Princeton Skittles Tourney 11/26/06 – 1st Place

[horse the name]

Hi guys, my name’s Eddie. This is my first time writing any kind of tournament report so bear with me.  I’d like to start off by thanking Simon for hosting this Skittles tourney, because I’ve been waiting to play in one for a while. For anyone who doesn’t know much about Skittles, it’s an amazing format and there’s a sticky for it right here in the casual forum of TMD. Check it out, you definitely won’t regret it. I came to the tournament prepared with my format appropriate Etched Oracle deck box and life counter and the entry fee was a whopping $0. Ok so on to the report. For reference here’s the list I ran, it’s very similar to a (now probably outdated) list of Jacob Orlove’s with a few alterations.

Green: 5

Sakura-tribe Elder
Eternal Witness
Thornscape Battlemage
Kodama’s Reach
Civic Wayfinder

Blue: 3

Drift of Phantasms
Silkwing Scout
Trinket Mage

Black: 4

Phyrexian Reclamation
Haunted Crossroads
Ribbons of Night
Boneshredder

White: 5

Orim’s Thunder
Faith’s Fetters
Swords to Plowshares
Seed Spark
Azorius Herald

Red: 6

Avalanche Riders
Flametongue Kavu
Fire Imp
Lightning Bolt
Tin Street Hooligan
Thunderscape Battlemage

Multi-Color: 7

Moroii
Perplex
Clutch of the Undercity
Dimir Guildmage
Selesnya Guildmage
Azorius Guildmage
Trygon Predator

Artifact: 6

AEther Vial
Skullclamp
Crystal Shard
Wayfarer’s Bauble
Darksteel Ingot
Etched Oracle

Land: 24

3 Forest
2 Island
2 Swamp
2 Plains
2 Mountain

Simic Growth Chamber
Selesnya Sanctuary
Gruul Turf
Golgari Rot Farm
Dimir Aqueduct
Azorius Chancery
Terramorphic Expanse
Gemstone Mine
Mirrodin’s Core
Treetop Village
Mishra’s Factory
Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree
Wasteland

Sideboard: 15

Okiba-Gang Shinobi
Dwarven Miner
Gilded Light
Equinox
Skyshroud’s Blessing
Aven Cloudchaser
Maze of Ith
Steamcore Weird
Perilous Research
Nightmare Void
Condemn
Exclude
Carven Caryatid
Minister of Impediments
Shred Memory

My board was pretty bad but contained the techy Gilded Light in case I had to face Tendrils combo at any point in the day. I also had a couple anti-LD cards in there and plenty of aggro hate. Onto round 1…


Round 1: Phil (Philatio) with Tendrils Combo

Game 1: I win the die roll, elect to play, and mull to six and keep a hand with 3 lands, civic wayfinder, and moroii. I get turn 3 wayfinder, turn 4 moroii while Phil plays a turn 3 imperial recruiter and tutors up his trinket mage which he plays turn 4. He grabs skullclamp w/ the mage. I lay the beatz and seedspark (paying the green) his clamp.  I transmute perplex for eternal witness on my next turn thinking I’m safe for AT LEAST one more turn.  But sure enough Phil takes about 5 minutes to plan out what I thought would be a game ending turn. He plays a fecundity, veteran explorer, and cloud of faeries.  His ensuing songs of the damned turns out to be the equivalent of a dark ritual.  He gets storm to 6 then grapheshots my moroii, his cloud of faeries, and his veteran explorer, hoping to hit good stuff off his fecundity draws and play it with lands from veteran explorer. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out and he ships the turn over to me.  I get a dimir guildmage down and send his 2 cards in hand to the bin.  Shortly after, still in game 1, time is called but I manage to beatdown for the win in extra turns. I never even got to try out my gilded light tech : (

Match Points: 6   Total Points: 6

Round 2: Steven Rosario (IceMaster) with Anusien style Land Destruction

Steve and I are good friends and we playtest Skittles when we get the chance.  I think I have a horrible matchup vs. his deck but he begs to differ.  He wins the die roll and elects to play.

