The deck:
Generic Solidarity build #152
// Lands
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
12 Island
// Spells
3 Meditate
4 High Tide
3 Cunning Wish
4 Reset
3 Turnabout
4 Brainstorm
2 Brain Freeze
4 Impulse
2 Flash of Insight
4 Opt
1 Twincast
4 Force of Will
4 Remand
// Sideboard
SB: 1 Meditate
SB: 1 Turnabout
SB: 2 Brain Freeze
SB: 1 Twincast
SB: 1 Stroke of Genius
SB: 4 Hydroblast
SB: 1 Chain of Vapor
SB: 4 Disrupt
The report:
Round 1: RG Loam
Should be a good matchup, but when you screw up enough with Solidarity, all matchups are bad.
Game 1 - Regulation win, nothing exciting happened. He conveniently drew his maindeck Gaea's Blessing, and was nice enough to complain about it so I knew for sure that I had to worry about it.
No SBing. From what I've seen, I can deal with this with my MD.
Game 2 - Long, long game where I screw up in just about every way possible. I eventually die, despite nothing happening for about 10 turns, and I'm positive I had a way to win that game
Game 3 - About 2 minutes on the clock when we start, and there's no way he can win in that time. Instead he simply plays for a draw by screwing both our mana as much as possible.
Round 2: Richard with Kobe Loam (A direct netdeck, I believe. I wasn't familiar with the list at the time)
See above, except this time I didn't lose to myself.
Game 1 - Regulation win, no problems.
I board in Hydroblasts, as I'd seen D.Dreams and wanted to stop it.
Game 2 - Opponent double-mulliganned and manascrewed, I simply won at my leisure.
Round 3: Rich with BRW Aggro (Like B/w Confidant, but with -disruption and +burn and Avatar of Discord)
I've played against this deck before, and it's not too tough. It's owner had made some changes though, which caught me out. He wasn't playing enough targets for Disrupts to be worthwhile.
Game 1 - Turn 1 Hyppie, Turn 2 Hyppie and I don't get lucky.
Game 2 - I board in Disrupts and try to combo, but get stuck mid combo with a hand full of Remands, Disrupts and Land. Whooops, that was a dumb idea.
Round 4: Crispin with Mono B Discard/SmallPox.
In theory, this should be an awful matchup. Trouble is, in practice, it... wasn't. The build here only had the Rack for a clock, so if I could simply draw out of all the early discard I could eventually set up a winning position in spite of all the disruption.
Game 1 and 2 both went to me with simple-ish combos ag
Round 5: Matt with Mono Red Burn.
This guy won the previous tournament with this deck, but I wasn't too worried - his deck is about the same speed as mine, except that I have counterspells and he doesn't. Post board I get 4 Hydroblasts and he gets 4 REBs, which kinda evens out.
Again, I win 2-0 without too much trouble - I can take good guesses at when my life total is under threat, and time my combos accordingly.
Top 8: Goblins
Game 1: I win the die roll and combo out turn 4 opposite his potential lethal damage. Pity I tapped them all with Turnabout
Game 2: He mulligans into 2 Aether Vials and then draws another one. Vial is good and all, but it's not a card you want to see too much of when you've got to consistantly present lethal damage by turn 4.
Top 4: B/w Confidant
Disrupt is my answer to this matchup, the trouble was... it never did anything. I'm taking a long hard look at what should go in that slot now.
Game 1: I win, mostly thanks to Remand stopping his turn 2 play and buying me the turn I needed.
Game 2: I get Hyppied to death in short order
Game 3: See game 2. I mistakenly scooped when I had a faint chance of comboing out, which annoyed me immensely when I realised.
3rd Place Play-off: All that's on the line here is a playset of Lightning Bolts - the boosters were awarded by Swiss placement. We split the bolts as I had to go home, and my opponent had scouted me and realised he had an awful matchup.
The top decks were:
Top 2: 2* B/w Confidant
Top 4: Solidarity and some form of White/x control - I didn't get a proper look.
Top 8: 1 Iggy Pop, 1 Goblins, 1 Smallpox/Discard, 1?
The good: The metagame was suited to Solidarity... mostly. The B/w confidant decks were a nasty surprise.
The bad: I didn't win :-/. Also, Disrupt felt a bit pointless - it never seemed to do anything against the decks it was supposed to be beating. I need a new plan
