Report of T1 Tourney in SPAIN

[Necropotenza]

Hi, I’m writing the report of a T1 Tourney in Cabrera (village in SPAIN). There was a low level of quality decks (most were extended with some restricted goodness) and play skill in general, but many players packed some power and 3 people were fully powered. We finally managed to gather 45 people for the tourney in a village near Barcelona, not bad. The 1st would get a Timetwister, 2nd an Abyss and the 3rd a Moat.

I could get to Top8 after 6 rounds of swiss. I’ll go through my matchups as well as I can, because I didn’t take any notes. I played a Parfait deck tuned for the ocasion. I can provide all decklists if anyone is interested.

1st Round (Opposition) Good player
1- I have to Paris to 6, at least I was drawing.
I couldn’t get to work my rack/tax engine because he had very few land all the time an also a Quirion ranger. My attempt to Balance is FoW’d and soon afterwards he lays oppo with some criters on the table. His living wish for deranged hermitt seals the game.
2- I let him draw. No land on both first 2 hands so I have to Paris to 5...
He quickly lays down cheap critters and drops oppo. I can’t win.

0-2 Round
0-1 Total

2nd Round (Black/White/red/blue) Bad deck
1- We roll the dice and he starts.
 He starts slow laying duals and I can lay the tax/rack engine and start to work. He lays sengir, royal assasin, serra angel... I wrath and eventually have almost all my deck in the table. I have mesa producing lots of pegasus per turn... he tries to disk away my board but I have an aura of silence in hand.
2- He lays land and passes. I lay plains, mox pearl, mox diamond, zuran orb and land tax. In my next turn I balance his land, his freshly cast hippy and some cards in his hand... needless to say I win.

2-0 Round
1-1 Total

3rd Round (Mono White) Bad deck
1- He wins the dice roll and I have to mulligan to 6.
He starts fast with some shadow critters and some good beatdown weenies. I get to wrath them away but I can’t find my draw engine. I lay Moat and Humility in a desperate move trying to survive to an horde on newly cast weenies. Shortly afterwards he armageddons but hopefully I have mox pearl and sol ring. As we both have few cards in our libraries I decide to deck him after another wrath just in case.
This game exhausted all 45 minutes of the round.

1-0 Round
1-2 Total

LUNCH TIME!!

4rt Round (Black/White) Well built deck
1- He rolls the dice and wins... I never win dice rolls
He starts very aggressive with Hymn and Hippy. I manage to stabilize with swords, tax/rack. I can get absolut control of the game and I win with mesa.
2- He chooses to start. He lays land and passes. Me, tax and zorb. I win after laying rack as his hymns, vindicates and sinkholes can’t do nothing.

2-0 Round
1-3 Total

5th Round (Sui Black)
1- He wins the dice roll, I’m used to it, no problem
He starts with carnophage. Me, plains. He dhauti. Me plains. He Hippy. Me plains, story circle. He carnophage grinning demon(morph) factory. I can’t find the wrath effect and I loose.
2-   He starts with ritual hippy. Me plains swords. He, shadow critter and carnophage that gets through some damage before I get out a story circle... game over when I can rack/tax.
3- He mulligans to 6 and so do I.
He starts very well with ritual, hymn (discarding replenish and moat) scroll. I can recover to a well timed replenish.

2-1 Round
1-4 Total

6th Round (Sligh)
We decide to ID so we both Top 8 with the result.
We play some games for fun and I slaughter him every single game.

TOP 8 TIME
1st Green/Red Beatdown
2nd Sligh
3rd TNT (fully powered)
4th Keeper (fully powered)
5th Black/White/blue
6th Sligh
7th Parfait (me)
8th Sligh

So I’m paired up against the guy I slaugthered for fun in round 6.

1/4 Final (Sligh)
1- Dice roll, he wins. I paris to 6.
He lays pup. Me plains and tax. He swings and lays lavamancer. I need to reach 4 mana to wrath. I can’t get to them and I loose pretty badly without any zorb, ivory tower or swords.
2- I paris to 5 because my first two hands contain no mana producers.
He quickly rolls over me with pup, lavamancer and fanatics. I couldn’t get balance, swords or zorb.

0-2 Round

This sligh won the tourney quite amazingly because it wasn’t optimized (he used only 2 pups and used seal of fire...)
The 3 best decks of the Top 8 were all defeated in 1/4 finals (Parfait, Keeper and TNT).
I didn’t keep track of the semis and the finals (sligh on sligh...) because I was quite tired.
Maybe the TNT will also add his coverage of the tourney.
I hope you liked my report and I apologise for my bad English.

Have a happy new year!

[Davido]

I brought my fully powered TnT deck to this tournament and found way too much sligh running free. I had tuned my deck for an aggressive metagame, though I had no idea what I was going to find there. I browsed through all kind of posts about TnT and decided something close to j_orlove's philosophy of total offense. I removed all the defensive stuff out of the deck and built this:

The Crusher!

