Dark Ritual
11-18-2012, 02:19 AM
Okay so I went to a tournament today at the monster den in minneapolis to battle some legacy for dual lands. Sadly the tournament was only 21 people so the prizes were incredibly top heavy (1st place was a revised u. sea and second place was a revised scrubland. 3rd and 4th got 4 packs, the rest of the people got nothing so yeah.)
So anyways the decklist as developed by Emidln on here and the stormboards with a few minor tweaks:
Lands
4 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic island
1 Tropical Island
2 Island
1 Swamp
Ritual effects
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
Business
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Past in Flames
1 Grim Tutor
1 Ad Nauseam
2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Infernal Tutor
Protection
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress
Cantrips
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
Sideboard:
1 Bayou
4 Abrupt Decay
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
3 Virtue's Ruin
3 Karakas
Anyways, onto the tournament.
Round 1 against jund (the very bad homebrew kind, I feel bad for this guy as it was his first tournament match and he was playing a homebrew casual type of deck.)
I lose the die roll and he elects to play first. He goes evolving wilds or some other random land, go. I kept the hand of dark rit, cabal rit, fetch, infernal tutor, and a pair of cantrips or something. I draw lion's eye diamond on my first turn and kill him on turn 1 via ad nauseam.
SB: No changes
Game 2 I draw the one of tendrils in my opener along with a bunch of rituals and a snapcaster or something. I play land go for 4 turns, he plays some random dorks, and when I draw cabal therapy I get there for exactsies via snapcaster on cabal ritual and snapcaster sacking to flashback therapy for lots of storm.
1-0 (2-0)
Round 2 against esperblade
I'm on the play this round.
I know my opponent is on the FoW plan, and I lead off with a blind therapy naming sensei's divining top thinking he's on the countertop miracles deck. Turns out he's esperblade. His hand has 2x brainstorm, thoughtseize, terminus, swords to plowshares, lands. I decide to go petal into therapy on brainstorm, going down to 3 cards in my hand naming brainstorm to get the 2 for 2. He thoughtseizes me and takes infernal. I'm never really in this game after that point, as I topdeck terrible cards and he draws another thoughtseize and double snapcaster as well as SFM to get the beats on before I have a chance of combo'ing.
SB: No changes
Game 2, I open with a hand of dark rit, ad nauseam, cantrips, land. I go land, ponder, go. He goes land go. I draw another ritual, but decide to wait to go for it for fear of FoW or any countermagic really. He goes land, go. I draw another ritual. When he brainstorms on my end step I go dark rit, dark rit, ad nauseam in response with 2 mana open for pierce. He has the force. I never really recovered after this point, I couldn't resolve past in flames as he obviously drew a counterspell to stop me from resolving it as I was almost completely out of resources after my first combo attempt. Didn't help that he duressed my cabal ritual and drew snapcaster to duress me again. I lose to snapcaster beats.
1-1 (2-2)
The worst part? I find out he has literally 2 FoW's in his entire 75 after the tournament because he doesn't own more than 2 making the matchup heavily in my favor due to his lack of 4 FoW's.
Round 3 against merfolk
I think I win the die roll although I'm not completely sure. I lead off with probe to see his hand of double silvergill, master of the pearl trident, merrow reejerey, island, mutavault or something i.e. no interaction at all. I play ponder and pass to him. He casts silvergill. On my turn I go for it, as he has drawn 2 unknown cards since I probed him. He lacked force of will and I won.
SBing: +1 EtW -1 Grim Tutor maybe? Not completely sure.
I open with 3 fetchlands, probe, LED, petal, empty the warrens. He goes land go. I draw a probe and decide to go for goblins. I probe twice drawing brainstorm and another land seeing a bunch of creatures and maybe a daze or something. I pass back. He ticks up the vial he had played turn 1, plays a land and passes after casting relic of progenitus. I cast brainstorm after playing a fetchland. He doesn't counter, I draw into infernal tutor as well as another LED and a therapy. I put back EtW and a land. I pass back. He goes mutavault, cursecatcher. On my turn I draw snapcaster. I decide to force his hand with relic and cast snapcaster, targeting gitaxian probe. He exiles everything in response. I pass back. He ticks vial to 3 with a reejerey in hand that I know about due to probing him earlier. He attacks with mutavault and I elect not to block. I take 3 due to reejerey and he passes back. On my turn I combo with ease due to double dark rit and all the mana I have in hand + infernal tutor into PiF into tendrils. My memory is a little foggy on this game but it was an easy win.
