Results 1 to 2 of 2

Thread: SCG Open Los Angelos Dec-16th-2012 type 1.5/Legacy, just 1 perspective out of 266!

  1. #1
    Member
    feline's Avatar
    Join Date

    Dec 2011
    Location

    USA
    Posts

    586

    SCG Open Los Angeles Dec-16th-2012 type 1.5/Legacy, just 1 perspective out of 266!

    So here we are with part II of my 1, 2 in a row Type 1.5/Legacy attempts at the So Cal Region, for the Las Vegas report, please see part I.

    Why didn't I use my invite to play in the Invitational?
    Because of a couple of reasons, I decided to go down to So Cal literally about 2 weeks or so before it happening, and if you get your ticket 2 weeks in advance, it's cheaper, so the day I decided to get my ticket, was the day before Thanksgiving, meaning that I'd have to have paid more at that time than I did. Secondly, I am not prepared to play type II on that level, I could see doing the Open Series but, for an invitational, I would have gotten crushed in the type II segment, though I still could have played for fun, I decided to save the invite for a later time, since I can go to any of the next 4, that being throughout 2013. Also, my So Cal card group probably didn't want to sit around all day on Friday and watch me play while they waited for Saturday, on top of that, if I went alone and waited for them to show up on Saturday, I'd have to have gotten another bus ticket, though it would have been for alot cheaper and less than 100 miles, vs 1,000+, that also meant though that I'd have to pay for another hotel night. Basically when it call comes down to it, it came down to money more than anything else, but the fact that I have had almost no experience testing out type II / Standard stuff, was also a role. In the end, it was a combination of factors, and I still have the option to go to another if one hits the west coast later, I can be more planned out, I sort of decided to go to Vegas / LA on a last minute whim when I realized that I could do 2 events for 1 travel ticket. Literally after I did Seattle in mid November, I didn't even think about going to Vegas / LA until after that SCG.

    Type II/Standard, my first competitive event at that level for the format since playing Dragonstorm at Regionals in So cal back in 2007
    Other than a few random FNM's during Innistrad/Mirrodin, I have not touched the type II "scene" if you will call it that, in a long time, basically, long enough that I am not familiar with things your average FNM'er is familiar with. However, I also wanted something to do on Saturday while my friends were type II'ing it up, & in talking with them I was looking at doing reanimator, then the Grand Prix happened where Angel of Glory's Rise won 1st reanimating tribal humans and all that fun, so I basically went with that deck, though I ran 4 Izzet Charms instead of 2 & some other very minor things. Long report short, I went 6 wins 3 losses 1 draw (2 of my losses were against B/R aggro, that deck is so fast) netting 72nd place out of 469 players. Will I get back into the type II / Standard format again? I don't know, it's always out there, as for right now though, I can see borrowing cards for type II & playing if the chance comes up (Which is how I played on Saturday, I let my friends use my legacy decks I wasn't playing, & they helped provide me with a type II deck) However I don't see myself actually getting cards for a deck in the format & actually pushing it like I do type 1.5/Legacy, at least, not right now.

    Foiling out my high tide deck because I'm not crazy enough!
    Long story short, after Vegas we went back to California, & I had decided at that point, that stuff I wasn't using, playing, would become fuel for making my high tide deck even flashier, since it's all I ever push at the bigger events anyhow, might as well make it shine right? Well if you read my signature, you see that my Dredge/Belcher/Zoo decks are now listed under "past legacy decks"
    -Dredge just gets hated out too much, not even by the sideboard stuff, but just by what's good in peoples main decks, scavenging ooze's, deathrite shaman's, even Rest in Peace is being ran as half of a combo.
    -Zoo is just not interactive enough, especially fast zoo, which is the version I liked playing, and the "big zoo" just turns into a "Maverick with some burn in it" every time I look at "fixing zoo"
    -Belcher -vs- Force of will, not to mention being on the draw adds in daze, spell pierce, spell snare...
    -Maverick is a deck I completed recently as well, but I never played it, it just collected dust for a few months, so I didn't even note it as one of my past decks, other than this tournament report here in this sentence, and some of the people I talk to regularly, noone will ever know I had a Maverick deck in my bag for a while.
    This All Became Fuel For Something I Do Play: High Tide-
    Did a request to SCG, they brought the Foils, Promos, etc, & now, every card except Meditate / Turnabout / Time Spiral & Candelabra of Tawnos is either a promo, foil, textless or w/e else, Force of will & High tide's are not foil of course, but I alter arted my High tides myself, & I got the Force's signed by Terese Nielsen who was also at the invitational, thank you again for that ^.^ (I know that I could do foreign cards for what I have left, but I for some reason am just not into foreign carding out a deck, everyone likes shiny pretty foils right?)

