IsThisACatInAHat?
08-15-2011, 04:04 AM
This weekend was Jupiter Games' August NELC qualifier tournament for the 2012 series. Four of us drove up Friday, picked up some cards when we got there around midnight, then found our hotel to crash for the night. As usual, in the days before the trip I'd gone through half a dozen decks I wanted to play (rather, didn't really want to play) and still wasn't happy. Originally, I intended to run BUGstill or NO RUG, but neither felt like they did what I wanted to be doing and our Thursday test session left me aggravated trying to find something I liked. When a teammate suggested "something with Stifle," I said verbatim, "I will never play Stifle in my 75 for the rest of my MTG career. That card fucking sucks."
Friday morning I woke up early to scour the Interwebs and read back through lists I'd already seen, including the results from the July qualifier. One of my friends had made top 8 then, and after he ID'd in the final round with his opponent, the three of us went to Wendys to hang out before top 8 started (I'd since dropped). His opponent told me about his deck and how much he liked it. The idea seemed OK, but I wasn't personally interested- "Esper Team America" or something. Team Fireball had tried it for Providence, but LSV said the mana just didn't work and I tend to figure LSV knows better than I would about MTG matters, so I wrote it off in my mind. The list this guy had was different, but ran Stifle and sounded mediocre at best.
Aaanyway, back to Friday. I reread the list and it seemed to have exactly what I thought I wanted: a highly disruptive, pro-active game plan in an aggro-control shell that was strong against unfair decks and had decent game against fair decks. It also had 4 Stifle. Desperate for something, I took apart UW Stoneblade and BUGstill for the pieces, traded for 2 Scrublands when we got to Jupiter (since naturally, Scrubland is the only dual I owned 0 copies of) and went to sleep, intent on playing my first game with the deck in round 1. Or as my friends will tell you, "the usual." The only thing I touched was the sideboard, which clearly needed work. I made some snap decisions and wrote it down, figuring if I ever played the deck again I’d work it out then. Fittingly, I named it Fun Police because of how disruptive it is, (hopefully) stopping opponents from ever doing anything fun that they want to do. So much for never running Stifle.
In the morning, 69 people showed up for 7 rounds of swiss with a cut to top 8. My is linked here (http://sales.jupitergamesonline.com/articles/2011/08/top-8-deck-august-legacy-qualifier).
Round 1 vs. NO RUG
G1: He leads with t1 Lavamancer and eventually sticks a goyf while I don't really do anything. I need to kill the Lavamancer so I can Clique him and hopefully stabilize the board. My StP eats a Misstep, I have to Clique anyway and he shoots it down, then goyf just kills me. "Step 1: Do nothing. Step 2: Die." Sweet deck.
G2: T1 Thoughtseize takes a goyf, I Daze or Force a second and he's out of gas. Eventually I hardcast Batterskull, then equip it with SoFaF and kill him. No Stoneforge in sight. Whatever works I guess.
G3: Ghastly Demise hits t1 Hierarch, he has no t2 play and I follow up with Hymn taking goyf/ Clique leaving him with trop. Nice card. I land a Tombstalker and win.
1-0 matches, 2-1 games
Round 2 vs. Dredge
G1: T1 Putrid Imp on the play pitches Bridge, Ichorid, Stinkweed. He actually missed an opportunity to dredge at some point, but it doesn't really matter; by turn 3 or 4 he has three Bridges in the top 15 or so cards and I'm dead before I can really do anything.
G2: I mull to 6 with a Leyline + Misstep and we play draw-go while I wait for 5 lands to cast Batterskull. He Careful Studies 3 or 4 times, but never hits an out and dies.
G3: Again mull to 6 with a Leyline, this time with Force but only a Wasteland for lands. He snap kept this game, probably because of land + answer. T1 Nature's Claim gets the Force and he follows up with Tireless Tribe, which beats me down for 4 turns until I find lands to cast SFM and Stalker.
2-0 matches, 4-2 games
Round 3 vs. Esper Jace Control
G1: My opponent casts t2 Bob, which I tap out to Swords with Misstep backup. I had watched him play the end of round 2 and saw Counterspell + Jace, so tapping out seemed fine. Daze on Swords rocked my world until I topdecked a second one immediately and killed it. He was on all answers after that, but no real gas. Hymn ate Counterspell, a pair of SFMs both ate Swords and when he finally got one of his own, I Stifled the tutor trigger. Eventually I stuck Batterskull + SoFaF and Dazed his Jace off the top.
