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potato
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« Reply #1 on: November 22, 2010, 12:10:46 am » |
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I think this tournament demonstrated all the problems with my deck quite well. I played an updated version of my deck from the last event:
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Island
1 Tolarian Academy
5 Moxes
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Inkwell Leviathan
1 Myr Battlesphere
4 Goblin Welder
1 Mindslaver
1 Tinker
1 Time Vault
1 Voltaic Key
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
2 Spell Snare
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Vampiric Tutor
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Brainstorm
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Thirst for Knowledge
3 Frantic Search
1 Rebuild
Sideboard:
6 Misc. Dredge Hate
4 Sower of Temptation
2 Rack and Ruin
2 Red Blast
1 Darkblast
I turned the spell pierces into snares and a Ponder into a 4th Jace, which seemed like changes I could have made originally. I expected spell snare to be great against Dark Confidant, Quirion Dryad and Lotus Cobra which I expected to make a strong showing today. That proved to be correct, and the snares were an excellent choice, making themselves useful in every one of my matchups.
My problem was ultimately that since this deck is a pretty straightforward multi-part control/combo deck, one part of which has summoning sickness, I was very vulnerable to opposing duresses, and if I lost a counterwar I had very few long-term advantage cards to get me back into the game.
I fared extremely poorly against Jeff Huang with neo-grow in round 1, partially due to his very, very strong draws, but partially due to my inability to deal with getting thoughtsiezed twice each game.
In round 2, I completely skunked a Lotus Cobra Tendrils deck, thanks partly to his very poor draws in game 1 and partly to the strength of my choice of Spell Snare, along with getting somewhat lucky in finding vault/key without too much trouble in game 2.
In round 3, I encountered Blaine Christiansen's similarly rogue painter/grindstone concoction. Game 1 went very long and he ultimately conceded to my hardcast Mindslaver. Library of Alexandria went the distance in this one, keeping me ahead on cards. Game 2 saw him get an early Confidant and Remora, followed by Jace, and his card advantage helped him find a very very powerful Yawgmoth's Will. In game 3, we both ran out of gas early and I topdecked Tinker, with which I found Myr Battlesphere (Inkwell was my one card in hand at that point). He stumbled into another Yawgmoth's Will, with which he tutored for a painter and red blasted my battlesphere and a land. I got a Goblin Welder online the next turn though, welded back in the battlesphere, and went the distance that way.
Round 4, I put away Josh Stein thanks to a very powerful draw in game 1 and a very serious Marit Lage timing blunder from him in game 2 with allowed me to steal the 20/20 with a Sower of Temptation. He destroyed it by making a second Marit Lage, and his last card was a Dark Confidant, which wouldn't have been bad but I had a second Sower lined up ready to go.
In round 5, I got paired down against Alex Keleman, who scooped me into the top 4 when I explained that due to the very unusual mechanics of this tournament, he would be unable to make it if he won, and I would be guaranteed in if I won. After we agreed to that, he proceeded to completely skunk me 8 or 9 games to 0 when we were playing for funsies, demonstrating my deck's extreme vulnerability to a resilient "hate bear" based deck. His aces in this matchup were definitely a combination of Null Rod and Magus of the Moon, which combined to frequently make me completely unable to play any spells at all due to my deck's lack of a second basic island or a single basic swamp. Alex definitely showed me that the time for Control Slaver has passed in this metagame. I definitely plan on making a change of technology for the next one.
Interestingly, every single deck in this tournament except Ryan Reynold's Sun Titan Oath played at least 4 early creatures in the maindeck, and most played 8 or more. Had I gone back to Oath of Druids, my old standby, I believe that I would have completely dominated my matchups. If I were to play this deck again, I would like to find a way to add a 4th robot, most likely a second mindslaver or a sundering titan. I would also definitely add a second basic island and most likely a basic swamp, increasing my total number of lands by at least 1. I would remove 1 Jace, because 4 actually seems a little much in this deck (heresy!), and I would probably remove 1 Mana Drain because I was quite underwhelmed by drain throughout the day. I never seemed to have the mana to play drain when I had it.
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