[Report] Team DD gets 1st after Swiss, annilated in quarters

[edit]: Yeah, I screwed up the title. I'm tired. So sue me.

Another of the semi-monthly Game Universe tournaments. This was a 10-proxy for a Timetwister. Standard 5 rounds of Swiss, cut to Top 8. I was the sole representative of Team DD, facing down 2 full car-loads of Team GWS. I played my newest revamped, heavily tested, and soon to be discredited, insulted, etc. deck.

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Team DD presents: DDT Masque
4 Underground Sea
3 Bayou
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Polluted Delta
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Black Lotus
4 Dark Ritual
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
2 Tainted Pact
4 Brainstorm
2 Phyrexian Negator
3 Unmask
4 Duress
4 Berserk
4 Illusionary Mask
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought

SB: 4 Coffin Purge
SB: 3 Daze
SB: 4 Force of Will
SB: 4 Quirion Dryad

It's basically the standard MaskNought I've worked on for so long, but it is designed to radically alter post-board, in order to optimally 2-0 K.O. my opponents. The second game leaves them with dead cards (artifact hate), while I can choose from a full complement of disruption through discard and counters. I also have the Coffin Purges for the obscene advantage they provide over Welder-based decks and Dragon, which are popular around here. It also is great with Dryad of course. Without further ado, the report.

Round 1: Robert w/Hulk
I kinda forgot how popular Hulk is around here, so I really never tested this matchup, which was a bit scary.

Game 1: I open with Mana Crypt, Underground Sea, and Negator. He Forces it, then Wastes my land. I don't see another black mana the rest of the game and I lose to Crypt and Tog beats. I make sure he's seen my whole strategy through Duress and such, and he sideboards predictably. I remove the combo, and in go counters and Dryads.

Game 2: We trade counters and Wastes, but I eventually resolve a Dryad and beat him to death before he can find another Smother. It was close, since I'd forgotten about Smother killing both Dreadnoughts and Dryads, so I take out a lot of excess in order to fit in the MaskNoughts and the Dryads, in order to go for maximum threat density.

Game 3: I keep a great hand with Lotus, Demonic, and more. He opens by Duressing me for the Demonic, leaving me with no threats. I topdeck a Mask and Brainstorm into Dryad, Mask, Dreadnought. He uses up most of his hand to counter the Dryad and Mask, and the second Mask is unanswered. A decidedly angry Dreadnought goes the distance.

Games: 2-1, Matches: 1-0

Round 2: Aaron w/Draw-7
I'd only tested a couple matches of this and other storm combo, but I like my chances when I can run 14 card disruptors (including 7 free counters), 5 Strips, and my Coffin Purges post-board.

Game 1: I Waste his first turn Academy and Duress him several times. He scoops after Brainstorming into crap. I proceed to board in all 15 cards of my sideboard.

Game 2: I keep a nice hand with Wastes and two Turn-1 Duress effects. He opens with Mox, Mox, Land, Tinker, Colossus. Oops.

Game 3: We stall out, and he ends up at 8 life via Mana Crypt. I am unable to counter his Tinker, and Colossus appears ready to end the game swiftly. I draw. . .Dryad. I drop it and pass. He hits me down to 8, then attempts to Wheel, going down to 6 via CoB. I Daze twice, and he can only pay a single mana. Multiple end-of-turn Coffin Purges pump my Dryad to epic proportions, and he suddenly finds his life total in the negative.

Games: 4-2, Matches: 2-0

Round 3: Manuel w/Mono-U (he insisted I call it that on my report)
Yet another matchup I'd yet to extensively test out. Apparently, fate made sure that all my testing against decks I expected to face was nullified by being matched up against none of those.

Game 1: A Negator hits under cover of Duress, and the Phyrexians steal another one in short order. I ended up boarding out the MaskNoughts, because he saw them and I knew he'd be adding in the good old artifact hate he had packing.

Game 2: He gets an early Keg, and I'm forced to Consult for a Negator since a Dryad would be dead on arrival and I'm out of threats. This at least buys me a turn and forces him to sacrifice his Ophidian to deal with it. He easily lets it through and then promptly Control Magics it. I Force, he Mana Leaks, and he has exactly one mana left over, making my last Daze quite useless. GG.

