Paint it Black - T8 Report[Blue Bell]

So I decided to run a Painter variant at Blue Bell because it has been testing quite well against everything except Oath and MUD both of which aren't that popular in our local meta. I worked on the deck with my friend Steve (personalBackfire) who came up with original list, I primarily did testing and tuning.

Here is the list that I ran:
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
1 Tolarian Academy
2 Island
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
3 Painter's Servant
1 Darksteel Colossus
4 Force of Will
2 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast
3 Mana Drain
3 Thoughtseize
4 Accumulated Knowledge
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Ponder
1 Brainstorm
2 Grindstone
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Tinker
1 Time Walk
2 Intuition
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor

Sideboard:
1 Tropical Island
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Ancient Grudge
1 Annul
2 Extirpate
4 Leyline of the Void

The main difference from the average Painter deck was the inclusion of Thoughtseize which work very well in the deck. Both for the information you get and being able to remove non-blue threats that REB couldn't deal with. Also the draw engine is more robust with Intuition/AK over Thirst. Splashing for green makes the manabase a bit sketchy but I believe Tarmogoyf is needed against Fish decks and Workshops. It also lets you run Ancient Grudges for Shops, it is also strong in the mirror. The one random Annul was the 15th card put into the board as I wanted something for both Shops and Oath.

R1 - Painter
My opponent was playing his own take on Painter with Ancient Grudges and Ignot Chewers in the MD. I knew what he was playing when I was scouting before the event started. Knowing it’s the mirror is pretty important because dropping an early Painter can be a death sentence if your opponent has Grindstone and enough permission to back it up.

G1 - I keep a slowish hand with Drain, REB, and Grindstone. If he drops an early Painter I'll be able to protect GStone and win. I'm on the draw and rip Thoughtseize casting it seeing a hand of Will, Scroll, 2x Trickbind, and 2 Painter which makes me pretty happy. I take the Scroll since my opponent opened with a Mox and could cast Scroll->Recall if he draws a land.

Next turn I hit Vamp Tutor which I cast on his endstep it resolves and I get Recall. My opponent has been missing land drops so I go for a fetch which he Trickbinds tapping out leaving a window to resolve Recall without worrying about REB so I go for it. A couple turns pass and he eventually drops a Painter I play my GStone but he has mana to Trickbind so I wait for his turn, he main phases TFK which I drain. I use the will I drew a couple turns ago to setup Seize on 1 Trickbind Vamp->Time Walk + Recall and use Stone which is Trickbinded then he dies on Walk turn.

Sideboard:
-2 Painter Servant, -1 Grindstone -1 Island
+3 Ancient Grudge +1 Tropical Island

G2 - Not much happened this game as my opponent didnt have any card draw going and couldn’t deal with barrage of Intuition and AKs.

R2 - UW Fish
I win the roll and start with a Thoughtseize seeing Lotus, Pearl, Tundra, Meddling Mage, Swords, Null Rod. I take the Null Rod as it shuts down my combo and 2 moxes in grip. He plays Turn 1 Mage on Tendrils of Agony since he doesn't know what I'm playing. On his next turn he plays Kataki which I can't stop as I only had a REB in hand but endstep I kill the Mage to slow down beats. I have 2 Moxes and a Grindstone in play which I pay for but it's restricting my mana.

A couple turns later I draw Mana Drain and my opponents board hasnt changes he's kept both Mox and Lotus alive but has failed to draw another land. I have a Gifts but I can't think of a pile that will win the game with the number of lands I have and I have a Drain for when he draws a land to fuel a strong Gifts. We both go about 7 turns not drawing mana sources and I'm down to 6 life from just Kataki beats.

Finally I have enough mana to upkeep Gifts for Vamp, Mystical, Lotus, DT. And go for a big Will turn. This is where my opponent makes a mistake after I have the combo assembled but not enough mana to activate he cracks his Lotus EOT for Swords on Painter. I use the REB from the yard to counter it, he has a second Swords which I counter with the Drain thats been stuck in my hand. If he had cast the Swords on his upkeep then he would have had a good chance to win since I didn't have any more backup and had to use most of my Will to setup the combo.

Sideboard
-3 Thoughtseize -4 REB
+1 Tropical Island +4 Tarmogoyf +2 Ancient Grudge

Grudge is actually pretty spicy against the current UW Fish as it kills both Null Rod and Cannonist.

G2 - Similar to the 1st round this game was pretty lackluster. I play a turn 1 Painter which gets Swords. He gets in for a little damage but then Tinker->Colossus with Force for his 2nd Swords ends the game. In retrospect he noticed that he should have waited for me to show him Grindstone before going for Swords. If he made this play the game would have been much tighter.

R3 - TPS(Nick Coss)
My testing showed that this matchup is heavily in Painters favor but Nick is a solid player who has been making many T8s so I know I'll still need to play tight.

G1 - I win the roll and have a bad hand against TPS since it has no early disruption so I toss it back. The 2nd hand is much better with Seize, Reb, Force, AK and lands. I turn 1 Seize and see; GT, Ritual, Necro, Mox Jet, 2 Land, Darksteel. I take the Necro on his turn he draws Timetwister which sucks as I'd really prefer to REB but still have to counter. I draw Intuition, he plays a 2nd land and casts GT shipping turn and casting Recall on is next turn which I REB. Eventually I fire off Intuition for AKs and gain a ton of card advantage but I cant seem to draw the win. Thankfully I have enough Thoughtseizes and counters to survive until I eventually asssemble the win. It was a little dicey since I had taken dmg from multiple fetches, 3 Seizes, and couple mana burn and he had Tendrils in hand the whole game so despite being way ahead on cards my life was very precarious.