G2: My t1 Thoughtseize triggered a Brainstorm then resolved revealing… 6 lands. I waited two turns to try a Hymn, which got Counterspelled. He untapped, played Jace, Brainstormed. My Jace traded with his and he kept making land drops while I beat him down with a Tombstalker. Apparently both his Brainstorms (real one and one from Jace) drew three lands apiece. Despite a poor performance, the deck looked sweet. He let me look through it after and I’ll definitely be brewing up my own to try out in the future.
3-0 matches, 6-2 games
Round 4 vs. UW Stoneblade
G1: He keeps 6 with just Plains on the play, but only misses one land drop before he hits a Wasteland. I work through 2 Swords and a Standstill with SFM and Clique then land a Tombstalker. He falls to 7 before resolving SFM for Batterskull and to 2 before he gets to attack with it. Up to 6, down to 1. He taps out for Jace, I Stifle the bounce on Tombstalker and we’re off to game 2.
G2: I keep 2 Stifle, 2 Thoughtseize, SFM, Daze, Delta on the draw. Fittingly, I don’t draw land for multiple turns while he develops his board into SFM, Batterskull, Jace, Standstill. That hand could’ve been awesome. But it wasn’t.
G3: My 7 is decent, but wants a Hymn. I draw it immediately after he resolves t2 SFM on the draw for Batterskull. It resolves, hitting Wrath and Batterskull (again, nice card) and his SFM beats with Manriki Gusari until a Tombstalker comes to change the math. I land a Jace to seal his fate even further.
4-0 matches, 8-3 games
Round 5 vs. Terrageddon
G1: I mull into a good 6 and get a quick Clique revealing Sylvan Library, Terravore, 2x Armageddon and lands. I’d never seen this deck before, but cycle Library and figure I’m fine. He plays a 2/2 Terravore and passes. I play Tombstalker, attack with Clique and pass. No way I’m losing this race. Then, he Armageddons (I have Force but no blue card) and attacks with his 10/10 lhurgoyf. No way I’m winning this race. 2 bricks later I’m dead.
G2: I keep a decent hand and we trade my disruption for his land/ guys until my resolved Clique sees Maze, Swords, Loaming Shaman. Keep it. Clique eats the Swords and Shaman gets an Edict. I resolve a Tombstalker, SoFaF and Jace over the course of several turns, while he gets an Elspeth. Jace unsummons tokens while equipped Tombstalker beats for retarded damage.
G3: I mull to 5 on the draw with (I think) Edict, Daze, Waste and 2 other lands. My first draw is Thoughtseize (runner 1) for his Scavenging Ooze to take him off of a turn 2 play, though he’s still got KotR and Terravore. He plays t3 Knight, I draw Swords for my turn (runner 2). Follow up with t4 Terravore, I draw Swords for my turn (runner 3). He stops casting threats and we play draw-go until I start drawing threats: a Tombstalker and 2 SFM, followed by a third Swords for his second Knight (runner 4). Mull to 5 turns into a complete blowout the other way. I want to say I played tight (which I believe I did, even if I made some mistakes), but I also drew like god. Just when I thought the wheels had fallen off…
5-0 matches, 10-4 games
Round 6 vs. NO RUG
Unfortunately, I’m paired down. Instead of drawing twice (7 rounds of swiss), I’m forced to play because my opponent needs the win-and-in. He also (understandably) declines to draw.
G1: I start with a Usea and Waste his first 2 lands, hoping to mana screw him. He just keeps playing lands, so I try to get aggressive. I EOT Clique, he responds with Clique, cycling one of my Tombstalkers. I cycle Daze, then tap out for Tombstalker and SoFaF. Equipped stalker gets there.
G2: He resolves a t2 Sylvan Library and we trade cards back and forth for a while until I’ve got 2 SFM and he’s got Clique in play. Batterskull ate an Ancient Grudge, so I’m stuck with Perish, Edict and SoFaF. I try not to use them, hoping to draw into an answer for the Clique trading 3 for my 2 from Squire beats. Eventually I’m forced to play the Edict, he Counterspells and I topdeck a Clique, cycling his second Clique and leaving Natural Order, Bolt, Sylvan. Perish takes a goyf and Dryad Arbor. Next turn he taps out for something so I SFM the SoFaF, equip it to the other Mystic and hit him with it, then Thoughtseize his Natural Order. Flashbacked Grudge gets my Sword, but Bolt targeting Mystic gets Misstepped. I’m eventually at 3, he’s at 2 with lethal Squires on board. He’s got none in the grip to my Thoughtseize. EOT fetch for Arbor, Sylvan Library finds Natural Order off the top and I’m on two outs, either remaining Edict or Perish. It’s a Flooded Strand, bummer. Naturally, the next card down is Brainstorm with Perish just under it.