    So, the record largest West Coast SCG Open, what were the numbers?
    Type II/Standard was 469
    Type 1.5/Legacy was 266

    What deck did I play?
    High Tide, as may or may not have been suspected to this point, I'll post the decklist again anyway, at a minimum as a way to show what I foiled out specifically with what.
    12 Island (John Avon Full Art Zendikar foil)
    2 Misty Rainforest
    2 Scalding tarn
    2 Flooded strand (DCI foil promo)
    4 Brainstorm (FNM promo)
    4 Ponder (Textless)
    4 Preordain (Foil)
    4 Force of will (Signed of course)
    3 Flusterstorm (DCI foil promo)
    4 Merchant scroll (foil)
    3 Cunning wish (foil)
    1 Snap (foil)
    1 Wipe away (foil)
    1 Turnabout
    1 Meditate
    4 Time Spiral
    4 Candelabra of Tawnos
    4 High Tide (Alter art approved before tourney started, thank you head Judge)
    -Sideboard-
    1 Blue Sun's Zenith (foil)
    1 Brain Freeze (foil)
    1 Intuition (Judge Promo foil)
    1 Meditate
    1 Turnabout
    1 Snap (foil)
    1 Wipe away (foil)
    1 Rebuild (foil)
    1 Flusterstorm (DCI foil promo)
    3 Pact of negation (2 foil, 1 non foil)
    1 Surgical Extraction (Promo foil)
    2 Grafdigger's cage
    (The reason I ran the misty's & scaldings non foil was because I was still waiting to get the other 4 dci foil's, being flooded strand # 3 polluted's that I could not get the rest of until the tourney ended because my friend was playing belcher, one of the decks I was going to turn in)
    (Yes, I actually ran a Brain Freeze in the sideboard after so long of not running it and using that sideboard slot for something else, Thank you Michael Bernat for a different kind of perspective on the card, Brain Freeze not being in there because it's a primary way to go off, but a way to go off when you'd otherwise not have the option to keep going towards a lethal Blue Sun's Zenith, sometimes you are cutting it close when you have to Cunning Wish for a Meditate because you're so low on mana that you can't Blue Sun Zenith yourself, or even Intuition > Time Spiral, & if you can just get a Brain Freeze & end it instead, that's better than Meditate'ing into nothing.)

    Round 1 Table 30 vs Gonzalez, Art Esperblade
    Game 1: High Tides casted: 4 - Pact of Negation's casted 1 - They start out with a mulligan to 5 which is encouraging, then they get to the point of playing Stoneforge Mystic, netting a Batterskull, I wait enough to go down to 15 life before I feel comfortable enough with my counter back up to go off and lethal Blue Sun's Zenith them.
    -Sideboard- IN 1 Flusterstorm 2 Pact of negation - OUT 1 High tide 1 Snap 1 Wipe away
    Game 2: High Tides casted: 4 - Pact of negation's casted 1 - My Candelabra of Tawnos in play gets Detention Sphere'd for the first time ever, but I am still able to combo off accordingly, realizing I'll just have to get it later if I decide I need it back into play via Wipe Away. I'm at 10 life when I combo off & clench my first win for the first match of the tourney.
    End Result: 1-win 0-losses 0-draws


