20th at GP Denver with Reanimator

[Stryfo]

This was my first GP, and the games are almost entirely from memory, but I hope you guys get the gist of what happened. Before the main tournament I scrubbed out hard in a pair of grinders, but I quickly learned that main board echoing truth would be very important in the GP, so I took out thoughtseize for them, and I was never once disappointed.

The Deck:
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Hapless Researcher
4 Reanimate
4 Entomb
1 Thoughtseize
3 Daze
4 Careful Study
4 Exhume
2 Animate Dead
2 Echoing Truth

2 GriselBrand
1 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Tidespout Tyrant
1 Inkwell Leviathan
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind

4 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Marsh Flats
4 Underground Sea
3 Swamp
2 Island

Sideboard:
2 Wipe away
1 Blazing Archon
2 Thoughtseize
3 submerge
2 massacre
2 snapcaster mage
2 pithing needle
1 bitterblossom

Round 1: Slivers
I keep a somewhat sketchy hand, but it gets an inkwell on turn three, little did I know that I was playing against agro slivers, which was able to race me by one turn with glittering wish into a vialed in sliver overlord.
Games two and three go much better, T2 Jin into T3 tidespout gets there both games.

1-0

Round 2: Sneak and Show
Game one he loses to a punt, he casts show and tell, I force, he forces back, and is tapped out, I daze targeting show and tell and he forces targeting my force, daze counters his S&T and hapless beats do work until I land something bigger.
Game two was basically me just being the faster combo deck, I get a guy sooner than he does and ride him to victory.

2-0

Round 3: BUG control
Game one: I use exhume tricks to get sphinx into play against his DRS, hapless researcher to beat Lili spells game over for him
Game two: not exactly sure what I did to win this, but I think it involved Griselbrand early.

3-0

Round 4: Storm
Game one: I “casually land a turn two griselbrand” and after two D7s I am able to not die.
Game two: We thoughtseize/duress back and forth for a bit, I land an early hapless and get the beats on, eventually land pithing needle on karakas, and next turn Jin comes down, I know he only has mana in hand because of a thoughtseize, so I force his ponder, and that’s the game.

4-0

Round 5: UW Miracles
Game one: He lands turn one Relic of Progenitus, establishes countertop and its on to game 2
Game two: I beat him down with some hapless for a while, and he gets down to 4 I think and lands trinket mage, then I lose, sadface

4-1

Round 6: Dream Halls
A little tilted after my last match, so I’m worried about what will come next.
Game one, he lands turn 2 show and tell and I have the choice between tidespout and griselbrand, I figured tidespout beats more of his guys than griselbrand (thinking he’s on sneak show) and he drops progenitus. I end up reanimating griselbrand and race for almost exactsies thanks to his ancient tomb.
Game 2, turn two griselbrand was hard for him to beat, he intuitioned and found that he only had 2 echoing truth, easy win after he doesn’t have an answer to GB.

5-1

Round 7: Mono Green 12 Post
Both games were turn 2 Jin into turn 3 tidespout tyrant, not much he could do either game.

6-1

Round 8: UW Stoneblade
Neither game was incredibly interesting, basically was able to land fatties, game 2 I got to play my bitterblossom! But unfortunately I already had complete board dominance.

7-1

On to Day 2!

Round 9: BUG Tempo (Top 8 Player)
This is the only match where I truly believe I lost to myself rather than something else, I punted game one quite hard.
Game one he goes T1 DRS, T2 hymn, I have a hand of 2x entomb, land, exhume, daze, careful study, random card, with a fetch in play, I try to daze the hymn forgetting that he could pay with DRS, thus I am too far behind and end up losing the game. I land an elesh norn to wipe him but I’m on 2 and he plays out a tombstalker to kill me.
Game 2 an early Jin lets me win (poet and I didn’t even know it?).
Game 3 I mull to 5 and have a single island, he flips a delver to a sinkhole and I lose.

7-2

Round 10: Greg Hatch with Kiln Fiend/ Nivmagus Elemental “combo”
Game one I get elesh norn on the last possible turn, after he bricked on things to cast for 3 straight turns with 3 kiln fiends
Game two he gets me with an 18 damage attack from a nivmagus elemental, and he kills me shortly after
Game 3 We both durdle a bit, but my durdling has lands, his doesn’t so I get a guy out and win.

8-2

Round 11: Junk splash blue
Game one I thoughtseize his brainstorm after he mulled to 6, I am able to land a Jin and he has nothing to stop it
Game 2: I mull and end up unable to beat his DRS, despite my expansive hate for it (Something like 7 draws that deal with it)
Game 3: he lands 2 DRS, which I am unable to deal with, one I could have beaten with submerge, but the 2nd was too much for me, I landed an inkwell, and it died to lily, having to reanimate it meant that I was too low on life to race, and he eventually kills me with DRS activations.

8-3

Round 12: BUG Control
Game one: Mull to 5 to find lands and keep a hand that goes: T2 Sphinx, T3 hapless, and he is unable to beat it in time, so I get there.
Game 2: He mulls to five and plays out a polluted delta, I was not sure if he was stuck on lands, so I took the risky play of T1 pithing needle on polluted delta, it ended up being reasonable, as I drew other fetches and landed some big fatty, winning the match.

