The following is my tournament report from the March NELC at Jupiter Games.
Let me take you back with me. We're not in March. We're not even in 2013. It's the tail end of the last year, the beginning of November, and I'm sitting on Mumble with Tom Leger discussing the final few slots for the list I'd be running at the NELC. Deathrite Shaman and Abrupt Decay had just been released in RTR, and this would be the second tournament with these cards. Jund hadn't been discovered yet, nor the BUG Midrange deck that would soon take over the SCG Circuits. Instead, what we had was a no mans land, as people tried to harness the power of Deathrite and Decay. In my mind, that meant one thing - Junk. I had gone over numbers again and again, tuning numbers, deciding what I was going to see and adjusting my board accordingly. I remember meticulously going over each perfect-fit sleeve, making sure my cards shuffled well, and I had purchased twice the number of KMC Black Mat sleeves just in case something happened and the store was sold out. I was ready to battle.
This would be my first NELC without blue cards. In a way, it was liberating. A few hours later, as I drove away from Jupiter that November day in Bobby Greene's van, I was a winner and it felt good. I thought that I'd just continue winning, and winning, and winning. No one could stop me now! Pro tour, here I come.
I was very wrong.
When I started losing with my deck in playtesting and online, I thought I must just be doing something wrong. I was being lazy, making stupid mistakes, right? That had to be it - how else could I be losing? Clearly, I was just getting unlucky! This deck was insane, I couldn't be losing!
Fast forward to SCG Edison. I'm back on blue. No longer would I lose games because I didn't have the filtering that Junk lacked. No longer would I lose games because my gigantic Knight of the Reliquary met it's unruly demise at the hands of Abrupt Decay. I had resurrected a monster of a deck - Next Level Thresh, or Next Level Ning, as some people called it - a RUG Control deck created and tuned by Eric English and Si-Ning Li, that used Stifle and Counterspell and Force as well as Grim Lavamancer, Tarmogoyf, and Jace. It was sweet. I was going to mise people with Stifles and win games with Jace. I was going to crush control with my army of counterspells. I was going to lose to Countertop after making a bad mistake, then proceed to get crushed by burn, and just like that, my tournament was over.
This miserable showing confirmed my worst fears - things were going down hill. I wasn't going to lie - it was very depressing. Real life was absolutely miserable and now my performance at Legacy events wasn't much better. I wanted to win, and I wanted to win badly. I needed to reevaluate a few things.
Thus began a long road to recovery, which started with an intervention. At Edison, a lot of people were on combo - a lot. In fact, combo took down the entire event. Sometime during Sunday, as I sat defeated, I realized that I needed to try something new. I could spend my Legacy career doing one of two things - I could do fair things and try my hardest to beat the people doing unfair things, or I could just do unfair things and beat everyone. Once I had decided that, I determined that the card that enabled me to do the most unfair stuff was this blue sorcery that cost three and let you win the game, 99% of the time: Show and Tell. I got lucky and picked up four before I even left Edison, and the following day as I took off work and hung out with friends, I determined that Sneak and Show was the deck for me. I was convinced up until I got home, and realized that the deck just felt boring. I started scouring online, and then I found something that made me smile. The Legacy MOCS was won by another Show and Tell deck - Reanimator. I was sold, and I spent the next month grinding games, constantly, trying to see new ways to win and such.
Now, the list.
4 Griselbrand
1 Iona
1 Elesh Norn
1 Tidespout
3 Reanimate
2 Animate Dead
4 Exhume
2 Show and Tell
3 Pithing Needle
2 Show and Tell
2 Thoughseize
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Karakas
2 Jace
1 Terastadon
1 Echoing Truth
Now it's the day of the March NELC. Pairings are up, and my opponent, B.F.S. sits down next to me. We know what each other is on, and he tells me how miserable the match up is for him. I apologize, with every intent to crush. I then win the die roll. By the time he has a single Llanowar Elf in play, my Iona is making sure that he is casting no more green spells for the entire game. On the second game, I mulligan and keep a decent hand, made worse by his turn one Deathrite, followed by turn two Deathrite. I'm dead this game, unless I draw one of my two outs, and even then I still might be dead. My only out is BFS making a glaring mistake, which isn't going to happen, except it does. With four mana in play, me at fifteen, and four dorks, He taps out for Natural Order with no lands in the graveyard. What this means is that if he gets Craterhoof, I'm dead. I force, which he didn't know about (he had Thoughtseized me earlier). However, now all he has are two Deathrites and a Wirewood Symbiote, with no lands in yard. He swings out. I end step entomb and exhume Elesh Norn and that ends an unwinnable game.
