I am playing against
davecw2@hotmail.com (Psyduck) and we are both 2-0 at this point. He has a interesting looking deck that pretty much revolves around Goblin Welder as far as I can see. This isn't a typical Stacker deck or anything (list below), I'm not sure if this is entirely his creation or a archetype that I'm not familiar with. It looks like it would be hell on control decks with Smokestacks and Wires and Spheres of Resistance. He wins with Karn beats, Welder beats or decking (he has 1 Digger) I guess. In any case, pretty cool looking deck.
He has no real creature control at all other than fast Wires and Smokestacks I guess, so I thought I had a reasonable chance if I got some disruption and a fattie out quick. I am playing a fairly standard Sui Black although I have 2 Edicts main deck where most of them run Null Rods. That decision looked brilliant rounds 1 and 2 vs Reanimator and a Void deck, but looks quite stupid when facing a deck like this with 50 gazillion artifacts or so. Only 2 main deck ways to kill Welder worries me too since it looks like the deck would struggle mightily without a Welder.
After boarding I like my chances a lot more since I can bring in 4 Contagions for Welder control and 3 Ebony Charms to cut down on Welder foolishness if one does survive.
Game 1: I keep a hand of something like 2 Swamp, Wasteland, Negator, Duress, Consult, Hyppie. No acceleration but I really want a turn 1 Duress vs him. I win the roll and Duress and he has a pretty weak hand with great acceleration (Workshop and a mox) but no gas other than 1 Tangle Wire. I take the Wire and I think that left him with nothing but Land, Moxen and a Tsabo's Web. He drops workshop, mox pearl, Web, Web. Not too scary. I peel Ritual so I can wasteland the Workshop and Ritual out Negator (his hand is already practically empty so I chose fat over the hyppie). He drops land and maybe another mox and a Welder. I smash with the Negator and consult for an Edict. I only have 2 so I worry a bit when I lose one in the top 6 but the next one shows up only a few cards down. I feel pretty good once the Welder is gone since he only has 2-3 turns on Negator time. His next turn he ponders a bit and Wheels.
This is obviously a risk for him since he is low enough on mana (3 or 4 available maybe) that it is fairly unlikely he can do anything broken and he might wheel me into a bunch of disruption, but he had no other option except sit there and take 5 a turn. I lose a couple Hyppies but he wheels me into a simply ridiculous hand of Swamp, Vampiric Tutor (another choice most sui decks don't run but I have always been happy with it), Ritual, Lotus, Negator, Hymn, Wasteland. I Vamp during upkeep for Yawg's Will, then Ritual, Lotus, Will, double Ritual, Lotus again, lay Wasteland from graveyard, Duress him, Hymn him, drop another Negator and 2 Hyppies to go with the Gator already on the board. Oddly enough, I win that game. That may not be the most broken will I ever cast, but it ranks right up there.
Game 2: I sb badly here. By FAR the weakest part of my game is sbing. I know what I want to come in, but I have a hard time deciding what to take out. I want to sb in 4 Contagion and 3 Ebony charm to kill/cripple welders. I end up taking out 2 Edicts, 2 Negator and 2 Sinkholes and siding in 3 Charms, 1 Contagion, 1 Masticore and 1 Warbeast. I feared sb fire/ice vs my Negators a little but this is stupid sbing in retrospect. I should have dropped 4 Negators, 2 Edicts and 4 Sinkholes (since he was going first, if I'm going first I'd keep them in) and brought in 4 Contagion, 3 Charm, and a Masticore.
He gets and early Welder and I wax it with a Contagion. I get a Hyppie going and lay Necro and think I'm in pretty good shape as I start going crazy drawing cards but he has a load of artifacts and gets a Smokestack down. I keep hitting with hyppie but I can't find any more critters and my disruption isn't doing much since he has emptied his hand anyway. He gets another Welder but I have an Ebony Charm ready to go.
He has a bunch of stuff in his graveyard from a Tinkered out Memory Jar so when he goes for a Wire with the Welder I nail it and Karn and the Memory Jar with the charm. I thought that was game honestly since without Karn his ways to win are very limited but despite a wasteland or two the smokestack forces all my permanents off the table and he manages to keep a lone Welder and Smokestack, which he can now recur forever with the other smokestack, locking me down at one land. All my rituals are gone via the Memory Jar and a Consult (for a Wasteland earlier I think) so I can't win. This was a great game, very close, a couple of momentum shifts.
Game 3: I open a very mediocre hand of 3 Swamp, Wasteland, Hymn, Warbeast, something. I keep it just because the Wasteland and Hymn are attractive. In retrospect this hand is pretty lousy against him, I should have mulliganned. He also mulls (as he did in game 1) and I do the Swamp go thing. He lays Shivan Reef, Welder, Tormods Crypt. I peel Ritual off the top again so I get to Ritual Warbeast and Waste his Volcanic. Better lucky than good I guess. He lays a City of Traitors and does nothing I think. I pull Sinkhole off the top and use it on his City and Swing. He lays another City and says go. I draw another Hymn which is as useless as the first one. I have no intention of feeding his Welder anything good. I swing again, he lays a Sphre of Resistance and says go. I swing again and draw nothing. He then crypts my yard and welds the Sphere back in to the crypt on his turn, drops a lotus petal and Volcanic Island and tinkers the Crypt into Karn. He is at 10 at this point and I'm not crazy about the board position.
I have nothing but land and Hymns in hand, 4 Swamp and Warbeast on board. He has Welder, Karn, some artifact of little consequence (Crypt? Tsabos Web?) and fortunately only the Volcanic for mana now that City of Traitors is gone. I peel a Nantuko Shade, drop it and say go. He lays land and either does nothing or lays a zero cost artifact. I draw ritual and think yay, I can kill Karn now if he blocks shade with Karn! Obviously I'm an idiot since after he blocks the shade with karn and I pump it to 8/7 he just Welds it away. Luckily he draws nothing good so all he can do is weld something back into karn and block my shade again next turn. He is down to 4 now and I drop a Hyppie. He draws more land or a Lotus or something and gets Tangle Wire down but has no mana left over to animate anything with Karn so when I attack next turn he has to chump the Warbeast with the Welder and drop to 2 and I lay another Shade. It is all over next turn since he can only drop a Tolarian Academy and die to my hyppie.
I took no damage this game but I felt like it was very very close and he was only a turn or two away from taking over. If his academy had showed up a couple turns sooner who knows?
Great games, very cordial opponent again - we chatted for a while before the match. I wish him luck the rest of the way, thanks for the games.
Tony
