Dyvith
11-05-2012, 08:24 AM
Hello everyone. My name is Greg Komar and this is my tournament report for the November 3rd Jupiter Games NELC Tournament in which I split the finals with Eli Kassis. For all intensive purposes, he agreed to give me “the win” which is basically just for pride, so thanks for that!
I decided to play Junk, which is basically B/G/W good stuff. I’ve top eighted a handful of times now, all with blue decks, most usually RUG Delver and then again last month with BUG Delver, but I never felt like I was able to win games against some decks and turn one Delver just didn’t seem good enough anymore. With the printing of Deathrite Shaman and Abrupt Decay, I really, really wanted BUG Delver or BUG Control to be “the deck,” the one that would oust RUG Delver as public enemy number one. So far, that hasn’t happened, and likely I don’t think it will. However, my testing with Abrupt Decay and Deathrite really made me a believer that these cards were the real deal and not just hype so, last month when Eli and Tom both showed up with Junk decks and both did well, I decided to hang up my Force of Wills and Brainstorms and start playing Knight of the Reliquaries. I have no regrets. Junk is a incredibly awesome deck. I drove up with Jesse Adams, Bobby Green (I think that’s Bobby’s last name), Dave Rice, David Choa (Again, I think that’s his last name), and a few others, and no one else was on the Deathrite plan. Later that night, after the tournament, we went to get Friday’s with all of them plus Alex Bertochini and his girlfriend, Shannon (I think? Man, I am bad with names…). David Choa and I played a few games and by the end of the dinner, everyone was on the Deathrite plan – even the Bant deck wanted to splash a black dual or two for him. Good card is good, and as Eli said at one point during the tournament, “Every time I played him (Deathrite) turn one, I didn’t lose.” I felt the same way.
As far as the decklist is concerned, I didn’t come up with the shell – I can thank Eli Kassis and Tom Leger for that, but I took what I liked from both of their lists and made a few changes and tweaks with numbers and came up with a list I was very content with. I wanted consistency above all else, so I kept my tutor package limited (I have some regrets about this) and my numbers high. The most variance in my list consisted of the two Mox Diamonds that both Eli and I played, and though I can’t speak for Eli, they won me infinitely more games than I lost from them, including my third game against Si-Ning in the first round of top eight.
Here’s the list:
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
4 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Liliana of the Veil
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Inquisition of Kosilek
3 Thoughtseise
3 Sensei’s Divining Top
2 Mox Diamond
1 Karakas
1 Horison Canopy
1 Bajuka Bog
1 Mase of Ith
2 Scrubland
2 Bayou
1 Savanah
4 Marsh Flats
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Forest
1 Swamp
4 Wasteland
Sideboard:
2 Enlightened Tutor
2 Choke
2 Ethersworn Cannonist
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Duress
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Golgari Charm
1 Zealous Persecution
1 Darkblast
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Stony Silence
There are definitely some changes that I would make, and I will happily discuss those afterwards. For now, I’d like to get into the games. I make some mistakes at times, which while embarrassing, happens, but I also play tight when I need to and based on my results, it paid off.
Match 1: Hollywood on Manaless Dredge
Hollywood beat me in the first round of Top Eight last month when I was on BUG Delver. I know exactly what he’s playing, and I am both concerned and content. On one hand, I know how insane Deathrite Shaman is against Hollywood, plus I have a maindeck Bog, but at the same time, Manaless Dredge can sometimes just win games from literally nowhere, so it’s not like I felt like I couldn’t lose, but I certainly didn’t feel like this would be a free win.
Game One: I win the die roll and I happily put him on the play. I keep a hand with turn one Deathrite Shaman and some other action, and keep. Hollywood takes his turn which consists of him saying pass. I draw my card and take a moment before slamming Deathrite. At this point, my hand is Deathrite + Inquisition, which means if I Inquisition him now, I take a card that doesn’t matter and he gets time walked again. I Inquisition him (there’s a Thoughtseise still in my hand) and see a hand of irrelevant spells that I can’t target, two street wraiths, and a dredger or two. I don’t remember what I take, but it’s a non-dredger, non-relevant spell. He draws, comments on how it was a good one, and passes. I play Deathrite, and I’m pretty sure I just win from there by applying some threats and keeping his dredgers off the board.