9-3

Round 13: RUG Delver
Game one I land sphinx when on 2 life and he is unable to get through it
Game 2 I land an elesh norn and follow it up with a griselbrand, he is unable to beat it. At the end he said he was hedging that there would be no graveyard decks, so he had no hate to deal with me, not that delver hate has ever been super effective.
(PS keeping my record against RUG delver strong)

10-3

Round 14: Esper Blade splash green
Game one I get a guy in the yard and he rips all of my reanimates out of hand with thoughtseize and snapcaster, but I rip a lucky exhume off the top and Jin comes down, followed by assorted other fatties in the next few turns.
Game 2 goes similarly, he counters 2 of my 3 reanimate spells and the third one gets there netting griselbrand, I bounce his Jace with an echoing truth, and he concedes after I counter it when he trys to recast

11-3

Ended up in 20th, just barely eeking out the price of my trip.

I decided that I really like the main board echoing truth in the deck, also, I never once wished I had show and tell.
Props:
Getting 20th in my first ever GP
Playing my pet deck, LOVING IT!
Beating the DRS left and right
Drawing 7 cards
archnemesis scrubbed out in day 2

Slops:
Being sick all weekend
Missing first day of school?
One friend scrubbed out 5-3 day one
Another friend didn’t make it in the money, going 10-4.

I think that’s it so…
The END?

[Ziveeman]

Grats on the finish. Reanimator seems like a scary deck to take to a GP where the most hyped card is Deathrite Shaman, so that's awesome that it worked out for you!

[baghdadbob]

...which was able to race me by one turn with glittering wish into a vialed in sliver overlord.

My head exploded.

Congratulations though man good job!

[Zilong]

thanks a lot for ur report

[zeagle]

Round 5: UW Miracles
Game one: He lands turn one Relic of Progenitus, establishes countertop and its on to game 2
Game two: I beat him down with some hapless for a while, and he gets down to 4 I think and lands trinket mage, then I lose, sadface

Don't forget the Pithing Needle on Hapless Researcher!

archnemesis scrubbed out in day 2

Heh.

[Megadeus]

My head exploded.

Congratulations though man good job!

That is also my face when I read that lol. Sounds pretty awesome to me.

[lord09]

Congrats as well, interesting list. Mind sharing some general boarding tips?

[Stryfo]

I would be more than glad to share boarding tips, however I don't really feel up to writing a comprehensive boarding guide. So if you have specific matchups in mind, those are easy to cover and I will gladly do so, but as for boarding vs. every deck in the format, that is a reasonably extensive list. I would rather just cover those that actually interest you, so give me some matchups and I can tell you how I'd board.

[Dessyreqt]

Personally I'm interested in the boarding and general strategy against Jund. The matchup seems like they just wreck us and I expect to see it quite a bit.

[Stryfo]

Jund is actually a fairly easy matchup, that said, I've only played it on the order of 5 times, but I have yet to drop a match (not even sure if I've dropped a game).

I would do something like this:
+3 submerge
-1 inkwell leviathan
-1 thoughtseize
-1 daze

The way I see this matchup is entomb is your best friend. realize that depending on the game state, Jin gitaxias, Griselbrand, and sphinx of the steel wind are all incredible targets, with honorable mention to Elesh Norn of course. Don't pop your entombs until you have to so that you can get the right guy. Also, if you don't have to use your hapless researcher, don't do it, he jumps in front of lili -2s all day. The only way they have to interact with your reanimate spell is usually creature based, which makes submerge and even pre board echoing truth incredibly powerful against them.

The problem for jund is that they play fair and thus are significantly slower than us. Unlike BUG delver, they only disrupt our hand and sometimes our mana base, BUG delver hits our hand, our mana, and fights on the stack, making it much more difficult. If we do what our deck is supposed to (turn 2 guy) they really should have a long way to go to win. their best answer to us is a three cost PW that has a +1 that they are frequently scared to use.

Why is it you think its a bad matchup? I don't know what the deck really has that's super good against us other than liliana and DRS, is there some specific card you were afraid of?

[Dessyreqt]

I decided to PM you my questions since I didn't want to derail this report thread.

[lord09]

I would be more than glad to share boarding tips, however I don't really feel up to writing a comprehensive boarding guide. So if you have specific matchups in mind, those are easy to cover and I will gladly do so, but as for boarding vs. every deck in the format, that is a reasonably extensive list. I would rather just cover those that actually interest you, so give me some matchups and I can tell you how I'd board.

I was just looking for some general tips, such as if you expect artifact gy based hate, extraction/extirpate, and the various deathrite decks.

In particular, I'd be interested in how you board against Miracles and the various BUG strategies.

[Stryfo]

Most decks have switched to surgical over extirpate, which means holding up counters when you want to reanimate is a good idea. artifact hate is handily dealt with with bounce, it is also important to note that using exhume shenanigans beats pretty much all artifact based hate. deathrite shaman is dealt with either with submerge or massacre, depending on what deck they are on.

Against BUG, I split them into two categories:
Delver and control

against delver:
+3 submerge
-1 thoughtseize
-1 inkwell leviathan
-1 daze

against control:
+3 submerge
+2 pithing needle
-1 thoughtseize
-3 daze
-1 tidespout tyrant

against miracles:
+2 pithing needle
+1 bitterblossom
+2 snapcaster mage
+2 wipe away
+2 thoughtseize
-1 echoing truth
-1 careful study
-2 animate dead
-1 sphinx of the steel wind
-1 elesh norn
-3 daze

these are my rough board plans anyways