tournament report

A local convention including 3 days of mtg competition decided to add a sanctioned T1 tourney after the swiss of the 1.X PTQ, just to do our bit to show that people do still play T1.

Unfortunately several of the more prominent local T1 players T8’ed the PTQ and so skipped out on the T1 in an attempt to win the cash (who can blame em?).

In the end, 10 people were lined up for the 4 round competition.

I took unpowered gay fish along, since I figured it was the deck I had the cards for that would stand the best chance in the metagame as I knew it (keeper, combo, and non artifact aggro).

I wont bother typing out a decklist as it was pretty standard null rod based gay fish, with the full complement of 5 strips, and islands replacing the missing power. I forgot to make a sb until the day of the tourney so, expecting aggro, I just filled it with maze of iths and elemental blasts.

Round 1: Lackey sligh
Game 1 He opened with lackey-flunkie+scroll+pup, but a chump block and a misdirected bolt soon left him with just a useless flunkie staring at me. He shortly hit me with a ball lightning, but pretty soon I had the scroll shut down with a null rod, and all his topdecked dudes totally outclassed by my factories. Some flying fish eventually did him in with the help of a few lords. I was a little lucky that he didn’t topdeck much burn to finish me off from the precarious 4 life the ball + 1 bolt left me at.

I didn’t see any wastes but assumed he was using them. I was also expecting pop out of his side so I sided out my 4 conclaves for 4 blue blasts. I also guessed that he might side out his scrolls due to seeing my maindeck null rods so I sided 2 of the rods out for 2 more blasts.

Game 2 started with carnage. His mass quantities of fanatics and burn quickly melted any creature I tried to get into play, and he beat me senseless with pups and flunkies. I almost managed to stabalize, but then had to spend 4 cards and 1 life forcing a red blast backed ball lightning and soon a bolt finished the job.

Game 3 there were 8 elemental blasts of various colours in our graves by about turn 6, and not much in play. I had come out relatively unscathed with 17 life still, and soon my factories and lord backed thiefs outclassed anything he could play, and a few curiosities sealed the deal.

Games 2-1, matches 1-0.

Round 2: 5 colour dragon.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect here as I had never played a 5 colour version before, only mono B and B/U variations.

Game 1 I kept an opening hand with null rod and rootwater thief. I won the roll and played a conclave. He played an underground sea. I played island-thief. He eot entombed a dragon, untapped, animated, showed me whispers, so I folded.

I didn’t have anything in the board for him. Next time I will definitely be packing crypts.

Game 2 I kept an opening hand with misdirection and 2 thiefs. I went first with conclave. He went lotus-mox, dt for an underground sea, vampiric. I played land and thief. He played the other land that I assume he vampiriced for and said go. I hit him with the thief and stole his cunning wish (probably should have taken a dragon). He eot intuitioned for entomb, untapped and comboed. I had misdirection and something to pitch but had nothing to misdirect the animate onto. He also wasn’t dumb enough to try and kill me before he’d drawn all four of his forces.

Games 2-3, matches 1-1.

Round 3: parfait with splashes for mox monkies, black tutors, mind twist, regrowth and sylvan library.
Game 1, he had tax, ivory tower and zuran orb in play by turn 3. I thiefed balance, moat, 1 sacred mesa, regrowth, feldons cane, his second ivory tower, all his monkeys, all his swords and all his scroll racks, but I just couldn’t put enough pressure on him to seriously damage the life he was gaining from the tower and orb. He was still above 10 life when he finally coaxed the one force I had with a wrath, and played the sacred mesa he had been holding all game. This was a dumb mistake on my part, I should have just held the force back for the sacred mesa that I knew he had. I would have found a misdirection to protect me from chant soon enough. It was not to be though, as within 2 turns it was fold time.

Game 2 he once again opened with ivory tower and tax in the first 2 turns and was very soon above 30 life. I shut down his scroll racks and orb with a rod but eventually a monkey ate it and he started drawing cards like mad. This game went pretty much like the first except I didn’t get to thief anywhere near as much as they all went farming as soon as they entered play. I folded as soon as he resolved sacred mesa.

Games 2-5, matches 1-2.

Round 4: random T2 G/W scrubby aggro deck.
Game 1: This game was very sad, as he held me at bay for a very long time with annoying things such as white combat tims, damage prevention clerics, and flying first strikers. Eventually though I had a huge enough flying army to just fly past his minimal flying defence and killed him in short order.

Game 2 was a lot better as I had 3 lords in play rather rapidly, and my flying ernham thiefs smashed face.

Games 4-5, matches 2-2.

All in all it was a fun event, despite being already massively tired from playing 7 rounds of extended straight before it. There were 3 people tied at 3-1 for the top prize which was just packs, with a B/r disruption deck (pox I think??) getting it over sligh and blood moon parfait.

The 10 decks were:
B/r pox?
5 colour dragon
paragon keeper
Wr parfait
Wrgb parfait
Gay fish
T2 G/W aggro
Lackey sligh
Sligh
And I think a 3rd sligh deck of some variety.