[Report] Milwaukee - 5 Proxy - April 25th @ Game Universe

I attended last month's tournament at Game Universe for an Unlimited Timetwister and piloted Workshop Slaver to a sub-par finish. I believe that tournament had 28 players, and given the 5 proxy allowance, there was a pretty diverse field. There was a small contigency of scrubby little kids with elf decks and the like, but also a good showing of decks such as Tog, Fish, Landstill, Masknought, TNT, RG Beatz, Dragon, Keeper, etc. The store owner took a vote of whether or not the players wanted a Top 8, Top 4, or Top 2 and Top 4 won out. Later in the tournament a lot of people complained, so it was decided that the April 25th tournament would have a Top 8. The finals ended up being Tog vs. BG Masknought and the Masknought player took the match (I believe in game three).

Having decided that Workshop Slaver wasn't the deck for me, I decided to fall back on the deck that I've been toying around with for the last 6 months - a variant of TNT that also included the Masknought engine. Not having seen a ton of combo at the last tournament, I was inclined to forego the MD 3spheres and place them in the SB instead. Still needing to make additional room for the Masknought components, I also moved the MD Blood Moons to the SB.

Here's the list that I finally settled on:

===Main Deck (63 cards)===

~Mana Sources (25)~
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
4 Mishra's Workshop
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Taiga
1 Forest
1 Mountain
3 Tropical Island

~The Goods (8)~
1 Timewalk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Tinker
4 Survival of the Fittest
1 Memory Jar

~Creatures (30)~
1 Wonder
4 Goblin Welder
4 Juggernaut
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Illusionary Mask
3 Su-Chi
1 Elf Replica
1 Anger
1 Platinum Angel
1 Triskelion
1 Sundering Titan
1 Duplicant
1 Genesis
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Masticore
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob

===Sideboard===
3 Blood Moon
3 3sphere
3 Chalice of the Void
3 Tormod's Crypt
3 Red Elemental Blast

I know that I broke one of the cardinal rules of T1 deckbuilding by going over 60 cards, but having the Survival engine at my disposal, I figured that it provided me with more utility options.

On to the tournament report...(I don't remember everyone's name, so I apologize if you're reading this and I get it wrong or leave it out). We had 20 players show up for the Sunday morning event.

Match 1 - ??? playing a random blue deck

Game 1 - I have a sundering titan, a welder, and plenty of mana in my opening hand, so I keep in hopes that I'll be able to get out an early ST and start swinging. He plays a turn 1 Legacy's Allure and on the following turn takes my Welder - and then plays another Allure. I don't see a Survival all game, and he ends up getting all four Allures out - with enough counters to take any of my creatures. I lose the first game to an Imaginary Pet, some of my stolen critters, and a pair of Fog Elementals.

Game 2 - I keep a hand of something like Workshop, Welder, Mox, Sol Ring, Mask, Taiga, Survival. He plays a turn 2 Legacy's Allure, turn 3 Energy Flux, and Turn 4 Allure. It totally wrecks my board position, and I'm unable to draw anything but land and welders before his Allures have too many counters on them. He lays the Imaginary Pet beatdown again, and I hang my head in shame at the loss to such a random deck (no offense to my opponent - he played it very well and took advantage of opportunities that he should have).

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*Matches 0-1-0
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Match 2 - ??? playing Affinity

Game 1 - I get some early critters to apply some pressure and a Welder helps to slow down the building of his army. He eventually gets some men on the ground, plays a disciple of the vault and starts to go off. I survival away a platinum angel and weld it into play to save myself. He doesn't have a way to deal with it, so the Angel goes the distance.

Game 2 - Similar to game 1 in that I get some early critters, but this time he's mana screwed. I felt bad, but I definitely used it to my advantage - welding out artifact land that he needed for artifacts that didn't help him. I hard-cast the Platinum this game and my team took him out without a fight.

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*Matches 1-1-0
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Match 3 - Matt Hoffa playing U/R Fish

Game 1 - This game is a little fuzzy, but I know that Matt FoW'd at least two of my early threats and got some pressure going with a Lavamancer and some Factories. A Triskelion managed to resolve, which helped to clear his side of the board a bit and turn the tide of the game. I ended up taking it, and Matt assured me that he had plenty of SB hate waiting for me in game 2.

Game 2 - Again, a little bit fuzzy, I recall resolving a Mask with two Dreadnoughts in hand and Anger in the yard. They made short work of him.

