Cascading for the win - because dumb luck is goddamn useful

[mort-]

Hello thar!

As I'm usually trying to play a deck as competitive as it can be when attending tournaments, I'm either playing some storm variant or BUG tempo most of the time. But as you might have guessed, this is not what you will be reading. Going into the last two tournaments (and having traded for a set of Shardless Agents) I decided it's time for some cascade action. The first tournament... went well. I actually played a five color list with as much cards that I like (-Dark Confidants, as there was sadly no room) as possible in it and won my first two rounds, I.D. the next two and went on to win the quarterfinals against Miracles. Paired against a friend and with no time left on that evening, we decided to split and I'd give him the game so he can advance to the finals (which he won, so yay us).
Seeing that the list was a blast to play and seemed to work pretty damn well, barring that it was just some random goodstuff that I threw together, I decided I'd give it a try at the next tournament. Given that there would be about ~20 players more, maybe even some with Wastelands, I decided to cut black, resulting in the following list:

“ELF WURST GOYF GO!” ("Wurst" (=> sausage) being Shardless Agent. Because he really is just a stupid 2/2 sausage once he hit the field)
//Critters (17)
3 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Scavenging Ooze
4 Shardless Agent
3 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Tarmogoyf
//Spells n Stuff (22)
1 Sylvan Library
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Ancestral Vision
2 Izzet Charm
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Jace, the Mind-Sculptor
1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
//MANABASE FROM HELL (21)
4 City of Brass
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Savannah
2 Taiga
1 Tundra
2 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island

//Damn I love this Sideboard! (15)
3 Rest in Peace
3 Sensei’s Divining Top
3 Counterbalance
2 Firespout
1 Sower of Temptation
1 Oblivion Ring
2 Mindbreak Trap


As you can see, there are no bad cards to cascade into, the worst being Noble Hierarch. And even that was good when it happened. So, on to the report. Again, this is all from the top of my head, I'll try to be as correct as possible.

There were 32 players registered, which would result in five rounds, no top eight. Wat. Protests from various corners (including me, as, with all idiots, if there's a thing to protest, I have to join - though I did want to play top eight). The TO is nice enough to announce top eight after swiss and also that we'll be battling for a Bayou. And also prize cups. Awesome. Pairings are posted quick and I sit across my first opponent.

Round 1 - Thomas with 9-Post

I pretty much knew what he was playing as I saw him earlier. I also knew that this matchup would suck because I was appearently to stupid to fit Wastelands into my absolutely-not-shaky-manabase. Still, game one he is too slow, with me winning the dice roll and going Hierarch into Wurst into Ooze. That's alright I guess. A Bloodbraid Elf soon joins the party and cascades into something I think, so we go to game two.
I didn't board in too much, I think Traps, O-Ring and Sower to maybe snag some delicious Eldrazi. He does nothing the first few turns, but has Repeals to slow me down. I hit him once for a damage or so, then he gets Primeval Titan which is.. quite good against my deck. I concede.
Game three is a bit faster as I get the beats going pretty fast. He does his thing with Cloudpost, then Glimmerpost into Expedition Map and Tabernacle. Never play it though, must be because I have enough lands to wipe my ass with and still have some spare. I get him to 13 or something with him having ridiculously much mana, so I decide now is the time to kill, going Wurst into Vision and Wurst into Tarmogoyf. Then casting another Goyf. So he's dead on board and his only out is Emrakul. Or the All is Dust that he rips from the top. I'll deploy a Hierarch to continue mad beats but he just plays Stroke of Genius for 10 on my endstep. As I generally do not want any huge tentacle monsters anywhere near my face (or other body parts), I pick up my cards.
1-2
0:1

