A tale of pwnage...
Edit: Before you start reading, I will say that this wasn't a very competitive event, so if that's what you are looking for read elsewhere. This report is, however, a good example of how well fish can perform even in budget/scrubby metas.
Well, I didn't take any notes so I'm writing this from memory after getting back from the tournement. It was a 5 proxy and round robin in pools with cut to top 8. 11 people showed up, although about as 15-16 people play Vintage in the area.
Without further adieu, this is my list:
MetaPWN WTF/r:
14 d00ds:
4 grim lavamancer
4 spiketail hatchling
4 river boa
1 gorilla shamen
1 call of the heard
22 spells:
4 brainstorm
4 curiosity
4 force of will
2 fire/ice
2 daze
2 stifle
1 ancestral recall (Proxy on US island)
1 timewalk (Proxy on US island)
1 oxidize
1 crucible of worlds
24 manaz:
4 wasteland
4 mishra's factory
4 polluted delta
4 volcanic island
3 tropical island
1 flooded strand (Proxy on cloudpost)
1 strip mine
1 library of alexandria (Proxy on US island)
1 mox saphire (Proxy on US island)
1 island
The lack of null rods and addition of fire/ices was do to the low powered meta game despite 5 proxyness I was expecting almost no workshop deck, slaver, or combo. Man did I call this right!!! And, yes, the 4 US islands were all different pictures and the flooded strand on the cloudpost confused people. I call it proxied pimpness.
So, on to the matches:
Match 1: Matt with carnophage/sacromancy sui. Standard disruption of sinkhole, duress, hym, waste and the quintessential shades, negators, and hippies. All his swamps are beta and the entire deck is black boardered. Sui in style
.
Game 1:
I play first and lay a dual and pass. He does something stupid like ritual, sinkhole, sacromancy, go. His distruption and fast beats own me before I can really even get in the game.
Sb: -1 gorilla shamen, -1 oxidise, +2 fire/ice
Game 2: He doest have a ritual draw but goes first and duresses my brainstorm. He is then able to screw my mana with 2nd turn sinkhole and then a waste on 3rd turn. I believe I died to a hippie and a negator.
Match 2: John with R/G LD. He told me what he was playing before the tourney and I was surprised that he borrowed his friend's LD deck instead of playing dragon as he usually did. He explained to me that he was unable to borrow enough goodies to make dragon on 5 proxies as he lacked bazaars. His ld doesn't seems scary even with my 3 colour mana base; what I ph34r are his kird apes and river boas.
Game 1: He wins the die roll and lead with one of his evil kird apes, followed up by a river boa
. He starts destroying my land and despite drawing into my mox and casting several spiketails I am overwhelmed by his river boa and 3 2/3 kird apes combined with the disruption.
Sb: +2 BEB, -2 daze (rational was that mana development was more important and daze doesn't help me there)
Game 2: I get a good start with mox land spiketail and my 2 wasteland mana screw him at 2 land. (1 on a taiga and 1 on a tapped waste). Another spiketal, a boa, mancer, and factory beat down for the win. He dies wating for the land that never came.
Same sb
Game 3: This was seriously like the most awesome game of the tournement. I keep a hand with stifle, brainstorm and 5 land, thinking, well, it's LD, so what the hell? He plays first and lays waste, pass. I play delta, pass. He plays strip, pass. I play delta, pass. He drops a basic and passes. I lay a volc and pass. He stone rains my volc, leaving a waste untapped. I tap the volc for brainstorm into BEB, stifle, and something else. I break the delta to shuffle away the shit and grab a trop to BEB the stone rain. He wastes my trop and I break the other delta for a volc and stifle the waste. I play a spiketail and next turn stifle his strip mine. He lays an sbed defense grid with his 2 land and proceeds to die horribly to factory and critter beatdown. Like I said, awesome game.
Match 3: Devin with sub-optimal affinity. It was indeed sub optimal as it lacked welders and disiples and ravagers and workshops AND blue, plus there was the presence of a little card called shock. Try not to laugh as this is exactly the sort of random aggro deck fish has problems with. Also because he runs only black and red and many basics it will be difficult for me to mana screw him. He proxied 4 moxes and a lotus for acceleration. Oh and I am scared of his crappy myr servitors because fish doesn't like recurring 1/1s.
Game 1: He goes first and drops 1st turn myr servitor. I play a land and pass. He lays and 2nd artifact land and taps out for a plating then drops frogmite, frogmite, frogmite. Needless to say I lose, dead in about 2-3 turns from plated froggy beatdown.
