[Report] Old-School GAT takes down Hulk for NJ's Lotus

[Ultima]

Mods please move to the appropriate forum please.  Thanks

First however, I would like to state that the GAT build used was a list I did known only to the team and a few fellow friends/TMD'ers and its nature, card choices, and various analysis will be fully explained in the upcoming GAT /Neo-GAT primer that is being written by both me and Grand Inquisitor.

Aside from that business,  as it is a common beginning to these things, I woke up and went with my guys to the GM monthly Lotus tourny.
I expected alot of Tog and Slavery as they were very prevalent last time and are considered to be the real tier 1's right now by what everyone seems to say.  I also thought there would be plenty of rogue and scrubby aggro as GM has a nature of bringing to most of its tournys.

This is the list

GAT 04 (aggro-combo style)

3 Psychatogs
4 Quirion Dryad

3 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
4 Misdirection

1 Time Walk
1 Yawg Will
1 Pernicious Deed
1 Fastbond

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Gush
2 Cunning Wish
2 Deep Analysis
3 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Brainstorm

1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
5 Moxen
4 Polluted Delta
4 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
2 Island

SB

1 Pern Deed
1 Berserk
1 Oxidize
1 Smother
1 Echoing Decay (Tech- Only weapon 3-color GAT has for mult. welders)
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Stifle
1 Coffin Purge
2 Naturalize
2 Ground Seal- (the pseudo-Damping Matrix that doesn't stop your Tog)
3 Duress

Round 1 - Suicide Black

Game 1- I get out a dryad and get out a shade.  He manages to hymm me after duress but the turn after, I misdirect his sinkhole.  I manage to deed away all his stuff and berserk with the Tog.

Game 2- -1 Cunning Wish, -1 Crypt,
             +1 Smother, +1 Deed

He goes first and doesn't do anything but play a land.  I play an island and soon find recall.  He plays a powder keg and starts hammering out shades.  I counter one or two and and play dryads to stall out the one resolved.  When I drop a tog he kegs at three to kill the tog and I find the opening I want to start playing spells like nuts and that shade didn't look so threating anymore.  When I tutor up the wish and show it, he scoops.

1-0

Round 2- Ben Kowal with Miracle Gro

I already knew Ben and knew not to underestimare anything he plays regardless of how it looks.

Game 1- Ben gets out the first dryad and starts beating me down.  They get too big before I can stabilize, and he rides them home.

Game 2- -2 Cunning Wish, -1 Fastbond, -1 Dryad,
     +3 Duress, +1 Smother

We tangle a little bit with counters and both of us resolve ancestral.  Just when it looks like he's gonna get it with 2 dryads, I brainstorm into a deed and a crypt, just enough to deed now and stabilize.  After i deed away all his permanents, i get a tog out and resolve will, ending the game.

Game 3- I get a very good opeing hand with alot of moxs.  Ben starts playing around though and counters my sapphire with a force.  I  get a dryad down first and start beating.  he resolves his own and starts playing aks to come back.  I find the smother and more togs to end this round.

2-0

Round 3- James (of the Goats) with SuperGro

Game 1- James sees some mana problems and I berserk a Tog and kill him before he gets developed.  I took careful note to remember that he also plays Ancients which can be insane.

Game 2 - 2 Wish, -1 Fastbond, -1 Dryad, -1 Crypt
     +1 Smother, +3 Duress, +1 Deed
 
James manages to get a dryad first turn and manages to overwhelm me before I can stop the 1 dryad.

Game 3- He starts casting all sorts of creatures and manage to deed them all away.  Just when was gonna take the tempo back and play my men, we time out.  James was relieved, I suspected.

2-0-1

Round 4- 4-Color Hulk Smash

Game 1- I play ancestral during his upkeep and am surprised to find it resolving.  Then when he plays library, and starts drawing, I know why it did.  I say to myself, start drawing away and see what happens.  I play fastbond 2nd turn, then get a little nutty and play a tog.  He keeps the draw going and tries to play time walk.  I mana drain cause I don't wanna give em the chance to catch up.  He ancestrals in response, and I misdirect to myself.  I get the recall and draw gush, mystical, and a land.  At the end of his turn I mystical for cunning wish.  I play gush and berserk him for 22 around turn 5 or so.

Game 2- -1 Deed, -1 Cunning Wish, -1 Crypt

He plays first and duresses taking my thirst.  I play lands and drop dryads.  He counters all of them with me not really caring.  I felt the best way to take it now was to try and overwhelm him with threats and draw at the same time.  He tries to recall again and I misdirect it again.  On his recall, I get a demonic tutor and a the yawg will.  With fastbond already in the grave yard from being countered, I play the will and its over.

