I went up to Concord to make a run for the mox and meet some of the other people who post here. I've been adopted into the Hadley, MA crew (yes, we are fierce ), and I was looking forward to some healthy regional banter.
I got there about an hour ahead of time, and met up with the guys from Hadley: Chris (mezzir), Chris, Brian (hulk3rules), Nick(billtheduck), Chris, Sam, and Dan (pernicious dude).
I scouted around a bit to see who had made it from this site and try to find a set of mana drains. There wasn't much at the store in the way of singles, but I eventually found Steve (Zherbus) and registered.
I was playing emerald alice with ophidians instead of werebears (and oath conversion). My decklist is at the end of the report.
Round 1, Tom (thombligh) playing Turbo Land
I learn Tom (helluva good guy) is from New York (Binghamton crew if memory serves), we chat about tmd a bit, and get down to brass tax. Game 1: a blue/green mirror is just plain cool (disgusting) depending on whether you like counter wars or not. I win the first war to get dryad into play. The next counter war sees my guy to 5/5, and Tom can't find an answer or go off.
Game 2: I feel pretty good with an early dryad, and pitches. However, at some point we have a transaction similar to:
tom: horn of greed
me: FoW
tom: gush
me: counterspell
tom: foil
me: gush
tom: FoW
tom: MisD on my FoW
tom: Exploration (then shows his hand)
me: so about game 3...
Game 3: I get a decent draw, and then I sneak in a dryad. I beat and we counter over some card draw, but i have him pretty low when time is called. We start the 5 turn clock, and tom drops glacial chasm. Thats right, the uncounterable wall of everything. His life goes 8, 6, 2, draw.
I can't really complain. I should really beat combo (at least thats what people who don't respect combo tell me), but Tom played extremely well, and made me work for the tie.
0-0-1, 1-1-1
Round 2, Sam (pernicious dude's son) playing Ur Phidian
I saw him playing before the tourney started, and was a little worried as I have never played against any phidian. My kill is cheaper, but he was playing mana drains. Sure, Sam is less than ten years old (not a typo), but he's made T8 at our local tournaments, and is worthy magician.
Game 1: I resolve an early phid, and do the poor-man's loa dance. From there its alot of card drawing, and counter wars which I win. I find a dryad and beat.
Game 2: We both set up our mana base and do some preliminary searching with impulse and the like. I drop phid again and win the counter-war. Sam untaps, sees his window of opportunity and drops...blood moon. I think for a minute and let it resolve. I already had a mox emerald out, and figured that was all i need to play my dryad once i find it. Sam on the other hand only had island, mox, volcanic, strip.
With blood moon he couldn't mana drain my next few counter/searches. I countered FtKs, FoF, all the time swinging with phid. I eventually find the dryad and ride it home.
1-0-1, 3-1-1
Round 3, Nick (billtheduck) playing paragon keeper.
It kinda sucks playing people from Hadley over and over, but we did make up a third of the tourney (8/24), so I guess it was inevitable. Game 1: One of the strangest starts ever with my deck...
me: land, go
Nick: land, ancestral recall
me: misdirect, pitch blue
Nick: FoW, pitch blue
me: FoW, pitch blue
Nick: FoW, pitch blue
he actually grins as he looks at the 2 cards in my hand,
me:FoW, pitch blue
me: draw 3, drop dryad and beat. Now, you can argue that I was ass-lucky to have 3 pitch counters and 3 blue cards, but wasn't he just as lucky to have ancestral, 2 pitches and 2 blue (in fact, i'm sure this is much less probable for keeper). Either way, I drew about 21-30 cards off misdirect over the course of the day.
Game 2: Unfortunately, Nick gets perniciously land screwed and i find phid and friends and build a wall of counters while beating down. On an aside, this is the point where in the game next to us our friend Brian (hulk3rules) gets into an argument with Andy (evidently the creator of team academy website) over a animate dead/diabolic edict resolution. I didn't hear what was said, but Brian's a good player, and I doubt he misplayed. They both made T8, so it didn't matter. Again, it sucks beating Nick (especially since he lent me 5 cards for the deck), but thems are the breaks. Obviously more testing is needed, but I feel pretty good about playing keeper now.
2-0-1, 5-1-1
Round 4, Andy (yes, the argument guy) playing Dragon
I'm not usually one for vendetta's, but he called brian a blatant liar in front of everyone because he was about to lose a game he should have won. I wanted to stomp this guy. Game 1: I get an early dryad, and search for counters. He animates dragon, I FoW, he MisD's, and I'm combo'd out. Worth mentioning was him running Vodalian Merchant which I expect to see in future Dragon builds. It allowed him to go off without a kill, and 'search' with his merchant until he found the cards he wanted.
Game 2: I get an early dryad, and counter all his brokeness, on to game 3: I resolve an early ancestral, misdirect his, then resolve Back to Basics (he didn't have a basic land in his deck) and take my time to beat him down. It turns out Andy's not such a bad guy. A little anal retentive, but he means well.
3-0-1, 7-2-1
Worth mentioning is that both of my losses are to combo decks. Are these tougher than control for Emerald Alice since they have fewer misd targets?
Round 5, Brian (hulk3rules) playing Mask
We're both undefeated, so we draw into the top 8 and play some games for fun. He slaughters me 4-0 (I had beat him 2-1 two days earlier). Unfortunately, it seems he used all his good draws against me and loses to Chris (eventual winner) in the T8.
3-0-2, 7-2-1
Here I had an opportunity to talk with Steve (Zherbus) a little. He's a good guy and quite knowledgable about magic, however, "really, you're Grand Inquisitor? I always pictured a little kid..."
With that ego boost I picked up Alice and headed for the top 8.
