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Thread: 5-0-1 with Team America, Poznan 11/12/10

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    5-0-1 with Team America, Poznan 11/12/10

    Helo everyone, I'm a long-time lurker here and decided that it is finally the time to somehow contribute :)

    Last weekend I played in a 32 ppl tournament being part of 3rd Poznań Legacy League, and the deck I chose for the event was Team America.

    Here is my decklist:

    4x Underground Sea
    2x Bayou
    1x Tropical Island
    1x Island
    4x Wasteland
    4x Polluted Delta
    4x Misty Rainforest

    4x Tarmogoyf
    3x Tombstalker
    2x Vendilion Clique

    2x Jace 2.0
    2x Pernicious Deed
    3x Snuff Out
    2x Smother
    1x Darkblast
    4x Force of Will
    4x Daze
    4x Brainstorm
    3x Ponder
    3x Stifle
    4x Hymn to Tourach

    side:

    3x Extirpate
    2x Krosan Grip
    2x Tormod's Crypt
    2x Perish
    2x Spell Pierce
    2x Ghastly Demise
    2x Consuming Vapours (an experimental inclusion, as i was rather happy with my sideboard and decided i can risk these two slots)

    It is not optimal - 61 cards, as I decided to cut one tombstalker and add vendilion cliques at the last moment and could'nt decide what to cut for the second one. 6 pieces of spot removal maindeck have been working out fine for me, although i might consider cutting one for something else, depending on the expected metagame. I am also not sure whether i want stifles or one-mana discard spell(thoughtseize/inquisition of kozilek), as both options shine in certain matchups while being completely awkward in other. Since i was expecting a lot of wasteland decks (mainly merfolk,eva green and aggro loam) I decided to run a single basic Island, as having acces to blue allows me to dig for other coulours with brainstorm/ponder, and thus went for more blue spells=stifles(they're also good at protecting my manabase from oposing wastelands).


    Round 1: Rb Goblins
    Game 1: I win the roll i keep hand with snuff out, 3x goyf and lands. Not being able to get in with his lackey (he didn't draw vial) he just can't race and is soon forced to chump block each turn just to stay alive. I eventually drop Jace and just draw into enough removal to force trough lethal damage.

    Side in: 2x Ghastly demise, side out: 2x Daze

    Game 2: This time he opens with aether vial, and i force it, turn two he drops another one and it resolves, then he wrecks my manabase with 2x wasteland and i can't recover in time.

    Side in: 2x Daze (they're much better on the play as i can counter vial and the tempo loss is less significant) side out: 2x hymn to tourach

    Game 3: I keep a strong hand with deed, darkblast, stifle, jace and some lands. He again opens with vial. Durnig my opponents upkeep I decide to stifle his vial trigger so that he can't drop an eot lackey into siege-gang commander when i tap out for deed). We than play a couple of turn's land-go, and i misplay by waiting a turn too long with blowing up deed, and allowing his vial to go up to three counters. When I finally activate deed at his eot(for x=3)t, he activates vial in response dropping matron, and fetching warren weirding. Fortunately for me it doesn't matter, as i have force in hand, and enough wastelands to cut him off black mana. On my turn i drop a tombstalker, and he can't race with a lonely piledriver, being stuck on two lands after my wastelands.

    1-0

    Round 2: UGwb Survival(I think no ooze, but I'm not sure, didn't see any black cards, just a single bayou)

    Game 1 : He mulligans to 5, turn two I daze his survival,he tries to force wich i also daze. All he has left is a bunch of rootwallas. Tombstalker eats swords to plowhares, but two following goyfs end game pretty quick.

    Side in: 2x Perish. 3x Extirpate, 2x Ghastly demise, side out: 4x Hymn to Tourach, 2x Pernicious deed(way too slow, espacially on the play) 1x Daze

    Game 2 I mulligan to six, and keep a hand with brainstrom, ponder, force, darkblast and lands. He opens with noble hierarch, and casts force when i try to darkblast it on my turn. Turn two he dropps survival, i try to force and he spell pierces. I fail to find extirpate with my brainstrom, so turn three i just die to vengevines.

    Game 3: We both mulligan and I keep a decent hand with 2x perish, ghastly demise and extirpate but no threats. He drops a wild mongrel on turn two, and another one on turn 3. I manage to find some creatures with ponder/brainstorm, but when I drop goyf it gets StPed, and tombstalker takes a trip on a path to exile. The two mongrels slowly eat away my life total, while all i can do is waste his sources of white and blue mana. Finally i draw Vendilion clique. On his turn I waste his newly played savannah, leaving him with just two forests and two mongrels in play, 3 cards in hand. He attacks dropping me to 8 and passes, at the end of his turn I drop the clique targeting him and see a hand of two lands(one fetch) and StP - I let him keep all cards, and on my turn decide to play perish - my reasoning is that in order to save his mongrels he has to discard two cards, leaving him either with no removal or no white mana to play it, then on his turn i can block one mongrel with the clique and either trade to slow down the bleeding or be able to kill mongrels with my second perish if he chooses to discard two cards to save his creature in combat. As it turned out my opponent didn't know/forgot what his cards do, and I just killed his creatures with the first perish.. I proceeded to win the game from that point, as i had hand full of removal, vengevine ensurance in form of extirpate and enough time to find a win condition.

