Up to No Good in Knoxville: 6th Place at SCG Knox with Deadguy

[Megadeus]

The decklist first (formatting courtesy of bmjhagan):

Spells (16 + 22)	Lands (22)	Sideboard (15)
4 Deathrite Shaman 2 Phyrexian Revoker 4 Stoneforge Mystic 4 Dark Confidant 1 Stillmoon Cavalier 1 Shriekmaw 4 Swords to Plowshares 4 Thoughtseize 2 Hymn to Tourach 4 Lingering Souls 2 Vindicate 3 Liliana of the Veil 1 Umezawa's Jitte 1 Sword of Fire and Ice 1 Batterskull	1 Plains 2 Swamp 4 Scrubland 1 Bayou 2 Isolated Chapel 4 Wasteland 2 Verdant Catacombs 2 Windswept Heath 4 Marsh Flats	1 Grafdigger's Cage 1 Pithing Needle 1 Ethersworn Canonist 1 Orzhov Pontiff 1 Choke 1 Engineered Plague 1 Rest in Peace 2 Disenchant 1 Enlightened Tutor 2 Zealous Persecution 2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben 1 Perish

Well I am very excited to be typing this report! I have never Top 8'd before, so this is definitely the biggest accomplishment in magic I have achieved! Obviously we know how it ends, but I'll be going into more depth into matches and other shenanigans that went on for the weekend so please, enjoy!

We left our place at around noon with about a 3 hour drive ahead of us from Kennesaw. We intended to play in the challenge, me on Deadguy, my roommate on UR Delver, and the driver (bmjhagan) on Elves! We finally find parking as we roll into the venue, and I have Deaths Shadow Ale all ready to go, but decide to just play normal Deadguy since I still had some questions about a slot or two, though I did slip in a single Mana Tithe where my second Vindicate was in my T8 list. After debating buying a played Savannah, they call the Legacy challenge to begin.

Round 1 of the Challenge

UR High Tide (with comet storm as a sweet, sweet win condition to wish for)
Game 1: I do not remember all of the details, but it looks like I thoughtseize him twice at some point in a row, because I can't figure out any other reason for losing 4 life in one chunk. I saw 2x Volcanic, a Cunning Wish, a Merchant Scroll, and a high tide. I believe he had cast Candelabra. I get a revoker naming it, and rip his hand to shreds, and he dies.
Game 2: I lose fairly quickly after he spell pierces my thoughtseize and I don't have any more real interaction.
Game 3: I open on a Deathrite Shaman and pass. He plays an Island and passes. I assume he has brainstorm in hand then. Untap, play my fetch land, and cast thoughtseize. He brainstorms. I crack my fetch, and Mana Tithe the everliving shit out of his brainstorm. He slumps. Reveals his hand of Ponder, Snap, Candelabra, Time Spiral, something irrelevant, and a Polluted Delta. I laugh because my hand has a pithing needle in it, and I recently posted a deck list that uses needle as a way to deny people their fetches. So I take ponder, cast Needle, name Delta and pass. My opponent draws. Plays his Delta, and casts Candelabra. I cast revoker naming it. He draws and passes. I vindicate his island. We durdle while I hit him with revoker and a bob and Thalia for a bit until he simply dies.

1-0

Round 2: Shardless BUG
Game 1: Me on the play, I go fetch, pass. He goes DRS pass. I cast bob. He casts Liliana, sacrificing bob. I cry. I think I just makes souls, while he suspends visions, I get a Stoneforge down at some point and get SoFaI, and when his visions fires off, he is essentially dead because I have lots of soul.
Game 2: Much of the same. I feel like I fall way behind since he Lilianas my T2 Bob again, and fires off vision, however Perish is a hell of a card vs Tarmogoyfs.

2-0

Round 3: Team America
I don't actually have notes here, I just know that he outplays the crap out of me, and I end up losing after he gets down a goyf and TNN, and in G2 he wastes me out I think and I scoop.

