My 6th place finish at gencon worlds.

[Suicideking]

So my gencon story starts all the way back at last year's Gencon.  Ben Roberts and I did some work with the deck Iggy Pop.  Ben felt it was strong and ran it I thought Solidairity was better and ran that.  Ben made top eight I didn't.  So since then I've worked my way through several of the legacy top teir decks and I finally decide that I know Iggy pop so I'm going to run it.  With about a week and a half to go until gencon Owen Turtenwald ships me Jeff Rabovsky's URG threshold list.  I dont like werebears because of the massive amount of graveyard hate being ran in the current metagame, so we decide that 4 Quirion Dryan and 4 opt are the way to go.  When I get to gencon i talk with Jeff and he give me a strong sideboard to use so im set for the Prelims.

This is the list

4x Tarmogoyf
4x Quirion Dryad
4x Nimble Mongoose

4x Lightning Bolt
4x Fire/Ice

4x Force of Will
4x Daze
3x Counterspell
4x Serum Visions
4x Opt
4x Brainstorm

4x Polluted Delta
4x Flooded Strand
4x Tropical Island
4x Volcanic Island
1x Island

Side board
3x Spell Snare
4x Pyroclasm
3x Krosan grip
2x EE
2x Vedalken Shakles
1x Counterspell

So my deck is as solid as I could wish for in the lagacy metagame.  I look at round one pairings for the prelims and I am up against Jacob Riehm.  Jacob is a St. Louis player and Vintage regular so its cool to play him in another format. 

Game 1.
   I have no idea what hes playing and He therapies my FOW turn one turn 2 plays wall of roots.  Turn 3 sacs roots  for therapy, hits my counterspell and blows me out with aluren.  Im pretty disapointed so i side in 3 Krosan grip and out 3 lightning bolt.

Game 2. 
   He basically blows me out when i force his aluren and he forces back.

0-1

Second Round I play a Chris Brenner.  A nice guy but he's playing Goblins and i basically dominate the match so I'll spare everyone the details.

1-1

Round three I play Daniel from Chicago.  Hes playing UWG thresh and we have three games and I lose.  I drop because I'm hungry and decide to get a decent night's rest before the big tourney.

So now I'm off to the World Championships.  I make no deck changes, and round one play Mike with the Epic Storm.  I have never really been a huge fan of this deck because i think it fizzles quite often especially in the hands of inexperienced players. 

Game 1.
   He basically does nothing while my Goyfs run wild.
Game 2.
   I play and early goyf. So he decides he needs to go off early(turns 2 or three i forget) and I force his orims chant.  He continues to go for it and fails.  I win and he tells me he was going for Diminishing Returns.  I thought he had me when he ignored my bluffed counterspell but i take it 2-0.

1-0 2-0

Round 2

   I get paired against Ben C playing goblins.  I freaking love this match up.  Against really skilled goblins players the worst we could get it to was 50/50.  No offense to Ben but he didnt seem to be the best at piloting this deck.

Game 1 I open with mongoose.  I then procede to kill/counter anything relevent he plays and i take the game easily.

Game 2 I play some Goyfs, and he does nothing relevent.  This game he had almost no chance.  At one point my hand is three pyroclasms and two fire/ice.

2-0 4-0

Round 3
   
   I play Sean with mono black.  I dont really remember these games too well but he doesnt really do much and i win the match in 2.

3-0 6-0

Round 4

   I play Mike hope with a homebrew 4 color threshish/flying creature deck. 

Game 1 I get two tarmogoyfs out and thats all I need to win. 

Game 2 is a little harder.  He mulls and plays a creature and i bolt it.  Then he plays Kira the glass spinner.  My hand has a vedelkan shackles and a lightning bolt so thats fine.  I dont do much but I finally get a Dryad growing.  He plays lightning angel and serendib effreet.  I bolt the angel, drop shackles and take it.  Hit him with enough that he dies to his own serendib on his upkeep.

4-0 8-0

Round 5

   This match up is looking to be the hardest of the day.  I get paired in the mirror against the person who developed my list.  Jeff is a really strong player and overall good guy.

These games i didnt take very good notes for but they were tough.  Game 2 ended with jeff dropping a shackles when I had a mongoose and a tarmogoyf.  I respond with EE at three and that pretty much clinches the game.

5-0 10-0

Round 6

   Trouble from up north.  I am paired against Peter Olzewski(?) or DicemanX. 
I never get anything going and the wastelands plus stifles plus maindeck spellsnares do me in. I lose my first game of the day.  Game two I have to mull to 5.  My one land gets wasted and my fetches get stifled i lose.

5-1 10-2

Round 7
   I get paired against Rhyno Spindler playing landstill.  Well his deck lives up to its name and we have a slow game 1 and i lose it.  Manlands got me. 
   
Game 2 Involves me jumping out fast and I get it. 

Game 3 is running short on time and we time out with me having a mongoose and tarmogoyf on the board with a hand of krosan grip and counterspell, and rhyno has two manlands.  Its ok for me because I was ranked 4th going in to that round and I was the only loss for at least 4 X-1s at that point. 

5-1-1 11-3-1

Round 6

   Its win or go home time for me, and unfortunetly I'm up against a great opponent.  I dont know Gadiel very well but he has protour experience and finished 5th at GP:Colombus.  Hes running Loam control which I think is one of my worst matches.   

