[Report] 25th place at Myriad Games Aug 11 B/U Control

First off, would an admin kindly move this to the correct forum? Thanks.
More importantly, why I am writing a report after placing 25th with some weird deck? Well, it was a fun day, so my main goal is to just give a recap of the decks I saw (I lost to two Top 8s).

My decklist (2-3-0 and drop at Myriad Aug 11th):

"What the hell is this?"
4x FoW           S/B
3x Mana Drain        4x Leyline of the Void
3x Mana Leak        3x Blue Elemental Blast
3x Spell Snare        1x The Abyss
3x Duress           2x Nevins Disc
2x Diabolic Edict        2x Energy Flux
1x Repeal           2x Island
           1x Swamp
4x Brainstorm
3x Street Wraith
2x Night's Whisper
1x Skeletal Scrying
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Windfall
1x Relearn

1x DSC
1x Tinker
1x Platinum Angel

1x Demonic Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Mystical Tutor

1x Black Lotus
1x Mana Vault
1x Mana Crypt
1x Lotus Petal
4x Moxen (no ruby)

4x Flooded Strand
2x Polluted Delta
4x Underground Sea
3x Island
1x Swamp

Round 1 vs. Ichorid (Eric Kerwin) (2-1)

Eric got lost and arrived late and thus had a game 1 loss.
So I let him win game 2 (just kidding)

Game 2 (loss): He Mulls to 4 and finds the bazaar, which he plops down on the play along with a Chalice at Zero (ugh), and begins to build his graveyard.
My hand was something like: Mystical Tutor, Night's Whisper, Lotus Petal, Vampiric Tutor, Delta, Drain, Island and I think I drew a Mox Pearl. Stupid chalice. I basically just needed to vamp for tinker, pre-chalice, which would have been an easy win, but now I had to mystical for tinker and vampiric for mana vault so that I could get a non-zero-cc artifact to sac to tinker. So I lay delta and pass the turn. He puts some therapies in his yard and gets a creature in to play and therapies for FoW which I dont have. Still has another therapy in the yard. I sac delta, get a sea and vampiric for mana vault (not wanting to show tinker first with the mystical). I draw mana vault, not surprisingly. Play an island. Now I leave my mana open to either drain if I absolutely must, but hopefully cast mystical and then brainstorm. Pass the turn to him. He puts about 20 more cards in his graveyard, but I dont think he has enough mana to finish me this turn. Being so absorbed in what's going on with all of this dredging, I stupidly forget to cast anything at the end of his turn. Fortunately, even had I been able to play tinker this turn, he still would have gone off next turn and killed me in 1 or 2 turns before I could swing twice with Colossus. I wish colossus had haste. I also hope that was the first and last time I ever have to Vamp Tutor for a mana vault.

Game 3 (win): He dredges to 1, and it's not bazaar or chalice. I have a leyline in my opening hand, 'nuff said. Interestingly enough, it still took me until turn 3 to win and I counted how many cards he saw without seeing a bazaar. He serum powdered 3 times during his mulliganing and drew 3 cards during the game. He saw 41 cards without getting a bazaar. Craziness. I shouldnt have won this match.

Round 2 vs. Control Severance Belcher (Sam Best) (1-2)

Game 1 (loss): It took us both quite a while to figure out what the other was playing. I hardly remember anything about game 1 or game 2. Game 1 went extremely long, probably at least to turn 8 or 9, with both of us land dropping and building up for the inevitable counter war. I dont remember what triggered it (probably me trying to tinker), but he came out victorious with a welder on the table which preceded a thirst for knowledge discarding belcher. Game over in 2 turns. Damn you belcher. The luxury with his deck is that he could just sit and wait for the right time to cast a welder and had 2 more if one of them got countered/killed, or even hard cast the belcher (not exactly that difficult), while I had far less options and had to be more proactive in finding tinker, then casting it and only really had one shot to do it all. Still, it was a good, close game.

