gigapatrick
10-13-2014, 06:46 PM
Hello all. I’d like to share a tournament report with everyone who’s interested. Yesterday, at a local game store, I piloted RG Lands for the first time in a Legacy Grand Prix Trial. I hadn’t known that the event was a Grand Prix Trial, so I came in expecting ten or twelve people to show up. Instead I got to play in a five-round, twenty-two man tournament with a cut to the top eight. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to pilot a new deck at this larger-than-expected event, since for the past two years I’ve exclusively played Monoblack Pox—and while casting Liliana of the Veil and Nether Void at times treated me very well, at other times I found myself losing to inconsistency and to the fact that my clock was too slow and my hard-locks weren’t hard enough. So the switch to Lands seemed great to me, given that Lands hard-locks better than Pox and has a quick 20/20 win-con as well.
This is the list I took to the Trial. It’s pretty traditional, an aggregate of the many lists I’ve seen on mtgtop8 and on SCG.com. Since it seems like a Miracles meta at the moment, the four Chalices and two Chokes in the board reflect this.
4 Exploration
2 Manabond
4 Life from the Loam
4 Punishing Fire
4 Crop Rotation
4 Gamble
4 Mox Diamond
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wooded Foothills
2 Taiga
1 Forest
3 Tranquil Thicket
3 Maze of Ith
4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
1 Karakas
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Glacial Chasm
4 Thespian’s Stage
2 Dark Depths
Board:
1 Dark Depths
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Krosan Grip
2 Choke
Round 1: Merfolk
I’m up against a guy I know who is normally on Miracles but has decided to try out Merfolk today. He’s on the three-Chalice, Cosi’s Trickster version rather than the Aether Vial version.
Game 1: Merfolk casts some dudes like Silvergill Adept and Cosi’s Trickster. I don’t have a good control hand, but I’ve got Crop Rotation into a Marit Lage token, so I go for it. He’s already countered my first-turn attempt at Exploration, so I feel like he doesn’t have any more counter-magic. He doesn’t, and the tentacled queen of the ice depths murders him.
I board out: 2 Manabond
I board in: 2 Choke
Game 2: Merfolk makes a Silvergill Adept and a True-Name Nemsis—but taxing with Port and Tabernacle keep him from increasing his clock. This allows me to live long enough to assemble a 20/20 token, again without the inference of countermagic, and Marit flies over his little sea creatures to destroy him.
1-0
Round 2: Ant
Game 1: We both play lands for a while, except that Ant gets to perfectly sculpt his hand because the only interaction I have to offer is a Port for his swamp. When I drop a Depths on my fifth turn (with Stage in play), he Rituals into a Past in Flames win.
I board out: 3 Maze of Ith, 1 Tabernacle, 3 Punishing Fire, 2 Manabond, 1 Karakas, 1 Glacial Chasm
I board in: 4 Chalice of the Void, 4 Sphere of Resistance, 2 Choke, 1 Dark Depths
(This seemed like a pretty bad configuration to me after Game 2 started.)
Game 2: I see a seven-grip without any hate, so I mull to six. I see a Gamble, a Crop Rotation, a Choke, a Mox Diamond, a Thicket, and a Grove of the Burnwillows. Not awesome, but the Gamble can find a Chalice or Sphere for me, so I keep. I tank for a second, wondering if I should give him a life with Grove or if I should drop a land to play Mox, thus making my Gamble chances worse. I figure Ant will crack a fetch so my Marit Lage clock will stay the same. I play Grove and Gamble, finding Chalice of the Void—which I promptly discard to Gamble. Bummer. Ant plays some lands, I don’t do much, he Duresses me, I respond with Crop Rotation to find Bojuka Bog despite the fact that it will have no effect, and he takes the Choke out of my hand. Then he Rituals into an Ad Nauseam win.