Game Two: I’m on the play and my hand is Thoughtseise, Inquisition, Knight, Land, Land, Land, Land, none of which are Bogs. I go first, Inquisition, take something irrelevant and pass. He draws and passes. I draw, Thoughtseise, take something irrelevant, and pass. He draws and passes. I draw, play knight and pass. He knows that I play at least one bog, but put me on more than one because Eli is playing three in his Junk deck. On his turn, he comments on how his draw was very good, and discards Phantasmagorican, which is his best card in this position. However, I think because of his concern of multiple Bogs, he plays it slower than he has to, I don’t bog until is absolutely needed (after one of his draw steps so that he wastes more dredges) and I win from there, though on the last turn apparently if he had dredged the absolute perfect five off an imp, he would have won (scary stuff). I think I may have slightly confused some lines between game one and game two, so Hollywood when/if you read this, please feel free to correct me. That being said, playing against Hollywood is always a pleasure. His jovial attitude is a welcome respite against the antisocial negative nancy’s of the magic community.
1-0
Match Two: Chris Scagnelli playing Bant.
I know what Chris is on because the night before I helped him with his deck. I know that this is a favorable matchup going into it, and throught the entire game we were joking around and having a good time. This was a feature match which can be seen on Jupiter’s website, and I won in a close two games which you can watch there. Every time he has a threat, I always have an answer. He’s never in either of the games at all. After game two, he showed me his board, which confused the hell out of me. He brought in Engineered Explosives and Rest in Peaces to kill my guys and shrink my knights, but this line also kills his guys and shrinks his knights, plus dilutes his threat count. I think one of the reasons I won so handily in game two was that he never had any threats, ever.
2-0
Match Three: BFS playing Combo Elves
Brian had asked me for cards going into the tournament, so I should have known what he was on, but I totally forgot. As we were shuffling up, I started remembering that he wanted Surgical Extractions, then Karakas, so I put him on Esper or Maverick or something, then he plays Forest into Llanowar Elf and I remember him also wanted a Mirror Entity. Whoops. It ends up not mattering as I have a reasonable hand and he doesn’t really get to stabalise. The game is entirely in my favor, and at one point my board is Knight x2, each with over fourteen power, two Deathrite Shaman, and three lands. Brian has forest, forest, Nettle Sentinel with two cards in hand. That’s a total of six cards after he draws. On his turn, he had over twenty permanents in play. While I’m not a combo elves player, the series of events that occurred went from somewhere along the lines of glimpse with two cards in hand, play a Quirion Ranger, bounce forest, replay forest for mana, drew a heritage druid off the draw from glimpse, and continues to go off. Must be nice... At the end of the game, there is no more than ten minutes in the round and we need to play fast to finish. Needless to say, I’m pretty much on super tilt as the winner of this round just needs to win one more match.
In game two, I keep an aggressive keep with removal, a turn one Dark Confidant off of mox diamond, and I proceed to keep him off spells while playing a Knight and other relevant threats and win the game in no more than five minutes.
We go into game three with two minutes on the clock. I mulligan a trash heap of a hand and keep a sketchy, sketchy hand that basically is mono-removal, not willing to risk mulling even more. He fails to kill me in turns and I fail to kill him. We wish each other luck and continue on in our tournament. Though I am 2-0-1 at this point, my last match has me tilted.
2-0-1
Match Four: Eli Kassis on Junk
I know Eli is on Junk going into this tournament because he was one of the people I based my deck off of. We go to three games, and while I’d like to give you a more detailed report, my memory is totally shot. I win game one because I have all the answers at the right times, and then in games two and three it’s the opposite. I don’t really think I made any glaring mistakes at all, but I’m pretty convinced that these games are very much based on drawing right more so than skill (obviously not saying that skill isn’t a factor, as Eli played well, as is typical). Our games were jovial, similar to my games against Hollywood, except Eli is slightly more serious than Hollywood is, and we discussed deck lists and changes and such. Overall, it was a really good opportunity to see how another person might pilot the deck and I think I learned a lot from that match, despite being on serious life tilt and feeling like top eight was out of my reach at this point.