Sb: -1 stifle (he ran no wastes or fetches but I can still stifle jars and the like), -4 curiosity, -1 daze (I need tempo and development vs fast aggro like this) +2 null rod, +2 naturalize, +1 oxidise, +1 rack and ruin
Game 2: He gets a solid start beating on me with a myr and a frog. Eventually I am able to stall with factories untill I get an active mancer out. I slowly take control of the board and kill a second servitor as well as the 1st one and a frog. After null rod his and I strip his mountain he is basically out of it, although I do remember stifeling the trigger of the 3rd servitor he played so as to swing through for the win.
Same sb.
Game 3: Once again he beats down quickly until I can stabilise somewhat with a boa as a blocker. I believe Fowing a 3rd turn myr enforcer was necessary. I oxidize of his critters and ancestral into an active loa. Null rod eventually hits as well as crucible/strip lock and he dies to my critters with no usable mana sources in play. It seems very one sided the way I wrote it, but I was actually at 2 life at the end.
Match 4: Russ with G/u/r surivial madness. Ouch; not a good matchup for fish. A win would be nice but not really necessary at this point I think because I can probably advance at 2-2. Anyways, I know from last time that the main way to win is by disrupting his mana base to prevent him from casting fat.
Game 1: He goes first and drops a first turn rootwalla. Damn I don't like 3/3 beatsticks. He lays a lot of early beats and I just can't stabilise. I end up dying to an arrogant wurm that can trample through for just enough, even though he made a misplay with his rootwalla by pumping it in resp to me wasting his taiga (for no reason) allowing me to fire it.
Sb: -2 curiosity, +2 fire/ice. He doesn't run enough blue to warrent REB. I suppose I could have sbed naturalizes for his survivals but I don't think that was necessary.
Game 2: I lay a first turn mancer; yay!! My mancer combined with strip effect on his mana base and a boa to deal with his rootwalla leave me with solid board position and I easily beatdown for the win.
Same sb.
Game 3: Once again my disruption does him in and my smaller critters go the distance.
So, I have a solid record of match: 3-1-0, games: 6-5-0 and advance to t8.
Quarter finals: Al with salavager deck. Al is fully powered with workshops and bazaars so can make any deck his heart desires and needs none of the 5 available proxies. Today he is trying to have some fun with salvager deck, which, fortunately for me, has an absolutely horrible matchup against fish, even without me maindecking rods.
Game 1: He goes first and starts out with a basic island. I have a first turn mancer (yay!) and pass it back. He plays another land, I play a land and a boa. On his turn 4 he pays 3W to kill my spiketail hatchling as I am forced to sack it to counter the 2/4 (scary fat, man). I play another creature and swing. He balances away my d00ds and I draw no more creatures, but my factory beats for 2 a turn as he can’t deal with it (he had to discard 3 cards for his balance and sac 1 land). I topdeck another factory when he is at 3 and swing for leathal.
Sb: +2 null rod, +2 REB, -2 stifle, -2 daze
Game 2: He leads with a basic again and I with a fetch. On my turn 2 I cast a null rod, which lands, but I had fow backup anyways. On my turn 3 I play a spiketail leaving a volc open for my REB. On my turn 4 I cast crucible with REB backup, which he also does not fow. I have waste lock with it. On my turn 5 waste, then I play a mox monkey and ancestral myself. In response he fires my two doods and I have no blue card for the fow. This is a clear misplay on my part, but my ancestral resolves and I draw into more doods for next turn. I eventually start beting with 2 more citters which he ALSO fires, but my 3rd army goes the distance with factory backup. It was the crucible that won me this game, by wrecking more than half of his lands; combined with null rod this was brutal.
Semi Finals: Dustin with FCG. In a random meta like this FCG is a good choice, and I myself suggested to Dustin at the last type 1 that he make the deck. Well, here he is now facing me in Semis
.
Game 1: I have a double grim hand, which I think is good as 1 can chump a possible 1st turn lacky while still leaving me the burnanator for his little red men. Then he goes first turn mountain mana crypt sharpshooter. I have no fow so I die inside
. I play my land and pass. He wins the next 5 out of 6 mana crypt flips (I mean common, OMFG), and beats me down 1 a turn with a piledriver as his only source of damage. I need to be able to cast a boa with G open to regen from sharpshooter (or topdeck a fire/ice for the sharpshooter), so I am basically waiting as he has a slow clock on me. I get crucible strip lock, but this doesn't really matter as he has a mana crypt and a sol ring in play. I eventually topdeck my lone monkey which eats his ring and crypt (I had to eat the crypt on my main because of sharpshooter) leaving him with no mana sources and me with crucibel strip. From then on it was only a matter of time as I wasted/stripped the wastelands he played and cast another boa eventually beating with the boas for the win, his sharpsooter forced to chump in the end. As an interesting note, by this time my hand was cluttered with 3 mancers and a spiketail due to the lousy sharpshooter.
