My third tournament ever

[Matt]

(This was a tiny ass "tournament" against nobody special, so I'm putting this in Community instead of 1.5, where it has basically no relevance.)

The format: 1.5, everyone's on a budget or sucks or both.

The entrance fee: $3

The decklist:

4 Force of Will
4 Circular Logic

4 Careful Study
1 Intuition
1 Quiet Speculation
2 Deep Analysis
1 Moment's Peace

4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Wild Mongrel
2 Aquameba
4 Arrogant Wurm
2 Roar of the Wurm
2 Waterfront Bouncer
3 Wonder

1 Yavimaya Coast
1 City of Brass
1 Undiscovered Paradise
10 Forest
9 Island

//SB
3 Blue Elemental Blast
2 Powder Keg
3 Compost
1 Genesis
3 Naturalize
2 Legacy's Allure
1 Moment's Peace

The place: 1st

The report:

I arrived early. The store owner, Andrew, was playing some black control deck against a black guy, Jeremy, who had a Warped Devotion/bounce deck. After waiting awhile, we got a few guys together. The store owner, Andrew, joined in and we had six people.

I had brought Sligh and U/G Madness. While waiting I saw some guy had mounatins, so disliking Jackal Pup I went with U/G. I decided to run with U/G seeing as I wasn't facing the kind of decks Price of Progress and Wasteland hurt.

With six entrants the payout was $12 store credit for first place, $6 store credit for second.

ROUND TWO vs Andrew with U/B Tog Control

Andrew had some deck with Togs, Morphlings, counters (I didn't see FoW while playing but I saw him with one in a later round), and a surprising number of Boomerangs.

Game 1:

He won the die roll and Brainstormed. I drew Forest, Forest, Undiscovered Paradise, Waterfront Bouncer, Wild Mongrel, Basking Rootwalla, Careful Study, Roar of the Wurm. Very strong. I led with Forest->Rootwalla.

He Duressed, taking my Careful Study. I resolved Wild Mongrel and attacked for 1. He played a Shadowmage Infiltrator, and my Mongrel chuckled. The next turn I hit him to 13, discarding the Roar. He tried to Boomerang the Mongrel, which I Forced. At one point he swung with Finkel, he Boomeranged my Rootwalla and it immediately came back down, turning my Mongrel black. Huge misplay on his part!

He hit me with some more Boomerangs and Edicts and counters, but eventually I wore him down to 4. Then I started resolving Arrogant Wurms and such and he ran out of counters.

Life totals:
Matt: 19 (Finkel), 18 (Force), 17 (Finkel), 16 (Finkel), 10 (Tog)
Andrew: 19 (Rootwalla), 13 (Mongrel+Rootwalla), 8 (Mongrel+Rootwalla), 5 (Mongrel), 4 (Delta), dead.

Game 2:
I sided in Genesis for Moment's Peace but nothing else.

I drew Forest, Island, Island, Island, Waterfront Bouncer, Circular Logic, Quiet Speculation. My first draw was Basking Rootwalla, which I immediately played. This turned out ot be Key, as that Rootwalla did the vast bulk of the job of killing him. I resolved the Bouncer on turn and he answered with a Tog. What followed was a wonderful game: I kept playing threat after threat, mostly Arrogant Wurms, off my Bouncer, who kept bouncing his Tog to let my Rootwalla through. At one point he Boomeranged the Rootwalla with my Bouncer ability on the stack, and the tried to Edict my unguarded Bouncer, but I had wisely been keeping Logic mana open and the Tog kept his vertical climb towards Andrew's hand.

I fucked up more than once, passing the turn after my attack when I could have Speculation'd or Deep Analysis'd. But it was okay because after many turns of whittling his life down, stuff like Wurm tokens started landing and overran huis Morphling. He did a total of one damage to me this game.

Life totals:
Matt: 19 (Tog), 16 (Deep), 13 (Deep), 12 (Force)
Andrew: 17 (Rootwalla), 16 (Rootwalla), 15 (Delta), 14 (Rootwalla), 11 (Rootwalla), 8 (Rootwalla), 1 (Rootwalla+Arrogant Wurm), dead

Everyone was pretty amazed I beat the guy.