2-1-1
Match Five: Ethan on Miracles
Ethan is a super cool guy from Rochester, however I heard earlier that he was going to be moving away and that this was his last NELC. I was slightly guilty that I had to play against him, because a) I had a good matchup and b) when any gregarious regular is leaving the area, it’s sort of nice to have them go out with a bang.
Game One: Despite what I thought about my matchup, I got rolled. Ethan had an early lock with top and balance and resolved an early Jace. My Liliana was just too slow, and he aggressively ultimate me out of the game, countering everything I threw at him and making me feel totally outclassed. Ethan is a good player and anyone that has ever watched him play Belcher online or in person should know this.
Game Two and Three: I win these games, though I never felt like I was winning. Despite not overextending at any point in these two games, I always felt like he could easily Terminus me at any point, and it was here that I realized that a good miracles player always has the Terminus, whether or not he actually has it. As in, it doesn’t matter if the miracles player actually has Terminus, because you are always going to think that there is a Terminus on top of their deck, and there were turns where I prayed for him to whiff, and he did. The only time I actually felt like I was ahead was in game three the turn before he died where he actually cracked a fetch to look at more cards with top and I knew he didn’t have the answers. I know this isn’t the most exciting recollection of the game ever, and it’s a shame because we both played very, very well, but highlights include ripping the one of Gaddock Teeg the turn before he wiped out my board with an Engineered Explosives that was in his graveyard that he was planning on recurring with his Academy Ruins and resolving the next turn to blow me out. That was in game three I believe. Game two I resolved a turn two Dark Confidant off of protection that carried me into the late game with enough fuel to restock after the Terminus that never came.
I felt pretty bad knocking Ethan off of the Top 8 Train, but I wanted this badly as well, and Ethan was pretty cool about it. I’m going to miss doing block battles bud, have a safe and happy trip back home and we’ll have to battle on MTGO sometime, eh?
3-1-1
Match Six: Ryan Phramer playing BUG Delver
I knew what Ryan was on because last month I played BUG Delver and as a BUG and Delver fanatic, I had looked at his list and knew what he could do. Before the match I bragged about how I think Confidant is bad in that type of deck and that I thought I had a favorable matchup. I then proceeded to make two major mistakes in this game that should have cost me the game.
Game One: Ryan sticks two early confidants, while I only have one, however I have an active knight for a long time, despite him drawing an extra card every turn. Eventually, I decide that I’m going to shut off his mana as much as I can and then kill him from Bob triggers, however given this is my plan, I make the mistake of shuffling away a top. Despite this one mistake, I played super tight all game and I felt good about my play, but because I’m not a Sensei’s Top player, I just totally undervalued how important it would have been for that game. Unfortunately, drawing three cards a turn makes it so that I can’t actually shut him off of green and the Tarmogoyfs keep coming. The turn that I’m going to die, Ryan is at six with one Confidant in play, flips the one Jace he has left in his deck, and I proceed to kill him with Deathrite Shaman. Ryan was understandably tilted, but it felt good to have the karma gods give back to me after my round three match against Elves.
Game Two: Ryan is saying how his tournament is over, etc, etc, and for some reason I felt like I just wanted to shuffle up as fast as possible and make sure we have a full game two. I sideboarded miserably, kept a miserably hand, and was miserably destroyed when he played around Choke all game. Basically, I gave him an out to win game three with very little time left. It was super, super awkward.
Game Three: Ryan and I play at a brisk pace, but this game goes how I thought games one and two would go – I assemble a quick threat base, use my cheap removal to keep his board clear, and make sure to discard his removal. Everything goes as planned, and the game is over in short, short work. That’s the beautiful thing about this deck – it’s very well balanced, so against fair decks, you have a solid about of disruption, removal, and difficult to answer threats. And just like that, I was in Top 8 with a deck I’d never played before! Woo!
First Round Of Top 8: Si-Ning with TES
Game One: I knew going into this that I was on the back foot. It didn’t help that Ning was going first because he was higher in the breakers. I kept a meh hand with turn one Deathrite which is normally the nuts, but he proceeded to kill me promptly on his second turn by tendrilsing me for infinite.
