Yo, listen up: a story about a blue world at Axion Mega Legacy, Birmingham

[jasper]

Yo, listen up: here’s the story, about a little guy that lives in a blue world…
Fable Painter at Axion Now’s The Gathering
Edgbaston Cricket Ground, 22 October 2022

The deck — mono-red Fable Painter

A couple of months before this event, the painter discord server started honing in on what I think can now reasonably be described as "stock" mono-red painter, or Fable Painter. There was a red-green build with Once Upon a Time which a few people picked up and which started showcasing the power of Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, but around late August, Robert R top 16’d a challenge with a mono-red version featuring 3 Simian Spirit Guides. This in turn inspired Callum to cut the green for more Spirit Guides and spawned the following deck, first posted on August 22nd, 2022.

Maindeck
1 Breya's Apprentice
1 Twinshot Sniper
2 Fury
4 Goblin Engineer
4 Goblin Welder
4 Painter's Servant
3 Simian Spirit Guide

4 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker
4 Pyroblast
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Lightning Bolt

2 Grindstone
1 Soul-Guide Lantern
2 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Opal

4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
2 Great Furnace
8 Mountain
1 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance
4 Urza's Saga

Sideboard
2 Fury
1 Fiery Confluence
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Magus of the Moon
3 Mindbreak Trap
1 Pithing Needle

As it happens, this deck is only one card off the 75 I actually ended up playing for the event. In the build-up to the tournament, I logged nearly 150 matches with various builds, tweaking here and there, and just kept coming back to the configuration above, with the Fiery Confluence in the sideboard as the flex slot. For the event, Callum and I were talking about shoring up the fast combo matchup, so we both registered the fourth MBT over the Fiery Confluence — but more on that later. Here’s what I played:



The deck is very streamlined, with lots of 4-ofs to maximise consistency and a minimal number of bullets to allow for this. No Retrofitter Foundry, no Shadowspear, not even a maindeck Pithing Needle. This allows you to focus on the parts of the deck with the highest raw power level and synergy. Most of the cards in the deck either find the combo, protect the combo, pay for the combo or are the combo. Other than that you have ways to interact cheaply with your opponent like Lightning Bolt and Fury, and you have Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, which basically does everything. It ramps you (generating artifacts for welding), rummages you into what you need, and flips into Reflection of Kiki-Jiki, which has lots of great synergies in the deck: copying Engineer lets you get and weld more combo pieces, copying construct tokens generates lethal attackers scarily quickly, copying Painter gets you redundancy for the combo, and copying Fury… well. (There are even lines where you get to copy one Reflection with another in their endstep, then rinse and repeat for each mana you have to build an army of 2/2s.)

I won’t go too much into the individual card choices beyond that because this isn’t a primer, but I’ll just address a couple of things that might look odd at first blush.

During testing, I thought that maybe Twinshot Sniper was a bit of an odd goblin out, and tried cutting it, but it does just enough that it feels good to have. It’s awkward that you can’t use Engineer to recur it, but welding it is great and having an uncounterable burn spell is clutch against threats like Delver and un-pumped DRCs, plus it blocks Murktide.

Similarly, having access to Soul-Guide in the maindeck is worth more than it might first seem. At very worst it always cycles or is fodder for welding, and at best it beats Reanimator, lets you interact with Uro or DRC and gives you outs to Emrakul in game 1.

Breya’s Apprentice is the kind of card you want exactly one of, and no more. It’s frequently the first thing I entomb with Goblin Engineer in matchups where I think the goblin will get removed because it means that later goblins can accrue value. You get to weld it in, then sacrifice it to draw a card, then use the thopter token it created to rinse and repeat. Or you can just keep welding it back and forth, generating a thopter each time. If you don’t have access to Breya’s, and instead you always entomb a combo piece, you’re much more likely to run out of gas if they have any interaction to keep you from assembling the combo. Grindstone is great when it wins the game, but not so great the rest of the time.

