Here's my report for the Workshop event:
A week before the workshop event, I decided to test up UWb Scepterstill once again, and having gone 2-2 in our local weekly tournaments, I relooked into playing this deck for the big event. There was nothing wrong with UWb Scepterstill, I'll probably still play it in a bigger non-Asgard event, but there were definitely issues such as running to time against bad matchups, or losing due to play mistake. As Drew and many pointed out "Chris, if you played slower and more carefully you'll do much better".
Good advice, but I went ahead and tweaked up a pet deck that I had little experience playing with. The deck sometimes confuses myself too since there are too many tricks up the sleeves which sometimes I fail to see. I've been working on my own list of Welderstone Survival, but finally decided against playing with Painterstone in the Welder Survival package. I wanted to reduce the clunkiness of draws since a tutorbox-advantage approach of Survival already have plenty of dead draws in the form of Squee, Anger, big robots. I didn't want to draw hands of Welder/Painter/Grindstone that did not make sense.
Granted that I do not know the complete deck strategies with ease despite being the deck designer, I was confident that my opponents won't understand what my deck could do at all. Often times I would lead out with a Welder, slap a Grindstone and make them worry about both Welder/Painter strategies, but end up beating face with Goyfs. It's just a funny deck, and it is with the spirit of Squee that I command all ye Survival folks to relook into how Squee >>> Vengevine in Survival.
Vengevine Survival is a strong deck, but just doesn't suit my playstyle. My philosophy for Survival is: Advantage, advantage, advantage, tutor, tutor, tutor. Vengevival is a deck that goes against this philosophy. More importantly, it breaks Survival. It does what the engine doesn't want to do. Vengevival is a Survival deck about speed and winning fast. There is no advantage nor tutor. You set up for Vengevines and win, as simple as that. One can argue that the age of RGBSA is over, but I think that when designed correctly, Survival Advantage builds can still have an edge over their Vengevival counterparts, especially since a Vengevival deck will crumble once hated out, but a Survival-Advantage build cannot be crumbled if it is built with an advantage philosophy in mind.
So Squee told me that he would win me games. I told him to GTFO and stop annoying me, because that's what he does, to me and my opponents. Squee also told me to bring along his buddy ooze pet, and I did so he will shut up:
Welder Ooze SurvivalLands: 20
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Wooded Foothills
4 Bayou
2 Taiga
2 Savannah
2 Forest
3 Tree of Tales
Creatures: 29
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Noble Hierarch
2 Goblin Welder
2 Quirion Ranger
4 Fauna Shaman
3 Tarmodoodles
3 Tidehollow Sculler
1 Eternal Witness
1 Sylvok Replica
1 Squee
1 Anger
1 Necrotic Ooze
1 Shriekmaw
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1 Triskelion
1 Phyrexian Devourer
Others: 12
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Thoughtseize
SB: 15
3 Extirpate
1 Faerie Macabre
1 Gaddock Teeg
2 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Krosan Grip
1 Platinum Emperion
1 Duplicant
Brief deck design strategies:
Black shell:
The main reason to go for black shell was the ability to run discard against combo, and Extirpate against Survival mirrors. Extirpate won't be too useless against combo either since netting those Rituals would sometimes fizzle a combo player's setup.
The second reason to go for black was the Ooze package. I wasn't too interested in Ooze in Survival since it had 2 really dead slots (Triskelion + Devourer) but since I was playing with Welders and Triskelions are good with Welders, this reduced the dead slot in the deck to just Devourer (Ooze is great with Welder Survival since he could be a Welder as well with a Welder in the yard!). The Ooze combo was my backup plan to Welder. Welder + Survival is still fundamentally faster than Ooze since Ooze requires GG2BB to setup while Welder requires just GGR to win games. Ooze combo was nice in the fact that it CANNOT be disrupted outside of an Extirpate. So black became a strong shell from these two standpoints.
The unexpected third reason to go black was how strong Tidehollow Sculler is in this shell. In a deck with 4 Fauna and 4 Survival aka bent on the Welder combo or Ooze combo, I want to be absolutely sure that I am safe before I killed my opponents. I've had Scullter played against me a couple of times and he was very annoying. Losing a card to thoughseize was bad, but being on a 2/2 beater was worse. I tested him up out of curiosity and he was amazing, both in setting up for wins, or pre-emptively resolving Survival after nabbing counters/removals. Aside from the non-cute strengths of Scullers, he is AMAZING with Welders, and can lock an opponent out of cards: Play sculler, in response Weld a sculler for another sculler and resolve the LTB trigger over the ETB trigger to permanently remove a card from hand.