2-1 (4-2)
Round 4 against canadian threshold
So I lose the die roll this round against tempo thresh. Great. At first I thought he was countertop but he turned out to be on the thresh plan.
Game 1: He leads with tropical island, go. My hand contains infernal tutor, double cabal rit, swamp, therapy, probe, and snapcaster or something irrelevant. I draw a cantrip or something, maybe another therapy. I go swamp, therapy him. His hand is daze, goyf, bolt, brainstorm, and lands or something. I attempt therapy, he dazes. I pass. He plays a misty rainforest over the trop he bounced with daze and passes back. I fail to draw a land and pass back, drawing either a cabal ritual, an infernal tutor, or a grim tutor. He end of turns brainstorm and I give him the thumbs up. He untaps into a goyf and passes. Goyf is a 4/5. I draw another infernal or something I can't cast and pass on back. He attacks and deploys another threat or something. I probe him again and see just a bolt and lands/irrelevant cards. I draw dark ritual. At this point my hand is 3x infernal tutor, 1x grim tutor, 3x cabal ritual, 1x dark ritual, 1x snapcaster mage. I cast dark ritual into cabal ritual without thresh. I infernal for another cabal ritual and then cast all the cabal rituals. I grim tutor for LED. I play LED into infernal into a tendrils without the need of an engine.
SB: +1 EtW, +1 Bayou, +1 Tendrils.
-1 Probe, -1 Snapcaster, -1 Grim tutor
Game 2: I go land go for a few turns, planning to raw tendrils him from hand since I've drawn both. When I go brainstorm, it resolves. I put the redundant tendrils on top. I duress him. His hand is FoW (he's at 19 life from a fetch, so it's not really a card.) bolt, stifle, daze, spell pierce. I try to look concerned when I cast LED from my hand, but he doesn't bite on the first or second one. At this point my hand is infernal tutor, tendrils, duress, dark ritual with 3 mana open. I punt and cast dark ritual first. He pierces it, I pay. Then he dazes it and I lose immediately with no mana floating holding 3 do nothing cards. Definitely didn't think this part in the game through for some reason, thinking I would dark rit then duress with the dark rit mana whereas if I lead with duress, I'm able to take pierce and pray that he doesn't force the dark ritual afterwards.
Game 3:
I'm on the play and go land, ponder, pass. He goes land, go. I untap and resolve a brainstorm or something. I probe him and his hand is double stifle, double ponder, and meaningless cards. I therapy him afterwards, naming ponder since stifle doesn't do much when I resolve ad nauseam the next turn into a past in flames into flashbacking therapy on stifle into a lethal tendrils of agony.
3-1 (6-3)
Round 5 against mono red goblins (not sure if he was splashing or not, didn't see thalia at all or any white though.) I get paired down this round so I can't draw into top 8. Oh well, when I find out I'm against goblins I don't really care that much.
Game 1: I do what storm does to players without countermagic. I win on turn 3 via PiF or something, the game wasn't that hard to win through his turn 1 lackey.
SBing: -4 Therapy, -3 Duress +4 Abrupt Decay, +2 Chain of Vapor, +1 Bayou
Game 2: I naturally draw the ad nauseam as well as one LED, a brainstorm, and a probe alongside lands. I snap keep, as drawing a dark ritual or another LED can set up the win. He plays turn 1 lackey or something. I go land, ponder finding another LED, into a pass. He attacks, plays a skirk prospector, and drops a piledriver off of the lackey trigger, which is fine by me. I go land, brainstorm. He red blasts it and I die a little inside. Although at the same time I'm incredibly happy that he didn't save that for the probe when I sacked 2 LED's in response. I sigh and pass back with no relevant plays. He attacks and deploys a sharpshooter and he is in topdeck mode as well as myself. I draw abrupt decay and pass back. He attacks. I draw a lotus petal and decide to abrupt decay the piledriver to try to maintain my life total. He casts a ringleader meanwhile I am drawing lands and yet another LED. My hand contains 3 LED and an ad nauseam at 9 life or something with my board consisting of swamp, island, island, tropical island. He attacks me down to 5. He can skirk prospector + goblin sharpshooter me down to 1 life but that's it. With my last draw step I draw an infernal tutor and am extremely happy. I cast all the LED's into infernal tutor, cracking the LED's for red, black, and blue. I fetch past in flames after some deliberation as there's nothing else to grab really with 4 storm and only 11 mana floating I can't tutor chain him. I cast the PiF using all the red and a blue. I cast ponder first, finding dark rit, the fourth LED, and a bayou. Success. I draw LED, and then flashback brainstorm. I draw LED, bayou, petal. I put petal on top of bayou despite having a land drop remaining it doesn't really matter at this point. I hardcast probe to draw petal and then cast my hand into infernal into tendrils of agony for lethal.
