Quote My loss was to Justin (Saucemaster). Justin ran GAT and went 5-0 to win the whole tournament.
Well, that's me. Wow, two winning reports in less than a week. I'd like to try to defend next week, but I'm going to be in Indianapolis for a wedding.
It's late, but I won't have time this weekend at all, so I'll just make this a short report for now. Keep in mind that "short," as I use it, is a highly relative term.
So, as spevack mentioned, we had a nice turnout this week. A number of strong players showed up, and I can hear my Dryads' siren call rising, muffled, from my bag: "We love you! One last time before we part?" Aww, what the hell. So out comes GAT, though I told myself I'd run TnT today. After discussing the deck with Smmenen I knew I wanted to test a 4x Drain build, but I didn't want to cut any of my 3 MD Duress. So I dropped Cunning Wish #2 for Drain #4 and I was ready to go. Regrowth is gone for good, by the way--I have never once missed it since I cut it.
Back to the tournament. I look around and, noting the players today, I'm pretty sure there'll be at least one TnT (there was), one Hulk (there was), a couple GAT (yup), maaaybe a Keeper (nope--weird Uwr Phid instead, which did well), possibly a Ducktape (yup), a Mask deck (not sure, didn't have to face him), Academy (thumbs up), and possibly UrPhid (nope). Then Brian (Fishhead) asks me if I have two Cabal Therapies on me. So Rector Trix, too. And the guy who always plays a Lime-Parfait build, a.k.a. Mr. "You Have Five Turns Remaining".
Nice field.
I get it easy first round, though.
Round One: little kid with a Type 2 deck.
No one cares about the details here. Let's just say that while I hope the kid keeps playing Magic, I'll understand if he doesn't. Rorix Bladewing, no matter how broken in Limited, just isn't going to cut it here....
Matches: 1-0, Games: 2-0.
Round Two: Reanimator.
Wow, it's been a while since any Reanimator decks reared their maggot-eaten heads at C&J's.
Game One: He Duresses me and Entombs first turn. We both comment on the inscrutability of giving Entomb the Highlander but leaving Survival alone, and agree that neither should be restricted. I can't FoW Entomb thanks to Duress (and I'm not sure I would, anyway). Verdant Force in the graveyard. I play a first-turn Dryad, but I have no countermagic in hand and I'm a little worried.... Sure enough, he Exhumes on his second turn. I am now forced into the Wish --> Berserk plan, and I need to find it quick. I drop Tog on turn 2, after (of course) finally drawing a Force. Dryad gets big quick and Tog prevents Verdant Force from attacking, but the little tokens are swarming me and I have no way to stop it. I end up Brainstorming into Demonic in short order, however, and DT for Wish, Wish for Berserk kills him the turn before he would have killed me.
I congratulate myself on accidentally leaving Ebony Charm and Diabolic Edict in the SB--both were supposed to be on the chopping block, but my memory's loss is apparently my gain. Cool.
Game Two: I Force his attempt at a first-turn Buried Alive. He has no plays of note for a while, as I set up a great hand with cantrips, and I drop Tog in short order. He Duresses me and this time he's able to resolve Buried Alive, but he has no reanimation spells with which to follow it up. In the meantime I start drawing the countermagic that had been hiding from me, and the game ends after I Drain two reanimation attempts.
Matches: 2-0, Games: 4-0.
Round 3: Max (spevack) with Academy.
I know he's been working heavily on his SB for months now (see the EVF thread he started if you're interested), so I'm worried about Game 2, but Game 1 should be simple. It is, as I have a first-turn Duress, after which I have countermagic when I need it, though at one point (with one Force and two blue cards in hand) I have to Brainstorm to find the second Force I need to counter a Wheel. He just shakes his head, we sideboard, and it's on to Game 2.
Game 2: He resolves an early (first turn?) City of Solitude when I can't FoW twice (he REBs my Force). This doesn't look good; however, he's topdecking, which helps. I get a Tog on turn two, so now it's just a race--whose "combo" is faster? He tries, but my occasional Duresses show useless land in his hand, and I draw Gush before he gets a draw-7. I got a little lucky there.
Matches: 3-0, Games: 6-0.
Round 4: Christiaan (Zhalfirin), THE MIRROR.
You knew it would come. Before today I was 0-5 in tournament matches against Christiaan. I am long, long overdue for a win here. I tell him so. My 17 on our roll to see who plays agrees.