    Round 2 Table 37 vs Genova, Andrew Nic Fit
    Game 1: High Tide's casted: 4 - Meditate's: 1 - 20, 19, 18, 17, win, nothing else noted for this game.
    -Sideboard- IN 1 Flusterstorm 1 Pact of negation 1 Blue Sun's Zenith(In case their disruption + extraction if they're running it, hits my Wish'es) - OUT 1 High Tide (Again extraction reasons) 1 Snap & 1 Wipe away
    Game 2: I never even get the chance to combo off here, the column just says "Them: 20, 19" "Me: 20, 19, 17, 13, 11, 7, 5, Dead"
    Game 3: High Tide's casted 5 - Meditate's: 1 - Pact of negation's casted 1 - I combo off accordingly, though it takes a bit longer & requires more tapping & untapping via Turnabout from Merchant scroll & Cunning wish, because they Abrupt decay'd my candelabra, and then Extracted it from the game. I was sure glad it was that and not Cunning wish, high tide, or time spiral at least!
    End result: 2-wins 0-losses 0-draws


    Round 3 Table 9 vs Pilalas, Alex RUG
    Game 1: High Tide's casted 0 - This is the first interesting game of the night, a very smart move by my opponent and one of those situations you often hear of, but never get to see it for yourself. Game 1 he mulligan's down to 6, keeps, says ok, so we start going, they take their first turn, draw a card, & pass, not even playing a land, & now my mind is racing (Ok it's gotta be storm like ANT/TES, maybe Belcher, Oh crap he could be playing DREDGE! There's also the possibility, since he like many other's, were so nice and congratulated my previous success in Seattle, which told me that he knew what I was likely playing, so he could possibly just be playing any blue deck with Force of will and Brainstorm, and could possibly just have a hand with 0 lands, some Force of wills & some cantrips, though I was leaning much more towards Dredge or storm)
    -Sideboard- Now this is fun, what's he playing, oh that's right, I don't know! Well since I still have counters, I don't have graveyard hate, do I bring in the cages just in case? It's only 2 cages, ok I'll go with that, cutting a Snap and a High tide to the sideboard, since I'll almost always want a high tide in the sideboard game's 2/3 against almost any deck anyway.
    Game 2: High Tide's casted 0 - "Now you'll know what I'm playing" he says, playing a Tropical Island, then a Nimble Mongoose. Darn, it's Rug, not the most favorable match up, but at least I got that game 1 in my favor, just have to win one of the next 2, when I try to get tutors via merchant scroll & cunning wish, I get pyroblast'ed out, my life total goes from 20, to 19, 18, 17, 14, 13, 10, 9, 6, 5, 4, 1, Dead, but that's not the only thing that dies...
    Time: Around Noon. The other death: Electricity Talk to anyone that was there during that time frame, and they will likely tell you of their story when the lights were going out, then back on, then out again, we still had some lights, like 5% of them on on our side, but the invitational side was completely dark, I imagine players used their cell phones as a light to continue playing
    Game 3: High Tide's casted 0 - Again, Rug does what it does best, play a creature, swing, get the opponent down to 19, 18, 17, 13, 9, 8, DEAD (yes some of it was fetchland damage) below that it just says "Countered out"
    End result: 2-wins 1-loss 0-draws


    Round 4 Table 41 vs Zlobnov, Nikolay BUG
    Game 1: High Tide's casted 5 - Meditate's: 2 - This person had some pretty cool stuff in their deck, including some black border foreign dual lands, though being from another country they also had to read the oracle text on Candelabra of Tawnos, which was fine, I wish it worked the way it was suspected though, if it didn't tap to use it's ability, that'd be absurd! (Basically was a situation of explaining that Mono Artifact basically means "tap for a 1 time use") Other than that, the game was just another typical High Tide, generate mana, Time Spiral, generate more mana, draw, high tide, mana, tap, untap, etc etc, wish for a Lethal Blue Sun's Zenith for the win.
    -Sideboard- IN 1 Flusterstorm - OUT 1 High Tide
    Game 2: High Tide's casted 4 - Meditate's: 2 - 20, 18, 13, Combo off for the win! I know Abrupt Decay is a popular card, but for me, all it does is hit my candelabra of tawnos, & further more, I will just recast them when I Time Spiral into more, I just love how stupidly awesome that is as a high tide player!
    End result: 3-wins 1-loss 0-draws