1-0
My first match win with Reaimator and I'm feeling really good right now. For the first time ever, I have thirty minutes between rounds. I stand up, walk around, use the restrooms, eat some of my breakfast, and see how my friends are doing. This is a new experience for me!
Finally, the next round is called, and I sit down next to my opponent. He's a really laid back guy, and we get underway. He's on Esper Stoneblade, and we begin a very interesting round. The thing about Reanimator is that games usually break down into one of three ways. Either you had a turn one or two hand with disruption and you win, or you have a bad hand that gets destroyed by their hand disruption and you do nothing, or you have a hand that doesn't involve reanimating a Griselbrand, but something slightly more interactive. I had one of those last hands - the one's that make it so interesting. On my second turn, I resolved Animate Dead on my Tidespout Tyrant, creating a very, very interesting board state. Because Tyrant isn't Legendary, Karakas doesn't bounce it, and because the only way that Esper Stoneblade can interact with it is with Swords to Plowshares, I can cast any instant or sorcery to bounce the Animate Dead and protect my creature. I proceed to do this while using other spells to keep my opponent on two lands the entire game as I slay him from 20 to 0. Game two is weird - usually, it's game two where I need to do obscure things like kill with Tidespout Tyrant, but instead this game I reanimate a turn one or two Griselbrand with protection, and the game ends.
2-0
I again get a nice break, and I'm feeling amazing. My buddies are all doing okay, and I feel like I can't lose.
Round three, I sit down next to another individual I don't know. He wins the die roll and goes T1 Deathrite off of a Badlands. I put him on Jund, and my first turn I Careful Study a Elesh Norn, cast Lotus Petal, and reanimate it. I feel like I can't lose at this point. Then, he goes Scrubland into Swords to Plowshares and I get nervous. He's on Sam Black Zombies, and I'm in trouble, however he spends a few turns doing very little and I'm able to buy time into Griselbrand, which takes me all the way.
Game two looks grim, as he has two Deathrites on his second turn, but on my third turn, I resolve a Pithing Needle, shut off his Deathrites, and reanimate a Griselbrand the same turn to win the game.
3-0
Because this is a 63 man tournament, it means that I probably can't draw in at 4-0, but I keep my hopes up. I enjoy my free time between rounds, elongated because of the lunch break, and go enjoy some good ole' Chinese food. Yum.
I sit down next to my fourth round opponent on the draw, but I keep a quick, aggressive hand. He goes turn one Careful Study, and shows me he is on Dredge. I have turn two Elesh Norn which ends the game for me, but on his second turn, he dredges into double Narco, double Therapy. He goes to Therapy me, and I'm faced with a really interesting decision. My board state is a Delta, and in hand I have a second land, entomb, and two different reanimation spells. If I cast entomb here, he has to hit with both of his therapies on both my reanimation spells, however then any reanimate spell just wins the game for me. If I let it resolve and he names entomb, I most likely lose no matter what. I decide to entomb, and he blind names reanimate, snagging it, and then therapies me again for my exhume. On my turn, I ponder, seeing the Animate Dead, and I hide it, hoping he can't kill me on his next turn. He gets me to eleven, but I resolve Elesh on my third turn and the game ends.
Game two I get worried that he has hate, and I keep a weak hand that just gets run over after seeing a whole lot of nothing and he therapies what little action I have.
Game three I'm on the play and I have a very aggressive Elesh Norn, turn two with multiple ways to protect it, which wins me the match.
4-0!
I find out that there are three other 4-0s, Maverick, Burn, and Dredge. I decide that if I get paired against Dredge or Burn, I'll play, otherwise we can double draw. I get paired against Maverick, and we double draw.
Top 8, here I come. I finish my lunch and meander for two rounds as my friends battle, trying to make it. Joey Manner, Si-Ning, and a few others manage to squeak in, which is awesome.
Top 8 - against Maverick
I get paired up against Maverick, and I cringe when I see his list. Double Karakas is really bad for me main deck, but I'm pretty excited. I get to a board state where I have Tyrant in play, my opponent is at ten, it's my turn, but I'm at six and he has Loxodon Smiter with double Hierarch. I win as long as I can play a spell to bounce his Smiter, otherwise I have to block with Tyrant and I probably lose. I draw a Underground Sea, and my only spell is an Animate Dead with no legal targets. Yuck.