As a corollary point, some people may be surprised at the lack of Ensnaring Bridge in this list. There are two reasons for this: Breya’s Apprentice actually does quite a good impression of Ensnaring Bridge in many scenarios, except that it’s proactive instead of reactive. What I mean by this is that you can spend turns generating a board state full of chump blockers rather than turtling up behind a Bridge and hoping it doesn’t get removed. The second reason is that this list likes attacking. Between Goblin Shaman, construct tokens and Fury, you don’t want to be stuck behind your own Bridge.

To sum up, pretty much every card serves a specific purpose and the whole ensemble just seems to work. As the meta stands, I’m struggling to think of things I’d change in the maindeck. You have a proactive combo plan that goldfishes on turn 3 (rarely turn 2) plus a creature plan based on Fable and Saga that also lets you generate a lot of value from your cards. You’re essentially pre-boarded vs Delver, have game vs fair blue thanks to blasts and fair creature decks thanks to Fury. This mostly leaves the unfair matchups, which is where the sideboard comes in.

Because you’re half a turn to a turn slower than a lot of combo decks, you want to be able to slow them down enough to combo off yourself. Mindbreak Trap does this vs storm decks while Leyline is a nice sledgehammer against graveyard strategies. Both of them have pros and cons, and there’s value to be gained by switching them up from time to time. Reanimator is currently on lots of Serenity that they’re bringing in against you anyway, so one example would be shifting to Surgical Extraction in order to diversify what they have to play around.

You also have Magus of the Moon, which is better than Blood Moon out of the board from this deck because your opponents will be bringing in artifact and enchantment hate for your other cards anyway. The fact that Magus dies to bolt is largely immaterial, since you’re pretty much never bringing it in against decks with bolt anyway. It’s solid against the various multi-coloured piles as long as they don’t play too many basics, and is secretly your best card against Doomsday and ANT. There’s a clear non-bo with Urza’s Saga, but the card is so high impact when it’s good that you put up with it.

Rounding it out are a couple of extra Fury, because when they’re good they’re incredible, and a catch-all Saga target in Pithing Needle. It comes in often enough that you do sometimes wonder why you’re not maindecking it, but in the end slots are tight and drawing a card that doesn’t do anything in game 1 is a big cost.

The trip

The tournament was run by the always-excellent Axion Now team and called The Gathering. The bit that we care about is the two identical "mega" Legacy events that were running on the Saturday and Sunday. There was also "giga" Modern/Pioneer, but who wants to play those when you could be playing Legacy? The Legacy events were capped at 128 players each, and both came close to hitting the cap, with 122 on the Saturday and 112 on the Sunday. Prizes were generous, with blue duals for top 4, non-blue duals for top 8, and a whole host of supplementary "top 8s" to allow 9th through 44th place to compete for other prizes. In addition to the sweet cardboard to compete for, the winner of both events earned an invitation to the European Legacy Masters at 4seasons in Bologna in December.

A good few of us from London decided to make the trip up, and I ended up staying in an airbnb with Aston, renowned for his excellent cube, and Mills, a keen Goblins player. I took the train up early on the Friday evening to join the gang for a pub crawl through the streets of Birmingham. Key knowledge of the local bar meta was provided by Ethan, who used to study there.

We started at the Wellington, an old-fashioned watering hole with a wide variety of cask ales plus a few cats wandering about the place. A cosy place to start slow while waiting for people to trickle into Birmingham on their various modes of transport. A few people were driving up, yet more were on later trains, and we even had someone fly in from Edinburgh to join the revelry. After a pit-stop for pizza, we moved on to an underground bar called the Post Office Vaults, with an excellent selection of Belgian beers, followed by a place called Bacchus featuring suits of armour, wall murals and more beer.

At the last place, we also started playing a spaceship combat drafting game called Star Realms. (You can’t keep magic players away from cards for too long, I guess.) Easy to pick up and learn as you play, and good with more than two players, making it a great pub game. (Warning Beacon OP.)