Game 1: I keep my opener and get an early selesnya guildmage down.  I thwart his early attempts to destroy my land by playing faith’s fetters on his turn 4 trench wurm.  He gets a ravaging horde (3/3 + stone rain for 3RR) down on the following turn, however, and nukes my bounceland. Luckily, I keep making land drops and moroii comes down in the clutch.  Soon he runs out of gas and I can take him down with my 4/4 flyer and some guildmage 1/1 tokens.

I board in my Equinox and not much else.

Game 2:

We keep our initial 7 and I have a turn 2 bounceland. Steve ghost quarters it and I play my sakura-tribe elder the next turn.  I’m able to sit on 3-4 lands long enough to play my silkwing scout, phyrexian reclamation, and then recur and play my sakura-tribe elder.  Steve then orim’s thunders my reclamation and pays the kicker to burn my silkwing scout.  Having tapped out the turn before to get my elder back onto the field, I was unable to activate silkwing’s ability and I felt like I was poised for a loss in this game.  Luckily I topdeck aether vial and play it. Steve lets it be and goes to town destroying my land. I ramp vial up to 3 counters while gripping my last hope: trygon predator.  Steve then attempts to faith’s fetters the vial. I respond by vialing in trygon predator.  I swing with it the next turn, removing the fetters from my beloved artifact.  Steve sits in despair as my predator beats for 2 per turn while my only land remaining is vitu-ghazi! He cannot find an answer in time and predator flies in for the win.

Match Points: 9   Total Points: 15

Round 3: I don’t remember my opponent’s name this round but he was a nice kid that said he used to play Skittles “back in the day.”  He was playing a Honden Control variant.

Game 1:  I’m pretty sure I mulled at least once this game. My draws were pretty poor, and I stalled on 2 lands. I got an early dimir guildmage but my opponent’s thornscape battlemage took him down and starting smashing me.  He dealt 2 damage per turn while I stared at my hand full of stuff I couldn’t play.  He eventually played allied strategies and then a blastoderm to finish me off. sadfaceXcore….

I hadn’t seen much of his stuff game one, so I sided in a steamcore weird thinking his deck was mostly aggro.

Game 2:  I get better draws this game and supply a steady stream of creatures to turn sideways.  At one point I got my avalanche riders out with crystal shard. I played other ‘comes into play’ favorites such as thornscape battlemage, steamcore weird, and azorius herald.  He gets the blue and green hondens out but at this point he’s just using his 1/1 tokens as chump blockers.  I drew azorius guildmage an assigned him to token tapping duty.  Despite my opponent drawing 3 cards per turn, he couldn’t escape the beatdown and eventually fell to 0.

After the 2nd game was over, we asked Simon how much time was left in the round and he said it had ended about 10 minutes ago.  Way to call time Simon! Haha. My opponent and I decided it was fairest to just draw and move on to the next round.

Match Points: 5    Total Points: 20

I was paired with Lawrence in the last round and if he won just 1 game he would have the most points and win the tourney. I needed the 2-0 sweep to win the 1st place prize: 3 packs courtesy of Simon.  Seeing as Lawrence is an extremely skilled player who won $350 at the latest Nationals event, this wasn’t going to be an easy task.

Round 4: Lawrence with Random Good Stuff (tossed together 10 minutes before the tournament)

He wins the die roll and chooses to DRAW. An interesting choice, but not entirely uncommon in this slow format.

Game 1: I kept a sketchy hand with 2 forests and a wasteland as my only mana.  I get a turn 1 skullclamp followed by a turn 2 aether vial off the top.  I played a turn 3 cyrstal shard (which Lawrence claims was his bane for this game). I use vial every turn to churn out a guildmage, a boneshredder (killing one of his threats), my avalanche riders, and then a moroii! I start to bounce my riders with the shard and replay him for free each turn.  Lawrence gets a psychatog out but it’s not enough and he scoops shortly after.