Okay, this was expected. I slump in my chair and proceed to sideboard in eleven cards.
Game Two: I keep a saucy hand with a hand disruption spell, a confidant, and an enlightened tutor (I believe.) Because I go first, I go turn one hand disruption and see he has the turn one win again, but take him off of it. Despite the hand disruption, if he draws well, I’m still just dead. However, he draws ponder. At this point, I drop confidant, and on my upkeep, I tutor in response to the trigger and draw my canonist and something else. From there, he can’t keep up with my disruption and threats.
Game Three: My hand is perfect. I have turn one Thalia. That is all I can ask for against him. All I need to do is get one turn. Ning mulls and I begin to think that I’m going to win. Ning mulls again and I let out a loud cheer. He doesn’t kill me, and I land the Thalia and it isn’t close from there. Afterwards, I profusely apologized to Ning, not for winning, but for the fact that I cheered when he mulled. I’d like to think that I’m a nice person to play against, and I felt like the biggest of tools after that. I offered to buy him lunch or anything, but he wouldn’t have it, however he seemed much more laid back about it than I did. Either way, he’s getting lunch on me next month, whether he likes it or not.
Second Round of Top 8: Tibbetts with UW Stoneblade
This was a feature match which you can watch online. I make a huge punt and run out a turn one confidant into his open white because I figured that if he didn’t have the swords, I’d just win on the spot. It was a risky, risky play that I didn’t need to make, especially because I could have just run out the turn one discard spell. However, I still stuck the game out super long, but died to Jace’s card advantage.
In games two and three, I played super tight. Whereas game one was the Jace game, games two and three were Liliana games. Game two I ultimate with Liliana which felt insane, and then in game three, I ultimate with Liliana, twice. It was pretty sick. This was a strange game for one reason though – my opponent had a lot of “takesie backsies” with brainstorms and a few other things – nothing major that would have been considered cheating, but had I not been in a great mood, I could have been a total chump to him, and a few people had very strange faces as they watched when I allowed him to do this without calling a judge. I definitely should have, but like I said, I never felt like I was losing in games two and three because I just played like I was supposed to and not like a durdle. My opponent was a nice enough individual and at the end, it certainly felt like an epic match.
After I won, Eli came in and said that we were in the finals and offered the split. I accepted on the condition that I was given first place. He double checked to make sure that it didn’t actually matter accept to my pride, and was fine with it. Was it the win I wanted? Maybe not, but it still felt incredible. I’ve been grinding these for a long, long time, and I’d like to think that after the almost two years that I’ve been going to NELCs that I’ve become a regular face by now. I love the Jupiter Games magic community and the players that make it excellent, and this was such a reassuring, rewarding victory. I felt like though I made mistakes, I was really rewarded when I played tight, and that’s all I could ask for.
If I were to play this tomorrow, here are my changes.
Maindeck:
-1 Marsh Flats
-1 Inquisition
-1 Horizon Canopy
+1 Scrubland
+1 Windswept Heath
+1 Thoughtseise
Sideboard:
-1 Enlightened Tutor
-1 Nihil Spellbomb
+1 Worldly Tutor
+1 Bojuka Bog
Here’s why:
Maindeck, I needed a seventh land for Knight. Canopy was just bad for me on the day – not because the lifeloss was relevant, but because I usually just sacrificed it to try and find a land for knight to eat up when I drew it naturally. Inquisition is also just worse than Thoughtseise. In several matchups, had I drawn Inquisition, I would have died. Against Hollywood in round one, because I had double Inquisition, it was much closer than it ever should have been.
In the sideboard, I always wanted at least a second Bog. Worldly Tutor also gets me Thalia and Teeg against combo which is when I need to bring the tutor package in.
All in all, Saturday was so insane. I had such a great time, the drive back was so much fun, the guys I drove with were hilarious, and it was pretty exciting seeing my grinding finally coming to fruition. I’m sorry if my report isn’t the best, and not the most detailed – I hadn’t really expected to get as far as I did, and I just didn’t take notes. Sorry guys! That being said, I hope I was able to relive some of more epic moments of the day. I’ll see you all next month.