Sb: +2 BEB, -2 curiosity
Game 2: He plays first turn lacky. I have a mancer in my hand but no red source to cast it. Being the god that I am, I lay a mox saphire and ancestral into the red source I need, laying he grim to chump the lacky so I don't get pwned by a siege gang or something stupid like that. Once again I beilive he beat on me a bit with a lone piledriver (gogo ½ pro blues for 2) but I got active loa and began drawing and dropping like mad. He has very little board when I grim him at eot and then alpha strike for 7 with fow backup.
Finals: Matt again with sui. I finished early enough to watch the entire semi-finals match between Matt and Russ and despite me cheering Russ on (so I didn't have to face evil sui again that pwned me in round robin), Matt was the victor and will now attempt to pwn me again.
Game 1: I win the die roll, and drop waste, go. He plays a swamp+d rit+negator (needless to say I have no fow
) and passes. I drop a volc and cast a spiketail. On his turn he swings for 5 and I drop to 15. He lays another swamp, casts sacromancy, and duresses me, taking brainstorm. I play a mox saphire and a land and pass. He swings for 7 and I drop to 8. I play another factory and pass. On his mainphase he plays a hypnotic spectre and I tell him to swing at me with the negator. He happily obliges (I was surprised!!!) and I block with factory pump, factory non-pump do to sickness, and my spiketail. He tells me to take 2 from the sacro and I drop to 5 (I had fetched). I tell him to sac 6 permanents. He has 7 (3 swamp, sacro token, sacro, hippie, negator) and tries to sac everything but the hippie, however I inform him that negator has taken leathal damage (6) and dies as a state based effect and thus cannot be sacced to it's triggered ability. He loses all of his permanents and I lose my 2 factories. I play a boa and a mancer and swing witht eh spiketail. He lays a swamp but I strip it and start beating down. He dies horribly.
Sb: -1 oxidize, -1 gorilla shamen, +2 fire/ice
Game 2: He goes first and drops swamp, sacro, pass. I play a first turn fetch, mancer, which allows me to take control of the board, in addition to a fire/ice, burning his zombie and he starts taking pain from the sacro and eating some beats. He can never really get into the game and once again dies horribly.
YAY!! I get 1st place and walk away with 2 Mint/NM tundras and a Japanese 3D Elephant token to use for my call of the heard. I know I didn't mention it that much but there were a few games where it was pure gold and I was quite happy with running the 1. Now it gets even better!!! Overall I was very happy with my list and probably wouldn't change very much were I to play it again. (Except possibly sbing lightning bolts to pwn sui and kird apes, random stuff, etc)
Here is a complete meta game breakdown of what was there:
pool A(6):
2 4cc
1 salvagers deck
1 FCG
1 G/W aggro/control
something else
pool B (5):
1 WTF/r
1 affinity
1 R/G LD
1 G/u/r survival madness
1 sui black
So, it was pretty scrubby but there were competitive decks there, mainly me, the 2 4cc, and the FCG, possibly you could count salvagers deck also I suppose. The 2 4cc both were eliminated in Semi finals by madness and sui, making the top 8:
1: WTF/r
2: Sui black
3: FCG
4: Madness
in no order
4cc
4cc
salvagers deck
1 don't know
So, what I learned:
1: Tier 1 decks can get owned by sui black
2: 1st turn lavamancer does indeed rule the Vintage universe as every game I cast first turn mancer I won
3: Most Importantly, a well metagamed fish deck can do well even in random metas saturated with weird aggro decks (of course this assumes a non-standstill 3 colour build: the way it should be
)
Props:
Me: For winning
WTF/r: For Owning
Grim lavamancer & River boa: For being undercosted creatures with awesome abilities
2 md fire/ice: These things PWNned the meta!!
My friend Adria (Necropotenza): For free tech and many games of playtesting.
5 proxies: YAY proxies are the WAY TO GO!!
Slops:
4cc: For scrubbing out vs fowless madness and sui
Sui: For owning me 2 straight games 1st match.
