[Report] Sucking with control slaver (in Mol)

This is a tournament report from the Beta Timetwister tournament yesterday at Mol (Belgium). People seemed to like my first report, so I decided to write another one. Please tell me to quit posting these if you think it’s a waste of bandwidth.

I forgot my jacket in the pub the night before which contained a biro, so I had nothing with me to write down tournament stuff. This is all from memory. I'm bad at remembering names for starters, so don't get mad if your name is missing (you'll be "some guy") or misspelled. Note that some details can be wrong too.

The tournament had a nice attendance, 60 people or something like that. There where boosterprices up to 15th place. I was playing Control Slaver. I won't post a decklist and clutter up the report. I basically played Atog Lords deck from the primer with a shaman main and a different sideboard. Also, I was missing a Jet in an "Oscar Tan, my Time Walk is still in the mail" kind of way. I was expecting a lot of Tog, and some slavery decks (although not that much as there where, results from Eindhoven the week before threw me of). My friend Bob the builder was with me, so we chatted and made some stupid jokes before the tournament began.

Round 1: Some guy playing nether void.

These games are hard to remember, but both went pretty well the same way. He had some early critters out (shade game 1, negator game 2) and played a void after them. I always came one step too late to get rid of them. I wasn't able to get any heavy artifact on the table in both of those games and lost. The slaver deck didn’t run very fluently, so it can only go better than this. This guy was good.

0-1 (0-2)

Round 2: Some kid playing random.dec

I'm still not sure what he was playing. I saw some bops and llanowar powering some land destruction (which didn't disrupt me much) and burn.

Game 1: I had a turn 2 welder, turn 3 angel. I was beating him with the angel. When I had two welders, he decided to start throwing burn at the angel. I just welded the angel out and back in. He tried this like 5 times or so. Why didn't he get rid of the welders? He must have noticed that targeting the angel didn't work very well. Angel beats. Note: when I played crypt, he asked me what block it was in. I told him it was a promotional card. He was looking strange and was probably thinking about calling a judge and nag about it. But he didn’t and we played on.

Game 2: Similar as game 1, but now we had pentavus beats instead of angel. Still, the guy was targeting the pentavus, not the welders. So, I dropped all pentavites en welded one of them back into pentavus. He was even nice enough to channel himself to one life so he could throw a fireball of 5 at me, dropping me to 12. This was so stupid. I don’t like playing games like this . His only intention seemed to get me as low as possible before he died. Well, I could always counter, and I don’t care if I end at 17 or 12.

1-1 (2-2)

Pause where we had some bad French fries, and made room very fast cause Rudy and a lot of other Dutch people entered in the shop .

Round 3: Some guy playing Tog (with red).

Game 1: I get a crazy hand and completely outdraw him. My mana crypt stays out very long though, but I'm not taking much damage from it. I'm constantly throwing odd numbers. The Tog guy gets a little upset with how lucky I am. Certainly when I'm able to counter all his important stuff. Well, that tends to happen when you're outdrawn against control. But he did some crazy stuff, like casting ancestral without counter backup. I'm not sure how I won game one, but it was probably pentavus beats.

He was not happy with me taking minimal damage from the crypt. Hero, sitting next to him, told the guy that it was just good playing. Har Har.

Game 2: I get a good counter hand. I play more slowly and counter all his important stuff (again). He gets even more agitated and calls me very lucky with all those counters. Well I did side in 3 red en 2 blue elemental blasts, so what did he expect? He even saw my all counter hand when duressing me. He drained my angel and could use one mana from it. So he burns for 6. Anyway, pentavus kills him. Closer finish than game 1 (I had like 5 cards left), but a win anyway.

2-1 (4-2)

Round 4: Nice guy playing a black beatdown / nether shadow - altar of dementia deck.

Game 1: I mull into an average hand and end up mana screwed. The guy feels sorry when beating me down with cheap black creatures. When I was almost killed, the judge appeared and told us we had a deckcheck. He finished me off and we handed our decks to the judge. It took no longer than 20 minutes for the judge to return with the decks, so we chatted a while and had a toilet break. These things are really annoying. You're just sitting there and talking whilst the other guys around you are playing. Maybe we where also annoying other guys with our chattering, but what else was there to do? Judge returns and tells the guy he made a mistake in his decklist. He forgot to mention one card or something, so he got a game loss. I think this is just stupid. There was really no need to give the guy a game loss. We were joking about it after that, and had some fun with the situation.

Game 3: I have a strange hand but decide to keep it. I tinker in pentavus and start the beating. He casts buried alive and puts 3 of those pesky nether shadows in the grave. He announces I have 1 more turn to live, so I drop everything from pentavus and weld him back in at the end of his turn. Then I attack for 9 and kill him. Bob was watching the game and told me afterwards that the guy could have combo-ed me out, but decided to wait for no apparent reason.

3-1 (6-3)

My friend Bob the builder and I did some more chatting with this guy afterwards (Bob played him round 1). Turns out they ware having fun drinking 2 beers between every round. 7 rounds and 5 beers before starting meant a lot of fun.