I board out my fire imp and boneshredder for dwarven miner and okiba-gang shinobi. 

Game 2:

I mull down to 5 and keep the virtual god hand of:

Forest
Wasteland
AEther Vial
Azorius Guildmage
Dimir Guildmage

I play out my vial and hear “Whaaaaat!?” from the other side of the table. I start dropping my guys with vial and I waste his turn 2 bounceland. Things are looking good as I draw silkwing scout to add to the beats.  Lawrence rend flesh’s my azorius guildmgage and plays a mother of runes but I have the faith’s fetters to stop it for now.  I keep attacking but he has orim’s thunder (without the kicker) to stop my faith’s fetters.  He attempts to stabilize at around 6-8 life by playing his own azorius guildmage but I transmute perplex for eternal witness, vial it in, and get wasteland back to take out another one of his lands.  Next turn I lay down the crystal shard I had been gripping for a while.  With the crystal witness combo out I know I can witness back my perplex and transmute again for my thornscape battlemage to eventually take out Lawrences remaining 2 life but I decided to play it safe and wasteland almost all of his mana sources so he couldn’t play any answers, life gain, or other tricks he might have had.  Seeing that the game was over and it was just a matter of a few more turns, Lawrence concedes and GG’s are heard all around. 

Match Points: 9    Total Points: 29

For winning I received a pack of Ravnica, Dissension, and Japanese Betrayers of Kamigawa. The tournament was a fun experience overall.  Let’s hope Simon hosts another one soon.

Props:

Whoever invented Skittles for making such an awesome format
Simon for giving prizes out at a free tournament
Crystal Shard, Avalanche Riders, and Moroii for being the nutz

Slops:

Well... none really...

Thanks for reading my report, I hope you enjoyed it.

[Jacob Orlove]

Awesome! Thanks for the report.

[Anusien]

Sweet, although I have to admit that while reading the report, I was rooting against you and for the land destruction deck.  Mind giving a little more detail about that; how many lands he got, what you felt/were thinking during the match.  It's something I'm trying to optimize every now and again.

[IceMaster]

Yeah! Tell us more about the land destruction guy! Was his deck pimped out? Did you just get lucky? What did he place?

[Polynomial P]

Congratulations on your win. I'm glad you did well since my skittles list is very close to yours.

How did you like the bouncelands though? Alot of people I talk to hate hate HATE the bouncelands and I think they are ok...but have not tested against many lists. Did you find them to be a liability or are they staples of your deck?

[Jacob Orlove]

Oh man, I spawned an archetype. I love, love, love the bouncelands. Every deck is better off with at least four, and probably five to seven. Are people just playing them right out on turn 2 and dying to LD?

[horse the name]

The bounelands are very good.  Sometimes I feel like theyre not that great and then I imagine what it would be like if I didn't have them, and i regret ever doubting them.  They're good because with them you have the potential to produce more mana than you have lands, which is extremely important a lot of the time.  Another important function of the bouncelands is to ensure you have the colors you need.  With bounces it's easy to get 3+ colors then get the missing colors using your green mana fixers.  The downside is sometimes I want 3 mana turn 3, 4 turn 4, 5 turn 5, and so on but eventually you'll be gripping bounces as your only lands and you might be forced to slow your development.  Finding a good number of bounces is the right question, and because sometimes I want more and sometimes I want less, I feel like 6 is a good number for the Orlove archetype.

Oh man, I spawned an archetype. I love, love, love the bouncelands. Every deck is better off with at least four, and probably five to seven. Are people just playing them right out on turn 2 and dying to LD?

