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Eastman
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« on: August 26, 2009, 10:59:50 pm » |
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I won ELD's lotus on Saturday, so actually now it's Eastman's lotus. So I guess I didn't win ELD's lotus but what was at the time ELD's lotus but which now is mine. Or something. Well anyway you get the picture.
Suffice it to say this post is about how all that took place - it's my tournament report. First I describe the deck I played and why I decided to play it, second I describe the tournament, and third I close with some general thoughts and thank yous and the like.
Highlights: Section 1.4 - a comparison of green and red as tertiary colors; Section 2.1 giving my take on the steel city deck, and Section 2.4 a dominion report.
1. Decklist
1.1 origin
Not that the list has any surprises in it, but my playtest group and I came up with it on our own for gencon, so I want to give appropriate props. Anyone who plays around here knows that Grand Inquisitor and his followers are always at the edge or lead with how best to fill out the 15 cards that surround Mana Drain and the restricted list, and this was no different. Diakanov, GI, Wolf (Jeff Greene), Dan Cunningham, and myself did the usual tons of testing and wound up with a bob tezz list for gencon. Originally we had been working on an intuition/AK list that had 4 colors and a lot of tech, but we found that it just succumbed too easily to wastelands. Bob is actually worse as a draw engine (strictly speaking) in the matchups where a draw engine is how you win, but it's so much better against the wastelands and creatures that it wound up the natural choice. Jeff Greene, who I split in the finals at ELD with, went X-1-1 at the World Champs with it but wound up in 9th on breakers. GI (Houdlette) split in the finals of the world champs prelim as well.
It has become something of a mana denial meta (other than the mirror of course) with fish and shops the top players besides control, and TPS comparatively weak and underplayed. As a result, we solidified the manabase a lot more at the expense of some speed. We moved up to 24 sources, as many have done (we like 23 in a control/combo heavy meta, and still consistently side out a land in those matchups), and cut mana vault for another hard land. This manabase, with 24 sources, no library and no vault, has more access to basics than anything we've played, ever. It really can't be understated how conservative of a manabase this is for modern combo/control. This deck is really more of a control/combo than the combo/control we got used to with TFK.
With workshops and fishies the prime concern, a lot of bounce is also really useful. I like to max out the bounce so those matchups are easier, but use the bounce that cycles so it doesn't weigh you down in the mirror.
1.2 Decklist
Here's the list I played:
6 Bounce
2 Repeal
1 Fire/Ice
1 Echoing Truth
1 Rebuild
1 Rack and Ruin (meh, should probably be another top)
11 Disruption
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
2 Duress
1 Thoughtseize (just so you can gifts for it/duress, not sure if it's worth the life loss really)
4 Kill
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind (briefly, you have to protect any robot these days, so I want the one with the best effect when I protect him in the matchups i need him == Sphinx)
1 Time Vault
1 Voltaic Key
1 Tezzeret the Seeker (I search time vault like 1/5th of the time, he does so much other awesome stuff)
7 Draw
3 Dark Confidant
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Sensei's Divining Top
6 Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Mystical tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Tinker
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Gifts Ungiven
2 Broken
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Time Walk
24 Sources
5 Moxen
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
3 Island
1 Tolarian Academy
1.3 Sideboard and Discussion
4 Control and Combo
1 REB
1 Pyroblast
2 Mystic Remora
The Reb/Pyroblast are split for Gifts and Meddling mage purposes. The Remoras are really a bomb, especially against bad players, and they have a great synergy with Dark Confidant. Even a good player is forced to play a lot more conservatively with a remora down, but Confidant forces them to play more aggressively, so with both they're caught between a rock and a hard place. Further, Bob finds you the mana to keep feeding Remora. It's really a nice synergy and gives you as good an efficient threat as you can bring in against control and combo
5 Ichorid/Stax
2 Leyline of the Void
1 Yixlid Jailer
2 Pithing Needle
Against ichorid, I think the most important thing about your board is that you have a mix of permanent types for your hate. Ichorid players have 15 cards in their board that blow up different kinds of hate, and playing that deck you have to decide for game 3 which ones to bring in. If you see a jailer, you might leave yourself dead to Leyline, and etc. It just keeps them a bit more off balance which can win you games. Against stax, leyline is a strong start. If you get this down you only have to stop the 4 smokestacks, nothing else in the deck is a serious threat.