Round 2 - Benni with BUG Tempo

Yeah, paired against a good friend and a person who drove to the event with me. He's also playing Wastelands, so I kind of throw the tournament away the moment I saw the pairings. I win the dice roll and keep the one-lander. Hierarch resolves (figures, he doesn't play Force of Will) and he wastes my land. Naturally, I topdeck one, then Brainstorm into one more to get my cascading powers going. Hilarity ensues as I'm tapping three lands (three different combinations) and he's asking me to specify the colors of mana I want to float. "So I'm tapping my Taiga for one green mana, tapping my Tropical Island for one blue mana, also tapping my City of Brass, trigger goes on the stack, for one white mana. I let the trigger of City of Brass resolve, taking one damage in the process. With the three mana, I'm going to LOL WURST GO CASCADE". Doesn't sound funny now? It was. We both laugh, then I resolve Vision and he's not laughing anymore. I'm still. Yeah, I'm not a good guy. After that, I'm just burying him in card advantage because I'll play some more Wursts and even Elves and stuff. He tries some Goyfs to block but I have a playset Force of Will in my hand.
I'll board my Goyfs out and RiP in. We both have to mulligan to six and he starts with a Thoughtseize, taking my Noble Hierarch. Easy, I wasn't sure what to do on my turn one, but now that the Hierarch is gone, I just suspend a Vision. He wastes some of my lands but being the lucksack that I am I topdeck some more. The moment my Vision would resolve, I do have two in play - and another Hierarch. He uses Spell Pierce and has one card in hand. Now, the good thing is, I know the exact 75 he's playing (good thing I build his list :D), so I just let his Pierce resolve and don't pay. Had I paid, there was a Divert waiting to snag my Vision and allow him to get in the game again. This way, I'm going Bloodbraid into stuff, killing his Shamans as they hit the field. Sweet, sweet cascade :D
2-0
1:1

Round 3 - Jason with Junk

I win the dice roll again! Yay me. He discards some stuff and also wastes while I try to get his Confidants of the table. Luckily, he doesn't draw that much gas while I (being the good player that I am) cascade into more Visions. Still, his Souls beat me down to five (with some help of my City of Brass, triple bolting me or something along the lines) before I can stabilize and get his life totals below zero.
Time for Firespout! And also more Rest in Peace. Stupid card, but brutally effective.
This is kind of an uphill battle as he gets an early Stoneforge Mystic out, searching for Jitte. I do the same, but he kind of has discard for it. So yeah, I have to play against a Jitte the rest of the game. Which works for 15 minutes or so. Going into the last game we have about 10 minutes left and I also have to mulligan down to four. At least it's double land, Stoneforge and Vision. So that works. His hand is slow, but he gets about two copies of Souls going, so I'm under pressure pretty fast. Vision resolves and brings me Firespout, which cleares his board. But, there is more! He got another copy of souls, and also a Batterskull. My own is waiting in my hand since he sworded my SFM. Still, I manage to Wurst into Vision, get another Wurst into Vision going ("Oh.. that's pretty good") and finally stabilize when time is called. Seeing that he is at about 20 Life, we decide that a draw will have to do here.
1-1-1
1:1:1

Round 4 - Oliver with BG Nic Fit

He's that pokerface guy - and games against him tend to get intense pretty fast. Good for me that he doesn't draw any business in game one and my draw (Hierarch -> Wurst -> SFM and double Bloodbraid in the next two turns) was too fast for his no-Pernicious-Deed-board.
Time for a Rest in Peace again! We durdle around pretty much in this game, nothing happening for the first two turns except him playing Therapies and playing some lands. Sadly, I pretty much do the same and am soon confronted with a pretty big problem. There's a Deed. And a Thrun. Oh. Being the not-so-cool-guy that Thrun is, he ends the game once my chumpblocks are dead. Which, considering there was also a Deed, didn't take too long.
The last one was harsh. We bombed pretty much everything we had. And then there is the goddamn Thrun again and I - again - can do nothing against it. And again, there is a Deed on the field. I do have double Bolt in my hand though, so I try to get him down from his nine lifes to six. Which doesn't work because I have to kill a Shaman. Enter Jace, better than all. He immediately drew fire from Thrun and gave me some good cascades with his Brainstorm. The turning point comes when I don't chump with Noble Hierarch (keeping my last Lightning Bolt and Bloodbraid Elf in hand) to let Jace die, but stay on four mana. Problem is, he drew a Therapy and named BBE correctly. So I pretty much lost all my options. Still, I'm getting a SFM from the top to fetch up Batterskull, which is able to gain me five exalted lifes and then gets gripped. He lands Liliana, being still on seven life. We discard and I Bolt him to four. Liliana discards some more, Thrun attacks me to five and my field suddenly looks pretty bad. He's at one but has a Thrun against my lonely SFM. His Liliana is at six. He got a top. I'm at five, but the boardstate couldn't be worse. So naturally, I topdeck BBE, cascading into RiP. Now, if I go all in and he has Decay, I'm dead (I had to use the City for BBE, so I'm at four). But I figure, if I don't attack now, I'm going to be dead pretty soon as the boardstate could still be worse. I attack and he shakes my hand, showing me a Thragtusk on the top of his deck. Close call and probably the most intense game I played in the last few tournaments.
2-1
2:1:1

