Trinistax brings home the trophy, again.

So I played the annual Andy Fletcher memorial Type I tournament on Sunday as the returning champion having won it last year with Stax. I won again. So I get this HUGE trophy (seriously its like the Stanley Cup, its that big) and my name will be engraved on the first two lines. Next year will have to be the three-peat.

Anyways, the tourney was 5 rounds swiss with cutoff to Top 2. Thats right Top 2. No pressure or anything, its only single elim all day. The turnout was dissapointingly a little smaller than last year, but there are more powered players. There is my fully powered deck, a fully powered (and FULLY BLACKBORDERED) 4cC, an almost fully powered Tog, a fully powered (as far as I could tell) Rector Trix deck, a semi-powered Metalworker deck and also several good budget builds in Landstill, WTF/r, Food Chain Goblins and a decent Survival/Masknaught deck.

So what did I play? Stax again. The funny thing is that I tell everyone I'm playing Dragon (I have the Bazaars and even take one and a dragon to the tourney to reveal to people) and everyone changes their SB's and takes out stuff thats good against me (this is reasonable, I'm the only guy in the country who can build Stax due to the Workshops). In the second round Vs the 4cC guy (who took out his second SB Rack and Ruin as I was playing Dragon) I Strip his first land and in response he casts Cunning Wish---->Swords to Plowshares. Hilarious. In the final my blatant lies helped out again, my Landstill opponent had removed 4x Rack and Ruin from his board in anticipation of a Dragon matchup.

I play in order:

Black (more control than suicide) 2-0

Game 1: I start the first game after parising, playing a land and saying go. I have 2x Crucible and Ancient Tomb in hand so it looks decent for me. He starts with Ritual, Duress, Hymn and gets my Crucibles and crucially my Tomb. He lays Hypnotic Spectre, I reply with Volcanic, Welder. He lays Lake of the Dead and casts Plague Spitter (WTF?! Its soo bad for me at this point in time) so I have one turn to draw a Mox to save myself. I mize one off the top, cast it, Weld in a Crucible, play Tomb from the yard and cast a Smokestack. His turn sees the end of my Welder with the Plague Spitter activation, I take 5 damage and lose a card. I add a counter to my stack, draw Wasteland and off his Lake. He loses a land to the stack and swings for 5 again, I have no hand by this time. I add a second counter to the Stack after saccing a land that I can replay with Crucible, and mize Tanglewire off the top. I keep Stack around for a couple of turns to completely clear his board of permanents, draw and cast Trinisphere, then draw Intuition for Strip/Academy/Delta and its over.

Game 2: After a stern test in the first game this one is just dead easy for me. He boarded in Negators and now I have Fire/Ice and Triskelion. I get his first Negator with a Trike, he even sacs a land to my first Triskelion activation (how nice!). I randomly draw my Strip Mine shortly afterwards with a Trini on the table and Intuition for Crucible.

4cC (with the Tinker Collosus) 2-0

Game 1: We get deckchecked and he misregistered his gorgeous all black bordered, fully powered 4cC. So I get a free game - how good! Even better since he still thinks I'm playing Dragon and now won't have the opportunity to play two games after board.

Game 2: His start is quite broken with several Moxen and Lotus, but I Strip his first land and he Cunning Wishes----->Swords to Plowshares thinking that I have Dragon. On my next turn I drop Shop---->Trini and he knows his Cunning Wish target was terrible. He makes a mistake and Drains the Trini despite having like 3 Moxen + Lotus on the board, I think this was a fear reaction to the Trini which raped him in another tourney. He uses the Drain mana to cast Crucible, which would be bad except that he hasn't drawn Waste or Fetch yet. Eventually we get to a situation where he Wishes for the 1 Rack and Ruin in his SB, but I have 3 lock pieces that he needs to kill and a Welder that he can't answer. I draw Slaver with a Stack on the board and over the course of a few turns make him sac his Crucible, then his Moxen. While I'm taking his turns I'm using my turns to Weld in the Trini and Crucible he Rack and Ruined with a Wasteland in the yard and thats game.

Sligh Vs the finalist from the previous days State Champs tourney 2-1

Game 1: I forget the details, but my draw was seriously busted and he scoops in short order after 2x Intuition gets me whatever I needed.

Game 2: He beats me! I parised and kept an average six with only two Moxen for mana and his Shaman makes me pay. I've never lost Vs red with Stax so this one was quite a shock.

Game 3: I keep a marginal hand with too much land and proceed to draw many more off the top. I topdeck a Tanglewire and it keeps me in the game long enough to eat his board. A little later he almost gets to enough mana to endstep-Bolt, unkeep-Fireblast me out while I keep drawing land but I draw Thirst----> Strip Mine to seal the deal.

Food Chain Goblins Vs our regions player of year 2-1

Game 1: I paris but my six are busted. I go first and lead with Ruby, Vault, Crypt, Jar and say go holding Karn and Tinker. Second turn I activate the Jar in unkeep and get an amazing hand with Academy, and I'm able to finish the turn with a Welder and Trinisphere (from Intuition) in play. He has Taiga and Mountain in play with a Piledriver by my next turn, so I Tinker for Titan and ruin him.

