3rd at Philly/Blue Bell T1 4.5.08

[psu42]

Intro
Since gush was unrestricted last year I’ve basically dedicated myself to playing the card.  It’s just too broken not to play, and I believe any deck with it gives you a better chance of achieving victory.

Here’s the list I played:

Gush Storm
1x Darksteel Colossus

1x Ancestral Recall
1x Black Lotus
4x Brainstorm
1x Demonic Tutor
4x Duress
1x Echoing Truth
1x Empty the Warrens
1x Fastbond
4x Force of Will
4x Gush
1x Lotus Petal
4x Mana Drain
4x Merchant Scroll
2x Misdirection
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Mystical Tutor
1x Regrowth
1x Tendrils of Agony
1x Time Walk
1x Tinker
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Yawgmoth’s Will

3x Flooded Strand
1x Island
1x Library of Alexandria
3x Polluted Delta
1x Snow-Covered Island
2x Tropical Island
2x Underground Sea
1x Volcanic Island

Sideboard
4x Annul
2x Blue Elemental Blast
3x Extirpate
2x Fire/Ice
1x Spawning Pit
3x Trygon Predator

As you can see it plays a lot of control with duress, force of will, misdirection, and a complete set of mana drains.  It’s similar to TTS (The Tropical Storm) except I play the drains over rituals, and the likes of necropotence/timetwister/doomsday.

The sideboard is dedicated to beat the meta there, which is usually no ichorid (thus no leylines) with the extirpates for mirror matches and flash.  The annuls are hopefully helpful against stax which is about the worst matchup of all time.

Tournament Report
(This is over a week ago and my memory is not outstanding; thus the matches will probably tend to be brief)

Round 1: Dan Herd

Dan is playing a BUW meta hate deck with confidants, aven mindcensors, extirpates, etc.

Game 1 he gets a confidant in play and my life goes down by 2 for a couple of turns as where his goes, 20, 19, 17, 16, 0 and he is tendrils out.
Game 2 I remember he establishes early control and drops 3 meddling mages on key cards and I quickly succumb.
Game 3 is a long fought duel.  I eventually empty the warrens for like 8 tokens and ride to victory.

1-0   (2-1)

Round 2: David R

Game 1 we both play some fetches and forces and it’s quickly obvious this is the mirror match.  He tinkers a colossus into play but I’m holding for an end of turn echoing truth.  On my next turn I tinker in my own big man and his life totals show 15, 4, dead.
Game 2 I quickly empty the warrens for 8 and ride that for a few turns.

2-0   (4-1)

Round 3: Ryan

Game 1 he opens with fast beats and over the next couple of turns I die to R/G Beats.
Game 2 he gets in his quick beats and I just sculpt my hand and try to deal with threats and eventually tendrils him.
Game 3 my deck basically gives me nothing and by the time I try to combo out he has double lightning bolts.

2-1 (5-3)

Round 4: Jeremy

Game 1 he controls me with duress/thoughtseize and plays doomsday. He’s got me where he wants me but his doomsday pile is wrong and I win.
Game 2 he gets gush-bond and we all know how that ends.
Game 3 I get control with my duress and control package and win off a mini empty the warrens over a couple of turns.

3-1 (7-4)

Round 5: ?

Game 1 he opens up with kird ape or something so I’m in for R/G Beats again.  He basically smashes my face for a few damage a turn. When I get to like 8 life I get a tendrils to bounce back up to 20 and then gain complete control and drop colossus and walk like twice.
Game 2 I fan open my opening hand of 4x force of will, mystical tutor, misdirection, and ancestral recall. I keep and basically force every card he plays until I draw a land on my second turn and combo out quickly there after.

4-1 (9-4)

Round 6: Justin T

I know he is playing flash and we both draw into top 8.

4-1-1 (9-4-1)

Top 8 quarterfinals: Jason Jones

I make top 8 which consists of 2 gush decks, 2 g/r beats, and 4 flash decks.  I obviously drove 2.5 hours here to play with one of my teammates that came along in the top 8.

Game 1 I get a nice hand and resolve some duress effects with forces and quickly combo out on turn 3.
Game 2 I again establish control and when he tries to go off I extirpate his hulks and after taking a couple damage combo off.

Top 4 semifinals: Jeremy (rd 4 opponent) with TTS

So I basically beat this guy in the swiss due to him making a mistake so I’m not too confidant. In all honestly he had about the only deck in the field I didn’t want to play so I was quite disappointed having to play him again.