1-1
Round 3: Napoleonic Delver
Game 1: My seven-grip includes a Manabond and six lands, but they aren’t really six awesome lands and I’d prefer one of them (a Thicket) to stay in my hand. I mulligan to six and see no colored mana sources. So I mulligan to five. I see a Punishing Fire and some non-Grove lands. Keep. Delver plays a fetch and passes. I topdeck a Grove of the Burnwillows and feel better about my chances. Delver then proceeds to play a Stoneforge Mystic (finding a Skull), and the turn after, another Mystic (finding a Jitte). Neither Mystic lives to forge anything into play. Still, Delver has enough lands to hardcast his Batterskull, but I topdeck a Maze of Ith. Sweet. Then Delver plays a Delver of Secrets, which flips soon thereafter and swings in with a Jitte attached to him. I have to aim a Fire at it, which gets countered, so I take the beats from Batterskull and Maze the insect to keep the Jitte from getting counters. Then I Fire the insect again, which resolves. At long last, I topdeck a Loam, which allows me to get more lands into play and to begin Wasting away his manabase. I also Crop Rotate into a Tabernacle to tax him while I get rid of his duals. Delver immediately forgets his Tabernacle triggers and concedes.
I board out: 2 Manabond
I board in: 2 Krosan Grip, fearing some number of Rest in Peace
Game 2: I keep a seven-grip with a Mox Diamond, a Gamble, a Crop Rotation, an Exploration, and three lands. I cast Exploration and, when it resolves, a Gamble into a Life from the Loam. Delver doesn’t see any hate, so I just keep him from killing me with my various lands until I find an opportune moment to make a Marit Lage token.
2-1
Round 4: TES
Game 1: I’m not sure what my opponent is on for a couple of turns, but then I figure it out and I hope that my in-hand Crop Rotation can steal a win by finding a Bojuka Bog at the right moment. Instead, I topdeck my Bog, pass, and watch as TES casts several Rites of Flames and two Lotus Petals into an Ad Nauseam win.
I board out: 3 Maze of Ith, 3 Punishing Fire, 1 Karakas, 1 Tabernacle, 1 Glacial Chasm
I board in: 4 Chalice, 4 Sphere, 1 Dark Depths
Game 2: I keep an awesome seven-grip of Mox Diamond, lands, a Sphere, and a Chalice. I Chalice for one, then cast Sphere of Resistance my following turn. TES keeps drawing cards, but can’t do anything. I naturally draw the Marit combo for the win.
Game 3: I see no hate in my seven-grip, but keep a six of two Spheres of Resistance, a Dark Depths, a Thespian’s Stage, a Life from the Loam, and a Crop Rotation. I reason that I’m on the draw, so if I get a turn, I’ve got good odds to find the lands to cast my Spheres. TES mulls to five looking for a decent hand, but doesn’t find one. He passes his first turn without playing a land, I draw a Thicket, put it into play, and pass. TES draws and passes. I play Sphere, then the second Sphere the following turn, and TES concedes without land on the battlefield.
3-1
Round 5: Intentional Draw into top eight
Guy was on Elves, and as I’m new to the deck (I played against it once a few months ago when I borrowed a friend’s Intuition Lands build), I’m not sure how the matchup plays out. It seems okay to me if you can get Tabernacle or Glacial Chasm into play, but it also seems like a very losable matchup. (When I fought it with Intuition Lands, I beat it 2-0 on the back of Engineered Explosives and Tabernacle.)
3-1-1
Top Eight: Quarterfinals
Lands vs. Delver Cruise
Game 1: I don’t know what I’m up against, but I keep a Loam / Exploration hand with a Punishing Fire but no Grove. Delver Cruise counters my Exploration, which slows me down considerably. The only resistance I’m able to find by dredging is a single Maze of Ith, which is pretty ineffective against an army consisting of Monastery Swiftspear, Delver of Secrets, Young Pyromancer, and two Elemental tokens. I do find a late Depths-Stage combo, but Delver Cruise has cast two Treasure Cruises and has plenty of countermagic when I naturally draw another Punishing Fire. I aim it at a flying Delver to clear the path for a win, but the Fire gets countered and I die the next turn to a mass of Elementals.
I board out: 2 Manabond
I board in: 2 Chalice of the Void
(In retrospect, this seems incorrect.)
Game 2: I cast a turn one Exploration. Delver Cruise plays a turn one Delver of Secrets. I cast a turn two Crop Rotation, which enables me to make a turn two Marit Lage. Delver Cruise scoops.