G3: T1 Thoughtseize sees 2 Hierarch, Clique, JTMS, REB, Volc, Misty. What a fucking hand. I have a Clique and Jace of my own, but not much else. I need to get that REB out so I can force him to Jace my Jace, so I take his Clique. Sure enough, my Clique eats REB and Jace resolves, giving me a Brainstorm before he plays his own to kill them both. At this point, I feel firmly in control because he’s been forced to spend his turns answering all my threats by depleting his and I’ve got Edict, Ghastly Demise still left from my opener. I resolve Tombstalker, hit twice and he resolves Natural Order. EOT Edict draws some ire and my demon flies in for the W.
6-0 matches, 12-5 games
Round 7 vs. Belcher
Finally, I can ID. And I definitely want to see Belcher in the 8.
I’m first after Swiss (as the only undefeated forced to play 6 rounds) with 19 points. I get paired against 2012 NELC series point leader Geoff Smelski for the quarterfinals. Unfortunately, he gets a game 1 loss for mis-reging his deck. I think he’s usually on NO RUG, but today he played NO Bant, so when he wrote 4 Wooded Foothills, he clearly meant 4 Windswept Heath. I’ve been there before, so as much as the free win benefits me, I really wasn’t happy about it. It’s just a shitty way to get there. I felt pretty bad, although it helped when I looked back at the standings before round 7 because I noticed he was 15th with 6 other X-2s ahead of him. They literally all had to draw with one another in order for him to make it, since if any of them won they’d have better breakers. At least 2 of those matches were at one-turn-to-lethal board states where someone refused to scoop. I guess in the grand scheme of things, making top 8 in the first place was enough luck for one day.
Quarterfinals vs. NO Bant
G2: I have a Stifle/ Daze/ Hymn hand on the draw. That seemed to make a world of difference, since I was exactly one step behind each step of the way. It only got worse when I was forced to Daze a Tarmogoyf because I didn’t have an answer or a threat and couldn’t guarantee finding one in the four turns it would take to kill me. We fight back and forth, putting ourselves to 11 and 14. He taps out for the Natural Order on turn 5 or 6 and I scoop to no outs.
G3: I keep a good hand that gets much better when I topdeck a Hymn on turn 2. He Forces, pitching Clique. I draw another one, leaving him with one card and crippled. I follow up with Tombstalker and he plays a goyf alongside Hierarch to race. He figured he was “dead if I have it anyway” (which he was) and plays his last card, another Hierarch. I untap and Perish his board, connecting 4 times with the demon to advance to the semis.
Semifinals vs. UW Stoneblade (same opponent from round 4 and the exact last person I wanted to play against in an elimination round)
We discuss the split, neither of us has a preference. I feel like I’m unfavored (Hymn deck vs. Standstill deck) but grow a pair and say, “let’s play for $300”
G1: I mull an ok hand because I don’t like it, drawing the stone cold nuts… from 2008. Delta, Ponder, Hymn, Waste, 2 Stifle. I really don’t like this kind of hand because it illustrates exactly why Stifle-Waste and Threshold strategies suck now. In a world where everyone plays 18 (nonbasic) lands, this hand is sweet. Against 24 lands, Jace and Standstill, this hand blows. I keep anyway and Ponder into another Stifle. As expected, he plays carefully around Daze and Stifle, always fetching with Misstep backup. Pretty soon he’s up on cards and I start drawing blanks when I need runner-runner-runner just to stay in it. He plays SFM, Jace and Standstill successively before I scoop.
G2: This game went on for 50 minutes. It was the most epic game I played all day, eating through about 35 cards of my library. I don’t remember all of it because so much went on and everyone was watching (the other semifinal was Belcher vs. Deadguy, so that was over before we finished our first game). What I do remember is highlights:
-The early midgame revolved around multiple SFMs fetching various equipments: one Batterskull apiece, my SoFaF and his Manriki-Gusari. I resolved Jace and chumped with various creatures (SFM, Clique) to keep Manriki’d Mishra’s Factory from killing him. Eventually they did anyway, but I found my second Jace and waited until I could Swords one and Waste the other before I cast him.
