Swedish nationals (5-3-0), but learning a lot

[schweinefettmann]

32 out of 106, Swedish nationals in borås, 6 November.
Lowest ranked of 3 total painters in the room (others were on imperial and mono blue painted stone). Learned a lot from it, and I think the deck itself is built wrong; too many mana sources. Gonna go down to 20 lands, but keep the other non-land fast mana.
I managed to get multiple turn 2s, and a few turn 3s, and managed to beat 2 players on burn, which I would consider to be the second worst MU.
I think the biggest error was coming to the tournament the previous day and not playing painter in the legacy teams tournament, and instead running goblin fast food stax.
Super fun though, but made me less prepared for the first few rounds where I made a lot of silly misplays.

Round 1 - reanimator
No idea what my opponent was on, so I kept a reasonable 7 that leads on welder into engineer with a petal. My opponent unmasks me, taking engineer, ritual into entomb griselbrand animate dead, draw 7. I don’t draw anything reasonable and die a few turns later.

-1 karn, -3 recruiter, +1 canonist, +1 breya apprentice, +1 bridge, +1 magus of the moon.
Plan is to land a turn 1 canonist, bridge, then painter on blue, hold up blast for serenity. Doesn’t feel great, but what can ya do. There are probably smarter things to do here, but I’m not well rehearsed vs reanimator.

G2 mull to 5 featuring a turn 1 canonist and a welder, but no painter nor blast. He slowly pitches cards to the yard, I continue to draw into nothing, and I land a bridge the turn after he puts a Griselbrand into play.
Few turns later, he plays a serenity, and I draw air. Feels pretty horrendous, but I don’t really see any way out, and I die to big-guy beats soon after.

0-2, to a grand start of 0-1.

In hindsight, I probably should have mulled that hand, but going down to 4 either needs to be a 1-2 turn win through discard, or like turn 1 karn into wish liquimetal coating or trinisphere.

Round 2 - WUr control/midrange
This was apparently a very non-memorable match. The thing is that I’d completely forgotten about the match until I looked back at my notes.
Game 1 - My notes just point to my opponent losing a life (fetch), he plays a DRC, but I had turn 1 stone led into turn 2 engineer for painter turn 3 combo win.

I guess I don’t see much, but I see blue, I saw DRC, so I guess maybe delver? so +1 canonist, +1 breya apprentice, +3 bolt, -1 blood moon, - 1 karn, -3 recruiter.
Plan is to bolt their guys, blast the ones I can’t bolt, count how many of his bolts had gone off, and go off as fast as possible.

Game 2 is even less eventful; and I misdiagnosed my opponent; wasn’t on delver, was on DRC midrange pile. Either way, I tombed myself 3 times, and beat into my opponent twice with copter, and then combo off. My notes really don’t say more than that, and apologies to my opponent for an uninteresting match.
Surprised that I got away with it even though I misjudged, missided and possibly had the wrong plan.
2-0 here to a 1-1 start.

Round 3 standstill WUr saga
Game 1 I win the roll and turn 2 my opponent. He turn 1 goes basic into grafdiggers cage (ehh? Main? Really?), so I don’t really know how to side.
I guess similar to the last game, but the cage really threw me off. So I went for +1 canonist, +1 apprentice, +1 spellskite, - 1 blood moon, -1 ancient tomb, -1 bridge
Game 2, he lands Lavinia, and then makes a bunch of big karnstructs from sagas, swords my painter, Pended a welder, and slowly beat me down.

Ok, so my siding wasn’t the greatest, so here I did +2 bridges back in, +1 pithing needle to remove his karnstruct constructions, -1 etutor, -spellskite, and I didn’t write down what else I might have taken out.
Game 3, he swords my welder, prismatic ending a grindstone, and I didn’t have a lot of gas in hand. Kept drawing lands, and my opponent kept locking the game down with saga karnstructs, and hatebears.

1-2 loss leading to 1-2 total at the end of round 3. At this point, the other peeps I knew coming here were all on 3-0. I kinda knew I wasn’t getting to the top tables, but hey… first big paper legacy thing in a long time. Also, I get to take it a bit easy knowing That the pressure is off.

Round 4 - tes
So I’ve not had a lot of practice against the latest iteration of tes; the last time I played against it was pre prismatic ending.
Game 1, he wins the roll and turn 1s me with ad nauseum into tendrils. Right. That was quick. Probably will be done in time for a quick lunch.

