Hi, This is my first report so I hope I dont screw the whole thing up. My notes were not 100% complete and I seem to have lost them from the semi-finals, but I will do my best to remember how things went.
I have been toying around with the idea of running MaskNaught for a while now and when Eric Millers list from SCG4 appeared I finally found what I was looking for and decided to take it to this weekends tourney in the SF bay area for a shot at a mana drain, a PSA Qualifying spot,and some Christopher Rush memorabilia.
My list varies from Millers by a couple of sideboard choices (I ran Chains of Mephistopheles and the secret tech of Rule of Law instead of Arcance Laboratory
and I dropped main deck Vampiric tutor due to my sick vendetta against that card for a glimmervoid (im weird man)
The MAIN EVENT.
My "team" and I leave our Sierra Foothills homes around 9:30 and stop by Sacramento to pick up our version of SCG4's "Star Wars Kid."
We arrive in Dublin (not Ireland) shortly after 11:00 and proceed to leave to have some Chineese when we find that Mr. Rush is not signing cards yet. (Chineese food is a tradition with us, every GOOD magic shop has an amazing Chineese place within a stones throw)
After coming back we fill out our deck lists and show our proxies to the store owner for approval, then proceed to meet Christopher Rush and get some signage on some pretty beta cards (My buddy Eric had a perfect Lotus to get signed, im so jealous)
Players start arriving just before start time, so to get more players they delay the start almost 45 minutes.
Scanning the room I see a meta like so...
7 Oath decks (2 or 3 were combo varieties)
3-4 Stax
5 Drain Slaver
4 Doomsday
1 DeathLong
1 Tog
1 Riddler
1 Fish
1 FCG
1 4CC
3 Garbage decks
and thats about all the decks I get to see before the start (although some of my initial numbers were fixed after I finished round 1 in about 3 minutes allowing me to scan the whole room)
Round 1: Jesse from Oakland playing Doomsday.
Game 1 he starts with land, duress, for Illusionary Mask go. I proceed to rip Workshop, mox pearl, trinisphere(top deck, I was a top decking whore all day long). He plays land go again due to trinisphere, and on my turn I lay down Strip mine crucible, he scoops.
SB in 2 Chalice of the Void, I do not have notes on what I took out, although I believe it was balance and hurkyuls recall.
Game 2 he starts with swamp dark ritual doomsday, go. I have chalice in my opening hand and proceed to drop it on 1 and he is forced to scoop.
Matches 1-0 Games 2-0
Round 2 Nathan from Oakland playing Drain Slaver (I never found out what variety)
Game 1 he gets to start, what do you know. (I fail to win a dice roll all day and have to play second all 7 rounds) I do not remember exactly how this match went but it ended up coming down to me having Karn, Juggernaught, Platz and Titan out, and him holding it down with just Platz on his side, I was able to Recall him platz back to his hand when he was way into the negatives.
SB in 1 Hurkyls 2 Hannahs Custody (Out I dont remember, my notes were not clear all tourney on what I SB out which is a shame)
Game 2 was quick with me resolving a trinisphere, then a platz, then a custody after balancing his first turn platz and welder, he scoops a few turns in.
Matches 2-0 Games 4-0
Round 3 is Robert from Oakland (I played half their little team in the first 3 rounds, and they were all really great guys) playing Ankh Sligh (weird I know that he was 2-0)
Game 1 he plays first leading off with mox monkey go, I proceed to rip something stupid and my draws all game are terrible, I end up dealing myself like 10-14 damage with crypt and city of brass, and he sends a 4 point fireblast up my back side. ouch, first game loss of the day to a deck I actually playtested against and didnt even come close to losing too.
SB in 3 Chalice of the Void
Game 2 is over quick as I resolve trinisphere turn 1, MaskNaught turn 2.
Game 3 is much of the same (as it should be against Sligh) and I move on to a 3-0 record
Matches 3-0 Games 6-1
Round 4 is David playing UR Trinistax
Game one I believe he plays trinisphere go, and I play workshop COW, go, he plays meditate on his next turn hoping to rip anything, and sees nothing playable in time, I drop strip mine and another beefy card and he scoops.
SB in H.Recall, 2 Sacred Ground
Game two I dont remember very well (probably because I lost
)
Game Three is a platinum angel war again I drop him down to around -40 before I can recall it back to his hand for the win.
Matches 4-0 Games 8-2
Round 5 is against Fong with Oath (although I didnt know it was oath till we played in the Final) we agree to ID into the top 4 (I know it was weird only top 4 even with over 30 players) as the only two undefeated players.