    -Mid Report, sorta, since technically, the actual half point is in the middle of round 5- So far it is looking better than Las Vegas was for me, I haven't ran into any fizzle problems, only have 1 loss so far, though I have to be careful not to get a 2nd or it's over, as far as my friends that showed up this time, the same one borrowed Pox, but they were having bad luck and at this point dropped from the tourney, the one that borrowed my Belcher deck got a round 1 victory, only to run into 3 walls afterward and were now 1 win 3 losses with the deck.

    Round 5 Table 22 vs Rabin, Gabriel O RUG
    Game 1: High Tide's casted: 1 - Well, it looks like another RUG match, maybe this time luck would be on my side? I start to combo off, get the resolved Time Spiral and it's happy dance time right? Nah, time for the fizzle of the night, I Spiral into, no draw spells and no tutors, KABOOM! goin to game 2 after some more combat steps that kill me off. As much as fizzling sucks, it's even worse when you fizzle against a matchup that is not so favorable, I'd much rather fizzle against something I am still favored against, so I can make up for the fizzle the other 2 games, but either way, it's part of magic, it's part of the deck, and it's part of the game!
    -Sideboard- IN 2 Pact of negation 1 Flusterstorm - OUT 1 High tide 1 Snap 1 Wipe away
    Game 2: High Tide's casted: 0 - 20, 17, 14, 11, 8, 5, 4, DEAD I never get the chance to combo off, their counters keep my tutor's & wishes down, & their creatures get the job done to finish me off.
    End result: 3-wins 2-losses 0-draws


    Round 6 Table 54 vs Hadley, Mike Goblins
    Game 1: High Tide's casted: 5 - Meditate's: 2 - Turn 1 Cavern of souls, NAME GOBLINS, play Goblin Lackey, go! Well it looks like I better not stall out with that turn 1 start. Luckily I am able to get there before they get to lethal, just wait it out, then combo off with as many islands in play as possible.
    -Sideboard- IN 1 Pact of negation 1 Blue Sun's Zenith - OUT 1 High Tide 1 Snap
    Game 2: High Tide's casted: 4 - Again, another turn 1 Lackey, luckily this time however it drops only a matron, then before they get the chance to drop a tuk tuk scrapper on me & nail my candelabra with it, I snap the goblin lackey just to by myself more free time, it isn't long that I start to combo off, though because of Red elemental blast & friends, I turnabout them at the end of their turn, before I actually do combo out and it get's to the point of aiming a lethal Blue Sun's Zenith at my opponent, as a rule I never go off with out protection if I can help it, so I was very glad to have counters when my opponent attempted 2 mindbreak trap's my way in response.
    End result: 4-wins 2-losses 0-draws


