[Report] Suboptimal 4cc places 24th @ Somers, Ct 8/15/4

[Nantuko Rice]

Some of you may know me as that really lucky guy who places FCG. Well today I decided on trying something different, and I must admit, control isn't really for me. 4CC is a good deck, but it's not fun drawing a Force of Will... wouldn't it be better to draw a Piledriver, play it, and smash.

In any case, 4CC is a really strong deck, capable of drawing tons of asnwers for tons of threats. It was probably really poor playing on my part that caused me all my matches. Plus, the freezing room, no breakfast, and 3.5 hours of sleep that night is not good.

Oh yes, and my "suboptimal" build. It started out as a netdecked version of Kowal's... but then i have no clue what happened.

Counterwall:
4x Mana Drain (borrowed)
4x Force of Will

Removal:
2x Fire/Ice (borrowed)
2x Swords

Drawing + Other:
4x Brainstorm
2x Skeletal Scrying
1x Ancestral Recall (proxy)
2x Cumming Wish (borrowed)

Win Conditions:
2x Exalted Angel
2x Gorilla Shaman
1x Decree of Justice
1x Crucible of Worlds

Restricted:
1x Mystical Tutor
1x Time Walk (proxy)
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Fact of Fiction
1x Balance
1x Yawgmoth's Will

Oddities:
2x Stifle (ME: Surprise! Stifle! YOU: Wtf? You sided that on me? ME: No, it's in the main )

Mana:
1x Black Lotus
1x Sol Ring
1x Strip Mine
1x Mox Pearl (proxy)
1x Mox Sapphire (proxy)
1x Mox Jet (proxy)
4x Wasteland
2x City of Brass
2x Volcanic Island
3x Underground Sea
3x Tundra
1x Library (borrowed)
4x Fetches (borrowed)

SB:
3x REB
2x COffin Purge
1x Skel Scry
1x Echo Truth
1x Misidrect
1x Echo Decay
3x Rack and Ruin
1x Swords
2x Disenchant

Card Choices:
No 3rd Scrying? Only ran 2 angels, wasn't sure how three scryings would do with all the aggro decks around like Fish, FCG, and Big Brown (aka any artifact deck).
Why 2 Stifles? Cmon. It's amusing. I always have weird card choices (which results to suboptimal decks, yet I haven't learned my lesson have I?) I've played FCG and some Fish in my past and tempo is really cool. I've been drafting alot recently because my local store isn't doing type 1 tournaments and tempo is very impotant in limited so I thought it must have been important in type 1 just as much. The lesson learned today is that only some decks were meant to abuse tempo, such as fish. However, I wanted to run 2 stifles so the deck had more "mana denial." Stifling fetches is good and stifling wastelands is pretty much mana denial. Your opponent is set back one turn. I also realized that Stifle works pretty good on stuff like 7/10. To bad I never drew them when I needed them.
Why extra fire/ice? Fish. Lots of fish. And welders. But they were in there for the fish.
No 3rd Angel or 2nd Decree? Uhhh... I had to make room for stifles and extra removal... if you hadn't noticed, Mind twist and Mox Ruby are also missing.
How is Crucible? Oh yeah. I didn't run a 3rd angel or 2nd decree because I felt crucible was a good replacement. Crucible = Ownage. See games below.
Why only 2 cunning wishes? They say "borrowed" on them. I could've borrowed more power to fit in a 3rd wish but didn't want to.

So... first thing to do is... Fix my deck. And then practice more, cause I made ALOT of play mistakes. Also, huge props to Nick Vallas for letting me borrow his stuff and for the ride. In return I offered him 1/3 of my winnings, which unfortunately today would be zero.  

About 50 people show up, so 10% came from the car I was in.

