Manaless Ichorid gets 3rd place at 1st Cary Cup

[meadbert]

I played the same list that I have been playing for almost a year now:

Bazaar stuff:
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Serum Powder
3 Petrified Field

Dredgers:
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
1 Darkblast

Beaters:
4 Bridge from Below
4 Narcomoeba
4 Ichorid

Free Disruption:
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Unmask
4 Chalice of the Void

Flashback Stuff:
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Dread Return
2 Ancestor's Chosen

Sidboard cards that are in the maindeck:
4 City of Brass

Sideboard:
4 Gemstone Mine
2 Wax/Wane
1 Darkblast
4 Chain of Vapor
4 Emerald Charm


I am sure once other tournament reports go up someone will say "Ichorid was everyone."  Out of 21 decks there were exactly three Ichorid decks and probably 12 Gush decks.  I do have sympathy for David Early who played against Ichorid the last two rounds of his last tournament and the first two rounds of this tournament.  Playing against Ichorid four rounds in a row can be maddening.

Round 1: David Earley playing GAT
David knocked me out of the top 4 eight months ago when I was paying Gifts and he was playing Long so I am sort of happy for a rematch.  That said, I am not thrilled about playing someone so good in the first round.
Game 1:  David wins the roll and has what would be a combolicious hand but I have Leyline, Chalice and Unmask on turn 1 which meant his Yawg Will is dead.  Just in case I Unmask Yawg anyway.  From there he gets a dryad but I have way to many blockers and win without being damaged.
Game 2:  David mulligans to 6 and still does not have hate but keeps a hand with Vamp, Demonic and Scroll.  I am able to Unmask Demonic on turn 1.  Vamp finds Fastbond which I Wane.  David then Scrolls for Gush with Fastbond in the yard.  He then Gushes and passes the turn.  At this point I am assuming that David had top-decked Yawg the previous turn because the standard play with Fastbond on the yard would have been to Scroll for Mystical and then Mystical for Yawg.  It turns out that David only drew Yawg after Gushing.  Anyway, I Therapy Yawg and from there win easily without being damaged.
1-0 (2-0) (0 damage)

Round 2:  Ralph playing random aggro.
Ralph started with Flooded Strand.  He then used it to fetch Plateau.  At this point I was about ready to call a judge since I have never heard of Flooded Strand fetching Plateau.  It turns out that Flooded Strand can fetch all Plains including Plateau!  Who knew?  He throws down a quick Jotun Grunt.  On turn 2 I have triple Therapy.  I have no idea what to name so I name Grunt and whiff but see 2xMagus of the Moon and 2xWindborn Muse.  For those who do not know Windborn Muse says I must pay 2 for each attacking creature.  This is something I really do not want to have to do.  Therapies 2 and 3 name Magus and Muse and rip 4 cards out of Ralph's hand.  Ralph blocks Ichorid with Grunt, so I Darkblast Grunt.  My bridges hang around since I have Leyline out.  From there I win easily.
EDIT:  Left out game 2 against Ralph.  I do not have my notes with me, but this was the only game that I Dread Returned the entire day.  My target was Golgari Grave-Troll who was a huge 17/17.  Raph had chump blockers so Grave-Troll never did any damage.  I had boarded out Ancestor's Chosen so that was not an option.
2-0 (4-0) (1 damage[City of Brass])

Round 3:  Cody playing Drain Tendrils
Game 1:  I open with Leyline and Cody just concedes because he wants a win and knows this matchup can be slow post board.
Game 2:  Cody mulls to 1 trying to find hate (he ran 4 Leyline and 4 Needle).  His one card is a Needle but it is Therapied before he finds mana and I win easily.  It turns out that against my advice Cody dropped his Needle count to three at the last minute.  While I would like to encourage all future opponents to do this, I generally encourage my teammates to run a full set of Leylines and Needles post board if they expect to beat Ichorid.
3-0 (6-0) (1 damage [City of Brass])

At this point I can draw in with a record of 3-0-2.  I am still in first after Swiss.  I have only been damaged by my own City of Brass.

Top 8: Ben playing Flash
In game 1 Ben wins the roll and opens with Fetch->Trop, Lotus, Heart Sliver, Virulent Sliver.  This is just not good enough against Ichorid.
Ben gets two swings in before I have a huge army of Tokens.  From there I win easily.
Game 2:  I open with Leyline and Ben did not.  Apparently he had a turn 1 win if I did not have Leyline.  Instead Ben harcasts Hulk which I Chain of Vapor.  From there I win quickly.
 4-0 (8-0) (5 damage)

At this point the top 4 is Cody Vinci (Drain Tendrils), Me (Bert Kyle), Darien Elderfield (Gush Storm) and Eric Becker(GAT).

