I had a ton of stuff to get done on Thursday so I decided I wasnt going to work on deck-building very much before the tournament. That meant that I would be playing what I played the week before, which is TNT.
So, I am sitting there, digging through my TNT deck about 15 minutes before I have to leave for the tournament and thinking about the changes I wanted to make since last week. I was down on the high land count, some of the utility creatures and the Colossus. So I yank these guys out and start dumping other random stuff like Sylvan Safekeeper in.
I get to a point where I realized that I have more cards that I want to dump than I have cards that I really want to maindeck. Then a fateful thing happens. I look over and see a half disassembled version of Extended DuckTape with a Tangle Wire on top. "Ah," I think, "Tangle Wire. Lord of Goats suggested that, lets give it a spin. And it would be 4 slots which is just what I need."
Since I havent posted a decklist in a while, I'd do it now:
Fishhead TNT (inspired by Lord of Goats)
4 Tangle Wire
4 Su-Chi
4 Juggy
2 Trike
1 Masticore
1 Powder Keg
4 Survival
2 Sylvan Library
1 Anger
1 Squee
4 Welder
R Ancestral
R Time Walk
R Tinker
7 SoLoMox
1 Grim
5 Fetchies
2 Tropicals
4 Tiagas
4 Workshops
2 Forests
3 Wastelands
1 Strip Mine
SB
3 Blood Moon
3 ReB
3 Naturalize
1 Artifact Mutation
1 Tormods Crypt
1 Bottle Gnome
1 Waterfront Bouncer
1 Sylvan Safekeeper
1 Squee
I get down to the tournament site and the place is just packed. There must be 25-30 people in the tournament. I run into many of the usual suspects and I also see Phoung who I havent seen in ages. He says he isnt going to play since he doenst have a deck and I lend him a Legend Ankh Sligh that I have built. Phoung is certainly the best player with an under 1600 rating in T1; the guy has Q'd for the Pro Tour, but he's somehow baffled by T1. Lol. Anyway, with all these people, its going to be 5 rounds.
Match 1: Christine. Legend Ankh Sligh
I've mentioned the DCI pairing software before. Apparently it's the month where I will be paired with Christine every week in the first round. Last week she had a Goblin Sligh. This week the store owner has lent her LAS.
Game 1: If TNT gets a good start, Sligh is just through. I bait out her Bolts with my first few creatures, but soon gain a crushing position. She PoPs me for 4 to bring me close to 10 and then concedes facing lethal damage.
-2 Su Chi +1 Sylvan Safekeeper +1 Bottle Gnomes
Game 2: If TNT gets a bad start though, its in a lot of trouble. I get a hand with no real accelleration, and get rolled. At the end I have a Bottle Gnomes holding off her two attackers, but she scrolls me showing a Fireblast which is quite unexpected in LAS. I cant outrace that with the Gnomes and I go under.
Game 3: A good start with a first turn Gnome. It holds off the beatings forever as she draws Ankhs but no Bolts. TnT does what it does which is suddenly make about 20 points of hasty creatures appear where Moxes and Monoliths used to be.
Matches 1-0. Games 2-1
Match 2: NaChlv with A Beautiful Tog
Despite the general derision ABM gets on this board I consider this a tough matchup. I cant really interfere with his draw engine; if he starts drawing 3 cards every turn I will definitely lose. Add the MD Devout Witness, StPs and Balance to 4 MD FoWs with BtB and he has a lot of tricks to blunt my initiative. But, it turns out that my secret weapon will be soon unleashed:
Game 1: He keeps a chancy hand with LoA, Mox Pearl & StP going first. I Waste the LoA before he can draw the card and follow with a Juggy that gets StPed. He discards a Tog to FoW at some point, and I exclaim that he is playing "A Beautiful Tog". Lol. We both start to get some game, but Tangle Wire is just a bone-crushing finisher. Since ABM plays so few permanents, it locks him down and even though he has like 10 cards to choose from due to Tax/Rack abuse its not enough.
+3 ReB +1 Naturalize, -1 Masticore, -1 Tinker, -1 Wooded Foothills, -1 Sylvan
Game 2: We played a bunch of games this night, and they've all blurred together. I think in this one he StPs my Welder since I am threatening to shut him down by recurring Tangle Wire, but it turns out that I have 2 more Wires in my hand. Overall, I think I went 4-1 against Dave in playtest, which is the sort of record I am not used to.
Matches 2-0. Games 4-1.
Match 3: Raziel TnT
I am hoping my mighty Wire tech will wreck him. If not, I have Artifact Mutation and 3xNaturalize in the SB. Afterwards it turns out he has 2xNaturalize main. And that Wire probably isnt that good in the mirror.
