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Smmenen
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« on: May 16, 2004, 01:37:43 pm » |
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Tournament Report:
I have been working hard on the Tog deck over the last few weeks and one of the most important tests of a deck is the crucible of a tournament. I almost played this deck at numerous tournaments including the Waterbury in January with my addition of Mana Crypt - intead i played Death Long and Slavery after that. I have also come to the conclusion that Tog is very difficult to play at a mastery level. Decks like Long.dec obviously require a level of mastery that is beyond what most people ever achieve to pilot, but Tog requires more than just technical expertise, it requires experience in every matchup because the goldfish isn’t the way that Tog gets W’s. The way is by knowing how to beat each matchup.
This tournament was to see if I would have faith in Tog in a tournament setting – I haven’t played it in a Type One tournament since Antwerp, Belgium the week before Gencon last year.
I get to the tournament site and about two dozen people are milling about. I register my decklist and we begin:
ROUND ONE: Jason Hill
Jason is a cool guy and comes with Travis Hopkins (the infamous creator of the Belcher deck that won the Dulmen, and the man who lost to Divert to fail to make Gencon top 8). Travis had made it this weekend as well. Jason was playing mono blue fish. Luckily, I had spent a tremendous amount of time testing fish so I was feeling relatively confident. I knew I needed a basic on turn one, and mox, land on turn two to execute one of a number of key plays.
I won the die roll and elected to play first.
I opened with turn one Fetch, break it for Island. I had the turn two Mox, land Intuition and my AK for 3 and then for 4 resolve on turn three. This game was good because on turn 5-6 I cast Berserk and then Wished for Berserk against and attacked with Tog for 72 damage.
Game two was defined by my Deed on turn 2. Again, I explained my growing distaste for this card that continued throughout the day. By the end of the day I was convinced that Deed was crappy for a few reasons. First, its easy to play around. Second, it doesn’t attack like Tog does. Third, a lot of the cards become much better with Tog in play: Deep Analysis and Cunning Wish (because then Wish becomes Instant speed Regrowth).
Jason was here to have fun too and he got a “WTF� from me when he played Mask of Memory. I had Drained his only non-land critters this game and my Deed blue up his Mask and anything he had attached it too. Eventually he played Lord of Atlantis, but by the time he was recovering, I had the Tog, Berserk, Yawgmoth’s Will combo. The best part is to Intuition for moxen and restricted cards when you have Yawg. Will in hand.
ROUND TWO:
Craig:
Gay Red Fish.
Again, I know what I have to do to beat Fish. My hand had turn one Tog and I have played matchups where that is enough. Unfortunately, my turn one Tog was answered by his turn one Library of Alexandria. This was a long drawn out struggle that I simply could not over come. My opening hand was Jet Pearl, Sea, Sea, Trop, Force of Will, Force of Will. My next two cards were Volc and Force of Will. I kept the hand because all my testing suggested that Tog was the most important card to resolve because it negates cards like Standstill. By the time this game ended, he had cast all four Lavanmancers and I only had him down to 6-7 life.
Game Two: Craig mulliganed to six and then played a turn one Sapphire. I was shocked and proceeded to clean up. It took me about 15 minutes to actually execute the win. By the time game three came up, time was up and I had 2 turns to try to win.
1-0-1
ROUND THREE: draw7
Tim Allen is playing the deck I designed and its quite scary for the Tog player. I keep a hand with Sapphire, and two or three lands, but Drain would be up on my first turn. Unfortuantely, Tim had won the die roll and I wasn’t going to paris to 6. He goes: Mox Pearl, Mox Jet, Mana Vault: and I about bowl over. Unfortunately for Tim, he does nothing after that. I was like: Wtf? I untap and have Drain up. He goes back to take his turn and he plays Jar, which I obviously Drain to fuel Intuition. At this point, his game is lost. He can’t play another Draw7 any time soon. He probably should have parised that hand.
Game two was precisely the opposite. A turn one Xantid Swarm was unanswered by Force of Will. I did my best to stunt him. I played turn one Mana Crypt, Strand, fetch out Sea and played Mind Twist for 2 making him discard Tolarian Academy and Dark Ritual: never a good thing for draw7. Unfortunately, soon he had enough tools to play Bargain (like a turn later) and I still didn’t have an answer to the swarm.
