Death and Taxes: 1st at SCG Richmond

[Bahra]

After GP New Jersey we (the European Legacy super team "Team EuroSwag") planned to play SCG Richmond as well. And here is the report of the games I played at that event.

Round 1: Reanimator 2-1

Beat him down and had karakas, second game he has turn 2 Sire of Insanity with Force of will for my Swords to Plowshares, game 3 I beat him down and have Karakas

Round 2: BG Depths 2-0

Wastelanded him out of the game in 2 games, he was pretty upset (he left without signing the match slip).

Round 3: Sneak and Show 2-0

I had karakas game 1 and then I pressured his mana enough so that he never resolved Sneak Attack.
Game 2 I keep a mediocre hand but draw karakas, I hold it for 4+ turns and eventually he plays Show and Tell he had probed me earlier so it didn't make sense for him to just put in Emrakul or Griselbrand, so I thought he had Ashen Rider, which is why I chose to put in nothing even though I had a stoneforge mystic and a vial on 2 (I could then get a batterskull into play off the Show and Tell. As it turned out he just put in Griselbrand, I bounced it, he drew 7, I put him to 1 life and then comitted enough permanents that I had lethal through an Emrakul attack even, and he didn't have anything on the following turn so he died.

Round 4: Eric Rill - ANT 2-1

I thought he would be on stoneblade but I didn't really mind it too much, I just kept a solid hand with 1 land and 2 vials, and he killed me on turn 3 before I could vial in Thalia and I never drew a second land. Game 2 I keep a hand with Horizon Canopy, Wasteland and Rishadan Port as my mana base, my only hate card is a Spirit of the Labyrinth but I don't mind it since it will slow him down a lot and he will always name Thalia on a Cabal Therapy, and it leaves about 12 hate cards in my library to draw and dodge Cabal Therapy that way. But mostly I keep it because I know I can play around Massacre this way. I draw a plains but hold it back and play the Spirit. He immidiately displays his unhappiness with the spirit and puts Massacre on the table even though he only has 2 lands, I immidiately call a judge and he realizes his mistake and gets a warning. With such an experienced player, sloppy mistakes like that can not be tolerated. I wasteland him and start to port him with Horizon Canopy + Rishadan Port even though it's painful and I could avoid it by playing the plains in my hand. eventually he dies. Game 3 I again keep a similar hand but I have karakas instead of Horizon Canopy and this time I have vial. I play a revoker on turn 2 naming Lion's Eye Diamond. I then pressure him with Revoker + Serra Avenger and eventually I draw a Thalia, he attempts to go off but after his first ritual I vial in Thalia and he concedes.


Round 5: 4c Delver 2-1

Game 1 I destroy his horrible mana base, Game 2 He goes Deathrite Shaman into True-Name Nemesis into Grim Lavamancer and I have no chance. Game 3 I destroy his horrible mana base.

Round 6: RG Lands 2-1

I am on the play and my opponent mulligans to 6. I go land + vial. He goes Mox Diamond + Exploration + Thespian's Stage + Dark Depths and on the third turn he kills me, I didn't draw a Karakas or a wasteland, or a Swords to extend the game.
Game 2 he leads with grove + exploration so it's his only green source, I wasteland it and mana to stick Thalia, Revoker and other disruptive creatures and kill him.
Game 3 I again manage to color screw him and kill him.

Round 7: UWR Stoneblade 2-0

Game 1 he plays land + triple Gitaxian Probe and never does anything all game while I deploy moms and a germ token.
He was sitting next to me at the last table and I was almost certain that he was on UWR stoneblade even though he looked like storm by game 1 (his land was Scalding Tarn) So I board for UWR Stoneblade and that's what it turns out to be. Game 2 he plays TNN and stoneforge mystic but it's too late, I already have Sword of Fire and Ice active before he gets Jitte into play. By wasting his time killing Mother of Runes and Thalias I managed to put myself in a position where I was ahead with the stoneforge race (for example playing Thalia when he has 1 mana up so he can't end of turn bolt/swords it).

This round was featured as the camera match B

Round 8: UR Delver 2-0

I am 7-0 at this point but my opponent doesn't want to draw, oh well I'm probably a lock anyways.
He plays his usual UR delver cards and die to stoneforge mystic. In game 2 I play a stoneforge mystic and he doesn't kill it OR cantrip despite having 2 cards in hand, so he obviously has Smash to Smithereens. For approximately 5 turns I wait to get to 5 mana so I can keep open the batterskull activation, and eventually Batterskull gets there. After the game he asks me if I still want to draw and I tell him no, because now we played and I have friends that are more likely to make top 8 if I beat more opponents.