Game 1: He keeps a risky hand with Taiga, Sol Ring and Welder. I have 3 Taigas, a Wire, and a Survival, so I am a bit slow but not without play. We both play turn 2 Survivals, but I play a Wire on turn 3 and he has not played another land. With 3 Tiagas I am able to out-Survival him; I weld the Wire into a Trike and shoot his Welder. The rest is forgone; the mirror is all about the Welder and the Survival; I have both on the table.
-4 Tangle Wire, +2 Naturalize, +1 Arti Mutation, +1 Tormods
Game 2: Another slow hand with all the toys. We both play Welders, but I play Survival and begin to abuse it. He has had to mull to 6, and I stay one turn ahead of him the whole game by getting Anger and then Squee into the graveyard first. My mana is good and with an early Sol Ring I can cast hasty fat creatures.
Matches 3-0. Games 6-1
Match 4: Shawn with GroTog
Shawn plays T1 every now and then; he's brought a couple off-beat combo decks like Aluren and Coat of Kobolds before. He saw the wave of GroTog over the past couple weeks and thought Berserking people looked like fun. He's too lazy to look for Sleight of Hands in his card box, so he's playing Impulse instead.
Game 1: This game runs long and I get Hurkyl's Recalled 3 times. That cant be good. It desperately tight though; he cant draw a second Gush to finish me and I am slowly clawing back into the game by resolving Survival and a Welder. I get to 6 mana and can start hardcasting Trikes, which is good because they are the last two cards in my hand. But he finishes me with Y-Will, getting his Gush that way, along with the Ancestral and the 3rd use of Hurkyls. He Fastbonds himself down to 8 and I try to will him to going to 6 (so I can Surivival my 2nd Trike into my grave and Weld it back into play) but he has no reason to.
+3 ReB, +3 Blood Moon, -1 Ancestral, -1 Tinker, -1 Masticore, -1 Land, -1 Su-Chi, -1 Sylvan
Game 2: I draw my hand and say "Gin". I play Workshop, Mox, Jug to test for FoW and he frowns and says, "That resolves". Then I throw Lotus-Blood Moon on the table and say, "I guess this resolves then too". He elects not to scoop as he has Lotus and Emerald. I topdeck Powder Keg and blow it for zero after swinging; but he shows why he did not scoop: he fetches Hurkyls with Wish and casts it. Huh. Now I have a Mountain and he has two Mountains. I draw poopily for several turns and imagine him drawing the Jet and the Sapphire and Y-Willing up everything again to cast Tog somehow and win. But that unlikely thing does not come to pass and I eventually draw some more lands and resolve Survival+Welder.
Game 3: I feel good about this since the last game went so well. My hand is mediocre speedwise, but it has the toys. He plays Lotus-Ancestral-Land-Brainstorm-Impulse but no Tog. Its a pretty nutty first turn and I am already in serious trouble. Fortunately, time is called. I Wasteland his one land to slow him down and then play a Taiga so I can ReB. He shows me a hand of 2FoW + 2 Blue + Tog afterwards so I was lucky to escape with the draw.
Matches 3-0-1. Games 7-2-1.
Match 5: Emmanuel with Enchantress.
I know Emmanuel from Games of Berkeley. I'm always a bit surprised when Enchantress does well, but I guess I should get over that. It consistently smashes Aggro, which is a strong point in many metas. And here I am facing it with Aggro in the finals.
Game 1: I'm so excited by my hand I attempt to play first. E reminds me that I got a 1 on the dice. OK, no problem.
I play Land-Lotus-Masticore with Anger in hand. He denies me by playing Seal of Cleansing. Fearing my Anger, he doesnt even wait to make me discard to Masticore. I follow with a Keg and a Welder, while he has an Argothian and Auratog. He swings once or twice with the Auratog and draws a couple cards, but he walks into a welded Masticore with the Tog. This was irrelevant since I Keg for 2 next upkeep, but it shows how 5 rounds affects your mind. Lol. I drop an Tangle Wire and it utterly shuts him down. The Juggernauts and Masticores start rolling and finish him before the Wire runs out.
Game 2: He gets 2 Seals of Cleansing and Tormods Crypt, but it's not enough. He kills a Juggernaught and a Tangle Wire but I get a Welder on the table. He thinks about it and decides to Crypt to keep me from getting the Tangle Wire back, but I have another one in hand. But I'm drawing 2 a turn off a Sylvan Library, so he's facing a Welder, a Su-Chi and a Trike before long. He shows me a Replenish that he will never get the mana to cast, but we agree that it probably wouldnt have been enough. So which two of my permenants will you kill?
Matches 4-0-1: Game 9-2-1.
This is a really long report, so I wont make too much commentary.
One thing I do want to mention is how good Tangle Wire was to me all night long. I played TurboLand for fun afterwards to see if the Tangle Wire helps that matchup and found that its totally useless. So Tangle Wire is not invincible. It was also strangely useless against Gro since Shawn got lots of land out in both games. I expect on a more average day that Tangle Wire is great in that matchup though.
Comments and feedback welcome.