The Games:

Round 1: Steve with Slaver + Tinker Colossus
Game 1. Turn two he tinkers for Colossus. Mistake number 1. I play a crucible, he doesn't counter. So I swords. He counters. I had a drain in my hand but I used my mana for crucible. Oops. I tell him after but he shows me more counters in his hand.
Game 2. Ok... the game was all me. All me. It was mine! But then he got his welders going. I stalled some time by Echoing Truth his welders but Angel wasn't swinging fast enough. He's at 2 and I am at 41. He's been slaving me the last 2 turns. He is out of artifacts. He draws, memory jar. Activate. i see no forces, he thirsts and drops Pentavus in his yard. Infinite slave lock ensues and I die a miserable death while I have a shaman and two angels on the board. Eventually he plays my Yawgmoth's Will, Echoing Truth my angels and I die.

Round 2: Jerry with Sui Black
Game 1. Shade beats me up a bit and then after desperatly searching with brainstorms and fetches I get an angel. He realizes his mistake after the game by not playing Chalice for 1 instead of beating with shade.
Game 2. I play my entire hand except two cards. He plays his entire hand except one card. He hymns me. We topdeck and he gets a shade which thoroughly beats me until I a monkey to eat his mana and an answer for shade. He draws, I draw, He plays, I counter. i counter a Juzam, Hippie, Shade and eventually I play crucible, tutoring for a Strip Mine. He has a full hand, no lands, and I have ten on the table. Keeper does it's thing from then on as it has full control of the game.

Round 3: Matt with Brown Stuff (Deck with artifacts)
Game 1. I waste my demonic tutor to grab a black lotus because I'm trying to gain tempo. Next turn I wanna wish for R&R and kill stuff. Unfortunately he drops a Karn to kill my lotus AND a sphere of resistance. Sphere of Resistance owns tempo.
Game 2. Let's see... he Jar's a few timees and then I see the scariest creature ever. I thought Psychatog was scary, I thought Colossus was scary, but this guy is scary because he's huge and blows up all my land. I frown and die a horrible death as he hardcasts a Colossus the following turn.

Round 4: Patrick with Fish
Game 1. He dazes my turn one Sol Ring and forces my turn two Crucible. Later in the game he has 2 lavamancers and a curios flying man. I have an Angel. Ok. I should win this. I fire/Ice one lavamancer and the flying man. On his turn he plays a second lavamancer and a razorfin hunter (sucks). Next turn I can't kill anything and his guy do just enough damage to rape Angel.  He swings with voidmage and I cycle a decree. My resistance is futile. I crumble a few turns later.
Game 2. My crucible resolves, I get a strip mine, and it's good game fishes as I cycle a decree for 4.
Game 3. Late in the game he plays standstill. I cycle decree for 6.

Round 5: Jon Long with 4CC
Knowing that we won't have any chance of making it, we talk a bit about 4CC and some of my odd card choices. Very cool guy, and I feel very very very bad about game 1.
Game 1. We both get a decent start. One turn we fight over a few ancestrals. Next turn we fight over a FoF. But his resolves. He sees something like Land, Mox, Flametongue Kavu.....
Game 2. Again we both get decent starts but he outdraws me with more scryings. He wastes my mana and I do nothing wit hone tundra on the table.
Game 3. I stifle a waste and library draws me about 3 cards. I cave in to aggro tendencies and Tutor up an Angel to play as a morph. This is where the game basically ends as I start dropping wastelands. Jon explains to me how he had tutored for his crucible but was going to wait to drain something before playing it.

Round 6: Matt with Brown Stuff
Game 1. Stuff.
Game 2. Stuff.
Game 3. He goes crazy with a Yawg Will. Brings back a titan and leaves me with a Wasteland and a Pearl. He has 1 card in hand I think. I balance. He loses everything. I have a crucible on board so i play a land and an Angel soon. But by the time I got to play balance, that was already turn 3 so no one was gonna win. Realistically we had no chances of making it, but I gave him the win anyway as my friends wanted to leave (cause we all crapped out).

We end up staying to see the standings though. I place 24th and the guy i played in round 6 got 15th. So switch those numbers around for more accuracy. My friend whom I loaned my FCG deck to went 3-0... and then 0-3... the rest of us didn't do so well either. Oh well. We'll get the next one. As for myself, I've learned quite alot today... Hopefully I'll be able to play control better next time.

