u/w bomberman

[Cruel Ultimatum]

In the last two tournament I played bomberman, winning a small tournament for a library and a 10th place finish  at bluebell with the following list

4 force of will
3 mana drain
2 spell pierce
2 auriok salvager
3 trinket mage
1 blightsteel colossus
1 tinker
1 brainstorm
1 ponder
2 preordain
1 thirst for knowledge
1 fact or fiction
1 ancestral recall
1 time walk
1 aether spellbomb
1 balance
1 pithing needle
1 top
1 engineered explosives
1 time vault
1 voltaic key
2 jace
1 mystical tutor
1 merchant scroll
1 swords to plowshare
1 hurkyls recall

4 mox
1 black lotus
1 mana crypt
1 sol ring
1 library
1 polluted delta
4 flooded strand
4 tundra
3 island
1 plains
1 strip mine
1 tolarian academy

Sideboard used for both tournaments (13/15)
4 leyline
1 relic of prog
1 tormod's crypt
2 sower of tempation
1 devout witness
2 energy flux
1 rebuild
1 mindbreak trap

Local tounament for a loa
2 predict

I had not tested predict at all, but had read demars article and wanted to test it out. Although I did cast it for value a few times, I did not think it was a strong enough card for the sideboard

Sb for bluebell
1 hurkyls recall
1 glen elendra archmage

Glen elendra archmage is kind of like predict in that its good against blue decks, but with its high mana cost I decided to play only one. It is possible that I played the card because I have had moderate sucess with it in standard and extended in the past.

On second thought the recall should have been the 7th dredge hate, since despite looking like a combo deck its really a control deck...

In fact through both tournaments I only comboed out with auriok salvagers a few times, the rest being mostly grinding out opponents and ending the game with 2/x beaters or jace, with the occasional vault key win in there.

Tournament reports
Local tournament for a library

Round 1 -noble fish

G1 goes for about 20 minutes with him beating me down with some guys and slight disruption.  I got to around 6 or 7 life and he had a 1 hit kill with a goyf and maybe a hierach exalted when I land jace and bounce his goyf, he replayed goyf and knocked jace to 1 loyalty. I have a trinket mage in hand and I think I brainstormed played mage and got top. I chumped his goyf eot mystical for balance cast balance and fateseel away any sort of creature.
G2 he has a hand of guys and a couple counterspells and beats me down
G3 I am not really sure what happened, I think I got a fairly fast vault key

Round 2 tyrant oath
G1 I get an auriok salvager fairly early and get an engineered explosives recurring and he scoops shortly afterwards
G2 he has a quick oath and wins
G3 I stabalize after geting duressed. we both have no/few cards in hand but I have a couple of bears in play and he is at low life. He rips will and has oath and timewalk in the yard with exactly enough mana and wins on the following turn

Round 3 Raff Forino on espresso stax
G1 we both mull to 5 or so but I am blessed and have vault key t1 but bnot enough mana to activate it. He plays t1 tanglewire which is annoying but I eventually build out of it and get rid of the mana crypt I have in play.
G2 he leads with mox chalice 0 chalice 1 (forced) off shop. I have t1 strip mine and he gives me a look. His next turn is pass with no land. I have land preordain and a coupl other cantrips and a drain in hand I think but can't get anything going before he gets land and locks me out/ beats me down with lodestones.
G3 I mull to 5 and Raff snap keeps his 7. Again I am blessed and have t1 land mox sol ring balance with only spell pierce left in hand. Raff bins a broken hand that I deffinitly would have lost. He has shop go I think and a couple turns later land a energy flux to lock the game up
Round 4 noble fish
G1 I have a turn 3 or 4 tinker all he has done so far is play a meddling mage (on auriok salvager)and a hierach. He eot swords and I have the counterspell. Game ends 2 turns later.
G2 all I remember is I sower his goyf and I think I had jace or something

T8 goblins
G1 he wins the die roll and leads with null rod into t2 lackey, but doesn't have any other goblins except another lackey. I have t1 library and draw some cards. He makes a mistake on t4 and hardcasts ringleader into my drain. he gets me to 10 or so and has a hoard of  gobbos, so I have to balance and discard 6 cards.  He topdecks ringleader but I have drain. I am able to tinker myr battlesphere(bsc wasn't legal for this tournament) but he has pyrokenisis for my dorks and warren weirding for the station itself. This game goes on a lot longer but I eventually get some 2/4s down and use jace to unsummon his guys to force damage in.
G2 he has t1 lackey I think and I have t1 mox key strip his land with t2 vault activate. He flashes me the tin street and wishes me gl.

