Top 16 - Grudge Match

My report starts the night before. After FNM, the clarion calls for drafting afterwards go out. I make the right decision and leave with the intention of getting a good night’s sleep in. Being tied in votes for the regional team increased the pressure level for me, and I wanted to be on my game with no excuses. Alas in hindsight mistakes were made. I get home at a reasonable time, and get ready to watch my son. I spend the waning hours of the evening and early night with him, until my wife tags me out at around 2am. I get to sleep around 245 or so, looking forward to 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep before the Grudge match. Shortly thereafter my son decides to fuss quite a bit, and my wife gets frustrated too. Needless to say, waking up in a sleepy haze to screaming babies and upset moms leads Dads to fear the worst. Alas, I book it to the living room in less than 2 parsecs, but manage to stumble over the dining room set on the way and forcing me to fly into the living room. I was afraid of the worst, but was told that everything was ok. Whew, just over reacted. Wait…why can’t I walk anymore? Oh right, smashing my left foot at top speed isn’t a great idea. Ice pack and Advil should get there, right? Wrong. From about 4am on I am awake and in massive pain. Driving three people to the event and being on the team sort of negate any option that I could miss the event. At least I had time to eat breakfast and drink some coffee. Meet up with everyone around 8am and get gas for the trip. Then we go the road and get a move on. The trip there was uneventful until I smashed up the front of my car because the brakes gave out due to the icy roads. Luckily nothing besides my car and pride were damaged; so no harm, no foul. Oh and now I’m finally at the event so the tournament can start. I’ve been running a variation of Hornung’s Snapcaster/Confidant/Trinket deck. He had no game against Shops, which I expected to be at least 20% of the field. I put in a bunch of Steel Sabotage and some other cards, like Slaughter Pact, to get through the fight. Here is the list I went with:

4 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
2 Island
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Flooded Strand
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Riptide Laboratory
4 Dark Confidant
3 Snapcaster Mage
2 Trinket Mage
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Blightsteel Colossus
4 Force of Will
3 Mental Misstep
1 Flusterstorm
2 Mana Drain
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Tinker
1 Time Walk
2 Steel Sabotage
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Grafdigger’s Cage
1 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Skullclamp
1 Sol Ring
1 Time Vault
1 Voltaic Key
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Black Lotus
1 Pithing Needle

SB:

2 Steel Sabotage
1 Flusterstorm
1 Mental Misstep
1 Island
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Ravenous Trap
2 Slaughter Pact
2 Sower of Temptation

Round 1: GW Hatebears
Game 1: He’s on the play, I have strong action with Needle + Ancestral so I keep. He leads Plains+Vial. I respond with Needle on Vial. He drops Stoneforge and gets SoFaF(signaling Batterskull in hand). I Ancestral, and then cast Key. Next turn drop Time Vault and take all of the turns.
Game 2: He mulligans, I have Lotus and Jace, with some lands. He has no turn 1 action outside of a Pridemage, I have Jace. Game is over at that point (bounce + clique to block next time. I felt the pseudo time walk from the bounce was better than fatesealing, as it ensured he would only have 1 threat on board).

Round 2: Brown Shops
Game 1: He wins die roll, Leads Shop Mox Mox Chalice 0 Thorn Sphere. T2 Lodestone, T3 Metamorph(Lodestone). Great game.
Game 2: I have 2 Steel Sabotage Island, Fetch, and Snapcaster with some other goodies, should be a good hand. He leads out Workshop Crucible. I Sabotage. He has Lotus into Trinishphere. Must be nice. He has two more Workshops behind it and that was that. Love playing this match up. In hindsight I should have let the Crucible in, but I misread him. I thought he was out of gas and kept a suboptimal hand. Nope, he was just baiting and did it very well.