These were the reasons for going black.
Welder package
- Sphinx against Zoo/Gobs/Bant (did not see too many of these decks).
- Triskelion against Gobs/Merfolks/control
- Sylvok Replica against Enchantress/Stax
TOURNAMENT REPORT:
Match 1: Jeremy with Bant Aggro
Game 1:
I don't remember this game clearly but I remember good GWU cards getting in there against my jank cards.
Game 2: +1 Duplicant, -1 Top
Survival resolved against a 5/6 exalted RWM putting me to 5 life. I stabilized with blockers chumping RWM and eventually tutoring for a Sphinx. Earlier, he had used a Crypt and Bog separately to remove crucial cards for a combo win, including Squee so I was in the need to top-deck creatures to survive. An undealt welder with Duplicant ate up his board of 2 Goyfs, 2 RWM, leaving 3 Hierarchs while swapping out for Scullers to ensure that he was locked out of good cards. He resolved a Jace, and I attacked into it (he forgot to block with Hierarchs) and the game was over soon, but this matchup took a long time.
Game 3: Ran out of time and we drew.
0-0-1 (1-1-0)
Match 2: Richard with Monoblue Merfolks
Game 1:
We both mull to 6. I wanted to mull into a hand with Survival-effect. He leads with a strong Vial, that started putting an obscene amount of fish (Reejery, Coralhelm). It reaked of fish ammonium and I think I lost because of that.
Game 2: +1 Duplicant, +1 Platinum Emprion, -1 Top, -1Anger (don't think my Taigas will stick)
He paused and made a comment about how greedy his hand was. I thought to myself "1 land->Vial/Standstill or a 3-FoW-hand". I lead off with a Bop. He FoWed. I baited with a Fauna Shaman. He FoWed pitching FoW. I'm happy now unless he has the 4th FoW. I played Survival which resolved, and it was GG soon after he burned out of blue cards from his 3 FoWs while a Welder + Triskelion locked his board out.
Game 3:
I don't remember this game but it was skewed in my advantage.
1-0-1 (3-2-0)
Match 3: Jeff with Eva Green
Game 1:
I saw Jeff in the last game leading with a Bayou -> Thoughtseize and I mused that he's playing his favorite and forte deck: Eva Green. I'm not terribly happy with this matchup because for some reasons, he always beats the shit out of people with this deck with his broken plays. I guess that's the benefit of playing Dark Ritual over Brainstorm/FoW!! But I was slightly happy that I resolved a turn 2 Survival in game 1 (and I knew he had little outs preboard). Jeff put up the good fight in game 1 against the broken engine. Powering out unfair Gatekeepers while applying pressure. Eventually I stalled the board with Goyf blockers and eventually setup for a Ooze combo backed up with Sculler protection.
Game 2: -4 Thoughtseize, +1 Duplicant, +3 Krosan Grip (for some reason I forgot to side out shriekmaw but I guess in hindsight they were good against Goyfs).
I am definitely not happy with post-board games against his decks. Playing with Jeff in our local games tells me that he always has: "4 Deeds, 4 Leyline/Extirpate, 1-4 Grips" to roflstomp opponents. And those 8+ cards are definitely going to roflstomp the hell out of my deck. And it happened. Lost brutally to his discard/waste effects and Hyppie eating my hand. Resolving a Dystopia against me choked me out of this win.
