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voltron00x
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« Reply #37 on: December 05, 2011, 09:39:36 pm » |
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Here's a tournament report for Blue Bell on 12/3.
The deck:
Gro 2011
2 Dark Confidant
1 Trygon Predator
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Tinker
1 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Flusterstorm
1 Preordain
4 Gush
4 Mystic Remora
3 Mental Misstep
4 Force of Will
1 Fastbond
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Time Walk
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Sol Ring
2 Island
2 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
SB: 1 Hurkyl's Recall
SB: 2 Nature's Claim
SB: 1 Forest
SB: 3 Yixlid Jailer
SB: 4 Leyline of the Void
SB: 2 Trygon Predator
SB: 1 Dismember
SB: 1 Flusterstorm
This is, more or less, a blend of my Gro deck with the updates Paul Mastriano made (his changes were cutting some Missteps for restricted cards / Preordains, replacing Bob with Trygon, and putting more Dismembers in the SB). In an open Meta, Goyf gets the nod over Dryad. I actually added a 4th Remora because the card had been so good to me in testing.
Rd 1 - Noble Fish
Playing against Ryan Glackin for the first time in a while, I win the die roll and have a bit of a dilemma on turn one. My hand has both Sol Ring and Mystic Remora, with no other fast mana. If Glackin is on Shops, I probably want to get that Sol Ring in while I can, but if he’s on anything else, I want Remora. ordinarily I’d probably play turn 1 Remora vs. Shops too, but Sol Ring, I think, gets priority in that match-up). I decide to go with my gut and play Mystic Remora. Turns out Glackin is on Noble Fish, and plays land, Lotus, Trygon, letting me cantrip my Remora and signaling a need to sit on my Sol Ring. Glackin beats me down for a while, we toss some spells at each other to draw out counters, and eventually I hit a Gush, Gush into Tinker, play that Sol Ring and get BSC, and that’s that. Game two, I lead out on Lotus, land, Goyf, Goyf and just go aggro for the win. (1-0, 2-0)
Rd 2 – MUD
I don’t really remember this match, except that both games were close and my opponent did a ton of damage to himself with Ancient Tombs, which allowed me to win. In one game in particular I had to use Goyfs to chump a Slash Panther and a Lodestone Golem, and then live through a Bob staring off a Phyrexian Revoker; I stuck a Jace and had to balance between bouncing a Lodestone and using Brainstorm, before (I think) I finally won the game using Trygon when my opponent had literally dealt 18 to himself with two Ancient Tombs. I may have gotten Gush/Bond to fire in the other game. (2-0, 4-0)
Rd 3 – Reanimator / Oath
This was a fun round as I got to face off against “my own” deck, and my opponent didn’t realize that he was playing something based on a list I’d posted. Game one, he resolved turn two Careful Study into turn three Exhume for Jin Gitaxias, and that was that. I sided in Leylines and Nature’s Claims and turned the Bobs into more Trygons, expecting Oath of Druids. Game two, I countered some early spells and used Gush to play a Leyline when I got stuck at 3 lands. I then played a Remora and sat back in the control role, winning an easy one; he scooped when I played Jace. Game three, I took out one Claim and one Trygon, and that ended up being a mistake as he led on Orchard, Lotus, crack UUU, Oath of Druids, I respond with FOW, and he uses U to Brainstorm into a Spell Pierce. His first Oath nets him a Jin Gitaxias, so I end up losing my crappy hand (I’d drawn lands the first two turns). What ends up happening is that he misses an Oath (he lets me discard, then tries to use Orchard after), and in the 14 Jin cards plus two draw steps, hit a bunch of creatures. Instead of going the control route (he had Exhume and some dudes in his yard), he went for the Oath with, I think, two guys left in deck, but didn’t hit one until less than 7 cards were left. Obviously I dodged a bullet as I thought this was an unwinnable game. (3-0, 6-1)
Rd 4 – Mono-Red Shops
Somehow I rattled off a winning streak against Jeff in 2009 and early 2010. Since then I think I’ve lost four or five straight (which seems right to me, I have no right having a win streak against Jeff). These were close games, though. The first game, I drew a great mix of cards, with the correct amounts of counters, threats, and draw to trump Jeff’s draws; I believe I hit Gush-Bond this game, which led to a ton of Goyfs coming into play. The second game, I kept a hand with no Misstep, but with a Dismember, and Claim and Hurks. Jeff led on a Welder, I Dismembered it, but he had a second Welder and I had no Misstep. That Welder eventually took over the game even though I had plenty of offense in Trygon and two Goyf. Jeff played this game perfectly, he took some early beats to set up Metamorph and Smokestack and then used Duplicant and Bazaar to undo all my work. The last game, I mulled to five, but that five was really nice and had Recall into Mystic Remora, as well as Gush. All that card draw just left me with a grip full of lands, and Jeff resolved a bunch of threats and bashed me. (3-1, 7-3)
Rd 5 - Dredge
Last Blue Bell, I had to play against Dredge 4 times in 6 rounds (again, no complaints, if anyone deserves it I do, and I went 3-1 in those rounds). I was still packing 7 hate cards, but given my choice, would rather not play against Rob on Dredge (we’d ID’d a few Blue Bells back when we were both X-1 in rd 5, and then both won rd 6 to get into top 8). My deck doesn’t have a great game 1 win percentage…. But lately I’ve really been taking it to Dredge in game 1s. I fanned my opening 7 and it was about as good as I could ask for. I played mox, land, Demonic Tutor for Tinker, pass. Rob played Bazaar. I played another land and Tinker into BSC. Rob used Bazaar EOT, discarding his only Dredger (Dakmor Salvage). His Dredging didn’t reveal any more Dredgers and BSC won a quick one.