3-0-1

Round 5- Ray (Iamfishman) with 3-color Hulk

Game 1- we both start out hammering away.  Both of us resolve recall.  Ray goes after the twist and I misdirect it back.  He forces and I gush in response to find a drain but get a force and a land.  So his twist turns into a armaeddon more or less and I lose to tog beatdown.

Game 2- -1 Deed, -1 Crypt, -1 Wish

I start off strong playing threats and resolvng recall early.  Ray fights back hard though and counters most of my threats.  I get a big dryad going and swing and ray blocks and kills it.  I did that to deplete his hand because the following turn I play will and replay the dryad, fastbond and hit for 20 before he sees it coming.

Time gets called

3-0-2

Round 6- Oshawa Stompy

Game 1- My opponent gets first turn survival that I force.  I start drawing an insane amount of cards and he sees no land after trying to strip all of mine.  I get out a tog and just berserk him for 30.

Game 2- -1 Crypt,  -4 Misdirection
    +1 Smother, +1 Deed, +1 Echoing Decay, +2 Naturalize

I get a good draw but starts to play hidden gibbons and i make the mistake of not countering the first.  When I see my first threat, he already beating down with 2 gibbons and a rootwalla.  I can't hold them all off in time.

Game 3- He gets bazaar first turn while I get dryad first turn.  My dryad get to be a 9/9 and beating down but he continually is finding blockers and more gibbons.  He crypts away my graveyard and my tog becomes alot less dangerous.  I countered his first vineyard but he resolves the second and uses it to really power out his bazaar.  I'm on 3 after alot of vineyard burn and staring down an army of green critters.  I topdeck brainstorm and storm into a land, brainstorm, and my most desired cunning wish.  Then swing in with both while he's on 2 and show the wish to cause a scooping motion.

4-0-2

Top 8 as 2nd seed

Quarter Finals- Jacob Orlove with B/G Fish

I also already knew Jacob from previous tounys and knew not to mock any of his rogue ideas because they are all usually very good as the last waterbury showed.

Game 1-   I get a nasty draw and berserk a tog before he manages any damage at all, this game was really, really fast for my deck.

Game 2- -1 Cunning Wish, -3 Misdirection, -1 Crypt
    +1 Smother, +2 Naturalize, +1 Oxidize, +1 Deed

Jacob manages to see many standstills and beats at me with man-lands.  When I finally see a threat its too late and i did not see any of my SB hate for this match.

Game 3- I start with first turn lotus into scroll into recall.  I find the dryad and start bashing.  I counter his river boa, but then he plays drop of honey.  During my upkeep, i vamp for naturalize and destroy the drop.  He's at 12 and  I play a draw spell and get wish and then berserk for 12 into the win.

Semi-finals- 4-color Hulk Smash

Game 1- My opponent goes pretty nutty with draw spells and I counter just about all of them.  I get two big dryads going and start beating down.  I think he overextended a bit as he played yawg will very early and only got a duress and recall out of it.  I swing into his tog for 8 holding back my 5/5 dryad.  He blocks and depletes his entire hand and graveyard.  He finds a deed and blows away my  last dryad with his tog still standing.  I topdeck wish and smother his tog.  He has no win conditions   left and I resolve my will to the win.

Game 2- -1 Crypt, -1 Deed, -1 Wish
      +3 Duress

He manage to stabilize and outdraw me early and I draw into nothing.  He keeps going after the ak for 4 and swings for total tog only damage.

Game 3- I play recall on his upkeep and he forces.  He mind twists me but the only thing i'm holding is DA.  The twist allowed me to play the DA and I duress away his brainstorm, knowing he is seeing serious mana problems.  I find more DA and he duresses it away for me.  I get out a tog and gush into lethal damge.

Finals- Ray with 3-color Hulk Smash

Ray wants to split and i don't care but want the lotus for my friend Seth (2nd with EBA at waterbury Seth)  After his referral from Samite Healer that the Lotus is better than the 2 pieces in exchange, we decide to play and the winner gets the lotus and 2nd gets the stores 2nd prize walk and a ruby from opponent.  

Game 1- I resolve recall early and get a dryad going.  Ray duresses me and takes away my thirst but he taking alot of damage from dryad.  I walk into a mana drain on purpose to draw out counters with a tog to add pressure from dryad and he tutors for twist and I misdirect it back to him.  He scoops.

Game 2- +3 Duress

I keep a questionable hand of sapphire, 2 duress, misdirect, force, drain, scroll. ( something inside said to trust the deck)  He mulligans and brainstorms.  I rip a jet off the top and duress out his force.  He recalls and I misdirect, and he scoops.

So I get the lotus and we go home.

Like I said, the primer is in the making and more the build and its analysis will be there for all to read.

Props-  GM, all my opponents were great guys, especially Ray.

