whienot of the source) and he built fully foreign signed Sneak and Show for me to ape out with so I could prove a point. Turns out I was wrong actually. You can actually be a complete donkey and still win games.

The list: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/709379#paper


I have played 0 test games with this deck and took about 10 goldfished hands the night before the event. That is my prior experience to playing this deck.

Round 1: Burn
Game 1: I have a hand that has cantrips, a force and some big stuff to show into play. Unfortunately despite him having a pretty slow kill, I am unable to find a 3rd mana source to cast the show and tell that I find and I succumb to the burn.
Game 2: I force a turn 2 eidolon but I'm struggling to find a payoff spell. He gets a Sulfuric Vortex down and I have to show in a Griselbrand at 10 life left. he still has 3 cards in hand so I'm 100% sure I'm dead. He looks at his hand, looks at the board and scoops. He forgot Vortex denies Lifelink. Wow. Hot simian singles near you.
Game 3: I spell pierce a turn 2 Pyrostatic Pillar, but he has turn 3 eidolon and turn 4 Vortex while I am still trying to cantrip into things and my flusterstorm has no targets. I die.

0-1

Round 2: Reset Tide
Game 1: He cast impulse and I think it may be the mirror, so when my intuition resolves I get sneak attack instead of show and tell. He casts Opt. I realize he's reset tide. I curse. I cast Sneak attack and we fight over it. I win the fight and activate the next turn, but he has many lands and in response to my activation he attempts to go off. Unfortunately for him, our fights drained him of resources and his meditate doesn't get him there. Sneak trigger resolves and emrakul get him.
Game 2: we fight over a show and tell. He has more flusterstorms than I do, and I quickly scoop when he demonstrates that he has infinite mana.
Game 3: Similar to game 1. A big fight at some point and he attempts to go off in response to sneak attack activation. He gets pretty far but runs low on mana. He has to throw a hail mary with brain freeze. Unfortunately for him I have Emrakul in my deck and he scoops to me showing him Griselchimp.

1-1

Round 3: Death and Taxes
Game 1: I'm pretty sure he's on DnT from stuff I saw while shuffling. Shit. He opens on turn 1 Karakas. Shit. I cantrip and see I can show and tell turn 2 if I want and he doesnt have thalia. I plan to force his 2 drop. He plays Cavern. Fuck. Names Angel. What? Plays Stoneforge. WHAT? I force it like a donkey even though it's irrelevant. I cast sneak attack with no mana open. he untaps. DOes nothing. I sneak in griselbrand. He doesnt karakas. I draw 14, play petal, sneak emrakul with another red open and he scoops.
Game 2: He has a turn 2 revoker naming the petal I played before he could play Thalia. Then he plays Thalia. But he hasn't played Karakas yet. And he didnt play a land on turn 4. I was preparing to build up mana and look for Omniscience. Instead I said fuck it he doesnt look like the type of player that would sandbag a Karakas. Cast show and tell. Put in Emrakul, he puts in batterskull. He draws, sees not karakas. Scoops.

2-1

Round 4: Show and Tell
Game 1: He realizes Im on show and tell from probe but he yolo show and tells anyway. I intend to fight over it, but decide to let it resolve because I'm a mule. We both put in Omniscience. He casts Griselbrand. I force it. He casts another Griselbrand. Oh fuck. He draws 7. Passes. Fuck the what? I untap. Cast my griselbrand. He brainstorms. It resolves. I draw 7. I draw 7 more. I cast emrakul. He says, guess I shouldve done that too. Yep. He scoops.
Game 2: I fight over all the wrong stuff. I resolve a sneak attack but dont have a red source to activate and pass. He SHows in Omni and casts emrakul. I scoop.
Game 3: He probes. He casts petal. Breaks it to ponder. I very aggressively force it. He sighs, plays Tomb and passes. He has no other mana source for a few turns while I cantrip and build mana. Like a donkey I decide fuck it lets show and tell without an Omniscience in hand. He puts in EMrakul, I put in griselbrand. Fuck. Realize I'm a chimp. I draw 7. Found omni, but need a show and tell. Cast ponder off of a petal, find show and tell third down, put in Omni, cast Emrakul, and win.

