NYSE IV Report - Top 8 w/ The Deck

[MirariKnight]

So, I knew Oath, my usual deck of choice, was going to be a huge part of the field back home in NY. I decided I wanted to play something different, and after testing The Deck, found that I really loved playing it and felt prepared for pretty much anything.

The fundamental difference between a deck like this and the Time Vault decks really, in my opinion, comes down to archetype. Tezz and Oath are what I would consider Aggro/Control – in the “race to get my combo down, then prevent them from stopping me” sense. I have always been a true control player (hence my preference for Drains vs. Spell Pierce in Oath, for example) and I’ve realized that playing Tezz/Oath, which are my usual suspects, don’t quite fit my playstyle. They’re too aggressive for my tastes. I tried playing B/R Stax, but I really just like playing broken blue cards.

So, The Deck is a perfect fit for me. It is true, 100% control, unlike Tezz. At first I was skeptical of the lack of Time Vault, because, honestly, in my opinion that combo is the most busted think so ever hit Vintage. However, after actually playing The Deck, I totally agree with what Patrick said about Vault’s exclusion (see Smmenen’s thread for more).
It’s amazing to totally ignore stuff like Null Rod, and to be able to play the mana denial plan in a blue deck.

So, in preparation for NYSE IV, I put together this list:

2 Underground Sea
4 Wasteland
3 City of Brass
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Strip Mine
1 Snow Covered Island
1 Island
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
1 Tropical Island
1 Volcanic Island
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Brainstorm
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1 Mind Twist
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Ponder
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Fire/Ice
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Misdirection
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Regrowth
1 Tinker
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Sower of Temptation
1 Pernicious Deed
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Empty the Warrens

Sideboard:
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Helm of Obedience
2 Greater Gargadon
1 Sadistic Sacrament
1 Rebuild
1 Pyroblast
1 REB
1 Sower of Temptation
1 Extirpate
1 Oxidize
1 Diabolic Edict

Here’s my report, from memory so forgive me if I’m slightly off:

Round 1 vs. Vinnie Forino, 5C Stax

Game 1:
I put him on G/W because that’s what he played at Philly, and he put me on Oath since I always play Oath. Because of our mutually wrong decisions we both wind up starting with 5 cards (I threw away a 6 card hand with turn 2 Crucible/Strip possibility, but only through Crypt and with non colored mana of my own). I force his turn 1 Crop Rotation, drop Mox Monkey, and Waste his next two land drops. I’m in a pretty good position until we trade Monkeys, and he proceeds to drop 2-3 moxes and the usual Stax stuff. I’m pretty locked out at that point, but we continue for a while before I’m actually out of it. I scoop and we go to game 2.
Game 2:
First turn Tinker>Sphinx and Crucible, plus I have FoW for whatever he tries to do. It’s over quickly.
Game 3:
I forget exactly how this went, but we both keep each other off mana for a little, I resolve Recall. He gets Welder down with a Crucible+Waste and Tangle, but I manage to Rebuild on my upkeep to basically double Time Walk him. It doesn’t help since my draws suck, and I know he has Tangle but not Chalice, so I hold back my Moxen so I can get a turn w/ them post Tangle. He gets down Sundering Titan, gets me to 9. By some miracle I topdeck YawgWill, and I can DTutor for Lotus, YawgWill, Recall, Rebuild his whole board, including Titan (losing no land b/c of City) and then Empty the Warrens for 20+ Goblins. This is now turn 2 of extra turns, and I’ve managed to turn around this seemingly hopeless game, and I’m quite excited about it. We’re the last game going I think, and have drawn a crowd, and to be quite honest I was really happy with myself for pulling that off under pressure. Anyway, I pass turn, he drops triple Tangle, but I have almost 30 perms. He tries to Tinker Crucible, presumably for Powder Keg to kill my tokens and get the draw, but I Drain that, and go on to win with the Gobbos.

1-0

Round 2: James Hangley w/ Bloodghast Dredge

Game 1:
I knew he was on Dredge, and I’m pretty sure he saw my deck during the last match. He predictably mulls to Bazaar, I keep a hand with 3 Wastes, a City, and Recall. I Waste Bazaar, and keep wasting his lands. He gets me down moderately low with Ghasts, but I get 8 Empty tokens off a pretty weak Yawg. Bloodghast does some blocking which neither of us catch (I think, maybe something else blocked, I forget), but somehow he misses his important draws, I counter the big Dread Return, and I win game 1 vs. Dredge.
Game 2:
I keep an AMAZING hand, Leyline, Waste, City, Time Walk, Brainstorm, Recall or something like that. He starts w/ 2 Leylines in play as well. He bounces Leyline, but has no land because of my wastes. I replay Leyline ASAP, and it sticks. I Sower Bloodghast, and he keeps getting in for a few turns. He tries to bounce Leyline again, but I Force it, and that’s about it, Sower + Bloodghast get in for 20.