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*Matches 2-1-0
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Match 4 - Matt E. playing Keeper with MD Humility and Damping Matrix

Game 1 - I'm unable to resolve & keep any of my team on the board, and Matt overwhelms me with little 1/1 soldiers compliments of two cycled DoJ's.

Game 2 - I'm finally able to get some men on the board and apply pressure faster than Matt is able to come up with answers. An activated Memory Jar on my turn mills away all of his DoJ's, and my critters make short work of him.

Game 3 - We go back and forth without either one of us able to completely take control of the board. Time is called and we take our 5 turns without either one of us able to finish off the other. Matt is a really good and polite player and I thoroughly enjoyed playing against him.

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*Matches 2-1-1 I find out that I can still make Top 8 if I win my next match because there were a lot of draws in that last round.
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Match 5 - bedafile from TMD playing Landstill. While I haven't known him that long, he's a quality guy and it sucked that we had to play one another in this round. One of us would make Top 8, and the other wouldn't...

Game 1 - I didn't take any notes in this match, so I'm simply going by my recollection of the game. We go back and forth for a while, but I end up getting some men onto the board that go the distance.

Game 2 - I get some men on the ground that start to beat, but he pulls out the secret tech of Oath of Druids and oaths out a Darksteel Colossus the following turn. I don't have an answer and the 11/11 beats my face in.

Game 3 - Game 3 is always a tense one for me when it is the difference between Top 8 and going home. We played very slow and deliberately, and I believe that most of this game came down to just sheer luck rather than one player capitalizing on the mistake(s) of the other. He was unable to find an oath, while my team managed to eat away at his life total. He wasn't able to come up with any answers, my men went the distance.

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*Matches 3-1-1 It is determined that I definitely make Top 8, so I'm pretty pleased. bedafile and I were the last to finish, so everyone in the Top 8 knew what I was playing. While I dislike my opponents being at an advantage with knowing my deck, I was glad that I played slowly and didn't make any game-ending errors.
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===Top 8===
Being the last to finish pre-Top 8, I didn't get to see any matches before we started T8. The T8 games were played relatively spread out throughout the store, so I didn't see what all made it in, or how the other matches played out. Here's what I know (hopefully some of the other players that were in attendance can help me out and fill in what I'm missing for the T8 decks):

Masknought TNT
Dragon
Hulk Smash
7/10 Split
Keeper
????
????
????

==Quarter-Finals==
Keeper vs. ????
Dragon vs. ????
7/10 Split vs. ????
Masknought TNT vs. Hulk Smash - we went to three games and a Sundering Titan from the yard seals the deal.

==Semi-Finals==
Keeper vs. Dragon -> Keeper
Masknought TNT vs. 7/10 Split ->Masknought TNT

My match: Again we went three games. Game 3 he gets something ridiculous like a turn 2 or 3 sundering titan, with me at 5 mana and a Duplicant in hand. He swings on his following turn to put me at 13. I draw into a Foothills, go down to 12, and replace his 7/10 beatstick with one of my own. I get him within killing distance and he somehow destroys the duplicant (I forget exactly what he used). It basically comes down to top-decking, and he gets a Trike in play. I get Survival working for me and load up my graveyard with some goodies (Anger, Genesis, Juggernauts, Squee) so that I can weld in something to beat against his Trike. He plays a Welder and passes the turn. I play out a Welder and he shoots it, but I Survival for a Trike, pitch it, and go for another Welder. Still before the damage resolves, I weld my Trike in and kill both his Trike and Welder (using up all of my Trike counters). I pass the turn and he brainstorms. I take some damage from my mana crypt before Tinkering out a Platinum Angel. The following two turns he played R&R, but I was able to weld the Angel and Trike back and forth from the graveyard to keep the protection and damage going. The Trike went the distance and it was on to the finals!

==Finals==
Keeper vs. Masknought TNT -> Split

Matt E. and I decided that the gap between 1st and 2nd was daunting enough that mana screw could make a huge difference. 1st was the Unlimited Ruby and 2nd was $25 store credit. We worked out an equitable split, where he got the card and I got 4 skullclamps, the $25 store credit, and $110 cash (we valued the ruby at $275).

==Debriefing==

In hindsight, I probably would've left out Genesis and Wonder for sure (I never used them). Additionally I found that Chalice for one shut down my ability to deal with artifacts (shaman & welder), so I think that I'd probably try and swap out the shaman for a Heretic. The Masknought component was less-than-stellar during the tournament, winning me only two games out of the 7 matches that I played. I found myself SB-ing in Blood Moon quite a bit, so if I run TNT again, I'll probably go with more of a traditional build (more of what I've seen around as of late).