Round 9: UR Delver 1-2

My friends on Team EuroSwag asks me to play round 9 as well if I want to, because it will again increase their chances for top 8.
So I play it and lose in 3 close games.


At the end I am number 1 in the standings while Tomas Vlcek is number 4, Philipp Schönegger and Julian Knab are 10th and 11th respectively so we are not too unhappy with the result.


Top 8: 2 of my 3 top 8 matches were featured but I'll go over them anyways even though I believe that Cedric and Mathias did a good job covering them


Coverage of the Top 8 matches start at around 4:49:00 min. http://www.twitch.tv/scglive/b/592045534

Quarterfinals: I am against my RG lands opponent from earlier and since I am the number 1 seed I get to play first which is especially nice for a deck like mine with Aether Vial + Wasteland/Rishadan Port

Game 1 he has a solid hand and for the first out of the 4 games we played until that point, he actually gets to do loaming. I have a creature light hand but manage to draw into more creatures so I can pressure him through multiple Maze of Iths. After a very long game where I only drew 1 Wasteland 0 Rishadan Port and no Flickerwisps, he eventually dredges
Tabernacle. Which means I am done for. For some reason he elects not to retrieve the Tabernacle and play it, so I get to keep playing. A few turns later he also has Ghost Quarter but he has too few cards in his library to actually Ghost Quarter + Life from the Loam me out of the game. So instead he goes for the Dark Depths + Thespian's Stage combo. I held back a Serra Avenger to make him play into this line and when he attacks with Marit Lage I vial in Serra Avenger, block and give it protection from black with 1 of my 2 active Mother of Runes. My main plan at this point, was to deck him and plan B was to draw several Flickerwisps. I eventually draw a Flickerwisp and Vial it in to take away his Glacial Chasm this slows him down a lot and makes him sacrifice a land, I actually manage to pressure his mana so much even at this stage of the game, that his triple Thespian's Stage + Glacial Chasm lock crumbles and with a second Flickerwisp I take out his last copy of Glacial Chasm and kill him. I am almost certain that my opponent could have won this game if he had played Tabernacle early, but fortunately for me he didn't do it.

Game 2

I keep a 1 land hand with 3 sideboard cards, including my 2 best cards against him, Absolute Law and Rest in Peace. I am on the draw so I snap keep. I draw the second land immediately and after casts Life from the Loam just to start dredging, I jam Rest in Peace. I continue to draw lands, play Absolute Law, and start to clock him with a Mother of Runes (ha-ha). He then Krosan Grips my Rest in Peace and again casts Life from the Loam for 0, I allow him to dredge once because I couldn't really cataclysm turn 4, especially if I didn't have a 5th land myself. Luckily he doens't dredge anything other than a Maze of Ith and I draw my 5th land to make Cataclysm very profitable for me, I keep everything but 3 lands and he loses 3 lands. I then add a Phyrexian Revoker to the board to shut down potential Mox Diamonds, but mainly just to clock him more, and then I port him for the rest of the game until he dies.

Semifinals: This round I play against Ben Friedman who's on some sort of UWR stoneblade with Counterbalance and Sensei's Divining Top. The UWR stoneblade match up is terrible for me, but his build is slightly worse against me because he's playing Counterbalance which doesn't do a lot.

Game 1 I'm on the play and I lead with Æther Vial, my hand is solid and I have Plains + Rishadan Port to go along with my Æther Vial. He leads with Volcanic Island + Ponder, I draw Wasteland for my turn and decide to Wasteland him since he's playing a land light deck, and I don't want him to brainstorm on his upkeep. He then goes Volcanic Island into Sensei's Divining Top and I draw another Wasteland and immediately Wasteland him + vial in a Revoker on Sensei's Divining Top to stop him from looking for more lands. He finds a third Volcanic Island and Lightning Bolt my Revoker. I put in a Serra Avenger and start to clock him, I main phase a vial activation to put in another Revoker on Sensei's Divining Top. I had 2 Spirit of the Labyrinth in hand at this point and could've hoped that he would Brainstorm in response to my upkeep port, but I KNOW that he has a top in play and he can then use the top to find more lands so I decide to just shut down the Sensei's Divning Top, as it turns out he does brainstorm in his upkeep to punish me, but I am still sure it was the correct play. He plays a Stoneforge Mystic a turn later but has to start chumping and eventually he dies.

