pocari79
11-08-2010, 02:28 PM
Went to a legacy tournament on Sat, Nov 6th hosted by Dueling Grounds. 18 people showed and I recognized a lot of
the legacy regulars so it was a pretty good field. It was 5 rounds, cut to top 8. Here's the decklist
Maindeck
12x Mountain
4x Wooded Foothills
2x Scalding Tarn
1x Barbarian Ring
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Rift Bolt
4x Lava Spike
4x Chain Lightning
4x Magma Jet
3x Price of Progress
3x Incinerate
3x Flamebreak
3x Volcanic Fallout
3x Fireblast
4x Goblin Guide
2x Grim Lavamancer
Sideboard
3x Boseiju, Who Shelters All
3x Searing Blaze
3x Sulfuric Vortex
3x Smash to Smithereens
3x Faerie Macabre
I made some changes to the maindeck and sideboard. In the maindeck, I've replaced the hellspark elementals with the
volcanic fallouts and put the sulfuric vortex in the sideboard in place of the flamebreak. I found that for my meta, the hellspark elemental doesn't do enough and requires me to tap out in the early turns which is not good against merfolk or control. Also, with the amount of aggro in the field these days, I feel that having 6 board sweepers maindeck should be enough. Sulfuric vortex goes back to sideboard since game 1 against aggro, the vortex is a really bad option when you're facing a board full of creatures. For the sideboard, I replaced the sirocco with faerie macabre as I wanted something to deal with vengevines that couldn't be countered. I decided not to have anything against combo as there's too many different types of combo running around and there's not enough sideboard slots to deal with stuff like show and tell or ANT.
Round 1 - Raymond (Eva Green)
Game 1: I lost the die roll (which is something that will happen for the rest of the day). He had to mull to 6 and he ended up going turn 1, swamp, ritual, thoughtseize, therapy, thoughtseize. My hand happened to be goblin guide, lavamancer, 3x lava spike, incinerate, mountain. So I ended up having only a mountain and incinerate in my hand and I haven't even gone to my turn 1 yet. He ended up getting a 3/4 goyf on turn 2 and started to smash. I was actually able to get him down to 7 on the turn before I was going to die and I had an active barbarian ring. Nothing was going to deal 5 damage to him but I told him i'm sure i'm going to topdeck a fireblast and I did. *sigh*.
Sideboard: -3 Price of Progress, +3 Searing Blaze
Game 2: This game wasn't very close, I managed to get him down to 10 life by turn 3 and on my turn 4 I chained, bolted and fireblasted.
Game 3: He had to mull to a slow hand and whiffed on a turn 1 therapy. I was able to get him down fairly low and then he did turn 3 abyssal persecutor which i didn't expect. He was able to hit me once for 6 and then play a 4/5 goyf. Luckily, he was at 9 so at the end of his turn I bolted him, managed to topdeck another bolt and played flamebreak and bolted for the last 6 damage.
Weird how I didn't see any sinkholes in all 3 games but perhaps he went for the heavy discard route instead. usually sinkhole plays a big part in this matchup as I don't run many lands and if he manages to kill a couple of mountains, I'd be in trouble.
1-0 (2-1)
Round 2 - Mike (U/B Merfolk)
Game 1: This was actually a fairly close game as the only merfolk he drew were reejereys and cursecatchers. Fortunately, I was able to draw all 3 of my flamebreaks and a volcanic fallout and I was able to get him to waste his counters on my bolts and managed to draw enough land so my flamebreaks don't get countered by cursecatcher. Ended this game with me at 3 life due to me taking 8 damage from my own spells!!
Sideboard: -4 Lava Spike, -1 Fireblast, -1 Price of Progress, +3 Smash to Smithereens, +3 Searing Blaze
Game 2: I got a turn 1 grim lavamancer and thought I had this game in the bag. But then all of a sudden he had 3 creatures on board plus a jitte and all the burn I tried to use on his creatures got countered as well. I could only flamebreak away my own lavamancer plus his army and then he played a mutavault and started equipping it with the jitte and I ended up losing that.
Game 3: I got a turn 1 goblin guide and got some early damage in. He was able to bring in a whole bunch of merfolk that weren't lords and emptied out his hand. I cast fallout to clear the board at the end of his turn and then topdecked a lavamancer while he was at 6 and I had 6 cards in my graveyard. For some reason, he decided to cast a standstill on his turn without playing a threat or mutavault and I just played draw go and lavamancered him for 2 until he died.
