Report from bombing out at Waterbury

<Skips uninteresting story involving the 2:45 drive, 800 cops pulling people over, and who he sees when he arrives at the site>

NOTE: I had a blast going to Waterbury and the bitterness you may detect is purely the craptastic luck I had at times.

I played FiveAdditionalTurns.dec

In short, I was wrong about the metagame of Waterbury, I playtested the wrong deck and was forced last minute to pick up something I could play perfectly, and god hates me.

Waterbury was a very well-run event. The amount of people there was astounding, which is always nice. It was my first event there, so there was one crucial element I didn't understand: 60% of the people there only marginally keep up with Type 1. Does this mean they are playing old Academy, Keeper with Morphlings, and Price of Progress Sligh? Not necessarily.

It means that they know what decks are out there and what-not, but those 60% don't follow the trends by reading reports and realizing that Control Slaver and Fish are popular choices right now. It means that with 5 additional proxies, they don't care to change up to a Workshop deck. They are just fine running with whatevertheywant.dec. This differs from the normal New England events that I've attended since the 40-50 people there, generally only have maybe 10 (20%) people not up on the trends or the ebb and flow of the metagame.

What that meant to me is that by making crucial decisions to cut things like Mind Twist and Decree of Justice, it made me worse against an older version of the mirror. I made these decisions based on Fish, Titan, and Control Slaver showing up all over New England reports (Mind Twist versus Misdirection and Goblin Welder for example) and there being a downward trend of 4cControl being played. I'm not the only one who shared this sentiment (that is, estimating the metagame) as at least the 2 finalists (oh-so CrazyCarl and Rich Shay) and a slew of other talented players discussed this very suprising aspect.

I thought that by keeping the environment, metagame trends, and statistics in mind when making decisions would pay off. I was wrong there.

In addition to being wrong, I had spent 2 weeks playtesting my own version of Slaver. Because it did not beat Fish and didn't do any better in the mirror, I could not reasonably count it as a viable option for Waterbury. The night before Waterbury, I had two options: Stax or whatever version of 4cControl I was developing at the time.

I playtested Stax, but found that this wasn't a deck that you could run through 8 rounds of swiss with next to no play experience. I could run it, but I wanted to play something I would rarely, if ever make a mistake with. 4cControl is instinctive at this point and despite it being a "50%" deck against Slaver, Titan, and a handful of other decks, I would hope that luck would be slightly on my side of the fence and that playskill would carry me the rest of the way.

Round 1: Non-TMD'r with an older version of my deck.

Game 1: I strip some lands, get a Shaman rocking, then win with an Angel.

Game 2: I drop Crucible and start going to town, but then he drops his own. I have a full grip at some point and he MIND TWISTS my hand. He kept in both plows AND all of his Cunning Wishes (which he used twice for plows) and removed all my win conditions from the game (which took like 40 minutes) I concede.

Game 3: So we have 5 minutes left... He goes Land, Mox, Mox, Lotus, Angel. I drop a dual and a Pearl, Walk, untap, plow it, then Ancestral. He draws and passes. I Skeletal Scrying for 3. He plays a land. I waste a land then time is called. I Skeletal Scrying for 4. He passes. I Wish for Ancestral and draw some more. He passes. I Yawgwill, get taunted by the Time Walk in the GY. There's no way to win. Sad

0-0-1

Round 2: Jeff Anands Girlfriend with Toog

Game 1: We go back and forth for a bit. Shaman is eating her power and beating her for 1. I resolve Crucible, but she Oxidizes it. I Will it back, and destroy her lands. I play an Angel and win. (this game took a LOOOONG time... 45 minutes.)

Game 2: We're called on time. We go back and forth and noone wins.

1-0-1

Round 3: Ashok - The Method with Meandeck Titan

Game 1: I stall and two lands and by the time I start drawing mana again, he bitch smacks me into the next game.

Game 2: A very long back and forth game. I was able to Waste all of his Volcanics, Shaman his Ruby, and he already used his Lotus so he had no real way to get Welder out which apparently meant he had no other way to win at the gamestate we were at... (I think maybe all win conditions were in the GY)

Game 3: Again, it's almost time. I'm rocking his stuff hardcore. We get called on time and Angel looks to be 1 turn shy of pulling off the win. I get him to 3 with Angel on my LAST turn. I have FULL grip with brainstorms and such. I Fire him, bringing him to 1, I Brainstorm - nothing, shuffle, Brainstorm again NOTHING (Fire Ice #2 WAS near the top.)

At this point if we both tied, we both have to win out. If one loses then he still has to win out, but the other gets to be 2-0-1. Ashok is HELLA cool and gives me the win.

2-0-1

Round 4: 4cControl... older version

Game 1: I'm drawing like crazy off a LoA and I'm a turn away from dropping Crucible of Worlds. He only has 4 cards in hand, untaps, draws, drops a Lotus and Mind Twists me for 7. I Force (of course, I mean I've been drawing cards) and he Forces (of course). I lose my CoW and the game.

Game 2: I Ancestral on his first upkeep. He plays a land and a Mox. I untap, drop some acceleration, Waste his land, and Scrye for 3. He drops another land. I untap, drop a Shaman, eat the Mox. I am beating for 1 for like 5 turns, then drop another Shaman. I swing with 2 of em, he Decrees for 3. I Cunning Wish for Fire/Ice and blow 2 of em up, saving 1 Shaman. I drop an Angel and it goes the distance.

