[Results] The Waterbury Finals

WATERBURY FINALS

By Stephen Menendian

First of all, I’d like to say that both of these guys were great sports and had to perform well to get to this point. By this point they had played through ten matches of type one in a field of 190 sporting not just the best of new England, but beyond as well.

Scott was playing GroAtog and Seth was playing EBA. What follows is the play by play sprinkled with my own analysis.

GAME ONE

Scott won the Die roll getting an 18 to Seth’s 5.

Scott was playing first.

Scott’s opening hand:

1 Island
1 Mox Sapphire,
1 Time Walk,
1 Mana Drain,
1 Merchant Scroll,
1 Mind Twist,
and Yawgmoth’s Will

TURN ONE:
Scott dropped the Island and the Mox Sapphire and Merchant Scrolled for Ancestral Recall. Despite being so mana light, Scott was lucky to have such resilient mana sources considering Seth’s hand:

Wasteland,
Wasteland,
Polluted Delta,
Demonic Tutor,
Phyrexian Negator,
Meddling Mage,
Ophidian

If Scott had had any other combination of mana, it might have been far more vulnerable to Seth’s disruption.

Seth draws a Force of Will, drops his Delta and passes the turn.

TURN TWO;

Scott draws Force of Will and casts Ancestral drawing Duress, Dryad, and MOX EMERALD!! How laucky! That is even better than Tropical Island given Seth’s Wastelands! Scott plays Time Walk off both Moxen and takes another turn. He drops Dryad. Seth Force of Wills the Dryad, Scott FOW’s back. Dryad Resolves. Seth Fetches out Underground Sea. He drops a Wasteland and plays Demonic Tutor.

TURN THREE:
At this point I was distracted by Eastman who was cracking some jokes – I think I might have missed something here because I have them playing Force of Wills over the DT – which I do not think is the case.

TURN FOUR:
I have Scott swinging for 2 – which means FoW had to come after Dryad – but I’m not quite sure how. Nonetheless, things are fine from here on out.

Seth topdecks Black Lotus and taps a Wasteland, a Sea, and a Mox Sapphire he must have either tutored up or drawn the previous turn for Phyrexian Negator. The Negator resolves. Scott plays AK for one on Seth’s endstep and Dryad is now a 3/3.

TURN FIVE:
Scott draws another AK and passes the turn.

Seth plays a Morph. Scott plays Mana Drain and Seth plays Force of Will pitching Meddling Mage. The Morph resolves. At this point the Negator is stunted by the growing Dryad, but the Negator still has a function - it prevents Scott from swinging with the Dryad as long as Seth has two threats on the table.

TURN SIX:
For some reason Scott plays AK for 2 on his main phase instead of on Seth’s endstep. Scott plays a Tropical Island. On Scott’s endstep, Seth sacrifices Black Lotus to morph up an Exalted Angel. Seth wastes Scott’s Trop and swings with Angel. Eot, Scott plays Brainstorm.

TURN SEVEN:

Scott plays another Dryad and a trop and passes the turn.

Seth Wastes the 2nd trop, in response Scott plays another Brainstorm. Seth attacks with an Angel. The Dryads are 8/8 and 2/2. Seth plays Underground Sea, go.

TURN EIGHT:
Scott decides to reverse roles and go into Beatdown mode. He swings with an 8/8 dryad and plays another island. Seth is now at 15 life.

Seth swings with his Angel. Scott is at 7. The game is approaching its climax.

TURN NINE:
At this point I recorded Scott’s hand again: Mana Drain, Demonic Tutor, Yawgmoth’s Will, Duress, Mind Twist, Psychatog, Psychatog.

Scott does not attack with Dryad - he cannot - becuase Seth's trample damage would kill him.

Seth draws, swings Scott down to 3 while Seth is still at 15. Seth’s hand is Mana Drain, Meddling Mage, Sol Ring.

TURN TEN:

This is it. The game comes down to this. The Angel has fulfilled a very strong function using its life gaining as tempo to slow the life loss from Dryads while the evasion makes it difficult for Scott to deal with. Since Scott has been denied access to black since the beginning of this game he has had to fight as best he could and answered Seth’s mana denial well. To a large degree this game illustrates the power of Quiron Dryad. It, unlike almost any creature I can think of, permits one to play beatdown and control at the same time. You don’t have to do anything but be permissive after it resolves and it can stunt almost any attack eventually. In many respects, Quiron Dryad is as powerful a creature as Psychatog. On the other hand, Seth necessarily has to play, and has been pushed into playing, beatdown, rather than control. While his Negator is weak, it has fulfilled its function of buying time for the Angel. Thus, each threat Seth has played has been toward the purpose of securing tempo for his beatdown.