Then, Nick announced an error in the pairings and the need to re-pair.
“………. I was saying Boo-urns!”
Rd 5, take two – Elephant Oath
So, a match against Oath, winner goes to top 8, and loser does not. I knew Jack was playing Elephant Oath. I’m a little bit fuzzy on the particulars of these games. I believe that I had a strong hand game one, and I’m pretty sure I just played the control role, out-drawing Jack and winning with Tinker into BSC (but it may have been another Remora into Jace leading to a scoop). In game two, Jack got a quick Oath down and I couldn’t do anything about it, and scooped pretty quickly to a Terastodon. Game three, my sideboard cards arrived, including two Nature’s Claims and a Trygon Predator, plus plenty of draw spells, and I was way, way out front the entire game. In my experience, Mystic Remora is exceptional against Oath decks. (4-1, 9-4)
Rd 6 – ID
I ID into top 8 in 3rd at 4-1-1.
Top 8 – ANT
My deck certainly has plenty of cards for ANT. I won the die roll and led with Mystic Remora (fist pump), and eventually dropped that so I could play another. My opponent tried to go off through Remora and ultimately lost to his own Pact during his subsequent upkeep. The next game, he led with Duress, and I countered with Misstep to protect my Remora. He had a second Duress the next turn, we played draw-Go for a few, I dropped a second Remora, let the first drop, then played a second Remora as I had plenty of land and suspected my opponent was getting trigger-happy. When his friend lost, his car was waiting on him, so he tried to go off through two Remoras, and it didn’t work out. (5-1, 11-4)
Top 4 – “Three Decks, One Box”
I’ll let Visna’s deck speak for itself when it gets posted. It’s kind of a Dragon / Reanimator deck with Standstills and Intuition / Bloodghast. Deckname credit to one Paul Mastriano. Game one, I played out a few Goyfs, and just bashed… not sure how I won, I think Visna’s deck just didn’t give him the goods to complete the Dragon combo. I mulled to six in game two, leading on T0 Leyline. Visna missed the Leyline and played Lotus, Intuition for 3 Bloodghast, and then played a land. From there, I had a Remora in play for a while with a Fastbond, I finally drew some lands, did some Gush-Bond action, then hit Yawg Will, and passed a turn back with 3 Goyf, Jace, and Remora on the board. (6-1, 13-4)
Finals – MUD
MUD, again. This was a quick match. Game one, my opponent played Chalice 1 into Sphere into Thorn. My hand had plenty of lands plus Bob and Goyf. Unfortunately, he ran out of lands, and basically locked himself out of the game and died to beats from my creatures (I played a Preordain into the Chalice to pump +1/+1 for the win, which was cute I guess, probably obviously, but look I don’t play much Magic anymore so I get excited about these things when I still catch them). Game two, I countered T1 Chalice with Force of Will, played Sol Ring, took 4 from a Slash Panther, and then played DT into Tinker into BSC and won the game. (7-1, 15-4)
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So, obviously, I was really happy with the deck on the day. Overall the pairings felt pretty friendly and I dodged a bullet in round 3, but sometimes you need a little luck to push you over the top, right?
As far as the deck, I think Paul’s probably right and Trygons should get the nod over Bobs, especially if you’re going to play 4 Remora like I did. The deck sees plenty of cards as-is. Bob is just too dangerous without library manipulation and 4 Gush / 4 Force. I would probably go -2 Bob for one of the following: 2 Trygon; 1 Trygon, 1 Jace; or, 1 Trygon, 1 Imperial Seal. I’m leaning toward Trygon/Jace, myself, but Imp Seal is nice in the deck to help set up Gush/Bond, while going double-Trygon helps your game 1 Shop match-up and frees up sideboard space. In the board, I’d use the open space (from the Trygon or Trygons moving maindeck) to play more Dismember, which is a ridiculous card.
Of course, if creature decks get really popular (this top 8 had MUD, Mono-Red Shops, 2 Fish, Tempo Thresh, Gro, ANT, and Dragon/Reanimator, so six of the eight decks had some-to-many creatures in their decks) then additional changes might be required.
MVPs on the day were the singleton Jace, and the full set of Remora, plus Nick Coss for hosting a great tournament and giving away free pizza!
I’m hoping to see everyone on 1/7 to kick off next year’s insane tournament series!
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