Game 2 (win): Ah first turn Duress, how sweet you are. Almost as sweet as first and third turn Duress. So right there I knocked out FoW and a REB. He had to topdeck for a couple turns but still managed to get a welder in play. Fortunately it was only there long enough to see the second swing of my colossus.

Game 3 (loss): His first or second turn Duress knocked out my FoW and I don’t remember what I had, but there was A LOT of jockeying for control. I got a DSC on the board, but he truthed it back to my hand and put down a welder. I spent my early mana and counters getting the tinker through and thus had a long recovery road ahead. I was topdecking at this point but fortunately my first pull was FoW which I used to force my BEB through on his Welder. Lots of topdecking ensues.....He hardplays a belcher eventually. I have to build up land to attempt to hardcast platz which is in my hand. But having to spend 7 mana to play a spell wouldnt leave me with nearly enough counter backup, so I really cant do anything but sit and use my 3rd win condition - his mana crypt. Amazingly enough, since putting it in on turn 2 or 3, he manages to take damage for 5 Straight Turns!! He is at 3, and has chipped away at me with belcher and I'm down to to 7 life. He responds to crypt with belcher and gets me down to 3. He rolls safely on crypt! He then tries to timewalk, which I decide to drain. In retrospect it was a bad idea as I ended up burning for 1. Had I not done that, I would have made it a little more difficult for him to kill me, which he did anyways, on his next upkeep, before crypt.

Anyways, that was some good stuff. 3 fun games. He never used it, but he saw Recoup games 1 and 3, I believe, and both times it was quite a threat (and really forces your opponent to do ALOT of thinking). Recoup is a great card. Very tough loss for me, though, as this put me in lower brackets and didn’t get me matchups with GAT (which I specifically built this deck to beat).

Round 3 vs. U/B/W Phish (Chad Behre) (0-2)

Game1 (loss): My hand was Mystical, night's whisper, spell snare, mox jet, demonic tutor, delta, USea.
Turn 1: He was on the play and laid a scrubland and passed. I drew a lotus petal, laid a jet, petal and a delta, sac'ed it for a sea, tutored for tinker and passed, with 1 blue available for spellsnare on the petal.
Turn 2: He played a tundra or a sea and a Meddling Mage, which I let through. He names Merchant Scroll and then passes.
I draw a brainstorm. Here's where it all goes wrong. I have 3 options as far as I can tell.
Option 1: I can play my underground sea, tinker>colossus with spellsnare backup right now and then mystical for FoW at the end of his turn if I still have the petal.
Option 2: I can play the Usea, mystical for FoW right now and then brainstorm, which puts the FoW in my hand right now. HOWEVER, I'm in quite the quandry, as which 2 cards would I then put back on top??? Obviously, I put a night's whisper back, but what else? Even if I draw a mox/crypt/lotus/vault, I would then have to either put the FoW back on top, or the spell snare back on top, leaving me effectively no FoW either way. So the net effect of this option is that I would probably put tinker on top and wait til next turn to cast it with FoW backup.
Option 3: I don’t play a land, Brainstorm, and hope that I draw both a FoW and a mox/lotus/vault/crypt, putting night's whisper and the land back on top.
So it seemed like I had my choice of Extremely risky/aggressive play (option 3), moderately risky play (option 1), and slow, but much less risky play (option 2).
Well I chose Option 1, taking the risk that he didn’t have FoW and a pitch in his tri-color deck. I figured I had the answer to echoing truth (spellsnare) so I was pretty confident.
Anyway, I was right about him not having FoW, but he topdecked a Swords and that was gg shortly thereafter.
Chad was very classy and said he would have made the same play (he was probably laughing at me to himself). It seemed reasonable at the time, but after the game was over, it seemed like THE DUMBEST play ever, and still does when I think about it now. Why the heck wouldn’t I go for option 2?? It's not like I was playing flash or Ichorid. I should have expected Swords (and expected Fish) having seen the scrubland and meddling mage. Oh well, you live and learn.

