03/19
Dreamer's in Saint Louis Park, MN
Sanctioned Type 1
Total players: 21
Nice turnout for a Friday, with few inexperienced players or unpowered decks. Several players came in from various locations as far as 1 - 1.5 hours away. Always nice to see new faces. It looked like everyone was having a great time as well.
4 rounds of Swiss left us with the following Top-8.
Seed Name (tmd) Deck
------------------------------------------------------------------
1 - Darek - Foodchain --\
--- Darek --\
8 - Xue - UBw Combo / Control --/ \
\
--- Darek
/
5 - Jason - 1-land Charbelcher --\ /
--- Pat --/
4 - Pat - Hulk --/
(Finals=split)
3 - Jim (jdl) - Slaver --\
--- Jim --\
6 - Jeremy - RG Beats --/ \
\
--- Jim
/
7 - Pedro - Parfait (Charbelcher)--\ /
--- Pedro --/
2 - Jon (Frost) - UW Landstill --/
After last Sunday's
56 player sanctioned event where 9 R/G Beats decks were played, it was a little surprising to only see 1 R/G Beats tonight. Maybe people were expecting massive hate, or perhaps people are finally sick of that deck.
Lost somewhere in the bowels of the temporary boards are my old notes on combo Slavery. Back then I was playing a U/r/b version with Future Sight. It was fun, but never worked as well as I would have liked. The control versions of the deck never really floated my boat either. I tried out the Meandeck version of combo Slavery, and overall I've been impressed with the improvements made.
I was playing an unmodified maindeck, with the following sideboard.
4 Trinisphere
3 Blood Moon
2 REB
2 Fire / Ice
3 Rack and Ruin
1 Triskelion
I did not take notes of my matches, but my pairings were as follows:
1. (2-0) Brian Cox (Browser) -- Some mono-G monstrosity that was basically God's gift to destroying R/G Beats. Too bad only one of those showed up tonight. :/ He missed on the metagame call, but he's always cool when he loses and was having fun.
2. (2-1) Pat C. (not the Pat in the T8) -- U/R Landstill. This was a fun match against possibly a newer player. He didn't make many mistakes that I noticed, except I believe that he kept a questionable hand in game 3. Game 1 ended in a hurry when I hardcasted Memnarch on the first turn. He handed me my ass in game 2 after I broke his Standstill with an Ancestral, and he proceeded to Mis-D the Ancestral in response. That was brutal, but overall his deck just couldn't keep up in games 1+3.
3. (1-1) Pedro -- Parfait / Charbelcher. Marathon match. Our decks each got to do it's thing once, and then we ran out of time. We were down to overtime turns in game 3, and I got a Slaver off with him taking the last turn of the match. I was hoping to combo him out with his own deck, but he just didn't have the gas in hand to make it happen.
4. (2-0) Xue -- U/B/w combo control. Nice guy who was new to Dreamer's, I think. He was playing some permission with tons of mana acceleration, Tinker, Darksteel Colossus, and some draw sevens. I wasn't really sure what he was playing after game 1. I won pretty fast, and countered his first turn Windfall, leaving him with a tapped Mana Vault and some other various mana sources. Game 2, he made an error by keeping his hand. He expected his Tormod's Crypt to be much stronger than it was, because I used a lot of graveyard manipulation in the first game. Instead, I went for the quick fat and just ended it.
Top-8. (2-0) Jeremy -- R/G Beats. Nice guy, kind of quiet. New-ish to Dreamer's, but plays in the area. Currently ranked #2 in the state, I believe. Normally, I hate the matchup with R/G, but my deck loved me this time. Game 1, first turn Chalice for 2. Game 2, second turn Chalice for 2. Game 1, I was guessing and hit it right. In Game 2, I expected Naturalize and Artifact Mutation to be huge problems, so I was happy to get that out. Meanwhile, the rest of my deck was churning out cards as fast as it had all night.
Top-4. (2-0) Pedro again -- Parfait. Game 1 was another marathon. These two decks are geared to hate and stall each other out. He almost escaped the Slaver lock, as I ran out of artifacts. On the turn before he was going to smoke me (turn 30 at least), I popped a Memory Jar, dropped Mana Crypt, Tinkered it into a Mindslaver, and then killed him with his own Charbelcher on his turn. Game 2 was less interesting. My early Rack and Ruin and unwillingness to break the Land Tax standoff stunted his development too much. He couldn't keep up with Pentavus and 2 Welders, even with the massive amount of artifact and creature hate that deck packs.
Top-2. (0-0) Darek and I split our winnings and head home.
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Quick notes on the deck.
* Brainstorm is really good, but the deck needs a way to shuffle. Fetch lands are the obvious answer, and I plan to test that out.
* Memnarch might be win-more. If I'm going to win by stealing my opponents permanents, I have the mana to do several other sick things. He may have to stay in for the mirror, but Bosh could be a likely replacement.
* Earlier in the week, I was playing against a Gro deck that was heavy on mana denial. It was a very uphill battle. I discovered that Artifact Mutation with countermagic will pick Combo Slaver apart. I don't have a good answer for it either. Obviously, an active Welder would be nice, but those guys have such huge bullseyes on them.
* Fire / Ice in the sideboard was the right call for tonight, and may even get bumped to 3. Killing Gorilla Shaman and Lavamancer is good for your health.
* I've seen people complain that the deck is unfocused, because it has combo and beatdown. At the very worst, Mindslaver is another Time Walk. With a 5/5 on the board, that's a nice win condition. They have to kill both, or they still lose. I would not cut back on the fat or the Mindslaver count right now.
* I miss the Future Sight, but that requires Metalworker, and there's just no room for that in this deck. I like the Force of Will / Chalice of the Void a lot more.
* I did not face any straight combo tonight, nor have I had the time to test against it. I have to believe that barring a god hand on his part, I was well prepared for the 1-land Charbelcher with CotV, FoW, and Trinisphere. My point is that Trinisphere earned its place, even though I never used it. It was really nice to have it there as backup.