    Round 7 Table 24 vs Foster, Jeph W BUG (This was by far the fun'est & most epic match for me of not only the night, but also out of Saturday in LA's standard, and including Las Vegas the previous weekend, just ask Jeph Foster about our match if you know him it was truly a fun match!)
    Game 1: High Tide's casted: 3 - Meditate's: 1 - Waiting it out for as long as possible, my opponent actually casts, NATURAL ORDER! netting a Progenitus, didn't see that one coming, here's the fun part though, I decided, ok I must start to combo off now, obviously since I'm now staring at lethal. So we start going off, do some High Tide's, draw some cards, and it gets to the point to where my Islands are tapping for 4 per, and I wish I just had a little bit more mana so I could Blue Sun myself for more than a few cards, well, I have a snap in hand, and there's 1 creature in play, I could use that to generate more mana, pay 2, bounce a creature, untap 2 islands, tap for 8 more, would have been awesome BUT, progenitus has protection from, EVERYTHING so I have to do the only option I have left since I used Meditate already and I don't have the option of Intuition - Time Spiral, because I already used 2 Cunning Wish'es, so I have to get the blue sun's zenith anyway or I'll never have access to a kill condition, so I blue sun, leaving just enough mana to hope that I draw either a candel, a turnabout, or a time spiral, which means I have to leave 6 mana open, that means, I have to blue sun's zenith for 2, instead of 6 which would have been an option if I could only have snapp'ed that Progenitus away! OY! Not only that, but they also casted daze on me earlier, nailing me to tap for an island when I didn't want to, so that also costed me the mana I could have produced, as well as the mana I had to pay into it, so I could have been doing this for 8 at this point, but nope, it's 2, as you can imagine, I end up passing the turn after that point & dying to progenitus.
    -Sideboard- IN 1 Flusterstorm 1 Pact of negation 1 Blue Sun's Zenith - OUT 1 Snap 1 Wipe away 1 High Tide
    Game 2: High Tide's casted 0 - If you thought that game was nuts, well, the play of the night that I will never forget happens during this game 2: Going back and forth with our cards, playing accordingly, it gets to a point of a Vendilion Clique in play, they then Vendilion clique a second one just for the option to put my Intuition to the bottom of my deck which is a play that is very understandably worth it, they even noted that it was worth it in which I'm sure everyone would agree. The other play that stands out is a bit later, they cast a Liliana of the Veil, have 6 cards in hand, I have 4, being flusterstorm, which at this point it's later game and it's weaker, a force of will, which I don't want to use force on liliana and loose 2 cards when they're holding 6, a high tide, and a meditate. So I figure, ok, let it resolve, I'll discard the flusterstorm and have to just work with my hand from there, discarding the weakest card in my hand at the time, except that's not what happens, they pass the turn! Without using the liliana's "we each discard a card +1 ability" I was floored, how could they forget to use that ability, discarding the worst of 6 against the worst of 4, on top of the fact that I need cards in my hand to win, how could they forget something so vital? So I'm taking my turn, untap, upkeep, draw, still thinking in the back of my mind, I realize they can't use it on my turn, so I just asked "Did you forget to use it or what?" and their response was "No, my hand is Sweet!" As soon as they said that, I knew it was over, there's no reason to bluff not using a liliana's ability, which meant they didn't even want to discard the worst card in their hand, that is a very scary thing to hear on my side of the table! Needless to say, my suspicions were correct and after my loss, they revealed that they had 2 force of wills, 2 jace the mind sculptors, a flusterstorm & a 6th card I for some reason don't remember, I wasn't getting through that with my hand having 2 less cards & needing not 1, but 2 of my cards to resolve past those counters.
    End Result: 4-wins 3-losses 0-draws


    Round 8 Table 37 vs Paguio, Thomas Jund
    Game 1: High Tide's casted: 5 - Fetch for a Bayou, Fetch for a Badlands? Fetch for a Taiga? Are they playing Aggro Loam? Nah, it was Jund, I never expected that I suppose but here it is. Fortunately the discard isn't enough, thank you again Flusterstorm against Hymn to tourach and friends! Combo off accordingly and go to game 2
    -Sideboard- IN 1 Blue Sun's Zenith 1 Pact of negation 1 Flusterstorm - OUT 1 High tide 1 Wipe away 1 Snap
    Game 2: High tide's casted: 5 - Meditate's: 2 - I'm at 20, 19, 14, 7, time to combo. High tides, turnabouts, candels, time spirals, scrolls & wishe's later, I blue sun zenith them for 80+ cards, I don't think they were playing with a 90 card deck, so we net another win!
    End result: 5-wins 3-losses 0-draws


