Painter @ Myriad in August

[Englishman_in_NH]

Here is the decklist and a short report afterwards. My notes are not that neat so the report will be short on this one.

1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
5 Moxen
4 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Academy Ruins
1 Tolarian Academy
5 Island
3 Underground Sea

1 Time Walk
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
3 Duress
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Tinker
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Darksteel Colossus
3 Painter's Servant
3 Grindstone
3 Lim-Dul's Vault
4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Echoing Truth

Sideboard

4 Energy Flux
3 Tormod's Crypt
3 Thorn of Amethyst
2 Sphere of Resistance
2 Extirpate
1 Darkblast


Round 1 Jason -Dawn of the Dead

Game 1, he wins the die roll, and thoughseizes my recall, and drops goyf turn 2 and rides it all the way, as I can counter all his other threats, but cannot deal with the goyf on board.

Game 2 - We go back and forth and I extirpate his goys and bobs, but misplay when he thoughtseizes me and I thirst when i know that Will is on top of my deck, the Will gets discarded and I lose to Gaddock Teeg, with my opponent having 2 cards left in his library, as he is able to kill my grindstones both times I get one out.

Round 2  Jason - Green/Black Beats

Unfortunately my round 2 opponent is new to magic and has only played limited before. His deck is 45 cards and he has to add lands to make it 60, plus he gets a game loss. I combo him off with grindstone game 2 on the 4th or 5th turn.

Round 3 Matt - 5 color Shop.

Game one I win the die roll (lowest prime number on 2d6) and go first turn time walk, second turn tinker. He doesn't have welder and doesn't draw it so we are off to game two.

Game two he has a lot of mana early plus thorn and goes for a Memory Jar, but I have the drain with the extra mana available. I cast Ancestral, Grindstone and Energy Flux off the Drain mana and he scoops them up shortly afterwards as he cannot deal with flux.

Round 4 Matt - Ichorid/Dredge

Game one he has Leyline, Chalice @ 0 and double bazaar, I couldn't quite keep up and zombies eat my brains.

Game two I play ruby, mana crypt and an underground sea and play painter, demonic tutor and tormod's crypt. He plays a city of brass and chain of vapors my crypt. Next turn I drop Grindstone and activate.

Game three, he plays a pregame leyline and opens up with bazaar. I drop tormod's turn one, and a thorn turn two. This slows him down, and I am able to get painter on the board and then Demonic for Grindstone. I still had 2 Extirpates in my hand, as he is bazaaring carefully through crypt and had not seen much of use.

Round 5 Seth - Bob Tendrils   ID

Top 8 Jonathan - Pitch Long / Grim Long

Game one, I get an early Grindstone and we fight over a bargain, with me thirsting in response, he forces and I force his Bargain and then his force. I get Painter, but he gets Hurkyl's to buy some time, but I win it eventually, after replaying the spells.

Game two, he forces an early painter and then drops necro while I have force but no blue card. He rides necro to a tinker for Colossus and one swing and mini tendrils finishes me off.

Game three I get an early Thorn to slow things down, but I miss a few land drops. I get a grindstone though and it saves me as my oppnent mysticals for tinker but I grind it away. He then gets down jar. His jar leads to a time walk with some more mana and then a twister into a necro. I get a couple of moxes and lotus plus land off the twister and a sphere hits the board. I get a second grindstone and grind myself to find a painter and get it into play. My opponent is at 2 from the necro a tendrils me small for 4 storm and I go to 11 and he necros down to 3. I grind him out of cards, hoping he doesn't have Will in hand. He doesn't, but he can't deck with necro in play. Unfortunately he had Colossus in hand and more than enough mana to cast it. I am able to get him down to 1 before he has cast it. I then grind myself, forgetting that I had painter out, so I mill my deck. I had boarded out Colossus out, but I have Academy Ruins in play so I put a second Painter on top of my empty Library, draw and play it. My opponent now cannot attack as I block with one painter, put another card on my library and swing back to kill him. I win at 3 life, with Colossus facing me down and with neither my opponent or I with any cards in our library. It was one of the most intense and interesting games I have ever played.