2-1

Round 4: Sneak and Show
Game 1: I believe I Thoughtseize him and he forces it, and I just begin casting random dudes to clock him while he digs. I know at some point he has 4 mana in play and I know he has a Sneak Attack in hand. I'm sitting on Mana Tithe. He taps out to cast Sneak Attack. I Mana Tithe, he forces :( He attacks me with emrakul, however I'm at 16 and 9 permanents. I debate jumping my still moon to block, but I want to have a better clock, so I go to 1 and keep, Scrubland, Deathrite, Stillmoon. He draw go's me while I hit him for 4 each turn, finally at 4 life he casts intuition. In my head I'm thinking GG, but he finds 2x Emrakul, 1x Blightsteel. WTF? So I give him blightsteel, he sneaks it and attacks, I make him lose to to go to 2 from DRS after blocking and going to 9 poison. Then kill him with Stillmoon.
Game 2: I believe in this game my Revoker came down naming Sneak Attack, and I had a Needle on Griseldaddy while Vindicate played the role of stone rain.

3-1

Good way to end the challenge. I actually truly enjoy playing against non Belcher combo with hate bears, because the slow choke hold to me is very exciting. Definitely wasn't going to play the Mana Tithe though. Luckily I borrowed a second vindicate at the last minute. It was fairly clutch all day long. Stone Rain is a hell of a card sometimes.

That night we went to a local place for food after we cracked open some shitty “Journey into the Garbage Can” packs. On the elevator ride we encounter a random drunken man who sees the 5 of us (including Tyrio and Alphastryk) get onto the elevator. He asks us if we are up to no good and is wondering if we are here for the UT graduation party that is apparently happening. We reply no and end up walking to the restaurant where I got to experience a fine thing called, “The Lipitor Burger”. Goodness groceries. It was amazing. That combined with the fine “Oatmeal Porter” that I had along with dinner was enough to make me extremely full and happy. We also got to hear a random old patron of the restaurant tell us his life story about living in the Congo, Brazil, and the ever so exotic, Washington D.C. After walking back to pick up our bags and driving to our hotel, I watched a great UFC fight between Matt Brown and Erick Silva while filling out my deck list for Sundays Main Event.


So Sunday morning, we check out, and get to the venue, my roommate who was on UR Delver audibles to straight Wal-Mart burn, because why play UR when you can just play more lightning bolts right?!

I refocus myself for the tourney and when round 1 is called I'm good to go.

Round 1: Burn

I see that I am facing a female player, and automatically assume something cheap and easy to play, because I guess I'm sexist or something.

Game 1: I mulligan to a hand that contains 2 Scrublands, a deathrite, and 3 drops. Meh. She casts a lava spike. Well I'm dead. A few short turns later, I am at 0 to her 21. I did notice she is on the Hellspark plan, which I believe bodes well for me.
Game 2: I don't remember my hand, but I believe I Hymned her on turn 2, after STP'ing a Goblin Guide or Lavamancer on T1, So I feel good. I get a stoneforge down for Jitte, and it gets on a man and I win fairly easily.
Game 3: This was a very close one. I don't remember exact plays early, but I know I get Jitte down and it gets Smashed to Smithereens. Luckily she lacks burn spells and is flush with creatures, while I am flush with Swords to Plowshares and Lilianas. I get souls tokens down, but am at a precarious life total. I am at 5 with souls tokens and a Sofai on a token. I Plus 1 Liliana, she fireblasts me to 1. I however have an STP in hand. I have 5 non basics in play, but 2 are untapped wastelands so I can go to 1 non basic if need be. Any 4 damage spells wins here. She rips Lava Spike, throws it on the table, and I STP my soul token with a Sword to gain 3 life and then go back to 1. I then attack for the win.

Whew. Eek'd a win vs a poor MU. 1-0

Round 2: 5 Color Delver (the man who made T16)

This is actually the same guy who I beat with Sneak and Show in the challenge so I put him on that. However my hand is pretty versatile vs most decks.
Game 1: He goes T1 fetch into Delver. Sweet. I love playing vs that. I cast Deathrite expecting a Daze. No daze. Awesome. He untaps and doesn’t flip or cast anything. I untap, wasteland him, and cast a Stoneforge which resolves. No counter spell hand? Nice. Fetch SoFaI since I assume he has removal. He does. He plays another land into nothing and attacks with his freshly flipped delver. I uptap and vindicate his land. Same sequences happen, he attacks, I vindicate another land. Then he misses a land drop. I STP delver and he has a waste in play then after DRS gets him down to 9 he scoops.
Game 2: He goes, Dual into Delver. I again cast Deathrite Shaman. No daze. Feeling good here. No delver flip, He plays another dual. Stoneforges for Batterskull. Okay. I untap. Now, I could simply STP the Stoneforge, however, him allowing DRS to resolves signals to me that he has no daze, and if he has force, then no matter what I play it doesn’t matter. I cast Choke. As the S.A.S. Says: “Who Dares, Wins”. He grimaces. Goes to his turn, no flip. Cracks a fetch to lotus petal his tropical for another delver. I rip a Zealous Persecution, cast it, he says “fuck this” and scoops. I wish him good luck as I leave. All silence. The salt is real.