3 Stax/Fish
3 Ingot Chewer: You just have to play this card to understand what an absolute bomb it is.
3 GW Fish/Random Aggro
3 Pyroclasm
1.4 Green vs Red
I just want to mention that I ran green in my board at gencon, and a lot of people are also doing that. The top green sideboard cards are trygon predator and most notably oath of druids. In my opinion converting to oath is an overall weaker strategy precisely because vault/key is so broken. Vault/key is nuts, and so it's pretty damn easy to force it through just by bouncing or pushing aside 1-2 of the shut down cards people play against you. Given that, you're better off just bringing in cards like chewer, which help do that, and complementing the maindeck bounce, than you are trying to convert. Plus, everyone has like infinite diabolic edicts and shit ready for your tinker-->bot, and that stuff winds up handling the oath far too often.
2. tournament matches
2.1 T00l playing that janky draw 7 pile from gencon/steel city
Game 1: Not knowing what my opponent was playing, I debated for awhile whether to play a first turn mana crypt. I chose to, and it wound up killing me. Along the way I made a costly misplay: holding drain and force I drained his ancestral then forced his force, rather than forcing first so I could get the fat 5 drain mana. Holding YWill and a tutor, I wound up short the mana I needed to win the next turn.
Game 2: I had an early key and was holding tinker with a counter and the mana up. Given that this is really more of a control deck now, I slow-played it a bit and just waited. At end of his turn, I cast brainstorm and he REB'd it. That was all I needed, I untapped and tinkered for the lethal time vault.
Game 3: Against I had an early key, and my duress revealed he had exactly as many threats as I had mana drain. So we were going to play find the topdeck. I tend to think this is a favorable position for the tezz player, since with key out one of his draw 7's probably only puts him 60% to win, and most of my threats/counters etc. work only for me. I ripped the time vault relatively early in the topdeck war for the win (thoguh I was still holding an extra counter at the time).
**note on the deck: we've seen this before in Type 1: several of the best players in the world show up to a tournament with some new list, and instead of most of them getting top 8 only 1 does. This isn't the sign that the deck is competitive, it's just the opposite. In my opinion the players running this at gencon greatly underperformed what they could have all done with a tezz or TPS list or the like. The fact that Brian hit top 4 is a testament to him as a competitive player, not to the deck.
1-0
2.2 Tezz Mirror (forget the name)
This was a relatively straightforward 2-0 match. I remember slowplaying both games, and mana drain on his turn doing it's thing.
2-0
2.3 Josh Meckes playing Painter
This deck is awesome, and might be one of the worst matchups for bob tezz right now I think.
Game 1: he had a first (or maybe second?) turn vault/key with force backup. Fueled by tolarian academy.
Game 2: I play and lead with a bob, he says 'I have another busted hand' then lays academy, artifacts, grindstone, and painter. UGH!. I attempt Force of Will on his grindstone but he has the Force of Will backup, again. I untap to ponder, then repeal his grindstone holding another Force of Will to hit it on the way back down. He has another Force of Will (pitching painter blue ancient tomb) and I'm out.
2-1
2.4 Jeff Greene playing Dominion
I drove to the tournament with Jeff, and we're playing nearly identical lists and are both 2-1. We decide to live the dream and draw hoping we can both top 8. As it turns out, we met in the finals. BALLER.
We played Brassman's dominion instead. I had a 1st turn 5-gold, which purchased an early torturer. That fueled a torturer or laboratory purchase for me on 4 of my first 6 turns. GNARLY. He was trying to up his resources, buying a lot of Silvers, but he was greatly slowed by the tortures and I marched out ahead. Eventually I mixed in some action-splitters (I forget which one), and was chaining torturer/splitting action. I was resolving 2-3 tortures per turn AND buying provinces, which just put him well out of the game. He scoops it up.
Magic 2-1-1, Dominion 1-0
2.5 Shawn playing Bug Fish
Game 1: I lead it off and duress out his null rod. He draws for the turn and plays another. RIP. I have plenty of access to basics staring down his wasteland however, and eventually I drain something fat (I think a trygon predator). With the 3 drain mana I merchant for E-truth, hit the rod, and lay vault/key.
Game 2: This was an out and out attrition war, and we both went into topdeck mode. He found Goyf, I found tinker-->sphinx.
