pocari79
01-17-2011, 03:50 PM
Went to a tournament at Hairy T North on Saturday, Jan 15th. Kind of a low turnout but that's probably because there was a PTQ the same day and a snowstorm overnight. We did get enough for 12 people which meant 4 rounds. I decided to play the ooze deck again. Hopefully I won't go 1-3 again.
Decklist:
4 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Marsh Flats
3 Underground Sea
2 Swamp
2 Island
2 City of Traitors
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
2 Chrome Mox
1 Mox Diamond
4 Duress
3 Thoughtseize
4 Personal Tutor
4 Lim-dul's Vault
4 Brainstorm
1 Echoing Truth
4 Buried Alive
3 Reanimate
1 Exhume
2 Shallow Grave
1 Necrotic Ooze
1 Triskelion
1 Phyrexian Devourer
1 Putrid Imp
Sideboard
4 Show and Tell
4 Force of Will
2 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Progenitus
1 Thoughtseize
1 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth
I made several changes from the first time I played the deck. I added the moxes this time as I felt like I needed the acceleration really badly regardless of the card disadvantage. I found that a lot of times, I drew a lot of land which is weird so that's why I added a mox diamond so it can help me out there. The city of traitors may look really weird but with such a low land count, it's like there's no drawback. Plus in testing, i found that a lot of times i'm short on one mana and I'd have to wait an additional turn to combo which is pretty bad.
I also totally changed the sideboard First time I played this, I just ran hate against the graveyard hate but found out it slowed down the deck to the point where I never won a sideboarded game but I was winning my game 1s. I split the numbers of Emrakul and Progenitus because there's a lot of Jace TMS and Oblivion Rings in my meta.
Anyways, on with the report!
Round 1 - James (Mono U Control)
Game 1: I'm on the draw and my opening 7 was pretty hideous. Ended up mulling to 6 and I kept a hand with a 2x petal, personal tutor, fetchland, duress and reanimate. Definate keep there. He led off with an island. I drew another fetchland so I went land, fetch a swamp, petal, petal, duress. He had 3 islands, Force, Donate and Back to Basics. Took the Force and then I cracked a petal and cast personal tutor and grabbed buried alive. He did nothing during his turn other than play his 2nd island. I drew a lim-dul's vault. Played my other fetch, got an island, cracked the petal and tapped out to play buried alive and it resolved. Grabbed the ooze, triskelion and devourer and passed the turn. he did nothing on his turn again other than playing another island. I drew a ritual. I cast the dark ritual and it resolved. Cast reanimate and it got Forced removing back to basics. with the remaining black, tapped my island and cast the lim-dul's vault and it resolved. I found a pile that had another reanimate and a personal tutor so I stacked it so I drew reanimate and then personal tutor. He did nothing on his turn again and I cast reanimate and it resolved. Showed him how the combo worked and we're on to game 2.
Sideboard: I literally boarded everything in for every one of my matches so I'm only going to list this once.
-4 Buried Alive, -3 Reanimate, -1 exhume, -2 Shallow Grave, -4 creatures.
+4 Show and Tell, +4 Force of Will, +2 Emrakul, +2 Progenitus, +1 Thoughtseize, +1 Echoing Truth
Game 2: I opened up with these 7 cards. personal tutor, fetch, dark ritual, chrome mox, 2xemrakul, duress. I figured I could do turn 2 show and tell with this hand but then I'd have to go off without any sort of disruption or protection. On the other hand, I couldn't tell when i was going to get another mana source that's not a mox. Plus to give blue decks more time to draw cards is like very bad for combo decks so I decided to keep. He played an island turn 1 and I went fetch for island, mox, imprint duress, personal tutor. It resolved so I went for Show and Tell. He did nothing on his turn 2 except for playing another land. My turn, i went dark ritual off the mox, tap island for blue and cast show and tell with B floating. It resolved and I put Emrakul and he put illusions into play for some reason. Then turn 3 as he was about to draw he realized that he just died since he needed to pay upkeep.
1-0 (2-0)
Round 2 - Justin (G/B/u Affinity)
Game 1: I'm on the play and I drew the following: 2xduress, buried alive, mox diamond, reanimate, lim-dul's vault, personal tutor. Had to mull since even if i did draw a land, there's no way I can cast buried alive any time soon. This would not be the first time where I wish personal tutor can fetch dark rituals. My next 6 was 5 land, petal. Mulled again and my 5 cards were pretty bad too. Fetch, devourer, personal tutor, petal, echoing truth. Felt like I had to keep as mulling to 4 was like losing but this was pretty much a mull to 4 as well with the devourer. Basically, i did nothing for the first 3 turns and even drew my ooze on the 2nd turn and his first turn, he was able to glimpse and played 3 memnites and a frogmite and basically i lost to memnite and frogmite beats.