T4 tyrant oath-same player from the swiss

I don't really recall the match but I know I combo him out one game with salvagers lotus top ee

Finals welder mud
G1 he keeps a loose hand I think and I grind him out while he dies to his mana crypt.
G2 just to note, I know he has helm/line in the main or sideboard, and the salvager combo isn't very good against spheres and chalices anyway, so I board out 1 of my salvagers maybe both. he has an early metal worker off artifact mana but I have energy flux on t2 or something. He doesn't have a big guy to drop with worker and I bounce it with aether spellbomb and kill him with 2/2s.

Bluebell

Round 1
An epic battle between nick detwilers car and the cross bronx express way. The parkway wins, but nick coss us play it out. I was supposed to draw with jp kohler, but due to a missentry/dci reporter screwup I wind up getting the win.

Round2 ubrg vintage control
G1 I have a sick hand with t1 recall and salvagers and t2 win -must be-
G2 I believe he mulligans to 6 and leads off with welder I have t1 needle for welder he has land pass I play a mox, time walk and strip one of his lands, take timewalk turn play land pass. He plays something that I drain and I play jace, I think I brainstorm twice and welder knocks jace to 1, but then I play glen elendra and I think I get vault key before jace ultimates him.
Round 3 turbo tezz
Both game he tore me apart with fast mana into planeswalkers and broken spells with a myriad of countermagic

R4 ubr remora tezz
G1 he has t2 tinker double force
G2 I have t2 tinker force
G3 we both mull to 5 and both have land eot mystical for recall. They both resolve, unfortunitly for my opponent he can't find any more mana. While I draw lands. He begins to get low between my trinket and salvager and his mana crypt when he lands a sower for my salvagers. I bounce the sower twice then mercant scroll for drain and fateseal something good to the bottom. He untaps and plays sower with 1 mana up I drain and it resolves I untap attack him to 3 and try to think what's his last card could have been. I am unsure if he has a blank or somethng that wins the game like tinker or will, I decide to brainstorm with jace crack a fetch and brainstorm (the card) looking for a counterspell or timewalk. I find neither but its double irrelevant because he dies to crypt and his card in and and on top of his library are both dead draws

Round 5 dredge

He wins the die roll and I know he's on dredge. I keep a hand of mana, 2 preordains and a brainstorm basically hoping to hit vault key basically. Instead he has something like t2 iona on blue I don't draw balance or swords in the next two turns but ironically enough they were both on top after I lost, probobly would have lost regardless.

G2 I have t0 leyline t1 crypt t2 needle on bazaar or something and jace ultimate him
G3 I mull to 6 and keep top preordain mox sapphire force trinket mage and something else. After a few turns of being extremely tight on mana he deals with my leyline bazaars and passes, I got a needle down on bazaar, and a mana crypt holding tinker. He bounced my needle eot and hit everything he needed including 2 therapies to get rid of the tinker and I lost about 3 turns later.

Round 6 ubg gush storm

At this point im out of t8 unless people who should draw don't.

I think he wins g1 and I win g2 with tinker I think and g3 with vault key after he emergancy twistered.

Everyone who was supposed to draw did and I missed t8 finishing 10th.

Despite not making t8, I still felt as though the maindeck performed fairly well and the sideboard was awkward since I never played a shop deck (infact there wasn't many at the top tables at all)

I am unsure of the sideboard however, and the dredge hate package is awkward with leylines being pretty hard to cast but not wanting to rely on tormods crypts or rav traps because of the white leyline and relic being fairly awkward because of auriok salvager, albeit probobly not too important.

I am unsure of how good the deck is, it seems slightly under the power curve, which happened in most of my losses to people playing stronger cards in the abstract

[Bibendum]

Literally the hardest fought round one i have ever played. Congrats on that nail biter

[Prospero]

Congrats on the win at the LoA event Mike.

Good work on Saturday at Blue Bell.  Keep your chin up, I'm sure I'll see you in the top 8 of the next Blue Bell event.

As far as the deck goes, it's not my cup of tea, but you can't argue with success.  You've done well with the deck in two separate events now.  Test against the field, but I there's no reason to fight what's going well.  Trinket Mage/Aether Spellbomb is also an awesome answer in a Blightsteel Colossus infested metagame.

[Sextiger]

The deck is still pretty good but I've had a lot more success with a black splash in it.  It allows you to effectively run Nihil Spellbomb in the main and makes your sb graveyard hate ridiculous, also Jailer for dredge and it gives you Demonic/Vamp/Will (making Vault/Key much better).  By staying U/W, your stuck running junk like FOF and Balance instead of the real bombs. 

