Duck Weekly Tourney #16

[AmbivalentDuck]

Hi all!

Avacyn Restored will be legal for this tournament.

Every week, I'm going to start an 8-player single elimination bracket.  Rules are very similar to the TMD online invitational:
1. Games are played publicly on Cockatrice
2. Players have at most a week to complete each match.
3. Lists must be posted after all round 1 matches are complete.
3a. You cannot change lists between rounds.
3b. If requested by your opponent, you must reveal your deck at the beginning of each match after the first week.
4. Brackets are fully randomized.

Registration will be closed once we have 8 people or about a week passes and I remember to draw up a bracket.

Players signed up as of last update:
1. AmbivalentDuck
2. Guli
3. GI
4. Credmond
5. Nataz
6. BC

First matches must be complete by May 14th.  If all matches complete before then, the next set will be due within a week, and so on.

[Guli]

+1 come on guys fill it up

[Grand Inquisitor]

+1

[credmond]

I will play!

[nataz]

suuuure

[BC]

Ok.

[AmbivalentDuck]

I'm drawing the bracket around 3pm.  Get in while you can.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Pairings are up:
BC vs Credmond
Guli vs GI
Ambivalentduck vs Nataz

[AmbivalentDuck]

Tweaked the list a bit:

1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
3 Island
1 Forest
4 Tropical Island
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Flooded Strand
1 Ancestral Recall
2 Steel Sabotage
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Brainstorm
1 Time Walk
4 Flusterstorm
4 Mental Misstep
4 Force of Will
4 Edric, Spymaster of Trest
3 Tandem Lookout
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Trygon Predator
1 Sol Ring
SB: 4 Nature's Claim
SB: 2 Sower of Temptation
SB: 4 Grafdigger's Cage
SB: 2 Scavenging Ooze
SB: 1 Hurkyl's Recall
SB: 1 Ulvenwald Tracker
SB: 1 Surgical Extraction

Game 1: I have 2x Trop in my opener with a bunch of 3 CMC threats, some flusters, and a brainstorm.  I Brainstorm to find an answer to turn 1 Welder...and see no mana sources.  I'm dead in the water so I scoop before he can place me.  Thankfully it works and he puts me on Doomsday.

Game 2: I have 2x Nature's Claim, Steel Sabotage, abundant mana, and Tiago in my opening clutch...and I win.  He misstacks off a Top thinking I'm Doomsday and never recovers.

Game 3: I keep a one-lander with Claim, Sabotage, Ancestral, Edric, and Trygon.  He dumps his entire opener into a Steel Hellkite.  Luckily, the next turn he just pumps it and I can safely search up Trop and Claim it post pump for 4.  I Ancestral, find my land...and my Trop gets wasted.  I'm sitting on infi hate, though.  I eventually find more lands and Edric goes wild until I win.

I win 2-1.  Nataz made some solid points about the relative value of maindeck Goyf vs maindeck Ooze.  I intend to switch to 4x ooze main for the next tourney and add 2x Ichy hate to the sb because I can.  So far as I can tell, this has no bad matchups other than Kederekt Parasite decks.

[nataz]

Game 3: I keep a one-lander with Claim, Sabotage, Ancestral, Edric, and Trygon.  He dumps his entire opener into a Steel Hellkite.  Luckily, the next turn he just pumps it and I can safely search up Trop and Claim it post pump for 4.  I Ancestral, find my land...and my Trop gets wasted.  I'm sitting on infi hate, though.  I eventually find more lands and Edric goes wild until I win.

Pretty much how it went. G1 I win so early that I'm sure he is on doomsday. This sets me up for a loss g2 when I totally mis-stack my deck with top, and then promptly have it claimed right after I realize my mistake. Stuck with dead cards, and locked under my own mangus, I never recover.

G3 had an interesting mulligan situation. For starters, I hate mulling with r/shop decks. The deck already has some mana issues, and going down to 6 cards can be dangerous. So when I opened a hand of 3x mox, Sol Ring, tomb, wasteland, and hellkite I was unsure what to do.  Here is my thought process.

I'm on the play, so I'm fairly certain hellkite is going to resolve. If it does it is a two turn clock which beats trygon, and eats moxen.

