I attended the carta tournament too this month. I was playing my version of Chapin's Grow. Here was my deck list:
Mana:
1 Forest
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Saphire
4 Land Grant
3 Tropical Island (Yeah, I know, I need 1 more...)
6 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
Control:
3 Mana Drain
2 Foil
4 Misdirection
4 Force of Will
2 Daze
2 Powder Keg
Creatures:
4 Quirion Dryad
4 Ophidian
1 Morphling
Draw:
1 Regrowth
1 Timetwister
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
4 Gush
4 Opt
4 Brainstorm
2 Impulse
SB:
2 Gaea's Blessing
1 Spike Weaver
1 Spike Feeder
1 Woodripper
4 Oath Of druids
3 Naturalize
3 Back to basics
Round 1: Suicide Black
First game is simple, I manage to counter his card advantage discard, as well as his negators, hypno and shade and try to protect my mana very unsuccessfully (strange with gush and daze, but anyway). Eventually, the game just stalls while he have a lot of mana and no cards in hand while I have 2 cards in hand 1 mox emerald, 1 library and 1 tropical in play, he wastes my tropical which I believe was the right play, but cost him the game. We both top deck crap and I manage to get 7 cards in hand and start with the library, active library vs discard means game, so I win. In second game I side in oath, get a second turn oath even if he does not have a creature in play by fear of having it discarded and obviously win.
1-0 (2-0)
Round 2: Ankh Sligh
First game I start and resolve a 1st turn dryad backed by FoW and Daze (I still don't know what he is playing, but this is always good). On his turn he wastes my tropical (why???), I then attack for only 1 and play an island. On his second turn he tries to burn my dryad, I daze. On my turn I play a phid and attack for 3. He tries to burn my phid (what the?), I still counter and play a shaman. On my turn I play gush and attack for 5 and draw a card he scoops the next turn.
Game 2: Oath sb in (not sure if it's the right play as he had only played 1 creature in 1st game and it was a shaman, so he could be burn only, but who would play and win round 1 with burn, nobody). I resolve a second turn oath while he has a cadet in play, he tries to burn it, I misdirect on him, but he has a second bolt so his shaman is dead. The game just stalls for me as he draws burn only (for 7 turns he has 0-1 cards in hand only), so I regret my oath SB. He then resolves an Ankh of Mishra and a Black vise (ack!), but I get a keg and kill the Ankh. He then plays a scald which I counter, but he plays a second one which resolves, I'm at 4 life with mox emerald, 1 forest and mana islands in play. I top deck a feeder which is good, I take 1 to cast it and start applying feeder beatdown to get him to 4 life (he now has 4 card in hand) and he decides to cast a creature. I think a little and kill my feeder. (I have no counter is he burn his creature, but thought he would have used his burn on my instead of casting a creature), I oath for a weaver. On his turn he plays a seconds creature (???). From then it's easy and I win.
2-0 (4-0)
Round 3: Pox w/ white (Francois d'auteuil aka ti-bonhomme)
First game is a joke he just outdraws me whenever I manage to get a creature he has 3 edicts and I just lose.
Game 2 is very rough, I managed to cast 2 TimeTwister to stay alive and resolve a well backed dryad so I win.
Game 3 is the worse game of my life. I have control for the whole game. After about 20 turns, I have 1 Dryad, 1 Phid, 1 Brainstorm, 1 Regrowth in hand (with everything in the grave), he has nothing. So I decide to go for the win, I cast a dryad and a phid. His turn, he top decks a will so he manages to kill both on my creatures, card a steal golem and make my discard my hand on that turn, guess what? I lost.
2-1 (5-2)
Round 4: Andrew Simard playing Ur Ophidian
Game 1: He starts, plays an island mox sol ring. I resolve a 1st turn dryad and feel pretty confident. On his turn he casts control magic and win the counter war (damn!), he then casts an ophidian and obviously win.
Game 2: I start get a library on the board 1st turn. I draw too much for him, but he managed to dust my library which I regrowth, he dusts again (he has only 1 land left in play on turn 7-8 which is good for me) we then both casts a few phids and I get a dryad which he tried to control, but I misdirect on his own phid and win the game.
Game 3: We had 5 minutes left and I know I can win a lot faster than him so the game is in my favor, however we both get an "aggro" hand, he get 2nd turn phid and so do I, he then resolves another one and I get a dryad. I keg his 2 phids as well as mine, but the time runs out before dryad finishes the job
2-1-1 (6-3-1)
Round 5: Dragon, Martin Bonneville
The guy actually plays my version of Dragon (he is my friend and just copied it
) so I know his deck by heart and know every weakness.