2-0

Round 3: Corey Mann w/ Goblins

Game 1:
I had no idea what he was playing, and I was hoping for a non-annoying (read Drain) deck, but of course, it was another annoying deck. He leads with Mountain and I say “Lackey?” as he drops it. This game is pretty hopeless, I honestly was not prepared for Gobbos at all and I kept a hand that wound up being pretty bad against it.
Game 2:
He has no Lackey, I have Library online. His slow start lets me build up a nice hand. He drops a decent sized army eventually, but I have Sower on Warchief. He resolves Matron and finds Gempalm Incinerator, which will be bad for me since it kills my Sower. I manage to topdeck MIND TWIST just at the right time and twist his whole hand, including Gempalm, away. I almost punt it by swinging w/ Warchief and Sower, letting him get in with Lackey, dropping the SEIGE GANG that he topdecks. He kills my Sower, and I’m pretty pissed at myself for my stupid play. I should have known better than to try to go Aggro on him. Still, I manage to find Tinker>Sphinx. After a tight combat phase where he gets my down to 1, negating Sphinx’s lifelink by Seige-Gang flinging the guy I block with Sphinx, I’m good to go. He drops Stingscourger but luckily Sphinx is pro-red. I get some Empty guys as chump blockers just in case, and Sphinx gets in for the win.
Game 3:
I don’t remember exactly, but it was another close one. He didn’t have Lackey, which seems to be the deciding factor in these matches. I get Sphinx going, and his misplay lets me keep him off black w/ Waste (Warren Weirding). Sphinx goes all the way.

3-0

Round 4: Chris Hansen w/ Oath
We’re both 3-0, but there was an unintentional draw. I had REALLY good results testing vs. Chris (a good friend) all week, and despite the risk that we’d both miss Top 8 because of the random draw, we decided to ID anyway. We play a few games for fun that go as testing did, Gargadon is stupid good. I even got use him to sac Orchard guys at EOT, Oath, and get a HUGE Yawg. Amazing.

3-0-1

Round 5: Austin Pollack w/ Oath
Austin is another friend, and after seeing the standings, me and Chris mad the right decision last round. Me and Austin draw, and all 3 of us are in the Top 8. I watch a match between my friend Rob w/ TPS transformational board into Oath and Chris Pikula w/ Tezz deciding who will top 8. Chris pulls out game 1, barely living off Bob. Rob’s Oath boarding plan goes amazingly well, Akroma+Hellkite get there turn 3, and Pikula had no idea what was coming. Pikula pulls out game 3, and makes top 8.

3-0-2

I’m 3rd going into Top 8, which means I don’t have to play either of my friends, first round, which is awesome.

Top 8: Jeff Folinus w/ Tezz
Game 1: I keep a decent hand with some lands, Brainstorm and something else. He mulls to 4. My Brainstorm REALLY sucks, and I don’t have any gas. His 4 happened to include Recall, which resolves. I soon resolve my own, and we’re back in business. I have him decently locked behind a counter wall, but he gets a Key + Top engine going. I have Sphinx going and need 1 more turn, I belive he’s at 5, me at 36 or something. He has two cards, and I’m pretty confident, especially since his Hurkyl’s and Tezz are removed to FoW. Somehow, those 2 cards in his hand are just the right ones for him, Mystical>YawgWill and Mana Drain, the only two cards that could have beat me. He Yawgs, and almost loses because Tezz is gone, but he pulls out Vault/Key, shows me Inkwell, and we go to game 2. I’m mad at myself for losing this, the one time when Sundering Titan would have been really good. Still, without Sphinx, I probably wouldn’t have made top 8, since Sphinx was relevant in 2/3 of my matches beforehand.
Game 2:
I keep an awesome hand w/ Library, Walk, Merchant Scroll, Force, and Demonic Tutor. I lead with Library, and of course he has Duress to keep my off it. He is a really good player, so he makes the correct choice and takes Time Walk. I was really counting on him taking DTutor, which would have put me in a great position. After losing Walk, I decide to DTutor for Ancestral instead of Scroll so I can cast it with Scroll to pitch to Force. He has double counter for my Recall, and now I have one card in hand, City of Brass, Library and two lands on board. He has 4 in hand, and drops a Mystic Remora. He pays for it for a while, I wait it out but eventually he gets Academy and can conceivably keep Remora going forever. At some point, he also gets Bob down. Unfortunately, I didn’t think he was running Bob since I saw Repeal game 1, so I boarded out Sower and Fire/Ice. I eventually run EOTFOFYL into his Remora + huge hand, and it miraculously resolves. I get Mystical tutor, land and something else instead of Crucible+Tinker. I eventually get him off Remora after it hitting 5 or 6 counters, and his hand is stocked. I’m not entirely sure what happened here, but I think I tried to bait some counters with an EOT Thirst or something I think, I also Mystical for Yawg afterwards. He has more counters for my Yawg+Drain backup, and I again have 1 or 2 cards in hand to his 6+, 15 mana, and Bob. He gets down Vault/Key, and I make one last attempt to flashback Ancient Grudge, which I think we both forgot about, on his Yawg turn to RFG Key. It doesn’t work, he has even more counters, and we play out his turns since he again pitched Tezz to Force, and he is at like 9 with Bob, tapped Mana Vault, and Crypt on board. He finds top, untaps Vault, and finds some way of getting rid of Crypt, and I have to scoop it up. Some really well played matches, I love playing control mirrors. I wish I had seen more of the mana denial elements, I think I would have fared better. Oh well, Jeff is a great player, and I watched Chris and Austin battle it out in game 3 a 1.5 hour long Oath mirror (Top 4). Chris botches his Yawg, and Austin wins even though he got Sad-Sacced as on Orchard guy went all the way. I also watched Ashok w/ Red Shops play Chris Pikula, and afterwards I gave him some pointers on beating Stax w/ Drains. Ashok and Austin play the finals, Austin wins game 3 with Oath guys, and take home the Time Walk. I won a Misty Rainforest, and the no-proxy prize, a Mana Crypt. I really like the idea of the no proxy prize, and I hope more TOs adopt the idea.