The tournament

I wake up feeling very much worse for wear after an evening of drinking with the London crew and an ill-advised late-night prawn pathia and head to the venue with airbnb bunkmates Mills and Aston in time for Mills to play in the Modern main event. For the first time ever, I've written and printed my decklist off in advance of the event, so for once I'm not hastily counting cards and scribbling decknames. I even have sideboard notes! Unprecedented preparedness for which I'm grateful to my past self. I grab a cup of tea but don't really feel ready for food, so I just hang around waiting for the games to start to distract me from my burgeoning hangover.

My notes from the games are generally pretty lacking, so please forgive mistakes and missing details.

Round 1 – James Bailey on 8 Cast

I win the die roll and off we go. I know that I mulliganed my first hand of the day, but the life totals don't change in game 1 so I assume it went something like painter, grindstone, sideboarding.

The second game featured a peculiar judge call after my opponent cast a Retrofitter Foundry, triggering a Kappa Cannoneer. The only problem is that he has Chalice of the Void on 1 in play and neither of us notice until my next turn. (In my defence, there's a massive window behind him and I can't see his cards well. Okay, let's be real: I'm still waking up.) To his credit, he calls a judge as soon as he notices what he's done — the judge asks a few questions, trying to ascertain whether it's an attempt at cheating or an honest mistake, and rules that it's just a missed trigger with no bad intentions, which felt fair, especially since James called the judge on himself. The odd bit was the resolution of the game state: the missed trigger was put on the stack, but since Chalice looks for a spell to counter and the Foundry was already in play as a permanent, it fizzled. Foundry stays in play, as does the counter on the Cannoneer and the 6 unblockable damage it dealt me, with no option to rewind even though very little has happened other than that. James kindly appeals the judge's decision on my behalf, but the head judge rules that that's the letter of the law and sticks with the original ruling. The game ends two turns later as the Cannoneer crunches in for 7 and then many.

For game 3, I think I keep a hand with a Blast, a Welder, a Soul-Guide Lantern, a Fable, a Mountain and a Saga, or something along those lines. I play out the Welder to avoid Chalice, and then punt horribly on turn two. I want to make sure that I have a red mana up to blast a Cannoneer, and figure I can just run out the SGL to start drawing cards if I need to find lands or want to start welding for value. As soon as I put it on the table, I realise that the only card in either yard is James' Bauble, which I have to target and means I can no longer weld his stuff out unless more artifacts hit the bin. I think James realises it too and casts a bunch of baubles but doesn't crack them, playing double Thoughtcast and passing, discarding another Thoughtcast to handsize. I make a Fable, knowing that I need to start finding combo pieces sharp-ish. A few turns of us building our boards up later, I have a bunch of goblins and a Grindstone off my Saga, as well as a Reflection of Kiki-Jiki, whereas he has a Sai, some thopters and Thought Monitors and a Pithing Needle on Grindstone. Fortunately for me, on one of those turns he cracked a pair of baubles, I assume looking for Force of Will, which lets me start welding his stuff again. I get to work assembling the combo with an Engineer for Painter, while he attacks in with his flyers. I'm able to weld out the Chalice and blast his Thought Monitor, taking 1 from a thopter and keeping my life total at a healthy 3. I untap, weld out the Needle and Grindstone him for a very close win at 1 life.

Phew. Having not played a high stakes Legacy event for some time, I'm pretty wired — because of the judge call, we were pretty close to time on the round and there's a crowd watching. Exciting stuff to start the day, and I thank my lucky stars and my little goblin friend.

1-0

Round 2 – Francis Cowper on Cephalid Breakfast




Uh oh. Francis is a close friend of mine from the London crew and a very good player. I know what he's on, and he's played against my painter decks so often that he probably knows it better than any non-painter player on the planet. That aside, playing your friends in the early rounds is rough, since either way one of you loses. But there's nothing for it, so here we go.

