Dream Wizards 10 Proxy - Report (T8)

So yesterday I played at Dream Wizards' 10-proxy Legacy tourney.This is what I brought to battle:

4 Misty Rainforest
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Forest
2 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
3 Tundra
1 Academy Ruins

4 Tarmogoyf
3 Vendilion Clique

4 Brainstorm
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Counterbalance
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
2 Spell Snare
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Engineered Explosives
2 Threads of Disloyalty
2 Vedalken Shackles

--- Sideboard ---
4 Pyroblast
3 Firespout
3 Krosan Grip
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Spell Snare
1 Threads of Disloyalty

Round 1: David with Solidarity

This match is pretty much a bye, and both of us admit it. Of course, since it's round 1, we play it out anyways. Having extensively played this deck on MWS, I'm well aware of how to combat it.

Game 1, both of us do nothing for about 5 turns, setting up mana and fixing our hands. Eventually, he goes for it, and I Snare his Reset. He goes for Turnabout, I Daze, he Forces, and I Force back. After this, I set up CounterTop; he Wishes for Wipe Away, which I force him to play during his turn with a Clique. The Clique goes all the way, with a Goyf at the end.

Sideboarding: -2 Vedalken Shackles, -3 Engineered Explosives, -2 Swords to Plowshares; +4 Pyroblast, +2 Spell Snare, +1 Threads of Disloyalty

I side in Threads because it's a 3 and a blue card, I want to keep my 3 count up but I prefer the blue one to the Shackles. I considered Crypts for Flash of Insight, but decided that keeping more 1s in the deck was better; I'm not sure about this one.

Game 2, we again do nothing for about 5 turns, until he attempts to go off with double High Tide. He then goes for Meditate, with 4 mana floating; I Daze it to keep him off Turnabout mana. Evidently, my play was correct, as he Forces it; I return the favor. I set up CounterTop, he buys time against double Goyf with Cryptic Command, but I get there.

Round 2: Simon with Aggro Loam

Simon, a friend and teammate, is playing a pretty unique Aggro Loam deck. We're well aware of what the other is playing.

Game 1, he gets Terravore, which gets a swing in, and I blow it and a witness up with Explosives. He wishes for Chainer's Edict so he can kill my Goyf and get in with his, which goes the distance.

Sideboarding: -1 Counterbalance, -4 Daze; +2 Tormod's Crypt, +2 Spell Snare, +1 Threads of Disloyalty

I figure my best plan is to beat the crap out of him quickly, which Threads is good at; he definitely has inevitability in this matchup.

Game 2, I go Top, Goyf, and commence the beatdown plan, forcing his Goyf. A Clique sees and takes Seismic assault, and he proceeds to draw a second one off the Clique. He goes for Burning Wish, which I Snare, and he takes a beating from the Clique and Goyf. He drops another Goyf, which is Swordsed. He then gets 3 red mana, and Assault kills the Clique. I get him to 6 with Goyf, and then he drops his own. I Crypt him, and he summons a Witness. Engineered Explosives attempts to deal with the pair, but he Grips it. He gets a second Goyf, and I send it farming. Shackles comes down, but he Wishes, gets Shattering Spree, and blows up the Shackles. I get a second Goyf, and one Goyf trades for Witness and a land from hand. He piles in with Goyf, which I take, and drops his fourth Goyf of the game (he drew all of them). I draw Threads, and go aggro, stealing his Goyf, and attacking with mine, putting him back to 6; both of us are out of cards. He draws his card, and beats in. Tapped out, I decide to take it, going to 4, figuring that his chances of having a land are greater than his chances of having a Loam. Sure enough, he drew the Loam, and kills me with Assault.

Round 3: Justin with UB Depths-Nought

This is sure to be an exciting match. Threads is sure to shine.

Game 1, he Thoughtseizes me, taking Force, and goes for turn 3 Dreadnought and Stifle, which resolves. EOT, I swords it, which gets Forced. I fetch and try again; he Forces again, going to 0 cards in hand. I untap and blow it up with Explosives. He draws and plays Hexmage; I draw something irrelevant. He then draws Dark Depths, and pretty much punts by blowing it main phase. EOT, I top, shuffle, and Top again, seeing Threads. I untap and slap the Threads onto the table, which elicits excitement from the adjacent players and bystanders, including David Gerheart. He draws, Brainstorms, finds nothing, and scoops.