Komar
I decided to play Junk, which is basically B/G/W good stuff. I’ve top eighted a handful of times now, all with blue decks, most usually RUG Delver and then again last month with BUG Delver, but I never felt like I was able to win games against some decks and turn one Delver just didn’t seem good enough anymore. With the printing of Deathrite Shaman and Abrupt Decay, I really, really wanted BUG Delver or BUG Control to be “the deck,” the one that would oust RUG Delver as public enemy number one. So far, that hasn’t happened, and likely I don’t think it will. However, my testing with Abrupt Decay and Deathrite really made me a believer that these cards were the real deal and not just hype so, last month when Eli and Tom both showed up with Junk decks and both did well, I decided to hang up my Force of Wills and Brainstorms and start playing Knight of the Reliquaries. I have no regrets. Junk is a incredibly awesome deck. I drove up with Jesse Adams, Bobby Green (I think that’s Bobby’s last name), Dave Rice, David Choa (Again, I think that’s his last name), and a few others, and no one else was on the Deathrite plan. Later that night, after the tournament, we went to get Friday’s with all of them plus Alex Bertochini and his girlfriend, Shannon (I think? Man, I am bad with names…). David Choa and I played a few games and by the end of the dinner, everyone was on the Deathrite plan – even the Bant deck wanted to splash a black dual or two for him. Good card is good, and as Eli said at one point during the tournament, “Every time I played him (Deathrite) turn one, I didn’t lose.” I felt the same way.
As far as the decklist is concerned, I didn’t come up with the shell – I can thank Eli Kassis and Tom Leger for that, but I took what I liked from both of their lists and made a few changes and tweaks with numbers and came up with a list I was very content with. I wanted consistency above all else, so I kept my tutor package limited (I have some regrets about this) and my numbers high. The most variance in my list consisted of the two Mox Diamonds that both Eli and I played, and though I can’t speak for Eli, they won me infinitely more games than I lost from them, including my third game against Si-Ning in the first round of top eight.
Here’s the list:
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
4 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Liliana of the Veil
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Inquisition of Kosilek
3 Thoughtseise
3 Sensei’s Divining Top
2 Mox Diamond
1 Karakas
1 Horison Canopy
1 Bajuka Bog
1 Mase of Ith
2 Scrubland
2 Bayou
1 Savanah
4 Marsh Flats
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Forest
1 Swamp
4 Wasteland
Sideboard:
2 Enlightened Tutor
2 Choke
2 Ethersworn Cannonist
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Duress
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Golgari Charm
1 Zealous Persecution
1 Darkblast
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Stony Silence
There are definitely some changes that I would make, and I will happily discuss those afterwards. For now, I’d like to get into the games. I make some mistakes at times, which while embarrassing, happens, but I also play tight when I need to and based on my results, it paid off.
Match 1: Hollywood on Manaless Dredge
Hollywood beat me in the first round of Top Eight last month when I was on BUG Delver. I know exactly what he’s playing, and I am both concerned and content. On one hand, I know how insane Deathrite Shaman is against Hollywood, plus I have a maindeck Bog, but at the same time, Manaless Dredge can sometimes just win games from literally nowhere, so it’s not like I felt like I couldn’t lose, but I certainly didn’t feel like this would be a free win.
Game One: I win the die roll and I happily put him on the play. I keep a hand with turn one Deathrite Shaman and some other action, and keep. Hollywood takes his turn which consists of him saying pass. I draw my card and take a moment before slamming Deathrite. At this point, my hand is Deathrite + Inquisition, which means if I Inquisition him now, I take a card that doesn’t matter and he gets time walked again. I Inquisition him (there’s a Thoughtseise still in my hand) and see a hand of irrelevant spells that I can’t target, two street wraiths, and a dredger or two. I don’t remember what I take, but it’s a non-dredger, non-relevant spell. He draws, comments on how it was a good one, and passes. I play Deathrite, and I’m pretty sure I just win from there by applying some threats and keeping his dredgers off the board.