-At one point I Thoughtseized him when he had two cards in hand, revealing 2 Jaces and taking one. I Clique on his draw step and saw a freshly drawn Standstill. Since he had double Factory and two equipments, I was forced to cycle that. I immediately drew into Hymn for the second Jace, though. This happened sometime between when I lost my first Jace and drew my second one.
-My second Jace got the opportunity to fateseal him when he had no cards in hand and by then I was sure I’d won. I left cards on top a couple times until shipping a Clique to the bottom. At my EOT, he played a freshly drawn Clique. Major bummer. It eventually killed Jace then picked up Manriki-Gusari and Batterskull, forcing me to chump in order not to die. In hindsight, I think I should’ve chumped with Tombstalker immediately to give me an extra Brainstorm with Jace. I had about 15 cards left in my library, of which two were Swords and one was another Tombstalker. It’s more likely I win with fateseal than damage at that point, which is the opposite conclusion I came to in-game. Instead, Jace died and I drew a pair of Hymns while Clique beat me dead.
Thus ended my tournament at 3rd place. Totally against expectation, the deck ended up being awesome and was fun as hell to play. As much as I still hate Stifle, it won me a handful of games and kept me out of some really bad situations. Land destruction is extinct as a competitive strategy, but countering SFM triggers and Jace activations (among other things) is more than fine. I’ll still be looking for something better, but for now they can stay. Ponder was the worst card by far, since it was the only thing that actually just sucked. I was on the fence about maindecking Thoughtseize in its place, but decided against it last second because I had never played a game with the deck. Thoughtseize was the undisputed all-star of my sideboard all day and every single time I cast Ponder in game ones I wished it were Thoughtseize. I made the switch before I even finished de-siding post-elimination. It’ll give me some room in the sideboard, so I’ll play around some more with that to see what I like.
Finally, I want to give proper credit where it’s due. At the beginning of my report, I mentioned hearing about and copying a deck from my friend’s opponent from last month. I intentionally omitted his name until now because I want to properly credit this deck’s original author, Carson Yeager. It’s clearly a Team America shell, but Carson’s decisions for porting BUG into Esper are the reason this exact list exists. I saw his name on the standings board but didn’t recognize him out of anyone and didn’t have time to figure it out and reintroduce myself. Either way, thanks for the list guy.
Friday morning I woke up early to scour the Interwebs and read back through lists I'd already seen, including the results from the July qualifier. One of my friends had made top 8 then, and after he ID'd in the final round with his opponent, the three of us went to Wendys to hang out before top 8 started (I'd since dropped). His opponent told me about his deck and how much he liked it. The idea seemed OK, but I wasn't personally interested- "Esper Team America" or something. Team Fireball had tried it for Providence, but LSV said the mana just didn't work and I tend to figure LSV knows better than I would about MTG matters, so I wrote it off in my mind. The list this guy had was different, but ran Stifle and sounded mediocre at best.
Aaanyway, back to Friday. I reread the list and it seemed to have exactly what I thought I wanted: a highly disruptive, pro-active game plan in an aggro-control shell that was strong against unfair decks and had decent game against fair decks. It also had 4 Stifle. Desperate for something, I took apart UW Stoneblade and BUGstill for the pieces, traded for 2 Scrublands when we got to Jupiter (since naturally, Scrubland is the only dual I owned 0 copies of) and went to sleep, intent on playing my first game with the deck in round 1. Or as my friends will tell you, "the usual." The only thing I touched was the sideboard, which clearly needed work. I made some snap decisions and wrote it down, figuring if I ever played the deck again I’d work it out then. Fittingly, I named it Fun Police because of how disruptive it is, (hopefully) stopping opponents from ever doing anything fun that they want to do. So much for never running Stifle.
In the morning, 69 people showed up for 7 rounds of swiss with a cut to top 8. My is linked here (http://sales.jupitergamesonline.com/articles/2011/08/top-8-deck-august-legacy-qualifier).
Round 1 vs. NO RUG
G1: He leads with t1 Lavamancer and eventually sticks a goyf while I don't really do anything. I need to kill the Lavamancer so I can Clique him and hopefully stabilize the board. My StP eats a Misstep, I have to Clique anyway and he shoots it down, then goyf just kills me. "Step 1: Do nothing. Step 2: Die." Sweet deck.