R5 - Erik with Stoneblade

He mulligans to six, but won the dice roll, while I keep a pretty good seven. He proceeds to sword everything that moves on my side of the table while I hold a combination of Brainstorm, Bolt, Vision and BBE in my hand. Sadly, he gets to four mana first. I know he's playing Notion Thief main, but I do have that Bolt and am pretty sure that his hand can't be THAT good after a mulligan. So.. I Brainstorm. He has the Thief. I have the Bolt. He has the Force. Ouch. I get to BBE into SFM to at least get a bit of CA back, but when he cliques me in my next drawstep I just concede. Harsh beats.
More Firespouts against him. I don't know what happens in this game. He gets me to 13 life but it seems that I take over pretty fast. I think he concedes with me resolving two Visions in my upkeep.
We both mulligan to six for the last game. He opens up with Inquisition and I'm like "Haha, no." and show him four lands, Force and Elf. Free mulligan to five, yay. Naturally, I topdeck a Wurst and after that a Hierarch, which he kills so I don't get to four mana. Meanwhile, his Soul Token beat me up, Wurst resolves but cascades into nothing but a Hierarch and my Elf gets discarded along the way. Turning point! I resolve a Jitte. He hardcasts Force. I do to. Hell yeah! Jitte resolves and I manage to clear his side of the board to a manageable two token. Still, he kills my Jittecarrier and attacks me down to one. I find a Brainstorm. Jace, Firespout, Wurst. Yes. My Jitte has still one counter left, so I first clear out his board using Firespout. Jace hits next turn and Brainstorms, all while the last Jitte counter is protecting me from an EoT Vendilion Clique. Finally, I deploy a Wurst into Visions and play SFM. Being the huge idiot that I am, I'm trying to pose in his upkeep. Tap City of Brass, trigger on stack, bolt you for lethal (that Hierarch did some good work!). As with all the douchebag moves, he naturally has a Spell Pierce which I can't pay for, so I have to remove the last Jitte counter to not die by my own douchebaggery. Still, he draws a land and the game is mine in the next turn.
2-1
3:1:1

Yay, I sneak into top eight at the last place.

T8 - Paul with Merfolk

I get to open a nice grip of burn, a Force with pitchcard, lands and SFM. He starts with Land, Vial after a Mulligan to six. I force, but he naturally has the Daze. I play some lands, land some SFM and burn his lords while he hits me for two a turn. Enter Batterskull. He concedes.
For game two he has a very slow start, his first play is a Lord of Atlantis turn two, which I thankfully Bolt. His next lord gets an Izzet Charm. So, everything is pretty much under control. Wouldn't it be for the Commander he deploys and levels. So now he's hitting for much a turn, while I deploy Batterskull and block. My counterattack brings me to eleven again. He doesn't draw anything, so he just gets some damage in with the Commander. I attack again and go to twelve. He draws, plays an islandwalking Lord and attacks with three fishes and two Mutavaults. And I'm like "Goddamn Islandwalk... well, no blocks." I'm pretty much dead and pick my cards up when a friend casually asks "Why didn't you block?" - "Well, because he had Islandwalk - DUH!?" - "And, did you have any Islands?". So, this happens when you play blue all the time. I automatically assumed that I had to have some Islands somewhere, while my Manabase was just a Savannah and two City of Brass. Whoops.
Game three is pretty one sided. I go Hierarch into Sylvan Library which pretty much spells GG for him. The lords he gets are killed almost instantly and he concedes when I start chaining Wursts into Visions. Which feels so right and so wrong at the same time. Just stupid good.

T4 - Stefan with Esperblade

Yeah, that's the one player I couldn't beat ever since I played the first time against him. He always finds some way to beat me. Not this time. The games are pretty uneventful as he keeps a onelander game one. I Izzet Charm his Ponder and go on to deploy a Jace. He concedes.
The second game is more of the first, with him having lands and me having cascades and finally a Jace for which he has again no answer. FINALLY, I managed to do the unthinkable.