His list is very streamlined, basically aiming to combo quickly but with a strong backup plan of Stoneforge Mystic into Kaldra Compleat, which is also pretty scary for us since it's such a fast clock. In game 1, he combo kills me in short order with a Shuko. Briefly, it looks like things might get interesting because I have an active welder and could weld out the Shuko when he mills another artifact, but then we realise that his only non-Shuko artifact is Kaldra and that's already in his hand. He does the thing and I scoop 'em up.

I haven't really worked out a sideboarding plan for this matchup, but figure that the maindeck plan of combo backed up with loads of blasts is probably pretty good. I think the second game involves me blasting his combo, which will quickly become a theme to the point where I'm struggling to distinguish between games 2 and 3 in my head. I'm not sure how I won, but his life total was at 8 so I assume I came crunching in with constructs.

Game 3 sees me drop an early Saga while he goes for an early combo. I have the blast for his first Illusionist and get to making constructs. He goes for the second Illusionist but I have SSG and another blast, then fetch Needle off Saga to name Nomads so that the Lightning Bolt in my hand is live if he has the third Illusionist. Two 6/6 constructs and a Fury to wipe his board end the game in two turns. Sorry about all the red blasts, Francis.

2-0

Round 3 – Lucas Roemmer on 4c Loam (?)

My third round opponent is part of a small crew who've travelled from Germany for the event and we have a nice chat about the Berlin legacy scene before we get down to business. His list is kind of interesting and I'm a bit confused. It's got Dark Confidant and Knight of the Reliquary, but I think I recall him saying he'd cut Chalice and Liliana. Overall it seems like a solid matchup, although Punishing Fire is pretty nasty against all the goblins and reflection. The good news is that Painter is a 1/3, plus you have counterplay in form of SGL.

In any case, game 1 sees me make multiple early Fables while he has a Bob and a Knight. After a while it becomes apparent to him that the value off the Reflections is more than he can deal with and he scoops them up. Based on my life pad, game 2 seems to have been a similar sort of affair, though I dimly recall a pivotal moment where I get to weld in response to a Surgical and the loss of tempo for him proves too much.

3-0

Round 4 – Adam Barnett on Blue-Red Delver

Another friendly opponent, though it quickly becomes apparent that he's the bogeyman — Blue-Red Delver. I feel pretty good about this matchup given that we're basically pre-boarded to cope with it (sideboarding is just -1 Petal +1 Fable), but that doesn't mean that they can't just do Delver things and beat you with an abundance of flyers and Wasteland.

I win the die roll and make some goblins while answering his smaller threats, which leads to Big Daddy Murktide hitting the table. At this point I have both Welder and Engineer in play and a Twinshot Sniper in hand. He crunches in for 8, but the second time I get to channel the Twinshot, then weld it back in, block, and engineer it back out. "Oh," says Adam. "You're going to just keep doing that, aren't you?" Yup. He scoops. (Sidenote: it's important to weld (a non-creature artifact) first and engineer second so that they can't Bolt your Twinshot and fizzle the Welder.)

Game 2 my lifepad goes 20-18-16-14-12, which I assume means I'm activating Ancient Tomb a lot while he doesn't have a threat. Presumably this means I get a fast combo together and grind him out, but in all honesty I'm not too sure. I think I had monkey-blast for a key Force of Will on a Fable. Everybody knows that red force is better than blue force.



At this point, having not had breakfast, my stomach is grumbling and I'm grateful that there's enough time on the round for me to go and get a jacket potato with beans and cheese.

4-0

Round 5 – Theo Andresier on Blue Zenith

Here comes the (probable) win-and-in, since at 5-0 it may well be possible to double ID into the top 8.

Theo used to play in London but has since moved to Copenhagen and travelled to the event with a group of Danish players. Normally he's a Nic Fit guy, but this time he's on Blue Zenith with super secret 40k tech Toxicrene. We've played against each other a few times at the London monthlies, so he knows I'm up to my usual nonsense.