3-1

Round 5: UR Delver (incorrectly named Grixis Delver on SCG site)
Game 1: I play like a donkey keeping a hand of double petal, ponder and stuff. Ponder whiffs and I dont draw a non ancient tomb land and I die.
Game 2: He makes and eot turn 2 snapcaster for pressure and has many dazes, pierces, and flusterstorms and I never resolve a business spell and scoop.

3-2

Round 6: Lands
Game 1: We build up a bit. I don't let him crop rotate. He makes marit lage on his turn, eot I Cunning Wish for Through the Breach even though I need a land to cast it. I am in complete ape mode. Like the champion I am I topdeck the land and Breach in Emrakul to sacrifice his board. Then I top deck Omni next turn to show in. Then next turn brainstorm to find cunning wish for intuition for emrakuls again. Skill game.
Game 2: My opponent does very little. I show and tell after tombing myself. I put in Griselbrand, he puts in Tireless Tracker. I pass. He plays a land and makes a clue. I attack and draw 14 hoping to just end the game with Show and Omni. I dont get there and realize I am at 4 life with him having a tracker with clue out. I pass. He seems pretty frustrated. He passes without attacking. I mentally fist pump, untap, attack to get myself back to 11. Pass and force his crop rotation attempt and he scoops.

4-2

Round 7: BR Reanimator.
Game 1: He shows a standard hand when he thoughtseizes himself (under chancellor protection) to discard griselbrand. However he shows off that he is on the Exhume plan. My hand is pretty bad against what is about to happen to me so I do the only thing I can do. I draw to 8. Go to cleanup and discard my own Griselbrand. He sits thinking for a moment and just goes for it. Wow. Aggressive. We both get Griselbrands. He draws a bunch and starts going for stuff. I draw 14. Unfortunately draw essentially nothing, can't force because I only drew 1, and he reanimates chancellor which essentially locks me out because I still havent even played a land yet because of my draw discard strategy.
Game 2: I have a Tomb, Petal, Omni, show and tell, cunning wish, brainstorm, impulse hand. What the fucking shit? He sadly reveals chancellor so I tomb then pay for petal. He loots. Sure. I do the thing with show and tell and despite him putting in Tidespout Tyrant I have many instant speed things to beat any possible shenanigans.
Game 3: He mulls to 5, I mull to a 6 with force plus blue cards, brainstorm, and surgical. Fuck it. Scry and see a fetch. He unmasks himself to discard Sire and just goes for it. Mind twisting himself to attempt to reanimate sire and I surgical it and then eventually find the cards to do the thing.

5-2

Round 8: UWR Delver Blade
Game 1: He has a stoneforge hand with not enough interaction and I show in griselbrand and force his removal and we're off to game 2.
Game 2: He gets a good delver start, but I have a good hand. I cast cunning wish to try to bait counter. He lets it resolve. Like an ape I get Flusterstorm over intuition. Eventually I resolve a show and tell putting in Omni, but because my cunning wish got a second flusterstorm I have no action spells and just have 2 flusterstorms in hand and I die.
Game 3: I am on the play. I play fetch. He fetches, in response I fetch and brainstorm to try to find force. Find it. Let him resolve BS. untap and go for moon. He dazes, I force, he forces back. Fuck. That was my plan. He wastes my Volc that I had to awkwardly fetch and now I have no colored sources. Two turns later I skillfully draw a delta to get island and sunning wish for Intuition. Intuition finds show, show plus flusterstorm backup gets me a griselbrand. Im at a lowish life total but he cant attack besides the True Name he puts in. I draw, and since I didnt find sneak I attack and go back to 10. I show and tell in an Omniscience and eventually find an emrakul off cantrips I believe to take the extra turn.