2-0

So I sit down and talk with one of the locals about my general board plan vs burn and how he should fight blade decks between the rounds (he's on burn) and such.

Round 3: Burn

Yep. After telling this man how to fight the stoneforge decks, I get paired vs him. I wish I were making this up.

Game 1: I don't remember exactly what happened, but I believe it had something to do with Hymning all of his relevant cards, because I only went to 16 life.
Game 2: was a bit different, however, he has T1 Goblin Guide, I have T2 Thalia. He doesn’t have a third land, and apparently his hand is mono 2 drops. So I go to town with Thalia, and Jitte. I finish the game at 27 life

3-0

Feeling pretty good at this point. Definitely feel like I'm making money at least, however beating 2 burn decks and fisting a super greedy delver deck didn't feel THAT awesome.

Round 4: ANT

Game 1: I believe that he won the roll, and he probed me, saw a hand of Thoughtseize, Revoker, and some stuff. He duress my Thoughtseize. I believe I wasteland him since I assume he is on ANT at this point. Then he can trips a bit, while I get a revoker on LED. He doesn’t make a relevant play for the rest of the game while I smack him for 2 until a pile of men come down.

Game 2: I don't remember this game all that well, but I think that he forced me to discard Liliana, and My T1 Deathrite Allowed for a T2 Stone Rain, and I believe I ended up getting a Thalia down while Liliana was eating his hand and I was denying him the mana to do anything relevant.

4-0

Feeling good. I'm sitting at table 3 now! However, everyone around us got features. So we got all of the room to stretch!

Game 1: I went T1 DRS, he fetched basic Swamp and Thoughtseized me. I then proceed to Vindicate his Swamp. Then waste him a bunch. I thoughtseize, taking Goyf, leaving Scavenging Ooze, which he casts with no mana open. I then Revoker the Ooze and he proceeds to the scoop phase.

Game 2: This one goes long, and I believe I played a bit poorly. I know I cast RIP at one point which ate a Pfire, however, he decayed it with a goyf out, then had another Pfire and took over the game with it while I didn’t chump goyf, and by the time I was able to remove it and try to stabilize, Pfire finished me off.

Game 3: another long, long drawn out game. I am on the Stone Rain, Wasteland plan this game and I do not know if he ever got past 3 mana for a Liliana that got to force me to sacrifice a single lingering souls token. I know at one point he casts Sylvan Library, which meets a Vindicate. I grind him to 1 land, I have Liliana at 5 counters, and 2 equipment. I play Bob. He finds land and decays bob. I keep Liliana +1'ing. He finds grove, but I find another waste for it. Then I find bob. Slap SoFaI and Jitte and pass. He doesn’t find anything, then dies to bob drawing me into my 4th Waste to lock him out.

5-0

That was not an easy match, and we had a lot of people watching us by the end.

I'm feeling good now. I can T8 if I don’t mess up. Just gotta finish 2-1.

Round 6: UR Painted Stone (the guy who made it to the finals)

Game 1: I think I thoughtseized away an intuition, but he gets to keep his top, and finds painter/stone and I die

Game 2: I believe he got a goblin welder in play which quickly at an STP. He commented that most players just let it survive. I'm astonished. Welder is ridiculous. No way you EVER let it live. It just makes all of your counters/removal/whatever useless, and Makes Intuition into Triple Vampiric. He plays a painter. I eot Swords it, he forces pitching, Great Furnace. I get a good chuckle out of that. I disenchant it. It dies. Then my revoker on grindstone plus a SoFaI that joins the fray gets there.

