GW Zenith Wasteland Top 8 of 57 player tournament

[jrw1985]

I wanted to build a Green Sun's Zenith (GSZ) deck, and thought the best colors for it would be GW. I threw this together on Thurday and Top 8'd a 20 man tourny. Then I made some adjustments and played 6 rounds Saturday to make the Top 8 in a field of 57. This report cover Saturday's tournament.

Land (22)
2x Forest
1x Plains
1x Dryad Arbor
1x Horizon Canopy
4x Windswept Heath
4x Wooded Foothills
4x Wasteland
4x Savannah
1x Arid Mesa

Creature (20)
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Knight of the Reliquary
4x Noble Hierarch
4x Qasali Pridemage
3x Steppe Lynx

Instant (6)
4x Swords to Plowshares
2x Path to Exile

Enchantment (4)
2x Sylvan Library
2x Exploration

Sorcery (7)
2x Tariff
4x Green Sun's Zenith

Artifact (2)
2x Crucible of Worlds

Plainswalker (1)
1x Elspeth, Knight-Errant

Sideboard
2x Path to Exile
1x Krosan Grip
1x Tariff
1x Vexing Shusher
1x Maze of Ith
2x Silence
2x Null Rod
2x Gaddock Teeg
1x Reverent Silence
1x Tormod's Crypt
1x Bojuka Bog

The sideboard is an attempt to even up the bad MUs, with Silence, Null Rod, and Teeg all in to disrupt combo. Path to Exile is for Zoo or other Creature-based decks. KGrip is great in a host of MUs. Tariff is there for Non-zoo creature decks, but especially for those decks trying to cheat fatties into play. Maze is fetchable off of kotR and is great against decks running exalted. Crypt and Bog hit graveyards. Shusher helps against control and can be fetched with GSZ. The lone Reverent Silence is necessary because every (and I do mean every) big monthly legacy tournament I've been to at the store (The Monster's Den, Minneapolis MN) has multiple Enchantress decks. This one was no different. I saw 4 Enchantress players in a field of 57.

Tournament Report-

R1 Weston - Zoo
G1 I don't remember too many details here, except that I ground him down with removal and kept myself out of burn range and eventually pulled out the win. It was a hard fought game though. I started getting the upper hand when I was able to recurr my Wastes on his duals. He would respond be activating KotR to keep himself in the game. This left him open to attacks however, as KotR was his only blocker, and I finally started getting damage through and took the win.
I sided out Tariffs for Paths.
G2
His first turn went Savannah, Go. I went Waste on Savannah, Go. I don't think he hit another permanent all game.
As with any deck with Wasteland, my deck is very good at exploiting mana-hiccups in opposing decks. Also, with 22 lands, land recursion, 4 Hierarchs, and 4 GSZ that can be Llanowar Elves (GSZ for 0 T1 into a Dryad arbor) my deck has an extremely resilient mana base.
2-0
1-0

R2 Chad - ???
G1 He has some counters and I think he plays a Control Magic on my Goyf at one point. He also has a manland, but he doesn't see much that he needs from his deck while I'm hitting him for 4 a turn with Qasali.
G2 Again his draw seems ineffectual, and he just can't get anything going. He has a few Islands and a Forest in play, but he doesn't mount an offense. We talk after the game and he tells me his deck is a RUG, but he completely failed to get a red mana source in either of our 2 games. Unfortunate for him, but my deck's solid manabase has a distinct advantage against decks that have a greater likelyhood of drawing into manascrew, and I can pick up virtually uncontested wins because of it.
4-0
2-0

R3 Gene - Zoo
G1 A real grinder, but I get there. Elspeth lets me send Steppe Lynx flying overhead.
As before with Zoo, I side out Tariffs for Paths.
G2 I get my Sylvan Library out early, but his draw is more aggressive and after a very long game he just beats me down.
G3 Time runs out, and we draw.
5-1-1
2-0-1

R4 Tom - Junk
G1 Ruins my hand and beats me down.
G2 I'm Swordsing and Pathing his creatures like there's no tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm also setting up Wasteland recurrsion with Crucible, and I lock him out of green. He concedes at 20 life when I have 2 11/11 Knights online.
G3 He rocks my hand early, then lands a Confidant. I get him down to 12 life, but he pulls out the win.
Tom's a good friend of mine, so of course I would have to play him during the tournament. He wins the bragging rights. I'll have to make it up by making Top 8.
6-3-1
2-1-1

R5 Alex - Enchantress
Remember what I said about packing Reverent Silence SB for Enchantress? Doesn't seem so silly now, does it?
G1 - He mulls to 5, while I keep my 7. I land 2 Qasalis and Elspeth, and it's over pretty quickly.
I side in Crypt, Bog, kGrip, Tariff, and Reverent Silence and I side out spot removal. All his creatures have Shroud anyway.
G2 - I land T2 Library because i know I'll be searching for my Reverent Silence. My first 3 have Bojuka Bog, which I take knowing it will be an important follow-up to Reverent Silence. I then fetch and on my next turn hit the Reverent Silence. My hand is now stacked to win me the game, but I need to develop my board so that once I blow his Enchantments he won't be able to lock me out again. I make a small army of Qasalis and KotR, and I'm attacking him with 1 dude a turn through his lone Elephant Grass. He has 2 Argothians and 2 Enchantress Presence. He draws two thirds of his deck and Oblivion Rings my Library, but the damage is done. He plays a Words of War with 2 Sterling Groves in play to kill me the following turn. I don't have quite the horde I wanted to all out attack because his 2 Argothians would survive the Silence to chump block and he might be holding another Enchantress in his hand and still lock me out next turn. But i'm dead next turn to Words of War, so I gotta pop it now. i cast Reverent Silence and my opponent's jaw is dropped. I swing with everything. He may or may not have been able to survive the turn had he chumped, but he wasn't interested and scooped. I never even got to use Bojuka Bog on his graveyard!
8-3-1
3-1-1