I usually just play bounces out on turn 2 if I have one and just pray they dont have the wasteland As for the Anusien style LD deck, it has a tough time vs. aggro and if you can run a few guys out there and manage to keep at least a few lands out for creature removal, you should be ok, unless they grab tempo and don't let go until you are dead. They can do this by playing an early LD spell and playing at least one every single turn there on.  I can't even count how many games I've lost to IceMaster that I might've won if I had ONE turn where he didn't play an LD spell

[Ultima]

I couldn't make it, but found my deck while on the phone to Simon earlier.  Will bring it along Sunday if you're going....

[horse the name]

No, I don't usually make it on Sundays. I just got to go to this one because it landed on Thanksgiving weekend.  The next time I'll be up is probably over Winter break, in late December. Definitely bring you Skittles if you go on any around that time. Hope to see you there!

[Nomad]

Selesnya Sanctuary
Gruul Turf
Golgari Rot Farm
Dimir Aqueduct
Azorius Chancery
Terramorphic Expanse

I think this is the way to go.  I play mostly allied colour gold spells, so probably a whole set of allied bouncelands.  And once I track down that foil Expanse...

Match Points: 6   Total Points: 6

For those that haven't read the other thread in detail, we use a slightly different scoring system, namely 3 points for a game win, 1 for a draw, 3 points for a match win, 1 for a draw.  It's a slow format, and this encourages faster play.  I totally lost out to it...

Moroii for being the nutz

I lost to Jeff round 2 basically because he had turn 3 Moroii both games, while my deck sat there laughing at me, offering up:
Terror
Smother
Crosis' Charm
Lighning Bolt
Lightning Helix...

When I did chuck a Wrecking Ball at it, Jeff had a Mausoleum Turkey to get it back.  Even worse, game 2 he had some lightning Greaves for it to wear.

I nearly lost a game to Vince's sliver deck, I thought all was going well, with Crystal Shard/Eternal Witness going and 16 life, when all of a sudden, Slivers became 4/4 double strike and unblockable except by other Slivers.  2 of them came at me, and I just realised I had 1 counter left on my Infused Arrows to buy me the turn I needed...

[Nomad]

Yeah! Tell us more about the land destruction guy! Was his deck pimped out? Did you just get lucky? What did he place?

You came 3rd, Steve.  Well done.  And you certainly didn't win the pimped deck award, as you well know...

[IceMaster]

Yeah! Tell us more about the land destruction guy! Was his deck pimped out? Did you just get lucky? What did he place?

You came 3rd, Steve.  Well done.  And you certainly didn't win the pimped deck award, as you well know...

I believe my Aven Fogbringer has been altered to look like a pimp so i think that constitutes a victory. You certainly get shiniest but seeing as how i have 1 pimp and everyone else had none, that makes my deck the "Pimpest". 

[horse the name]

Yeah! Tell us more about the land destruction guy! Was his deck pimped out? Did you just get lucky? What did he place?

You came 3rd, Steve. Well done. And you certainly didn't win the pimped deck award, as you well know...

I believe my Aven Fogbringer has been altered to look like a pimp so i think that constitutes a victory. You certainly get shiniest but seeing as how i have 1 pimp and everyone else had none, that makes my deck the "Pimpest".

I believe either Simon's foil Lightning Bolt or foil StP will shoot your "pimp" clear out of the sky for one mana apiece :lol:

[IceMaster]

Yeah! Tell us more about the land destruction guy! Was his deck pimped out? Did you just get lucky? What did he place?

You came 3rd, Steve. Well done. And you certainly didn't win the pimped deck award, as you well know...

I believe my Aven Fogbringer has been altered to look like a pimp so i think that constitutes a victory. You certainly get shiniest but seeing as how i have 1 pimp and everyone else had none, that makes my deck the "Pimpest".

I believe either Simon's foil Lightning Bolt or foil StP will shoot your "pimp" clear out of the sky for one mana apiece :lol:

I believe he wont be able to pay for them because I would have already pimp-slapped his lands back to his hand. 

[Jacob Orlove]

Okay, enough.