Game 3, I keep an awkward hand that does have Thoughtseize and RIP to interact. However, he goes T1 Sol Land, Painter. I cast Thoughtseize. He forces, pitching whatever. He casts Mox Opal, plays Great Furnace, casts top, spins it, taps it to draw grindstone and cast, with red mana open. As he is doing this, I believe that I then call the Judge over to ask about if RIP stops Grindstone. He confirms my belief that it indeed stops grindstone. So I cast RIP on my turn, he allows it to resolve. I pass. He activates grindstone, mill the top 2, then the judge happens to be right there and I ask him to explain. My opponent then says his last round opponent did the same thing and it worked out fine. So I then simply ask for a head judge ruling. It takes almost 10 minutes for this to finally be resolved, probably since it was awkward that the judge I originally asked told me that RIP would protect me. Fortunately (or not I suppose) I didn't really have any other way to interact, plus he even had a pyroblast in hand regardless.

So I lose, go to 5-1. My opponent was a really cool guy, and we had some fun during the judge call talking about the nut T1 lethal hand that UR could produce.

I refuse to go on tilt. I know that I just have to 2-0 to make T8.

Round 7: Sneak and Show

I guess at some point I had to play against it right?

Game 1: I win the die roll. I have a pretty good hand vs unknown opponent. Thoughtseize into Revoker. Apparently it was even better considering my opponents deck. I see a SnT, a Sneak Attack, an emrakul, and can trips I strip the SnT. He can trips I cast revoker on sneak attack, then go on aggressive Vindicate your lands while wasting and battling for 2 and Hymning him with DRS up and 4ing him to death.

Game 2: he has a mull to 6, which ended up being really poor. He goes Tarn pass. I cast Thoughtseize. He forces. He doesn’t do anything and passes. I land into something random like a Stoneforge. He fetches basic Mountain, plays a sol land, and a petal, casts sneak attack and simply passes. Like the sack I am, I have Disenchant for his sneak attack, and I waste his sol land and continue the squire beats. I then rip a vindicate and vindicate his lotus petal he had cast to cut him off of Blue. He casts brainstorm, doesn’t find anything, and scoops.

6-1

I think I am now 5-0 vs. Sneak and Show with Deadguy. Ridiculous. What an inconsistent deck.

Alright. Down to my win and in. In between rounds I see one match going at the top tables and decide to scope it out to see what they are on just in case. Elves vs Team America I believe. I see standings and I can't draw in, and I get reconfirmation from Andrew Schneider, because as we are talking as we are going to our tables he says he is the only X-1 that can draw in due to his insane like 80% breakers. Alright. 1 match? This shouldn't be too difficult right?

So I get called for the on camera feature match. This is my first ever win and in as well as my first ever on cam feature. Here is the link to the video:

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http...0s&h=_AQEIgUwW

My only comments are: sitting down I recognized him as the TA player. I don’t know why I kept either of the hands that I kept, because they were both pretty terrible, however, the gods of the top deck were good gods.

7-1

In to top 8.

I figure out I am vs the ANT man. Probably my worst MU in the T8. Meh. Heres the link since we were the written coverage match:

http://www.starcitygames.com/events/...nd_vs_ben.html

Now a few thoughts, My keep in G3 was horrendous, although apparently his wasn’t much better. My Cage off the top was insane. The questionable plays of the game were: Vindicate his land vs vindicate on his Bob. I decided that with Thalia out, all I wanted to do was try to choke his mana. So that is the reasoning there. The other was, casting Rest in Peace, many wondered why I did it when I had cage and 2 Deathrites on board. I simply wanted to protect myself from Cabal Ritual being able to power through Thalia's tax.

In the end, he rips runner, runner to be able to kill me, which really sucks because the pyroclasm off of the top meant he was at 1 life from Bob. Which also meant that my 2 missed Deathrite Attacks cost me the game. I believe my lines were correct, as were my thought processes. If at any point in that game had I drawn: any thoughtseize at all, any hymn to tourach at all, Stoneforge Mystic, or another Wasteland, I would have won the game. He apparently had Tendrils in hand from the beginning, and if I strip it, then he was actually just dead to cage. Also, Hymn keeps him off of storm count (as well as the possibility of hitting the Tendrils), Stoneforge gets either SoFai to protect my Thalia from Pyroclasm/Massacre, or batterskull to just gain life to get me out of range, and wasteland would disallow him from casting pyroclasm into the kill in the same turn, because I had the 2nd Thalia in hand.

All in all, it was a great weekend though, I got to take down 6th place for my first ever T8, Q for an invitational which I may get to attend, and just overall have a great time hanging out with friends! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask! I apologize for writing a book, however I was just so excited and wanted to allow readers to experience what I did.