G2: T1 Thoughtseize takes a goyf, I Daze or Force a second and he's out of gas. Eventually I hardcast Batterskull, then equip it with SoFaF and kill him. No Stoneforge in sight. Whatever works I guess.
G3: Ghastly Demise hits t1 Hierarch, he has no t2 play and I follow up with Hymn taking goyf/ Clique leaving him with trop. Nice card. I land a Tombstalker and win.
1-0 matches, 2-1 games
Round 2 vs. Dredge
G1: T1 Putrid Imp on the play pitches Bridge, Ichorid, Stinkweed. He actually missed an opportunity to dredge at some point, but it doesn't really matter; by turn 3 or 4 he has three Bridges in the top 15 or so cards and I'm dead before I can really do anything.
G2: I mull to 6 with a Leyline + Misstep and we play draw-go while I wait for 5 lands to cast Batterskull. He Careful Studies 3 or 4 times, but never hits an out and dies.
G3: Again mull to 6 with a Leyline, this time with Force but only a Wasteland for lands. He snap kept this game, probably because of land + answer. T1 Nature's Claim gets the Force and he follows up with Tireless Tribe, which beats me down for 4 turns until I find lands to cast SFM and Stalker.
2-0 matches, 4-2 games
Round 3 vs. Esper Jace Control
G1: My opponent casts t2 Bob, which I tap out to Swords with Misstep backup. I had watched him play the end of round 2 and saw Counterspell + Jace, so tapping out seemed fine. Daze on Swords rocked my world until I topdecked a second one immediately and killed it. He was on all answers after that, but no real gas. Hymn ate Counterspell, a pair of SFMs both ate Swords and when he finally got one of his own, I Stifled the tutor trigger. Eventually I stuck Batterskull + SoFaF and Dazed his Jace off the top.
G2: My t1 Thoughtseize triggered a Brainstorm then resolved revealing… 6 lands. I waited two turns to try a Hymn, which got Counterspelled. He untapped, played Jace, Brainstormed. My Jace traded with his and he kept making land drops while I beat him down with a Tombstalker. Apparently both his Brainstorms (real one and one from Jace) drew three lands apiece. Despite a poor performance, the deck looked sweet. He let me look through it after and I’ll definitely be brewing up my own to try out in the future.
3-0 matches, 6-2 games
Round 4 vs. UW Stoneblade
G1: He keeps 6 with just Plains on the play, but only misses one land drop before he hits a Wasteland. I work through 2 Swords and a Standstill with SFM and Clique then land a Tombstalker. He falls to 7 before resolving SFM for Batterskull and to 2 before he gets to attack with it. Up to 6, down to 1. He taps out for Jace, I Stifle the bounce on Tombstalker and we’re off to game 2.
G2: I keep 2 Stifle, 2 Thoughtseize, SFM, Daze, Delta on the draw. Fittingly, I don’t draw land for multiple turns while he develops his board into SFM, Batterskull, Jace, Standstill. That hand could’ve been awesome. But it wasn’t.
G3: My 7 is decent, but wants a Hymn. I draw it immediately after he resolves t2 SFM on the draw for Batterskull. It resolves, hitting Wrath and Batterskull (again, nice card) and his SFM beats with Manriki Gusari until a Tombstalker comes to change the math. I land a Jace to seal his fate even further.
4-0 matches, 8-3 games
Round 5 vs. Terrageddon
G1: I mull into a good 6 and get a quick Clique revealing Sylvan Library, Terravore, 2x Armageddon and lands. I’d never seen this deck before, but cycle Library and figure I’m fine. He plays a 2/2 Terravore and passes. I play Tombstalker, attack with Clique and pass. No way I’m losing this race. Then, he Armageddons (I have Force but no blue card) and attacks with his 10/10 lhurgoyf. No way I’m winning this race. 2 bricks later I’m dead.
G2: I keep a decent hand and we trade my disruption for his land/ guys until my resolved Clique sees Maze, Swords, Loaming Shaman. Keep it. Clique eats the Swords and Shaman gets an Edict. I resolve a Tombstalker, SoFaF and Jace over the course of several turns, while he gets an Elspeth. Jace unsummons tokens while equipped Tombstalker beats for retarded damage.