2-0 (4-2)
Round 3 - Mike (CounterTop)
Game 1: I had a fairly slow start as I had a mountain and barbarian ring as my only land and when i was tapped out, he played a back to basics on turn 3. I didn't draw another land until the 5th turn and kept burning him until he was at 3. then he played a cunning wish at the end of my turn for pulse of the fields and I was holding a volcanic fallout. Lucky for me, I kept on topdecking burn and he kept on countering them and ended up using a force so he's down to 2!! I still can't kill him though since if i fallout, he'll be able to pulse in response. Again, kept on topdecking burn spells and the end came when I chained him, he pulsed in response and in reponse, i cast volcanic fallout. Look on his face was priceless.
Sideboard: -3 Price of Progress, -3 Flamebreak, +3 Sulfuric Vortex, +3 Boseiju, Who Shelters All b/c he played with all basic lands.
Game 2: I actually had to mull as the only land I had in hand was the Boseiju. But considering the boseiju replaced a spell anyways, I would have had to mull the hand regardless. The 6 card hand was pretty good with 3 lands and the right burn spells. I didn't realize it until turn 2 but I saw that he was pretty landscrewed as he drew all his basics but couldn't get 2 islands. I managed to cast all my 1cc burn spells before he played counterbalance and again, he was at 4 and I had a fallout as my only card in hand. Luckily, I kept on topdecking lavamancers and sulfuric vortexs and he was able to counter the vortexes and EE/plow my lavamancers. The key turn came when he forced a burn spell and knew he was going to topdeck a land so he went down to 3. then he cracked his fetchland and I saw that he had tapped all of his plains and only had islands untapped so I wasn't afraid of pulse anymore and with the fetchland search on the stack, I cast fallout and killed him.
I thought that he got greedy in game 1 in that he didn't cast pulse in response to my burn spells to keep on climbing up in life totals since if i had any burn spells other than fallout, he could have pulsed, and then countered my 2nd burn spell and then let the first burn spell resolve and he'll be at 1. Anyways, it was a totally close match and I didn't expect fallouts to be this amazing when I decided to maindeck them
3-0 (6-2)
Round 4 - Justin (B/R Goblins)
I had to play this round as I kept getting paired down since I probably had the worst tie breakers of all the X-0s. Also, he knocked me out of semifinals the last tournaments we were in so I was out for revenge!
Game 1: This game wasn't very close as I had a fallout and 3 lands in my opening hand so I just kept on burning him and I got him to overextend and managed to kill around 5 goblins and 3 goblin tokens with one fallout. He couldn't really recover from that and I burned him to death afterwards.
Sideboard: -4 Lava Spike, - 1 Price of Progress, -1 Fireblast, +3 Smash to Smithereens, +3 Searing Blaze
Game 2: This game was brutal. I didn't have the greatest spells as there's a whole bunch of 2cc spells. I kept it though since I knew he was going to board in chalice of the void and that's how he beat me the last time. So I played both my 1cc spells and on his turn 2, he cast chalice for 1. I felt ok since i didn't have any more 1cc spells in my hand. 2 turns later, he topdecks another chalice and does chalice for 2! I really didn't expect that as that cuts him off his war marshalls and piledrivers. I thought I still had a chance though since I was starting to topdeck all my fallouts and flamebreaks. Problem is that he kept on drawing warchiefs and chieftains so all his goblins had haste and I was dealing the same amount of damage to both of us so he was winning on the damage race. I lost as he attacked me and I dropped down to 2 and had mana to cast flamebreak to kill the board on my turn.
Game 3: A very quick game as he did a turn 1 vial while I did turn 1 guide, turn 2 guide, bolt him and dropped him down to 11 on turn 2. Problem is that I was mana screwed. I was stuck on 2 land and my hand was full of magma jets and fallouts and he was at 3. Only thing I could do was cast a lavamancer as an additional blocker with my 2 guides and suspended a rift bolt so he knew he was dead next turn. On his turn, he cast his sharpshooter and along with the incinerator, he killed all my blockers but thankfully was only able to deal 15 damage and I was at 19. YES!!
I can't believe that the goblin matchup is always so close even though I have so many boardsweepers.
4-0 (8-3)
Round 5 - Eugene (U/G Survival)
We drew as we were both undefeated. I ended up 1st in the swiss with a 4-0-1 record.
Top 8 turned out to be Goblins, Mono U Control, 4C Control, U/R Landstill, B/G Survival, U/G Survival, Pro Bant and Burn.