Top 4 ends up splitting and a bunch of us head out to Fuddruckers to watch Tyler eat 1lb of hamburger in a gigantic bun.

Thanks to Dan and Myriad for another great event and I hope to see abunch of people at Ray's event next.

Oli

[LotusHead]

Game one I win the die roll (lowest prime number on 2d6)

Nice one! I got to remember that!

[carl]

Round 3 Matt - 5 color Shop.

Game one I win the die roll (lowest prime number on 2d6) and go first turn time walk, second turn tinker. He doesn't have welder and doesn't draw it so we are off to game two.

How can you win the die roll with 2?

[emidln]

Perhaps his opponent cheats. Poorly. He could also be using "lowest prime on 2d6" to refer to his score while they actually rolled a single die.

[Englishman_in_NH]

We rolled two dice, whichever of us rolled a prime number won. If both of us rolled a prime number, the lowest prime number won. My opponent rolled a 9 (6 and 3) not a prime number. I rolled a 5 (3 and 2) which is prime, so I won.

[carl]

We rolled two dice, whichever of us rolled a prime number won. If both of us rolled a prime number, the lowest prime number won. My opponent rolled a 9 (6 and 3) not a prime number. I rolled a 5 (3 and 2) which is prime, so I won.

I see. I thought it was highest score with 2d6 wins, and that you won with the smallest prime number you can do with 2d6, which is two. Which is impossible...

Thanks for clarifying (and also for the report, as always).

You didn't comment on Lim-dul's Vault. Any better than Trinket Mage?

Cheers,

--
Carl

[Englishman_in_NH]

I have found Trinket Mages in this deck only really get Grinstone, as it is hard to justify all the silver bullets. I was testing a couple of Deep Analysis for a while as I had wanted more card draw to help the deck see more threats, but I thought of Lim Dul's Vault as essentially extra top deck tutors. Most of the time that's what they were. They are definitely cuttable for sideboard slots as needed, but for a main deck and to race the faster decks in the format they can give you whatever piece you are missing.

So as of right now I am continuing to use them, we shall see in the long run, how they do.

Oli

[Myriad Games]

Thanks for the report, Oli. Congratulations on another Vintage victory here at Myriad Games!

[MrJolly]

Congrats Oli.

[koboldwhat???]

ollie its seth, great job on t4

i think you should either main or side one aether spellbomb. in that t8 match it would have been much easrier to stop DC even when you milled yourself and you can potentially stop goyph every time while you mill like your round one.

[Tobi]

Very nice to finally see a Painter list without red and blasts. We are testing a similar UB version with Painter kill since some weeks and it performs quite well.

What was you particular reason to cut the blasts and keep the list UB?

Also, I like the sideboard. Very interesting choices!

[Englishman_in_NH]

Tobi,

 I haven't played Painter at all in a tournament setting with red. I prefer the stable manabase of two colours and find that the rebs replace the duress effects, which I would rather have at the moment against the plethora of combo that there is. Yes you give up the cute vindicate tricks, but I feel that the stable mana base and duress effects are worth it. I have tested a UB and U list with hydroblasts main, especially if I am expecting a lot of Control Slaver and Mono-Red Shops. Other than those decks though the card is obviously underwhelming. It has been good from the board, but I had replaced them with the sphere effects to try to shore up the combo matchup.

As I indicated briefly in my report I have been testing Deep Analysis in place of the Lim-Dul's Vaults. AS much as the Vaults were really useful whenever I cast one, the DA would have made my life a lot easier against a resolved Necropotence to deck someone playing combo.

I cut the Trinket Mages as I could not find room for all the toolbox cards I wanted, plus everything else. If the Trinkets return then an Aether Spellbomb is an easy addition, and has been played previously.