Game 3: I’ve got a spectacular seven grip of Loam, Mox Diamond, Exploration, Punishing Fire, and lands. Delver Cruise drops a fetch, gets a mountain, plays a Swiftspear, attacks, and passes. From here, I pretty much dominate when my Loam finds a Grove of the Burnwillows. I also find a Port to keep Delver Cruise off his mountain, and I begin to slowly choke the opponent to death. Slowly, because Delver Cruise has dropped a Pithing Needle naming Thespian’s Stage. Thus, I have to go for the Punishing Fire win because I haven’t boarded in K-Grip. I get Delver Cruise down to ten life after repeatedly Firing him and Bogging his graveyard so that he can’t use one of two islands to cast Treasure Cruise. He has, however, been waiting to find a fourth land so that he can get three mana to cast his Blood Moon. He does so, and having no outs, I concede. Bummer. I leave with fifteen bucks store credit for my performance, so I’m happy overall, but it was a bit of a sour note to end on, considering I felt like I had the game (and the match) well in hand.
Analysis: Both the Merfolk player and the Napoleonic Delver player made mistakes, so these matchups might be a little harder than this report makes them out to be. When I faced Napoleonic Delver, I saw neither Wastelands nor True-Nemeses from my opponent, and if I’d seen either, those games could have turned out very differently. Against Ant, I don’t think I should have boarded in Chokes, for the simple fact that it costs three mana and the game will probably be decided by the time I get to cast it. Otherwise, my board will either get me there or it won’t. In one case it didn’t, and the other it did (with a fair amount of help from TES’s mulligans). Lastly, because the deck felt super awesome to play and super-duper broken compared to one-card-a-turn Pox, I have to blame myself for the match loss against Delver Cruise. I’m not sure why Blood Moon wasn’t on my radar, but I never even thought of it. If I’d boarded in some number of Grips, I think I was so far ahead in that final game that I could have waited to naturally draw it and still won. As it was, I didn’t and so I lost. I’ll keep that in mind for future outings. I’d like, also, to make a final note on Manabond, which seems like the weakest card in the deck to me. It adds to explosive potential but does not actually increase the percentage of finding combo pieces. As it only speeds up your win by a turn a non-zero amount of times (considering the fact that you need six cards in your opener to go off turn one [green land, Manabond, Stage, Depths, and two other mana-producing lands]), I’m strongly considering replacing them with an Engineered Explosives-Buried Ruin engine in the tradition of Intuition Lands. You get to keep the all-in aspect of the Marit Lage combo while adding answers to noncreature permanents to the main deck. I know that there aren’t any competitive lists doing this, but it seems like a flat upgrade to me. If you have reasonable arguments to dissuade me from doing this, please make them known.
Results
(This section will contain a record of all my matches with RG Lands, but it will not include intentional draws, as it is meant to reflect match-win percentages rather than tournament minutia.)
[Aggro]
UR Delver Cruise: 0-1
Napoleonic Delver: 1-0
Merfolk: 1-0
[Combo]
Storm: 1-1
This is the list I took to the Trial. It’s pretty traditional, an aggregate of the many lists I’ve seen on mtgtop8 and on SCG.com. Since it seems like a Miracles meta at the moment, the four Chalices and two Chokes in the board reflect this.
4 Exploration
2 Manabond
4 Life from the Loam
4 Punishing Fire
4 Crop Rotation
4 Gamble
4 Mox Diamond
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wooded Foothills
2 Taiga
1 Forest
3 Tranquil Thicket
3 Maze of Ith
4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
1 Karakas
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Glacial Chasm
4 Thespian’s Stage
2 Dark Depths
Board:
1 Dark Depths
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Krosan Grip
2 Choke
Round 1: Merfolk
I’m up against a guy I know who is normally on Miracles but has decided to try out Merfolk today. He’s on the three-Chalice, Cosi’s Trickster version rather than the Aether Vial version.
Game 1: Merfolk casts some dudes like Silvergill Adept and Cosi’s Trickster. I don’t have a good control hand, but I’ve got Crop Rotation into a Marit Lage token, so I go for it. He’s already countered my first-turn attempt at Exploration, so I feel like he doesn’t have any more counter-magic. He doesn’t, and the tentacled queen of the ice depths murders him.
I board out: 2 Manabond
I board in: 2 Choke
Game 2: Merfolk makes a Silvergill Adept and a True-Name Nemsis—but taxing with Port and Tabernacle keep him from increasing his clock. This allows me to live long enough to assemble a 20/20 token, again without the inference of countermagic, and Marit flies over his little sea creatures to destroy him.
1-0
Round 2: Ant
Game 1: We both play lands for a while, except that Ant gets to perfectly sculpt his hand because the only interaction I have to offer is a Port for his swamp. When I drop a Depths on my fifth turn (with Stage in play), he Rituals into a Past in Flames win.