Game Two: I’m on the play and my hand is Thoughtseise, Inquisition, Knight, Land, Land, Land, Land, none of which are Bogs. I go first, Inquisition, take something irrelevant and pass. He draws and passes. I draw, Thoughtseise, take something irrelevant, and pass. He draws and passes. I draw, play knight and pass. He knows that I play at least one bog, but put me on more than one because Eli is playing three in his Junk deck. On his turn, he comments on how his draw was very good, and discards Phantasmagorican, which is his best card in this position. However, I think because of his concern of multiple Bogs, he plays it slower than he has to, I don’t bog until is absolutely needed (after one of his draw steps so that he wastes more dredges) and I win from there, though on the last turn apparently if he had dredged the absolute perfect five off an imp, he would have won (scary stuff). I think I may have slightly confused some lines between game one and game two, so Hollywood when/if you read this, please feel free to correct me. That being said, playing against Hollywood is always a pleasure. His jovial attitude is a welcome respite against the antisocial negative nancy’s of the magic community.
1-0
Match Two: Chris Scagnelli playing Bant.
I know what Chris is on because the night before I helped him with his deck. I know that this is a favorable matchup going into it, and throught the entire game we were joking around and having a good time. This was a feature match which can be seen on Jupiter’s website, and I won in a close two games which you can watch there. Every time he has a threat, I always have an answer. He’s never in either of the games at all. After game two, he showed me his board, which confused the hell out of me. He brought in Engineered Explosives and Rest in Peaces to kill my guys and shrink my knights, but this line also kills his guys and shrinks his knights, plus dilutes his threat count. I think one of the reasons I won so handily in game two was that he never had any threats, ever.
2-0
Match Three: BFS playing Combo Elves
Brian had asked me for cards going into the tournament, so I should have known what he was on, but I totally forgot. As we were shuffling up, I started remembering that he wanted Surgical Extractions, then Karakas, so I put him on Esper or Maverick or something, then he plays Forest into Llanowar Elf and I remember him also wanted a Mirror Entity. Whoops. It ends up not mattering as I have a reasonable hand and he doesn’t really get to stabalise. The game is entirely in my favor, and at one point my board is Knight x2, each with over fourteen power, two Deathrite Shaman, and three lands. Brian has forest, forest, Nettle Sentinel with two cards in hand. That’s a total of six cards after he draws. On his turn, he had over twenty permanents in play. While I’m not a combo elves player, the series of events that occurred went from somewhere along the lines of glimpse with two cards in hand, play a Quirion Ranger, bounce forest, replay forest for mana, drew a heritage druid off the draw from glimpse, and continues to go off. Must be nice... At the end of the game, there is no more than ten minutes in the round and we need to play fast to finish. Needless to say, I’m pretty much on super tilt as the winner of this round just needs to win one more match.
In game two, I keep an aggressive keep with removal, a turn one Dark Confidant off of mox diamond, and I proceed to keep him off spells while playing a Knight and other relevant threats and win the game in no more than five minutes.
We go into game three with two minutes on the clock. I mulligan a trash heap of a hand and keep a sketchy, sketchy hand that basically is mono-removal, not willing to risk mulling even more. He fails to kill me in turns and I fail to kill him. We wish each other luck and continue on in our tournament. Though I am 2-0-1 at this point, my last match has me tilted.
2-0-1
Match Four: Eli Kassis on Junk
I know Eli is on Junk going into this tournament because he was one of the people I based my deck off of. We go to three games, and while I’d like to give you a more detailed report, my memory is totally shot. I win game one because I have all the answers at the right times, and then in games two and three it’s the opposite. I don’t really think I made any glaring mistakes at all, but I’m pretty convinced that these games are very much based on drawing right more so than skill (obviously not saying that skill isn’t a factor, as Eli played well, as is typical). Our games were jovial, similar to my games against Hollywood, except Eli is slightly more serious than Hollywood is, and we discussed deck lists and changes and such. Overall, it was a really good opportunity to see how another person might pilot the deck and I think I learned a lot from that match, despite being on serious life tilt and feeling like top eight was out of my reach at this point.
