2nd Place at Sapphire tournament in Cleveland.

So my team and I set off for another Type One adventure at Compendium. Typical IHOP breakfast before the tournament and we’re off.
At first, it didn’t look like a lot of people, like normal. No one really showed up until like a half hour after the starting time. Surprisingly there were no Meandeckers to be seen. Probably because they are sick of the tournament not taking off. This time there were 18 players, and everyone decided to pay an extra 8$ to play for the Mox Sapphire and 100$ in store credit. And then the tournament begins. I didn’t take any notes, so bear with me on my reports.

My list for anyone that cares:

4 Goblin Welder
3 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Tinker
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Crop Rotation
4 Smokestack
4 Tangle Wire
3 Crucible of Worlds
3 Sphere of Resistance
1 Memory Jar
1 Trinisphere
1 Karn, Silver Golem
1 Triskelion
1 Sundering Titan
1 Platinum Angel
1 Duplicant
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Moc Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
4 Mishra’s Workshop
4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Brass
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Tolarian Academy

4 Red Elemental Blast
3 Rack and Ruin
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Jester’s Cap
2 Tormod’s Crypt

Round 1 – Steve Shimko – TPS

I go Gemstone Mine, Goblin Welder, Workshop Smokestack, and lose to TPS doing it’s TPS thing on turn 2.
Board in Chalice and Cap.
I mulligan a Chalice, Chalice, Mox Pearl, Welder, Smokestack, Sphere of Resistance, Tangle Wire hand.
Draw a hand that’s like playing a goldfish that involves Tangle Wire and Smokestack and stuff.
I get out Crucible Wasteland along with an active Welder, Jester’s Cap and some artifacts.

Round 2 – Sean Uridil - EBA

Two team mates in a row. I guess that happens when we were like 6 of the 18 people.

Game 1, I do the Stax thing and he scoops to Crucible Wasteland, Tinker – Titan.
I board in Rebs and I succumb to not seeing them while he has 3 Energy Flux and a flipped Exalted Angel on the table.
Game 3 I Ancestral and Thirst into greatness and he can’t keep up with Karn.

Round 3 – Doug Goddard – Trinistax

I haven’t been playing this deck for very long, and this would be the first time that I would play the mirror, so I think that it would be interesting.
I go Workshop, Resistance
He goes Crucible, Strip Mine along with Sphere of Resistance.
I lose to Karn and his minions.
Game 2 He gets mana screwed and I have out Crucible, Wasteland. Triskelion and Smokestack makes him enter game 3.
Game 3 sees me draw ridiculousness. I remember having Crucible, Strip, Karn, Chalice for 0, while he had Welder and Crucible. Stripping his lands kept him with just Welder and Crucible while I attacked with Crucible and Karn. I draw Duplicant and take out his Welder and kill him. He tells me later about how he forgot that he had Mox Ruby in the graveyard from my Karn. He could have welded out his Crucible after playing Gemstone Mine and casted Artifact Mutation on Karn or Crucible.

Round 4 – Steven Johnson – Slaver

Steve is playing a rather close version to Ugo Rivard’s list from the last Star City Games tournament.
I draw some ridiculousness against him and do the Stax thing.
I distinctly remember him saying earlier in the day that he boarded Darksteel Colossus, and for some reason I still board out Platinum Angel and Duplicant. Getting sleep before a tournament is good I hear.
The game gets to a point where he Tinkers for Colossus and I’m not doing too well. In desperation, I play Karn, destroy my own Chalice for 0, play Mox Emerald, Black Lotus, Demonic Tutor, and realize that my answer for Colossus was in my board. I get something irrelevant and die soon after.
I board the Duplicant back in, but I don’t see much acceleration at all. I guess I don’t run Mishra’s Workshop, and Colossus does it again for him.

Round 5 – JR Goldberg – Tendrils - Oath

JR is another guy on the team and he decides to take a dive to me because he was 2-1-1 and I was 3-1. We play a few games for fun. He Oath’s into Colossus and could have me beat, but opts not to attack me. I sit around with Karn for a while, find a Welder, weld out Old Darkie, and swing with some artifacts for game.
He goes Mox – Orchard – Oath – Witness – Will – Tendrils for an arbitrarily large amount and I lose. I win game three because he like sacrifices Lion’s Eye Diamond in response to Brainstorm and doesn’t have anything the whole game.

Cut to Top 4

Round 6 – Anthony Bucchioni – Food Chain Goblins

Another team mate. Interesting. The other two players was Nick something playing 4CC and the Slaver player from before. We decide that either one of us have a decent chance against them, so we play it out.
Game 1, I do the get Crucible, Wasteland, Strip Mine, Duplicant, Welder, and a bunch of Tangle Wires out against him. He scoops after I drop 2 Sphere of Resistance. He shows me the Incinerator he could have cycled to kill my Welder, had I let him have 2 mana.

Game 2, I use Welder to block Goblin Vandal to protect my stuff, but it was to no avail. I draw numerous City of Brasses and I desperately drop to 1, float some mana, Demonic Tutor for Ancestral, Recall into Tangle Wire, and play Wire with Smokestack out at 2, which would have been good if he didn’t just sacrifice a goblin to Siege Gang Commander to kill me the following upkeep.
Game 3, He mulls to like 5 and I have like 1st turn Karn with some other things. Crucible allows me to pick off his lands and Karn takes out his power and sends in fatties while he is trying to recover, but can’t.

Finals – Steven Johnson – Slaver

Here we meet again, I just hope that I win the first two like I should have the first time we played.

Game 1 has me Recall and Thirst into some ridiculousness and I just do the Stax thing and beat him down.

I’m pumped for game 2, hoping I win a Sapphire.

Game 2 has a questionable beginning. He cuts my deck but knocks over the top 3 cards before I go to draw. I ask him if he saw what they were, and I figure that I’d just shuffle again and draw 7. I draw my 7 and it is much worse than the Sol Ring, Black Lotus, and Mana Crypt I saw earlier. I go Shop – Sapphire – Trinisphere. He goes Rack and Ruin. I don’t have much business and he just beats me down with Triskelion backed by Crucible - Strip.

Game 3 – My hand is mediocre, but I figure I can draw into some good stuff. I should have known better, because I had had problems drawing the right lands I needed at the right times. He Forces my turn 1 Recall. Throughout the course of the game, I see like 1 Wasteland and 4 City of Brass as lands. My opponent is just like turn one Sapphire, Lotus, Island, Recall, brokenness and counters all my important stuff. Turn 2 he Fact or Fictions into Yawmoth’s Will, Thirst for Knowledge, Mox Pearl, Crucible, and Strip Mine. I think I did Will, Strip, Thirst and Crucible Pearl or something like that but he Willed that turn and replayed the Crucible. I already had a mana problem with just some Cities and a Mox. I tap out to play Cap, he Forces again. I resolve a Smokestack, but Crucible Strip leaves me with just the Smokestack. He gets a guy like Triskelion on the table and that picks me off.

So ends my semi-epic battle at Compendium. I walk away with a card that says 100$ and Tony walked away with 5 packs of Saviors which had Infernal Kirin, Twincast, Earthquake channel guy, and some other stuff, so that was cool. Props to the players for opting to pay 8$ so we could have a Mox tournament. That 4CC deck looked cool, I heard that someone was playing with Sakura Tribe Elder, which was interesting. At least I tried something new instead of playing Goth Slaver like, for the 100th time. Steven Shaw even showed up, but he went 2-2 drop I think. All in all fun times and I hope that the next tournament is a little bit more successful.

Thanks for reading this if you did, I hope it was mildly entertaining.