But, Scott topdecks…… MOX JET. Recall that Scott has Mind Twist, DT, Yawgmoth’s Will and Duress as well as two Psychatogs. Scott decides to play Yawgmoth’s Will. Seth plays Mana Drain and Scott responds with a Mana Drain as well. Yawgmoth’s Will resolves. At this point Scott swings with his Dyrad sending Seth to 5. In his second mainphase, Scott uses the mana drain mana to resplay the Time Walk from his graveyard and cast DT. The rest of the game is a formality as he takes his second turn and swings with both dryads for lethal damage.

Afterward, I pointed out that Scott could have Demonic Tutored for Black Lotus to sacrifice to play Yawgmoth’s Will for the same result, but in the end I suppose it didn’t really matter. Scott won a hard faught game.

With the lessons of this game in mind, how might the players sb going into game two? How will they be approaching the matchup? Will it matter? You’ll find out.

SBing:

Scott SBed in two Diabolic Edict and two Pernicious Deed. Seth SBed in two Swords to Plowshares, one Moat, and took out two Vindicate and one Negator.

GAME TWO
Seth is playing first. Here is his opening grip:
Mox Jet,
Tundra,
Plains,
Mana Drain,
Swords to Plowshares,
Meddling Mage,
Ophidian

Scott’s hand is just as robust:

Force of Will,
Force of Will,
Flooded Strand,
Mox Emerald,
Psychatog,
Brainstorm,
Accumulated Knowledge,
And he draws Diabolic Edict,

TURN ONE:

Seth opens with a safe Mox Jet, plains.

Scott answers with Emerald Delta. The game is off to a nice Type One start.

TURN TWO:

Seth begins the offense, as he should, with Tundra, Ophidian. On his endstep, Scott breaks the Delta for Sea and casts edict. On Scott’s turn, he plays Brainstorm off the Sea. He then plays another Delta and sacs it for a second Sea. He plays Duress seeing: Mana Drain, Swords to Plowshares, Meddling Mage, and another Ophidian. What he takes is going to be revealing about how he foresees his game plan. He takes the Mana Drain. This suggests that he is playing the Control deck, not the beatdown.

TURN THREE:
Seth plays another Phid which Scott Force of Wills. He plays a Tundra and passes the turn.

Scott plays Draw, Go.

TURN FOUR:
This is one of the funnier plays of the match. Seth drops Meddling Mage. In response, Scott plays Mystical Tutor for Ancestral Recall. I’m not sure if this is how Mage actually works, but once the Mystical Resolved, Seth named Ancestral Recall. If that is how Mage works, despite the error of playing Mystical in Response, it actually turned out to be the correct play because it locked down Mage on Ancestral so that Scott could make other key plays. Scott drew AK and played it for two after playing an island. This was to fuel more AKs later and would not have been possible if Seth had named AK.

TURN FIVE:
Seth plays Underground Sea and attacks with Meddling Mage. Scott plays Brainstorm. He drops a Dryad. Seth casts Swords to Plowshares on the Dryad.

TURN SIX:
Seth swings with his Mage for another two points.

Now comes the big play. Scott drops Pernicious Deed and it resolves.

TURN SEVEN:
Scott attacks with Mage again, and Scott sucks it up going down to 12. It is clear that Scott is considering whether to blow the Deed or not, but decides at this point not to.
Scott draws and passes the turn.

TURN EIGHT:
Seth enters his combat phase, and Scott thinks for a moment, then taps his Emerald and an Island and blows Deed for Two taking the Mage and Seth’s Jet with it. Seth’s only answer is to play Yawgmoth’s Will. Scott Mana Drain’s and plays Ancestral Recall into Sea, Tropical, and Tog.

Yawgmoth’s Will is one of the most powerful cards in Type One. On Scott’s turn he plays Yawgmoth’s Will, and this time, Will resolves.

He replays Ancestral getting two land and DT. He breaks Delta for Trop. He passes the turn and Seth points out that Scott had Mana Drain mana and so must burn (forgoing some sweet plays from his yard).