Game 3: I play a crudload of Duress effects, taking out almost all his Forces and Control Magics. I'm again forced to Consult for Negator, and I end up losing all but 8 or 9 cards in my deck. I drop it, and begin the beatdown. I count the cards left in my deck, and Pact down to 4, since I can now force through enough to win unless he can either kill/steal it (I'm dead anyways) or block it (requires a bunch of creatures). I Jedi Mind Trick him into not Ancestral Recalling me by pointing out that I had only removed one Berserk, and let him draw the logical conclusion that I must have 3 Berserks between my last 4 cards and my 3 in hand. I had in fact sideboarded out the other 3, but I wasn't exactly going to mention that. I beat him down, and he (I guess figuring I could be holding Berserk) blocks with an un-changed Morphling, letting me sac my extra mana, instead of pumping up to a 5/1 and wiping my board. He then announces he is at 11 life, meaning I cannot possibly win, and I object. I had been letting him keep track of his own life total (a gigantic mistake, I should've been recording it on paper) and he had announced himself at 6 the turn before. This led to a long argument, since neither of us could 'conclusively' prove it. I had counted my cards when I Pacted, and had allocated enough turns to win before decking myself with breathing room for blockers. I could count back the 3 turns of swinging, and he could not have possibly only been down to 11, since he'd only blocked once, with his 3/3 Morphling, which allowed 2 trample damage over. Since I could not prove this with a paper trail, he argued that I had not in fact swung that many times. I eventually just offered a draw, since there was no solid way to figure out who was right, only hearsay. This is a lesson I will definitely not forget. Keep track of life, and how it's being lost. Situations like these really, really suck.

Games: 5-3-1, Matches: 2-0-1

Round 4: Shawn w/Keeper
Finally, a matchup I had tested. Out of several dozen matches, I was pulling 2-0's at least two-thirds of the time. Definitely a bit of good luck, since winning this all but guaranteed the winner a Top 8 spot. We agreed beforehand to declare the match a 2-1 no matter who won, so the loser would have a better chance at T8ing on tiebreakers.

Game 1: He ends up mana-screwed (which I cheerfully exasperate with a 2-Strip opening hand) and Duress clears the way for a 48-point impact. Okay, I was having fun here a little bit, but I knew that there was absolutely no way for him to win, so I figured it couldn't hurt. I proudly display my combo, while discreetly relegating it to my board, as the full complement of disruption comes in. He told me later that he was suspicious, but he went ahead and stuck in his Rack and Ruins anyways.

Game 2: I mulligan to 5. This was, to say the least, a loooooooooong game. We both pull Wastes and we're eventually stuck in a showdown. He has a pair of Gorilla Shamans, and I've got a 2/2 Dryad. He is white screwed (I didn't exactly help here either) and we trade for a while. He's at 5 and I'm at 8. I draw exactly one non-green spell (Dark Ritual) in around 4 turns, and hold it for emergency use. I also, however, have a pair of Berserks. He takes another draw-go hand, and beats me to 6. I topdeck something useless, drop a land, and declare my attack phase. I ritual it up to a 3/3 and Berserk it. He frowns, then hard-casts a Force. I Berserk again. He extends his hand.

Games: 7-4-1 (It really was 7-3-1, but I'm a gentleman and stick to my word), Matches: 3-0-1

Round 5: Damien w/Enchantress SquirrelCraft, AKA Don't laugh, it works.dec
I'd watched him play this. It's crazy. He has a shitload of land and mana accelerators, and can go off like a madman. He wins via infinite beatdown or Goblin Bombardment, and it's full of hilarious tech. Think maindeck Ground Seal, Dark Heart of the Wood, and City of Solitude. Sideboard cards like Seeds of Innocence. I watched one match, where he just annihilated some poor fellow with 7/10. Sundering Titan. . .destroys a single Forest while nuking the guys own duals. Damien just ripped him apart in both games. This is a seriously interesting deck that deserves a second look. It reminds me of that TurboLandCrucible combo deck that popped up recently. At very least it's probably the best SquirrelCraft deck I've seen pop up so far. It's only major weakness is straight combo, since he really has nothing against it except some sideboarded Planar Voids, and he can't run Root Mazes, since they butcher him, too.

We ID into the Top 8, but agree to play it out anyways, because his deck is just that damn cool. Plus we're the 2 rogue decks in the Top 8.

Game 1: I slow him down with Duress (it was quite funny as I realized my Wastelands were 90% useless) and manage to force him into topdeck mode, and he dies to the furious Phyrexian. He chats to his friend about counters, and I can just smell the Seeds of Innocence, as they come in in place of the actually threatening Cities of Solitude. In come the counters and Dryads.

Game 2: I just never had anything going for me in this game. I let him goldfish rather than attempting to slow him down with my one Force, because I figure that I've got a better chance of going to game 3 with him not knowing what I've changed, rather than go for my miniscule chance of him crapping out, which is pretty much impossible. He had ~15 cards in hand.

