losing the last two rounds sucks, 4-3-1 at waterbury

Ok, so I'm gonna write a report, but this is mostly from memory as I've spent the last day looking for my notes and I can't find them. as such it's gonna be mostly vague descriptions with the exceptions of matches I remember particularly well.

I played Dragon, it was awesome, I boarded badly taking out my duresses far too often because I was concerned about by Blue spell count post board.

heres a list:

3 Worldgorger Dragon (1 german foil, can anyone help me get more of these?)
4 squee
3 xantid swarm

3 animate dead
1 dance of the dead
3 necromancy

3 compulsion
4 Bazaar of Baghdad

3 intuition
2 Lim-dul's vault
1 Demonic tutor
1 Crop rotation

4 force of will
3 Duress

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Eternal witness

8 solomoxencrypt
3 underground sea
1 island
2 swamp
1 bayou
1 Tropical Island
4 polluted delta

sideboard
3 Cursed Totem
3 Null Rod
3 Chalice of the void
2 Pernicious Deed
2 Sundering Titan
2 Verdant Force

Round 1: (Phil?) TPS
Game one: I get going early with bazaar and pitch the dragon on turn two. Up to this point he has only fetched two underground seas. I look down at the animate dead and force of will in my 2 card hand and decide to wait one turn figuring that if he's playing tog or some other control deck I'm better off waiting for a blue card. He goes off and kills me. In retrospect I should have gone for it.

Game two: Fairly standard dragon play. I get xantid into play and bazaar into a dragon, animate it for the win. I have to explain the witness kill which will become a recuring theme over the course of the day.

Game three: I don't side in deed since he's playing TPS and I don't expect any permenant based hate. he tinkers up platinum angel. I check his yard for creatures, return squee to my hand, animate the dragon and draw the game.

Game Four: Time is called while we're midmulligan. We call a judge to see if we start or not. Chris K comes over and asks if either of us is playing a combo deck. We inform him that we both are and he tells us to start. nothing of consequence happens and the game ends in a draw.

1-1-2 (0-0-1)

Round 2: Goth Slaver
I had tested friday night/saturday morning with mixing mike and felt fairly sure that my build destroyed Control Slaver so I didn't really worry too much about it once I saw the welder and the mana drains.

Game one: he holds me down for a while by welding engineered explosives in and out of play to destroy my moxen. He draws no buisness and I eventually the dragon gets animated while the young elfin lady watches and records for posterity.

Game two: I resolve xantid swarm on turn 2 or so, and decide to wait a turn in case of instant speed hate. He has 3 islands in play. during his main phase he casts ak for 3 and topdecks (he admitted it later) lotus, mana crypt and a land and hard casts platinum angel. I draw the game.

Game Three: He plays a volcanic island. Then he dies. Go Go turn one kill. and now for an actual description of what happened. he plays volcanic and passes, I draw a card, play black lotus, break for blue and ancestral myself. In response he ancestrals himself then lets mine resolve. I draw Dragon, animate, witness, aparently my deck loves me. I use the remaining two to drop compulsion, he doesn't have force of will, I play an underground sea, jet, pearl, ruby, cycle the dragon and animate it. that ancestral was insane. I didn't have a dragon OR an animate in my opening hand.

2-0-1 (1-0-1)

Round Three: UG madness
Game one: he drops a turn two waterfront bouncer which get's forced, counters my first 2 animates and then resolves another bouncer. I lose.

Game two: he sides in, no joke, 10 cards. afterwards I find out that he's also maindecking annuls. I lose to a deck that is 1/3 hate cards. I get a totem to stop the bouncer and eventually get a deed but I can't get a second green source after my bayou gets wasted and die while staring at two ground seals with xantid swarm in play. He reveals a hand of 3 force of will, 1 annul, and he blew two stifles on the swarm...yeah, hate cards in that density suck.

0-2 (1-1-1)

Round 4: Jon lungo, control slaver
Game one: Jon's hand can't deal with dragon on pretty much any level. I go off on turn 2 or 3. I show him how the witness kill works.

Game Two: I stop paying attention at some point and let jon resolve intuition with goblin welder in play but tapped. he gets slaver, trike, pentavus. I give him pentavus and topdeck dance of the dead. I dance the trike, kill the welder and xantid swarm keeps on rockin. I eventually have to have the trike shoot itself so I can hardcast witness to get back the dance to dance my dragon when I can't find another animate but at that point it's pretty academic.

2-0 (2-1-1)

Round 5: Null Rob, Control Slaver
My opponent is one of Mixing Mike's teammates who is playing his build virtually card for card. We're sitting next to Smennen and get to see him make two turn one kills against the same madness player I'd played before so I feel somewhat vindicated, at least by proxy.

Game one: Dragon just has too powerful of a draw engine especially when backed up by all the disruption I'm packing. I drop a xantid and pitch squee to bazaar over the first few turns. eventually he's forced to wish for lava dart to kill the xantid or face the loss as I goldfish unmolested for x turns where x is the number it takes to kill him. I go off and kill him the next turn.

Game Two: I make a HUGE play mistake and don't animate his platinum angel, instead digging with bazaar. he wins.

Game Three: I think I went off on turn three but this might have been the game where I got 2 squees and abused my draw engine for the win.

2-1 (3-1-1)

Round 6: Control Slaver
My opponent was someone I'd played next to in a previous round and explained how a single slaver activation was not enough against my deck. it was a delaying tactic only as long as I could arange things such that I didn't just lose the game. He disagreed, we got a chance to test this theory in game two.

Game One: I Get squees and bazaar, I kill him with my draw engine.

Game Two: I have a single squee and a bazaar, I dig for dragons and can't find them. I resolve a totem, and keep pitching animates looking for dragons. eventually he gets his single activation of mindslaver off. I don't have a dragon in the yard and have only an animate in hand. he doesn't return squee and topdecks intiution. he activates bazaar and doesn't see a dragon. he pitches the animate and some other cards. he casts intution and doesn't have enough mana to get a dragon and animate it. I only have 4 animates left in my deck so he gets two and pitches them giving me a delta which fails to find anything. on his turn he casts demonic tutor for platinum angel. I return squee and topdeck a dragon, I bazaar into an animate and something else. We call a judge to verify that Animate Dead cannot be misdirected. I win.

2-0 (4-1-1)

Round 7: GAT
Game one: I win rapidly and only see two togs out of him. I assume he's playing 3 color tog.

Game two: he resolves a dryad. I cast limdul's vault and lose track of my life total. he kills me the turn before I kill him.

Game three: He rolls over me with an extremely solid control hand.

1-2 (4-2-1)

Round 8: Jeff Greene 5/3
Game One: Jeff gets jester's cap off early. I scoop in response to keep him from seeing what I'm playing.

Game Two: jeffs opening hand contains at least 2 trinispheres, a wasteland and a crucible. I get crucible locked. I scoop

0-2 (4-3-1)

I think that basically covers it. I was pretty happy with the build overall but I think I would have been better off siding out compulsions more and duress less. I was too conscious of my blue count because it was very low main deck (13) and I wasn't sure it could handle the strain of going down to 12 or 11 in order to accomodate boarding. The extra protection was extremely solid as it allowed me to duress into xantids in alot of games which was a great play. My mana count was a little light and I might go to 21 in the future, but asside from that I was extremely happy with the deck.

Hale