Game 2 I'm on the draw, I lead with Mother of Runes which gets killed, I play Thalia which gets forced (pretty happy about that). He doesn't have a 3rd land so I wasteland him, he responds with Containment Priest (do not care about that card), I play stoneforge mystic and fetch up Fire and Ice since it forces him to chump every turn and it makes my creatures able to attack through True-Name Nemesis. He draws a third land but at this point all his creatures are on chump block duty and I manage to bring the game home with the Sword of Fire and Ice.

Finals: Pretty happy to face Joe Lossett in the finals since he's another streamer and it's kind of the dream scenario that we would face each other in the finals of a reasonably big event

Game 1 I go vial into Stoneforge Mystic fetching Sword of Fire and Ice (I bluffed having 3 equipments in my library even though I had naturally drawn the Batterskull, but the commentators seemed to not notice) into vial in Mother of Runes. I equipped the sword and when Joe went for the Terminus I vialed in Thalia in response to the miracle trigger from Terminus which then stranded Terminus in his hand. Sword of Fire and Ice was again victorious.

Sideboard: -2 Swords to Plowshares -1 Umezawa's Jitte +1 Ratchet Bomb +1 Pithing Needle + 1 Cataclysm

Game 2 Joe tells me his hand is terrible, but he keeps anyways. I have Mother of Runes on turn 1 and follow up with a Stoneforge Mystic fetching Sword of Fire and Ice. He passes back and I play my third land, play a vial and pass with Wasteland and Plains up. He Brainstorms end of turn and I'm very sure he has Terminus on top now (so sure that I pick up my creatures and put them on the bottom before he even draws a card) so I consider wastelanding his fetch to make him shuffle. If I do this it opens him up to be able to clique away my equipment, I lose a land, it's a big tempo loss for me since I can't put in my equipment that turn, and I still have a lot of creatures in hand so the Terminus is not so terrible for me. So I decide against it (if it was later in the game I would've done it for sure). As it turns out, he has Pithing Needle for my Sword of Fire and Ice which is terrible for me. I play a Thalia and just wait for my Aether vial to tick up while I port his white to prevent him from casting Entreat the Angels and Baneslayer Angel. He Pyroclasms which I'm fine with. I play another Aether Vial and Pass the Turn, he has a Karakas which allows him to deploy a Baneslayer Angel. I play Stoneforge Mystic and fetch nothing as I have drawn the Batterskull and sided out the Jitte. I will recommend you watch the coverage from here on, because things gets very complicated here. There's a lot of lines of play from the Miracles perspective but I don't have a lot of hard decisions. I'll mention the "chump attack" with Brimaz though, one of the lines that allowed Joe Lossett to win the game was to chump the Mirran Crusader with 1 of the 4 angel tokens he made, so I only gained 6 life a turn, but I needed him to not realize that, that's why I attacked with everything so that it looked attractive to take out the Brimaz, as it turns out Joe actually did block the Brimaz and that allowed me to win the game.

Overall I'm happy with the result but losing round 9 was pretty annoying!

The 1 Containment Priest main was great and I think my list is pretty much perfect for the meta. The increase of UWR stoneblade means that I will have to change the list drastically though, so if you're expecting UR delver play my list, but if you want to beat Stoneblade, then I will work on a list for that from now on. I suspect that list will still have Containment Priest main though, since going Containment Priest into Flickerwisp your Stoneforge Mystic, is very good.

I will also add this: If you're not playing 4x Flickerwisp in Death and Taxes, you're doing something wrong! Notice how at every point of the game, in EVERY game I want to draw a Flickerwisp. It's just fantastic ALWAYS.

Thanks a lot for reading this report, I will hopefully have more reports to write in the future.

/Bahra - Marc Beck König

[H]

Congratulations on the win, it took me a moment to recognize your name when I tuned in to the stream, but I was rooting for you and my favorite deck the whole way.

Looks like I need to get some extra Containment Priests! How did you feel about the 1 Flagstones? Worth in inclusion?

[Einherjer]

Congratz on the sick win! - pun intended, lol.