T2 - Jonas with TES

So.. that matchup is kind of not good. I keep a hand with double Force, SFM, Vision, Charm, Bolt and one Land. Suspend Vision, go. He brainstormes, uses a Lotus Petal, plays Rite of Flame and another one. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I am playing storm quite often. Still, I don't force. Goblin token enter the field. I get to force one of these copies! If I draw a land, I might survive the onslaught by deploying SFM into Batterskull, but no. Bad plays have to be punshied.
In goes the anti-storm-board, including Firespouts (again). I keep a hand without Force, but with a Charm and SFM and Hierarch. Needles to say, my Brainstorm didn't hit anything and he proceeds to combo on his turn two, going Diminishing Returns.. and fizzling. Cool. I now have the safe choice to play SFM and get Batterskull as early as possible, or be super stupid and play a goddamn Wurst. Which, of course, I do. It cascades into Visions and that finds me a Counterbalance. I also do have a one-drop on top, so my SFM is protected against his Therapy. He goes for some Goblins, but I have a Batterskull this time and he concedes.
He opens up with Gitaxian Probe. As I hadn't seen a Tendrils up until now I just kept a four land, Force, Hierarch, Stoneforge hand. Stupid, I know. "You don't have anything." - "Yup. Am I dead?" - "I can even kill you with Silence protection." - "Well, just try.". He shows me his hand: Infernal Tutor, Gemstone Mine, two Lion's Eye Diamonds, Dark Ritual, Silence, Lotus Petal. That's the moment I know I'm pretty fucked. And also that my mulligan decision didn't even matter. "Might as well concede now." - "Nah, you said you'd kill me with protection, now you have to do it." So he plays his hand, keeps priority after Infernal Tutor and searches his library "Well, I could do Ill-Gotten Gains, but I'm too lazy.". He picks Ad Nauseam and I'm starting to get confused. He starts to reveal Duress, Ponder, Lotus Petal, Lion's Eye Diamond and Infernal Tutor. Stops at 14 and declares that's enough. I agree, but watch. He plays his Petal, LED, Infernal Tutor, cracks and.... waits. Suddenly, he starts calculating and I'm getting more and more confused. As are the people watching. After about five minutes of him talking about losing the game and having miscounted his mana, I ask the one question that's on my mind: "So.. you did board all winconditions out?" - "Sure, why would I not?" - "Well..." I gesture to his boardstate "that's why, basicly". For those of you who counted, he had five mana floating and needed six. And that's how I won a finale without doing anything.

So, to conclude this article:
Play this deck, it's random stupid and so much fun to play.

[theillest]

Great report. That's an awesome conclusion.

[Dessyreqt]

This deck reminds me very much of the deck that a couple of my friends brewed up at 2 AM in a Mexican restaurant for the last SCG event that was in the area. I didn't play that deck, but Justin did to 15th place. Our other friend was another player who played the same deck, but only went 4-4.

I did eventually sleeve up the deck, and it's pretty fun to play. I'm especially interested in your use of Izzet Charm. Another direction we've take the deck in is to add Vengevines, which is another strong hasty threat, and can come back from the graveyard off a cascade into another creature.

[phazonmutant]

That TES match is just depressing... Too lazy to count to 3-6-lots?

Congrats on the win though!

[mort-]

This deck reminds me very much of the deck that a couple of my friends brewed up at 2 AM in a Mexican restaurant for the last SCG event that was in the area. I didn't play that deck, but Justin did to 15th place. Our other friend was another player who played the same deck, but only went 4-4.

I did eventually sleeve up the deck, and it's pretty fun to play. I'm especially interested in your use of Izzet Charm. Another direction we've take the deck in is to add Vengevines, which is another strong hasty threat, and can come back from the graveyard off a cascade into another creature.

Izzet Charm was really great all day. I didn't want to run with Force as my only counterbackup, but with the nature of Cascade, every counter below 3 mana is pretty bad. And every above 3 is also pretty bad, due to the nature of the 3cc+ counter :D So Izzet Charm was never really dead (it helped a great deal against merfolk, wouldn't have won without it) as the flexibility of the charm is exactly what you want in this deck.

[Mackan]

Reading your report felt like watching a random feelgood movie :)

Congrats!