Game Three was interesting. My hand wasn’t very good but I kept it on the strength of Duress. I had AK, AK, Lotus, Volc, Trop and Duress. I didn’t think I’d draw a Sea or a fetchland so I broke the Lotus for Black and Duressed and saw: Swarm, Land, Land, Brainstorm, Force of Will, Jar, Yawg Will. Obviously you take Brainstorm. It stops his development tremendously. He played turn one Swarm and while I couldn’t answer it immediately, soon I Firestorm killed it. He then resolved his Jar but had nothing but Swarm, Swarm, and Elvish Spirit Guide. I Yawg Willed and recast the Firestorm for 3 to kill all three critters. Soon I cleaned up and won the match
ROUND FOUR: R/G Beatz
This deck had played multiple Fish decks and was winning as a metagame deck. Game one I drained a River Boa and drew 7 cards with 2 AKs by turn 4 as well as Ancestral. I tried to ignore his board and go for the combo kill. He got me to 1 life (including multiple points of damage from my own Mana Crypt and fetchlands) before I comboed out using Yawg Will Tog, and Time Walk and Berserked a lethal Tog before he could untap.
Game two: This game I didn’t get below 15 life or so. I drained his turn 2 Troll Ascetic and he didn’t have any red mana outside of the Lotus he broke to Reb and Bolt me.
3-0-1
ROUND FIVE:
More Gay Red Fish
Justin Shister
Yes this is the third Fish deck of the tournament. At this point I’m first in the swiss with 10 points after round 4 and 11 after round 5. Sweet.
There were many many draws at this tournament. This is because of the competitive balance and because many matches went to time. So we drew.
TOP 8:
Quarter Finals:
Kevin Cron
Kevin has a pretty good synopsis of this match. I will note that this went the full 3 games and each game was at least 40 minutes. This was over two hours. We started around 6:30 and ended around 8:40. Kevin’s next match was just as long and ended at 10:30.
Kevin and I played an extremely intense round of magic. Kevin took the turn-by-turn notation of the matchup so I’ll see if I can get him to summarize what happened from his perspective.
Here is what I remember: My opening hand was:
Mana Crypt, Brainstorm, Brainstorm, Island, Volc, Sea and Intuition or Wish I believe.
I won the die roll (thank god) and thought for a while. I decided to play the Time Walk off the Mana Crypt and burned one and won the die roll on turn two. Then I dropped another land and passed the turn.
He goes:
Land, Welder. It resolves. Mox, Mox. At this point I say: How Laucky. And then he goes: Black Lotus and cast Fact or Fiction. I Brainstorm and see Force of Will as the third card. Thank god I cast that Time Walk. I Force the Fact (which would have been Ba-roken with turn one Welder and proceed to win the game by turn 6 or thereabouts, with a disgusted yawgmoth’s Will. Mind you, turn 6 was 40 minutes later. This game was very long and extremely intense. But it was only going to get worse.
I sbed as follows:
- 1 Tog
- 2 Deep Analysis
- 2 Duress
+ 1 Artifact Mutation
+ 1 Rack and Ruin
+ 1 BEB
+ 1 Fire/Ice
+ 1 Shaman
Game Two
My opening hand had Force of Will so I was pleased. Unfornately, I was anticipating Blood Moon and only had Volcs, Seas, and Trops – no Island or Fetchland.
Kevin mulliganed I believe and then played Volcanic Island, Sol Ring.
I drew and played Land and passed the turn. Kevin played Blood Moon, which I Forced and he Forced my Force. Then he played Chalice for 0 and the next turn he dropped Welder and Chalice for 1 (key later on). I knew I needed an Island – and if I totally had a handle on what I was doing, I probably should have mulliganed to 6 to find an Island – but I hadn’t had to mulligan all day, and I didn’t really think about it since I had Force of Will.
Despite the Blood Moon I was still in the game. The key play was like on turn 10 or so. I was discarding some cards but I kept in hand the Black Lotus I drew earlier. I knew that he must have been building up some pretty sick 0 costs in his hand because he didn’t get past a 2nd land drop so he needed to find a way to cast Gilded Lotus at some point before I started to find Islands. When he did so I he managed to drop Slaver into his graveyard. So it all came to a head. I had to find a way to deal with the Slaver and his active welder.
Here was the board state:
I had Sea, Volc, Volc, Trop (all Mountains). My hand had the Black Lotus and *this turn* I drew Mox Sapphire. My hand was then:
Cunning Wish,
Demonic Tutor
Mana Drain,
And Intuition
With three tutors in hand I had a million possibilities and I thought for a very long time. The problem was that Kevin had Chalice for 1 in play and that negated any attempt to Coffin Purge or something like that. I also knew that he wouldn’t weld in response to me casting Cunning Wish – which made other plays problematic.
Here were some of the thoughts I had:
Option 1:
Intuition for Moxen/Island and then blow the Lotus to DT for Yawg Will. The problem with this play is that he just needs to Weld in Chalice for 0 and I’m totally screwed.
I went with Option 2:
Play the AK engine and hope to draw sufficient answers. This almost worked out. The AKs drew me Islands. Kevin did Slave me several times, but I managed to stay alive because the Blood Moon negated my any attempt to screw with my hand or board. Soon I drew both Islands with the Sapphire and he had to slave me to keep my Mana Drains turned off.
