CounterSligh at Crazy Card & Comics

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My first and only Type 1 deck that I had was a suicide/butterknives style deck.  I tried several different variations.  My first was splashing blue for brokenness (Ancestral Recall and Time Walk mostly) and Avatar of Will.  It served me well and I had a decent showing at GenCon with a 4-3 record in an afternoon tournament and 3-2-1 in the $250 night tournament (which just happened to be my second and third tournaments ever, excluding the first type 2 tournament I did the day before).  Soon after GenCon, I started playing regularly at Crazy Cards and Comics in Chicago.  A few months ago, I tried monoblack and then splashed green to my current deck with Pernicious Deed.  Since then, I my blue power was waiting to be used again and I finally found a deck that I can play it in.  Keep in mind that if I had the mid-range power (Mana Drain, Abyss) I would probably play OSE and if I had the moxes as well, I would probably play Keeper.  Here is the deck I came up with and played in a tournament last Saturday.

CounterSligh
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Undiscovered Paradise
4 Volcainic Island
6 Island
3 Mountain
1 Mox Jet
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
2 Morphling
4 Jackal Pup
2 Goblin Cadets
2 Goblin Patrol
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Dwarven Blastminer
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
2 Fire/Ice
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Standstill

1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Dwarven Blastminer
4 Red Elemental Blast
1 Teferi's Response
2 Powder Keg
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Grip of Anmensia
1 Shattering Pulse
1 Capsize
1 Wash Out

Let me explain the deck briefly.  The idea is to get early creature advantage, cast a Standstill, and use the card advantage from a broken Standstill for counter magic.  The Factories would well under the Standstill.  Red has some of the best one drops around, so it made sense to splash that color.

Note that it was a last minute decision to take out a Cunning Wish in favor of another Fire/Ice.  After the tournaments, I concluded that increasing the count to four would be wise.  Also, I obtained the Morphlings kind of late, otherwise, the lotus and Sol Ring probably wouldn't have even been in the deck.  When I got them, I figured they belong in the deck as a compliment to the red creatures.

Round 1 - (2-1) Pandeburst

Game 1 - I had my early creature rush, but no counter spells (even after a broken Standstill?).  By the fourth turn or something, he was set up to Replenish for the win.  I Ice'd  his white land in hopes to keeping him at 3 mana so he couldn't Replenish, but he topdecked a land and cast Replenish for the win.  He used one of the Saproling Bursts on my Jackal Pup, but only the 1 damage got through as the rest didn't find a target (he messed that up).  However, there was another Saproling Burst that he used correctly against me.

Game 2 - I had a really early Tormod's Crypt (first or second turn) and forced him to work the hard way for the win.  Near the end, he somehow got a Pandemonium in play (probably hard-cast).  I attacked and used direct damage for the kill, but for style points, I should have cast my Morphling to deal him the fatal 3 damage with the Panemonium.

Game 3 - I had a first turn for Black Lotus (sac. for red) and 3 2/1s (probably 2 pups and a cadet) with a Mishra's Factory.  Needless to say, it only took a couple turns for the victory as I got another Factory the next turn.

Round 2 - (0-2) A Beautiful Mind

Game 1 - I was drawing none of my red stuff, so it wasn't a surprise if he thought I was playing some sort of control-only deck.  Eventually, I died to Mystic Enforcer.  I don't like that card as I have no true answer to it.  As a side note, when I originally tested this deck, I knew I had no hope against a resolved Morphling other than possibly stalemating it with my own Morphling.  This is the same case.  I tried out replacing 3 Islands for 3 Underground Seas to have access to Diabolic Edicts but I decided against this with the rising popularity of Back to Basics in the metagame.  Back to Basics and well named Meddling Mages stopped me as well.

Game 2 - For some reason, I did not side in Red Elemental Blasts.  For that reason alone, I deserved to lose.  A resolved Back to Basics found me tapped out.  I think I saw only 1 basic land between both games (an island) and had that Strip Mine'd right away (even though I got 1 use out of it)..

Round 3 - (2-0) OSE-like

This deck is my friend's deck and I probably know his deck as well as he does.  I don't think I have more to elaborate on other than I won.

Round 4 - (Intentional draw) Full English Breakfast

Intentional draw into top four.  It might have been interesting to see this matchip.

Top 4 - Round 1 - (2-1) Sligh

Goblin Piledriver isn't so scary when you have red to back up the blue.  All I remember is a bunch of Fire/Ice with Lightning Bolts on his creatures,  Misdirections of direct damage to his own creaures, and Standstills that he needed to break.  I think it was game two that he won.

Top 4 - Round 2 - (1-2) A Beautiful Mind

Game 1 - I had a decent early game only to have a Balance force me to lose my creatures and go from 7 to 2 for cards in my hand.  I lost too much momentum, especially with the discard and eventually saw the Enforcer for the loss.

Game 2 - He mulliganed down to 5.  I played an early creature and tried to counter an early Land Tax only for him to have another one ready.  Eventually, the creature beatdown with one or two creatures followed by direct damage for the kill was enough.  At least he didn't get a Zuran Orb out.

