Hey guys,
I have a little mini report forthcoming, and my friend Nam will hopefully send me some information as well, but until then, just wanted to say that I really liked the list. Nam shot me an email late last week looking for a legacy list and I shot him painter and then started talking to him about some of the subtleties playing this list. Hilariously, Cedric Philips covered him in the last round and after he intuitioned for 3 Blood Moon, said something like, "this is the reason it is clear he has been playing the list for a really long time." Which I thought was pretty funny.
Anyhow, grats to Nam, he played great all day, and put up with me remembering random advice and trying to cram it in his head all day, and converted under the lights.
Edit: ....and here's the report!
Hello Everybody!
So UR painter had a good weekend with Nam top 8ing with the same 75 that i played to a top 32 finish. I still think this deck is basically the nut, and people should really consider playing it more, that being said, keep an eye out for cheap Transmutes because apparently they are up from ~$10 last year to about $60 on site at SCG Opens.
Anyhow, we elected to have breakfast all together at George's and then take the rapid again at my (apparently misinformed) assumption that the Marathon going on downtown would close down any reasonable parking for us. There were 9 cleveland (ish) folks who attended including: Caffrey on Storm, Snoop-Troog with a mono black concoction, Randall with mono red sneak attack, Jerry on Belcher, G on Twaun's BG pox list, Charles on Reanimator, Brad Wayne on shardless bug, and of course Nam and myself playing UR painter.
We met up with a couple other friends on site and some vintage was played on the side while we were waiting for the tournament to start.
After a semi-late start we started to get down and play some magic.
RD1 vs unknown person (merfolk) Win 2-0
I lost my notes on this round (I presume they washed away in the storm that exploded after the tournament) but I think this was the same guy that G scooped into a chance at top 64 in the penultimate round. In any event, all i remember about this MU is that game 1 I tried to block a merfolk when I had an island in play, and that I drew the grindstone on my last turn to kill him. Game 2 I sided +1 REB +1 ensnaring bridge -1 tormod's crypt and -1 ? and preceded to force his turn 2 aether vial off his second non-island land, and then play out the combo in short order to his board of exactly those 2 lands.
Record after this round 1-0-0
RD2 vs Tony with "JunkBlade" Win 2-0
Game 1 was a turn 4 kill with protection. Game 2 was slightly more interesting since he knew what my cards did, I had the potential for a turn 2 kill, but it would have involved losing to abrupt decay or swords. I ended up playing out grim monolith turn 2, spellskite turn 3, i forced a swords on his turn 4 on my spell skite, and then played out the combo turn 4 with spellskite redirecting an abrupt decay. This might be a hard MU but spellskite was really good, and without brainstorms, his removal spells absolutely have to do work.
Record after this round 2-0-0
RD3 vs Andrew with "Mono Red" Loss 0-2
Game 1 I kept a slower hand with a force of will and welder intuition thinking this was a pretty good hand, and then my opponent caused me to draw a free card, which was sad. His turn 1 goblin guide did not bode well for the good guys. I tried to keep up with him but his burn was just faster than my ability to assemble the combo, especially having to waste force on burn spells. He played pretty aggressively basically playing out his hand and giving no respect to the combo, but it worked for him. Game 2 He made a couple mistakes, flame rift using his only 2 lands than passing with a goblin guide in play (I would probably not block at 14 life there if he leaves mana up until after attacks, since i need spell skite to protect my combo guys. However, I assembled a pretty sweet board of spell skite in yard 3 blue mana up and another skite in the yard with welder in play and him with no cards in hand. He of course top deck'd the lava spike for the win, i actually had the win next turn i think, but sadly didn't get the chance to get there. I can't be too salty though with flame rift, lava spike and price as all possible ways to kill me that can't be retargetted to spell skite i wasn't expecting to win, just hoping. Anyhow, this seems like a bad MU but one i wouldn't ever spend sideboard slots on, but note that I played against it at table 1, so that is a deck that apparently can still hang with legacy.