I can sandbag wasteland as back up in case he answers my hellkite.

Plus, I am running 4x solemns, 4x lodestones, 2x wurms, 2x hellkites, 3x revokers, 3x swords, 4x mangus, 4x welder, and 3x metamorph post board. I should be able to draw into pressure, which I will be able to cast with my bajilion mana.

I cast hellkite, t2 draw a land, and all in for 10 dmg. He claims. I waste. Then I proceed to draw 4x lands and 1x sword before my next creature. By then duck has stablized, and I'm toast.

Perhaps I should have mulled. Oh well.

GG's as always. 

[BC]

I lose to credmond 1-2 in three good games.  I played this:

3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Dark Confidant
4 Force of Will
1 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
3 Mental Misstep
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Strip Mine
2 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
2 Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Rebuild
2 Trinket Mage
2 Sower of Temptation
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Brittle Effigy
1 Mana Crypt
1 Tinker
1 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Voltaic Key
1 Time Vault
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Yawgmoth's Will
4 Cavern of Souls
2 Flusterstorm
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Swamp
SB: 3 Energy Flux
SB: 1 Sower of Temptation
SB: 2 Steel Sabotage
SB: 2 Yixlid Jailer
SB: 2 Mystic Remora
SB: 1 Flusterstorm
SB: 4 Leyline of the Void

Game 1: I lose the roll, but I have a pretty nutty hand: Cavern of Souls, Underground Sea, Mox Emerald, Black Lotus, Tinker, Ancestral, something else.  He opens with Fetch, Lotus, Thalia, Gaddock Teeg, which puts me off my turn 1 Tinker.  I play Cavern, Mox, Lotus and pass.  He attacks and plays Kataki.  I pay for Kataki with Cavern and Mox, then play land, Tinker and get BSC.  On his turn he play Bazaar of Baghdad (awesome) and discards Squee (awesomer) and some other junk, then plays Pridemage.  I attack and Pridemage absorbs 2 poisons.  He digs again with Bazaar, but doesn't find StP, so that's that.

Sideboarding: I don't have a lot to bring in against random creature decks, so I go -2 Flusterstorm, -1 Grafdigger's, +1 Sower, +2 Yixlid Jailer.  I figure Jailer is at least 2 power, but it ended up being pretty solid.

Game 2: He starts with land, Cage.  I go Island, Mox, Mox, Mana Crypt, Trinket Mage for Divining Top.  He plays Bazaar and discards Riftstone Portal, Life From the Loam, and Cage, then plays Thalia.  I lose the Mana Crypt roll, then play Fetch, Jailer, which effectively shuts off his graveyard.  He tries to StP Jailer, but I Top into Misstep.  He plays Hierarch and attacks with Thalia.  I lose another Crypt roll, then attack with my squad.  He plays another Hierarch and attacks with a 4/3 Thalia.  I lose ANOTHER Crypt roll, then Demonic for a Sower of Temptation, which takes his Thalia, but at this point I'm at 2 life, so I can't survive another Crypt roll, so I attack leaving only my Sower up to block his Hierarchs.  He attacks and gets his Thalia back, but it doesn't matter because I lose my 4th Crypt roll in a row.  Between games we talk about how Mana Crypt is a fickle mistress.

Game 3: I start with Fetch-Underground, Pearl, Demonic for Ancestral.  He starts with Bazaar, discarding Squee, Riftstone, Savannah.  I Strip his Bazaar like a total miser, then try to Ancestral, which gets Misstepped.  He plays Ooze.  I fetch up another Underground Sea (up until this point I hadn't seen any Wasteland effects, so I assumed he didn't run them because of the Bazaars or something) and play Snapcaster, target Ancestral, which gets removed.  He Wastelands my Sea (obv).  I play Yixlid Jailer.  He strips my other Sea.  We sit with this board for something like 37 turns.  Eventually he draws some more creatures and is able to pump his Ooze enough to attack.  I get a Top, but it's too little to late, and I never find another on-color land.  GGs.

[credmond]

Good set of games, BC. It was a pleasure playing you.

This is the deck I played.