4-1 (8-3)
Top 8 against Rb goblins.
Game 1 I kill him on turn 2 or something, my brainstorm was incredibly nice to me drawing me into my second LED as well as some more rituals to go with the rituals and infernal tutor in my hand. I win with ease.
SBing: -4 Therapy, -3 Duress, +4 Abrupt Decay, +2 Chain of Vapor, +1 Bayou
He's on the play. I start out with tendrils in hand and misplay by casting ponder turn 1. My hand is literally a bunch of ritual effects, tendrils, brainstorm, and lands. I play the land go game for a few turns taking some damage. On the turn before I die I cast brainstorm. I fail to find another cantrip/way to generate storm and am 1 storm short of killing him and he has a tormod's crypt in play, preventing me from winning if I cast tendrils for 18 at him unless I somehow get through with a snapcaster mage for 2 points of damage. I scoop.
Game 3 I go turn 1 ponder, pass. He goes land, go. I go brainstorm into a ton of rituals including double LED into infernal into ad nauseam. He mindbreak trap's my ad nauseam and I die quite promptly afterwards since I brick on draws a lot and he eventually just overwhelms me with goblins. Never thought to play around mindbreak trap since I didn't know about it game 2. Sigh. The worst part is I drew chain of vapor as well as double abrupt decay that game, so if I hadn't boarded at all I would have won the match with ease as I would have waited a turn to resolve a therapy or duress or something and had the information that he boarded in trap. Didn't help that I could play around mindbreak trap without any discard effects in deck, effectively leaving me with 2 2/1's to try to win the game with against a deck with 30 something creatures. Oh well.
Props: Getting a turn 1 kill for once despite it being against a casual deck.
Winning without tutors/engine cards (snapcaster mage flashing back cabal ritual and cabal therapy is the hotness in terms of raising the storm count.)
Snapcaster mage for being an awesome card.
Dark Ritual.
Ad nauseam winning me games versus losing me games.
Past in flames for being amazing.
Grim tutor was actually good today, grabbing LED like a champ when I needed it in order to combo off.
Slops: Mindbreak trap. I haven't played against this card in a long, long time. I was under the impression that people had discovered how bad this card was in legacy, but I guess not.
Never facing maverick. Seriously, I just want to face maverick ONE TIME with this sideboard, as the matchup is an actual bye.
So anyways the decklist as developed by Emidln on here and the stormboards with a few minor tweaks:
Lands
4 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic island
1 Tropical Island
2 Island
1 Swamp
Ritual effects
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
Business
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Past in Flames
1 Grim Tutor
1 Ad Nauseam
2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Infernal Tutor
Protection
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress
Cantrips
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
Sideboard:
1 Bayou
4 Abrupt Decay
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
3 Virtue's Ruin
3 Karakas
Anyways, onto the tournament.
Round 1 against jund (the very bad homebrew kind, I feel bad for this guy as it was his first tournament match and he was playing a homebrew casual type of deck.)
I lose the die roll and he elects to play first. He goes evolving wilds or some other random land, go. I kept the hand of dark rit, cabal rit, fetch, infernal tutor, and a pair of cantrips or something. I draw lion's eye diamond on my first turn and kill him on turn 1 via ad nauseam.
SB: No changes
Game 2 I draw the one of tendrils in my opener along with a bunch of rituals and a snapcaster or something. I play land go for 4 turns, he plays some random dorks, and when I draw cabal therapy I get there for exactsies via snapcaster on cabal ritual and snapcaster sacking to flashback therapy for lots of storm.
1-0 (2-0)
Round 2 against esperblade
I'm on the play this round.
I know my opponent is on the FoW plan, and I lead off with a blind therapy naming sensei's divining top thinking he's on the countertop miracles deck. Turns out he's esperblade. His hand has 2x brainstorm, thoughtseize, terminus, swords to plowshares, lands. I decide to go petal into therapy on brainstorm, going down to 3 cards in my hand naming brainstorm to get the 2 for 2. He thoughtseizes me and takes infernal. I'm never really in this game after that point, as I topdeck terrible cards and he draws another thoughtseize and double snapcaster as well as SFM to get the beats on before I have a chance of combo'ing.