[honestabe]

I was actually going to make a thread on Bomberman, but never got around to it.  I've been running a more fish-like build, with more permanents, to give me better game against Shops. Here's the list:


// Lands
    3  Tundra
    3  Underground Sea
    4  Island
    1  Plains
    4  Flooded Strand
    1  Polluted Delta
    1  Tolarian Academy

// Creatures
    4  Dark Confidant
    3  Trinket Mage
    3 [ARB] Meddling Mage
    2  Auriok Salvagers

// Spells
    1  Swords to Plowshares
    1 [DDE] Voltaic Key
    1  Sensei's Divining Top
    1  Pithing Needle
    1  Engineered Explosives
    1  Ancestral Recall
    1  Time Walk
    1  Brainstorm
    1 [DDC] Demonic Tutor
    1 [ARC] AEther Spellbomb
    1  Time Vault
    1  Hurkyl's Recall
    1 [HOP] Relic of Progenitus
    1  Jace, the Mind Sculptor
    1  Mox Sapphire
    1  Mox Emerald
    1  Mox Ruby
    1  Mox Pearl
    4  Force of Will
    1  Mox Jet
    1 [V10] Sol Ring
    1  Black Lotus
    3  Mana Drain
    3  Mana Leak

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [HOP] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 3 [GTW] Yixlid Jailer
SB: 2  Ethersworn Canonist
SB: 2  Sower of Temptation
SB: 2  Glen Elendra Archmage
SB: 1  Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1  Rebuild
SB: 1  Energy Flux
SB: 2  Disenchant

Much like the older lists from a few years ago, but with Meddling Mage over Mindcensor.  In a format without 4 Gifts and 4 Merchant Scrolls, Mindcensor is simply underwhelming.

[Ten-Ten]

@ Cruel Ultiumatum: Congrats on both events! Keep it up. U/W Bomberman is one of my favorite decks and it's good to see you doing well with it.
I splash black from time to time for the tutors but thats bout it really. I have been satisfied with U/W. 
  Thank you for posting the two reports and list! 

@honestabe: nice list! I'm liking the mage and couldn't help but notice the mana leaks in the main. How are those working out for you?

[honestabe]

They've been pretty decent.  Against shops, having UU up is pretty hard, especially though wastelands and spheres.  Leak allows you to simple have fetch and a mox to counter a spell.  Another reason I chose them over spell pierce is because of all the creatures being played right now.  Tezz will almost always try to throw down an early confidant, and mud lists are becoming more and more aggressive.  Mana leak also counters Gush, which spell pierce often cannot

[Cruel Ultimatum]

I am not sold on spell pierce in this deck, although it is good in the early game against all deck, it looses a lot of value in the mid to late game, since the deck is short on win conditions, so you cannot use it to force through a spell other then jace. This deck has a slow clock and tends to focus on the late game, where spell pierce is at its weakest. Obviously you do need to get to the late game so maybe it is important to play. Other counters I have thought about playing:

4th mana drain
Muddle the mixture (counter and gets time vault, which seems like it could be relevant given the limited spells that can tutor for tv. Also gets balance and to a much lesser extent hurkyls recall.) I don't think I would run this over the 4th mana drain though
Spell snare
Vendilian clique- not a counterspell, but has a simular effect and a 3/1 flying body. This can be effective against shops as it trades with lodestone, bob, fish creatures, etc

As for the black splash, it is something I have considered trying, however I feel like the maindeck is fairly tight

[Ten-Ten]

Vendilian clique- not a counterspell, but has a simular effect and a 3/1 flying body. This can be effective against shops as it trades with lodestone, bob, fish creatures, etc

I actually am testing this out in place of the 4th Drain. Great card against opposing Planeswalkers and manipulates yours or the opponent's hand! All at instant speed

S.pierce, I didn't even try. Seems powerfully week, as mentioned before, in this style deck. I would go Mana leak or even counterpell before S.pierce.

I dunno 'bout Snare though. Hits alot of good stuff, Oath,Drains, Spheres,and BoBs(fish). Our Drains/leaks and FoW do that well already.
This slot is meta dependant, I think. If faced with alot of fish, Snare is good maybe even Dispell. Alot of Shop/oath decks, Steel sabotage or Annul. against Combo, ethersworn canonist,Meddling mage and Vendelion clique.

[Shax]

I understand Bomberman is pretty established, but is it really that good over what we can be playing with stuff like Gush? Bounces around land destruction.. a 2 for 1.. Fastwinbond? I like how Bomberman focuses on artifacts and all, but against other blue they got some good soup. Since the meta is infested with Gush, MUD, and Dredge.. then tendrils/oath is about right there with Oath having the upper hand. Fish seems to be a bit weaker this go around. I'd be scared of the Oath, against MUD I think Bomberman could do a little bit better than the average control deck since your running creatures and your artifacts ran are extremely relevant to your gameplan. Theres a few cards I'd consider here but that just depends on the meta.