1 Mox Emerald
1 Black Lotus
2 Forest
1 Strip Mine
2 Wasteland
3 Squee, Goblin Nabob
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
2 Riftstone Portal
4 Savannah
2 Plains
4 Windswept Heath
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3 Gaddock Teeg
1 Mox Pearl
2 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Mental Misstep
2 Life from the Loam
1 Mox Ruby
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Qasali Pridemage
2 Stony Silence
3 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Crop Rotation
2 Noble Hierarch
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Karakas
SB: 3 Nature's Claim
SB: 2 Wasteland
SB: 4 Grafdigger's Cage
SB: 3 Porcelain Legionnaire
SB: 1 Mental Misstep
SB: 1 Devout Witness
SB: 1 Scavenging Ooze

[Grand Inquisitor]

Got there 2-1 vs. Guli and his uncounterable army of weenies.

G1 - he mulls, and preordain finds me an early ancestral for my snapcaster.  Jace bounces ooze, his only real threat and he's done.
G2 - i thought i was looking ok, but he has waste, strip, 2x aether vial, which is too much tempo even before i stop drawing lands
G3 - i have ancestral>snap again, which gets in before he can get ooze active.  Stoneforge staves off his growing army of sphere.dude and I find virtue's ruin to wipe the board and then draw into StP off AK>4 to dispatch ooze.  the caverns were useful at making his guys uncounterable, but cost him when trying to leverage ooze.  I have a small army of trygon (1st one gets eaten by fiend hunter, wtf!), snap & batterskull.  He concedes after I drop the 2nd trygon (holding DT and drain to push thru next turn's game ending YWill).

D3DC/w
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
2 Underground Sea
2 Island
1 Polluted Delta
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
3 Mana Drain
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Accumulated Knowledge
3 Intuition
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Preordain
1 Trygon Predator
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Flusterstorm
2 Mental Misstep
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Nihil Spellbomb
4 Flooded Strand
2 Tundra
2 Tropical Island
1 Echoing Truth
1 Chain of Vapor

SB: 3 Yixlid Jailer
SB: 1 Grafdigger's Cage
SB: 2 Trygon Predator
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 1 Swords to Plowshares
SB: 1 Batterskull
SB: 3 Stoneforge Mystic
SB: 1 Plains
SB: 1 Virtue's Ruin

[AmbivalentDuck]

Pairings are up:
Credmond vs Me
GI vs BC
Guli vs Nataz

[credmond]

I took the match vs Duck 2-1.

Game 1 his deck generates serious tempo with edric and predators. At a critical moment he topdecks another edric after I stp one on the board. My deck is putting out oozes and dudes, but I don't find squees or loams to keep up on card advantage and his edric + predators X 2 is lots of tempo for him.

Game 2 I waste and strip his two lands and keep the game from there.

Game 3 He starts with an early Edric off lotus. My deck has a brutal start of teeg and thalia and all the elements (bazaar + squee). His Sower on my Thalia is met with stp when he is tapped out. My Knight proves useful as a huge sack of bazaar-fed beef and grabbing Karakas to bounce Edric. Loam comes online for me too. His deck hits a lot of lands.

GGs duck!

[credmond]

Nataz,

Did you post your list?

[AmbivalentDuck]

Game 2 I waste and strip his two lands and keep the game from there.

3 mana sources in 14 cards.

Game 3

13 mana sources in 18 cards.

In neither game 2 nor 3 was it remotely appropriate to mull my opener.

GGs Cory.

[Guli]

Due to exams and lack of time. I concede all my future matches.

[BC]

I lose to Grand Inquisitor 1-2.  Three very good games.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Bracket updated:
Me vs Bye
Nataz vs BC
Credmond vs GI

[nataz]

Wait, this is still going? I thought that these were single elim.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Wait, this is still going? I thought that these were single elim.

When we have 6 people, I think this is superior to handing out so many byes.

[Grand Inquisitor]

2-1 vs CRedmond.

Game 1 I tutor for AK#3, holding the first 2 and win after drawing my whole deck.
Game 2 he's got 2x waste + Thalia which is too much.
Game 3 I drain into Stoneforge + Trygon and ride it (although both of us missed chances to make it more/less of a game).

[AmbivalentDuck]

Congratulations to GI on his tourney win.

If Nataz and BC elect to play their game, I'll record the result.