6-2


I made many mistakes, most of them not mattering because Griselbrand and Show and Tell are retarded cards. I got 150 credit for taking 16th. Not much in the way of interesting plays. The mana base felt really shitty, but I guess is necessary. One thing I did relearn is how insane Intuition is. It was by far the best card I was wishing for almost every time. Bought some of SCG's Korean ones because 25 for Korean Reserve List gold is pretty insane. Anyway I hope that this report deters you from ever wanting to play this deck because after about round 4 I really just didn't feel like playing anymore and I was apologizing to my opponents for being a complete mule.

You're an Ape and your opponents gifted you multiple wins. Skill game. :O

A real ape would not bother with Omni hybrid along with Omni's wish-board, this feels more like a humble brag.

Yeah the fucking Tusks, #skillgames #pillaroftheformat #mtgpros #tuskup

Quote:

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Originally Posted by twndomn

A real ape would not bother with Omni hybrid along with Omni's wish-board, this feels more like a humble brag.

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I have literally never seen a worthwhile comment from you, be quiet you autistic child.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by twndomn

A real ape would not bother with Omni hybrid along with Omni's wish-board, this feels more like a humble brag.

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Idk. I didn't build the deck. I just told Matt to build me whatever GP/SCG list people have been playing.

That's part of the derp test. Don't metagame. Don't test. Don't put effort into it. Just copy a list and head for the trees.


https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/e...76.crop.hq.jpg

It's funny and all, the deck is easy to play and pretty stupid, but it sounds like you got most of your wins from your opponents being bad and not the deck being dumb.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Whitefaces

It's funny and all, the deck is easy to play and pretty stupid, but it sounds like you got most of your wins from your opponents being bad and not the deck being dumb.

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https://cdn.meme.am/cache/instances/...3/31178013.jpg

Sure, but it takes away from the narrative he's going for of 'lol I can play bad and still win'. He played like shit, but so did his opponents to give him half the wins.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Whitefaces

Sure, but it takes away from the narrative he's going for of 'lol I can play bad and still win'. He played like shit, but so did his opponents to give him half the wins.

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Definitely true. I'm just one of those guys who doesn't particularly care for Show and Tell (actually, it's more Griselbrand and Emrakul that I hate, but yeah).

I only really counted 3 game wins that the opponents gifted him, only 1 resulted in winning a best of 3.

1 - Burn gifted a win when he forgets about Vortex, but lost the match anyway (L)
2 - Show and Tell misplays game 1 and doesn't storm out with Griselbrand plus Omniscience. Match goes to 3 games (W)
3 - Lands doesn't attack for the win game 2. Match goes to 2 games (W)

I wouldn't consider other wins with questionable lines as being gifts from the opponent. High Tide ran out of gas in fighting over countermagic and fizzled/had to hail mary with Brainfreeze (which could be win #4, but he had to expend resources and couldn't pick a better win con). Death and Taxes not using Karakas early seems fine, since Griselbrand would just draw 7 more anyway and potentially sneak in Emrakul, but if Ape can sneak in Emrakul only once then saving Karakas for that is better. Game 2 he kept a hand with Revoker (stop Sneak) and Thalia (stop Omni), but got punished anyway. BR Reanimator is an all-in deck, and turn 1 Sire might be the right thing to attempt on a mull to 5.

So I see this as the deck just being stupidly powerful enough to overcome a novice pilot and problems between the table and the chair.

I also remember the were two games that I attempted to resolve show and tell and couldn't where if I had waited a turn I would've drawn the extra mana source needed to play it with Pierce/fluster backup. Like I said in OP. These were my very first games playing this deck in a tourney full of presumably decent and experienced legacy players. Yes I am very familiar with legacy and play the format weekly, but the only other combo deck that I have played extensively is ANT. Otherwise I think I've played dredge once and high tide a couple times. The point is, a complete novice with this deck who simply knows how to properly cantrip can win games because of how retarded things like show and tell and Griselbrand are