Tiredness means my memory is pretty hazy and my notes pretty lazy at this point — my life total in the first game goes 20, 16, 12, 8 and then stops, but I think I won nevertheless with a combo. There was quite a bit of Endurance-ing going on this match, and it may be that I had to combo twice? Who knows. At one point (possibly game 2) I was facing down a lethal Yorion and needed to be able to block once with a Twinshot to combo again through Endurance, but it got forced and that was curtains.

Game 3 I keep a hand with a turn 2 Magus of the Moon, which is a mixed bag in this matchup. Sometimes it's great, especially if you can land it early, but they also play some basics and Abundant Growth, so it can wind up looking a bit silly. Unfortunately, Theo goes turn one Snow-Covered Forest into Abundant Growth. Fortunately, I have the turn 2 Tomb into Painter + Blast for the Forest, which I follow up with a Magus. He draw into the Island a few turns later, but the damage is done at that point and I combo off.

5-0

Round 6 – Andy Fernandes or Steven Walsh (ID)

I'm actually not sure who my opponent was this round — there were four of us at the top two tables on 15 points, meaning that we figured we could safely double ID into top 8 without risking the pair-down. We all look pleased, shake each other's hands, sign our match slips and go off to relax.

At this point, a few words on the excellent venue: Edgbaston Cricket Ground. Yup, a cricket ground, where people normally play cricket. As it happens, they also have a set of ideal rooms for this size of event, and there's a fun view out onto the ground. Since it's autumn and you can't play cricket in the rain, there's no risk of interruptions, either. I take the opportunity to wander round the vendors, but they don't have any Japanese cards so nothing in particular stands out.



5-0-1

Round 7 – Alex De Lis (ID)

The standings were posted before this round and initially the four of us at 5-0-1 feel pretty good about IDing again. But then someone points out that there's a 9th person on 15 points who's been paired down into a 13-pointer. There's a moment of panic and hurried discussion as it looks like the two players with the worst breakers might have to play to try and avoid the dreaded 9th place finish should the 15-pointer win their pair down. Alex and I are 2nd and 1st respectively, with considerably better breakers than the other two, so we feel good about ID-ing regardless and leave the other two to discuss.

They also wind up ID-ing — thanks to the structure of the event, it's much better to be 9th than risking ending up outside the top 12, so they risk it. (After top 8, there's a top 4 played out between 9th–12th places, and then a second "top 8" between 13th and 20th places, and a bunch more all the way down to 44th place.)

As it happens, it's a clean cut into top 8 with four 18-pointers and us four on 17 points. We'll all be on the draw thanks to seeding, and after Axion head honcho Francois makes the top 8 announcement we sit down to play.

5-0-2

QF – Theo Andresier

Ah, the rematch. After our match in the swiss, Theo had the guts to say "see you in top 8", so his confidence panned out — fair play.

Again, my notes are inconclusive, but I believe the first game featured the 4-colour deck full of cards that replace themselves being unable to keep up with the value generated by Fable of the Mirror-Breaker. Certainly at one point in our two matches, Theo commented that he just couldn't keep pace with it, which I think speaks volumes about how strong it is. It's difficult to answer cleanly and can run away with the game if left unchecked. I think I'd keep most hands that can make a turn one Fable, and I think it's a part of why the deck is good at mulliganing — you can go down to five and not be completely out of the game because Fable catches you up, plus you have a combo and lots of redundancy.

In the second game, Theo lands an early Endurance and starts swinging with it while removing and countering my threats. Yorion comes down a couple of turns later and although I manage to put him down to 6, Theo has a counter for my blast targeting the big bird and it comes flying over to end the game.

Game 3 features one of the most brutal plays I can remember with the deck. The first turn sees him once again lead on Forest into Abundant Growth, followed by a Wasteland for one of my lands, followed by an Island + another Abundant Growth, but then a missed third land drop. On my turn, I play Painter, name blue, and blast one of the lands, which is met with a Pyroblast targeting Painter. I blast the blast, then pitch a Spirit Guide to cast a third blast on his last land, which is met with a concession.