Top 4: Rematch with Cody playing Drain Tendrils
Game 1:  I totally jinx myself twice here.  First Cody rolls a 1 during the die roll so I become very happy.  I then roll a 1.  Cody rolls a 3.  I roll a 1.  At this point I point out that I have not mulliganed to fewer than 5 yet today.  Naturally the gods curse me for my hubris and I mull to oblivion never finding Bazaar and lose on turn 5.  At this point I am in a world of pain.  This matchup just went from about 60% in my favor to about 80% in Cody's favor.
Game 2:  Cody opens with Leyline and Needle.  I quickly Emerald Charm Leyline and then later Chain Needle eot giving me two Bazaar activations.  From there I am able to Therapy Needle away and win quickly.  Since I have a huge advantage when on the play this win is not that huge.  Cody still has a 70% chance of winning when on the play post board.  This is because Needle is such a pain when I am on the draw.
Game 3:  Cody opens with 2xLeyline and then Intuitions for 3x Needle.  I am actually able to remove both Leylines.  Then Tinker comes out but I rip Chain of Vapor off the top and attempt to Chain DSC, but Cody has Drain and DSC does me in.
4-1 (9-2)

Darien defeated Eric in the other Semi Final and Cody went on to win the tournament by defeating Darien in the finals.

Some Thoughts:
As usual Manaless Ichorid performed great for me all day long.  About 1 game in 16-17 you mull to oblivion so in a potentially 8 round tournament you have to expect to get one autoloss.  That this autoloss occureed in game 1 of the top 4 was unfortunate.

Although I lost to Cody in the semis, I was actually 3-2 against him on the day so there is a bit of a moral victory there.  I defeated the Champion in three of five matches and was undefeated against everyone else.

Outside of the top 4 round  against Cody, I was essentially untouched.  I actually went through the Swiss only being damaged by my own City of Brass.  I think that is a first for me.

Post board:  I finished 5-1 post board, so anyone who says that Ichorid is easy to hate out is dead wrong.  Ever since Bridge from Below was printed I have never had a losing record post board in a tournament.  Bridge is just way too busted and one Bridge is a wrecking ball over time.

Easy to Play:  There were two other guys playing Ichorid.  Neither finished with a winning record.  Ichorid is a very, very difficult deck to play.  Usually you are activating Bazaar every turn and these decisions are diffult.  The process of sideboarding is far more complicated since you are bringing in more cards.  Cabal Therapy remains one of the most skill intensive cards in Magic.


Non-Ichorid related notes:
Drain Tendrils:  I swear this deck is still good.  When Gifts was restricted I figured everyone would start playing DT, but instead they picked up GAT.  In a metagame geared towards beating GAT, Drain Tendrils can be powerful since it has the much better Stax matchup and does fine against GAT.  The fact that so much GAT hate is geared towards Dryads (Threads) really helps out Drain Tendrils

TurboGush:  During the championship round I tested Turbo Gush against Andrew playing Super Long.  I won three out of four games all played preboard.  I may go back to playing TurboGush because it has been testing so well.  I may chalk up the poor result at the last tournament to a bit of bad luck in a 4 round tournament.

[Yare]

Thanks for the quick report!  Yeah, in our match, I definitely felt like you were "untouched" as you put it for all your swiss rounds.  At no point did I think "oh, I can realistically win this game/match."  As much as I hate to admit it (because I'm just kind of bitter at the archetype for existing), your build shows a lot of meticulous deckbuilding and skill.  I was actually pretty sure you were gonna win the whole thing when I left after the swiss, but evidently not.  In any case, congrats and I hope we play again in the future.

Oh, technical note.  I actually played Ichorid twice in a row at my last event in Columbus, but that was in rounds 2 and 3 of a 5 round event.  So, it wasn't actually four straight.  It's also "Earley" but you're not the first and you definitely won't be the last, so no biggie.  

[RaleighNCTourneys]

Hey Bert, congrats on the finish. I think if people took the time to master Ichorid like you have, it would be the dominant deck in the metagame. I hope people don't do that though b/c you know how I feel about Ichorid... but the power of the deck combined with the skill level you play it at is absolutely amazing. Our swiss match was just stupid... and so was our top 4 match for the most part. I think game 2 of the top 4 I mulled to 5 and kept a hand with just Needle and no Leyline?