Game 2 (loss): Good old fashioned beatdown thanks to a perfectly timed Kataki, which stopped me from being able to tinker (couldn’t get enough mana, after paying to keep my mox in play).

Round 4 vs. Ravager Affinity (Sara Yarrington) (0-2)

Game 1 (loss): I'm pretty sure Sara would have beat me 9 out of 10 games as she's a smart player and my deck certainly is not meant to handle lots of little modular guys. Actually, what really sealed the deal was her option both games of moving the modular tokens and/or the equipment that gives +1 for each artifact in play, over to an ornithopter, as my colossus cant block that anyways. The only thing I did was edict her arcbound ravager, which just delayed the inevitable. Game 1 was a big beating. When she wondered what the hell I was playing, I joked that it was an Underground Sea deck, as that was about all she really saw Game 1.

Game 2 (loss): Therapy really hurt and tipped her off to my Energy Flux, which I had tutored for. I duressed to see a vamp tutor, yawg will and a REB. Yikes. I got rid of vamp I think, as she was low on mana and I was theoretically about to play energy flux. But by this time, she had a ravager, a disciple, an ornithopter and 2 moxen among others. I had a hardcasted Street Wraith (ridiculous, yes) and even had I played the flux, she still would have been able to sac everything doing damage with disciple and moving the tokens over to him, and then swinging for the win. Not even close (well, she let my 3rd win condition, her mana crypt, take her down to 6, but she could have sac'd it sooner if she had wanted to).

Round 5 vs. GAT (Taylor Pratt) (2-1)

Game 1 (Loss): Finally I get to play GAT!! I don’t remember what happened this game very well, but I edicted his Tog and then we both topdecked for a long time, before I finally got a DSC on the board. He then Gush/Opted and hit the echoing truth and that was that, as he had a whole hell of a lot more counter back up and more mana available at that point.

Game 2 (Win): This was quite possibly the coolest hand I've ever seen. I mulliganed to 6 and played first, drawing Black Lotus, Lotus Petal, Demonic Tutor, Jet, FoW, Spellsnare. Petal/Jet>Demonic Tutor for Tinker. Lotus>Tinker Saccing Jet. Pitch Spellsnare to FoW to counter his FoW leaving me with no cards in hand and nothing on the board but 1 DSC, lol! He didnt draw an echoing truth.

Game 3 (Win): The deck actually worked the way it was supposed to, I kept countering stuff, mana leak really worked well for a change. I eventually tinkered with FoW backup and then spellsnared an echoing truth, I believe.

I then tested my deck against Craig Dupre and won a ridiculously broken game seeing an ancestral, 2x FoW, spellsnare, mana drain, Lotus, 2 Sapphires and a Tinker over the course of 2 turns and even forcing his first turn duress. Mwahahahaha

Final thoughts: I was kind of surprised to see so many fetchlands. I was running 6 as were a bunch of other people (lots of people running 5 too). I guess Stifle and Mindcensor arent going to be making much of an effect on those.

Spellsnare is just awesome, I cant say enough good things about it. It hits Merchant Scroll, Etruth, Dryad, Flash, lots of Fish, Drain, Mana Leak, etc….

Despite everyone commenting that Skeletal Scrying was a nice addition to the deck, I didn’t play it once, so I'm rethinking that. Seems good on paper, but it's not as efficient as Night's Whisper early on and just seems like it costs too much mid-to-late game. Night's Whisper, on the other hand, was really strong. The life loss hurts more than I thought it would (especially with Street Wraith and Fetch lands), but it costs so little to play and helps to sort of keep pace with gush.

I'm taking out Windfall and Relearn (never played them). I'm not giving up on the deck yet. Everyone wondered why I dont just play GAT, as this is pretty close to GAT. I'd like to think that it gives a favorable matchup against GAT (we shall see), and maybe with some work (especially on my sideboard, which I admittedly threw together at the last second), I could strengthen it against Fish. Wish I woulda played Stax.

Thanks again for a great tourney as always, Dan.