[Deck] TinFins 3: Return of the Onion Burst

[Acclimation]

He was on the DD sideboard.

It was great watching him truck nerds this weekend.

I ended up scrubbing out at the Open, I drew average in most of my games, and my opponents drew just a little bit better.

I decided to not play Jace list and went back to the old list+ new sideboard.

Definitely think the Mentor sb is the way to go for a large tournament.

[TTX]

Hey Source,

Congrats to .dk and his deep run in St. Louis.

The following is my tournament report from Indianapolis 3 weeks ago.
I opted for the reactive sideboard strategy, due to anticipation of fatigue and failure
to correctly execute the Doomsday plan.
It turned out pretty well.

Creatures (4)

1 Children of Korlis
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Griselbrand

Lands (14)

1 Island
1 Swamp
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Scrubland
3 Underground Sea

Spells (42)

1 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Brainstorm
4 Dark Ritual
4 Entomb
3 Goryo's Vengeance
2 Lim-Dul's Vault
4 Shallow Grave
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Ponder
1 Reanimate
1 Tendrils of Agony
3 Thoughtseize

Sideboard

2 Defense Grid
2 Pithing Needle
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Disfigure
3 Massacre
1 Bayou

ROUND 1 vs. Tom Ross UG Infect

GAME 1.

I was really nervous sitting across from the "Boss." I knew he was on Infect, because history, and was thankful for the opening hand of mine containing Thoughtseize.
I will the die roll.
Turn 1. Underground Sea, Thoughtseize, take his FoW, then I lay a Lotus Petal into Dark Ritual, followed by Entomb and Shallow Grave into Griselbrand. I draw 14 and fail to
find any mana sources, then attack and draw another 7, still no bloody mana sources, so I discard down to hand size.
He goes fetchland into Noble Hierarch.
Turn 3. I Entomb for Emrakul and Goryo's Vengeance it into play, gg.

GAME 2.

In 2 Defense Grid, 2 Disfigure
Out 1 Goryo's Vengeance, 1 Lim-Dul's Vault, 1 Ponder, 1 Gitaxian Probe.

He plays turn 1 Glistener Elf.
Turn 2, I Thoughtseize his Force of Will seeing a Pendelhaven and Invigorate.
Turn 3, he hits me for 6 poison.
Turn 4, I Entomb a Griseldaddy and Shallow Grave, he was not happy to see Onions Burst.

1-0.

Good start to the tournament, perfect opening hands, I just drew the pistol faster.

ROUND 2 vs. Thomas Schlegel RUG Delver

GAME 1.

Turn 1 I lead off with a Gitaxian Probe and see his Stifle, Brainstorm, and Wasteland.
Turn 3 I get a resolved Entomb to get an Emrakul (wrong choice) and reanimate with Vengeance.
He Stifles the Annihilator and gladly takes 15.
Turn 4 He slaps gains control and drops Mongoose, Delver, Tarmagoyf and keeps out with countermagic.

GAME 2.

I lead off again with a Gitaxian Probe, followed by Cabal Therapy naming his Spell Pierce.
He has a Stifle, Pyroblast and unimportant...
I get a turn 2 Griselbrand and he Stifles the first activation, no big deal, I go to 3 with another activation, and wiff.
I attack to draw another 7, and wiff again, no mana sources. So I pitch Griselbrand to Cabal Therapy to take out his
Pyroblast.
He and I doddle for several turns, I manage to strike with another Grisel reanimation, getting him to 2, but I draw 7
and shit the bed again. He returns fire with Mongoose and Goyf.

Big mistake going to Emrakul, at the time I thought if I got him to <5 I could win with a Tendril, but never found it.
Griselbrand would have at least given me a fresh new 7.

1-1.

ROUND 3 vs. Death & Taxes

Game 1 was a walk in the park, I Thoughtseize his Stoneforge Mystic and then turn 2 Griselbrand into Tendrils ftw.

Game 2 he has Aether Vial turn 1. I Blindly call Thalia off my Cabal Therapy on my turn 1, hitting the it!!!
He also has a Revoker, Jitte, and Karakas, uh-oh.
Turn 3 he plays Revoker naming Griselbrand.
Turn 5 he plays Karakas and Jitte.
Turn 6 I peel a Massacre off the top and Goryo's Vengeance the Gdaddy, drawing 14 immediately, and wiff!!!
I move to attack step, and he forgets to Karakas, so he take 7 and I draw 7 more, leading into a Childish victory with Tendrils.

This guy was friendly, but his missplay with Karakas cost him the match.

2-1.