It was alot of fun and I hope more people come down to GM and see what I'm talking about.

Later,

John

[Piggy]

I am James of the Goats for those who don't know.  First of all, John I didn't know you were on the drain, but its always sweet to meet another drain member who is a cool guy.

Anyway, there was my game one error where I had lethal damage on the board and we each had relatively large grips.  He cast Will, I counter, he counters, I force, he drains.  This gives him exactly enough mana to cast deed and pop it to kill my ancient(s).  So the error, in case you didn't get it yet was forcing rather than allowing the will to resolve.  

Yes, I was happy for the round to end in game three, but I would have played that a lot differently if there were more than three minutes left in the round.  As it turned out, the draw didn't hurt either of us though, since we both drew into T8.

[LizardKING]

Well, first of all congratulations. It is pretty nice to see GAT back in a top 8. I have several questions, some of them will probably find answers in your primer.

Concerning your decklist :

1) I notice a very unusual thing, precisely Deep Analysis+Thirst for knowledge prefered to the traditional AKs. Why ? Is it to optimize Moxen in the late game ?

2) You run 4 Misdirection MD. This is striking, as far as the real target for it is Ancestral Recall. It can be very useful in counterwars, but it is most of the time overlooked in favor of Stifle (for example see Landstill that makes 2nd at Columbus). Does it come from a metagame choice ?

Concerning your round against SuperGro,

3)  Why do you side out your 2 Cunning wish, without even siding in Berserk ?

Well done anyway.

[TheFram]

Good job Jon. I see the list has changed since I owned you at Knight Dreams. How were the thirsts? Why did you stick with 4 mis'd?

-Avi

[Harry Lime]

Congrats on the win, and nice report. Looking forward to the primer (I guess I'll save some of my questions about the build until then).

edit - You guys play at Knight Dreams in Princeton? I should stop by next break I have from school. I don't know if you are familiar with Gamer's Realm in Cranbury (15 or so minutes away), but I'm trying to get them to run some vintage games in the future. Hopefully something will turn up.

[xrizzo]

Can you get to 4x Mana Drain main?  It just looks weird to me without them all there.

Is this deck fast enough to not care about LoA?  From the report, it seems like a resolved LoA does SO much damage.

[Ultima]

@ Xrizzo,

4 Mana drains are not really required in the 3-color build.  As it was seen in Game 1 of Round 4, your opponent can try to draw on library but your threats are huge and they put themselves on a smaller clock if they waste tempo on a library.

@ Avi-

Thanks pal. The thirsts were great.  I tried them after our games and a tourny in NY and haven't looked back since.  I played the 4 Misd because I expected ALOT of Hulk, more than artifact decks and i was right.

@ Harry Lime

Yes, actually me and my team go there quite often but more of a type 2 and limited place then T1.  They have tried T1 but never got a good turnout so they quit the idea.  We'll see if that changes.

@LizardKing

1. I don't play AK for a simple reason;  GAT canNOT effectively beat Hulk by using its own draw engine.  Hulk is well prepared for the AK wars and GAT is not because of other matchps and its tight MD.  In order to beat Hulk, you cannot get into AK wars or hesitate to play spells.  Hulk is a 5 turn clock and you got to try to overwhelm them before then so their hand goes down and they just die to your threats or Yawg Will.

2. I sort of view Misd as Stifle in the same way that they both are not useful all the time ut have their 1-2 uses that can be gamebreaking.  Misd'ing a twist o recall are the most common examples.  Playing 4 Misd in a metgame full of Hulk is a huge advantage.  If I believed that it was gonna be more arifact dominated like the Columbus Tourny then the counterbase would have different.

3. You don't always need berserk to win. Dryads and Togs can get big enough on their own.

[DavidHernandez]

Ultima and I have been discussing some of this stuff via PM.  My opinion of Misdirection is that it is severely underrated.  I never run less than 3 because it's such a house, and the only reason i dont run 4 is because i dont own the 4th one.  

It is good against far more than Ancestral Recall---it turns Mind Twist, Sink Hole, Bolt, Hymn, and a host of other stuff back on the opponent.  

My biggest concern with Ultima's build has been the mana base.  It looks very thin, and suceptible to Wastlands/Stifles/Mulligan.  He insists that it didn't cause problems, and he was undefeated, so I won't argue.     It's difficult to argue with this kind of success, especially in light of the excellent competition he faced.

Congrat's John!

Dave.

[xrizzo]

SB

1 Pern Deed
1 Berserk
1 Oxidize
1 Smother
1 Echoing Decay (Tech- Only weapon 3-color GAT has for mult. welders)
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Stifle
1 Coffin Purge
2 Naturalize
2 Ground Seal- (the pseudo-Damping Matrix that doesn't stop your Tog)
3 Duress

I like to run at least one AK in the side to wish out after the Hulk player has intuitioned for 3 AKs.  If they are already drawing that many cards, you will not have long to answer.