Game 1: He resolves 1 spell in the whole game and it's a brainstorm.
Game 2: I keep a Sapphire, Land, land grant, 2 opt, 1 daze, 1 brainstorm. I know it is not great mostly since he starts, but anyway. I gets 1st turn entomb. I get mox and land in play, on his turn he plays nothing so I double opt for 1 opt and 1 brainstorm (ack!). The rest of the game is exactly the same, I draw no counter for the whole game and he wins.
Game 3: I get 1st turn library and 3 turn phid, and just counter everything.
3-1-1 (8-4-1)
Round 6: Keeper (played by a pretty good player, but I forgot his name, even though you may not believe so by reading the report)
The guys is really pissed off because of his 3-2 record so I'm pretty happy, a good match up by a feed up player. Actually this is the funniest game I have ever played.
Game 1: I keep 2 lands, 1 mox, 2 misdirection and 2 random blue cards (I know he is playing keeper at that time). On his turn he plays lotus, jet, with jet, sol ring sac the lotus to cast will (with 2 mana from solring), get lotus back, demonic tutor for a recall cast the recall with the lotus (2 blue mana left in pool) and 2 cards in hand. I play misdirection on me, he forces of will and I misdirect again. He has 1 jet and 1 sol ring in play, will, lotus, recall removed from the game, I have 3 cards in hand + 3 from recall and will get one on my turn, so he scoops. I had not played a turn and the guy scoops, thought that was funny. I am still wondering why the mox, lotus, demonic with mox and 1 blue from lotus, recall play was not his way to get, but kept that top myself.
I ask him if he even knows what I play to be able to SB for game 2, he says no, but it must be some grow (I think to myself, how can he know that all I played was 2 misdirection, ok maybe I threw an opt in one of them, but still...)
Game 2: He plays mox and land, I have library, phid, mox emerald, 2 lands, FoW, daze in my hand. On my turn I play the library and draw a card. He skips a land drop. On my turn I play phid he has no counter and he scoops. Ok so that's it, I played 2 turns vs keeper and won both games? Ok, I know grow is a bad match up for keeper, but I had never tested it and did not know it was that easy. So I stand up walk beside my dragon playing friend who is still in the first 5 turns of his game (he knew I needed the win to maybe make the top 8, so I can't draw), he asks me what I had played against, I replied keep and he looked at me with questionning eyes as I walked away.
Top 8: Jonathan mailloux playing Super Grow.
We had play tested our decks 2 days before and he just won 70% of the games at least.
Game 1: I muligan and keep a pretty bad hand, he beats me with werebear (my phids are not really a match for those).
Game 2: I knew I had oath side, but I knew he would not think about it, so I sb it in. He gets his mages in. I resolve a 2nd turn oath and a 3rd turn one while he has werebear in play. He tries to sword my weaver as I only have 2 lands in play, I gush and foil his sword, he casts a 2nd one and my weaver dies. On my turn I oath for a feeder and have no land in play (and only one in hand from the gush and foil), so I decide to keep it instead of going for the morphling with the second oath. Bad choice as I draw my morphlingon that turn. I drop a land and say go. He then casts a 2nd werebear and starts applying some beatdown, luckily, my 2 oaths are enough to keep me high on life until he finally decides to cast a spell allowing me to foil my morphling away and get it on the board for the win. That actually took about 10 turns and still had only 1 land in play at that time.
Game 3: I know he has many seals and an aura fracture in the side, I so decide to side out my oath engine as with 3 seal, 1 aura and 4 mages (and that's 8 dead cards without my oath engine as he will name oath with his mages), my oaths will be rare. With my SB skill, he does not notice I sb 10 cards out and we play the game. He quickly gets an orb on the table, I wait with 3 lands in play with a 2 phids and mana drain in hand that he casts a spell to allow me to play the phid for free, he just does not, so I get pissed off discarding, so I cast a phid, on his turn he casts an enforcer, damn! that's mana for 2 phids!. Luckily I had a 1 counter powder keg I had resolved a little earlier so I put it at 2 on my turn. He attacks for 6, on my turn I untap, draw, damn the keg! I lose because of that mistake. I am not yet sure if sb oath out was the way to go, but if the game was to be played again, I would keep it in.