Game 2: drew my 7 and this is what it looked like. 2x Petal, show and tell, progenitus, force of will, brainstorm, lim-dul's vault. I was thinking to myself that if i could draw into any mana source I would be good to go so I kept the hand. What ended up happening was that I didn't draw a land until my 2nd draw and by that time, he already had 2 frogmites, 2 workers, 1 memnite, 1 opal and 3 artifact land. he was going to cast throughtcast and only had 1 card in hand and I was thinking, if he drew a ravager or plating, i'm dead so I forced the thoughtcast and he ended up having the ravager as his last card in hand. *sigh*. I played show and tell into progenitus next turn but it was too late as he could attack with everybody and move the counters around to the creature i didn't block with progenitus.
1-1 (2-2)
Round 3 - Hugo (Countertop Bant)
Game 1: I'm on the play again but I had to mull the first 2 hands as there was either only a search spell or a combo piece but no search spell. My 5 hander was pretty bad as it was 4 lands and a petal but I decided that against countertop, I needed mana to at least try to cast the spells I can topdeck. I didn't do much for the first couple of turns and he played at turn 2 counterbalance and in response I brainstormed and I actually got a ritual and reanimate. put back stuff i didn't want, broke fetch and shuffled. I actually drew a buried alive and cast it and it went through the blind counterbalance. Tried to reanimeate but that didn't work. A couple of turns passed and I tried to lim-dul's vault and he got me with a blind counterbalance again and next turn he played the top and that's it. Going to game 2.
Game 2: Drew my 7 and it contained island, personal tutor, city of traitors, progenitus, 2x dark ritual, lim-dul's vault. Again, this is a perfect turn 2 show and tell but there's just no disruption. He didn't see the city of traitors in game 1 though so I thought if he thought my combo was slow, he wouldn't keep a hand with a counterspell. I ended up keeping it and went island, personal tutor. It resolved so I got show and tell. His turn 1, he played misty, fetch tropical and cast a hierarch. My turn 2, drew the show and tell, played city of traitors and cast show and tell. It resolved and I put progenitus into play while he played a pridemage. He drew and then showed me it was a Force. Played another hierarch and pridemage and then conceded and he couldn't possibly deal enough damage before i killed him.
Game 3: I had to mull my opening 7 and my 6 cards were: fetch, petal, personal tutor, emrakul, progenitus, dark ritual. I figured I can keep this hand as at least I had daze protection. He went turn 1 fetch, tropical cast hierarch. I drew another fetch which was great. Played the first fetch, got an island, played lotus petal and cast personal tutor. He decided to return his tropical to daze and I paid with the petal. He had nothing else so the tutor resolved and got a show and tell. next turn, he replayed the tropical and did nothing. I drew the show and tell and played fetch, cracked it for a swamp. cast dark ritual and it resolves. cast show and tell with B floating and it resolved. I played an emrakul and he played a war monk. He drew his card and he showed me it was a Force again and then just conceded.
2-1 (4-3)
Round 4 - Wilkin (EVA Green/w)
Game 1: I was on the play. I mulled my initial 7 and got this 6 hander: 2x petal, city of traitors, buried alive, personal tutor, duress. Felt like I had to keep this as I could get a fast kill if I could draw into another mana source. However, if has turn 1 discard effect, my hand would be quite bad. I decided to risk it anyways so I went turn 1 petal, city of traitors, crack petal and cast buried alive and then played the 2nd petal. His turn, he wasted my city of traitors. My turn, I drew a swamp!! Played the swamp, cast duress and he didn't have anything threatening so I took a swords to plowshares and then sacced the petal to play personal tutor and grabbed reanimate. he just played a land during his turn. I drew the reanimate and reanimated the ooze and showed him the win.