ROUND 4 vs. Jeskai Counterbalance Miracles

This guy was really friendly and enthusiastic, best opponent all day.

Game 1 I mull to 5 on game 1...
Though I won on my third turn with a Griselbrand reanimation followed by Childish Tendrils.

Game 2 I get a sweet of discard and pick out his Counterspell, Council's Judgement, and Pyroblast.
I win on turn 3 with yet another Onion bananza.

3-1.

ROUND 5 vs. GW Maverick

This guy was the least interactive and not please at all when the onion stench flooded the game state.

GAME 1 I open with Thoughtseize to take his Thalia, phewoof...He has two Knights of the Reliquary and Wasteland.
I see the coast is clear and go for Lotus Petal, Dark Ritual, Entomb, Shallow Grave into Griselbrand draw 14, critical
mass for Entomb Emrakul and Vengeance, attack for 22 on turn 1. Good show. I didn't want to do the Tendrils route because
I could tell he was already really pissed by the Dark Ritual.

GAME 2 He lays a Mother of Ruins, followed by Revoker and Thalia. Sh*t.
Turn 3 I play Massacre for 1, and follow it up with ONION EXPLOSION. This guy hated me...

4-1.

ROUND 6 vs. Burn

Friendly guy, we both start off by mulling to 5...
Game 1 He promptly burns me out with Lava Spike, Rift Bolt, Chain Lightning,
Price of Progress and Fireblast. I took damage off a Thoughtseize and
Fetchland attempts to stay off Brainstorm locks.

Game 2 I "Reanimate" a turn 1 Griselbrand off a Dark Ritual and Entomb. say go.
He attempts to burn me, but I just keep attacking for 7 each turn, gaining 7 as a side effect,
and win from there.

Game 3 This is the most disappointing game of the day.
I get a turn 1 Griselbrand, draw 14 immediately, I bring back the Children, draw an additional 14, and wiff. WTF??!?! I never wiffed like this on Cockatrice!!
So I attack for 7, drawing an additional 7. And his nothing!! No mana sources of any kind. I'm at 3 life. I can't even sac my Gdaddy to a Cabal Therapy
Turn 3 he shows me his hand and I lose.

Moral of this story, wait a turn sometimes, the additional land drop would have guaranteed the victory.

4-2.

ROUND 7 vs. Jeskai Counterbalance Miracles

Game 1 I get garbage hands and he gets the turn 3 Counterbalance Sensei's Divining Top lock situated, and I lose to a Clique.

Game 2 He gets an early Rest in Peace, followed by Blood Moon, then Counterbalance + Sensei's.
I was able to Abrupt Decay both his Rest in Peace and Counterbalance by way of Lotus Petals and a Swamp, but he has too
much time and smacks me with Entreated Angels.

4-3.

ROUND 8 vs. Sultai Food Chain

At this point I am pretty tired and hungry, and frustrated with how I melted down over the past two rounds.

Game 1 I win turn 1 Griselbrand, no contest.
Game 2 He shows me a hand of Mindbreak Trap, Baleful Strix, Misthollow Griffin, Emrakul, and Genesis Hydra?!
I can't find an Entomb and he assembles the kill with a Food Chain with Misthollow Griffin and casts Emrakul.
Game 3 I miss 3 turns in a row to will by Cabal Therapying myself for Griselbrand while I have a Shallow Grave all along.
He can't get pressure assembled and I eventually Thoughtseize myself and and bring Griselbrand into play. The Disfigure I drew
off the first 14 was essential, for I wiffed on mana, so I had to remove his Baleful Strix before attacking with Gdaddy. I get Children
and Tendrils his face finally.

5-3.

Greater than 200 players attended, I placed 32, strangely.

A lot of fun with Tin Fins, I really like the deck and am very appreciative all of the constructive content present in this thread.
I was amused how many people had to read Lim-Dul's Vault, not because they couldn't remember, but because they had never heard of it before. Hmmm.

Maybe next time I go with the Doomsday transformational sideboard, it really catches people off guard, especially the ones that oversideboard...

In my experience you should try to not side board more than 4 cards with this deck.
Against Maverick/Death and Taxes though I have to bring in 3 Abrupt Decay, 3 Massacre, 1 Bayou, 2 Chain of Vapor.
Miracles hate cards and Temur Tempo are the hardest matchups, but early discard usually clears the way.

Props to SCG for a very streamlined event.

Slops to SCG for not telling anybody where food is. A 10 minute walk to a mall was the solution.

I learned a lot playing the deck in person, and will definitely play it again whenever another event falls nearby.