Game two, I made a huge punt and lose. I Show and Tell in Griselbrand and draw seven before O. Ring eats it. The next turn, I can Show and Tell in Terastadon to kill his O-Ring and his Karakas, and just totally overlook the line. It was pathetic and bad play, and I was playing scared, and it cost me the game. That was by far the worst. Everyone was watching, and I just made a mistake I shouldn't have ever made. I was worried he had something to mise me, and I just gave him the match. It was miserable. I felt like I wanted to vomit. I was at five life, and chose to thoughtseize him. As I cast it, I said I guess I just lose if you have Smiter and two lands in his three card hand. Guess what he had?
I'll write more about it later. I'm at work and I'm slightly rushed, but I wanted to get this out there while it was fresh in my mind.
Going Forward
SB:
-2 Thoughtseize
+1 Inkwell Leviathan
+1 Echoing Truth
While E.E. is good against my deck, it's not the stone cold nuts. Cursed Totem only hits two creatures, Knight and DRS. Blood moon is bad against DRS, Diamonds, and basics, Back to Basics has the same drawback, and Mind Harness is decayable.
Hello everyone. My name is Greg Komar and this is my tournament report for the November 3rd Jupiter Games NELC Tournament in which I split the finals with Eli Kassis. For all intensive purposes, he agreed to give me “the win” which is basically just for pride, so thanks for that!
I decided to play Junk, which is basically B/G/W good stuff. I’ve top eighted a handful of times now, all with blue decks, most usually RUG Delver and then again last month with BUG Delver, but I never felt like I was able to win games against some decks and turn one Delver just didn’t seem good enough anymore. With the printing of Deathrite Shaman and Abrupt Decay, I really, really wanted BUG Delver or BUG Control to be “the deck,” the one that would oust RUG Delver as public enemy number one. So far, that hasn’t happened, and likely I don’t think it will. However, my testing with Abrupt Decay and Deathrite really made me a believer that these cards were the real deal and not just hype so, last month when Eli and Tom both showed up with Junk decks and both did well, I decided to hang up my Force of Wills and Brainstorms and start playing Knight of the Reliquaries. I have no regrets. Junk is a incredibly awesome deck. I drove up with Jesse Adams, Bobby Green (I think that’s Bobby’s last name), Dave Rice, David Choa (Again, I think that’s his last name), and a few others, and no one else was on the Deathrite plan. Later that night, after the tournament, we went to get Friday’s with all of them plus Alex Bertochini and his girlfriend, Shannon (I think? Man, I am bad with names…). David Choa and I played a few games and by the end of the dinner, everyone was on the Deathrite plan – even the Bant deck wanted to splash a black dual or two for him. Good card is good, and as Eli said at one point during the tournament, “Every time I played him (Deathrite) turn one, I didn’t lose.” I felt the same way.
As far as the decklist is concerned, I didn’t come up with the shell – I can thank Eli Kassis and Tom Leger for that, but I took what I liked from both of their lists and made a few changes and tweaks with numbers and came up with a list I was very content with. I wanted consistency above all else, so I kept my tutor package limited (I have some regrets about this) and my numbers high. The most variance in my list consisted of the two Mox Diamonds that both Eli and I played, and though I can’t speak for Eli, they won me infinitely more games than I lost from them, including my third game against Si-Ning in the first round of top eight.
Here’s the list:
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
4 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Liliana of the Veil
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Inquisition of Kosilek
3 Thoughtseise
3 Sensei’s Divining Top
2 Mox Diamond
1 Karakas
1 Horison Canopy
1 Bajuka Bog
1 Mase of Ith
2 Scrubland
2 Bayou
1 Savanah
4 Marsh Flats
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Forest
1 Swamp
4 Wasteland
There are definitely some changes that I would make, and I will happily discuss those afterwards. For now, I’d like to get into the games. I make some mistakes at times, which while embarrassing, happens, but I also play tight when I need to and based on my results, it paid off.
Match 1: Hollywood on Manaless Dredge
Hollywood beat me in the first round of Top Eight last month when I was on BUG Delver. I know exactly what he’s playing, and I am both concerned and content. On one hand, I know how insane Deathrite Shaman is against Hollywood, plus I have a maindeck Bog, but at the same time, Manaless Dredge can sometimes just win games from literally nowhere, so it’s not like I felt like I couldn’t lose, but I certainly didn’t feel like this would be a free win.