Quarterfinals - Adam (Mono U Control)
Game 1: Fairly uneventful game. I didn't have the fastest start as I led out with a turn 1 lavamancer and he played a turn 1 relic and he kept on removing a card in my graveyard before I could get 2 cards in graveyard so I kept on attacking for one and burning him until he got a shackles out and stole the lavamancer. I cast fallout to clear the board and then kept on burning him until he was at 5. I waited until I drew a bolt and he didn't counter it and then i cast fallout to win. he thought I was slow rolling him for the win but I only had 4 land in play and had a price, fireblast and fallout in hand. Price was useless since he's playing all basics and I wasn't going to cast fireblast because if fireblast gets countered, i'd be down to 2 lands in play and I'd either have to cast fallout immediately or risk not being able to cast it.
Sideboard: -3 Price of Progress, -3 Flamebreak, +3 Boseiju, Who Shelters All, +3 Sulfuric Vortex
Game 2: Another uneventful game. I got a quick start with turn 1 guide, turn 2 guide, bolt. I kept on attacking and eventually dropped a boseiju when he was at 4 and I had 2 magma jets in hand and he just conceded.
5-0-1 (10-3)
Top 4 turned out to be B/G Survival, U/G Survival, 4C control and Burn
the top 4 split a mox jet and foiled tarmogoyf as the last quarterfinal match took around 1.5hrs to finish (U/R Landstill vs 4C Control) and none of us really wanted to play anymore after the wait. One of the players really wanted the mox so he gave the rest of us cash. I thought I had a good matchup against 4C control as he was my semifinal match but anything can happen so I figured it was better to get guarenteed money.
Afterthoughts:
I really didn't think that maindeck Volcanic Fallout would be that amazing. It won me 3 matches against control decks and did it's job against merfolk and goblins as well. I thought in the current meta, hellspark elemental just doesn't do enough to impact the game. I'm also not too sure about the lavamancer slot in the deck. It's a great card but with 6 boardsweepers, there were so many times in the day where i had an active lavamancer in play but needed to boardsweep and it would make me not want to play my boardsweeper even though I know I needed to. I'm generally pleased with my sideboard. I never got to use the faerie macabres so I don't know if it's good enough against survival. The goal is to try to slow down survival so I can burn them out before they kill me but if i have to keep mulling until I get faeries in my opening hand, that plan might not work so well.
the legacy regulars so it was a pretty good field. It was 5 rounds, cut to top 8. Here's the decklist
Maindeck
12x Mountain
4x Wooded Foothills
2x Scalding Tarn
1x Barbarian Ring
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Rift Bolt
4x Lava Spike
4x Chain Lightning
4x Magma Jet
3x Price of Progress
3x Incinerate
3x Flamebreak
3x Volcanic Fallout
3x Fireblast
4x Goblin Guide
2x Grim Lavamancer
Sideboard
3x Boseiju, Who Shelters All
3x Searing Blaze
3x Sulfuric Vortex
3x Smash to Smithereens
3x Faerie Macabre
I made some changes to the maindeck and sideboard. In the maindeck, I've replaced the hellspark elementals with the
volcanic fallouts and put the sulfuric vortex in the sideboard in place of the flamebreak. I found that for my meta, the hellspark elemental doesn't do enough and requires me to tap out in the early turns which is not good against merfolk or control. Also, with the amount of aggro in the field these days, I feel that having 6 board sweepers maindeck should be enough. Sulfuric vortex goes back to sideboard since game 1 against aggro, the vortex is a really bad option when you're facing a board full of creatures. For the sideboard, I replaced the sirocco with faerie macabre as I wanted something to deal with vengevines that couldn't be countered. I decided not to have anything against combo as there's too many different types of combo running around and there's not enough sideboard slots to deal with stuff like show and tell or ANT.
Round 1 - Raymond (Eva Green)
Game 1: I lost the die roll (which is something that will happen for the rest of the day). He had to mull to 6 and he ended up going turn 1, swamp, ritual, thoughtseize, therapy, thoughtseize. My hand happened to be goblin guide, lavamancer, 3x lava spike, incinerate, mountain. So I ended up having only a mountain and incinerate in my hand and I haven't even gone to my turn 1 yet. He ended up getting a 3/4 goyf on turn 2 and started to smash. I was actually able to get him down to 7 on the turn before I was going to die and I had an active barbarian ring. Nothing was going to deal 5 damage to him but I told him i'm sure i'm going to topdeck a fireblast and I did. *sigh*.