Record after this round 2-1-0
Rd 4 vs Ryan with Belcher Win 2-0
This guy was a lot of fun but flashed me his deck a couple times while shuffling so I knew he was on belcher, but we joked around the whole time we were playing. We had a couple fun arguments about the sideboard of belcher with me claiming that 15 islands was the only way to do it, and him responding (and proving me wrong) by flashing me the Naked Singularity in his sideboard (yeah you should look that one up). In any event, my opener had a turn 3 combo and a force of will, he probed me turn one got a sad face and I ended up countering his Seething song for the win. In game 2 i mulled to 5 to find a force of will or a flusterstorm (i sided in 3 of these and three skites and sided out a substantial portion of the transmute artifact/wurmcoil/grim monolith plan) and my 5 had Force of Will but no blue card. In any event he probed me but had to pass the turn on t1. And i drew my card (a basic land) gave him the look that I hoped conveyed, "oh yeah i totally drew a blue card", but was probably read as "I am slightly constipated" and played a land + grindstone. He passes again on turn 2 (!) and I draw flusterstorm and play a land + welder. He attempts to get me to waste my brainstorm on his burning wish with no mana floating and three cards in hand, but i am not fooled. He says something like "you were supposed to counter that" and gets an empty the warrens and passes. I play a land and a painters servant and pass with 3 lands on the table (2 tapped) plus the combo and a fluster storm and force of will in my hand. He does not pull this one out. He is from sort of near by and I encourage him to check out a TSO with his friends (he seems like our kind of people), and mention the infinite proxy option, he seems pumped.
Record after this round 3-1-0
Rd 5 vs Brian with Sneak + Show Win 2-1
This guy seems like a very serious player. Nice enough, but all business and not at all excited about bantering, I continue to be my normal manic self in tournament settings. I knew that my opponent was on Sneak and show almost immediately, but my hand is basically crap and i don't find a tormod's crypt to go with my combo pieces before my show and tells a griselbrand into play. I put in a wurmcoil and get pumped because my opponent seems eager to trade and starts talking about going up to 27 (which means he wouldn't have activated his griselbrand in time!) but he quickly realizes that he needs to activate first and draws 14 cards, and proceeds to destroy me. For game 2 i brought in 3 Fluster storms the 3rd Reb the ensnaring bridge and the 3x Tormod's Crypt and side out most 2 wurmcoil 2Grims 1 LED and 1 grindstone 1 transmute artifact and 1 other cards. In this game i cast an ensnaring bridge early and protect it with a force of will and my opponent looks pretty upset. I then proceed to attack with 1 painter, then 2 painters, then a welder (which he ends up having to kill with REB) and taking the game with a combination of attacks and my opponent attacking himself pretty aggressively with his own ancient tombs. At one point he hard casts a brainstorm off 2 island and 2 Ancient tombs putting himself to 8 with me havinf 3 power of guys in play, my comment "best psionic blast ever!". I kill him this game with dudes. In game three i just have a ton of counterspells and do almost the same exact thing, just attacking for the win with 1 power guys, Vintage achievement unlocked. The only diffference is that ensnaring bridge never came to the party. (Apparently attacking for 1 is how to beat show and tell?)
Record after this round 4-1-0
Rd 6 vs Ed with Goblins Win 2-0
Ed was once again a real nice guy. He was on goblins (which was one of the reasons I decided not to play a grindier version--no pun intended--of painter after the last Legacy GP I attended) which is a MU surprisingly enough, i have tested a fair amount. My main concern was that he was going to get a fast kill, but i managed to get welder and painter to stymie some attacks and things, and finally get a Wurmcoil into play that he just couldn't deal with. One neat thing that happened was attacking with wurmcoil with a painter in play and a welder. Then we cracked back REBing my own Wurmcoil and welding it back in for 3 blockers and 9 more life for me. For game 2 i sided in the extra wurmcoil and the three spellskites which may have been wrong but he showed me plateau in game 1 (to cast a thalia) and i worried about swords and pyrokinesis. As it turned out he kept a very slow hand with basically no action but a rishadan port to slow me down presumably. I killed him on turn 4 with a healthy 16 life with grindstone plus painter and a Reb in hand for any shenanigans on his part. I talked to him for a bit about his list and how i have lost to goblins in the past when they get a real fast pile driver start. I also asked him what he thought of CeddyP's list since I would assume that is the standard one. We also had a good chat about how Goblins is actually like an insane control deck ( vs creatures) but has to be an aggro deck against combo which kinda sucks.