Magic 3-1-1, Dominion 1-0
2.6 Dan Cunningham mirror
Dan was the third person I'd planned the decklist with the night prior, and he was X-1 and could have drawn in but he was paired down. He also had really good tiebreakers and we thought he could get in regardless.
Game 1: Blowout for him
Game 2: Blowout for me
Game 3: I'm leading late with a counter up on him and a Bob working when Dan scoops it up so we can both walk to the top 8.
Magic 4-1-1, Dominion 1-0
2.Top 8: Josh with Painter AGAIN
If you scroll back up, you'll see that Josh kicked the ever-loving shit out of me in our swiss round, handing me my only loss. Suffice it to say i was a bit concerned.
Game 1: He mulls to 5, but lays an early welder which puts me off tinkering for the win. I do an end of turn repeal on his welder in mid-game, and he happily replays it on his next turn. Subsequently tinker resolves on my turn and vault/key is assembled. Josh taps his welder but quickly remembers that repeal meant the welder had summoning sickness, and I go infinite
Game 2: My memory here is a bit foggy. It was an absolute grind. What I do remember is that remora was very good for me, and that ingot chewer won me the game. I chewered a painter's servant early which was really huge, and more importantly when I went infinite very very late game, I didn't have any win conditions big enough to swing over his trinker and welder, except for chewer.
Magic 5-1-1, Dominion 1-0
Top 4: Dan Cunningham playing UBr Bob tezz (very similar list, I think he has a 4th Bob and no mystical)
Game 1: Blowout for him
Game 2: Blowout for me
Game 3: Remora early and late got me there. This video will probably be posted by ELD, and you can see just how ugly this game was. He cast rebuild to put me off the mana for remora, but then forgot remora was still there and replayed his own artifacts. I responded to that brain fart by missing the triggers myself (we were both that impressed with the rebuild play). Nonetheless, remora was better than ancestral and drew me plenty to win the game.
Magic 6-1-1, Dominion 1-0
2.Finals: Jeff Greene playing UBr Bob tezz
Now if you'll recall Jeff and I had built the deck and driven to the tournament together. Then we drew when we were both 2-1 just to live the dream. And finally we managed to meet again in the finals. We had already prize split so there was no money riding on the match, but I insisted that we play it out. "Why?" Jeff asked. "So i can kick your ass," I replied. And that was exactly what I did. Remember how I went Obama on his ass with my fine plays in Dominion in round 4? Well I brought it harder in the finals, and gave him total trash talk the entire time. It was an epic victory for me against a playtest partner I'd never previously faced in tournament play.
Game 1: CLOSE. He had an early lead, but was forced to let a Tezz in late after we depleted our hands in a counter war. The last card in my hand was force of will, but with no blue card. He was still holding a couple, so i used Tezzeret to fetch a sensei's top. On his turn, he attempted the win, and I topped into a blue card to force it. Go go tezzeret-->top.
Game 2: Also surprisingly close. He kept a hand needing land and didn't find it. But, my only gas was remora which wasn't going to cut it against that particular hand. He found the mana and got going, and we both depleted our hands again. In the end I played tezzeret holding pyroblast and time walk, but I had only a volcanic island for colored mana (and a mana crypt untapped). Tezzeret went for a voltaic key, which used the mana crypt mana to untap my mox sapphire. Using the sapphire and the floating crypt mana I cast the time walk, and sure enough he had the FoW, but I still had volc untapped and REB hit.
(note: sorry for the short descriptions in top 8, but ELD has video I think).
Magic 7-1-1, Dominion 1-0
3. Closing
First, I can't say enough how much fun it was to put together a list with Dan and Jeff, and then to take first, second, and third in a big money event. Given that I'm leaving town for New York next week, it was a perfect end to a great summer of playing with those guys. Props to them.
Second, the tournament was over in time for a late supper, despite 6 rounds of swiss and a top 8 played all the way through. Why? Because ELD is an excellent TO. Add to that the awesome prize support he gives (even the low money cards are sweet foils and chinese stuff and the like), and I'd put Eric in the Ray Robillard stratosphere for TO-ing.
Third, a crew of NY guys came up for this, which was great. Props to them for traveling and to Josh for making top 8.
Finally, the meta isn't that bad. Tezz is currently dominant, but it is by far the slowest deck I've played since Hulk. It's really a much slower meta now, and a much more interactive one. I'm in the camp that thinks drain decks will probably always be dominant, but that also thinks they have many natural foils and that the metas they create are really enjoyable and interactive.
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