2-1-1
Match Five: Ethan on Miracles
Ethan is a super cool guy from Rochester, however I heard earlier that he was going to be moving away and that this was his last NELC. I was slightly guilty that I had to play against him, because a) I had a good matchup and b) when any gregarious regular is leaving the area, it’s sort of nice to have them go out with a bang.
Game One: Despite what I thought about my matchup, I got rolled. Ethan had an early lock with top and balance and resolved an early Jace. My Liliana was just too slow, and he aggressively ultimate me out of the game, countering everything I threw at him and making me feel totally outclassed. Ethan is a good player and anyone that has ever watched him play Belcher online or in person should know this.
Game Two and Three: I win these games, though I never felt like I was winning. Despite not overextending at any point in these two games, I always felt like he could easily Terminus me at any point, and it was here that I realized that a good miracles player always has the Terminus, whether or not he actually has it. As in, it doesn’t matter if the miracles player actually has Terminus, because you are always going to think that there is a Terminus on top of their deck, and there were turns where I prayed for him to whiff, and he did. The only time I actually felt like I was ahead was in game three the turn before he died where he actually cracked a fetch to look at more cards with top and I knew he didn’t have the answers. I know this isn’t the most exciting recollection of the game ever, and it’s a shame because we both played very, very well, but highlights include ripping the one of Gaddock Teeg the turn before he wiped out my board with an Engineered Explosives that was in his graveyard that he was planning on recurring with his Academy Ruins and resolving the next turn to blow me out. That was in game three I believe. Game two I resolved a turn two Dark Confidant off of protection that carried me into the late game with enough fuel to restock after the Terminus that never came.
I felt pretty bad knocking Ethan off of the Top 8 Train, but I wanted this badly as well, and Ethan was pretty cool about it. I’m going to miss doing block battles bud, have a safe and happy trip back home and we’ll have to battle on MTGO sometime, eh?
3-1-1
Match Six: Ryan Phramer playing BUG Delver
I knew what Ryan was on because last month I played BUG Delver and as a BUG and Delver fanatic, I had looked at his list and knew what he could do. Before the match I bragged about how I think Confidant is bad in that type of deck and that I thought I had a favorable matchup. I then proceeded to make two major mistakes in this game that should have cost me the game.
Game One: Ryan sticks two early confidants, while I only have one, however I have an active knight for a long time, despite him drawing an extra card every turn. Eventually, I decide that I’m going to shut off his mana as much as I can and then kill him from Bob triggers, however given this is my plan, I make the mistake of shuffling away a top. Despite this one mistake, I played super tight all game and I felt good about my play, but because I’m not a Sensei’s Top player, I just totally undervalued how important it would have been for that game. Unfortunately, drawing three cards a turn makes it so that I can’t actually shut him off of green and the Tarmogoyfs keep coming. The turn that I’m going to die, Ryan is at six with one Confidant in play, flips the one Jace he has left in his deck, and I proceed to kill him with Deathrite Shaman. Ryan was understandably tilted, but it felt good to have the karma gods give back to me after my round three match against Elves.
Game Two: Ryan is saying how his tournament is over, etc, etc, and for some reason I felt like I just wanted to shuffle up as fast as possible and make sure we have a full game two. I sideboarded miserably, kept a miserably hand, and was miserably destroyed when he played around Choke all game. Basically, I gave him an out to win game three with very little time left. It was super, super awkward.
Game Three: Ryan and I play at a brisk pace, but this game goes how I thought games one and two would go – I assemble a quick threat base, use my cheap removal to keep his board clear, and make sure to discard his removal. Everything goes as planned, and the game is over in short, short work. That’s the beautiful thing about this deck – it’s very well balanced, so against fair decks, you have a solid about of disruption, removal, and difficult to answer threats. And just like that, I was in Top 8 with a deck I’d never played before! Woo!
First Round Of Top 8: Si-Ning with TES
Game One: I knew going into this that I was on the back foot. It didn’t help that Ning was going first because he was higher in the breakers. I kept a meh hand with turn one Deathrite which is normally the nuts, but he proceeded to kill me promptly on his second turn by tendrilsing me for infinite.