Game 2: My hand was fetch, petal, 2x progenitus, lim-dul's vault, force of will, brainstorm. Decided to keep as I can lim-dul's for mana and show and tell if I really needed to plus I had a counterspell with blue cards! His turn 1, he goes fetch for a bayou, thoughtseize. I had to force this because if he takes my vault, i'm pretty much dead and I've learned not to rely that much on brainstorm. So I forced and pitched brainstorm. He then plays Engineereed Explosives at 0. hmm.. that puts my petals at risk. so now it's either play them or get them duressed/thoughtseized. great! My turn, I draw another petal which was pretty good. I decided to play the fetch, petal and passed. He played his 2nd land and decided to blow up explosives. I fetched in response, got an island and cracked petal for black and played lim-dul's vault. found a pile with city of traitors, show and tell and
emrakul and personal tutor. Stacked it so I'd draw the city, show and tell, personal tutor and emrakul in that order. Passed the turn and he played a land and then a deed. I drew the city of traitors and passed. I don't remember him doing much on his turn. Next turn, I drew the show and tell. Played city of traitors, cast show and tell. I put progenitus in play and he played tarmogoyf. His turn, he drew and then just conceded.
3-1 (6-3)
and that's how I made top 4! Rest of the top 4 was U/R/W Landstill, Dredge and G/B/U Affinity. We decided to split the prizes and I ended up getting a taiga.
Afterthoughts
- You really need to aggressively mulligan for this deck. If the opening hand doesn't have a combo piece and a tutor piece and some fast mana, it needs to be shipped back. Sometimes you get the situation like what happened to me in Round 2 but that's the risk of playing combo. and no, brainstorm doesn't count as a tutor piece. I've been burned by keeping the 1 brainstorm hand and I'd brainstorm on turn 2 and don't get the missing piece and then I'll lose because I know I'll be drawing junk for the 2 turns. I'm wondering if there's another cheap tutor out there that can replace the brainstorm.
- City of Traitors were great. I wouldn't up the count though as you still need color mana pretty badly. but
they're staying in for sure.
- Maindeck Echoing Truth. The only reason I included it was because my meta used to have a lot of maindeck graveyard hate. I didn't see any today and didn't even use it at all so I'm not sure if i even need it. Will have to think about what to replace it with if I do replace it.
- I was also considering upping the count of emrakul/progenitus in the sideboard as there's only 4 ways to search for the creatures but there's 8 ways to search for the show and tell so it makes more sense to try to increase the # of fatties so I get a higher chance of drawing them in the opening hand and then the rest of my tutors can try to find the show and tell.
- Regarding the moxes, I still don't know if i want to keep them in. I didn't really draw them today so I couldn't see if they had a positive or negative impact. Will have to test more on this.
- Putrid Imp really should be an Aquamoeba. not that it matters too much though.
Decklist:
4 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Marsh Flats
3 Underground Sea
2 Swamp
2 Island
2 City of Traitors
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
2 Chrome Mox
1 Mox Diamond
4 Duress
3 Thoughtseize
4 Personal Tutor
4 Lim-dul's Vault
4 Brainstorm
1 Echoing Truth
4 Buried Alive
3 Reanimate
1 Exhume
2 Shallow Grave
1 Necrotic Ooze
1 Triskelion
1 Phyrexian Devourer
1 Putrid Imp
Sideboard
4 Show and Tell
4 Force of Will
2 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Progenitus
1 Thoughtseize
1 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth
I made several changes from the first time I played the deck. I added the moxes this time as I felt like I needed the acceleration really badly regardless of the card disadvantage. I found that a lot of times, I drew a lot of land which is weird so that's why I added a mox diamond so it can help me out there. The city of traitors may look really weird but with such a low land count, it's like there's no drawback. Plus in testing, i found that a lot of times i'm short on one mana and I'd have to wait an additional turn to combo which is pretty bad.
I also totally changed the sideboard First time I played this, I just ran hate against the graveyard hate but found out it slowed down the deck to the point where I never won a sideboarded game but I was winning my game 1s. I split the numbers of Emrakul and Progenitus because there's a lot of Jace TMS and Oblivion Rings in my meta.
Anyways, on with the report!
Round 1 - James (Mono U Control)
Game 1: I'm on the draw and my opening 7 was pretty hideous. Ended up mulling to 6 and I kept a hand with a 2x petal, personal tutor, fetchland, duress and reanimate. Definate keep there. He led off with an island. I drew another fetchland so I went land, fetch a swamp, petal, petal, duress. He had 3 islands, Force, Donate and Back to Basics. Took the Force and then I cracked a petal and cast personal tutor and grabbed buried alive. He did nothing during his turn other than play his 2nd island. I drew a lim-dul's vault. Played my other fetch, got an island, cracked the petal and tapped out to play buried alive and it resolved. Grabbed the ooze, triskelion and devourer and passed the turn. he did nothing on his turn again other than playing another island. I drew a ritual. I cast the dark ritual and it resolved. Cast reanimate and it got Forced removing back to basics. with the remaining black, tapped my island and cast the lim-dul's vault and it resolved. I found a pile that had another reanimate and a personal tutor so I stacked it so I drew reanimate and then personal tutor. He did nothing on his turn again and I cast reanimate and it resolved. Showed him how the combo worked and we're on to game 2.