Engine:

4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Goblin Welder
2 Squee, goblin Nabob
1 Anger
1 Wonder

Utility/Card drawing

1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Sylvan Library
1 Memory Jar
1 Tinker
1 Quirion Ranger
1 Wheel of Fortune

Fatties:

4 Juggernaut
4 Su-Chi
2 Triskelion
1 Masticore

Mana Producers:

7 SoLoMoxen
1 Grim Monolith
4 Taiga
4 Tropical Island
4 Mishra's Workshop
3 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
2 Forest
3 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine

SB:

4 REB
3 Blood Moon
3 Tormod's Crypt
1 Jester's Cap
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Flametongue Kavu
1 Bottle Gnomes
1 Masticore

Round 1: White/Black

It was a white/black deck with vindicate and some discard. I'm not sure how he was trying to win because in the first match he got no mana and I crushed him in 4 turns. In the second match I got to see some discard and a hypnotic specter which hit me at the same time my juggie was hitting him. It was pretty lousy. Easy

Round 2: Black

This was fast too. First turn juggie followed by second turn triskelion was enough. In the second match, he duressed me first turn (survival fell) but couldn't hold back the horde of juggies/su-chis that came afterwards. Easy too.

Round 3: Sligh

I got an awful starting hand full of land and a single juggie, but I got risky and kept. It was an error, since I discovered a moment later he was playing sligh and was much faster than me.
Second match, I got the board pretty much controlled, but he hit me with two bolts and fireblasted me. Too bad. I lost.

Round 4: Black/Red

I crushed him badly since the start with a good hand and he started very slow. That was fast again.

He sided in lots of artifact hate (a spell that destroys an artifact and lets him draw a card). I got a pretty good hand with lots of moxen + sol ring + land + juggernaut and this time I knew he was slow, so I kept hoping something more would come. He managed to handle my second turn juggernaut and 2 su-chis and a triskelion and we both went into top-decking mode. He was at 2 life and I was almost untouched but then he topdecked a hypnotic specter and I didn't draw a single creature. I lost badly to the specter.
The third match was pretty much like the first one, but with his anti-artifact tech: I played lots of fatties and lowered him down to 10 life and then got the survival engine working: that gave me the match. I won.

Round 5: Sligh

As I started to get in the top positions again, I was seeing more and more sligh around. Terrible...

First match was fast and easy. He couldn't stop my su-chis from making him lose some life points. My engine started working and that was it.

Second match was somewhat harder. He made a terrible mistake. With a welder, a su-chi and a juggie in the board, he forked a goblin grenade to both fatties and let the welder live. I weldered away the second target and brought the first one into play. He killed the fatty and had some creatures in the board. I played a masticore and cleared the table but when he was at 5 lives, I forgot to pay the masticore discard and had to sacrifice it. That was a terrible error if I hadn't had a triskelion in my hand. He died soon thereafter.

Round 6: Sligh

Yes, more sligh, but this time we ID so we both could get into the top8. We played for fun and I crushed him every single game.

Top8 Round 1: Sligh (again...)

First match was easy. Everything as expected. I drew what I had to in every moment. My fatties beat him badly.

Second match I had to paris down to 6 and I didn't get much out of the next five turn draws. He got me.

Third match I drew no land (only a Mox Jet, but it wasn't any good...) I paris down to 6 again and got absolutely nothing again. The guy was amazed at his good luck and I was extremely disgusted to see how this guy could change a 0-1 into a 2-1 in some moments. Oh well, I guess it's my bad luck...

So, I lost in quarter finals but had lots of fun all day long. It was really exhausting but it was worth it. I'm looking forward to go to Barcelona again and play again against Necropotenza and his minions. Type I rules!

Best Regards to all and specially to the organizers of the tournament which were extremely efficient, given that they had no computer to organize 45 people. Thumbs up to them!

Davido

[carl]

I'd like your decklist because I found you had to mulligan a lot. I am especially interested in your mana base. Maybe you could comment a bit and tell what you would change.

Thanks to both of you for your reports.

[Necropotenza]

This is the decklist I used Carl:

4 Land tax
3 Scroll rack
2 Zuran orb
3 Orim's chant
2 Replenish
4 Argivian find
3 Aura of silence
1 Moat
1 Humility
1 Story circle
1 Tormod's crypt
1 Soldevi digger
1 Enlightened tutor
1 Ivory mask
1 Ivory tower
3 Swords to plowshares
2 Wrath of god
1 Balance
2 Sacred mesa

1 Sol ring
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox diamond
3 Wasteland
1 Strip mine
1 Library of Alexandria
15 Plains

SIDEBOARD
1 Mountain
1 Blood moon
2 Seal of cleansing
2 Jester's cap
1 Swords to plowshares
1 Wrath of god
1 Karmic justice
3 Tormod's crypt
1 Ivory tower
1 Replenish
1 Humility

Any comments or suggestions? I'll appreciate them.