[Report] Thor's Hammer 2/4/06 with Tog

[Matt]

Another 1.5 tournament, this time only 9 players.

Environment:

Dredge-A-Tog (Matt)
White Weenie (Stephen)
Pox (John who played 5c Rec-Sur last week)
U/R FlameStax (Derek)
U/R Fish (Erik)
Monogreen fat (different John)
Tide (not sure which version) (David Z.)
R/w Burn (Woodrow)
unknown

My decklist, much improved:

//Card drawing
4 Brainstorm
4 Accumulated Knowledge
3 Intution
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Regrowth
1 Life from the Loam

//Removal
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell

3 Pernicious Deed
2 Darkblast
2 Putrefy
1 Haunting Echoes

//Winners
4 Psychatog
4 Nimble Mongoose
1 Wonder

//Mana
1 Mox Diamond

2 Lonely Sandbar
1 Wasteland
1 Cabal Pit

4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta

4 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
2 Bayou
3 Island


//Sideboard
SB: 1 Gifts Ungiven
SB: 2 ???
SB: 3 Coffin Purge
SB: 1 Vedalken Shackles
SB: 1 Pernicious Deed
SB: 2 Naturalize
SB: 1 Life from the Loam
SB: 1 Mystical Tutor
SB: 1 Massacre
SB: 1 Persecute
SB: 1 Perish

ROUND ONE - Steven (White Weenie)

He plays some early jerks, and I Force a Crusade, because I am about to Intuition to get Darkblast recursion going. Then he drops a Glorious Anthem, and I'm glad I also got Loam and Cabal Pit off the Intuition. I recur that for awhile, killing all his dudes. A Nimble Mongoose goes the distance.

In: +1 Deed, +1 Shackles, +1 Massacre, +1 Mystical
Out: -1 Haunting Echoes, -1 Wasteland, -1 Wonder, -1 Regrowth

Pretty nasty again. I kill a humongous amount of creatures with Cabal Pit, get a Tog plowed, Deed two Glorious Anthems away and drop a Mongoose. He Geddons at some point, which I don't care about since I have a Bayou left in my deck and two fetches in hand. I fetch the Bayou, fetch something else, and Loam my way back up while Mongoose races Suntail Hawk.

Of note, he played both Suntail AND Welkin Hawks.

ROUND TWO - Derek (Anusien's FlameVaultStax deck)

Game one is ugly. I play a land, he plays Tomb-Mox-3Sphere. I play a land, he Wastes one and plays Crucible. Next turn I play another fetch, but he drops Smokestack and I have 2 land out vs. 3Sphere and that's a hard lock. Scoop.

In: +2 Naturalize, +1 Deed, +1 Mystical
Out: -2 Darkblast, -1 Tog, -1 Wonder

Game two I resolve a Deed and blow it for four, killing Mox, 3Sphere, Smokestack, and Propaganda. I live through two Stasis running out. The first time, when he finallys loses it, EOT I Intuition and have to think for like 7 minutes. I was considering going for triple Tog and forcing him to win the game in one turn or die trying, but I went for Regrowth, Counterspell, Haunting Echoes. He gave me the Echoes. I didn't want to go for Tog because I had only one Force in hand to defend with. Anyway, the REAL "good player" moment was when I then untapped and instead of casting Echoes, I played a Deed, swung, and passed. His graveyard hadn't yet caught a combo piece so I didn't want to waste the huge blast. Eventually he played a Vault, I Deeded it and another Stasis, and untapped and Echoes'd for like 40 cards. He was left with only one Vault in hand, and I had by then sculpted my way to a hand of Naturalize, Counterspell, Force, Force, Tog, and with 9 mana open to play it all. That Vault wasn't resolving!

Game three was tricky. He had Volc, Wasteland, Mountain in play, and a Time Vault, three cards in hand, and had tapped out for...um Trinisphere I believe. I had Cabal Pit, Bayou, and Island in play. My hand was Tog, Deed, Deed, Naturalize. My options were two:

A) Play Deed, hope he can't cast Flame Fusillade, and then untap in a very secure position.
B) Pass with Naturalize mana open.

I didn't go with B because he could easily Waste my only green source. If he did that I would be forced to Naturalize the Vault and then I'd have three uncastable cards in hand, while he had all the time in the world to play with, and tons of mana to draw. Plan A seemed better - I take a huge risk being tapped out against Vault, Trinisphere, and 3 mana - he only needs to have FF and any mana to win the game. But if he DOESN'T (and his deck has no draw or search so he's only seen like 9 cards), I untap and am able to Deed away the Vault AND Trinisphere, and have a strong hand left over. If he Wastes the Bayou, I still can kill the Vault at any time. I went with plan A, and he did untap, play a land, and FF for the win. Turns out he had the FF but got lucky and topdecked the fourth mana!

ROUND THREE - John (Pox)

Uh, yeah. Pox is a horrible deck, and scoops hard to a resolved -anything-. Loam made his Racks and Choking Sands look pretty shabby, and also took the sting out of his subpar discard (Stupor?).

In: +1 Life from the Loam, +1 Coffin Purge (expecting Nether Spirit), +1 Deed, +1 Mystical Tutor
Out: -2 Darkblast, -1 Wonder, -1 Haunting Echoes

You really wouldn't expect Corrupt in Pox, what with it killing 1/3 of its own lands so often, but hey. In any event, he uses a Rapid Decay to take out a Loam, but Tog and Mongoose are on the board, and he cannot shake them, even with Skittering Skirge.

Overall 2-1 matches, 5-2 games.

You would think 2-1 would be worth more than a lousy pack, but no. Two guys went 2-0-1 and there were three or four 2-1s, so I got 4th place on tiebreakers. I didn't find out what the top two were.

MVP card today: Cabal Pit. It killed like 20 creatures today.
Most useless: Wonder. I'm not taking it out though, it's great in clutch games where you have to push through a stall.

The monogreen deck was hilarious looking. I saw Blastoderms, Iwamori, RoboJens, Jitte, Hail Storm (probably SBed in against Fish), City of Traitors...um, Fyndhorn Elves...he should have BADLY been playing Vial with all those guys at 4 mana, but he wasn't. I don't know how this deck dropped a game against Fish. He was probably stupidly playing around Standstill. Just break the damn thing, who cares how many 1/1s he draws, he's still not going to match your 5/5 gargantua.

Burn lost hard to Tide. I heard it CALLED Solidarity but I thought I saw a Cloud of Faeries flashed so I don't know.

Pox did manage to beat Vault. Hahahahahaha.