First Finals at the Christmas tournament, now winning a SCG Open! Boss! :)

Greetings

[jarvisyu]

great job, and nice to meet all of you guys.

[twndomn]

dayum~~, you're so good, blew away the competition starting with 8-0. Doesn't even look tired on camera after all the rounds, how's that possible?

[workingdude]

I will recommend you watch the coverage from here on, because things gets very complicated here. There's a lot of lines of play from the Miracles perspective but I don't have a lot of hard decisions. I'll mention the "chump attack" with Brimaz though, one of the lines that allowed Joe Lossett to win the game was to chump the Mirran Crusader with 1 of the 4 angel tokens he made, so I only gained 6 life a turn, but I needed him to not realize that, that's why I attacked with everything so that it looked attractive to take out the Brimaz, as it turns out Joe actually did block the Brimaz and that allowed me to win the game.

First off, congrats on such masterful play throughout the tournament. Extremely impressive and a pleasure to watch on camera at a large event.

The quote above that you were talking about made me think that each player was trying to next level each other. I think it is reasonable to assume Joe knows about chumping the mirran with one token to make you only gain 6 life. If the announcers see that play, then Joe saw it.

First layer: I believe it was his original plan to chump.
Second layer: I know that you know that his best play is to chump. So you attack with brimaz and either get in some free brimaz damage, or he goes for the block of brimaz and you get some extra life
Third layer: I believe that, Joe knows you were anticipating that he would block the mirran and that you would have some sort of trick to blow him out. So he tried to next level you by blocking the Brimaz.


Probably just reading too much into it, but I think Joe was just fearful of making the obvious play because he was worried that you were expecting that and would have something that would just blow him out again.

[Bahra]

Probably just reading too much into it, but I think Joe was just fearful of making the obvious play because he was worried that you were expecting that and would have something that would just blow him out again.

.

I think you're reading too much into it, Joe admitted that he missed the line of chumping the Mirran Crusader so I think he just missed it.

[Phelix]

actually Marc looked like crap, and was ill most of the day, but sure, just tell him his sickface is his top appearance :P

WP Marc, proud to be on your team.

[Tormod]

What a clinic.

Well done, I already watched the replays twice.

[Koby]

Congrats Marc! You played excellent!

Joe tells me his hand is terrible, but he keeps anyways.

So it was exactly like on Stream.

[Koplinchen]

I am so happy! I would not be more happy had I won the whole thing. Well played! CG agin!

Where is your decklist?

Tomáš

Edit: Hey, mabye I will try ALL the legacy decklist websites... I am so bright!:-)

[venice]

Congrats and thanks for the report! Awesome finish! I enjoyed watching the coverage a lot and am really impressed by your playskill - nice work! Also, congrats to the whole "TeamEuroSwag"! With Philipp Top4ing GPNJ + Top16ing SCG, Tomas Top16ing GPNJ + Top8ing SCG, Julian Top16ing SCG, Niklas winning the Modern IQ and you winning the Legacy portion, seems like you all had a great time! That should be a lot of money you guys bring back home! Well done!!

[oarsman]

Marc already mentioned this but I will just confirm anyway. It did not occur to me that blocking the crusader would effectively cost him six life.
I think he played well, and I know I messed up at least twice in significant spots, so he certainly deserved to win.

[Finn]

puts Massacre on the table even though he only has 2 lands, I immidiately call a judge

This is so important. I have experienced this a few times, but I have witnessed it many more times. I do not mean the Massacre scenario in particular. I mean that we are allowed, what two warnings before we receive any bad outcomes from our actions. Perhaps he really did just make a mistake, but I can say with near certainty that I have seen guys make "mistakes" of this sort several times. If you do not catch it, he gets away with cheating. If you do catch him and do not call a judge, he gets away with trying to cheat. Call the Judge! Every time.

Players who are at a certain level of comfort with tournament play know that they are allowed to cheat over and over by "making mistakes" which never seem to benefit the other player if you do not call them on it. They only get to do it two times though, if you just call a judge.

[Megadeus]

UR Delver man forcing you to play it out then asking for the ID after he got his dick smashed seems scummy.

[Phelix]

UR Delver man forcing you to play it out then asking for the ID after he got his dick smashed seems scummy.

So Much of this going on!

[jake556]

UR Delver man forcing you to play it out then asking for the ID after he got his dick smashed seems scummy.

siging that shit lol