Report: 1st/2nd at the Beanie Exchange with Control Slaver

[tehmajickguy]

Seeing as how Hatch hasn't gotten around to posting anything about the outcome of the tourney last weekend and it being my first power win,  it probably wouldn't hurt for this lurker to contribute a lil bit to this site. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Matt McNally. I'm a regular at most of the power tournies in New England and you can usually pick me outta the crowd by my Ninja Turtles shirts and my loud, usually trash talking mouth. Most people tend to have an interesting pre-tourney rant to make when they're writing one of these, but I'm not that cool so I'll skip it and go straight to the list of what I played last sunday in Mass:

Control Slaver Version 172683.12

3 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
5 Island
4 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Library of Alexandria
7 SoLoMoxen
1 Mana Crypt

4 Goblin Welder
2 Gorilla Shaman
1 Pentavus
1 Triskelion
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Mindslaver

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain

4 Brainstorm
4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Echoing Truth

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Sideboard:
2 Red Elemental Blast
3 Duress
3 Rack and Ruin
3 Lava Dart
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Sundering Titan
1 Duplicant

Anyone that knows me knows that I've constantly worked on Slaver ever since Shay won a lotus with it at Andy Stok's infamous Double Round 2, errr Double Lotus Tourney last year. The main deck is extremely solid, and I'm not sure if I would change anything. The sideboard however is still a work in progress. The Duplicant was trash, and has been cut. What I do with that slot is still up in the air.  And without any further ado, heres the report.

Round 1 Dave(the owner of the Beanie Exchange) playing Cerebral Assassin

Game 1: Dave mulls to 6 while I keep a gassy hand. My welder hits play, i counter both of his while he digs for answers with his bazaar.  I drain something of a relatively large size and parlay that into a twisted Yawg Will for the win.

In: Darts and Crypts
Out: Colossus, LoA, and a couple random cards

Game 2: Dave resolves a Welder, while I'm pretty mana screwed. Despite this, I manage to counter his intuitions and resolve 3 Welders that I'm laying beats with. Eventually I find some land, tutor up tinker, activate Slaver and the game is effectively over there.
1-0, 2-0

Round 2 Random Guy playing Gifts-Dragon.

I hope this guy posts here on tmd, cause I forgot to write his name down and his deck was very original and interesting. He basically to a Meandeck Gifts shell and cut out some stuff for the Dargon combo.

Game 1: My hand is just retarded for the control mirror. Open with LoA, draw cards, resolve lotus and Ancestral in my first 2 turns, set up a Tinker for Slaver, have him Deep me, find Will and kill him.

In: Crypts, Titan, and Duress
Out: Mana Crypt, some other stuff

Game 2: I find LoA pretty easily, Duress him a couple times, Welder puts the bus into play and I ride the bus all over him.
2-0. 4-0

Round 3 Another Random guy playing Oshawa Stompy?!?!?

I dunno how this guy won his first 2 rounds, but he must have gotten paired with some of the fish that was everywhere that day. Oh well, mad respect to anyone who can win matches in a competative t1 tourney these days with O Stompy.

Game 1: He digs for gas with bazaar while I sit there and sculpt my hand into something pretty savage. I counter his Survivals and eventually dig up Tinker for the Iron Giant and smash face twice.

In: Duplicant
Out LoA

Game 2: He leads with Chalice for 0 and Root Maze. Ouch. Seriously. But I let them both resolve since I've got my Echoing Truth in hand. He does his bazaar thing while I dig up a Welder and look for a way to dump the bus into the bin. Eventually I find a Thirst, deposit the bus, truth his chalices, drop the moxes I was holding, put my beater into play and rode him home.
3-0, 6-0

Round 4 Yokomoto with Meandeck Gifts

I didn't even know this was Yokomoto until after the match was over. I suppose that just makes beating him all the sweeter (ooohhh, its like foreshadowing).

Game 1: I lead with LoA, figuring I'm in a good position. Unfortunately he leads with Walk into Tinker. Now if hed done it in reverse order, I'd have lost since I lost the counter war over his tinker. Unfortunately for him, right before he killed me, I dug up an answer to his Colossus in the form of Tinker for my own Colossus. Soon Welder hits play, removes his big speed bump and I kill him before he can deal.

In: Duress, Rebs, Titan
Out: Mana Crypt, random stuff

Game 2: We spend time building our hands over the first few turns until he tries to go off and I Reb his Rebuild into the stall. He doesn't resolve anything relevant for the rest of the game as really small red men beat him to death.
4-0, 8-0

Seeing as it was a 6 round tourney, I spend the next 2 hours ID'ing with my teammate Rich and the one and only Brass Man, and enter the top 8 as the number 1 seed. Just prior to the top 8, Hatch raffles off some stuff and I win a foil Ass Whuppin'. Coincidence, I think not....

Top 8 Some Guy with Kird Ape rides you like a Donkey.dec

This guy made a solid meta choice with R/G, since it beats fish everytime and his main deck Viashino Heretics and sideboarded Artifact Mutations gave him a ridiculous Workshop match. Unfortunately for him he got a bad top 8 pairing.

Game 1: He plays his little dorks, I counter his few relevant spells, Tinker for DSC + Time Walk = the win.