Record after this round 5-1-0
Rd 7 vs Brian with Pimped out Elves Win 2-0
Brian sat down and warned me that he hadn't slept in several days and was feeling a little ill and wanted to let me know he might be calling a judge and running to puke in the bathroom. I said whatever you need to do, but please don't puke on my Japanese Painter deck :\ . In any event we started out games and this guy had some ridiculously pimp'd out cards, all foily or beta. Miscut (two cards on them) basic forests, just straight up insane stuff. I had some of my best draws of the day, and killed him on turn 2 game 1. On turn 4 in game 2 with a force of will for his qasali pridemage and then a spellskite in play when i went off with a second Force of will in his main deck.
Record after this round 6-1-0
Since I ended super quickly this round I shot off to find Nam and saw him in the feature match area but something seemed off, and i realized that there were way too few cards in his hand and in play, and it looked like he had gotten hit by the mulligan bat in his feature match against Belcher. It looked this is not a great MU for us anyway and I know he had already beaten it once on the day, so he was probably due for the loss, but it sucked because the guy playing it was real bad. In any event, he and I chatted for a while about what we do if paired, and we decided we were going to ID. We were pretty confident that X-1-1 would top 8 and pretty sure that x-2 definitely wouldn't. So while one of us could have scooped the other one in it would have meant no chance at the top 8 for the other person. We decided we didn't want to blast each other out of the tournament and drew, which allowed us to scout every other player at the top tables.
We also got to chat a little bit about sideboarding plans and seeing 4 BUG/BRUG decks in the top tables we talked about how insane Blood Moon was in this matchup. Hint this will be important later.
Rd 8 vs Nam Q Tran Player extraordinaire ID
Record after this round 6-1-1
Rd 9 vs Peter with BRUG or 4 color cascade or BUG Shardless plus BBE Loss 0-2
I knew what this guy was on after scouting the previous round and felt pretty good about it. Until i mulled to 4 on the draw in game 1. I didn't even really get to make a decision my 7 cards were all spells, my 6 was 5 lands and a tormod's crypt, my 5 was all spells, none of which were combo pieces, and my 4 was 2 lands and 2 brainstorms. Let's do this. My opponent plays a tapped land turn 1 and i play land go. My opponent then hymns me :(. I do not win this game despite casting brainstorm in response. IN game 2 i bring in spellskites and blood moons and keep a 1-lander with great furnace, opal, 2 welders, blood moon, transmute artifact and a brainstorm. I do not draw a land until my 5th turn. I probably should have mulligan'd but i figured i needed to get luck at this point anyhow to win. Anyway, that was that but this match Nam was featured against shardless bug and you can watch it on the old coverage page. He ended up top 8ing which you should probably already know, and i ended up a respectable 19th which is still good enough for some money and in the top 10%.
Record at the end of the tournament: 6-2-1
The overall record for the weekend for our 75 was 13-3-2. My game win percentage for the weekend was 70.6% which is pretty exciting I think. Though Nam's was a bit lower.
Anyhow, there are a couple things I would change about a the list, the biggest of which is cutting the extra wurmcoil out of the board. I think it is a dead card most of the time as long as RUG is getting pushed out by BUG maybe it can be replaced by another card for reanimator/sneak and show/omnitell or maybe even the 4th blood moon. I also think i want to go up to 21 lands in the main board, and there has been some discussion about trying to fit in the 3rd REB in the main. Other than that though i thought the list worked really well. I would definitely encourage you to play with the list at other Legacy events, but please test it before hand, there are a lot of subtle interactions that you can miss out on if you haven't played with all these cards before. I was very happy with the finishes, and just wished i could have finished top 16 so we would have seen 2 of my list up there.
The weekend was fun, despite ending pretty rainy and late. I hope everyone else had a good time too.
The current list is here on starcity: http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=59730