Game One: I win the die roll and I happily put him on the play. I keep a hand with turn one Deathrite Shaman and some other action, and keep. Hollywood takes his turn which consists of him saying pass. I draw my card and take a moment before slamming Deathrite. At this point, my hand is Deathrite + Inquisition, which means if I Inquisition him now, I take a card that doesn’t matter and he gets time walked again. I Inquisition him (there’s a Thoughtseise still in my hand) and see a hand of irrelevant spells that I can’t target, two street wraiths, and a dredger or two. I don’t remember what I take, but it’s a non-dredger, non-relevant spell. He draws, comments on how it was a good one, and passes. I play Deathrite, and I’m pretty sure I just win from there by applying some threats and keeping his dredgers off the board.
Game Two: I’m on the play and my hand is Thoughtseise, Inquisition, Knight, Land, Land, Land, Land, none of which are Bogs. I go first, Inquisition, take something irrelevant and pass. He draws and passes. I draw, Thoughtseise, take something irrelevant, and pass. He draws and passes. I draw, play knight and pass. He knows that I play at least one bog, but put me on more than one because Eli is playing three in his Junk deck. On his turn, he comments on how his draw was very good, and discards Phantasmagorican, which is his best card in this position. However, I think because of his concern of multiple Bogs, he plays it slower than he has to, I don’t bog until is absolutely needed (after one of his draw steps so that he wastes more dredges) and I win from there, though on the last turn apparently if he had dredged the absolute perfect five off an imp, he would have won (scary stuff). I think I may have slightly confused some lines between game one and game two, so Hollywood when/if you read this, please feel free to correct me. That being said, playing against Hollywood is always a pleasure. His jovial attitude is a welcome respite against the antisocial negative nancy’s of the magic community.
1-0
Match Two: Chris Scagnelli playing Bant.
I know what Chris is on because the night before I helped him with his deck. I know that this is a favorable matchup going into it, and throught the entire game we were joking around and having a good time. This was a feature match which can be seen on Jupiter’s website, and I won in a close two games which you can watch there. Every time he has a threat, I always have an answer. He’s never in either of the games at all. After game two, he showed me his board, which confused the hell out of me. He brought in Engineered Explosives and Rest in Peaces to kill my guys and shrink my knights, but this line also kills his guys and shrinks his knights, plus dilutes his threat count. I think one of the reasons I won so handily in game two was that he never had any threats, ever.
2-0
Match Three: BFS playing Combo Elves
Brian had asked me for cards going into the tournament, so I should have known what he was on, but I totally forgot. As we were shuffling up, I started remembering that he wanted Surgical Extractions, then Karakas, so I put him on Esper or Maverick or something, then he plays Forest into Llanowar Elf and I remember him also wanted a Mirror Entity. Whoops. It ends up not mattering as I have a reasonable hand and he doesn’t really get to stabalise. The game is entirely in my favor, and at one point my board is Knight x2, each with over fourteen power, two Deathrite Shaman, and three lands. Brian has forest, forest, Nettle Sentinel with two cards in hand. That’s a total of six cards after he draws. On his turn, he had over twenty permanents in play. While I’m not a combo elves player, the series of events that occurred went from somewhere along the lines of glimpse with two cards in hand, play a Quirion Ranger, bounce forest, replay forest for mana, drew a heritage druid off the draw from glimpse, and continues to go off. Must be nice... At the end of the game, there is no more than ten minutes in the round and we need to play fast to finish. Needless to say, I’m pretty much on super tilt as the winner of this round just needs to win one more match.
In game two, I keep an aggressive keep with removal, a turn one Dark Confidant off of mox diamond, and I proceed to keep him off spells while playing a Knight and other relevant threats and win the game in no more than five minutes.
We go into game three with two minutes on the clock. I mulligan a trash heap of a hand and keep a sketchy, sketchy hand that basically is mono-removal, not willing to risk mulling even more. He fails to kill me in turns and I fail to kill him. We wish each other luck and continue on in our tournament. Though I am 2-0-1 at this point, my last match has me tilted.
2-0-1
Match Four: Eli Kassis on Junk
I know Eli is on Junk going into this tournament because he was one of the people I based my deck off of. We go to three games, and while I’d like to give you a more detailed report, my memory is totally shot. I win game one because I have all the answers at the right times, and then in games two and three it’s the opposite. I don’t really think I made any glaring mistakes at all, but I’m pretty convinced that these games are very much based on drawing right more so than skill (obviously not saying that skill isn’t a factor, as Eli played well, as is typical). Our games were jovial, similar to my games against Hollywood, except Eli is slightly more serious than Hollywood is, and we discussed deck lists and changes and such. Overall, it was a really good opportunity to see how another person might pilot the deck and I think I learned a lot from that match, despite being on serious life tilt and feeling like top eight was out of my reach at this point.