Matches 4-0-1
Semi-Finals: Brent playing either TriniStax or 5/3Stax hybrid with 5 color base.
Game 1 is probably the best game of the tourney for me with me getting him down to 5 and him reseting with stax, and me ripping mask and 3 phyrexians after the reset before he can do anything. I made a hell of a call and tinkered for a COW (with wasteland in my yard already) simply to put him at the point where he would be reset by the stax as well as myself. He was able to duplicant 1 of the two dreadnaughts I played figuring it would be a trade and his juggernaught would be able to go the distance, but I proceed to rip my third phyrexian off the top for a win.
SB in H.Recall and 2 sacred ground.
Game 2 was over very fast under a trini crucible kinda lock with sacred ground and hannahs custody protecting a first turn dreadnaught. (or something to that effect)
Matches 5-0-1 Games 10-2
Finals versus Fong (phong maybe?? sorry dude if I mess that up) from Hayward playing Oath (with volcanic islands and cunning wish for REB and R&R)
Game 1 he wins after I get a semi broken hand that sees ancestral recall misdirectioned to him(I do get to beat him down to 9 with spirit tokens)
SB in 2 Defense Grid, 2 Chalice of the Void
Game 2 I drop first turn Chalice set to 2 and he never is able to recover as I drop some artifact fat on the table.
Game 3 I decide to keep a hand that is not optimal, but is really funny (as he was able to succesfully waste and strip 2 workshops in each of the first two games, I keep a hand that has two shops a COW and a Sundering Titan, wasteland, and something else stupid) he plays land go, I play something like mox mox mox, COW wastland the volcanic island. But somehow it all doesnt matter he gets mox sol ring and a Orchard the next turn out followed closly by Oath and is able to out race my Sundering Titan I drop my second turn. Oh well.
Matches 5-1-1 Games 11-4 (I went 2nd in all 7 rounds)
2nd Place overall out of a little more than 30 players.
My prize is a nice playmat featuring art by Christopher Rush (its Rathi Dragon holding onto black lotus, pretty nice, and signed of course)
So we leave a little after 9:00PM (the tourney ran smooth except for the cut to top 4 where there was a reporting mistake and a lot of confusion until things got sorted out, ill mention is more in my props and slops) Unfortunatly Caspers Hotdogs is lame and closes at 9:00 so we miss out on the best hotdogs in the world and have to settle for a dinner of champions at Wendy's. We drop Ben back in Oakland and cruise through Berkely to see if Eudemonia is still open (its not they closed at 10:00 and we didnt get there till around 11:00 darn) and then take a tired drive back home for some sleep.
My analysis of Millers deck is simply this....Its HOT.
The only thing I would love to see is a duplicant finding its way into the deck. I might replace Karn. (although Karn helped win a game vs stax, I had at least two other games where I would of much rather seen a duplicant after dropping tinker.)
Riddler is one of the first decks where ive never actually felt like an underdog in the match, it plays well vs everything I have played against (in the tourney and in the week of testing after SCG4 and before this tourney) It is explosive enough to blast by any other aggro decks. It has enough disruption to stop combo dead in its tracks (although I have not been able to test against any strong dragon decks as of yet) and it has a large enough threat density to be able to laugh at control. And the icing on the proverbial cake is that Control Slaver rolls over and dies 99% of the time to a resolved hannah's custody.
Props:
The un-named team from Oakland for being a bunch of really fun guys to play magic with (sorry for beating up on you guys)
All but like 2 players in the whole tourney for being a great group, and making the drive more than worth it for all of us.
The owners of the shop for running T1 in our neck of the woods.
Jeff the owner's wife (sorry I forget your name) for being 4 months pregnant and still helping dirty gamers with soda requests and match results.
Eric for driving my ass down there to play and for loaning me power so I could run what is now being dubbed in the Bay Area as the 5 to 6 Thousand dollar answer (sorry stax)
Ben for picking up Food Chain Goblins hours before the event and playing it well enough to beat and draw vs some serious players (Ben hasnt played high level magic for years and has no clue what some cards are)
Slops:
The two or three players that seemed to have a negative attitude.
Meandeck for creating Oath and ruining my day for like the third tourney in a row
Jeff for not posting the pairings and just calling them out (which cause the previously mentioned problem) but he did redeem himself by giving consolation prizes to make it all work.
Oath again... just for good measure.
Caspers Hotdogs for closing at 9:00
Eudemonia for closing at 10:00