I board out: 3 Maze of Ith, 1 Tabernacle, 3 Punishing Fire, 2 Manabond, 1 Karakas, 1 Glacial Chasm
I board in: 4 Chalice of the Void, 4 Sphere of Resistance, 2 Choke, 1 Dark Depths
(This seemed like a pretty bad configuration to me after Game 2 started.)
Game 2: I see a seven-grip without any hate, so I mull to six. I see a Gamble, a Crop Rotation, a Choke, a Mox Diamond, a Thicket, and a Grove of the Burnwillows. Not awesome, but the Gamble can find a Chalice or Sphere for me, so I keep. I tank for a second, wondering if I should give him a life with Grove or if I should drop a land to play Mox, thus making my Gamble chances worse. I figure Ant will crack a fetch so my Marit Lage clock will stay the same. I play Grove and Gamble, finding Chalice of the Void—which I promptly discard to Gamble. Bummer. Ant plays some lands, I don’t do much, he Duresses me, I respond with Crop Rotation to find Bojuka Bog despite the fact that it will have no effect, and he takes the Choke out of my hand. Then he Rituals into an Ad Nauseam win.
1-1
Round 3: Napoleonic Delver
Game 1: My seven-grip includes a Manabond and six lands, but they aren’t really six awesome lands and I’d prefer one of them (a Thicket) to stay in my hand. I mulligan to six and see no colored mana sources. So I mulligan to five. I see a Punishing Fire and some non-Grove lands. Keep. Delver plays a fetch and passes. I topdeck a Grove of the Burnwillows and feel better about my chances. Delver then proceeds to play a Stoneforge Mystic (finding a Skull), and the turn after, another Mystic (finding a Jitte). Neither Mystic lives to forge anything into play. Still, Delver has enough lands to hardcast his Batterskull, but I topdeck a Maze of Ith. Sweet. Then Delver plays a Delver of Secrets, which flips soon thereafter and swings in with a Jitte attached to him. I have to aim a Fire at it, which gets countered, so I take the beats from Batterskull and Maze the insect to keep the Jitte from getting counters. Then I Fire the insect again, which resolves. At long last, I topdeck a Loam, which allows me to get more lands into play and to begin Wasting away his manabase. I also Crop Rotate into a Tabernacle to tax him while I get rid of his duals. Delver immediately forgets his Tabernacle triggers and concedes.
I board out: 2 Manabond
I board in: 2 Krosan Grip, fearing some number of Rest in Peace
Game 2: I keep a seven-grip with a Mox Diamond, a Gamble, a Crop Rotation, an Exploration, and three lands. I cast Exploration and, when it resolves, a Gamble into a Life from the Loam. Delver doesn’t see any hate, so I just keep him from killing me with my various lands until I find an opportune moment to make a Marit Lage token.
2-1
Round 4: TES
Game 1: I’m not sure what my opponent is on for a couple of turns, but then I figure it out and I hope that my in-hand Crop Rotation can steal a win by finding a Bojuka Bog at the right moment. Instead, I topdeck my Bog, pass, and watch as TES casts several Rites of Flames and two Lotus Petals into an Ad Nauseam win.
I board out: 3 Maze of Ith, 3 Punishing Fire, 1 Karakas, 1 Tabernacle, 1 Glacial Chasm
I board in: 4 Chalice, 4 Sphere, 1 Dark Depths
Game 2: I keep an awesome seven-grip of Mox Diamond, lands, a Sphere, and a Chalice. I Chalice for one, then cast Sphere of Resistance my following turn. TES keeps drawing cards, but can’t do anything. I naturally draw the Marit combo for the win.
Game 3: I see no hate in my seven-grip, but keep a six of two Spheres of Resistance, a Dark Depths, a Thespian’s Stage, a Life from the Loam, and a Crop Rotation. I reason that I’m on the draw, so if I get a turn, I’ve got good odds to find the lands to cast my Spheres. TES mulls to five looking for a decent hand, but doesn’t find one. He passes his first turn without playing a land, I draw a Thicket, put it into play, and pass. TES draws and passes. I play Sphere, then the second Sphere the following turn, and TES concedes without land on the battlefield.