2-1-1
Match Five: Ethan on Miracles
Ethan is a super cool guy from Rochester, however I heard earlier that he was going to be moving away and that this was his last NELC. I was slightly guilty that I had to play against him, because a) I had a good matchup and b) when any gregarious regular is leaving the area, it’s sort of nice to have them go out with a bang.
Game One: Despite what I thought about my matchup, I got rolled. Ethan had an early lock with top and balance and resolved an early Jace. My Liliana was just too slow, and he aggressively ultimate me out of the game, countering everything I threw at him and making me feel totally outclassed. Ethan is a good player and anyone that has ever watched him play Belcher online or in person should know this.
Game Two and Three: I win these games, though I never felt like I was winning. Despite not overextending at any point in these two games, I always felt like he could easily Terminus me at any point, and it was here that I realized that a good miracles player always has the Terminus, whether or not he actually has it. As in, it doesn’t matter if the miracles player actually has Terminus, because you are always going to think that there is a Terminus on top of their deck, and there were turns where I prayed for him to whiff, and he did. The only time I actually felt like I was ahead was in game three the turn before he died where he actually cracked a fetch to look at more cards with top and I knew he didn’t have the answers. I know this isn’t the most exciting recollection of the game ever, and it’s a shame because we both played very, very well, but highlights include ripping the one of Gaddock Teeg the turn before he wiped out my board with an Engineered Explosives that was in his graveyard that he was planning on recurring with his Academy Ruins and resolving the next turn to blow me out. That was in game three I believe. Game two I resolved a turn two Dark Confidant off of protection that carried me into the late game with enough fuel to restock after the Terminus that never came.
I felt pretty bad knocking Ethan off of the Top 8 Train, but I wanted this badly as well, and Ethan was pretty cool about it. I’m going to miss doing block battles bud, have a safe and happy trip back home and we’ll have to battle on MTGO sometime, eh?
3-1-1
Match Six: Ryan Phramer playing BUG Delver
I knew what Ryan was on because last month I played BUG Delver and as a BUG and Delver fanatic, I had looked at his list and knew what he could do. Before the match I bragged about how I think Confidant is bad in that type of deck and that I thought I had a favorable matchup. I then proceeded to make two major mistakes in this game that should have cost me the game.
Game One: Ryan sticks two early confidants, while I only have one, however I have an active knight for a long time, despite him drawing an extra card every turn. Eventually, I decide that I’m going to shut off his mana as much as I can and then kill him from Bob triggers, however given this is my plan, I make the mistake of shuffling away a top. Despite this one mistake, I played super tight all game and I felt good about my play, but because I’m not a Sensei’s Top player, I just totally undervalued how important it would have been for that game. Unfortunately, drawing three cards a turn makes it so that I can’t actually shut him off of green and the Tarmogoyfs keep coming. The turn that I’m going to die, Ryan is at six with one Confidant in play, flips the one Jace he has left in his deck, and I proceed to kill him with Deathrite Shaman. Ryan was understandably tilted, but it felt good to have the karma gods give back to me after my round three match against Elves.
Game Two: Ryan is saying how his tournament is over, etc, etc, and for some reason I felt like I just wanted to shuffle up as fast as possible and make sure we have a full game two. I sideboarded miserably, kept a miserably hand, and was miserably destroyed when he played around Choke all game. Basically, I gave him an out to win game three with very little time left. It was super, super awkward.
Game Three: Ryan and I play at a brisk pace, but this game goes how I thought games one and two would go – I assemble a quick threat base, use my cheap removal to keep his board clear, and make sure to discard his removal. Everything goes as planned, and the game is over in short, short work. That’s the beautiful thing about this deck – it’s very well balanced, so against fair decks, you have a solid about of disruption, removal, and difficult to answer threats. And just like that, I was in Top 8 with a deck I’d never played before! Woo!
First Round Of Top 8: Si-Ning with TES
Game One: I knew going into this that I was on the back foot. It didn’t help that Ning was going first because he was higher in the breakers. I kept a meh hand with turn one Deathrite which is normally the nuts, but he proceeded to kill me promptly on his second turn by tendrilsing me for infinite.