Game 1 he opens with like sea duress, lotus into necropotence.  I get like 2 more turns but I can’t break through.
Game 2 we both have minimal disruption and just before he is going to combo off I topdeck yawgmoth’s will and ancestral recall into the nuts of like fastbond, lotus, and gush or something completely ludicrous like that and pull out the victory I don’t deserve probably.
Game 3 he opens with duress and is control from there out. He kills me with a bunch of 1/1 goblins via empty the warrens.


I finish in 3rd/4th so I’m quite pleased with the performance the deck gave me.  The cards I’m not sure I would play are the mana drains.  They are quite slow and it showed in the matches with Jeremy.  His deck seemed very streamlined and I really liked what the doomsday added to the deck.

All the annuls went unused so I’m still not sure on them, but they have use against stax and oath. I played neither of those matchups as the field was quite diverse although the heaviest played deck was definitely flash, so maybe I need to add the REBs back in the side.

Props
Well ran tournament
My team for 2/3 making top8
My deck for running pretty well
Nice restaurant shop next door

Slops
Expensive gas
Playing the same guy twice and getting rocked basically every game although splitting the rounds
Playing teammate top 8

Thanks for reading and any deck suggestions reply.

[feyd]

Nice job making top 4.  Sucks that there was half flash in top 8; Good thing you were packing extirpates.
I have a few suggestions for your deck.
1:    I would personally add in mana crypt; It ehelps for tinker->colossus and feeds your generic mana dumps along with mana dains.  Also you listed mox pearl twice...I assume you meant mox emerald?
2:  Why no chain of vapor?  I would relegate the echoing truth to the sideboard and add in a hurkyl's recall to the main.  If you are worried at all about stax/Workshop aggro you can scroll for hurkyl's recall and EOT bounce their board.  I personally run chain of vapor, hurkyl's recall, and rebuild main with echoing truth and another rebuild in the side but that may be overkill.  Chain of vapor can add to storm, bounce any big threat, or screw up flash really bad in mid-combo, although it isn't good against empty the warrens.
3:  Since you already play a biblical ammount of control in the form of a full boat of each duress, force, and mana drain you might do well to cut the misdirections. 
4:  I know I may get punched out for saying this but I think that you should cut library.  You could replace it with another volcanic island and put some red in your sideboard.

My changes would be: -1 echoing truth, -2 misdirection, -1 library of alexandria, -4 annul, + 1 chain of vapor, +1 hurkyl's recall, +1 volcanic island, +1 mana crypt, +1 extirpate, +3 red elemental blast/pyroblast

My two cents.  Congratulations on third/fourth place!  Great job!

[XxtSundaybxX]

Congrats on the finish

I have a few suggestons, first you need to be playing rituals.

Why no timetwister... Its an amazing bomb that recycles discarded or countered bombs. And it pitches to force.

I have been playing TTS for a while and the deck is retarted...its just insane

However with no rituals and 4 merchant scroll and regrowth why are you not playing Gifts?? Gifts is probably the most broken card in the deck next to Will.

[A.-1.]

Sorry you had to play your teammate in the top 8 but grats on nice finish Justin.

One small thing I might change to your decklist would be -1 Mox Pearl +1 Lotus Petal. Having Drain mana up on turn 1 can be nice. I don't know if you've tested the Petal but it's worthy of consideration.

The Annuls and other SB choices seem fine given the expected meta.  I know several people were expecting a heavy Flash/Oath/MUD field but it turned out to be mostly Flash and R/G Beats. Several of my SB choices also went unused.

[urweak]

Anyone have lists for the top 8?

[Legrow]

I have the lists and a metagame breakdown, but the placement (like who got 1st and such) seems to be wrong, so I've held off posting it until I get more information.  I plan to have it in the next few days.

However, here's the meta breakdown for the event.  I may be wrong, because I'm trying to figure out the archetypes from the list, but here's what I came up with:
6 Flash (Reveillark)
5 Tyrant Oath
4 Long Variants (1 Doomsday-Gush, 1 Desire, 1 Gifts)
3 Red Workshop Aggro
3 RG Beats
2 Control/Welder (1 Comboish, 1 Chalices)
2 Bomberman
2 UWB Fish
2 Empty Gush
1 Ichorid
1 RB Goblins
1 UBG Fish
1 RB Burn
1 Suicide Black
1 Tropical Storm

[ashiXIII]

Can we get the rest of the top 8 lists for this? or at least the top 4? Mike?

[MISTERTREK]

Here is the top eight player breakdown. LeGrow has the decklists and should be posting them soon.

1. Ryan Glackin
8. Mark Weiner             Glackin               

4. Juan Sanchez
5. Paul Mastriano           Sanchez                  Sanchez

2. Justin Morford
7. Jeremy Beaver           Beaver                    Beaver                  BEAVER           

3. Justin Navickas
6. Jason Jones               Navickas