[movingtonewao]

in your round 2 game 1 match, can you explain why it was wrong to find emrakul? At that point in time with imperfect information it seemed that the tendrils for final 5 life plan was legit.

[.dk]

Thanks guys! So, I finished 11-4 and squeaked into T16 on breakers. I'll post a report somewhat shortly, but probably won't be quite as detailed as past reports. I've been pretty sick this weekend, and my memory might be a little too cloudy... But we'll see what it comes up with. I took shit for notes this time, so might be a total cluster.

Also, to answer the last question - it was a mistake to go for Emrakul because he knew he had a stifle for the annihilator trigger. Griselbrand, while turning stifle into the best lightning bolt ever, can at least draw you a fresh grip to set up a kill the following turn.

[movingtonewao]

Thank you for the answer, I am bad at reading and did not read that there was a stifle in the opponents hand. Well done and good to see you ran the doomsday sb.

[Richard Cheese]

The full metagame breakdown looks like this:

Shardless Sultai: 14
Storm: 8
Miracles: 8
Temur Delver: 7
Sultai Delver: 7
Elves: 7
Infect: 6
Lands: 3
Omni-Tell: 3
Grixis Delver: 3
Burn: 3
Reanimator: 3
Maverick: 3
Jeskai Stoneblade: 3
Punishing Jund: 3
U/R Delver: 2
Merfolk: 2
Imperial Painter: 2
MUD: 2
Sultai Control: 2
R/W Death & Taxes: 2
Jeskai Delver: 2
Dredge: 1
Pox: 1
Tin Fins: 1
U/W Stoneblade: 1
Four-Color Stoneblade: 1
Sneak & Show: 1
Mono-Red Sneak Attack: 1
High Tide: 1
Eureka-Tell: 1
Death & Taxes: 1
Abzan Deathblade: 1
Esper Deathblade: 1
Reliquary Retreat: 1

Keeping the dream aliiiiiiiiiiiive!

[Kathal]

congratz .dk, glad you played Tin Fins and busted some Onions there :D

Greetings,
Kathal

[dte]

Congrats .dk, very great to see you doing so well with the deck!
I'm looking forward to see your report.

Game 3 This is the most disappointing game of the day.
I get a turn 1 Griselbrand, draw 14 immediately, I bring back the Children, draw an additional 14, and wiff. WTF??!?! I never wiffed like this on Cockatrice!!
So I attack for 7, drawing an additional 7. And his nothing!! No mana sources of any kind. I'm at 3 life. I can't even sac my Gdaddy to a Cabal Therapy
Turn 3 he shows me his hand and I lose.

Moral of this story, wait a turn sometimes, the additional land drop would have guaranteed the victory.

I think the moral should be different: you drew 35 cards for the turn, OTD. So you saw roughly 46 cards of your deck, 14 remaining. If you had attacked with Grisel and draw 7 before sacrificing CoK, there is very few chances you wouldn't have seen a manasource in these 7 additional cards (with 3 remaining manasources, 7/8 chances of winning, with 4 remaining, 15/16) while waiting a turn let's your opponent have eidolon, pyrostatic pillar, fireblast online.

So you should really go on T1 vs burn OTD if you can, but you should draw 14, attack, draw 7, then sacrifice children.
Note that then, you're at more than 20 and you can wait for T2 to combo again, if you didn't see anything threatening from G Probe.
Or you can try to go off, with almost certainty of winning.

But anyway, congrats for the run! And another reason to go to the DD route is the face of your opponent in G2, and sometimes even in G3 when you switch back. Often hilarious.

[KaiSchafroth]

Thanks guys! So, I finished 11-4 and squeaked into T16 on breakers. I'll post a report somewhat shortly, but probably won't be quite as detailed as past reports. I've been pretty sick this weekend, and my memory might be a little too cloudy... But we'll see what it comes up with. I took shit for notes this time, so might be a total cluster.

Also, to answer the last question - it was a mistake to go for Emrakul because he knew he had a stifle for the annihilator trigger. Griselbrand, while turning stifle into the best lightning bolt ever, can at least draw you a fresh grip to set up a kill the following turn.

Props for an awesome finish; great meeting you in person! Thoroughly enjoyed hearing "some guy is playing this weird like...instant kill reanimator deck" all weekend around the hall.

[TTX]

Congrats .dk, very great to see you doing so well with the deck!
I'm looking forward to see your report.



I think the moral should be different: you drew 35 cards for the turn, OTD. So you saw roughly 46 cards of your deck, 14 remaining. If you had attacked with Grisel and draw 7 before sacrificing CoK, there is very few chances you wouldn't have seen a manasource in these 7 additional cards (with 3 remaining manasources, 7/8 chances of winning, with 4 remaining, 15/16) while waiting a turn let's your opponent have eidolon, pyrostatic pillar, fireblast online.