    2-0

    Round 3: New Horizons

    Not much to write about here.. My opponent kept very loose hands (one-lander with lots of removal but no creatures etc) and i just crushed him both games. Just for the record: Side in: 3x extirpate, 2x perish, 2x consuming vapours, side out: darkblast, 3x stifle(not sure if this was correct, but i figured he would be playing around my stifles anyway, and if I side in ton of removal and extirpates I can just win by getting rid of all his win conditions), 2x pernicious deed, 1x daze

    3-0

    Round 4: Enchantress

    This matchup is almost a bye, espacially with two pernicous deeds and two jace's maindeck.

    Game 1: I just counter all his relevant cards (enchantress, enchantresses presence and replenish) while letting resolve the useless ones with wich he tries to bait my counters(ig solitary confinement when he has no way to keep it around, elephant grass, when i can afford to pay for attacking with goyf, karmic justice etc..).

    Side in: 2x Krosan Grip, 2x Spell Pierce, 2x Perish (It kills enchantress and possible gaddock teegs/vexing shushers post-board), side out: darkblast, 2x smother, 3x snuff out

    Game 2: Similar to game one, except this time I don't have any dead cards in my deck. After I hit double oblivion ring with hymn to tourach, I drop Jace and proceed to fateseal him ftw, stifling twice draw trigger from enchantress, while he's in topdeck mode.

    4-0

    Round 5: UGW Countertop

    Game 1: He won the roll, and mulliganed to six on the play. I cast Hymn to Tourach, he spell snares and I daze, my hymn hits a counterbalance and a fetchland. Next turn i waste his tropical and he gets stuck on two Islands, as he kept fetching basic lands during first two turns fearing my wastelands.. As I already have some card advantage from hymn added to his mulligan, I force his post-brainstorm predicts, to not let him catchup, he eventually lands a counterbalance, but I just kill him with tombstalker while drawing cards with Jace (not much cards in his deck that he could reveal to counter these two:P).

    Side in: 3x extirpate, 2x krosan Grip, 2x Consuming Vapours, 2x Spell Pierce, side out: 2x pernicious deed, 3x stifle, 2x daze 2x smother ( smother is the least reliable removal spell against deck running both spell snare and counterbalance)

    Game 2: He starts by dropping sensei's divining top, wich i force and he forces back. We keep trading creatures for removal and Hymns for counters, while trying to dig for more threats (he activating sensei and me pondering/brainstorming). I am eventually able to drop Vendilion Clique, targeting him and seeing the following hand: counterbalance, Jace 2.0. vendilion clique, StP). My hand at this point is FoW, a blue card, consuming vapours, snuff out and darkblast. After considering my options Ii decide to send his StP to the bottom, then force his cliqe when he tries to play it in my draw step. At this point I have no answer to his active counterbalance(wich he drops next turn) but at least i know he has no removal and my cliqe keeps him from playing jace. For the next few turns i just keep drawing more irrelevant removal spells and attacking with the clique, while he desperately tries to find an answer with his sensei and brainstorms. When i drop him down to 1hp he finally manages to find path for my clique and plays Jace. There is not much I can do to win this game, but I decide not to scoop as the time for the round was running out, and his only win condition was jace. On my turn i wastelanded his only source of green mana so he would'nt be able to kill me with goyfs (he could'nt activate fetchlands, being at 1hp), and than just procided to play draw-go, while he was fatesealing me. A that point I didn't even bother playing my goyfs, as there was no way they could possibly sneak past his counterbalance and i wanted to have as many cards in hand as possible in case he jace's me, but my opponent seemed to be pretty nervous(we talked a bit after the match and he admitted he wanted to make sure he doesen't misplay and somehow lose this game) and kept activating his sensei each turn - both mine and his, taking his time to consider what to leave on top, what to draw etc.. so when he finally managed to launch jace's ultimate, me new library was six cards and the time was called - meaning he was three turns short of decking me, and when he didn't find anything as bizzare as 3x predict to mill me during 5 additional rounds, the game anded in a draw, the match went 1-0 for me. Well, he basically stalled himself out with his sensei...

    Round 6: ID with Belcher

    So I went 5-0-1 and finished first after swiss, unfortunately we couldn't play out the top 8 beacouse of time restrictions and had to settle for a prize split.

    Afterthoughts: I was really happy with the decks performance throughout the tournament, and it seems really well positioned in today's legacy meta. Having acces to extirpate is huge against survival decks, and you beat aggro and other tempo decks with superior creatures combined with fast removal. Stifles seemed a bit dissapointing, being relevant only in my match with enchantress, though in most games i just didn't draw them at the right time (I didn't get to stifle a single fetch during whole tournament). I also still have no idea is it worth running consuming vapours in the sideboard,as even if I drew it, I didn't play it in any of my matches, usually having already cleared the board with other spells.. On paper it looks like cute tech against emrakul/progenitus as well as mirror and eva green (I don't have many ways to deal with a resolved tombstalker/vampire nighthawk) but it might turn out just too mana intensive - still I'm not dropping this idea just yet.