Top 8, Jason (Leviat) playing Super Gro
At first Tom (from round 1) got called, but at 2-2-1 it was an error. Since it was 1 vs 8, no one else had to repair, and me and jason started.
Game 1: I lay an early powder keg, and he lays some beats. We're talking, and I get the strange feeling that he's trying to get in my head. Evidently it works, and he overwhelms my defenses (an active Library of Alexandria played a large part in it).
Game 2: after combo and control all day, I finally get to side in my oath conversion. He doesn't see it coming, and walks into a string of weavers and kegs. I'm the one with the active library this time, but I have trouble finishing him off. I oath into morphling with 1 card left on my library. If he was the last card, it would have been over (i was holding the blessing)! I think I have him beat, so I pass the turn without using all my resources. He oaths into Mystic Enforcer! The lone card in his deck that stops morphling. I realize i'm in time walk recursion now and ask if he wants to concede. He wants to play it out, so I bless back another blessing, timewalk, impulse and powder keg. I take infinite turns and get the keg up to 4. Probably the most exciting game of the tournament for me.
Game 3 (its a good thing there's no time limit, as the other T4 has already started): very similar to game 3. I win an early counter war over his (misd'd) ancestral recall, and get LoA out before he does. Morphling beats for the win.
Jason was a great guy, and I feel really bad for playing oath against him when he had a 7 hour ride ahead of him. He probably played better than me, but I got LoA more games than he did. Hard to say if it was LoA or Oath that won the match. We talked a bit about dryad variants and then I proceeded to the next match.
4-0-2, 9-3-1
T4, Andy (again) playing Dragon
Nick and him drew in Round 5, and flipped to see who would concede the other into the T8. They agreed to split any prize, but Nick lost the flip. He had a slight conflict of interest on who to root for (after all, I am now part of the crew), but Andy had sort of gotten a reputation for being 'that guy' at this tournament.
Game 1: There was really more to it, but basically I get a phid to stick and then smack him around with a big dryad. Game 2: See game 1, a big dryad makes him go 14, 5, 0.
5-0-2, 11-3-1
Finals, Chris (mezzir) playing Ubr aggro
At this point the hadley crew was basically all that was left watching. We proved our point that we are bad mofos, we had 4 in the T8 and both in the finals. Even when they laid the mox sapphire (and masks) down next to us, I didn't really care that much. It had been a great day.
Game 1: Chris applies early negator beats, adds a meddling mage, but I stabalize with a keg and drop a phid and dryad. He removes the dryad, and he eventually overwhelms me.
Game 2: I side in the oath again and tell everyone to pull up a comfortable chair...
Quote game 2: he gets a morphling out. end of story, i kept a hand i probably should've, but i knew i had another game to recover
-mezzir
Unfortunately it wasn't the invincible morphling, but a hard cast spike weaver which beat chris furiously in game 2. Roar.
Game 3: I kept a decent hand, but Chris's was better.
chris: land, go
me: land, go
chris: land, mox, tap, negator
me: FoW
chris: FoW
me: 'well, i've got 4 turns to live'
I search frantically for 3 turns. and top deck oath just when it doesn't matter.
me: merchant scroll for gush
chris: "sure"
me: "all i need is to gush into ancestral recall and timewalk", gush
me: ancestral recall, c'mon one of's...
It was not to be. We shook hands, congratulated on a match well played and picked up our winnings (yes, 2 illusionary masks is still cool).
5-1-2, 12-5-1
Props:
Chris, for taking it all home for Hadley and being an innovative and skilled player.
Steve (Zherbus) for running a classy tournament, judging impartially and running a cool site.
The rest of the Hadley crew (especially Chris K and Brian who T8'd)
Shop-owner-guy, for recommending a great cheese-steak sub.
Jason and Tom, its always great to meet cool people, and now I'll know the faces behind the posts.
Slops:
Andy, chill out man
New England weather, gusty snowstorms blowing my POS honda all over the road on the way home.
Overall a great experience; it helped me to decide to go to the TMD invitational in January. However, so far with Emerald Alice in tournaments I've gone: T4, T2, T2, T2. I don't know if I'm choking, my luck runs out or what, but I can't get over that hump and win it all. My skill with the deck has been increasing, and now that I have ancestral recall I'm a little bit broken. Here's the deck:
Emerald Alice (Rogue and Pegasus design with me choosing phids over werebears ala Chapin)
mana base (21):
4 tropical islands
1 black lotus (proxy)
1 mox emerald (proxy)
1 mox sapphire (proxy)
1 wooded foothills
3 windsweapt heath (thanks nick)
1 Library of Alexandria (proxy)
1 strip mine
1 forest
7 islands
creatures (9)
1 morphling
4 ophidian (co-MVP with misD)
4 quirion dryad
utility (14):
1 sylvan library
1 merchant scroll
1 fact or fiction
1 time walk (proxy)
1 ancestral recall
4 gush
3 impulse
2 brainstorm
removal (3)
3 powder keg
counters (13):
4 counterspell
4 force of will
3 misdirection (woot, woot, text: draw 3 cards and opponent misses his next three draws)
sideboard:
4 oath of druids
2 gaea's blessing
1 woodripper
1 spike weaver
1 spike feeder
2 naturalize
1 powder keg
3 back to basics
2 mana leak
My overall record with the deck is about 75% (and i'm not that good) against good to excellent T1 opponents (i've faced Keeper, Urphid, Dragon, Sligh, Void, Sui, S.Gro, TnT, Enchantress, Stompy, Zoo, WW, Mask, Bargain, Oath). I haven't played against parfait, academy or ducktape, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say this deck is a powerhouse. Comments, criticisms, corrections are welcome.
-GI