So you should really go on T1 vs burn OTD if you can, but you should draw 14, attack, draw 7, then sacrifice children.
Note that then, you're at more than 20 and you can wait for T2 to combo again, if you didn't see anything threatening from G Probe.
Or you can try to go off, with almost certainty of winning.

But anyway, congrats for the run! And another reason to go to the DD route is the face of your opponent in G2, and sometimes even in G3 when you switch back. Often hilarious.

Thanks for the critique, that would have definitely scrubbed the problem out.

.dk, what is the rationale for play 4 Underground Sea instead of 3 Underground Sea and 1 Island? I've had it come up a lot where I need 1 blue to be unmolested by Wasteland for more than one turn.

[KaiSchafroth]

Thanks for the critique, that would have definitely scrubbed the problem out.

.dk, what is the rationale for play 4 Underground Sea instead of 3 Underground Sea and 1 Island? I've had it come up a lot where I need 1 blue to be unmolested by Wasteland for more than one turn.

The Island messes with the fetches since Flats can't get it; you probably have to split Flats and Strands then to still fetch everything else...which leads to Strand leaving you unable to get Swamp.

[Koby]

The Island messes with the fetches since Flats can't get it; you probably have to split Flats and Strands then to still fetch everything else...which leads to Strand leaving you unable to get Swamp.

Added to the fetchland awkwardness is the opening hand Island, which hinders more often than helps.

Ultimately, the best way to play around Wasteland is to run more non-basics than fewer.

[Acclimation]

I think the 4 Sea are because he has 4 FBB Sea, and not for any real strategic reason :P


I did run 1 Island over the 3rd Sea (4th Sea is replaced by Tundra in my lists), and while I did enjoy the aspect of having a fetchable blue source that could laugh at wasteland, we run few enough lands that you can get the near unstoppable hand and have to mulligan it because your only mana source is the Island. And the added weirdness of the fetchbase makes life a lot worse when you run that island. Now that I own a 3rd Sea, I have dropped the mb Island (it's in the sideboard since we want another land in the sb for mentor plan, and I don't have 4th Sea, nor a 2nd Tundra/Scrubland), it's that much better.

[warfordium]

on basics: In my experience you only ever want basic swamp *sometimes*, so you can cast the combo. usually casting 2-3 blue spells does it. sometimes you can induce wasteland when you've got 2 lands/fetches by looking all nervous after playing a cantrip after fetching a sea. then you kill them.

[dte]

I personally like the basic island, as T1 ponder is one of the most common T1 with this deck.

Additionally, it hides what you're playing (most people will put you on storm or rea from fetch > U sea > ponder, while they will think miracle if you go flooded strand > island > ponder, or some sort of delver. deck), which is good because a lot of people will not want to have FoW vs delver for instance.

I feel like the U T1 is so important, that I removed the scrubland (so my manabase is 4 Sea, 1 swamp, 1 island, 4 polluted, 3 mire, 1 flooded strand).

And I feel much better now with this island than when I had the scrubland.

I feel like I should precise that I run the DD plan, and that having 2 basics with SDT is pretty strong. So all the above comments may be wrong if you're playing a reactive SB or if you have any white cards in it.

[.dk]

Kai and Koby nailed it - I wanted another source to produce U, but didn't want to screw with the fetch base. If you run Island, you probably want to split up flats into 2 Flats and 2 Strands. That means you have less fetches that can fetch swamp - which is the more important land in the deck.

Acclimation is close though - doesn't hurt that I have 4 French Seas. ;)

@dte

I don't care about hiding what I am with this deck. We're fast enough that it doesn't even matter. If you're a slower combo deck like DDFT, then you get some advantages from representing yourself as miracles or something.

Also, I can't see how removing Scrubland is correct. You most certainly want 1 W producing land to be able to cast Children of Korlis in the maindeck. That comes up very frequently when comboing on T2 off of a Dark Ritual.

Only having 1 basic with SDT doesn't bother me either - spin in your upkeep with Swamp, play an Underground Sea/Scrubland, Dark Ritual, Kill them. We play so much fast mana in this deck that you can make BBB in a ridiculous amount of ways.


Also, I should have my report up later today. I'll link to it here with some more thoughts on the deck as well, some of which may be a little surprising...

[.dk]

Ok, tournament(s) report is here:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...-SCG-St-Louis)

Some thoughts on the deck in general:

The new mulligan rule is insane. It makes losing the die roll not be nearly as much of a liability. For a T2 deck, going to 6 on the draw is almost as good as being on the play.