Sideboard: -3 Price of Progress, +3 Searing Blaze
Game 2: This game wasn't very close, I managed to get him down to 10 life by turn 3 and on my turn 4 I chained, bolted and fireblasted.
Game 3: He had to mull to a slow hand and whiffed on a turn 1 therapy. I was able to get him down fairly low and then he did turn 3 abyssal persecutor which i didn't expect. He was able to hit me once for 6 and then play a 4/5 goyf. Luckily, he was at 9 so at the end of his turn I bolted him, managed to topdeck another bolt and played flamebreak and bolted for the last 6 damage.
Weird how I didn't see any sinkholes in all 3 games but perhaps he went for the heavy discard route instead. usually sinkhole plays a big part in this matchup as I don't run many lands and if he manages to kill a couple of mountains, I'd be in trouble.
1-0 (2-1)
Round 2 - Mike (U/B Merfolk)
Game 1: This was actually a fairly close game as the only merfolk he drew were reejereys and cursecatchers. Fortunately, I was able to draw all 3 of my flamebreaks and a volcanic fallout and I was able to get him to waste his counters on my bolts and managed to draw enough land so my flamebreaks don't get countered by cursecatcher. Ended this game with me at 3 life due to me taking 8 damage from my own spells!!
Sideboard: -4 Lava Spike, -1 Fireblast, -1 Price of Progress, +3 Smash to Smithereens, +3 Searing Blaze
Game 2: I got a turn 1 grim lavamancer and thought I had this game in the bag. But then all of a sudden he had 3 creatures on board plus a jitte and all the burn I tried to use on his creatures got countered as well. I could only flamebreak away my own lavamancer plus his army and then he played a mutavault and started equipping it with the jitte and I ended up losing that.
Game 3: I got a turn 1 goblin guide and got some early damage in. He was able to bring in a whole bunch of merfolk that weren't lords and emptied out his hand. I cast fallout to clear the board at the end of his turn and then topdecked a lavamancer while he was at 6 and I had 6 cards in my graveyard. For some reason, he decided to cast a standstill on his turn without playing a threat or mutavault and I just played draw go and lavamancered him for 2 until he died.
2-0 (4-2)
Round 3 - Mike (CounterTop)
Game 1: I had a fairly slow start as I had a mountain and barbarian ring as my only land and when i was tapped out, he played a back to basics on turn 3. I didn't draw another land until the 5th turn and kept burning him until he was at 3. then he played a cunning wish at the end of my turn for pulse of the fields and I was holding a volcanic fallout. Lucky for me, I kept on topdecking burn and he kept on countering them and ended up using a force so he's down to 2!! I still can't kill him though since if i fallout, he'll be able to pulse in response. Again, kept on topdecking burn spells and the end came when I chained him, he pulsed in response and in reponse, i cast volcanic fallout. Look on his face was priceless.
Sideboard: -3 Price of Progress, -3 Flamebreak, +3 Sulfuric Vortex, +3 Boseiju, Who Shelters All b/c he played with all basic lands.
Game 2: I actually had to mull as the only land I had in hand was the Boseiju. But considering the boseiju replaced a spell anyways, I would have had to mull the hand regardless. The 6 card hand was pretty good with 3 lands and the right burn spells. I didn't realize it until turn 2 but I saw that he was pretty landscrewed as he drew all his basics but couldn't get 2 islands. I managed to cast all my 1cc burn spells before he played counterbalance and again, he was at 4 and I had a fallout as my only card in hand. Luckily, I kept on topdecking lavamancers and sulfuric vortexs and he was able to counter the vortexes and EE/plow my lavamancers. The key turn came when he forced a burn spell and knew he was going to topdeck a land so he went down to 3. then he cracked his fetchland and I saw that he had tapped all of his plains and only had islands untapped so I wasn't afraid of pulse anymore and with the fetchland search on the stack, I cast fallout and killed him.
I thought that he got greedy in game 1 in that he didn't cast pulse in response to my burn spells to keep on climbing up in life totals since if i had any burn spells other than fallout, he could have pulsed, and then countered my 2nd burn spell and then let the first burn spell resolve and he'll be at 1. Anyways, it was a totally close match and I didn't expect fallouts to be this amazing when I decided to maindeck them
3-0 (6-2)
Round 4 - Justin (B/R Goblins)
I had to play this round as I kept getting paired down since I probably had the worst tie breakers of all the X-0s. Also, he knocked me out of semifinals the last tournaments we were in so I was out for revenge!