Sideboard
Nada

G2 - I can't seem to recall what happened in this game except that I had some decent early disruption and we got into a big stalemate where I only had Painter who was laying the beats. I topdeck the Grindstone which resolves and I activate, Nick then begins to tell me what a master is he and I'm confused until he shows me a hand of DSK and Gaea's Blessing which he just drew. I feel like I dodged a bullet since I would have needed to dig for Recall after reloading his deck with most of his major threats.

R4 - Mirror
He was sitting next to me playing Painter against a friend when I was just playing Oath casually before the tourney so he asks me how the Oath decks been working out for me I say its pretty solid.

G1 - I open on U. Sea->Seize seeing that he has a fair amount of disruption in REB and Drain but not much draw so I snag the TFK out of his hand. On his next endstep I go for Intuition which he lets resolve since he'd rather get AK's out of deck and stop it with REB but what he doesn't know is that I have the 4th AK in hand. I pass the turn and on my endstep he goes for TFK. I cast AK in resp which he REBs I let REB resolve still in response to TFK, AK for 4 drawing DSK and discarding him endstep since I have 8 cards. After that blast of card advantage I setup up a massive Will.

Sideboard
- Same as R1

G2 - My opponent is pretty new to T1 so he doesn't know all the subelties of the format but with time I could see him becoming a strong player. This game showed that as he had the Ancestral in his opening hand and instead of casting it either mainphase or on upkeep he does it on my endstep. I didn't have Force but I did have REB which I was more than happy to use, he did not have backup. Despite stoping his Recall the rest of his hand is strong as well with a Trinket Mage -> Divining Top and another Mage for Grindstone. I was getting beat down and continued to draw mana sources and Thoughtseizes which weren't exactly helping my cause. I drew a Ancient Grudge which I used on a Mox since he didn't have the most mana and then I drew a 2nd. With now having the 2nd Grudge on my endstep he goes to top, in response I flashback Grudge he goes for Tap to draw and then I throw my other Grudge at it so it dies. It's pretty lame to use a full Grudges to kill a Top but it was supplying him solid card selection with fetch lands he had lying around. In the end it doesn't matter as he gets off a big Will with more than enough protection.

G3 - I mulligan this game and my opener is: 2 Lands, Ponder, Academy, Painter, Force.

I open with Ponder into Grindstone and Time Walk leaving Walk on top taking GStone. My opponent Scrolls for Recall and ships the turn. On my turn I play the Walk and topdeck into Sol Ring which is a very solid rip. I play the Sol Ring tap it to cast GStone then use the mana floating and my other land to cast Painter before laying my land. My opponent lets it resolve as he has 2 artifact destruction spells in hand I then play Academy and deck him.

After the game he mentions that he forgot that I hadn't played a land since it was on the Walk turn but regardless there's only two cards I could have to win there(he can counter 1) and if he did Force he'd have to pitch Recall so it's a big judgment call.

T8
After drawing twice I am paired against my R4 opponent who was one of the two players to get in at 4-2.

G1 - The beginning of this game looks awesome for me as I have Recall, Mox Ruby, and REB so I go for it and he Forces but my REB pushes it through. The problem is I have 2 Thoughtseize and a Vamp after Recall resolves but no black source. We continue to go back and forth but my next draws are Painter and another Seize. My opponent dropped a Grindstone and only has a few cards in hand. I then proceed to make first big mistake of cycling AK to draw a card. My logic was if I hit a blue spell then I've dug one deeper in hitting Black and I'm still safe or if I hit black source then I'm totally in business but instead its an off color Mox and my opponent drops Painter on Black and wins next turn as I can't do anything.

G2 - My starting 7 this game was decent but totally hinged on resolving Gifts. I have Mox-> Sol Ring Lotus and play a Volc and then ship the turn with Drain, Gifts, and fetch land in hand. I'm really trying to hand my opponent this game on a silver platter by waiting till his endstep to cast Gifts because despite having Drain backup on it Draining a Force is a sooo much better than letting him use REB or worse yet if he has Force and REB. He does have the REB which I Drain. After the game I find out he had the Force as well but let it resolve, he probably had a good read that I was about to punt the Gifts pile hard. I go for Tinker, GStone, Painter, Recall he gives me Painter and Recall, now my only path to victory is Yawg Will. I Recall which resolves drawing something like AK, REB, and land.

What I should have done was 2nd main the Gifts and change my pile based on if he Forces or not, assuming he doesn’t Force something along the lines of Recall, BS, Mystical, Seize/Intuition would have been a strong pile as I still had a blue floating a could use to cast any of the 1CC blue spells. As it was he drops a Tormod's Crypt so now my only avenue of victory iis hardcast DSC or Painter beats. The game kept going for some turns but once he played the Crypt I knew it was all over. After he decked my leaving DSC as last card I acted kinda excited and showed him the Will in my hand hoping he'd scoop but instead he just Crypted me and GG.

The tournament was quite fun and the deck very strong I just wish I would have not played like a complete idiot when it really mattered. And to all my opponents if I got any of the details of the match wrong feel free to correct me as I didn't take any notes and am just doing it off memory.