Pretty soon it came to a head again. I drew a Mox Jet and simply could not let him Slave me with that because he’d screw me over. So I cast DT and Ancestraled myself (the chalice for 1 was gone at this point). I drew: Land, BEB, and Rack and Ruin. I went to my discard step and discarded Psychatog. I had to wait until he went to use welder and for some reason it was untapped. When he did go to use it, I Rack and Ruined the Gilded Lotus and the Sol Ring (the only two artifacts in play) and then went to BeB his Welder and he cast Fact and I gave him Force of Will or 4 other cards and he took the Force of Will and managed to counter the Rack and Ruin although the Beb resolved. At this point I think the game slipped from my reach. You see, I had discarded or removed almost all my win conditions. All I wanted was a giant Yawgmoth’s Will and that wasn’t going to happen now.
Game Three:
This was an absolutely fascinating game.
My opening hand was ludicrious:
Mox Sapphire,
Polluted Delta,
Tropical Island,
Gorilla Shaman,
Artifact Mutation
Mana Drain,
Psychatog
This is why Tog is difficult to play. It isn’t a stretch to simply go: Sapphire, Delta, go. But in my view, that would be the incorrect play. Slavery has a good chance of being able to counter one counterspell with Force of Will, and you lose tempo. If the Shaman resolves, that negates many of his opening plays such as Welder or Chalice 2 (or Chalice period). Additionally, if he resolves a Draw7, then I’ll be without my Shaman. It is better to create a tempo advantage by playing threats. Shaman Resolved. Unfortunately, his answer was quite keen:
Turn One Library of Alexandria
I hate that card. Fished used it to beat me, and now it would beat me here. Let me show you how difficult this game became.
The next few turns went as expected. I continued my land drops and he drew. His next plays went: Volc, Welder, which I drained to play Cunning Wish) and then Ancient Tomb on turn 3. On my turn during turn three (after I had drawn, Rack and Ruin) he played Thirst for Knowledge when I went to my attack step. This resolved. At this point I had to make a critical decision.
Should I play Tog or not?
My hand was: Force of Will, AK, Tog, Artifact Mutation and Rack and Ruin.
I kept thinking Tempo, Tempo, Tempo – I need to create tempo to beat LoA.
I thought about what his turn 4 play was going to be and how many cards he had seen. He had seen 16 cards in his deck at this point and next turn he would see at least 1 more. That is over a fourth of his deck, but less than a third. So I knew he’d drop a Workshop and try to play Gilded Lotus. The worst fear was that he’d so that *and* play a Welder. If I play Tog I can beat that so long as he does not have one card: Time Walk. I can try to Force a key card and if that doesn’t work untap and Mutate the Gilded Lotus for another tremendous tempo boost! How amazing.
Of course, he had Time Walk – the ultimate tempo card. Afterward he said he almost SBed it out – incredible huh? Well I forced the Time Walk, and he Forced my Forced. He untapped and dropped Slaver, play Mox Pearl and slaved me. At this point, I gave myself a less than 10 percent chance at winning – and that was a high estimate.
I made a bad play error. The turn he slaved me, I’m supposed to discard my hand with Tog so that he can’t ream me with my own cards. You have to know these things �.
The key is that I have damage on the board and the Ancient Tomb has already brought him under 10 life. The question is: how many men does he have, and can he keep the slaving going without Goblin Welder. I get a turn without being slaved and I have no hand and no graveyard but I draw Demonic tutor. I had already cast Ancestral and it was removed. So I think of Shaman or Brainstorm. Kevin is at 7 life, so here is my logic:
If I get Brainstorm, I can Brainstorm and I’ll have 2 more damage now – the Brainstorm and the DT in the GY, the card I draw, and the Tog and Shaman points. That would send him to 3 so he can’t use his Ancient Tomb efficiently. This way I’ll win next turn with the card I draw, Tog, and Shaman. Altenratively, if I get Shaman, I play it, and attack him down to 5. Then next turn I win.
He untaps and plays Timetwister!! Unfortunately, he draws Slaver and I don’t. He plays it ands activates it and I make *another* mistake of not discarding anything he can fuck me with. It doesn’t matter though – that fuck up allows him to kill my tog with Fire/Ice – and either way, he would have removed my GY and hand so that his trike kills my tog on the following turn.
Kevin Wins a very close match. The entire other half of the top 8 bracket has played out and Travis beat Fish and Drain Slaver to get to the finals.
Kevin goes onto play Joe and the match is equally strenuous. Then Joe emerges victorious in the third game and Travis and Joe decide to split the prize.
Stephen Menendian
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