-4 Counterbalance, -2 Shackles; +4 Pyroblast, +1 Threads, +1 Spell Snare

Figuring he only has a few Dreadnoughts, as I saw Trinket Mage while he was playing another match, I decide against Grips. I want effective early-game answers instead of Counterbalance, and Pyroblast is crucial in those fights.

Game 2, his first Marit Lage goes farming, and he takes a few hits from a Clique, which dies to Smother. I Snare a couple Hexmages, and drop Goyf, which gets in a few hits. He then Beseeches the Queen for his last Hexmage, and transmutes into Dark Depths. He Thoughtseizes, taking a Swords and seeing double Explosives, and goes for it, and plays correctly by waiting to blow it. I Top and fail to find the land I need to force him to blow it mainphase with Explosives and then Threads it. I play Explosives on 2 but he makes Marit Lage and I scoop.

After the game, he asks me why I didn't play the second Explosives. Everybody stares, and I point out that Marit Lage is indestructible; his token that he made even says so.

Game 3 is a nice fight. I get a Clique, which he Smothers, but I gets some valuable information, including that he's holding Dark Depths and Spell Pierce; I forget what I took. He sets up a Hexmage and plays it around turn 5. I Top and see Threads and a land, and decide to bait him - it's risky, but he has to have four counterspells to stop my plan. I Snare his Hexmage, and he Pierces it. He plays Dark Depths and passes the turn. EOT I Swords his Hexmage; he figures out what's going on and Forces it; I Force back and he's forced to blow the Hexmage. He's got 2 cards in hand, and I have a Pyroblast (which I had no mana to play EOT, so I had to Force).

I untap, draw and play a fourth land, tap Top to draw and play a Threads of Disloyalty on Marit Lage.

"Well played," he says.

He untaps, draws, and casts Brainstorm. I Pyroblast it, and he extends the hand. Whew!

I go watch Simon play Dan Signorini, and Simon's at 5 life against a Goyf in game 3. He evokes Shriekmaw, and Dan shuffles with a fetchland. Simon cuts, then decides to cut again. Dan peeks at the card, then slams it - FORCE OF WILL!!! A roar from the spectators.

Round 4 - (Hollywood on The Source) with Merfolk

Game 1 is pretty boring. I set up my basics, control his Merfolk with Swords and a Goyf. We fight a counter battle over Standstill, Goyf gets big, and Goyf + Clique goes the distance.

-4 Counterbalance, -2 Threads, -1 Clique; +4 Pyroblast, +3 Firespout

Game 2 is more interesting. He gets a quick army, which I control with Explosives and Swords on both Lord of Atlantis and Merfolk Sovereign. Shackles comes down, and I stabilize; Ruins shows up, I blow up a Cursecatcher, and steal an Adept, but hold back as he has Mutavault. His Standstill meets a Snare, and I get a second Shackles. He drops Wake Thrasher for some reason, and it gets stolen immediately. He's assembled 3 Mutavaults at this point. An 11/11 thrashes his life points. He gets Lord of Atlantis and cracks with 2 Mutavaults; I Swords his Lord and trade Adept for a Mutavault. The Thrasher knocks him down to 5, and he untaps. I think he gets another Lord, and heads in; I play my final Swords, steal a Mutavault, and the Vaults kill each other. Thrasher eats a mutavault, he draws dead, and concedes to double Shackles.

Round 5 - ID

--- Top 8 Members ---
Paul Longo (Zaresiy) - Bant Aggro-Control
Chris Hartten (The Archivist) - Ubr Faeries
David Gerheart - UGW deck featuring Looter il-Kor, Cold-Eye Selkie, and Cloak and Dagger
David Price - Bant w. KotR and Crucible (no loam)
Dan Signorini (nitewolf9) - Ugwr CounterTop
James Shi - Entomb Hulk
Will Alston (gamegeek2) - Ugwr CounterTop
(Hollywood) - Merfolk

We negotiate a Top 8 split, and everybody gets $45 in store credit. I use this to get four Bobs and a Smother. Pretty nice for a $16 entry fee. We decide to play it out anyways for fun.

Quarterfinals: Chris Hartten

Game 1, he basically drops a Bitterblossom and it goes the distance. I fail to find an Explosives, and kill off a few tokens, but it gets me in the end.

Game 2, we basically sit there until he drops a Jitte, which we fight over, and I win the war. After a few minor exchanges, he drops a Tombstalker (I boarded out all my Swords, having not seen Tombstalker) and I fail to find Shackles.