Game 3:
I kept a hand of 2 Survival, 2 BoP, Squee, Lands. Hot. But can this hand survive a super-hymn taking out my Survivals? We'll see. Lead off with BoP, resolve a Survival. Jeff takes my Krosan Grip with a Thoughtseize and mentions "cute". I told him I wanted to Grip his Deeds before he used it if he got greedy :P Jeff goes for a fast Dystopia that is pressurizing my Survival on board. I thought about the strategy for this game. I could go off with the Welder package but I would risk losing my Survival to Dystopia before I can go off. Not to mention if the Welder package was fizzled to Snuff Out, I would be in a very bad position losing my board to Dystopia. I went ahead and grabbed Quirion Ranger and setup for a tutored-Goyf by untapping birds. This would allow me to maintain a high green permanent count to Dystopia. He follows up his turn with a Gatekeeper. Ouch. I sacced a BoP. Upkeep I sacced Quirion Ranger to Dystopia, and setup up my 2nd Ranger -> 2nd Goyf. I think he followed up with yet another Gatekeeper putting my board in danger. On my next upkeep, I decided that saccing Survival (had another in hand) was the best play. That pumped my Goyfs to 5/6, which went in to eat a chumped Gatekeeper. I played another Survival passed turn, and the Goyfs got in there. I was happy this match that I made the right decision to just trust on the Goyf beats instead of setting up cute tricks that would otherwise have costed me the game. Dystopia is brutal!! And to think I did not want to play Goyf earlier and wanted to play Bobs over Goyfs. He's just that good :/
2-0-1 (5-3-0)
Match 4: Brian with UB Merfolks
We ID into Top 8. Not looking forward to UB Merfolks since MonoU Merfolks was scary enough
2-0-2 (6-4-0)
Top 8: Eugene with Bant SnT-Emrakul.
Game 1:
Eugene and I were talking about our games, so he was playing his hybrid version of Emrakul/SnT in a Bant shell with Summoning Traps O_O But it seemed to be a great metagame deck against a control/merfolks environment. Knowing Eugene as the jedi-mindtrickster, I ignored all his trollin and comments during the game :P
Game 1:
Thoughtseize followed up by a Sculler locked him out of Summoning Traps. He resolved a KotR that was Shriekmawed after the Survival got through after the discard protection. Knowing that the game was risky due to Emrakul, I decided to play safe and go for Sculler locks. I setup 2 Welder in play with 2 Scullers coming in and out always locking him out of cards. Having the knowledge that he did not draw anything relevant every turn eventually pushed the scullers into victory.
Game 2:
Pre-game he leads off with double Leyline of Sanctity. My discard spells are usless now. He somehows seems to be playing Bant Aggro without Summoning Traps (he later said he only kept 1 SnT and Emrakul). I got Survival online and tried eating his Leyline with Sylvok Replica recursions but a resolved Elspeth got in there for 6 in the air (with Noble Hierarch) every turn and it was over. Oh Elspeth I <3 you. Time to Landstill again!
Game 3: -4 Top, -1 Anger -1 Quirion Ranger +2 Grip, +1 Duplicant, +3 Cabal Therapy
I lead the games off with Discard again, and noted his 2 Spell Pierces in his hand. He brainstorms eventually but I suspect he's still holding onto pierces against my Survivals (I personally think Pierces are weak against my deck which is heavily creature-based). A resolved fauna shaman sets up for yet another couple of Sculler molesting his hand. Quirion rangers sped the process up a little but somehow he managed to resolve 3 Leyline of Sanctity again. A resolved Elspeth on his board with 5 soldiers made aggro a futile plan. I setup my board to have 2 Welders and a Replica in the yard, EOT with Quirion Ranger, I nuked all 3 Leylines, and tutored for an Ooze. At this point, I knew he had 2 Spell Pierce and a mystery card. To play safe, I lead off with Therapy, which he pierced. I thought to myself, maybe he doesn't have the force, this game is dragging too long, I'll just go for it. Ooze got hit by a hard-cast FoW. I knew it lol :( So the games went a little longer, but the Survival + Goyfs got in there after Welder + Triskelion nuked Elspeth <8 and killed all soldiers.
Close games.
3-0-2 (8-4-0)
Top 4: Simon with MonoU Merfolks
Game 1:
Simon's a cool guy, I like him. But his fishes don't like me. Freaking Coralhelm is OP. Banz!! He was too fast against me
Game 2:
I kept a 'weak' hand of 2 birds, 1 Squee, 1 Goyf, 1 Top, Lands. I figured that the saying "Goyf beats Merfolks" would help me out especially since this hand was wasteland-resistant and a Top could dig me into a Survival-effect. Top didn't like me, Squee chumped like a champ. My birds got Submerged turn 2 in response to a fetch, and Thoughtseizing his hand revealed Echoing Truth and Submerge. I took the Submerge and his bounces on my goyfs tempo'd me out while his Folks grew up. I was actually able to recover in game 1 and 2 with Survival but it was always a turn too late. Merfolks put up such a fast clock. It doesn't help that he has plenty of Mutavaults both games that were so unfair with lords and coral-helm. I think I'm playing Merfolks for some time. The deck's good stuff.