Okay, this was expected. I slump in my chair and proceed to sideboard in eleven cards.
Game Two: I keep a saucy hand with a hand disruption spell, a confidant, and an enlightened tutor (I believe.) Because I go first, I go turn one hand disruption and see he has the turn one win again, but take him off of it. Despite the hand disruption, if he draws well, I’m still just dead. However, he draws ponder. At this point, I drop confidant, and on my upkeep, I tutor in response to the trigger and draw my canonist and something else. From there, he can’t keep up with my disruption and threats.
Game Three: My hand is perfect. I have turn one Thalia. That is all I can ask for against him. All I need to do is get one turn. Ning mulls and I begin to think that I’m going to win. Ning mulls again and I let out a loud cheer. He doesn’t kill me, and I land the Thalia and it isn’t close from there. Afterwards, I profusely apologized to Ning, not for winning, but for the fact that I cheered when he mulled. I’d like to think that I’m a nice person to play against, and I felt like the biggest of tools after that. I offered to buy him lunch or anything, but he wouldn’t have it, however he seemed much more laid back about it than I did. Either way, he’s getting lunch on me next month, whether he likes it or not.
Second Round of Top 8: Tibbetts with UW Stoneblade
This was a feature match which you can watch online. I make a huge punt and run out a turn one confidant into his open white because I figured that if he didn’t have the swords, I’d just win on the spot. It was a risky, risky play that I didn’t need to make, especially because I could have just run out the turn one discard spell. However, I still stuck the game out super long, but died to Jace’s card advantage.
In games two and three, I played super tight. Whereas game one was the Jace game, games two and three were Liliana games. Game two I ultimate with Liliana which felt insane, and then in game three, I ultimate with Liliana, twice. It was pretty sick. This was a strange game for one reason though – my opponent had a lot of “takesie backsies” with brainstorms and a few other things – nothing major that would have been considered cheating, but had I not been in a great mood, I could have been a total chump to him, and a few people had very strange faces as they watched when I allowed him to do this without calling a judge. I definitely should have, but like I said, I never felt like I was losing in games two and three because I just played like I was supposed to and not like a durdle. My opponent was a nice enough individual and at the end, it certainly felt like an epic match.
After I won, Eli came in and said that we were in the finals and offered the split. I accepted on the condition that I was given first place. He double checked to make sure that it didn’t actually matter accept to my pride, and was fine with it. Was it the win I wanted? Maybe not, but it still felt incredible. I’ve been grinding these for a long, long time, and I’d like to think that after the almost two years that I’ve been going to NELCs that I’ve become a regular face by now. I love the Jupiter Games magic community and the players that make it excellent, and this was such a reassuring, rewarding victory. I felt like though I made mistakes, I was really rewarded when I played tight, and that’s all I could ask for.
If I were to play this tomorrow, here are my changes.
Maindeck:
-1 Marsh Flats
-1 Inquisition
-1 Horizon Canopy
+1 Scrubland
+1 Windswept Heath
+1 Thoughtseise
Sideboard:
-1 Enlightened Tutor
-1 Nihil Spellbomb
+1 Worldly Tutor
+1 Bojuka Bog
Here’s why:
Maindeck, I needed a seventh land for Knight. Canopy was just bad for me on the day – not because the lifeloss was relevant, but because I usually just sacrificed it to try and find a land for knight to eat up when I drew it naturally. Inquisition is also just worse than Thoughtseise. In several matchups, had I drawn Inquisition, I would have died. Against Hollywood in round one, because I had double Inquisition, it was much closer than it ever should have been.
In the sideboard, I always wanted at least a second Bog. Worldly Tutor also gets me Thalia and Teeg against combo which is when I need to bring the tutor package in.
All in all, Saturday was so insane. I had such a great time, the drive back was so much fun, the guys I drove with were hilarious, and it was pretty exciting seeing my grinding finally coming to fruition. I’m sorry if my report isn’t the best, and not the most detailed – I hadn’t really expected to get as far as I did, and I just didn’t take notes. Sorry guys! That being said, I hope I was able to relive some of more epic moments of the day. I’ll see you all next month.
Komar