Round 3: Red Shops – Ed Carey
Game 1: He wins the roll and goes bananas.
Game 2: He mulligans. I go bananas with Ancestral Snapcaster and some other goodies. End up with 4 permanents and a full grip on turn 1. He has nowhere near enough cards.
Game 3: We play for a bit, and are having a long game. He lands all of the Thorn of Amethyst(3), then sticks Precursor Golem. I have 3 mana up, so I Slaughter Pact. Pay for it in my upkeep. We keep playing. James Hangley asks how the Golem died, we tell him, and he advises that I should have lost because Golem makes copies of the spell, so I’d have to pay 9 for it to not lose. We call over a judge, and since both of us missed it all we get is a warning and a tsk tsk. I offer to scoop to Ed, but he says no. We play out the game and I take it. I offer him to replay the game, but he again refuses. We both didn’t realize how the interaction worked, and I didn’t want to take advantage of that. It felt tainted. I had enough lands to Hurkyl’s him on the next turn after taking the 9, so it wasn’t as if I needed to Pact him. I was just trying to use my cards optimally based on how I thought it would play out. Obviously I was wrong about the Golem’s effect. I end up taking the match but am unhappy about how it went down.

Round 4: Dredge
Game 1: I put him on hate bears, and get blown out by Bazaar.
Game 2: I have land Mox Cage and Needle. He can’t deal with not being able to dig and my ravenous traps when he does get going.
Game 3: I have all the Ravenous Traps and Snapcaster Mages to make this game unfair.

Round 5: Dredge – Matt Elias
Game 1: He goes bananas, I have no hate.
Game 2: I have an early needle through Trinket Mage, and then use Black Lotus to Vendilion Clique him in his upkeep. Take out his Claim and his hand is 5 lands a Cabal Therapy and a card I don’t know. I show him all my counters after he gets to 8 and we move on.
Game 3: Matt presents, but his SB looks thick to me. After a quick count I notice it’s 16. I ask him to make sure he’s boarded correctly. Turns out he is one off. I have him correct it and we start game 3. (I know I could have called a judge for the win, but that’s not how we play in this community. Much like Ed before me, I knew Matt made a mistake and wasn’t trying to game me. I’d rather win by winning than by a DQ) He mulligans to 1 and I have turn 1 Cage. Followed by a Leyline and then a Needle, and Matt concedes after I drop a threat.

Round 6: Win and In vs Paul Mastriano (BUG Fish)
Game 1: I’m on the play. I lead land Top go. He has Tinker into Blightsteel. Not leading with Cage from my hand was correct I believe, as I knew Paul was on Blue and the only thing that helps against is t1 Tinker. That is so unlikely that I felt setting up my Bobs would be more valuable. I also punted here by not blind drawing with Top. Turns out it was in fact FoW. Paul showed me he had a FoW himself, and a blue card, but it was still a mistake.
Game 2: I lead again with land and Top, this time with a Mox. Paul lays a mox and a fetch, but has no other action. I top, see a Bob, Drain, and Cage. I stack it so I draw Bob and would flip cage. I have FoW in hand with no blue card. I drop Bob and ship it. I easily could have just left Drain mana open after drawing that, or I could have stacked Drain on top so I drew it with the top for the FoW. Paul sticks a Sower, and that was the game. I basically brain farted my way out of the top 8 by playing the worst magic I have in years. It was atrocious. I am so glad we didn’t get the feature match because I couldn’t imagine watching it over and over.

Round 7: Remora Gush – Brian Smolin
Game 1: He has an early Remora, and some solid action. I have very little and get Vault and Key.
Game 2: I have the action this time, and he doesn’t have much. Nothing of note happens before I lock it up.
Game 3: He has an early Demonic Tutor. I say, “better not get something that costs one” bluffing Misstep. I am on level 2 here, as I know that Brian is aware that I often bluff stuff like that. I have two Missteps. He chose Ancestral Recall. I cast Ancestral Recall on my turn, and he responds in kind. I then Misstep him, and he casts FoW. I ask him what he’s targeting, and he says my Misstep. I then Misstep again, draw 3 cards, and cast a Sower taking his Goyf despite having Vault and Key in my hand (missed it because I was so keen on the Sower). The end was sloppy, but I am happy I was able to draw out the play I wanted early on.

I end up in t16, but felt like I played much worse. The deck was good, but I still don’t like playing against shops on the draw. I need to figure out something better than that. The ride home was a pain in the beginning with the snow driving into the car, especially on 295. Once we hit the Turnpike it got quite a bit better. Still, I’m looking forward to NEV 4 and am looking to play a bit better than I have been of late. Great times were had as well, which is the whole point of this endeavor. This community is a collection of the best people I've come to know.