ROUND TWO: Bye

Bah! Not the best way to win but I'll take what I can get. During this round I watched the match that determined my third round opponent - nothing like a good scout. One guy had a burn deck (which are VERY popular), the other had a neat R/G Madness deck with no Angers, but a TON of burn, plus Quirion Dryads and Kird Apes. The burn player was a total dickhead, doing that little card shuffle, and whining and complaining the entire time, regardless of how well he was doing. the other guy, whose name was Ricky, was actually pretty cool. In the final game, Ricky could not draw a forest to save his life, and ended up going to 8 cards three turns in a row to discard three Basking Rootwallas. Thank god Ricky ended up winning.

ROUND THREE vs Ricky, R/G Madness+good stuff.

Game 1:
He won the roll and played Forest, Rootwalla. I started with a strong hand, with City of Brass and forests. I played City, Careful studied, and discarded double Rootwalla. He played a Mongrel, I played a Mongrel. But I had an Arrogant Wurm, which sucked up a lot of his resources. I Forced a few things and ended up killing him with god knows what.

Life totals:
Matt: 19 (City), 18 (City), 17 (Force), 15 (Flame Burst), 13 (Kird Ape), 12 (City), 11 (Force), 9 (Kird Ape)
Ricky: 16, 14, 11, 7, 3, dead. I didn't record these hits.

Game 2:
I sided out 2 Deep Analysis, 2 Waterfront Bouncer, and 1 Deep Analysis, and brought in 3 BEB, 1 Moment's Peace, 1 Legacy's Allure.

I kept another decent hand. He burned my first couple plays but I Speculated for Roar and Peace (I had drawn the other Roar in my opening hand and I didn't want the last Deep in my graveyard against a deck with so much burn), and eventually got two Wurm tokens, which kind of ran him over. I also had Wonder going this game.

Life totals:
Matt: 15 (Rootwalla+Mongrel), 13 (Mongrel)
Ricky: 19 (Rootwalla), 15 (Rootwalla+Mongrel), 14 (his Barbarian Ring), 10 (don't know), 9 (Ring), dead.

And that was the whole tournament. I spent my $12 credit on a Polluted Delta and a Vedalken Shackles. Afterward we played a game of Emperor. I was the left lieutenant, and steamrolled a weakass B/R artifact deck on the strength of turn one Study->Rootwalla+Wonder and Waterfront Bouncer trumping his Energy Chambers. I then proceeded to roll over Andrew, the opposing emperor, who had some underpowered enchantress deck. My teammates did basically nothing - the right lieutenant had to leave after like six turns and then our Emperor, Jeremy (the black guy from before), basically just did us the favor of not dying while I did the actual killing. His five color sliver deck with only like three nonbasic lands was a total pile of shit, and made worse by the opposing left lieutenant's Stone Rain deck.

I played a bunch more casual games after that, sometimes switching to Sligh. I lost a grand total of two games all night, both while playing Sligh versus some burn deck: once was a legitimate race, which I lost by one turn and not drawing a fourth Mountain for my second Fireblast, and once by mulliganing to five.

I'll probably go back, they have tournaments every Thursday and Saturday. I want to win some more Deltas.

[Meddling Mike]

Congrats Matt

[rvs]

If you're using Intuition, why not include a Genesis + Gilded Drake combo into the bouncer mix. I always thought it was pretty good, and cool too

[Matt]

Cause that's slow. I hardly ever get more than four lands on the table. Oh, and I don't have a Drake.

[The Atog Lord]

Well Done Matt!

[Bram]

LeGrow, not having a full account yet but being in the process of taking the exam, contacted me over IRC asking if I could post a suggestion he had for this deck.

<Legrow> If you could suggest Survival of the Fittest for his deck, that's all I wanted to do.

I don't know how well Survival-Madness works in 1.5 but it sure cleaned my clock in T1 yesterday.

[Matt]

As far as I know, I was one ofthe first people to try Survival in madness - B/G madness, in very very first tournament report, which should be in the archives somewhere. It's not that good, and it was only playable in that deck because I was running mana accel like Llanowar Elves. In U/G it's horrible.