Game 3: I slow him down with Duress effects, and drop a beatstick Dryad. I drop a second one and Time Walk. He counts that I need 3 spells to kill him. I happen to be holding Black Lotus and Yawgmoth's Will at the moment. Impact, etc.

Games: 7-4-1 (plus whatever you count an intentional draw as), Matches: 3-0-2.

There was quite a bit of drawing, and I ended up first seed. Take that, GWS-holes.

Round 6: Gregg w/Fish
Ah Fish, everybody's worst favorite deck. This is not the quarterfinal matchup I'd wanted by any means. Fish is, unfortunately, one of the few decks that I can say is simply not a good matchup for me. Somewhere between the maindeck hate and the resistance to my sideboard plan I just can't seem to find consistent advantage. Nevermind that once Mr. Dreadnought hits the table Fish has exactly one option: roll over and die, I just can't seem to pull this offten enough to win.

Game 1: I do something. He drops Null Rod. Ouch. I have exactly zero cards (which will most definitely be changing) that can answer a Null Rod. I have exactly 2 cards in my deck which can beat my opponent without Mask. He Forces my Negator somewhere along the line, and I scoop. This is where the hard choices are. He has seen what I'm playing, and he has talked to the other guys who have most likely informed him of my strategy. I go for it anyways, and go in go my counters and Dryads.

Game 2: We trade Wastes, and I have a lot of fun using Berserks as spot removal for some overly Curious Fish he dropped. I slip through a Dryad, and manage to beat him to death, narrowly, as I managed to Time Walk to get around his Maze of Ith, then go Berserk, Will, Berserk for a whole lot of impact. The whole game, including Duressing his hand several times, I never saw any of the artifact hate, not even the standard Null Rods. All I ever saw were the highly generic Mazes. I figure he's left them out, so I can all out. I drop the counters for a return of the MaskNoughts. Between them and the Dryads, I figure I can drop enough fat to smash him easily, Mazes or not. He does not re-sideboard, so I'm quite confident that I've successfully second-guessed his second-guessing.,

Game 3: I do something generic, he drops Null Rod. Oops. After a lot of miserable Stripping and Wasting, we both end up relatively mana-screwed. Him for colored (his Rod negated his lonely Mox Sapphire) and me for Green, as I sit with my 3 Underground Seas. After taking care of 2 of his Forces via Duressing, I go for my double-ritual Will, and he has his third Force waiting in the wings. I then manage to draw all three of my Moxen, Lotus, Sol Ring, and at least 3 or 4 Masks and Dreadnoughts. I do not see a green sources through at least eight or nine draws, and I run out of Wastes before he runs out of threats. By the time I see a green source, it's too late. My final hand was 3 Quirion Dryads, 3 Berserks, and an Illusionary Mask. That was obscene.

Final record: I don't feel like adding up the games, but the matches were 3-1-2. Losing to my worst matchup in the quarters was aggravating, but I still pulled first place after Swiss, and I feel confident that my uber-secret tech can perform in the future. When I can fit in an answer or two for Null Rods and the ilk (and I can't forget the ever-evil Platinum Angel), I aim to improve my lot against the few remaining bad matchups.

I probably say this with every deck I build (See: Salvagers.dec), and I'm sure I'll probably get flak for it, but I seriously like this deck and think it has potential. I have hugely favorable matchups against bother Keeper and Control Slaver, and that alone should warrant further consideration. This is the third time out of 3 tries I've made it to the top 8 in power tournaments with this deck (with the first two being the more primitive forms), and I've never found it prone to crapping out (major reason I've set aside Draw-7) or just plain possibly subpar randomness (yes I'm talking about Salvagers).

I guess I should probably put in the obligatory props/slops for this report before signing out.

Props:

My brother, for loaning me 100% of the cards for this deck.

Surprise, for being on my side most of the time.

The bagel shop next door, for being open for the hour we had to wait before the tournament began.

My deck, obv.

Damien's deck, for being infinitely cooler than anything else could possible be.

Slops:

Fish, I hate you.

Control Slaver and Dragon, for not facing me. I own you.

Team GWS, for pretending like they were amazing for placing 5 people in the top 8, when they accounted for nearly half the competitors. Also for ignoring the fact that I savagely owned them in Swiss.

Headaches, because I fucking hate playing with a headache.

My deck, for not having any bloody answers to Null Rods.

Until next week, peace out and enjoy yourselves immensely.

-Dan