6-0-2

SF – Steven Walsh on 8 Cast

As it turns out, all four of us ID-ers manage to win our QFs on the draw. Steven is playing 8 Cast and is worried about the number of red blasts in my deck vs his largely blue deck. That said, he does have Chalice of the Void. Because of Chalice, I think the early turns of this matchup are important — landing an early Welder puts them in a tough spot, since it deals with Chalice and can weld out constructs off Saga or even Kappa Cannoneer if you can afford the ward payment.

So: I'm grateful to be on the play going into game 1. As far as I remember, I mulligan and keep a hand that makes a turn 1 Fable. I'm actually not sure whether it resolved or not, but Steven's Sai makes a bunch of thopters and a Cannoneer comes down while I draw a few too many lands. I have two Fury but not much else, and it's not enough to stave off the beats.

This means game two might be my last game of the tournament, but I know that 8 Cast has very few ways to interact with your cards and even fewer answers to a resolved combo. With a deck like Painter, which only has limited card selection despite the wonders of Fable, I've found that you just have to lean into your plan, get the basics right and hope that luck is on your side. Don't be afraid to mulligan bad hands, even if they have lands and spells.

In this matchup, you're looking for hands that let you assemble things early before they can start overwhelming you with lots of tin soldiers. Even when they do have interaction in form of Force, their blue count is not very high, so they'll often need to pitch threats to Force to try and stop you, which can buy you the extra turn or two you need to find another piece.

Time to place my faith in the heart of the cards, then. The life totals only changing three times between us in this game implies that a fast combo is exactly what happened, I think off a Saga.

It's funny how sometimes you can (probably irrationally) feel like you have momentum in a match, those junctures at which it just feels like you'll get there. Obviously, being confident and relaxed doesn't change the cards you draw, but it's vital not to give up and stay focused on your plan, your potential outs and so on. If you start doubting that it's even possible for you to win, you're more likely to miss the lines that give you a chance. Things had felt a bit ropey after game 1, but refocusing for (and being lucky in) the second game helped me feel that the tide had turned in my favour.

From what I can deduce from my notes, game 3 also ended pretty swiftly, and I think this time it was thanks to an early Urza's Saga on my side and some big construct tokens. Further to what I said previously about Chalice, the deck can also just have hands that ignore it completely, and when that happens your opponent has spent resources answering threats you don't have, which obviously puts you in a good spot.

Steven's enthusiasm about the game and having reached the top 4 were infectious, making him a joy to play against. His spirits were high even as I was comboing off and despite him feeling like the matchup was in my favour. (None of this to say that any of my opponents were unpleasant — in fact, everyone was lovely — but I wanted to give Steven a shout-out for maintaining a high level of fun even in the latter stages of a tournament.)

7-0-2

Handshakes resolved, I look over to the other semi-final table and see that my opponent will be…

F – Alex De Lis on ANT

Alex and I had had the chance to hang out earlier, during the final round of the swiss, and we had a fun chat about all sorts, so it was nice to encounter each other in the final. The physical prizes were more or less the same for both finalists, and both great: an Underground Sea and a Volcanic Island, with the winner getting first pick. But there was something else for the winner, too: a spot at the European Legacy Masters, an invitational tournament happening at 4seasons in Bologna in December.

Before we started playing, we had a brief chat about the ELM invitation up for grabs. I knew that if I qualified, I'd go, but he initially wasn't so sure because of a potential clash with preparing for important exams. Once I explained a little bit more about the tournament and the fact that it's by invitation only, he seemed keen to try and make it work, so I wanted to take this opportunity to thank the organisers of the ELM for creating something that's building hype around Legacy in Europe and will hopefully showcase why we all love the format so much.

Right, time to face off. Both of us were pretty exhausted, and resolved to just try and have a good match. I know that Alex is on ANT, which is not a particularly good matchup for the deck — the full set of Mindbreak Traps and Leylines in the sideboard are there for a reason, and Magus is very strong if you can land it early, which means I'll be bringing in a pretty sizeable chunk of cards to try and shore things up. Even then, though, he has plenty of discard and can build kills that play around Leyline, so I know that I need a chunk of luck to go my way. The better news is that ANT has a lot of air in form of cantrips and can lose to itself via Ad Nauseam on occasion.