My sideboard isn’t amazing vs stuff like storm, but I went +1 magus +1 canonist, +2 surgical, -1 bridge, -1 tomb, -2 recruiter.

Game 2 I mulled a slow 7 to a turn 1 moon with 6 cards. So while I had the chance, I landed turn 1 moon on the back of mountain petal SSG. And he does a petal petal bayou prismatic ending the moon. So that didn’t turn out too well for me. A turn cycle later he goes off and I go down 0-2.

Not too sure if I played that right. It feels like if I have a way to choke the mana, I should definitely do that. I mean, the chances they have a basic, petal, land and Pending isn’t amazingly high, but he had it. I don’t think I’ve any way to keep it all protected outside of painter blast and/or spellskite.

End of round 4, at a 1-3.

Round 5 - burn
So I had heard from some other players that they had seen a burn player making the rounds… I figured I’m gonna be doing pretty bad if I’d meet it. Lucky me!
I win the roll and go turn 1 into grindstone, and my opponent asks me what it does. Apparently, she was new to magic, and was still learning the format. I explained what the stone does (most of my deck is in jpn), and explained that I have a guy that makes everything a colour of my choosing. She goes turn 1 bolt me, and I go turn 2 painter, led, grind win.
I feel a bit bad, but games 2-3 are gonna be tough. I go -1 karn, -2 recruiter, -1 blood moon, and +1 apprentice, +1 grindstone, +1 spellskite, +1 canonist.
Plan is to land the combo, and then protect it and win.

Game 2, she starts with the nuts, which is more what I was expecting. Goblin guide, I draw a ancient tomb, and I start with petal led furnace welder, then she lands the eidolon soon after, and I draw 2 tombs in a row, and she shows me the price of progress that hits for 8.

Man, that was a tight game, and more like how I expected burn to be like. I figured I could win if I mull to a turn 2-3 with backup.

Game 3, I start with the near-nuts, a turn 2. So I lead with tomb on grindstone, she lands mountain go. I draw a welder, but figured I should go for it anyways, play led, mountain, painter, on blue, and she bolts painter at the end of turn, so I sac led in response to stone. I guess I got really lucky, but I explained how she could have gotten around it, to kill painter in response to going off instead. I chatted a bit after, about how the stack works, and how burn needs some amount of patience, which seems unintuitive. I also tried to convince her that 3-4 price of progress and 4 fireblast should be the norm, but I didn’t wanna be ‘that guy’, so I left it. It’s a shame there weren’t any other burn players/masters in the room to chat to her about it.

2-1, to up myself back out to a 2-3

Round 6 - burn, again.
So I’m apparently doomed here, cuz I sorta stole a match vs an inexperienced burn pilot, and this time I’m up against a burn, if not master, then at the least an experienced pilot.
Game 1, he suspends a rift bolt, and then I drop a grindstone. He bolts me, gets swiftspear and a goblin guide, I draw a red mana, then turn 2 him while he’s tapped out with painter led.

Siding would need to be faster, so -2 karn, -1 tomb, -1 blood moon, +1 canonist, +1 stone, +1 spellskite (now that I’m thinking about it, this is probably a mistake), +1 apprentice
I’ve noticed in the last few games that I’ve been more likely to mana flood than be stuck. Coloured mana has been hard to come by though, but def not colourless. I started to board out 1-2 tombs every game, and it never really ended up biting me.

Game 2. He lands an early goblin followed by swiftspear, and does something I thought was pretty cool in the double manamorphose for bigger swiftspears. My plan was welder to engineer into spellskite, but he bashed my goblins down, eidolon down, and really pummeled my life total down. Highlight of the whole tournament for me though was a final bash in, he price of progressed me and then fireblasted, and I SSG-blasted the pop. Got me down to 3 life, and it was a bit too late to do anything about the game.

Game 3, I luckily got turn 1 led stone, turn 2 painter, SSG-blast his open mountain, he bolts the painter, I led stone him.

Feels really lucky to win against 2 burn opponents, especially the more experienced one. I also convince him to look for the new burn player, and give her some tips as to how to next level the opponents.
Either that, or burn isn’t as bad as I imagined it should be. But my combo being weak to most of his burn spells, 4 tombs aren’t really helpful.

So now I’m on 3-3 at the end of round 6.

