Originally Posted by
Mad Mat
4-3 at the Dutch Open with mono white D&T. Only match-up that felt unwinnable was bant snow. True-name blade with Oko and a ton of basics is kind of stupid.
Lands (23):
6 Plains
4 Snow-Covered Plains
4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
3 Karakas
2 Flagstones of Trokair
Creatures (26):
3 Giver of Runes
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Tomik, Distinguished Advokist
2 Charming Prince
3 Flickerwisp
2 Recruiter of the Guard
2 Mirran Crusader
1 Sanctum Prelate
1 Palace Jailer
Other (12):
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Aether Vial
1 Batterskull
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Council's Judgment
Sideboard (15):
2 Rest in Peace
2 Council's Judgment
2 Chalice of the Void
2 Deafening Silence
2 Path to Exile
2 Cataclysm
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Leonin Relic-Warder
First time playing with princes and they were awesome. Council's in the main didn't really do much.
R1: 2-0 against GW depths.
- Game 1, I get a quick giver + tomik.
- Game 2, I counter his ghost quarter by vialing in Tomik. He is squeezed for mana for the rest of the game, as he slows his own mox with ouphe, which I plow after playing my own revoker on mox (making my vial live again). When he finally goes for the combo to see if I have it, I had the wisp ready for a few turns already.
R2: 1-2 against Grixis delver.
- I lost game 1 to a double delver start with nothing but lands on my end. I actually somehow got to 6 plains and no spells before my puzzled opponent beat me to death. I should have mulled this (4 plains on 6, two 3-drops), but I think it would have been a mull to five and the massive mana flood would have cost me the game anyhow.
- Game 2, he got brainstorm-locked and I had double waste. He did actually side wrong because he saw nothing but plains game 1. Guess people really don’t expect d&t anymore.
- Game 3, I grind him down with double port. I lose in part to a greedy play of casting jitte, rather than using SFM, for tempo reasons, and in part because he has a blowout brazen follower to win the race, followed up with a bolt for lethal and a plague engineer for back-up (shrinking my crusader).
R3: Dredge 2-1
- Game 1: I almost manage to grind all his bridges and ichorids out, but just barely fail to stabilize due to missing two land drops.
- Game 2: I have a turn 2 RIP after a turn 1 vial. He has an end step nature’s claim, followed by looting + LED to get 2 zombies, hogaak and Iona on the table. I take care of Iona with Karakas, so he makes a huge grave-troll + casts Hogaak again, and doesn’t attack to keep his 3 bridges alive. I slam my second RIP, karakas hogaak and he scoops.
- Game 3: I have a surgical, but he has looting into discard thug and imp. So I wait, as he goes end step street wraith and draw step dredge. He fails to dredge any other dredgers. The next turn, I drop a revoker on LED and waste his land the turn after, locking him out of the game.
R4: White Eldrazi 2-1
- Game 1: He has a slow start, which allows me to play out my entire hand before his first TKS hits (SFM-ing in a sword in response of the trigger). The TKS prevents me from attacking with a ¾ SFM and he does manages to land a smasher. He opts to attack me down to 5, rather than keep a blocker for my SFM + sword. The draw trigger from sword helps me find both jailer and the 4th land I needed. I jail the smasher and he loses to the extra draws from monarch and sword.
- Game 2: He gets double early TKS after starting with spyglass on wasteland.
- Game 3: He starts with chalice and follows up with TKS on my SFM. He doesn’t take my two plows because of his chalice, but I topdeck a wisp. Turn 3, I’m forced to council a displacer, so only turn 4 can I wisp the chalice and use one of my plows. The next turn, plow + jailer take over the game despite being low on life.
R5: Bomberman 2-1
- Game 1: vial + double port keeps him out of the game.
- Game 2: My clock is too slow and I fail to find mana disruption. He can land the combo and draw his whole deck with a bauble. I should have mulled this.
- Game 3: Goes very, very long, with multiple Karns (scion and creator). He does not find the combo or lacks the mana for it, or is locked under my chalice on zero, but can go pretty dangerous with a mentor. After he plays a second mentor, I’m forced to attack with a stoneforge into a 2/2 construct to kill one of the mentors. I then manage to nerf the last mentor somewhat with deafening silence, yet to find more substance, I’m forced to use my jailer on a construct token (knowing that a mentor would come back as I can’t keep this monarch) to dig deeper. After he attacks to take back the monarch, I can use council to remove his last blocker, connect with jitte and kill the second mentor. He can strike back to get me down from 5 to 1 (no more due to deafening silence), but on the rebound I wipe all his creatures with jitte. My board is favored now, with active jitte and the monarch, but he topdecks a Karn Creator and goes for bridge, making it live by sacing a LED (ditching another Karn scion, which I had already revoked). He decides to blow up my chalice in his next turn (not enough mana for lattice, I think), allowing me to find a wisp and damage the Karn (but not kill it, as I can’t activate jitte). This does disable him from going for Lattice combo as the Karn would die in the process. With Karn at 3 again next turn, I’m in danger of getting latticed out now. Fortunately, with monarch, I managed to find my final two wisps. In turn 1 of turns, I cast wisp, attacking him down to 7, but forgetting to attack the Karn itself. Hence, I’m forced to cast the other wisp, targeting wisp, then wisp again, so that I can wisp his bridge again in his end step. In his turn, he uses cast out on my giver and attempts to Karn for a removal artifact, but I note that he can’t cast it due to deafening silence, so he scoops.
R6: Bant snow 1-2
- Game 1: I scoop as he threatens true-name with jitte and monarch. Jailer was one of the only spells I drew beyond vial and giver. This was a vial keep, but topdecks were poor.
- Game 2: He scoops quickly to an early sword of fire and ice he can’t answer. Start was giver into SFM.
- Game 3: He gets a turn 3 True-Name, then Oko, then Jitte. I can beat the latter two, but not while he has the stupid asocial fish. He even made a mockery out of it all by exchanging my elkskull for a food token.
R7: RGb Lands 1-2
- Game 1: He has a slow hand and I hurt him significantly with double wasteland and revoker on mox. I subsequently grind him out, despite a maze of ith slowing my clock.
- Game 2: He manages to develop his board through two rest in peace (one decayed). I scoop (possibly too early) as he lands field of the dead, while having 7 different lands and a thespian. There’s a chance I still could have taken the game off of the RIP, but a likely two zombies a turn is a tough clock to beat and I still needed to draw a white source to get my own clock going.
- Game 3: I keep a weak hand and he has a turn 1 mox, exploration loam, then turn 2 dredge, find tabernacle, play another exploration (I used leonin on the first one). This should have definitely been a mull, but lack of food and too many grinds hamper your decision-making. His start was probably only beatable with a surgical though.