And the deck itself: I'm pretty sure Doomsday is wrong. I don't think it's the best sideboard plan, or even transformation. I'm pretty sure Monastery Mentor is. Couple that with a couple of SDT in your board, and you still have room for a good amount of Anti-Hate as well. I think this configuration should have a much easier time with Death and Taxes. I don't own them so I can't play them, but I'm pretty convinced that it's generally superior. Most decks will board out their removal, and even if they don't, you're on a swarm strategy so it's not even that good. Cast a couple of rituals in response to their Lightning Bolt or whatever. After seeing that card in action all over the place this weekend - I'm pretty convinced it's that good. T2 ritual, into Mentor, Probe, and Therapy, flashback Therapy is just unreal strong, and WAY easier to play than Doomsday. You don't just lose to your own mistakes, and it's rare that a single top deck will kill you.

Just my opinions though. In this case, I think you go back to my NJ maindeck with the Tundra, and you get to run Serenity and stuff out of the board too. Seems realllllll good to me

[Richard Cheese]

Ok, tournament(s) report is here:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...-SCG-St-Louis)

Some thoughts on the deck in general:

The new mulligan rule is insane. It makes losing the die roll not be nearly as much of a liability. For a T2 deck, going to 6 on the draw is almost as good as being on the play.

And the deck itself: I'm pretty sure Doomsday is wrong. I don't think it's the best sideboard plan, or even transformation. I'm pretty sure Monastery Mentor is. Couple that with a couple of SDT in your board, and you still have room for a good amount of Anti-Hate as well. I think this configuration should have a much easier time with Death and Taxes. I don't own them so I can't play them, but I'm pretty convinced that it's generally superior. Most decks will board out their removal, and even if they don't, you're on a swarm strategy so it's not even that good. Cast a couple of rituals in response to their Lightning Bolt or whatever. After seeing that card in action all over the place this weekend - I'm pretty convinced it's that good. T2 ritual, into Mentor, Probe, and Therapy, flashback Therapy is just unreal strong, and WAY easier to play than Doomsday. You don't just lose to your own mistakes, and it's rare that a single top deck will kill you.

Just my opinions though. In this case, I think you go back to my NJ maindeck with the Tundra, and you get to run Serenity and stuff out of the board too. Seems realllllll good to me

Awesome report, and interesting thoughts on Doomsday. Seeing your reasoning, I'm inclined to agree. The man plan has always been appealing because it dodges both graveyard and storm hate, and Mentor essentially gives us an extremely compact man plan.

Dammit, now you've got me wanting to order Mentors, and I told myself I wasn't going to spend any more money on this stupid game!

[.dk]

Awesome report, and interesting thoughts on Doomsday. Seeing your reasoning, I'm inclined to agree. The man plan has always been appealing because it dodges both graveyard and storm hate, and Mentor essentially gives us an extremely compact man plan.

Dammit, now you've got me wanting to order Mentors, and I told myself I wasn't going to spend any more money on this stupid game!

Thanks!

And yeah, they're on my list now too... :( At least they're cheaper than Jace!

[KaiSchafroth]

Ok, tournament(s) report is here:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...-SCG-St-Louis)

Some thoughts on the deck in general:

The new mulligan rule is insane. It makes losing the die roll not be nearly as much of a liability. For a T2 deck, going to 6 on the draw is almost as good as being on the play.

And the deck itself: I'm pretty sure Doomsday is wrong. I don't think it's the best sideboard plan, or even transformation. I'm pretty sure Monastery Mentor is. Couple that with a couple of SDT in your board, and you still have room for a good amount of Anti-Hate as well. I think this configuration should have a much easier time with Death and Taxes. I don't own them so I can't play them, but I'm pretty convinced that it's generally superior. Most decks will board out their removal, and even if they don't, you're on a swarm strategy so it's not even that good. Cast a couple of rituals in response to their Lightning Bolt or whatever. After seeing that card in action all over the place this weekend - I'm pretty convinced it's that good. T2 ritual, into Mentor, Probe, and Therapy, flashback Therapy is just unreal strong, and WAY easier to play than Doomsday. You don't just lose to your own mistakes, and it's rare that a single top deck will kill you.

Just my opinions though. In this case, I think you go back to my NJ maindeck with the Tundra, and you get to run Serenity and stuff out of the board too. Seems realllllll good to me

About to click open the report now; should be another fun read.
On the Mentor - I realize different deck but I did watch Losett kill his opponent this weekend (on meathooks of all things) from like 22 or something in a single swing by flipping two tops a bunch of times