Game 3: So, I'm rocking like an allstar with LoA again. Again, I have Crucible in hand. AGAIN he Mind Twists me. He countered everything I wanted to resolve the whole game. Soon, he Decree's for 6 tokens because he Drained my Force of Will. He beats me for 6. He has a full hand, I have 1 card. He has 8 lands, I have 5. I draw a Demonic Tutor and think what can save me in the face of such savageness.

I look at what's in his graveyard and notice he's used SEVEN of his EIGHT counterspells. I Tutor for Balance and throw it out. His remaining counterspell is 1 of the 30+ cards in his deck, so it resolves. He goes down to 1 card, 0 critters, and 5 lands, just like me. I pass the turn, he topdecks something REALLY special and (keep in mind that I have 5 lands in play and a Force of Will in hand, all I needed was an untap phase to be back in the game) taps 3 lands, one of them black. His graveyard comes flooding back into play.

2-1-1

Round 5: Food Chain Goblins

Game 1: He plays Mountain, Emerald, and mana goblin. I Strip his Mountain. He plays a Wasteland, swings for 1. I drop a fetchland and a Jet. He swings again for 1. I drop a Lotus, fetch and Island, Demonic for Crucible, cast it off Lotus, and Strip his Wasteland. He attacks for 1. I fetch (from the graveyard of course) out a Tundra. He plays a Taiga and summons a Piledriver which I Drain. I recur a Strip and play a Shaman. I will a few turns later and we're off to game 2.

Game 2: He drops a Lotus, Lackey, Piledriver. That's pretty broken... except I kept a hand with ZERO land and a Lotus, Recall, BEB, Fact, Drain, Plow, Force of Will. I drop the Lotus, Ancestral, drop a City of Brass, Plow the Piledriver, BEB the Lackey, then rule the universe. He does nothing for like 4 turns while I assemble the Angel and Shaman double team.

3-1-1

Round 6: Dave Mazza (I think... he had a beard with a handle) playing Control Slaver

Game 1: He mulligans to six. He opens with Land, Mox, Lotus, Sac Lotus to play Tinker sacrificing his Mox. I Force it, but god hates me so he has Force of Will to back it up. For the listeners at home, his opening hand was Tinker, Lotus, Mox, Land, Force of Will, Brainstorm). He drags out Platinum Angel and I'm like *yawn* because I run like 234 ways to remove it and even though I don't HAVE any in hand, I have 2 Brainstorms and a Time Walk to go find them, capitalize on his severe card screw, and win. Right? WRONG. God REALLY hates me. I dig and walk and dig and NOTHING.

In 5 turns with 2 Brainstorms and a Walk, here are the list of things that could of won me the game. Keeping in mind that I had a Will in hand and could have dug more and Time Walked and stuff...

4 Polluted Delta
2 Underground Sea
2 Swords to Plowshare
3 Cunning Wish
1 Balance
3 City of Brass
1 Mox Jet
1 Black Lotus
-------------------------
Total 17 cards

Game 2: I go Lotus, Brainstorm, Wasteland, Morph. He plays a land. I Waste the land, swing for 2, and drop another Wasteland. He plays a Volcanic. I blow it up and stall on lands, but swing for 2. He drops a Mox. I stall on land and swing for 2. He passes. I get a fetch and find a Volcanic. I play a Shaman and attack for 2. He gets poop. I eat the mox and swing for 3. The game ends pretty much there.

Game 3: We go back and forth, but it's mostly him doing the to and fro since I draw SEVEN LANDS IN A ROW. Anyway, he's got 7 cards in hand at some point and I have 5. I draw Demonic Tutor and cast it. He Mana Drains it (and I really want CoW) so I hardcast a Force (I do have 10 mana in play). He Forces it back. (he's down to 4 cards to my 4, but he's REALLY light on Mana, he's got like 3 lands and two Moxen) so I Drain the Force. He FORCES AGAI...

*Phone Rings - it's work*

I talk to an employee of mine. It's really nothing major and I'm wondering why the hell he's calling me at 8:30PM on a saturday for non-emergencies especially when I have supervisors of his on shift with him. I answer his question, but my mind is now OUT of the game.

First play-mistake of the day, coming right up.

Ok, so I get re-aqaunted with the game. We're in a counterwar over a Tutor and I want to get Crucible BADLY. I can Drain the Force or I can let the Tutor fail. He's got 2 cards (one's an Ancestral, he Mystical'd for it and the other one is a land) left in hand so in my removed mindset, I know he must be out of counter juice and CoW is the bomb, so I Drain it.

God laughs at me because he was about do demonstrate that he hates me, but instead I save him the trouble.

My tutor goes off and I grab Crucible. Second mainphase happens and I plunk it down and eat 7 mana burn. He draws (a Drain) He tries the Ancestral but I have a Force for that. He drops a land ("No no no, don't drop land," Steve thought to himself as he considered his Crucible, "I need to make you unable to cast stuff!") and passes. I draw a REB ("Whew," Steve thought, "the game isn't over yet.") and recur a Strip bringing him back to 3 lands, 2 mox.

He untaps and draws again, then he Tinkers (another God-hates-me topdeck) away his Mox and I REB it. I'm so good! Oh wait, he has Mana Drain and soon Pentavus is making little sperm tokens.

3-2-1

*BARF*