[BreathWeapon]

Considering that you didn't play a single match vs Combo or Prison, how does this tournament do anything to prove that GAT is still a playable deck in a meta game with any real diversity?

[johnstown713]

First off congrats on the win.  I was the sui player but it was aactually Void not sui.  The misderections were awsome against me and hurt a lot.  Also some of you pointed out that Ultima would have problems with his mana base.  I had sinkholes and wastelands but he was alsays drawing more lands than I could destroy.  To bad I drew 6 lands in a row after the shade.

[Jhaggs]

Ultima,

  Congrats on the victory.  Gotta love the misdirection tech.  I was wondering if you could post the Top 8 from this tournament.  I tried looking in the tourny forum for the results, but the thread is too confusing to definitivly say what the Top 8 was.

[jpmeyer]

I don't know exactly how the tiebreakers worked, but here's what I think it was:

GAT (Ultima)
3c Tog (Iamfishman)
3c Tog (Me)
4c Tog
Madness
U/G Gro (Piggy)
TnT (The Method)
U/G Fish (Jorlove)

[Jhaggs]

Thanks JP!  U/G Fish....I hope Jacob posts a build.  I would love to see how he incorporated the forests.

[Ultima]

@ Xrizzo

I try to stay away from using a SB slot that isn't useful for more than one match up.  When playing Hulk, don't think of yourself as the control player, rather take the role of the aggro player and try to overwhelm them.  There is no point in trying to control Hulk because it is designed to overwhelm any deck given sufficent time.  Just focus on smashing face and you'll find that the Hulk is asking themselves about where to get the answers.

@ BreathWeapon

I think even Smmenen brought up GAT in his Metagame Article as being a tier 2.  Moreover, GAT has had amazing tournament rankings in almost every recent major T1 tourny.  So to answer your question, what does
my tourny do, nothing to support that alone.  Its my tourny and all the others together that make it plain and simple for anyone to see that GAT is still a very viable choice.

@ Piggy

Yeah, I hear you James.  I suppose Will is like a reflex to counter, plus I think I still might been able to do something if you let it resolve, but i'm not entirely sure.

@ Johnstown713

Thanks for the backup.  Yeah, 21 mana is good and I never really ever see mana screw but anything is possible.

[DavidHernandez]

I think Siral ran a GAT build that only had 19 mana sources, and included LoA (and Strip Mine, I believe).  He had a high finish in Europe with it (late last year).

I'm not saying it won't work; I'm saying that whenever I run less than 24 sources, I get hosed.  

...and it doesn't matter what deck I run...

 

Dave.

[Kowal]

I tend to run 24 in everything, as a rule.  Less than that, and my luck turns to poop.  More than that, and I get flooded.  Me and workshops don't play nicely because of this phenomenon.

Though, one memorable occasion, I put together my deck in a drunken stupor and accidentally ran only 18 sources in a control deck (including Loa, 4 trops, two moxes, six fetches, and lotus.  I ran maindeck b2b too.)  I took third in Hadley with it.  It was awesome.

[Methuselahn]

Game 2- +3 Duress

I keep a questionable hand of sapphire, 2 duress, misdirect, force, drain, scroll. ( something inside said to trust the deck) He mulligans and brainstorms. I rip a jet off the top and duress out his force. He recalls and I misdirect, and he scoops.

So I get the lotus and we go home.

Props to Ray, it takes alot of balls to just scoop when a lotus is on the line like that.  

[dmessiah]

Game 2- +3 Duress

I keep a questionable hand of sapphire, 2 duress, misdirect, force, drain, scroll. ( something inside said to trust the deck) He mulligans and brainstorms. I rip a jet off the top and duress out his force. He recalls and I misdirect, and he scoops.

So I get the lotus and we go home.

Props to Ray, it takes alot of balls to just scoop when a lotus is on the line like that.  

Ray had mulled down to 6.  He played a land and brainstormed, so his hand was at 4;  he FoWs the Duress, so by the time he cast ancestral, he had only one other card in hand.  After the MisD, Ultima went up to 6 cards (to Ray's 1), and he had two mana sources to Ray's 1.  My guess is that Ray was holding another land or something; I mean it's not a foregone conclusion or anything.  But the beatdown deck has the full grip when the control deck has no gas.  Yeah, I maybe I woulda been stubborn and lost the old fashioned take-me-to-zero way, though.

[Piggy]

Basically, his chances were slim to say the least, he was already guaranteed two peices of non-twister power and he's a cool guy, so rather than waste everyone's time(including his) he said gg and moved on.