In: Lava Darts, Sundering Titan
Out LoA, random junk

Game 2: He mulls, keeps a questionable hand. I keep a Welder on the board, dig up titan, weld him in and he goes the distance.
5-0-2, 10-0

Top 4 Kyle Leith playing MeanDeck Gifts

Game 1: He sets up Tinker for DSC which I gladly let resolve since I was holding Welder, and from the way he gifted I immediately put him on having Will in hand. Turns out I was right, so the Force I saved got to counter his Will. Unfortunately, Kyle top decks Merchant Scroll > Echoing Truth for my Welder and hands me my first loss of the night.

In: Rebs, Titan, Duress
Out: Mana Crypt, random stuff

Game 2: This is a game I'm sure Kyle will never let me live down. I expend my hand early and find myself with no cards in hand. Kyle taps out to scroll for ancestral. I top deck my own ancestral into Duress, and stuff to set up a huge will. I strip his ancestral, and proceed to resolve will a couple turns later.

Game 3: There wasn't much to this game. Kyle's hand was decent, but mine was extremely strong. Duess nailed a drain turn 1 and kept me informed of his hand the rest of the match. I carefully pieced together my will, baited him into a counter war over something meaningless, cast my will and won.
6-0-2, 12-1

1st and 2nd both get moxes, John and I decided for me too take the pearl which was in amazing condition and he took the emerald he needed.

Props:

Hatcher for running another great tourney
My teammates for traveling with me and helping me tune my slaver list
Outlaw for being my pimp :shock:
Null Rob for being awesome
Brass Man for teahcing me how to pay 2 and tap my Vesuvan Doplleganger to cast Searing Wind

Slops:

Rotaries for sucking. Mad true.

[Whatever Works]

good report, and dont worry I might let you live down game 2. Everybody mizes sometimes... just happens that you do it more then most. However, props on winning!

Your analysis of game 3 over fighting over a meaningless spell is a bit scewed... I think we were fighting over my misdirection targeting your ancestral... I new 100% you were baiting it, but I liked the idea of making your great hand smaller, and less broken... and my already small hand (that was fairly weak) smaller... So it appeared as a neccessary evil with a clear risk reward that made sense.

However, you did play your side of the table perfectly, and not to many control slaver players seem to do that so be proud!

[Juggernaut GO]

Mad props for trash talking.  It is truly a lost art at magic tournaments, and there's probably a lot less since im not there to do it........................... ...........on that note, F control slaver!!!!!

[Ivantheterrible]

I dunno how this guy won his first 2 rounds, but he must have gotten paired with some of the fish that was everywhere that day. Oh well, mad respect to anyone who can win matches in a competative t1 tourney these days with O Stompy.

I am just as much of a random guy as you are here on the drain and i'd acutally be willing to bet that more people no me here then know you (though with a few of them its for somewhat infamos reasons.)

I find it interesting that my deck was clearly a terrible call while the r/g deck was an excellant meta call. I actally hadn't played fish at all and swept my previous opponet who was playing stax. Besides herritecs and rebs i had just as much hate as he did. I was actually going to play r/g also but i couldn't fit both root maze and a good mana base in, though somehow the other guy did. After that day I saw that root maze didn't do as much as I thought and if i play a hate deck again it'll be r/g.

I won my first to matches not because i got luckly but because i knew what i was doing. I wasn't some random noob playing a budget deck. I could have played with drains also but i chose not to opting to make a good meta call. In the end i made a decent meta call but r/g would have been better.

Futhermore i consider slaver to be a rather good matchup. Our games didn't exactly play out in the right way for me. I saw maybe 3 green sources between the 2 games and you saw ancestral both games. Am i calling you a luck sack. Not really. What i am saying is that iv'e played slaver a lot and I know how both decks play. Iv'e also done a lot of testing and unless they go broken withe'n the first turn or two slaver generally has a pretty rough time. In fact if it hadn't been for a somewhat minor mistake i'm pretty sure i would have won the first game. I bated you with a rootwalla which you countered (I think that was a mistake of your's) then i had space to either cast chalice for 1 or rod. For some reson even though chalice for 0 was already down i got worried about pentavus slaver and tirsk and played the rod. A few turns later you played sol ring tinker and won. If i had cast chalice at 1 your only way out would be to eventually cast any large guys or get luckly on your one slaver turn and have me draw a way to kill chalice. In game two I think i had enough answers but i only saw a single green source til it was to late (I probably should have mulled)

Also the first random guy was a friend of mine named Jesse. Both of us also play all around New England just like you. So befor you go around calling people random consider if you are also random.

[amidtownrocker]

I believe he meant someone whose name he did not catch and someone he did not reconize by using the term "random." Almost everyone has a ManaDrain name and just because of that he is supposed to know your name?  Have you done well at a local tournament and screamed out IamIvanTheTerrible!!! because if you did then he def should know your name then. If you notice the people he names in his report are people that are easily reconizible at any T1 tourney. Everyone knows people like BrassMan. So before you go and get all bent out of shape because he called you Random, think of a reason why he should know your name..

[Juggernaut GO]

matt mcnally is a random beotch !   slapping bitches (3)

[amidtownrocker]

Apparently LaPlante is good at slapping beotches, everyone better watch out, I hear he can even reach us from LasVegas! Be warned!

[Gaagooch]

Nice report Matt, nice win, too bad I had to be stuck at work rather than being at the tourney.  But hey you kept me updated the whole time.  Glad we are teammates, maybe now we will get recognition in the area...but I doubt it.  And i completly agree that Outlaw is a pimp too bad he knocked Rich out of the top 8 otherwise we coulda had what like two moxen, well pending Rich winning in the top 4.  Can't wait till Waterbury.

[Outlaw]

Congrats Matt, obviously you did so well cause i'm your pimp!