Round 5: Carl Devos playing workshop slaver

The first time I played him. I was surprised that he spoke Dutch! And not bad at all. So I'm still wondering why I was still talking in English. He obviously wouldn't mind if I talked Dutch (although it can be hard to understand me with my accent…) .

Game 1: I get out 2 welders and counter some of his stuff. We both draw nothing spectacular, so I keep beating him with welder and finish of with fire (how lame, I know. But I did apologize).

Game 2: This game seems to go the same way as game one. I keep his welders of the board. I keep on attacking with welders, but he casts a mindslaver with I'm unable to counter. He slaves me right away. I had tinker in hand but no artifact. Then I drew sol ring. He tinkered up my mana crypt after having a look at my deck. Nice. I had my two welders so he used one of them to get his slaver back. No way I could win this game. Onto the next. (It was a mistake this game to attack with the welders all the time, but I probably kept doing it cause it worked game 1. Stupid of me)

Game 3: I mulliganed twice in a hand without any mana. Darn. Then I made the second biggest mistake of the tournament and decided to go for it. He was surprised when I did nothing first turn . Second turn, still no land. Third turn an underground sea. He is also taking his time developing his side of the board with an active library, as I’m screwed anyway. I draw some mox mana, time walk but keep on missing a red mana with a full red hand. I tutor ancestral and cast tinker (hoping to make him think I tutored the tinker). He blasts my tinker so I’m guessing it worked. I'm drawing cards with ancestral, still no red mana. He drops mindslaver. I have one turn to do my thing. I cast thirst of knowledge and look at my hand and graveyard. I had like 9 cards in hand. No red mana, rack and ruin in hand, will in hand and ancestral in the graveyard. I drop will and some other card in the graveyard because of the thirst, which amused Carl seeing the ancestral in the grave. I really didn't want him to cast will, ancestral on himself during his slave turn. So I thought this was the correct play. The moment I dropped those I saw I made the biggest mistake of the tournament. I had a fetchland in hand! How could I not have noticed this before! I dropped it, searched a volcanic and cast rack and ruin. His slaver was gone, and he wouldn't be able to slave me next turn. Meanwhile, my will was in my graveyard. Sometimes, I can be such a loser! Anyway, due to this, I keep on doing nothing important the next few turns, and he gets his slaver back. People where gathering around us to watch the game. He thought a long time for his first slave turn. He decided to cast the shaman and kill all of my moxen instead of casting a welder. Which was correct as he had a welder himself he could use. The turn after that, I'm slaved to cast a welder, mana drain it, then pyroblast the mana drain. We were getting close to time being called. I saw no way out and I didn't want to be a dick and use the time limit to get a draw out of this. I lost anyway, even if it took 20 more turns. Again I give up. I made A LOT of mistakes in all those games. He was probably wondering how I got to table 3 .

3-2 (7-5)

Afterwards I asked him to sign a dreadnought, just for fun. People around me told me I was mad, ruining the card. It's a $7 card, get over it. It's not the end of the world. Remember this when I beat you with it sometime.

Standing showed I was 15th, and still good for a darksteel booster (jay! Euhm, yeah).

Round 6: Arthur Tindemans playing Tog

These games where just stupid. I was unable to do anything significant in both of them. It was that bad, he even had to ask me afterwards if I was indeed playing control slaver. My deck didn’t move an inch. At this point, I was very tired and I wasn't paying attention at all. His deck ran fine though. Unable to do anything, he kills me with a berserked tog twice very fast. I was surrounded by Tog. A Tog mirror next to me, and Tog against Rector Trix on the other side.

3-3 (7-7)

That's it, it was no longer possible to get to top 15 and win a price (booster from the best set evar! Uhm, yeah right). (Edit: seams it was still possible due to the tiebreakers. Ah well). Bob's girlfriend had phoned twice to know when we where getting home (even though I left her my last croissant in the morning). So we thought it wouldn't be bad to drop to get home an hour faster. We still had to drive an hour and a half. I was very tired and didn't feel like playing anyway. And I supposed my girlfriend wouldn't mind either (which she didn’t).

Thoughts about the deck:
The deck is great fun to play with. I feel the manabase could use some more red. 5 red sources is not that much when facing landdestruction. Also, it might help getting out of mana screw. Certainly with the red intensive sideboard I used (3 rack, 3 REBs). Problem I had all day was not being to familiarized with the deck. I've tested it only last week and decided to play it over keeper 2 days before the tournament (kids, don’t try this at home). Also, I didn't mindslave once all day! WTF is wrong with me? 80% of the kills I made where with pentavus, angel being second with about 15% en 5% with welder. I will need to get to know this deck better if I want to play it again. So I might be playing something else on Saturday (which will probably be another Tog infested Meta).

Props:
- The organisers, all went well.
- Bob the builder and Bruno for lending me some cards.
- The guy with the black deck: great sport and had lots of fun playing and talking to you.
- Pentavus, the mad pentavite creator you are. (with a little help from our friend the welder).

Slops:
- We could have used a little more light. I didn't see the cards my opponent was playing sometimes (Round 3).
- Leave supporters at home. Having a dick standing next to you holding a sign for the opponent to read is ridiculous and makes you look like an arse.