So this ends my dreams of the Workshop. I knew I should have brought MUD for this event lol. But finishing 3-1-2 (8-6-0) was alright I guess, considering I made the deck on Thursday and tested 4 games with Drew, played EDH/casual till 2am on Friday after work), and woke up at 10am on Saturday to tweak the deck for 30min-1hour before starting the event.
I enjoyed the deck a lot, and Squee saved my donkey plenty of times. I could see the Vengevines getting in there, but I like my Goblins (Squee, Welders) in Survival. I haven't had issues with 4colors (my only 2 red spells were Welder and an Angry Anger). The Scullers were amazing all day in setting up and/or protecting my win-conditions/strategies and I'm looking to explore them more in Welder Survival.
1st place: Joey with Zoo (Workshop)
2nd place: Simon with Merfolks (UNL Volcanic Island)
3rd place: Me with Welder Ooze Survival (RV Underground Sea)
4th place: Will with TES (Bayou)
(+)
+ Ooze being oozy good
+ Sculler being MVP all day. Must be annoying to have your hand molested everyturn. He keeps Survival safe when online and keeps it safe before it goes online.
+ Me being the only Survival pilot
+ Squee is so good.
+ Cool people, fun event
+ Going out for a group dinner finally!
(-)
- Extirpate being utterly useless in our metagame (this tournament)
- Platinum Emperion for doing nothing, although would be decent against combo
- Needing that Shield Sphere/Memnite in 3 games that I could have otherwise won. Need that in my list next time!
- Squee is so annoying. STFU!
- Extirpate = useless in that metagame
- Suggesting to go to Ruggles for dinner lol!
Good games all and hope you enjoy this little report. It's not very detailed because I didn't take notes so hopefully I did not state anything blatantly wrong.
-Chris
I like the idea. Welder survival has always sucked against chalice at one, or countertop, and the necrotic ooze combo is much better there. I think its worth having genesis somewhere in the 75, though, so that if your opponent has too many counters you don't just lose. I've also always liked cabal therapy in survival, but maybe you can't fit it, I don't know.
For the record, I don't think extirpate stops the ooze combo. You drop survival, and get ooze, devourer, and trisk in hand. Drop ooze. If it resolves, pitch devourer to survival, and in response, activate ooze a sufficient number of times (removing the cards is the cost, so you can stop when you hit 20 or whatever). Then pass priority. If they extirpate, fine. Once you have your counters, then you pitch trisk, and in response throw all your counters. Extirpate doesn't help with 20 ping effects on the stack.
Obviously this should only be used if you have the time to set it up, and you think your opponent has extirpate. If you're doing this, your opponent can respond to your string of activations with a swords or something, and then you need to activate in response a bunch more times, and you might not have the cards in your library. I guess this is another reason why it's nice to have the welder plan, because your total deck CMC is higher.
EDIT: not sure if I like Sylvok Replica. How do you use him repeatedly? If you activate him, you can't weld him. You'd need multiple scrap metal, tree of tales or tops or whatever. And you don't run all that much. The versions of WeldSur I've played run 2 Chrome Mox, 2 Mox Diamond, and 2 Shield Sphere, as well as some number of tops and scullers.
Last edited by brattin; 11-15-2010 at 02:10 PM. Reason: sylvok replica confuses me
I belive Extirpate still fizzles the combo. Even if you don't pass priority and get 20+ stacks of Ooze activations, you have to resolve them in order, and if you flipped a CMC 3+ spell, Ooze dies and you won't be able to kill your opponents. You have to do the activations one by one, resolve those that are <CMC3 and reactivate the ones that reveal CMC 3+ spells, so Extirpate can get there in between activations.
Replica can't be used unless you have fodder. In the scenarios I mentioned above e.g. taking out 2-3 Leyline of Sanctity, I had a Survival on board so I was tutoring for Scullers (which happen to be nice with Welders by resolving the LTB trigger over ETB when welding in the Replica).
A few lessons I learned in my list:
- I need at least 1 Shield Sphere. I lost 3 games to Merfolks where I would have stabilized if I had a zero mana artifact to tutor with Survival. Paying WB for sculler for a fodder is too costly, and sadly those games costed me otherwise winnable matchups.
