[Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

Though my tournament was unremarkable (3-4 drop), for your reading pleasure and my future reference here is my report from Eternal Weekend North America 2024. The list:

4 Painter
3 Welder, Engineer
2 Recruiter
1 Cratermaker, PDE

8 Blasts
3 Grindstone
2 Karn
2 ET
1 Bridge, Lantern, Vexing Bauble, Blood Moon

4 Tomb, Saga, Mountain, fetches
2 City, Plateau
1 Furnace
2 Petal, SSG
1 LED, Mox Opal

Sideboard:
4 Bolt
2 Surgical
1 Faerie Macabre
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Pithing Needle
1 Grindstone
1 Portable Hole
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Abrade
1 Magus of the Moon

So fairly standard Shortcake compared to lists from the past year, except:

1. Maindeck Canonist replaced by maindeck Bauble. With Storm-type decks way down, artifact combo way up, hard control way down, and Reanimator decks playing Wasteland the value of this silver bullet is just not there. Bauble is better at stopping Forces of Whatever and allows Saga to find a sort of protection, a first for this deck.
2. 8 maindeck blasts & 0 maindeck Bolts. Between Frog pushing red Delver out of the meta, small-creature decks being pushed down by Frog & Bowmasters, and Bolt being unhelpful against prevalent creatures (Frog, TKS, Nadu, Goyfs), I chose to make the maindeck strong against Frogs and combo.
3. Maindeck Blood Moon. I used to have Breya's Apprentice in this slot but the role that card fills is not so important anymore. I added Moon as a crutch since I didn't get much testing this year and was uncertain about some matchups, and then never saw a compelling reason to play a different card so I kept it.

On to the games:

R1: 2-0 vs Forgeraker
G1: On the play I keep Petal, 2x Mountain, ET, Grindstone, Painter - a T2 combo if needed. After the opponent dumps a bunch of Keys and Monoliths I decide it is needed, so ET -> LED and win.
G2: On the draw I keep a 2-Tomb hand with Karn and Painter. Kozilek's Command exiles the Painter which Karn retrieves, but then he has a Karn for Needle to shut down both our Karns. I deploy a Grindstone and the game shifts to Saga beatdown, where I am trying to knock out his Karn through Dismembers and Kommands without dealing too much damage to myself with my own Tombs. I am a bit short on blasts, but ET -> Needle to turn off his Saga plus Painter turning off Fleshraker to deprive him of chump blockers mean I eventually remove his Karn and win.

R2: 2-1 vs UB Tempo
G1: On the play I keep Bauble, SSG, City, Moon, Saga, Blast and decide to turbo out the Moon since I have it. The opponent naturally draws both his basics while I struggle to draw any lands at all. I blast three Frogs but don't have the mana to both advance the combo and deal with Nethergoyf so I loose.
G2: Goblins chew through removal spells, and Painter turning off Consign lets me resolve a Bridge which buys plenty of time to assemble the combo.
G3: I Surgical his Consigns which shows me two Brazen Borrowers, but due to being short on mana I can't activate Grindstone with blast backup so I use the combo to draw out one Borrower and replay Painter the following turn. I wait to draw a fourth mana source but on turn 5 of extra turns I have no real choice but to go for it. Turns out he Brainstormed away the second Borrower in favor of a Frog which I had blasted, so he had nothing and I got there.

R3: 0-2 vs Sneak & Show
G1: OTD I keep a hand that can either T1 Moon or T2 combo and has a blast, but he has T1 Emrakul off Show and Tell. I put in a Painter (a mistake, looking back) which gets annihilated the following turn. I do not draw Bridge to go with the Petal and Tomb so I lose.
G2: I mulligan some hands with terrible mana and keep Mountain, Petal, Engineer, Blast. I play out the mana, then we draw-go for a couple turns during which I do nothing, but after I draw Cratermaker plus a second Mountain I tap out (leaving Petal) for the Emrakul killer so that I don't have to guess what to put in for Show and Tell, which he now casts. Turns out it's Omniscience this time, so with the Engineer trigger on the stack (getting PDE) I give up the Petal to blast the Omniscience. This buys me some time, but I don't draw an artifact to swap for PDE and refill my hand so I'm completely cold to Sneak into double Archon.

R4: 2-1 vs Bant Nadu
G1: I have a T1 Welder with a blast and some useful stuff in hand, but he has a T2 Soul Cauldron and later a Keen-Eyed Curator so the goblins I keep drawing (four, in total) are basically blank. I ET -> Bridge but Bridge eats FoW so I lose.
G2: T1 Blood Moon isn't a complete lock as he has an Island and a Plains, but turning off all the fetches was enough of an obstacle to clear a path for the combo.
G3: Having boarded out some goblins I am not pleased to open a hand with two, but it seems better than mulliganing to 5 so I keep. This time there is no graveyard hate so the goblins do what they're supposed to do - turn PDE into Ancestral Recall, assemble the combo, blank removal, and win the game.

R5: 1-2 vs R Stompy
G1: I keep a Saga-Tomb-Karn hand and get run over.
G2: I play out a Grindstone, Bolt some stuff, then use Recruiter and its found Painter to bait out a Fury so that I can then play out Bridge + Welder with one card in hand. He has no answer so I untap and execute the combo.
G3: After losing a Welder to Bombardiers but having a Grindstone, I end up having to play Painter and blast the Bombardiers so he can't throw a flipped Fable at the Painter to kill it. He has no cards in hand so it's down to his topdeck as to whether I win or not - and it's another Bombardiers. Painter goes down, and goblins are worthless since he can just throw treasures at them so I need Bridge and/or more mana plus another Painter and I find neither.

R6: 0-2 vs Cradle Control
G1: I can't find the Painter to go with my Grindstone before getting blown out by Craterhoof.
G2: I keep what was possibly too reactive of a hand, with multiple Bolts and a Saga + Grindstone, but Force of Vigor on those two cards leaves me topdecking while also having to Bolt his random creatures. He topdecks some dumb creature that beats me.
I haven't quite figured out this matchup yet.

R7: 1-2 vs R Stompy
G1: I am on the draw, but the opponent kept a hand that clearly relied on Vexing Bauble to shut me out, so I casually draw into Painter plus Karn for Grindstone and go off with blast backup while he's stuck on one land.
G2: I slip a Painter through, then after he taps out for a Ring I combo on his following upkeep before I get buried in card advantage. He has an Untimely Malfunction to redirect the Grindstone to me and I have no blast.
G3: Same as G2.

Thoughts:

1. 8 blasts was great. I might prefer more SSGs though since blasts are often only relevant with Painter in play and the format has become faster.
2. Maindeck Blood Moon should almost certainly be something else. It turned out to be unnecessary or bad in the ways that I usually find maindeck Moon effects to be bad (see R2G1). A maindeck Needle might have been better.
3. Karn was strong all day, in contrast to its mediocre performance in testing. I don't think it's necessary to go back to three copies though.
4. With Endurance and Orcish Bowmasters at probably record lows, it may be time to revisit Smuggler's Copter. It seems a bit too difficult to realistically threaten combat wins, and with 8 blasts I'm more interested in looting. I also find that Goblins are less likely to survive a turn cycle and Copter lets them still be useful in that situation. But then, if Null Rod becomes more prevalent due to the Forge deck Copter would not be a good idea.
5. ET was strong whenever it came up. Especially after watching all the event coverage, I am glad to be playing Shortcake instead of Fable.
6. Twinshot Sniper has been strong against Red Stompy in the past and may be worth another look now.