[haganbmj]

Congratulations on the top 8, Josh!

Looks like Vindicate was as insane all day as you were making it out to be during the car ride home.

In your top 8 match versus ANT his hand was pretty confusing, it had both Tendrils and Past in Flames in it though, so maybe he thought it would get there. He ends up Brainstorming into double LED, which represents lethal... until you topdeck the Grafdigger's Cage.
He also boarded back out Massacre on the play (and brought back in Ad Nauseum), so his only draws for that board state involved the Pyroclasm he flipped to Bob.

[Tormod]

Fantastic!

Congrats. I'm going to watch the link now.

[maharis]

Nice. You played against some wonky decks, haha. Maybe the SCG circuit isn't as Delvery as the coverage would make it seem!

I think I might use Revoker main and ZP side one week to see how I feel about it. ZP is so much fun to cast while Revoker is dead against some popular decks... but who's to say what decks are popular?

[litenkatt]

Well done!

After reading your report I feel like Phyrexian Revoker preformed very well.

How was it playing without Sensei's divining top/sylvan library or any other cards that control the library?

How important are Wastelands to this deck, in your opinion? Can it be replaced with, say, Mishra's Factory?

[nedleeds]

TUSK UP

[phazonmutant]

Congrats! Nice report, makes me want to stone rain some fools next legacy tournament. My biggest question though - what do you cut for the Thragtusk?

You going to Columbus?

[Megadeus]

Well done!

After reading your report I feel like Phyrexian Revoker preformed very well.

How was it playing without Sensei's divining top/sylvan library or any other cards that control the library?

How important are Wastelands to this deck, in your opinion? Can it be replaced with, say, Mishra's Factory?

Thanks guys!

I haven't actually tested Top, however, I simply don't want to get caught up doing nothing with top for awhile and falling behind in a game. Maybe it is right to play it though. Sylvan Library, while I love the card, I only have the single green source, so I don't want to get too greedy. And I'm fine with playing off of the top of the library because I have a good decent amount of high impact spells.

Wasteland, in my opinion, is the actual best card in legacy. However, there are people that play variants of this deck with less, or 0 Wastelands and they get run tun more double costing things like Gatekeeper and such which is cool. Just the number of times wasteland simply wins the game for me is enough for me not to even go down to 3.

@Greg, Columbus is probably a no-go for me. Next Invitational I could make it to if I end up trying to go would probably be Jersey since my Mom lives up there.

[lordofthepit]

Planning to read this later, but I wanted to offer my congratulations! I didn't realize that was you on camera, but I was definitely pumped when I saw Deadguy Ale overcoming manascrew on camera to beat BUG Delver in your win-and-in. Well played!

[infiniteJ]

Congrats Josh! Was pumped to see you in top 8. You've been putting in work with Deadguy.

[ThediscoPower]

Congratulation Deus!!! I would have liked to see deadguy take it all, but nevertheless, well played and well deserved finish!!

[Aesir]

Deadguy is one of those decks that I don't play, but I like seeing it do well. Congrats and thanks for the report!

[NeZ]

Round 4: Sneak and Show
Game 1: I believe I Thoughtseize him and he forces it, and I just begin casting random dudes to clock him while he digs. I know at some point he has 4 mana in play and I know he has a Sneak Attack in hand. I'm sitting on Mana Tithe. He taps out to cast Sneak Attack. I Mana Tithe, he forces :( He attacks me with emrakul, however I'm at 16 and 9 permanents. I debate jumping my still moon to block, but I want to have a better clock, so I go to 1 and keep, Scrubland, Deathrite, Stillmoon. He draw go's me while I hit him for 4 each turn, finally at 4 life he casts intuition. In my head I'm thinking GG, but he finds 2x Emrakul, 1x Blightsteel. WTF? So I give him blightsteel, he sneaks it and attacks, I make him lose to to go to 2 from DRS after blocking and going to 9 poison. Then kill him with Stillmoon.
Game 2: I believe in this game my Revoker came down naming Sneak Attack, and I had a Needle on Griseldaddy while Vindicate played the role of stone rain.

3-1

To sum it up: You won Game 1 at 1 life with 9 poison counters.
There's no way anyone can be more dead than that without actually being dead. Feel free to brag about this game for all eternity.

Please have my like, Sir.