@Machinus.
I'm finally very happy of the improving obtained by my new list when facing decks like WelderMUD or MuD.Monobrown.
As you can read through the report, if MUD's start is less than decent, I shouldn't usually have any difficulties on winning the game.
I can pass through his hate with my Basic lands ( Trinispheres and CoWs+Wastes ), my E.E.s ( CotVs ) and post side the board control is far more easier to achieve with the HUGE amount of removals directly swapped for the worst cards for this specific matchup ( MisDs, Cranials and Wishes ).
On the other hand, I missed ONLY once my Shaman and I lose a game with a couple of Welders starting recurring cheap artifacts and with me helding my E.E. without so much to do with it. Instead I have to admit that the versatility of a card as E.E. itself have been so much important in any matchup that I can't go back at now.
----
Cranial Extraction.
I loved and hated this card a lot during the tourney. I shuffled it back as much as any other metagamed cards in my hand in the wrong matchup. So I can't deny is inherent usefulness, but I must admit that in a field different from the one that I described, it could be sustitutedwith any one other cards available to Keeper.
I must pack in as much hate as I can for Combo and Control, without diminishing too much my own impact to the game. I can't play with my beautiful ChaliceKeeper because there are too many spells at cc1 that are CRUCIAL to me and there are too few ways to crush my own CotV when needed.
So I opted adding Cranials maindeck especially to maximize their impact against players prepared to face them post side and not preside.
I play only a match against TPS and they weren't hot at all because he had hands to strong to be handled. On the other hand, ANY OTHER game played ( especially postside ) against my teammates playing TPS were usually decided by three cards:
1) Cranials taking Tendrils
2) ReBs on Brainstorms and Gifts and FoW
3) Drain on opponent's Duress
I won ALMOST any non-broken game I managed to pull out this sequence of spells, especially in this order 3) 1) 2). TPS usually is unprepared to win without being SURE of not being stopped by something at some point of his gameplan. Denying him looking through our hand is key to win.
-----------------
I suggest you to play a deck without Cranial Extraction in a field without so much combo and so much control ( we had 40% of combo decks and 40-45% of hybrid-control's decks! ). For a mixed and "slower" metagame I have a list prepared with these changes:
Maindeck-2 Cranial Extractions
-1 Tolarian Academy
+1 Cunning Wish
+1 Decree of Justice
+1 Library of Alexandria
SideboardNo Changes
----------
@Statistics.
I was very satisfied about your feedback.
I would like to add some hints for a deeper insight through the metagame ( Shockwave would benefit of all of these data because he would be one of our future opponents with the 2005 coming.
):
A) You could see that there were a lot of decks ( Oath, WelderMUD, TPS, Aggro-Control in general ) that placed themselves nearly equally divided among all the "spectrum" of the possible results. They made extremely good and nearly extremely bad. The player's abilities are crucial for being able to say the "WHY" at this aparently contraddictory situation. I saw a lot of people being always "1 or 2 weeks back in time" with their lists or playing strong decks without at least a personal metagamization. This translate in the reality with bad results. The ones who did well were 1) perfectly prepared to master the deck in almost any situation and 2) if needed they were able to do crucial changes to the entire deck even briefly pre-tourney.
B) A lot of deck lost a lot of mirror's matches cancelling each other in the path through the Top8s. Excluding a few exceptions, a lot of them thought a lot about any other matchup rather then thinking that a lot of people would have assembled and played
their owndeck, with inherent difficulties on winning games without game breaking cards.
C) None expected Atog.dec to be played because we did a subtle work of "moving and directing the entire metagame" in this direction at least 3 or 4 weeks before the tourney. We started writing articles and discussions other strong decks in the metagame and Tog not being able to win a lot anymore. Soon after, anyone seemed to focus on them for their choices.
Why did we do it?
My personal reasons were that for a Keeper.dec, Atog.dec is usually his worst matchup. So, I didn't want to face Atogs almost any turns, fatiguing the hell out for winning against Scrubs with their FirstTurnIntuition.dec. In this way I was sure about the decrease of matchups like that and I could be able to focus on the others to power them up.
All the other people had different reasoning behind this work.
They all WANTED to play our UBr-List of Atog, because it is really Strong Strong Strong Strong against almost ANY TIER1 at now including Oath.dec, TPS.dec and Welder.dec, but it fails to be Skill-Based in the mirror matches ( As is happening since his first appeareance at the W1Championship played by Carl ). The mirror is decided by your speed on resolving Intuition for Deep-Deep-Duress and then by trying to stop your opponent to do the same. Really shitty imho. On the other hand, if anyone would be interested on playing Atog.dec, it would become soon THE DECK TO CHOOSE to win a so competitive tourney.
Retrospectively, we expected to have not more than 4 or 5 Atog.dec so they all did ANOTHER not intuitive choice ( for all the ones that didn't expect tog being so strong ): They swapped out Deeps for Thirst for Knowledge. It is really the crucial change that they made BUT ONLY BECAUSE they KNEW that Mirrors matches were almost avoided. Taking out Deeps, let you draw almost the same amount of cards BUT with Istant speed AND without using the precious buffer of life points. Retrospectively speaking, taking out cards directly used only because of the Mirror matches strenghtened a lot more the aggro and the aggro-control matchups. So they thought about playing the perfect deck for that tourney.
IN SUMMARY
Three of six Tog.dec Top8ed without any difficulties BUT the only one that opted to play the version with Deep Analysises could manage to win the inevitable mirror's matches in the Top8s. Mad Props to him for his choice of risking a bit more before the Top8 but being more metagamed for a so Tog's filled Top8.