TURN NINE:
Seth draws and passes the turn. Clearly, something has gone very wrong for Seth. I peek over and I see Moat and Swords to Plowshares in Seth’s hand.

Scott draws Black Lotus and plays AK for 3 and drops another Deed.

TURN TEN:
Seth plays Brainstorm and passes the turn.

Scott plays Tog. Seth plays Swords to Plowshares, and Scott plays Brainstorm in response, and casts Mana Drain. The Tog survives. He plays Scroll for AK and passes the turn. Seth points out, once again, that he had mana drain mana and burns for two. Eot, Seth breaks Strand for a Tundra.

TURN ELEVEN
Seth makes his final play – his final gambit for survival: He taps his mana for Moat. In response, Scott plays Gush and finds Force of Will with ease. Moat is answered. On Scotts turn he swings with a lethal tog for the game, and the Waterbury Championship.

Both players shake hands and they get a round of applause from the remaining group.

Stay tuned for my Final Thoughts.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Clearly, Scott and Seth were competent players to get this far. Scott chose a very strong deck for this metagame – and I’ll explain why in a moment, but I’d like also to say that Seth is also a very strong technical player.

The one thing you had to understand going into the Waterbury – that I think everyone expected was a lot of blue based control. Naturally, I think the logical answer for people who can’t invest hours and hours of breaking the format is to play Madnessesque decks. Hyperion, Jacob, and the Big O decks to a large degree that infiltrated the top tables reflect this. Bazaar based decks use card disadvantage to create card advantage and overwhelm control. When packed with the best cards that type one has to offer, they are real threats. So what decktype best straddled in between these aggro decks and the control decks? I think the answer is clear. Aggro-Control. Both EBA and Scott’s GroAtog are excellent Aggro-Control decks. Their creatures are powerful enough to ruin Aggro’s day by being larger and racing aggrol, at the same time they are able to be outcounter and to a certain extent even out-control control!

This brings me to the final point of this match. Recently I’ve been taken by Flores’ “Who’s the Beatdown?” article which posits that in every matchup, there is a control player and a beatdown player – this occurs even in control mirrors. The lesson is that if a player is supposed to be the control player but plays beatdown, they will lose and vice versa. I believe that is what happened here. Seth’s Angel and Negator even were very strong in Game One. EBA with Drain and FoW has the tools to go head to head with counters against Tog, but in the long run has none of the drawing power. As a result, it cannot possibly try to win by out-controlling Tog – but that is what Seth did. Moat is indicative of this. For a very long time Scott did not have any threats that resolved. If Seth had sided in or at least kept and resolved some more threats, the game could have been a lot different. I think EBA has no choice but to be the beatdown and the Moat gambit reflects that failure.

As for metagame trends and portents, I would say that Waterbury stands for two things. First, it signals the triumphant return (?) of Green as one of the very best colors in Type One, and indicates a rise in Bazaar as a budget (?) aggro tool to defeat control. What i mean is that Bazaar functions very well in what are otherwise budget designs. I think Bazaar has clearly replaced Workshop as the land that fuels the defeat of control because of Weaknesses of TnT and Stax at the moment. While I think TnT is very strong, the budget decks can comepte becuase of their strong artifact hate - which only gets stronger with Oxidize. Bazaar was everywhere. But so were green creatures. I would not be surprised if Elvish Spirit Guide was one of the most prevalent creatures at the tournament. Xantid Swarm also made a very good showing, as did Wild Mongrel, and in the finals Quiron Dryad. Root Maze was also a savage beating on par with the power of Sphere of Resistence. Yes you heard me, Sphere.

One final note. I believe that allowing five proxies, while certainly necessary, led to a distortion of the metagame that would not have happened had say 10 proxies or more been allowed. The reason is simple. Five proxies for people who have none of the money cards means that they are constrained in colors and content. If someone wants four bazaars, then they may well have to go mono green and run Lotus as the fifth proxy. Allowing unlimited proxies would mean that people have far more choice in the deck they wish to play and I believe this would mean a lot more Workshops would see play because Workshop needs to be used with power, while clearly, Bazaar does not. Additionally, I think combo would see more play, and control as well if you can believe it – all replaced by hate heavy green decks which the players can afford to play. Perhaps allowing 10 proxies at the next tournament would be something to try.

All in all, a great tournament. Again, congratulations to the finalist and the semi-finalist and to Ray for putting the tournament together.