SB: No changes
Game 2, I open with a hand of dark rit, ad nauseam, cantrips, land. I go land, ponder, go. He goes land go. I draw another ritual, but decide to wait to go for it for fear of FoW or any countermagic really. He goes land, go. I draw another ritual. When he brainstorms on my end step I go dark rit, dark rit, ad nauseam in response with 2 mana open for pierce. He has the force. I never really recovered after this point, I couldn't resolve past in flames as he obviously drew a counterspell to stop me from resolving it as I was almost completely out of resources after my first combo attempt. Didn't help that he duressed my cabal ritual and drew snapcaster to duress me again. I lose to snapcaster beats.
1-1 (2-2)
The worst part? I find out he has literally 2 FoW's in his entire 75 after the tournament because he doesn't own more than 2 making the matchup heavily in my favor due to his lack of 4 FoW's.
Round 3 against merfolk
I think I win the die roll although I'm not completely sure. I lead off with probe to see his hand of double silvergill, master of the pearl trident, merrow reejerey, island, mutavault or something i.e. no interaction at all. I play ponder and pass to him. He casts silvergill. On my turn I go for it, as he has drawn 2 unknown cards since I probed him. He lacked force of will and I won.
SBing: +1 EtW -1 Grim Tutor maybe? Not completely sure.
I open with 3 fetchlands, probe, LED, petal, empty the warrens. He goes land go. I draw a probe and decide to go for goblins. I probe twice drawing brainstorm and another land seeing a bunch of creatures and maybe a daze or something. I pass back. He ticks up the vial he had played turn 1, plays a land and passes after casting relic of progenitus. I cast brainstorm after playing a fetchland. He doesn't counter, I draw into infernal tutor as well as another LED and a therapy. I put back EtW and a land. I pass back. He goes mutavault, cursecatcher. On my turn I draw snapcaster. I decide to force his hand with relic and cast snapcaster, targeting gitaxian probe. He exiles everything in response. I pass back. He ticks vial to 3 with a reejerey in hand that I know about due to probing him earlier. He attacks with mutavault and I elect not to block. I take 3 due to reejerey and he passes back. On my turn I combo with ease due to double dark rit and all the mana I have in hand + infernal tutor into PiF into tendrils. My memory is a little foggy on this game but it was an easy win.
2-1 (4-2)
Round 4 against canadian threshold
So I lose the die roll this round against tempo thresh. Great. At first I thought he was countertop but he turned out to be on the thresh plan.
Game 1: He leads with tropical island, go. My hand contains infernal tutor, double cabal rit, swamp, therapy, probe, and snapcaster or something irrelevant. I draw a cantrip or something, maybe another therapy. I go swamp, therapy him. His hand is daze, goyf, bolt, brainstorm, and lands or something. I attempt therapy, he dazes. I pass. He plays a misty rainforest over the trop he bounced with daze and passes back. I fail to draw a land and pass back, drawing either a cabal ritual, an infernal tutor, or a grim tutor. He end of turns brainstorm and I give him the thumbs up. He untaps into a goyf and passes. Goyf is a 4/5. I draw another infernal or something I can't cast and pass on back. He attacks and deploys another threat or something. I probe him again and see just a bolt and lands/irrelevant cards. I draw dark ritual. At this point my hand is 3x infernal tutor, 1x grim tutor, 3x cabal ritual, 1x dark ritual, 1x snapcaster mage. I cast dark ritual into cabal ritual without thresh. I infernal for another cabal ritual and then cast all the cabal rituals. I grim tutor for LED. I play LED into infernal into a tendrils without the need of an engine.
SB: +1 EtW, +1 Bayou, +1 Tendrils.
-1 Probe, -1 Snapcaster, -1 Grim tutor
Game 2: I go land go for a few turns, planning to raw tendrils him from hand since I've drawn both. When I go brainstorm, it resolves. I put the redundant tendrils on top. I duress him. His hand is FoW (he's at 19 life from a fetch, so it's not really a card.) bolt, stifle, daze, spell pierce. I try to look concerned when I cast LED from my hand, but he doesn't bite on the first or second one. At this point my hand is infernal tutor, tendrils, duress, dark ritual with 3 mana open. I punt and cast dark ritual first. He pierces it, I pay. Then he dazes it and I lose immediately with no mana floating holding 3 do nothing cards. Definitely didn't think this part in the game through for some reason, thinking I would dark rit then duress with the dark rit mana whereas if I lead with duress, I'm able to take pierce and pray that he doesn't force the dark ritual afterwards.
Game 3:
I'm on the play and go land, ponder, pass. He goes land, go. I untap and resolve a brainstorm or something. I probe him and his hand is double stifle, double ponder, and meaningless cards. I therapy him afterwards, naming ponder since stifle doesn't do much when I resolve ad nauseam the next turn into a past in flames into flashbacking therapy on stifle into a lethal tendrils of agony.