Sideboard: I literally boarded everything in for every one of my matches so I'm only going to list this once.
-4 Buried Alive, -3 Reanimate, -1 exhume, -2 Shallow Grave, -4 creatures.
+4 Show and Tell, +4 Force of Will, +2 Emrakul, +2 Progenitus, +1 Thoughtseize, +1 Echoing Truth
Game 2: I opened up with these 7 cards. personal tutor, fetch, dark ritual, chrome mox, 2xemrakul, duress. I figured I could do turn 2 show and tell with this hand but then I'd have to go off without any sort of disruption or protection. On the other hand, I couldn't tell when i was going to get another mana source that's not a mox. Plus to give blue decks more time to draw cards is like very bad for combo decks so I decided to keep. He played an island turn 1 and I went fetch for island, mox, imprint duress, personal tutor. It resolved so I went for Show and Tell. He did nothing on his turn 2 except for playing another land. My turn, i went dark ritual off the mox, tap island for blue and cast show and tell with B floating. It resolved and I put Emrakul and he put illusions into play for some reason. Then turn 3 as he was about to draw he realized that he just died since he needed to pay upkeep.
1-0 (2-0)
Round 2 - Justin (G/B/u Affinity)
Game 1: I'm on the play and I drew the following: 2xduress, buried alive, mox diamond, reanimate, lim-dul's vault, personal tutor. Had to mull since even if i did draw a land, there's no way I can cast buried alive any time soon. This would not be the first time where I wish personal tutor can fetch dark rituals. My next 6 was 5 land, petal. Mulled again and my 5 cards were pretty bad too. Fetch, devourer, personal tutor, petal, echoing truth. Felt like I had to keep as mulling to 4 was like losing but this was pretty much a mull to 4 as well with the devourer. Basically, i did nothing for the first 3 turns and even drew my ooze on the 2nd turn and his first turn, he was able to glimpse and played 3 memnites and a frogmite and basically i lost to memnite and frogmite beats.
Game 2: drew my 7 and this is what it looked like. 2x Petal, show and tell, progenitus, force of will, brainstorm, lim-dul's vault. I was thinking to myself that if i could draw into any mana source I would be good to go so I kept the hand. What ended up happening was that I didn't draw a land until my 2nd draw and by that time, he already had 2 frogmites, 2 workers, 1 memnite, 1 opal and 3 artifact land. he was going to cast throughtcast and only had 1 card in hand and I was thinking, if he drew a ravager or plating, i'm dead so I forced the thoughtcast and he ended up having the ravager as his last card in hand. *sigh*. I played show and tell into progenitus next turn but it was too late as he could attack with everybody and move the counters around to the creature i didn't block with progenitus.
1-1 (2-2)
Round 3 - Hugo (Countertop Bant)
Game 1: I'm on the play again but I had to mull the first 2 hands as there was either only a search spell or a combo piece but no search spell. My 5 hander was pretty bad as it was 4 lands and a petal but I decided that against countertop, I needed mana to at least try to cast the spells I can topdeck. I didn't do much for the first couple of turns and he played at turn 2 counterbalance and in response I brainstormed and I actually got a ritual and reanimate. put back stuff i didn't want, broke fetch and shuffled. I actually drew a buried alive and cast it and it went through the blind counterbalance. Tried to reanimeate but that didn't work. A couple of turns passed and I tried to lim-dul's vault and he got me with a blind counterbalance again and next turn he played the top and that's it. Going to game 2.
Game 2: Drew my 7 and it contained island, personal tutor, city of traitors, progenitus, 2x dark ritual, lim-dul's vault. Again, this is a perfect turn 2 show and tell but there's just no disruption. He didn't see the city of traitors in game 1 though so I thought if he thought my combo was slow, he wouldn't keep a hand with a counterspell. I ended up keeping it and went island, personal tutor. It resolved so I got show and tell. His turn 1, he played misty, fetch tropical and cast a hierarch. My turn 2, drew the show and tell, played city of traitors and cast show and tell. It resolved and I put progenitus into play while he played a pridemage. He drew and then showed me it was a Force. Played another hierarch and pridemage and then conceded and he couldn't possibly deal enough damage before i killed him.