3-1
Round 5: Intentional Draw into top eight
Guy was on Elves, and as I’m new to the deck (I played against it once a few months ago when I borrowed a friend’s Intuition Lands build), I’m not sure how the matchup plays out. It seems okay to me if you can get Tabernacle or Glacial Chasm into play, but it also seems like a very losable matchup. (When I fought it with Intuition Lands, I beat it 2-0 on the back of Engineered Explosives and Tabernacle.)
3-1-1
Top Eight: Quarterfinals
Lands vs. Delver Cruise
Game 1: I don’t know what I’m up against, but I keep a Loam / Exploration hand with a Punishing Fire but no Grove. Delver Cruise counters my Exploration, which slows me down considerably. The only resistance I’m able to find by dredging is a single Maze of Ith, which is pretty ineffective against an army consisting of Monastery Swiftspear, Delver of Secrets, Young Pyromancer, and two Elemental tokens. I do find a late Depths-Stage combo, but Delver Cruise has cast two Treasure Cruises and has plenty of countermagic when I naturally draw another Punishing Fire. I aim it at a flying Delver to clear the path for a win, but the Fire gets countered and I die the next turn to a mass of Elementals.
I board out: 2 Manabond
I board in: 2 Chalice of the Void
(In retrospect, this seems incorrect.)
Game 2: I cast a turn one Exploration. Delver Cruise plays a turn one Delver of Secrets. I cast a turn two Crop Rotation, which enables me to make a turn two Marit Lage. Delver Cruise scoops.
Game 3: I’ve got a spectacular seven grip of Loam, Mox Diamond, Exploration, Punishing Fire, and lands. Delver Cruise drops a fetch, gets a mountain, plays a Swiftspear, attacks, and passes. From here, I pretty much dominate when my Loam finds a Grove of the Burnwillows. I also find a Port to keep Delver Cruise off his mountain, and I begin to slowly choke the opponent to death. Slowly, because Delver Cruise has dropped a Pithing Needle naming Thespian’s Stage. Thus, I have to go for the Punishing Fire win because I haven’t boarded in K-Grip. I get Delver Cruise down to ten life after repeatedly Firing him and Bogging his graveyard so that he can’t use one of two islands to cast Treasure Cruise. He has, however, been waiting to find a fourth land so that he can get three mana to cast his Blood Moon. He does so, and having no outs, I concede. Bummer. I leave with fifteen bucks store credit for my performance, so I’m happy overall, but it was a bit of a sour note to end on, considering I felt like I had the game (and the match) well in hand.
Analysis: Both the Merfolk player and the Napoleonic Delver player made mistakes, so these matchups might be a little harder than this report makes them out to be. When I faced Napoleonic Delver, I saw neither Wastelands nor True-Nemeses from my opponent, and if I’d seen either, those games could have turned out very differently. Against Ant, I don’t think I should have boarded in Chokes, for the simple fact that it costs three mana and the game will probably be decided by the time I get to cast it. Otherwise, my board will either get me there or it won’t. In one case it didn’t, and the other it did (with a fair amount of help from TES’s mulligans). Lastly, because the deck felt super awesome to play and super-duper broken compared to one-card-a-turn Pox, I have to blame myself for the match loss against Delver Cruise. I’m not sure why Blood Moon wasn’t on my radar, but I never even thought of it. If I’d boarded in some number of Grips, I think I was so far ahead in that final game that I could have waited to naturally draw it and still won. As it was, I didn’t and so I lost. I’ll keep that in mind for future outings. I’d like, also, to make a final note on Manabond, which seems like the weakest card in the deck to me. It adds to explosive potential but does not actually increase the percentage of finding combo pieces. As it only speeds up your win by a turn a non-zero amount of times (considering the fact that you need six cards in your opener to go off turn one [green land, Manabond, Stage, Depths, and two other mana-producing lands]), I’m strongly considering replacing them with an Engineered Explosives-Buried Ruin engine in the tradition of Intuition Lands. You get to keep the all-in aspect of the Marit Lage combo while adding answers to noncreature permanents to the main deck. I know that there aren’t any competitive lists doing this, but it seems like a flat upgrade to me. If you have reasonable arguments to dissuade me from doing this, please make them known.
Results
(This section will contain a record of all my matches with RG Lands, but it will not include intentional draws, as it is meant to reflect match-win percentages rather than tournament minutia.)
[Aggro]
UR Delver Cruise: 0-1
Napoleonic Delver: 1-0
Merfolk: 1-0
[Combo]
Storm: 1-1