Game One: I draw a hand with two Drains, a Force, a Mis-D, Time Walk, a land and a Mox. A very strange hand, and since you want to be aggro in the mirror, one I think about for a while. Sure, you want to be aggro, but this is one hell of a controlling hand. I keep. My draw on my Time Walk turn is ANOTHER Drain. His early plays are mostly setup--Brainstorms and Opts. But he hasn't drawn a shuffle effect yet, even after two Brainstorms, so I know he hasn't been able to search very far. He Duresses me (he agrees with me on the MD Duress issue) and sees my hand, does a double-take, and looks a little puzzled. This is a good sign. We get into a war over something (Fastbond, IIRC; I believe the stack goes: Fastbond, Drain, FoW, MisD, Gush in response, I FoW Gush, he thinks for a while and Forces the FoW, but finds no further counters. Gush resolves, Fastbond doesn't--which is better than vice versa, given that we're now both topdecking). He resolves a threat, but the fact that we're both out of counters means that my topdecked Demonic Tutor gets me anything in the world that I want. I Ancestral and draw YawgWill. From there it's easy. Christiaan remarks that he drew ass and I drew very well--he's absolutely right. I remind him of one of our matches a few months ago, where his first turn consisted of: Unmask/Lotus/Ritual/Mask/Dreadnaught/Dreadnaught. Told you I was due.
Game Two: My deck presents me with another interesting question. My opening hand contains 2 Moxen, 1 Fetchland, one of each Dual, a Brainstorm... and LoA. LoA is the nuts in this matchup, but I have NO gas at all unless I draw well off that Brainstorm. I decide to keep anyway, and hope he doesn't have any massive turn one brokenness. He doesn't, so I immediately start drawing like a madman. I get very good cards off the Brainstorm, and those lead to more cards.... He gets the first Dryad (which is a big deal), but I am massively outdrawing him. He makes me get into a counterwar over something--I really can't remember what--but I have Gush in hand, so I just Gush Library back online and continue from there. Once again I'm drawing Scrolls, Gushes, and Duress while he draws land and the occasional Counterspell. When I finally play the YawgWill turn I'd been setting up (no Fastbond--who needs it?), he scoops.
Matches: 4-0, Games: 8-0.
5th and final round: Brent (UnstableCornBread), with Hulk.
I feel kinda bad here. Brent was a big TurboNevyn player until GAT started getting popular, when he took up Hulk. Now here we are, his old deck is now dead, and I'm facing him with the deck that kamikaze'd it.
Game One: not even close. I get out TWO Dryads early off a Lotus. He drops Pernicious Deed, which looks bad for me, and I hit him for eight points. He untaps, passes the turn, and when I attack he blows Deed. That's fine. I play YawgWill, win the counterwar, and replay Lotus and both Dryads (along with other goodies). I counter his attemps to find an answer and we reach for our sideboards.
Game Two: he drops land, says go. I play a first-turn Duress and see the following hate-filled hand staring back at me: 2x Pernicious Deed, Smother, land, Maze of Ith. His sideboard hates pretty hard on GAT--he's running red (which I fully support), so he has REBs to bring in, too. I take Pernicious Deed #1, because if he can draw multiples, so can I: I have Duress #2 in hand. My second turn sees me drop Emerald, land, Dryad, then Duress away Deed #2. He Smothers my Dryad in response while I'm tapped out. Fair enough. He ends up playing Maze of Ith while I resolve a Dryad. He tries to find a permanent answer to Dryad, but nothing sticks and she gets huge. I eventually drop a Tog as well, and it looks good, but Brent gets his own Tog, and his is bigger than mine (as is typical in the Hulk/GAT matchup). However, he starts getting manaflooded and I draw well. Soon I have two Togs and a massive, massive Dryad--think 17/17--on the table, but though I can attack with all three every turn, he does the correct thing--he blocks Dryad with Tog, waits for me to put damage on the stack, then Mazes the Dryad. I can't make the Togs lethal because he'll Maze the lethal Tog instead, then expend the rest of his hand killing the Dryad. This would be okay, except that then we'd both be out of gas, and it would be Tog x2 vs. Tog + Maze of Ith. So he starts taking 2 per turn. I miss the immediate win when I draw a DT: I go for Gush to make sure my Togs can keep pace with his, when Time Walk would have been game (having Duressed, I knew he had nothing but land in hand--he drew land after land this game. I'd also used my Cunning Wish earlier, which would also have been game). This is a massive play error, and I realize it as soon as I pass my turn, but it's too late. Fortunately I continue to draw well and eventually the 2 points per turn catch up with him. I have enough cards in the yard to make both my Togs lethal simultaneously, and Brent loses with at least 3/4 of the lands in his deck either in play or in his hand.
Matches: 5-0, Games: 10-0.
That feels like farewell to GAT. I'm not going to beat a perfect record. 10-0 in games is huge, and far better than anyone can reasonably expect to do at C&J's. I got a little lucky in that Rector Trix and Ducktape/Stax each dropped a round early, so they were never in the same bracket as I was, though I know that Rector Trix took down one of the two other GAT decks there. Until the last round, I was playing well, too, so all in all it was a good night.
And, incidentally, that means that out of the last 19 tournament games I've played with GAT, I've lost only 2. And those were both in the mirror. Maybe restricting Gush was the right call after all....
Congratulations to spevack, too, who placed third in a tough field with Academy. Hopefully we'll get a few more reports from other players as well.