Being the slightly lower seed (I was first seed going into round 7, but breakers changed pretty significantly going into top 8, making him 5th and me 6th after the 18-pointers), I'm on the draw. Not good news, but I keep a strong proactive hand with a turn 3 kill through disruption, which is about as good as you can hope for in this matchup: Mountain, Great Furnace, Urza's Saga, Goblin Engineer, Goblin Engineer, Lotus Petal. (There might have been a 7th card or I might have mulliganed, I'm not sure.) As long as you open on Saga and play out the Petal, you'll get to play an Engineer for Painter on turn 2 and set up the kill for turn 3, with mana off the saga and two lands to activate Grindstone, holding priority and cracking the Petal for the mana to weld out Grindstone for the Painter. If they have a discard spell, they can only take one of the Engineers and you can still play out the second copy. Sounding pretty good then, as long as he doesn't keep a fast hand.

His turn 1 sees him cantrip, and I start enacting my plan. I play my Saga, play my Petal and should just pass the turn. As previously mentioned, though, tiredness is taking its toll on me, and even though I had just mapped out the plan for this hand in my head when I kept it, for some reason I crack the Petal to cast the Engineer. I'm not sure what I was thinking, but I think the idea of getting both discarded must've come out of an overthinking corner of my brain, and here we are. Oh well. I'm still in a good spot if I can find a sol land or another source of fast mana.

As anticipated, his turn 2 involves me getting Thoughtseized, taking the second Engineer, plus a cantrip. I tick up Saga, play out my land, and pass, trying not to berate myself too much for needlessly messing up the sequencing. You're still in it 'til you're not. In any case, I'm pretty sure he goes for it on his turn 3, making it largely academic what I did and didn't do. Some LEDs come out to play, as do some rituals and a Past in Flames, but (if I remember rightly), no tutors, leaving him reliant on utilising those cantrips to find more gas.

This is where I'm once again lucky and also things get a bit funky: after casting the rituals, making a lot of mana and racking up the storm count, Alex draws a card, then pauses and sighs before calling a judge. It turns out the copy of Ad Nauseam that he's just drawn shouldn't be in his deck at all, but is in fact a sideboard card, which is pretty unusual for a deck known by the name Ad Nauseam Tendrils. (His reasoning for it, which he explained afterwards, is interesting and makes sense, at least to me: in short, ANT isn't a very good Ad Nauseam deck because you have lots of cantrips and higher CMC cards instead of fast mana, so he prefers it in the board.)

It's a feel-bad moment, because you never want a game in the finals to be decided by an error as simple as that at a stage when everyone is tired and mistakes happen easily. Luckily, it's easy to tell that his story about why it's in the deck lines up: the judges check his sideboard and it's short a card, and the ruling is for it to simply disappear, plus a warning, but thankfully no game loss. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't get to draw a replacement card, and he hasn't found enough gas off his cantrips.

So after all that, I do get my third turn, and we're back to me being unable to combo because I've left myself one mana short thanks to playing out my Engineer off the Petal. Whoops. Fortunately for me, I think what ends up happening is that we pass back and forth a bit longer and somehow I end up winning. What a let off.

In come the MBTs, the Leylines and the Magi, and I mulligan looking for them, finding a hand that makes a turn 2 Magus. MBT is pretty straightforward for ANT to play around, especially for a player like Alex who a) is very methodical and precise with his play, and b) knows I have them and gets to take them with discard. The first discard spell takes the Magus and another takes a Trap, and that's Tendrils.