R4 Player X - Show and Tell/Natural Order
G1 Looking at my decklist for the first time, many Magic players will say "Why are you running Tariff over Path to Exile? Why would you run Tariff at all?" The answer is simple: Emrakul and Progenitus. "Then why not just play Karakas?" Because Karakas can't hit Progenitus. And while Karakas can't hit Progenitus, Tariff can hit the best creature you're up against in any MU (except Zoo where they always keep 1-2 mana open). In my brief stint playing Emrakul decks I realized Zoo decks had absolutely no answer to an Emrakul unless they ran KotR and Karakas maindeck. Since my deck is essentially a Zoo deck without Red, I decided I needed a solution to this very real problem. And I remembered Cedric Philips in a SCG broadcast saying that Tariff was one of the most underutilized cards in Legacy. I had bought a playset after that, and now had a home for them. I started the game with a pretty decent hand with Sylvan Library. I was on the draw, and my second turn Tarmogoyf was Forced (pitching Daze) by the feared Player X. Player X then proceeded to cast Show and Tell. I was thrilled and excited to see if my bet on Tariff would pay off. I put into play my Silvan Library, and Player X dropped Emrakul. In my draw step, Library found a Tariff 2 cards down. I cast it, and Player X read it in a state of shock. He sacked his Emrakul and shuffled his graveyard into his library. I won several turns later with beatdown.
I sided out Steppe Lynx for the third Tariff and Vexing Shusher.
G2 I opened on a hand that included Vexing Shusher. Score. We played the removal-denial game for a while, Player X and I, with me lucking into one of my Tariffs along the way. Eventually he landed a Hierarch and cast Natural Order. Player X attacked with ProG his next turn, and I was put down to 7 life. My following turn I cast Vexing Shusher with three mana up and cast Tariff. Player X didn't try to counter, and his ProG and my KotR went into the trash. A few turns later and the match was mine. I got great draws both games, and playing a homebrew kept Player X from pinning down my gameplan. This was most obvious G1, when he countered my Goyf with FoW, allowing my Tariff next turn. He probably read me as playing New Horizons or Bant Aggro, and wanted to draw out my counterspells so he could resolve his Show and Tell the next turn. Had he known I was playing Tariff and no blue, he could have won that game. But because I built this thing 5 days ago Player X couldn't see it coming.
10-3-1
4-1-1

Top 8! Chris - Aggro Loam
I'm getting tired of playing at this point. We started at 1 and it's now 7:30. Chris plays Aggro Loam a lot. A LOT. The first time I ever played him was over 2 years ago, and he was playing Aggro Loam then and most of the times I've played him since. He knows what he's doing with it. 28 lands and beatdown/recursion. I'm not sure how I'll stack up to it, and I think I play poorly because of it.
G1 It's a back and forth fight. I have a lot of removal for his Confidants, but his style negates my Tariffs. He eventually takes control of things and wins.
I think I sided GY hate and Paths in and Tariffs and some lynx out.
G2 On the play I do a lot better, and I manage to keep his Seismics out of play and remove a bunch of Confidants again. It's back and forth, but I win in the end.
G3 I had my first double mull of the night! My first hand was 5 lands, a Lynx, and a KotR. I knew I needed removal to have a shot, so I had to mull. My next 6 had Wasteland as the lone mana source. My next 5 were probably better than any 4. I had 1 fetch and a GSZ, so i could play an Arbor Dryad and a Forest T1. And I did, but Chris had played something like T1 Land, Mox, Confidant, T2 Land, mox, Seismic and maybe something else. He torched the Arbor with Seismic and I was out of the game after that.

My thoughts on the deck and its future:
There was 1 card in my deck that almost always felt out of place: Steppe Lynx. The deck isn't really built to be a super explosive T2 attacker, especially with the reliance on Swords to Plowshares. It grinds out the opponent with Knights and Goyfs and Exalted. But with Crucible and Exploration, Lynx was occasionally enormous. I'm not entirely sure what it should be replaced with though. I also want to replace the single Arid Mesa with a Ghost Quarters or a 2nd basic Plains. All in all the deck has been fantastic, and I was very pleased with its performance. I think I played it sub-optimally on occasion, but its really hard to figure out what that even is without playtesting. I do feel that building this deck is a milestone for me, as I've put my stamp on this deck and it had immediate success. Still, I'll need to work on it more to streamline and optimize its lines of play.

[Diprivan]

Nice report, nice deck! Thanks for posting this!

[Damoxx]

Round 2.
I was actually playing NLT (it's in the forums somewhere). I initially thought your deck was GSZ/Natural Order deck and then you dropped an Exploration. The rest of the day I was tryng to figure out what your deck did, but since I never sat near you again, it just puzzled me. glad you posted your report. Very interesting deck and good performance.

P.S.-Nice to see my two losses were to guys that top 8'd.

[KSpaeth]

I also played and made Top 8. From what I saw the Top 8 was comprised of at least 3 Merfolk (1 mono-u, 2 u/w with Stoneforge Mystic), 1 ANT, 1 Aggro Loam, you, and another two I didn't see. Nice deck and congrats on your finish!