Game 3 - I had a limited amount of early success and even countered a Zuran Orb only for him to have another one.  It proved too much as he had the land tax/scroll rack going and eventually got a Mystic Enforcer that I couldn't deal with (do we see a pattern yet).

Conclusions

Fire/Ice is good and probably should go up to 4 if I can get my hands on them.  They probably replace Cadets.  Blastminers were not that useful today.  Goblin Vandals may be something that I want to try out.  Morphlings are questionable, but as long as I have them, I might as well run them.

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One thing that I knew early on is that I had no real answer to a resolved Morphling.  I originally splashed black into the deck when testing this deck in an attempt to add Edicts as a way to handle troublesome creatures.  I decided against that for Saturday as I was hoping good counter magic would prevent it from being cast.  Unfortunately, I was overrun by Mystic Enforcers.  I decided on Sunday to try a different version of the deck that splashed black for a few good answers and some of the non-accelerated broken black.

I started writing part of this report Saturday evening and wondered what would it be like if I had splashed for black and Diabolic Edicts as I originally intended.  I figured I would give it a chance in the Sunday tournament.  Here are the changes that I made to the deck.

+3 Underground Sea
+1 Gorilla Shaman
+1 Cunning Wish
+1 Demonic Tutor
+1 Yawgmoth's Will
-3 Island
-2 Goblin Cadets
-1 Dwarven Blastminer
-1 Counterspell

-1 Dwaven Blastminer
-1 Grip of Amnesia
-2 Powder Keg
-1 Teferi's Response
+2 Diabolic Edict
+1 Ebony Charm
+1 Gorilla Shaman
+1 Fireblast

Round 1 - (0-2) A Beautiful Mind

Game 1 - A long, drawn out game with the same formula for the loss.

Game 2 -  Once again I had the early advantage erased.  I had a Morphling to block the pumped Mystic Enforcer, but he cleverly played a Back to Basics when I was mostly tapped out and slowly got me to tap my mana to the point where Morphling couldn't block anymore.  Before time ran out, he attacked me once, which I didn't block because I had enough life.  He used an Edict, time walk.  Next turn, he scroll racked for 10 (all the remaining cards in his library), Yawgmoth's Will, Time Walk.  Of course I was dead.  Some time in the middle of this, time expired, but he killed me on the second (of five) extra turns.

Round 2 - (1-2) U/G Rogue

I think he described his deck as throwing a bunch of cards that he liked into a deck.  It was a blue deck with Morphlings and countermagic (no Mana Drains but with Counterspell and Arcane Denial) and splashed green for acceleration in the form of Birds of Paradise, Utopia Tree, and as I found out later had many manlands in Treetop Villages and Faerie Conclaves.

Game 1 - Boy did I mess up.  I had a Goblin Patrol and he had a Treetop Village and I cast a Standstill without realizing that his creature was bigger than mine.  I had to break the Standstill and it didn't look good for me.

Game 2 - I think I did it the right way this time with little resistance.

Game 3 - If I realized he had as many manlands as he did, I would have sided out the Standstills.  He had tremendous acceleration with 3 brids and 1 tree and I really needed to buy time, so I cast a Standstill with a Factory in play while he had no manlands.  Soon enough he had 2 Faerie Conclaves out and I had to break the Standstill again.  I tried to Fire them, but had it countered.  I forget when, but he got 2 Chills out (maybe before the Standstill).  He got a flashbacked Call of the Herd after I had a Cunning Wish for a Fireblast.  He was not quite low in life as I hoped to get enough to go through with the direct damage despite the two Chills.  Unfortunately, I couldn't top deck a Lighting Bolt.  I had to use the Fireblast on the Call of the Herd to buy me at least one more turn.  It's a shame, because I thought I had this matchup prior to the start of the round.  The loss pratically eliminated me from top four.

Round 3 - Bye

Round 4 - (2-0) U/r Rogue (Burning Tide?)

I will categorize the deck as rogue.  From what I saw, it was heavy blue with Morphlings, Force of Wills, probably 4 Disks, and splashed red for Ruination and other stuff that I didn't see.  I didn't really get to see too much of his deck.

Game 1 - Early creature, standstill, broken standstills for a disk, more creatures, another disk, more creatures.

Game 2 - I got some creature rush going, but had disks and ruinations that really slowed me down.  He did a High Tide/Palinchron, but must not have had the kill card.  The next turn I used a Red Elemental Blast but now wonder if he failed to return it to his hand in response to me casting the spell.  In the end I resolved a Yawgmoth's Will baiting the countermagic and played a Mountain from the graveyard and did a double lightining bolt for the win.

Conclusions

Why does every good outing have to be followed up by a bad outing, although it's tough to gauge the deck considering 3 of the 4 loses this weekend was to one deck?  Overall, I think the splash of black offers a more flexible deck.  I'm thnking that I probably want 2 Faerie Conclaves of my own for this deck.  I may even take out the Counterspells completely.  It's hard to say where the future of this deck is with me because although I doubt I would play this deck at a major Type 1 tournament, I would definately think of improving it and playing it again at Crazy Cards.  Anybody have suggestions to improve the deck?