For the third and certainly final game of the event, at least I'm on the play, and again I mulligan looking for interaction, finding a hand with Leyline. It's not necessarily going to do the trick on its own, but I'm hoping to buy enough time to get my own combo going. Here's where the whole story nearly changes once again, though. We've both resolved our mulligans, and I start to put a Mountain on the table. Before I've actually let the card go, though, I hastily put it back in my hand and, chastened, say something to the effect of "oh shit, I have pre-game effects. do you mind?". The head judge, who is sitting next to us and watching the game, looks over at Alex, who says he doesn't mind and for me to go ahead. The judge, without making any sort of ruling just yet, says that if Alex would like to call a judge, he's more than welcome to, as it's not certain that I'd be allowed to rewind having already shown a different card in my hand.

It's hard to overstate how important this is for how the game plays out. A Leyline in play turns off Past in Flames lines and means that he either needs a lot more mana or might have to go for a non-deterministic line with Ad Nauseam. Very graciously, however, Alex sticks to his verdict and allows me to play out my Leyline, which I'm still grateful for. I'd hope that the fact I hadn't yet let go of the other card and no new information had been gained would be mitigating factors in the judge's eyes, but Alex would've been well within his rights to involve the judge in the situation. Anyway, the lesson here is: play out your damn Leylines, folks.

I make a Goblin Welder and start attacking while discard shreds my hand and cantrips sculpt his. I do get to a point where I think I'm threatening to combo soon, and on his turn Alex starts counting. The only points in my favour are the Leyline and my life total which I've carefully preserved at 20, and after a second and third mental recount, Alex extends the hand and concedes, realising that he's a little short of either mana or storm.

I think the Leyline made a huge difference here, and Alex's spirit and fairness will stay with me for a long time. Thanking him for an excellent final despite how tired we both are, we collect our prizes. The difference in price between a Volc and a Sea is pretty minimal, and I end up choosing the former as a nod to having previously won a Volc for coming second at an Axion event that I unfortunately wound up having to sell. It feels right, somehow, and is a nice full-circle moment to celebrate having won an event for the first time. (In all my years of competitive play, and despite top 8-ing a fair few events of different sizes in various formats, I'd never actually won one. People say that the real achievement is making top 8, and there's truth in that, but it sure does feel good to have won for once.)

8-0-2



After all that drama, it's time to celebrate! Callum (who also crushed with Painter all weekend and narrowly missed out on top 8 on both days) plus a small group from Denmark, Anders, Janus and Johan, very kindly waited out the final, and we all got a cab in the pouring rain to the centre of Birmingham, where we scarfed down a pizza and joined some of the others at the back of the pub. Let me tell you, that first sip of beer…not much compares.

____

I'm very pleased with where the list is overall, especially the maindeck, but can see making tweaks to diversify the sideboard as I mentioned above. The value of sideboard cards like MBT goes up or down proportionate to what people expect you to have, so being able to pivot to permanent-based hate like Thorn or play a split is a nice way to force opponents to play around a multitude of different cards and hopefully stress their answers that much more.

Now, what tournament report would be complete without a props and slops section?

Props:

• Francois Hauchard, Liz Barnetson and the team at Axion — for hosting events with such a great atmosphere and fantastic prize support;
• Francesco Nicolini, Francis Cowper and Simone Freschi — for lending me copies of vital sideboard cards;
• Aston Ramsden and James Mills — for good Airbnb vibes and last-minute testing;
• Ethan Richards — for running a marvellous pub crawl on Friday night;
• the rest of the London crew, plus all the lovely folks I met at the event;
• the Painter discord — for being a wonderful place to chew the fat and chat all things Painter's Servant; and
• Painter's Servant — for being the little scarecrow that could.

Slops:

• WotC — for banning Top and not yet printing Painter's Servant in old border;
• me — for nearly missing my pre-game effects; and
• Ethan Richards — for running a marvellous pub crawl on Friday night. My head hurt.

If you made it through all that, thanks for stopping by! Painter is a deck that's very close to my heart and decks like it are what make Legacy a special format to me. I'm really looking forward to playing in the European Legacy Masters in Bologna — if you're gonna be there, come say hi.