3-1 (6-3)
Round 5 against mono red goblins (not sure if he was splashing or not, didn't see thalia at all or any white though.) I get paired down this round so I can't draw into top 8. Oh well, when I find out I'm against goblins I don't really care that much.
Game 1: I do what storm does to players without countermagic. I win on turn 3 via PiF or something, the game wasn't that hard to win through his turn 1 lackey.
SBing: -4 Therapy, -3 Duress +4 Abrupt Decay, +2 Chain of Vapor, +1 Bayou
Game 2: I naturally draw the ad nauseam as well as one LED, a brainstorm, and a probe alongside lands. I snap keep, as drawing a dark ritual or another LED can set up the win. He plays turn 1 lackey or something. I go land, ponder finding another LED, into a pass. He attacks, plays a skirk prospector, and drops a piledriver off of the lackey trigger, which is fine by me. I go land, brainstorm. He red blasts it and I die a little inside. Although at the same time I'm incredibly happy that he didn't save that for the probe when I sacked 2 LED's in response. I sigh and pass back with no relevant plays. He attacks and deploys a sharpshooter and he is in topdeck mode as well as myself. I draw abrupt decay and pass back. He attacks. I draw a lotus petal and decide to abrupt decay the piledriver to try to maintain my life total. He casts a ringleader meanwhile I am drawing lands and yet another LED. My hand contains 3 LED and an ad nauseam at 9 life or something with my board consisting of swamp, island, island, tropical island. He attacks me down to 5. He can skirk prospector + goblin sharpshooter me down to 1 life but that's it. With my last draw step I draw an infernal tutor and am extremely happy. I cast all the LED's into infernal tutor, cracking the LED's for red, black, and blue. I fetch past in flames after some deliberation as there's nothing else to grab really with 4 storm and only 11 mana floating I can't tutor chain him. I cast the PiF using all the red and a blue. I cast ponder first, finding dark rit, the fourth LED, and a bayou. Success. I draw LED, and then flashback brainstorm. I draw LED, bayou, petal. I put petal on top of bayou despite having a land drop remaining it doesn't really matter at this point. I hardcast probe to draw petal and then cast my hand into infernal into tendrils of agony for lethal.
4-1 (8-3)
Top 8 against Rb goblins.
Game 1 I kill him on turn 2 or something, my brainstorm was incredibly nice to me drawing me into my second LED as well as some more rituals to go with the rituals and infernal tutor in my hand. I win with ease.
SBing: -4 Therapy, -3 Duress, +4 Abrupt Decay, +2 Chain of Vapor, +1 Bayou
He's on the play. I start out with tendrils in hand and misplay by casting ponder turn 1. My hand is literally a bunch of ritual effects, tendrils, brainstorm, and lands. I play the land go game for a few turns taking some damage. On the turn before I die I cast brainstorm. I fail to find another cantrip/way to generate storm and am 1 storm short of killing him and he has a tormod's crypt in play, preventing me from winning if I cast tendrils for 18 at him unless I somehow get through with a snapcaster mage for 2 points of damage. I scoop.
Game 3 I go turn 1 ponder, pass. He goes land, go. I go brainstorm into a ton of rituals including double LED into infernal into ad nauseam. He mindbreak trap's my ad nauseam and I die quite promptly afterwards since I brick on draws a lot and he eventually just overwhelms me with goblins. Never thought to play around mindbreak trap since I didn't know about it game 2. Sigh. The worst part is I drew chain of vapor as well as double abrupt decay that game, so if I hadn't boarded at all I would have won the match with ease as I would have waited a turn to resolve a therapy or duress or something and had the information that he boarded in trap. Didn't help that I could play around mindbreak trap without any discard effects in deck, effectively leaving me with 2 2/1's to try to win the game with against a deck with 30 something creatures. Oh well.
Props: Getting a turn 1 kill for once despite it being against a casual deck.
Winning without tutors/engine cards (snapcaster mage flashing back cabal ritual and cabal therapy is the hotness in terms of raising the storm count.)
Snapcaster mage for being an awesome card.
Dark Ritual.
Ad nauseam winning me games versus losing me games.
Past in flames for being amazing.
Grim tutor was actually good today, grabbing LED like a champ when I needed it in order to combo off.
Slops: Mindbreak trap. I haven't played against this card in a long, long time. I was under the impression that people had discovered how bad this card was in legacy, but I guess not.
Never facing maverick. Seriously, I just want to face maverick ONE TIME with this sideboard, as the matchup is an actual bye.