Round 7 - oops all spells
So this was a bit unexpected. My opponent wins the roll, and I get a relatively good 7 with the 1-2 punch of welder, engineer and a petal plus mana to fuel the start. Nice. The only weakness would be against a turn 1.
He wins the roll, and goes mana into mill everything, then nacromoeba triggers into Oracle.

Ok, that’s a bit annoying, but I should have some game vs turn 1 glass cannons.

-1 bridge, - 3 recruiters, +1 canonist, +1 torpor orb, +2 surgical, +1 tormods crypt

Game 2, I go first, and I mull to a 4-card turn 1 canonist. So t1 canonist, my opponent asks what it does, and then takes a turn, then scoops.

Ok, that was easy, so onto game 3.

Game 3, I open a 7 with a surgical, tomb painter SSG. So if he has a slow start, I can counter, and if he’s got a fast start, I can surgical. Weak to discard though, but I figured I can’t get better than this. He starts with a transform land, then lands the guy that mills the yard. It resolves, he mills, puts all the narcomoeba triggers on the stack, and in response, i surgical his Oracle. Then he thinks about it a bit, then concedes!

Ok, so that was a quick one, and get myself up to a 4-3. The first time all weekend I was on a positive record!

Final round, high tide
Quick history lesson; I actually started in legacy all the way back on solidarity high tide, and had wanted to watch the one who I’d consider to be the master of spiral tide, markus, kick some ass. On Friday during the teams battle I met him, and he owned it, navigating around pillars of the format like tangle wires and smokestacks (I was on 10 welder splash asmo food stax). This time round though, I’m on what I’d assume to be a deck that’s a lot more favoured to my side (playing 6 blasts plus 2 SSG can’t be a bad thing, right?).
Game 1, he starts going off turn 5, but couldn’t find more than 1 high tide, up to storm 12, brain freezes me to mill some amount of my deck, but I just untap and stone him.

So his outs vs me are his blue blasts if he plays any, and dress downs mostly. We just double check also, that we know what the interactions between timestamp and layers are specifically between painter and dress down. All is good.
Siding is -1 bridge, -1 blood moon, -1 mountain, +1 canonist, +2 surgical, and the plan is to just go faster and wish for the best.

I turn 1 stone into turn 2 painter, to which he responds with dress downs so painter isn’t painting. I’ve a saga on 2 by this point, so I just need to find one more painter or welder effect. His turn 3 plays land go, I mise engineer, so play that, and find led with the saga, pitch painter. Starting the beatdown strategy, since painters without colour aren’t doing much otherwise. On his turn, he starts going off, i try to blast the high tide, he forces, and I think I had a second blast, and he pacts that, and tries to go off. At this point I have no untapped red mana, but he time spirals, drawing me into…. Blast, but no SSG. He gets the storm up to 24, we get closer to time, and then he ends up bricking. Lucky me! I beat him down with goblins until I find the combo and win.

Grand total of 5-3-0
Some thoughts; my mana was horrendous. Feels like I always flood given time. Maybe I should go down to 21 or even 20 lands. Red mana sources were pretty hard to come by sometimes too, and my hedging of more engineers for silver bullets instead of welders meant that red mana was even harder to come by.
I think next iteration, I wanna have 2-3 etutors instead of the one.
And have chromatic star(s) as colour fixing. It gives me a line I was considering the next day, as tap saga for mana, level 3 trigger, find star, put mana into star for white, hold priority for the draw from saccing, play etutor, put whatever I need on top, star draw trigger then resolves. It’s not super effective, but it can be pretty useful if you already have the mana (or led in play) to land the moon or whatever.

Not the greatest tournament report, but I feel like I’ve learned a lot from it.


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[ESG]

Thanks for the report! That looks like a tough slate of matchups, but you came out with a winning record. Plus, the deck looks fantastic. Painter players know how to win in style!

[schweinefettmann]

Haha style seems to be the only thing going for me. Thing is, having migrated here via solidarity high tide and aluren, painter is really a deck that somehow calls to me. It does everything, and even leads to fun judge calls (like how do the various layers work).

Anyways, I’ve been juggling some numbers here and there, and have come up with a whole other build now.
Currently trying:
Main
-SSG, -petal, -engineer, -mountain
+welder, +karn, +chromatic star, +etutor

Not sure about the side, but spellskite is on the potential chopping block, potentially for the 7th blast.


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