- I play 4 Tops and enjoyed them. This is a more combo/welder focused deck so drawing either Shaman/Top/Survival in hand is solid, together with the 7 MD discard outlets.
- I probably need Myr Battlesphere/Pentavus in the deck. Originally I thought it was a win-more strategy, but I think Myr Battlesphere is actually a decent target: defensive against tribal/Zoo while being a good win-condition and great welding target to be welded in/out.
- Sphinx was actually alright. I was debating Sphinx v.s. Wurmcoil and decided on Sphinx since she beats gobs/zoo better than Wurmcoil. Both still die to StP/Path though. My friend pointed out that I cannot weld Sphinx since she's pro-red so I think I'm back to Wurmcoil, which will also provide Welder fodder (I was running Wurmcoil to good success in previous lists).
- Genesis could have been helpful although I'm really tight on slots. Duplicant should be in the maindeck for sure, that was a huge mistake. Platinum Emperion might be barely playable if you're facing against decks with no outs to creatures. However since you're playing survival, he's subjected to Grip-hate post board.
Sadly, if I brought my GWR Painterstone build in this tournament choked with Merfolks, I would have done significantly better. There were only 3 combo decks and no Survival so my black plan for Extirpate was dead in all my matches. Anticipated the meta incorrectly but the Scullers were still awesome in 8 Survivals.dec.
You're totally right on all counts, sorry for being non-productive. I was gonna edit my post again, but forgot.
Never noticed you can't weld sphinx out. That's too bad.
I've always been a huge fan of turn 1 survival with moxen, but moxen are pretty terrible topdecks, so maybe the extra birds effects are better. I'll test the list.
Yupp, the list was inspired by GThompson's recent GB Ooze Survival deck with 4 Birds, 4 Hierarchs, 4 Fauna, 4 Survival, 4 Rangers.
I initially started my list with 4 birds, 3 Hierarchs, 4 Survival, 3 Shaman, 1 Ranger but trimmed it down to:
4 Survival, 4 Shaman, 4 Birds, 2 Hierarchs, 2 Rangers.
GThompson's deck philosophy is similar to what this deck wants to do: get Survival out asap, you want that turn 1 BoP every game turn 1, to setup your mana for Survival activations. I was really impressed by the Quirion Rangers, and will definitely want to play up to 3 if I ever tweak the list. Since this is not Vengevival, the lists are usually more tight since winning with Vengevival requires fewer cards, although not playing with Vengevival but with Welder Survival gives you more option outside of the tap-attack plan.
I've tried Moxens before and I disliked the card disadvantage. Most of the time when playing moxens I don't pitch anything and use them as welder fodder. The reason why I dislike the card disadvantage is: in games 2/3, your opponents are going to hate your deck/engine, to which every card becomes valuable to fight back. I started with Moxens, moved to Aether Vial (which is amazing) but finally to Top. The whole reason was due to having card advantage in a deck that is pressed for its cards. You don't play blue, and have no manipulation. Either you win with your engine or you lose without it. Running Top over Vial reduced the explosiveness and speed but gave me a more solid weaker matchups, and running Vial over Chrome Mox gave me less explosiveness but the ability to beat control etc. You notice the trend on how I've shifted my playstyle. I'm not sayin Moxens are bad. They are staples in Welder Survival, but I haven't found it to my playstyle, since this deck is really bent on getting a Survival engine out, and I'll run any card that best helps it: Top finds Survival/cards, Vial cheats Fauna into play, Chrome Mox accelerates Survival. So I ended up picking Top > Vial > Mox. As a result, the additional Hierarchs took the place over Mox (I ran hierarch also to up my white count since I only played 2 Savannah and if you noticed my manabase, I usually fetch out Bayou, and have Birds/Hierarch cast W for sculler).
EDIT: Welding a top is also much more valuable than Welding Mox/Vial (Tap draw a card in response weld it out, don't need to put Top on your library, and you draw a card).
I enjoyed playing you in the Top 4.
I think both of the games could have gone either way. My game plan of dont counter anything unless it is SoTF seemed to work out pretty well for me against you.
-Cheers-
You can't weld Sphinx out but you can weld it in ... guess that was the question? The Sphinx (Creature) has protection not the Card itself, so it can be targeted while in grave
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