These Games went pretty fast and my note taking sucked but Game 1 I start out fast and get Mongoose turn 1 and Goyf turn 2 and win.  Game 2 he trounces me.  First turn double mox diamond, life from the loam, wasteland is pretty good.  Game 3 i know i need to play the agrro role so all my burn is in counters are at a minumum.  And the game is back and forth.  Luckily I counter 2 EEs and have lethal damage on the board.  Gadiel sits for a while and decides to draw instead of dredging.  He tops the EE, but luckily for me I toped Force of will a turn earlier.  He scoops them up.

6-1-1 gets me in as the 5th seed for the swiss.

Top 8.  I am informed by the judge that I misredged.  I suck at filling out deck lists and wrote flooded strand down twice instead of volcanic so when i double and triple checked it my count looked good.  So I have a game loss going into top8.  I look at the seeding and my opponent is Peter.  Awesome I can try to avenge my only swiss loss down a game.  I dont feel his deck was fantastic.  It was a good Metagame call but I think his play skill won the tourney moreso then his deck.  That being said, we head to top8.

Our game is quite possibly the worst game of magic I've seen i a while.  He has no removal but a lot of counters for my removal, and we both just accumulate massive armies.  I have two goyfs, a dryad with 5 counters, and two mongeese.  While he has 3 tarmogoyfs and 2 mongeese.  Well I start the offensive by sending burn at his goyfs, but i can kill them.  we sit and sit and sit, until he finally top decks one of his two bounce spells in the deck.  He rushing rivers and blows me out.  GG.

Conclusion.
   I think this tournement represents a huge metagame shift in the legacy world.  I no longer believe goblins is the top deck, but every deck will still need to be ready for it at all times.  Iggy Pop is going to have a tougher time with huge fields of threshold, but i have a feeling it will be alright.  Loam control will be really good, as well as aluren which i think is the most resilient of the combo decks.  As is always the case with legacy we had 4 singleton decks in the top8 so that should be proof that any deck can storm an unprepared metagame by suprise.  And finally Tarmogoyf is stupid good.  It is the card the pushed threshold over goblins.

[Polynomial P]

Hey James, Congrats on your top 8 in the champs. I think your list with the dryads, in addition to the goyfs, is a very good creature base. Would you make any changes to the deck for future tournaments?

Way to represent the midwest!

[Suicideking]

i think i want to drop to 3 dryads and maybe a 1 of but i dont know what yet.  This deck is definetly a deck to beat in future legacy tourneys. 

[Shock Wave]

I think you had more than a chance against Peter but you punted a few plays against him in the Swiss and certainly punted the game in the top 8. You 2-for-1'd yourself on several occasions, and your plan of burning out his creatures as opposed to racing him wasn't very well thought out.

That being said, that was a very impressive performance and you deserve the accolades for your achievement.

[Suicideking]

well im not sure i agree with you that i couldve raced him in top8.  While i did run 8 burn spells i think it wouldve been incredibly difficult to kill him that way.  He pretty much just amassed too much card advantage for me to deal with.

As far as the swiss i did misplay quite a bit but I was taken by suprise by several things.  I didnt see a wasteland until game 2.  The main deck stifles were difficult.  But the deck is extremely well prepared against 3 color thresh and i think it was an very good choice for this tourney.  I just wonder how good is its goblins match.  I would guess with so little removal it would be tough.

[Shock Wave]

well im not sure i agree with you that i couldve raced him in top8.  While i did run 8 burn spells i think it wouldve been incredibly difficult to kill him that way.  He pretty much just amassed too much card advantage for me to deal with.

Well, it definitely would have been difficult to burn him out, but there was no way you were going to win the creature/card race. That's why the choice you made was flawed. It pursued an avenue of victory that you were less likely to achieve than any other.

You cannot reason that burning him out would have been difficult and thus an unworthy endeavour. It was your best shot of winning, and the right decision was to play the game in a manner conducive to that specific plan.

As far as the swiss i did misplay quite a bit but I was taken by suprise by several things.  I didnt see a wasteland until game 2.  The main deck stifles were difficult.  But the deck is extremely well prepared against 3 color thresh and i think it was an very good choice for this tourney.  I just wonder how good is its goblins match.  I would guess with so little removal it would be tough.

Well, regardless of those misplays, you also ran your Goose into his Werebear that was sitting on the brink of threshold, which was certainly not the right play. As for the goblins matchup, Peter had several rounds of play against that deck and I don't believe he lost a game. On the play, the deck has too many answers to Lackey, and on the draw, he only needs a Goose or a FoW to survive. The deck accumulates threats very quickly. I can't see goblins being a problem. In testing, the matchups went the same way.

[ix-ir]

What do you think of a black splash and Dark Confidant instead of Werebear? The werebears always seem weak and slow to me, I'v even replaced the Mongooses with Grim Lavamancers (this is fine with Tarmogoyf) due to the slowness of threshold.

[Suicideking]

Well i think the dryads are fine.  Dark confidants dont have the greates life span in this format and the manabase would be an issue in longer games.  Mongeese are amazing and i wouldnt take them out.  Getting threshold can be an issue occassionally but being untargetable is huge in so many games.

[ix-ir]

If they deal with Dark Confidant you're both down 1 card, if they can't or you can protect it the game very quickly runs away in your favour, it's really worth testing. Mongoose I'd agree the untargetability is very nice, Grim Lavamancer on the other hand helps break Tarmogoyf deadlocks.