G3: I mull to 5 on the draw with (I think) Edict, Daze, Waste and 2 other lands. My first draw is Thoughtseize (runner 1) for his Scavenging Ooze to take him off of a turn 2 play, though he’s still got KotR and Terravore. He plays t3 Knight, I draw Swords for my turn (runner 2). Follow up with t4 Terravore, I draw Swords for my turn (runner 3). He stops casting threats and we play draw-go until I start drawing threats: a Tombstalker and 2 SFM, followed by a third Swords for his second Knight (runner 4). Mull to 5 turns into a complete blowout the other way. I want to say I played tight (which I believe I did, even if I made some mistakes), but I also drew like god. Just when I thought the wheels had fallen off…
5-0 matches, 10-4 games
Round 6 vs. NO RUG
Unfortunately, I’m paired down. Instead of drawing twice (7 rounds of swiss), I’m forced to play because my opponent needs the win-and-in. He also (understandably) declines to draw.
G1: I start with a Usea and Waste his first 2 lands, hoping to mana screw him. He just keeps playing lands, so I try to get aggressive. I EOT Clique, he responds with Clique, cycling one of my Tombstalkers. I cycle Daze, then tap out for Tombstalker and SoFaF. Equipped stalker gets there.
G2: He resolves a t2 Sylvan Library and we trade cards back and forth for a while until I’ve got 2 SFM and he’s got Clique in play. Batterskull ate an Ancient Grudge, so I’m stuck with Perish, Edict and SoFaF. I try not to use them, hoping to draw into an answer for the Clique trading 3 for my 2 from Squire beats. Eventually I’m forced to play the Edict, he Counterspells and I topdeck a Clique, cycling his second Clique and leaving Natural Order, Bolt, Sylvan. Perish takes a goyf and Dryad Arbor. Next turn he taps out for something so I SFM the SoFaF, equip it to the other Mystic and hit him with it, then Thoughtseize his Natural Order. Flashbacked Grudge gets my Sword, but Bolt targeting Mystic gets Misstepped. I’m eventually at 3, he’s at 2 with lethal Squires on board. He’s got none in the grip to my Thoughtseize. EOT fetch for Arbor, Sylvan Library finds Natural Order off the top and I’m on two outs, either remaining Edict or Perish. It’s a Flooded Strand, bummer. Naturally, the next card down is Brainstorm with Perish just under it.
G3: T1 Thoughtseize sees 2 Hierarch, Clique, JTMS, REB, Volc, Misty. What a fucking hand. I have a Clique and Jace of my own, but not much else. I need to get that REB out so I can force him to Jace my Jace, so I take his Clique. Sure enough, my Clique eats REB and Jace resolves, giving me a Brainstorm before he plays his own to kill them both. At this point, I feel firmly in control because he’s been forced to spend his turns answering all my threats by depleting his and I’ve got Edict, Ghastly Demise still left from my opener. I resolve Tombstalker, hit twice and he resolves Natural Order. EOT Edict draws some ire and my demon flies in for the W.
6-0 matches, 12-5 games
Round 7 vs. Belcher
Finally, I can ID. And I definitely want to see Belcher in the 8.
I’m first after Swiss (as the only undefeated forced to play 6 rounds) with 19 points. I get paired against 2012 NELC series point leader Geoff Smelski for the quarterfinals. Unfortunately, he gets a game 1 loss for mis-reging his deck. I think he’s usually on NO RUG, but today he played NO Bant, so when he wrote 4 Wooded Foothills, he clearly meant 4 Windswept Heath. I’ve been there before, so as much as the free win benefits me, I really wasn’t happy about it. It’s just a shitty way to get there. I felt pretty bad, although it helped when I looked back at the standings before round 7 because I noticed he was 15th with 6 other X-2s ahead of him. They literally all had to draw with one another in order for him to make it, since if any of them won they’d have better breakers. At least 2 of those matches were at one-turn-to-lethal board states where someone refused to scoop. I guess in the grand scheme of things, making top 8 in the first place was enough luck for one day.
Quarterfinals vs. NO Bant
G2: I have a Stifle/ Daze/ Hymn hand on the draw. That seemed to make a world of difference, since I was exactly one step behind each step of the way. It only got worse when I was forced to Daze a Tarmogoyf because I didn’t have an answer or a threat and couldn’t guarantee finding one in the four turns it would take to kill me. We fight back and forth, putting ourselves to 11 and 14. He taps out for the Natural Order on turn 5 or 6 and I scoop to no outs.