I was really happy with my deck on the day, and all my card choices. Spell Snare in particular was amazing - I'm considering moving a third to the main, and relegating the third Explosives to the sideboard. Everything else worked out great.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gamegeek2

...Top Eight...(Hollywood) - Merfolk

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I felt so naked without playing something more fun than this shit. Thanks to the guy who let me borrow it, but I ended up purging my dinner later than night and cleansing my sins to the Lord after playing it.

Ironically, I ate fish.

Does anyone have Gearheart's list from this? I'm really curious about it.

i wish dreamwizards would post when they have tournies i totally would have roadtripped up there for this shit.

It wasn't worth it. The judging is appalling and it is very badly handled. The only reason to go there is to see chris harten.

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Originally Posted by beastman

It wasn't worth it. The judging is appalling and it is very badly handled. The only reason to go there is to see chris harten.

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i played a couple timespiral block ptq's up there it was handled bad.I figured it was just a fluke so its not?got it.
beastman hit me up if team unicorn goes to any tournies i live close enough that if you guys go i can roadtrip i know you hear about stuff that is not posted here.

Hello all, I'm Paul, and I was playing the bant aggro control very similar to the one in Doug Linn's article http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l...empo_Bant.html (thought with rhox war monks in lieu of vendillion cliques) after switching from ugr thresh at the last minute. James' last name is Shi, and the deck that Hollywood was playing is Dave's (from Willie's first match, who was borrowing my solidarity deck for this tournament b/c he expected a lot of zoo).

Also, speaking of the judging, after the tournament, the judge traded my friend Dave a pulse ($18) and 4 hellkite chargers (negligible $) for a savannah ($28) as Dave wasn't sure of the price...

There is no way in hell savannah is 28 dollars.

I bought mine in iffy condition (like many many duals) for $16.

It's true, the dual lands used to be considerably cheaper, but I suppose more interest in the format has caused the prices to increase. I usually go by the prices on findmagiccards.com , but if you look on star city games, they are willing to pay you $20 for a revised savannah (while it is one of the cheaper duals, it has increased in price as with the others). If you're going by ebay prices however, you could find one around $20, but at the same time I could get a maelstrom pulse for well under $18, so the difference would likely be similar.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hollywood

I felt so naked without playing something more fun than this shit. Thanks to the guy who let me borrow it, but I ended up purging my dinner later than night and cleansing my sins to the Lord after playing it.

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I'm confused, is this a compliment or an insult to Merfolk? Either way, you're very welcome.

Do people really think the judge at Dream Wizards is that bad? I always felt he was a pretty good judge. Savannah for Pulse might have been slightly unfavorable but I don't think it was that bad. Maybe I could've gotten another $4-5 out of it.

Match 1 was pretty fun, even if it was unwinnable for me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dyzzy

I'm confused, is this a compliment or an insult to Merfolk? Either way, you're very welcome.

Do people really think the judge at Dream Wizards is that bad? I always felt he was a pretty good judge. Savannah for Pulse might have been slightly unfavorable but I don't think it was that bad. Maybe I could've gotten another $4-5 out of it.

Match 1 was pretty fun, even if it was unwinnable for me.

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Compliment to you.

Insult to Merfolk, because I'm just not a big fan of the deck in general; no biggie.

Any comments on the deck?

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Originally Posted by gamegeek2

Any comments on the deck?

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How Threads of Disloyalty work out? I did see how it helped in one of your MUs. Did you ever wish that they were Sowers?

Was 4 Dazes worth running?

4 Daze is definitely worth it, but you want some number of Spell Snare in there as well.

Threads nearly won me a game in the Aggro loam match. It would've been awesome had any zoo shown up, but there was absolutely no Zoo present. Sower is dirt against Zoo, while Threads is the nuts.

You know what was depressing? Watching Dan flip the force.
But yeah, the moral of the story for me, at least, is that cutting mox diamond really doesn't work. Also maybe play graveyard hate in the side. When I played James he just rolled me.

On the note of the judge, didn't he give someone a gameloss for not writing down a proxy? That just seems dumb.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by woremak

On the note of the judge, didn't he give someone a gameloss for not writing down a proxy? That just seems dumb.

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I specifically asked the judge if we needed to indicate proxies in our decklists before the tournament; he said no.

I told you cutting Mox Diamond was bad! Personally, I'd recommend Knight of the Reliquary (especially as you already had at least 1 white source in your list AFAIK).