Game 3: I had to mull my opening 7 and my 6 cards were: fetch, petal, personal tutor, emrakul, progenitus, dark ritual. I figured I can keep this hand as at least I had daze protection. He went turn 1 fetch, tropical cast hierarch. I drew another fetch which was great. Played the first fetch, got an island, played lotus petal and cast personal tutor. He decided to return his tropical to daze and I paid with the petal. He had nothing else so the tutor resolved and got a show and tell. next turn, he replayed the tropical and did nothing. I drew the show and tell and played fetch, cracked it for a swamp. cast dark ritual and it resolves. cast show and tell with B floating and it resolved. I played an emrakul and he played a war monk. He drew his card and he showed me it was a Force again and then just conceded.
2-1 (4-3)
Round 4 - Wilkin (EVA Green/w)
Game 1: I was on the play. I mulled my initial 7 and got this 6 hander: 2x petal, city of traitors, buried alive, personal tutor, duress. Felt like I had to keep this as I could get a fast kill if I could draw into another mana source. However, if has turn 1 discard effect, my hand would be quite bad. I decided to risk it anyways so I went turn 1 petal, city of traitors, crack petal and cast buried alive and then played the 2nd petal. His turn, he wasted my city of traitors. My turn, I drew a swamp!! Played the swamp, cast duress and he didn't have anything threatening so I took a swords to plowshares and then sacced the petal to play personal tutor and grabbed reanimate. he just played a land during his turn. I drew the reanimate and reanimated the ooze and showed him the win.
Game 2: My hand was fetch, petal, 2x progenitus, lim-dul's vault, force of will, brainstorm. Decided to keep as I can lim-dul's for mana and show and tell if I really needed to plus I had a counterspell with blue cards! His turn 1, he goes fetch for a bayou, thoughtseize. I had to force this because if he takes my vault, i'm pretty much dead and I've learned not to rely that much on brainstorm. So I forced and pitched brainstorm. He then plays Engineereed Explosives at 0. hmm.. that puts my petals at risk. so now it's either play them or get them duressed/thoughtseized. great! My turn, I draw another petal which was pretty good. I decided to play the fetch, petal and passed. He played his 2nd land and decided to blow up explosives. I fetched in response, got an island and cracked petal for black and played lim-dul's vault. found a pile with city of traitors, show and tell and
emrakul and personal tutor. Stacked it so I'd draw the city, show and tell, personal tutor and emrakul in that order. Passed the turn and he played a land and then a deed. I drew the city of traitors and passed. I don't remember him doing much on his turn. Next turn, I drew the show and tell. Played city of traitors, cast show and tell. I put progenitus in play and he played tarmogoyf. His turn, he drew and then just conceded.
3-1 (6-3)
and that's how I made top 4! Rest of the top 4 was U/R/W Landstill, Dredge and G/B/U Affinity. We decided to split the prizes and I ended up getting a taiga.
Afterthoughts
- You really need to aggressively mulligan for this deck. If the opening hand doesn't have a combo piece and a tutor piece and some fast mana, it needs to be shipped back. Sometimes you get the situation like what happened to me in Round 2 but that's the risk of playing combo. and no, brainstorm doesn't count as a tutor piece. I've been burned by keeping the 1 brainstorm hand and I'd brainstorm on turn 2 and don't get the missing piece and then I'll lose because I know I'll be drawing junk for the 2 turns. I'm wondering if there's another cheap tutor out there that can replace the brainstorm.
- City of Traitors were great. I wouldn't up the count though as you still need color mana pretty badly. but
they're staying in for sure.
- Maindeck Echoing Truth. The only reason I included it was because my meta used to have a lot of maindeck graveyard hate. I didn't see any today and didn't even use it at all so I'm not sure if i even need it. Will have to think about what to replace it with if I do replace it.
- I was also considering upping the count of emrakul/progenitus in the sideboard as there's only 4 ways to search for the creatures but there's 8 ways to search for the show and tell so it makes more sense to try to increase the # of fatties so I get a higher chance of drawing them in the opening hand and then the rest of my tutors can try to find the show and tell.
- Regarding the moxes, I still don't know if i want to keep them in. I didn't really draw them today so I couldn't see if they had a positive or negative impact. Will have to test more on this.
- Putrid Imp really should be an Aquamoeba. not that it matters too much though.