G3: I keep a good hand that gets much better when I topdeck a Hymn on turn 2. He Forces, pitching Clique. I draw another one, leaving him with one card and crippled. I follow up with Tombstalker and he plays a goyf alongside Hierarch to race. He figured he was “dead if I have it anyway” (which he was) and plays his last card, another Hierarch. I untap and Perish his board, connecting 4 times with the demon to advance to the semis.
Semifinals vs. UW Stoneblade (same opponent from round 4 and the exact last person I wanted to play against in an elimination round)
We discuss the split, neither of us has a preference. I feel like I’m unfavored (Hymn deck vs. Standstill deck) but grow a pair and say, “let’s play for $300”
G1: I mull an ok hand because I don’t like it, drawing the stone cold nuts… from 2008. Delta, Ponder, Hymn, Waste, 2 Stifle. I really don’t like this kind of hand because it illustrates exactly why Stifle-Waste and Threshold strategies suck now. In a world where everyone plays 18 (nonbasic) lands, this hand is sweet. Against 24 lands, Jace and Standstill, this hand blows. I keep anyway and Ponder into another Stifle. As expected, he plays carefully around Daze and Stifle, always fetching with Misstep backup. Pretty soon he’s up on cards and I start drawing blanks when I need runner-runner-runner just to stay in it. He plays SFM, Jace and Standstill successively before I scoop.
G2: This game went on for 50 minutes. It was the most epic game I played all day, eating through about 35 cards of my library. I don’t remember all of it because so much went on and everyone was watching (the other semifinal was Belcher vs. Deadguy, so that was over before we finished our first game). What I do remember is highlights:
-The early midgame revolved around multiple SFMs fetching various equipments: one Batterskull apiece, my SoFaF and his Manriki-Gusari. I resolved Jace and chumped with various creatures (SFM, Clique) to keep Manriki’d Mishra’s Factory from killing him. Eventually they did anyway, but I found my second Jace and waited until I could Swords one and Waste the other before I cast him.
-At one point I Thoughtseized him when he had two cards in hand, revealing 2 Jaces and taking one. I Clique on his draw step and saw a freshly drawn Standstill. Since he had double Factory and two equipments, I was forced to cycle that. I immediately drew into Hymn for the second Jace, though. This happened sometime between when I lost my first Jace and drew my second one.
-My second Jace got the opportunity to fateseal him when he had no cards in hand and by then I was sure I’d won. I left cards on top a couple times until shipping a Clique to the bottom. At my EOT, he played a freshly drawn Clique. Major bummer. It eventually killed Jace then picked up Manriki-Gusari and Batterskull, forcing me to chump in order not to die. In hindsight, I think I should’ve chumped with Tombstalker immediately to give me an extra Brainstorm with Jace. I had about 15 cards left in my library, of which two were Swords and one was another Tombstalker. It’s more likely I win with fateseal than damage at that point, which is the opposite conclusion I came to in-game. Instead, Jace died and I drew a pair of Hymns while Clique beat me dead.
Thus ended my tournament at 3rd place. Totally against expectation, the deck ended up being awesome and was fun as hell to play. As much as I still hate Stifle, it won me a handful of games and kept me out of some really bad situations. Land destruction is extinct as a competitive strategy, but countering SFM triggers and Jace activations (among other things) is more than fine. I’ll still be looking for something better, but for now they can stay. Ponder was the worst card by far, since it was the only thing that actually just sucked. I was on the fence about maindecking Thoughtseize in its place, but decided against it last second because I had never played a game with the deck. Thoughtseize was the undisputed all-star of my sideboard all day and every single time I cast Ponder in game ones I wished it were Thoughtseize. I made the switch before I even finished de-siding post-elimination. It’ll give me some room in the sideboard, so I’ll play around some more with that to see what I like.
Finally, I want to give proper credit where it’s due. At the beginning of my report, I mentioned hearing about and copying a deck from my friend’s opponent from last month. I intentionally omitted his name until now because I want to properly credit this deck’s original author, Carson Yeager. It’s clearly a Team America shell, but Carson’s decisions for porting BUG into Esper are the reason this exact list exists. I saw his name on the standings board but didn’t recognize him out of anyone and didn’t have time to figure it out and reintroduce myself. Either way, thanks for the list guy.