Game 2: I'm such a horrible player. I deserve to lose one after I cast Trinisphere turn one, and then realise that the Tanglewire in my hand is actually a Mana Crypt. He Wastes my Shop and I pick up my cards shortly thereafter.

Game 3: Somehow I'm not fazed by my terrible mistake in the last game at all, just grimly determined. This game is really close and the pivotal moment is when he Strips a Volcanic, which would take me to only 2 mana sources (Strip + Volcanic) and would almost certainly win him the game since I had no artifacts in play to go with my Welder. In response to the Strip I Intuition for 3 Moxen and on my turn cast a Crucible and Weld in a Stack for the Mox. I'm taking 4 a turn from a Driver + Recruiter so the game is still tight for a couple of turns where it looks like he will kill me before I clean his board, but I mize Tanglewire and though the game continues for a while I essentially won as soon as the Wire hit.

WTF/r with Dryads instead of Boa piloted by friend who was in last years National Team 2-0

Game 1: His draw is good, he even gets a maindeck Crucible into play which looks like it will give him the time to win since my hand is empty and my own Crucible is now useless. I MIZE Jar off the Top and my seven cards are savage. Again the details are hazy, suffice to say that I ripped like a fiend.

Game 2: I know he has 2x Artifact Mutation and 3x Null Rod in the board for me and may also bring in the Hydro/Pyroblasts. I'm not too unhappy about this, I'll try to Waste his red or green sources to stop Mutation and I know that Null Rod is not that good against me anyway. He agonises over whether to mulligan for a long time and eventually does, drawing into a six card hard that he thinks over for a long time also but keeps. Since he parised I decide to keep my hand, which has little business in the way of spells but does have 4 Wasteland. In the end the Wastelands ruin him and he has a lone basic Island on the board for the longest time, during which I draw nothing to put the game away. In the end I finally get Intuition---->Strip Mine + 2 irrelevant cards and lock him down with Trini + Crucible.

Final:
Vs Landstill played by a friend and 3 times National Team player 2-0

Game 1: Turns out I saved my most busted draw all day for this game. He draws all four Force of Will this game (!!!!) and forces the game to the point where we both have empty hands. I make a comment about how its all about the topdeck now and proceed to rip Ancestral. It takes a few turns to grind out the win after that, but it felt pretty comfortable after the Ancestral.

Game 2: We board and I think he has 4x Rack and Ruin in the board for me, but it turns out he removed them when he thought I was with Dragon. This game is unusual and while I could probably have won earlier, I have 2x Pyro and 1x Hydro in hand so I slow play it so he can't Drain----> Disk. It drags on a bit and I just can't draw a non-Workshop source to cast the Tinker which would immediately win me the game (he can't counter due to Trini) and instead hard cast a Titan to kill his only remaining land. Next turn I draw Wasteland and cast Tinker with the Sapphire in play, he knows theres a Strip in my yard and extends the hand in concession.

Here is my list:

// Lands
1 [UG] Island
4 Volcanic Island
4 Mishra's Workshop
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
1 Tolarian Academy
2 Polluted Delta
2 Ancient Tomb

// Creatures
4 Goblin Welder
2 Sundering Titan
1 Karn, Silver Golem

// Spells
4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Memory Jar
4 Smokestack
4 Trinisphere
1 Tinker
4 Tangle Wire
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
3 Crucible of Worlds
1 Mindslaver
2 Intuition
1 Time Walk

Yeah, its 61 cards. Sloppy but I wanted to play my Walk, if you wanted the list at 60 cards Walk is the one that leaves (I boarded it out all day long). The MVPs would be Ancient Tomb (makes the deck so much smoother, it can handle Shop-less draws and importantly lets you cast non-Artifact spells like Thirst/Intuition/Tinker easily) and Intuition. Intuition was just amazing all day long, whether it was getting Titan/Jar/Slaver with an active Welder, Strip/Academy/Delta with a Crucible in play, 3x the lock component I wanted at the time or just some random set (like the 3 Moxen) to pull me back from the brink.

I love this build haven't missed the draw-7's at all in either testingor tournament play. 28 mana sources with the 2x Tombs runs soooo silky smooth, the deck just doesn't even skip a beat when it doesn't draw Workshop or has it Wasted. The other thing I like about this build is that Null Rod does virtually jack against it, its only on a 2+ Mox draw thats also light on other mana that the Rod can hurt.

EDIT: SB was the following -

3 Fire/Ice
3 Chalice of the Void
3 Pyroblast
2 Hydroblast
2 Defense Grid
1 Triskelion
1 Tormod's Crypt

Basically the SB was geared towards Sligh (theres still a lot of it here, as you can probably tell by my facing an undefeated sligh deck in round 3) and 4cC/Tog (being the other powered decks I expected to face).