[meadbert]

I think game 2 of the top 4 I mulled to 5 and kept a hand with just Needle and no Leyline?

I just checked my notes and I think you are right.  I got confused with match 3 where I removed both Leylines.  In game 2 there was no Leyline.

[TopSecret]

Ralph started with Flooded Strand.  He then used it to fetch Plateau.  At this point I was about ready to call a judge since I have never heard of Flooded Strand fetching Plateau.  It turns out that Flooded Strand can fetch all Plains including Plateau!  Who knew?

That was a nice and well written report. Thanks for posting it!

[bronxie]

Nice job, Bert.  Congratz on doing so well.  I played against one ichorid deck yesterday and it stomped me, but that was because i was playing a terrible deck.  Good luck in the future.

What did you grab for the prize?

--Geoff

[bronxie]

ok im looking for the list that Matt was using saturday

i played him second round and if anybody has the list it would be great cause it looks like fun =)

Geoff Mullin

[wiley]

Great job Bert.  Glad to see at least one of the Ichorid players got to top4.  I was one of the other Ichorid players (finished w/ a 2-2-1 record), and played your exact list.

The wins were against Yare w/ GAT (2-1) and Mike M. with red aggro stax (2-0), while both players are obscenely good at magic, playing against Ichorid feels like a different game.

My notes for the two loses and draw are as follows.

1st loss was to cody (see his round one for the game), nothing I can really say here.  I chained colossus once and he Bstormed to yawg and tinkered it back out.  I failed to find another chain next turn and lost :/  It happens.

The draw was against Deez Naughts played by george.  Game 1 was insane wher he got an infinitely recurring crypt thanks to academy ruins, but a chalice three turns or so later stopped those shinanagins and one dredged narco + 1 hardcat narco swung for 16 points O_o.  I'm still kind of shocked at that game, but I think it would have been lost if he had drawn a few more cards instead of crypting every turn.  Game 2 saw my leyline and his crypt fighting for dominance.  The stalemate broke when he got dreadnaught on the table just in time.  Game 3 saw me winning most of the game but time was called and a smart walk on his part brought the game to a draw with me capable of wining on my next turn without a problem.  I think this is the first time I've ever come to time in a construted tournament.
(Note on Deez Naughts:  I think this is probably the hardest game one out of any current archetype, as even with a welder in stax it's hard for them to recur a crypt so easily and consistantly, and our sb is meant to deal with leyline more than crypt anyway.  Overall one of the worse machups IMO)

Third loss was to Ben playing flash.  Game one was a blowout for me, Game two he got his revenge with a turn one flash (with me having two gemstone mines and a chain in hand ).  Game three I did the bonehead mistake and broke the first rule of Ichorid (don't keep a hand without bazaar) and thought two leyline would be enough to keep him from winning until I got dredgers online.  He then proceeded to cast double virulent and I died to poison.

Overall a fun tourney, I wish I could of had the chancce to play the mirror.  While I think they are horrible games, it's because they are entirely counter-intuitive to the rest of magic (such a stupid/good/fun deck!).

[meadbert]

I totally agree about Deez Noughts being the worst matchup.  Wastelands and Trinket Mage fetching Crypt/Needle are a real problem.  The last time I ran through my gauntlet I only went 1-5 against Deez Noughts.  Grim Long is the other matchup that seems rough, but old school Grim Long has not really shown up for a while.  Shop Aggro looks bad on paper, but since most Shop Aggro lists do not run Leyline post board, they end up not being as bad as other matchups.

I am glad to hear that I was able to avenge your only two losses (Cody and Ben), although Cody got the last laugh and won the tournament.

Good luck in the next tournament!

[Duncan]

You didnt mention ancestor's chosen in your report. How often did you use him and do you still think he's better than something like desolation angel/flamekin zealot?

congrats on your finish

[meadbert]

Generally my opponent's scoop before I am able to Dread Return.  This is because it is Cabal Therapy that does the real damage.

The only Dread Return that resolved without someone scooping first was in game 2 against Ralph.  I had boarded out Ancestor's Chosen and targeted a Grave-Troll who was 17/17.
I consider Dread Return to be an out in case DSC hits or Bridges are Extirpated rather than the goal.  Most games are simply won by Bridge token beats.
Also Grave-Troll is very good on his own so any creatures that are better are simply gravy/icing on the cake/win more.

This is why I am opposed to running 4 Dread Return targets preboard in the current meta.  You are rarely racing combo.