[Whatever Works]

It started out as a netdecked version of Kowal's...

That must be a first... I dont really understand your reasoning for dropping the 3rd angel from the deck. I have tried 2 angels and i find it amazing how much of a difference it can make, with 3 angels the deck tends to play much more agessively. Running 2 stifles maindeck also did not make much sense considering you could play better cards in those slots, and that if your incredibly concerned about fish stifle is not the card to improve the matchup.

I personally dont like running CoW maindeck, but the format has taken a turn for the worst where I could honestly predict that there were more Crucibles of Worlds then Force of Wills in that tournement (being there i thiink i only saw 2 fish decks of of 50+ people), and with fish hate rampant (including my own board) I was dissapointed that i never had a chance to use my board.

IMO I think a parfeit deck with some maindeck crucibles with of won that tournement... And the tournement with a finals between 3c Madness vs. STOMPY final(running 4 maindeck beserks that scared the hell out of every1 with double beserked rancor rogue elephants on turn 3 etc.) VERY odd tournement yet very organized and well run as always

[Kowal]

It was mildly bazaar.

Congrats on Jesse Reffsin for taking first with Stoopid Madness.

[Dozer]

Out of curiosity, how often did you have to mulligan? 25 mana is not much. How did that fare for you? Not running Mind Twist is probably a noticeable decrease on the mana curve. Did that make itself felt?
And: Were there times when you'd have liked to tutor for Mind Twist, or did you not miss it at all?

Dozer

[wuaffiliate]

2 angels is fine if you suppliment with another threat, that crucible should be a decree.

[tehmajickguy]

I'm the guy you played in round 6. Its too bad it went to time, because game 3 was turning out to be a very good game. It was nice meeting you and getting to play against you and thanks for the win.

[Nantuko Rice]

Because the quote thing is really annoying to do and i forgot the code for it....

Whatever Works: Couldn't find a 3rd angel. Stifle wasn't meant only for fish. It was meant as anti-fetch, anti-waste, anti-triggered stuff like 7/10, and anti-combo (which was none).

Wuaffiliate: You don't think crucible is a good enough threat?

Dozer: I mulliganed one game. I had a dual land and no brainstorm or ancestral, or any blue for that matter. I don't think I ever cast mana drain all day for anything big. Control doesn't like me. Honestly, I didn't miss the twist at all.

themajickguy: I think I could've won that game 3. Had crucible on table and angel in hand.  

Kowal: Since it seams like you stuck around til it ended, I'm wondering how that R/G Beatz deck did. It was 5-0 going into round 6 I believe. I heard it was something like... Jackal Pups, Kird Apeas, Lavamancers, Fireblasts, Bolts, Chain Lightnings, and Dryads. I asked what his draw was and I was told it was browbeat.

Also, I didn't see many null rods being played at the tournament. Did all the fish decks drop it? I saw at least 5 fish players at the tournament.

[Ruinn]

I am a friend of the R/G beatz player and since he does not post here or even read this forum much I guess I'll try and help you out a little bit with how he did.  He ended up losing in the quarters due to a combination of a poor judgement on whether to mulligan a hand or not, and some bad luck.

It is not really an R/G beatz deck also, its really more of a red burn/stompy deck with dryads, and this is why we call it "Burning Dryad."  The dryads are the focal point of the deck but hardly necessary to win (I think he said he casted a total of one in his first 3 matches and very few after as well.)  He actually only decided to play the deck before as we figured on a very heavy control oriented meta and we were right as he did not lose a match until the top 8.  

Browbeat is basically the drawing engine of the deck, originally it was sylvan library + fetches but that did not work well.  Then it was skullclamps but we did not like the idea of having to take out burn spells for sub optimal creatures (like goblin cadet) to feed clamp.  Browbeat actually works the best, as it does not get played until he has already dealt a hefty amount of damage.  If the person takes the five damage, that works too.

Hope that helped to clear some things up.

[wuaffiliate]

Wuaffiliate: You don't think crucible is a good enough threat?

No. No i don't. Angel wins games in 4CC, crucible doesn't.