    Round 9 Table 29 vs Harduvel, John RUG
    Game 1: High Tide's casted: 3 - Well, 9 matches, and a 3rd one vs rug, luckily this time, game 1 isn't a fizzle like against the earlier rug deck, and I'm able to get there after getting down to 11 life.
    -Sideboard- IN 2 Pact of negation 1 Flusterstorm - OUT 1 High tide 1 Wipe away 1 Snap
    Game 2: High tide's casted: 5 - Pact of negation's: 2 - After some back and forth for a few turns, I try to at the beginning of their draw step before they draw a card, turnabout them, they use a pyroblast on it, they then with their remaining 2 lands they tap and play sylvan library, pass the turn tapped out to me, and I get the result I wanted anyway, so I start going off, they have access to nothing but daze & force of will, and my deck can handle those counters properly since it doesn't include a host more of reb's, pyroblsasts, spell pierces & spell snares. Eventually I get there for the win & it's a victory this time against RUG. I later found out from another, who also happened to be a local from the pacific northwest that I've talked to a few times off and on at different tourneys, that when my opponent tapped out for that library, they had a hand full of counters & blasts and I would never have been able to go off if they didn't tap out for that library, not only that but even after the resolved Time Spiral, they drew into an even more nuts hand with even more stuff to stop me, but again, they were tapped out so most of it was irrelevant thank goodness!
    End result: 6-wins 3-losses 0-draws, netting me a 44th place finish out of 266 players


    Congrats to all of my opponents:
    Gonzalez, Art The 1st person to Detention sphere my Candelabra of tawnos!
    Genova, Andrew The 1st person to Extract my Candelabra of tawnos!
    Pilalas, Alex After mulligan'ing game 1 and conceding, that was a very smart move, I brought in 2 Grafdigger's cages because I suspected Storm or Dredge, more than I suspected it just being a blue deck that held onto force of will because they knew I was playing High Tide, & yet it turned out to be the latter, that being RUG.
    Zlobnov, Nikolay Very nice Foreign cards and again, everyone loves those FBB's, Foreign Black Border Duals!
    Rabin, Gabriel O Who placed 12th in the tournament, congrats on prizes
    Hadley, Mike Again another props for goblins, when I'm not playing high tide at my more local events, one of the decks I push is Goblins
    Foster, Jeph W Who placed 24th in the tournament, after that epic match, both games were very memorable and it's the match of the tournament I remember the most
    Paguio, Thomas I really thought you were playing aggro loam for a good part of game 1
    Harduvel, John for my last competitive opponent & match at this level of 2012, will see you & the rest of you all next year ^.^
    Also Congrats to my so cal card group, Carlos Lopez playing Naya on Saturday & placing 55th out of 469 players, Cary Thomas who played belcher, the last time my belcher deck to be played before I let it go! Jeremy Chestnut & Tony who decided to play 2 headed Giant as a side event after dropping as well as Steven Sheriff who also played Side events on day 2, as well as all of us that played in day 1 for type II / Standard

    Not to be last but, lastly, & again, thank you for everyone behind Starcity games, these forums that we all know & use so much, all of us as players and piloter's of our decks that we enjoy & until the next Open series in 2013, it looks like a holiday break for everyone. My next aim will likely be March 2nd-3rd 2013 for when the SCG open series returns to Las Vegas.
    Last edited by feline; 04-23-2013 at 04:45 AM.
    Primary legacy deck High Tide primer

  2. #2
    Member

    Join Date

    Aug 2011
    Location

    Italy
    Posts

    780

    Re: SCG Open Los Angelos Dec-16th-2012 type 1.5/Legacy, just 1 perspective out of 266

    Quote Originally Posted by feline View Post
    I'll post the decklist again anyway, at a minimum as a way to show what I foiled out specifically with what.
    Pics or it didn't happen

    Great report, it's always nice to read a detailed report about High Tide. My only gripe is you are probably one of the main reasons why Candelabras came up in price in the last month with your SCG finish. Please keep the high finishes to a minimum for a couple months OK? I still have 2 more to buy

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)