All in all a great tournament. Thanks for running it Nick, and for everyone who showed up despite the blizzard.

[Gekoratel]

Thanks for the report and match that we had.  Just some small notes on our matches.  Game 1 I open on Lotus->Brainstorm and drew into DT which I cast off an Fetch->U. Sea with Blue floating and found Ancestral.  I didn't naturally have it in my hand but outcome was the same turn 1 resolved Recall.  A turn or so later you went for Mystical->Recall and cast it but I had the Force and you had no backup, it was at this point in the game that I thought I had a shot.  Then I did get Top/Key drawing a couple cards which allowed me to draw into Fire Ice after you cast a Vamp EOT.  I figured the two obvious choices for Vamp was either Yawg Will or Gifts so I cast Ice on your Sol Ring to make you have either a much smaller will or no ability to cast Gifts for the turn.  Mainly it was just a stall tactic to get more cards off my Key/Top.  The next turn you cast Yawg Will and I was able to dig into another Force.  

After that we were about even on cards with you having slightly more mana but you had resolved a Tinker->Sphinx so I was on a serious clock.  I Duressed you seeing Volc, Drain. DT and took the DT.  I had a drain of my own but no threat.  The turn before I was dead I put Top look on stack, Tap to draw and Repeal in response and was able find a Merchant Scroll pretty far down.  After that I cast Scroll which resolved finding Mystical Tutor which I cast finding Will tap to draw with Top cast it with Drain backup which I used on yours.  After that I Mysticaled for Tinker Recall into it and drew a blue spell.  I cast a Key which was in the yard from your Ancient Grudge and then moved to 2nd main using my drain mana to cast Tinker with a colorless floating.  After I went to untap you cast Grudge but I had Force in the yard plus blue spell in hand.

All in all it was a very tight game where I had to get lucky to win.  The one thing you could have potentially done differently was Grudge my Top in response to Mystical that way I have no ability to draw into the Will unless I got lucky and it was naturally one of the 3 on top.

Your game 2 is really accurate the only difference was I had Academy as my only open land with one artifact in play and went to cast Mana Vault.  I had Drain in hand but needed Vault to resolve you saw this window of opportunity and cast Fof and Vamp off Fof but I did have Remora in play so it wasn't as back breaking.  After that Vault resolved so I had access to Drain mana on your turn with active Remora.

Congrats again on your finish.

[MirariKnight]

Thanks for clearing that up, I tried my best to represent it as accurately as I could from memory.

Game 1 I was really impressed with how you manage to claw back from your mull to 4.

I remember agonizing over whether to Ancient Grudge your top a few times, one was when it's draw was on the stack and in response to you using Key, and another was in response to Mystical tutor. I decided not to and was hoping to be able to stop your Yawg or use the Grudge on your Yawg turn to RFG either Key or Vault, which would get me the 1 turn I needed to swing w/ Sphinx. This game was really enjoyable; I love playing these types of matches.

Game 2 I thought I was pretty good, with Library and all, but your Duress was really bad for me since it both ruined my Library plan and took away my Recall+counter back up off Time Walk plan. You definitely made the right decision to take Walk, which I think was hard to see there and I was impressed with. Once you had Remora going it was pretty tough for me, especially after Bob came down too. There was a glimmer of hope when I resolved FoF+Vamp when you were off Drain mana, and I think I tried to bait your Drain with Mind Twist before I could Yawg, which I never go the chance to do. Remora was a really good call, and with all your mana+Bob, I couldn't really wait it out. Really nicely played, and congratulations as well.

[forcethewill]

My blocking was with dryad arbor and a single token after my ony bridge got removed.