9th with Storm - GP London Legacy Champs

After milling around on Saturday I considered heading home on Sunday morning as I was feeling rough and didn't want to wait until the afternoon to play a format I didn't enjoy. Thankfully one friend had most of the cards for ANT and another had LEDs, so I only had to scramble to find a few cards to let me enter the Legacy event. Lacking only fetchlands/dual lands and insulin, I registered and we were off:

Maindeck:
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Preordain
2 Gitaxian Probe

4 Infernal Tutor
4 Burning Wish

1 Ad Nauseam
1 Past in Flames
1 Tendrils of Agony

3 Duress
1 Thoughtseize

1 Chrome Mox
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Gemstone Mine
1 Badlands
1 Underground Sea
1 Steam Vents
1 Island

Sideboard:
1 Time Spiral
1 Reforge the Soul
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Empty the Warrens
2 Cabal Therapy
1 Duress
1 Pyroclasm
1 Deathmark
1 Grapeshot
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Slaughter Pact

Round 1: Alex with BG Pod

This guy had an interesting brew: essentially Nic Fit with a Birthing Pod package spliced into it. This is probably his worst possible matchup though. Game 2 was closer than I liked: due to my inexperience I pullthe trigger too early and had to settle for a mid-sized Empty. Explorer + Phyrexian Tower let him GSZ for Thragtusk, which made attacking difficult, but after a few turns I draw Wish and kill him with alpha strike + Grapeshot.

1-0 (2-0)

Round 2: Joakim with Bant

In game 1 I Duress away a FoW, trade a redundant Wish for a Spell Snare, and go off easily from there. In game 2 he taps low for an irrelevant Jitte, which gives me a window to go off. I have to figure out the correct sequencing so that I can use my LED at the right time, gain threshold for Cabal Ritual, and hardcast Past in Flames against his Pridemage, but once I do that the rest is easy.

2-0 (4-0)

Round 3: Oscar with UWb Stoneblade

This guy seemed competent and the discard in his deck makes the matchup tougher than UW, so I was a little worried. He leads with Swamp and Scrubland into Stoneforge Mystic, which makes me all the more surprised when I see blue cards. He puts a quick clock on me with Batterskull and makes things harder with Thoughtseize, but I manage to go off on the turn before he can deal lethal. In the second game he has a combination of discard, countermagic, and Relic of Progenitus to buy time and a Mystic into SoFaF to force my hand, so I have to fire off a non-lethal Tendrils to stay alive. My last draw step yields a Burning Wish, but I can't Wish for Reforge or Time Spiral while playing around the Spell Pierce I know he has.

As I'm comboing off in the third game I face my most interesting decision of the tournament. After casting a few rituals my hand is Bloodstained Mire, LED, Infernal Tutor, Burning Wish, and I need to play around possible countermagic or Vendilion Clique in his 3-card hand (he's down a FoW already). I know I need to resolve LED and crack Mire; if he has Clique and doesn't play it before I do both, then if he has nothing else he won't be able to stop me from going off with Tutor/Wish if I have one. I resolve LED and announce the Mire activation, and he motions for me to pause. It's possible he's bluffing Clique here, but this is only relevant if my hand is exactly what it is - Tutor and another spell - and I lead with the spell. When he lets me fetch the land, I assume that he can't have Clique; and since there was no good time for him to have countered anything this turn, I think about how to play around that instead. If I cast Wish with one card back, he probably counters it; and if he doesn't, I can just get a discard spell and protect my Tutor (maybe the fact that I didn't crack LED maybe made him suspicious, but there's no reason to break it there). Wish resolves too, and I cast Duress; and he excitedly throws down Clique in response, cycling my Tutor... into another Tutor, which either rewards me for my bad play or punishes him for his. I liked my line at the time, but after thinking about it a little more: if it's safe to assume he would've countered Wish if he could, perhaps it's best to just not cast my Wish target and go for a hellbent Tutor immediately? Based on physical tells and the Mire pause I suspected Clique, but I thought Clique wouldn't make any more sense than a counterspell.

3-0 (6-1)

Round 4: Joni with RUG Delver

Joni was sitting next to me in the previous round, so he snap-keeps a hand of Trop, Force, Spell Snare, Spell Pierce, and triple Daze. When I Probe him and see his grip I'm about ready to write off this game, but since he only has a 1/1 Mongoose as a clock I have time to work something out. It seems like the first step involves Wishing for Therapy, but to get Wish to resolve I'd need to burn my last Gemstone Mine counter or a Petal to pay for any of his soft counters; and this assumes I can get past Spell Snare. I test the waters with a redundant Infernal Tutor, which he Snares; and my Wish next turn gets Forced! My business spell is Past in Flames so LED is Black Lotus, and with the help of multiple Rituals I power through Dazes and Pierce to take what should have been an unwinnable game. Joni confirmed after the first game that he hadn't played against Storm before, which gave me more confidence for the post-SB games.

The second game is less exciting as Ooze and a flipped Delver kill me while I durdle around with cantrips. The third game is looking good as I take his Force and leave him with Pierce, a Wasteland, and some uncastable red cards to go with his squad... and he draws Tormod's Crypt, blanking my Past in Flames. I try baiting him with a thresholded Cabal Ritual, but he doesn't bite until I cast PiF. I'm able to hold a Ritual in reserve and use it in response to PiF after he Crypts, but I'm a few mana/spells short of killing him. Even if he had used Crypt earlier, I don't think I had enough; I was worried about him drawing a hard counter or flipping a cantrip into a red source to Bolt me to death, and there were a number of cards I could've drawn that would stop me going hellbent with Tutor, but that's better than certainly fizzling.

3-1 (7-3)

Round 5: Dalibor with GWb Maverick

He appears to be Maverick rather than Junk, as I see Hierarch, Cradle, and only a touch of black. He puts up no resistance, so I take the first game without trouble. He leads off with an early Thalia, which is fine as I'm holding Chain of Vapor, but he aggressively tags my lands with Vindicate/Wasteland and I'm not able to EOT Chain. I'm forced to play Lotus Petal to get the second mana, but when he plays Pridemage on his turn it looks grim: if he just kills my Petal at any point I can't win. Thankfully he goes for Vindicate instead, which lets me bounce Thalia and get a turn. I still need to rip a land, but Probe gets me there.

4-1 (9-3)

Round 6: Robert with UW Stoneblade

The first two games are unremarkable: Duress a FoW and go off, then lose to having no cheap Wish target to continue comboing. Game 3 I decline to Thoughtseize on my first turn as I can't go off in the foreseeable future, and he has turn 2 Ethersworn Canonist :(.

4-2 (10-5)

Round 7: Laura with Belcher

I know Laura, so we were able to laugh about this shitfest of a matchup. In both games I get a turn and have turn 1 discard, which buys me the time I need.

5-2 (12-5)

Getting to play Legacy was awesome, and I greatly enjoyed playing Storm even though my build was suboptimal. Props to my friends for lending me the cards, slops to diabetes.