    I hope you enjoyed my report and/or find it somewhat useful - if you have any questions/suggestions considering both report or the decklist feel free to post them here or PM me.
    Last edited by mich; 12-13-2010 at 07:12 PM.

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    Re: 5-0-1 with Team America, Poznan 11/12/10

    Nice report and well done! Keep them coming! ;)

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    Re: 5-0-1 with Team America, Poznan 11/12/10

    How was the darkblast? That was the only odd card I saw in you're MD. It's useful at times as a 1cc removal spell but did it really matter enough? I can see that it can dredge to recur/dump cards in the yard but darkblast seems incredibly narrow. I'd put it in the board. Maybe that could be your cut to get down to 60. Great report btw, I like this build. Apparently tempo decks now are playing Jace TMS too, surprise surprise, what a house.

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    Re: 5-0-1 with Team America, Poznan 11/12/10

    I like darkblast as one-of maindeck. It just happens that there are several one thoughness creatures played in the format that you really don't want your opponent to untap with, namely dark confidant, mother of runes and grim lavamancer. Once you draw darkblast, whenever opponent topdecks one of those creatures you can always reccur it to immediately deal with it, before it starts generating card advantage, wich is very important.

    Obviously it has some other uses, like randomly screwing decks dependant on their bops/hierarchs, dealing with lackey and vendilion clique, or allowing you to win goyf wars, but most of those could be done with any other removal spell.

    Running it in the sideboard seems less efficent, as your opponents will likely bring in some grave hate.( although I realize the same can be said about ghastly demise and i still chose to run in the side, mainly for the zoo/merfolk MU)
    Last edited by mich; 12-14-2010 at 06:03 PM.

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    Re: 5-0-1 with Team America, Poznan 11/12/10

    How did your manabase treat you? 2x Bayou but only 1x Tropical Island seems strange with 4x Daze. Did this ever come up? At the least would you rather have had 2 Trops & 1 Bayou?

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    Re: 5-0-1 with Team America, Poznan 11/12/10

    Quote Originally Posted by Doomsday View Post
    How did your manabase treat you? 2x Bayou but only 1x Tropical Island seems strange with 4x Daze. Did this ever come up? At the least would you rather have had 2 Trops & 1 Bayou?
    I play the same mana base and it generally isn't a problem. Getting BB is important, but so is U for your cantrips and stifles.

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    Re: 5-0-1 with Team America, Poznan 11/12/10

    Great job, although, I couldn''t conscionably play any less than 4 Spell Snare when playing blue in the current meta.

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    Re: 5-0-1 with Team America, Poznan 11/12/10

    Nice work :)

    Regarding your list, if someone (i.e. me) were to try the same list, but couldn't/didn't want to shell out a monthly salary for Jace2s, what would you replace those cards with?

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    Re: 5-0-1 with Team America, Poznan 11/12/10

    @ Doomsday - Getting BB for hymn is very important thus 2 bayou 1 tropical. Basically every hand without blue mana source is a mulligan, but I didn't find 2x bayou to be a problem.

    @ Purgatory - There is simply no way i can stress how awesome jace is, serving as both removal, win condition and source of card advantage - to put it simply: there is no card that could replace it. If I had to cut jace's though I would probbably add fourth tombstalker and either additional removal or the 4th ponder (cutting one land, going down to 19 might also be an option if you choose to run 4 ponders).

    @ jazzykat - It all depands on the expected metagame, a couple of weeks ago when I expected a lot of survival decks i chose to play the following list:

    4 Polluted Delta
    4 Misty Rainforest
    4 Underground Sea
    4 Wasteland
    2 Tropical Island
    1 Bayou
    1 Island
    4 Tarmogoyf
    4 Tombstalker
    2 Phyrexian Dreadnought
    2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
    4 Brainstorm
    4 Daze
    4 Force of Will
    4 Snuff Out
    4 Stifle
    3 Spell Snare
    1 Darkblast
    2 Ponder
    2 Pernicious Deed

    Sideboard:

    3 Extirpate
    3 Ghastly Demise
    3 Hymn to Tourach
    3 Spell Pierce
    2 Krosan Grip
    1 Pernicious Deed

    Went 4-0-2 with it at 39ppl tournament (4-0 than double ID into top 8). As you can see in order to make room for spell snare I decided to cut hymns from main, as making them discard vengevine always feels awkward. Spell snares had been great form me all day, but the problem is the deck already has many situational cards like daze, making your topdekcs in the late game pretty bad and hymn is at least always 2 for 1 in any non-survival matchup. I'd still like to play some spell snares maindeck, but I simply can't decide what to cut for them as all in all every other card seems more important/reliable.

  10. #10
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    Re: 5-0-1 with Team America, Poznan 11/12/10

    I do realize the awesomeness of Jace2 and if I was to go to a tourney with the deck, I'd probably beg my friends to lend me a couple for the event in question :) Thanks for your feedback though.

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