A month or two ago, I did in fact play a Salvager's/Painter's hybrid deck as the only additional cards from the Trinket Painter builds needed are Aether Spellbomb and Auriok Salvagers. It should be noted that with infinite mana from Salvager's and E.E. and Grindstone, you can deck someone, by grinding them then E.E for 1, then return both cards, then repeat as needed.

I hope this helps, answers some of the questions.

PS  Tobi, I would be interested in seeing your current UB list your team is testing. If you are able, please send me a pm with the list, I would be interested to see the differences and how the different cards have performed in testing.

Oli 

[Negator13]

Doesn't Darksteel Colossus have trample?

[Englishman_in_NH]

Yes Colossus has trample. 

I presume you are asking about the last match in top 8. I was at 11 and took 8 trample damage to leave me at 3 life when I won.

[jmedina]

Hopefully I didn't miss something that simple LOL

Congrats BTW Oli!- That Game Was RIDICULOUS!

[madlucas]

Hi Oli,
could you please tell me why do you play 2 Spheres and 3 Thorns and not four and one?
I've been testing this list for about a week now and it's been really successful.
In all of the games I played I found myself casting a Lim Dul's Vault only twice while the rest of the games I was always pitching it to FoW.
What do you think about some utilities like Merchant Scroll or Impulse or Repeal instead of those three?

Thanks for the report.

[Englishman_in_NH]

The Sphere Thron numbers is because I couldn't get my hands on 2 more Spheres, it would be 4 and 1 optimally.

In regards to the Lim-Dul's they are open slots for whatever utility you feel you may need. As I staed before I had been testing Deep Analysis in that slot, but I wanted to speed up the potential goldfish against the faster combo decks, so I went with the Vault plan for that day. Scroll and or Repeals is certainly another option.

[Glix]

Not wanting to nit-pick, but, considering you play a basic swamp, any particular reason you run a 4 strand - 1 delta split and not the inverse?  (I'm assuming it was a transcription error)

I like this direction of the deck, by the way, the simplification of the strategy and the removal of cute "tricks" seems like a more optimal direction, particularly in a meta where duress effects seem a lot stronger than blast effects when painter isn't down.

A few questions:

What are your thoughts on Thoughtseize vs Duress?

Is truth better than EE?  I mention this because you have academy ruins, and late game ee could do some nasty things with that, I would speculate, while early game they perform relatively similar functions.

Would another draw engine have been more or less powerful than vault?  How significant was vault, that is, and how often would it have been better/worse than other given options, would you speculate?

Congrats on the finish man.

[Englishman_in_NH]

Yes 4 Deltas are better, but the 1 swamp was a last minute addition, and I don't have the Deltas to switch easily.

E.E may be better than E Truth, but my combo is shut off by Null Rod, and from playing Salvager's I'm used to running a non-artifact solution. It's a balance between Academy Ruins for recursion and Mystical to search for instants more easily. I will certainly be testing the E.Es as an alternative.

In regards to the Lim-Dul's see my responses above. The slots are definitely card draw or card search. Easier Trinket Mages, Deep Analysis, Lim-Dul's something like that. With the number of duress effects in the format I was trying to leave more options out of hand as possible. Also the Vaults are 2 drops vs most card draw costing more. It is one of the main reasons I was testing Deep Analysis, as I was looking for a card draw / card filterer at the 2 mana slot.

In terms of Thoughtseize vs Duress, right now the only creature I'm at all worried about is Welder, and I don't feel that that is enough to warrant the 2 life loss for the spell.

[Sean Ryan]

Have you or anyone else you know of tested a version with only 1 painter and 1 Grindstone?  I remember the Flame Vault Gifts that went this route with their 2 card six mana combo, granted we don't  have 4 Gifts to assemble the combo anymore. 

Once you cut REB the incentive for running multiple Painters drops significantly. The question seems to be whether running multiple copies with the risk of having dead cards in hand, but with ease of assembly is better than running more draw/search and disruption without dead cards.