Game 1: This game wasn't very close as I had a fallout and 3 lands in my opening hand so I just kept on burning him and I got him to overextend and managed to kill around 5 goblins and 3 goblin tokens with one fallout. He couldn't really recover from that and I burned him to death afterwards.
Sideboard: -4 Lava Spike, - 1 Price of Progress, -1 Fireblast, +3 Smash to Smithereens, +3 Searing Blaze
Game 2: This game was brutal. I didn't have the greatest spells as there's a whole bunch of 2cc spells. I kept it though since I knew he was going to board in chalice of the void and that's how he beat me the last time. So I played both my 1cc spells and on his turn 2, he cast chalice for 1. I felt ok since i didn't have any more 1cc spells in my hand. 2 turns later, he topdecks another chalice and does chalice for 2! I really didn't expect that as that cuts him off his war marshalls and piledrivers. I thought I still had a chance though since I was starting to topdeck all my fallouts and flamebreaks. Problem is that he kept on drawing warchiefs and chieftains so all his goblins had haste and I was dealing the same amount of damage to both of us so he was winning on the damage race. I lost as he attacked me and I dropped down to 2 and had mana to cast flamebreak to kill the board on my turn.
Game 3: A very quick game as he did a turn 1 vial while I did turn 1 guide, turn 2 guide, bolt him and dropped him down to 11 on turn 2. Problem is that I was mana screwed. I was stuck on 2 land and my hand was full of magma jets and fallouts and he was at 3. Only thing I could do was cast a lavamancer as an additional blocker with my 2 guides and suspended a rift bolt so he knew he was dead next turn. On his turn, he cast his sharpshooter and along with the incinerator, he killed all my blockers but thankfully was only able to deal 15 damage and I was at 19. YES!!
I can't believe that the goblin matchup is always so close even though I have so many boardsweepers.
4-0 (8-3)
Round 5 - Eugene (U/G Survival)
We drew as we were both undefeated. I ended up 1st in the swiss with a 4-0-1 record.
Top 8 turned out to be Goblins, Mono U Control, 4C Control, U/R Landstill, B/G Survival, U/G Survival, Pro Bant and Burn.
Quarterfinals - Adam (Mono U Control)
Game 1: Fairly uneventful game. I didn't have the fastest start as I led out with a turn 1 lavamancer and he played a turn 1 relic and he kept on removing a card in my graveyard before I could get 2 cards in graveyard so I kept on attacking for one and burning him until he got a shackles out and stole the lavamancer. I cast fallout to clear the board and then kept on burning him until he was at 5. I waited until I drew a bolt and he didn't counter it and then i cast fallout to win. he thought I was slow rolling him for the win but I only had 4 land in play and had a price, fireblast and fallout in hand. Price was useless since he's playing all basics and I wasn't going to cast fireblast because if fireblast gets countered, i'd be down to 2 lands in play and I'd either have to cast fallout immediately or risk not being able to cast it.
Sideboard: -3 Price of Progress, -3 Flamebreak, +3 Boseiju, Who Shelters All, +3 Sulfuric Vortex
Game 2: Another uneventful game. I got a quick start with turn 1 guide, turn 2 guide, bolt. I kept on attacking and eventually dropped a boseiju when he was at 4 and I had 2 magma jets in hand and he just conceded.
5-0-1 (10-3)
Top 4 turned out to be B/G Survival, U/G Survival, 4C control and Burn
the top 4 split a mox jet and foiled tarmogoyf as the last quarterfinal match took around 1.5hrs to finish (U/R Landstill vs 4C Control) and none of us really wanted to play anymore after the wait. One of the players really wanted the mox so he gave the rest of us cash. I thought I had a good matchup against 4C control as he was my semifinal match but anything can happen so I figured it was better to get guarenteed money.
Afterthoughts:
I really didn't think that maindeck Volcanic Fallout would be that amazing. It won me 3 matches against control decks and did it's job against merfolk and goblins as well. I thought in the current meta, hellspark elemental just doesn't do enough to impact the game. I'm also not too sure about the lavamancer slot in the deck. It's a great card but with 6 boardsweepers, there were so many times in the day where i had an active lavamancer in play but needed to boardsweep and it would make me not want to play my boardsweeper even though I know I needed to. I'm generally pleased with my sideboard. I never got to use the faerie macabres so I don't know if it's good enough against survival. The goal is to try to slow down survival so I can burn them out before they kill me but if i have to keep mulling until I get faeries in my opening hand, that plan might not work so well.