Okay, this was expected. I slump in my chair and proceed to sideboard in eleven cards.
Game Two: I keep a saucy hand with a hand disruption spell, a confidant, and an enlightened tutor (I believe.) Because I go first, I go turn one hand disruption and see he has the turn one win again, but take him off of it. Despite the hand disruption, if he draws well, I’m still just dead. However, he draws ponder. At this point, I drop confidant, and on my upkeep, I tutor in response to the trigger and draw my canonist and something else. From there, he can’t keep up with my disruption and threats.
Game Three: My hand is perfect. I have turn one Thalia. That is all I can ask for against him. All I need to do is get one turn. Ning mulls and I begin to think that I’m going to win. Ning mulls again and I let out a loud cheer. He doesn’t kill me, and I land the Thalia and it isn’t close from there. Afterwards, I profusely apologized to Ning, not for winning, but for the fact that I cheered when he mulled. I’d like to think that I’m a nice person to play against, and I felt like the biggest of tools after that. I offered to buy him lunch or anything, but he wouldn’t have it, however he seemed much more laid back about it than I did. Either way, he’s getting lunch on me next month, whether he likes it or not.
Second Round of Top 8: Tibbetts with UW Stoneblade
This was a feature match which you can watch online. I make a huge punt and run out a turn one confidant into his open white because I figured that if he didn’t have the swords, I’d just win on the spot. It was a risky, risky play that I didn’t need to make, especially because I could have just run out the turn one discard spell. However, I still stuck the game out super long, but died to Jace’s card advantage.
In games two and three, I played super tight. Whereas game one was the Jace game, games two and three were Liliana games. Game two I ultimate with Liliana which felt insane, and then in game three, I ultimate with Liliana, twice. It was pretty sick. This was a strange game for one reason though – my opponent had a lot of “takesie backsies” with brainstorms and a few other things – nothing major that would have been considered cheating, but had I not been in a great mood, I could have been a total chump to him, and a few people had very strange faces as they watched when I allowed him to do this without calling a judge. I definitely should have, but like I said, I never felt like I was losing in games two and three because I just played like I was supposed to and not like a durdle. My opponent was a nice enough individual and at the end, it certainly felt like an epic match.
After I won, Eli came in and said that we were in the finals and offered the split. I accepted on the condition that I was given first place. He double checked to make sure that it didn’t actually matter accept to my pride, and was fine with it. Was it the win I wanted? Maybe not, but it still felt incredible. I’ve been grinding these for a long, long time, and I’d like to think that after the almost two years that I’ve been going to NELCs that I’ve become a regular face by now. I love the Jupiter Games magic community and the players that make it excellent, and this was such a reassuring, rewarding victory. I felt like though I made mistakes, I was really rewarded when I played tight, and that’s all I could ask for.
If I were to play this tomorrow, here are my changes.
Sideboard:
-1 Enlightened Tutor
-1 Nihil Spellbomb
+1 Worldly Tutor
+1 Bojuka Bog
Here’s why:
Maindeck, I needed a seventh land for Knight. Canopy was just bad for me on the day – not because the lifeloss was relevant, but because I usually just sacrificed it to try and find a land for knight to eat up when I drew it naturally. Inquisition is also just worse than Thoughtseise. In several matchups, had I drawn Inquisition, I would have died. Against Hollywood in round one, because I had double Inquisition, it was much closer than it ever should have been.
In the sideboard, I always wanted at least a second Bog. Worldly Tutor also gets me Thalia and Teeg against combo which is when I need to bring the tutor package in.
All in all, Saturday was so insane. I had such a great time, the drive back was so much fun, the guys I drove with were hilarious, and it was pretty exciting seeing my grinding finally coming to fruition. I’m sorry if my report isn’t the best, and not the most detailed – I hadn’t really expected to get as far as I did, and I just didn’t take notes. Sorry guys! That being said, I hope I was able to relive some of more epic moments of the day. I’ll see you all next month.
Dismember was solid, but again, this deck really wants Goyf, and in the future, that's probably what I'll do. Lavaman is a great one of, but I think if I go into green, I'll keep him like that - as a one of. Submerge will probably go down to a 2 of, and Kenny Adams and I have some spicy tech that I think might be going in as a one or two of. As far as Price goes, I think if my deck wants Price, it's going to want Fireblast too, and I'll just end up playing the Doug McKay Version then. However, one thing to note is that in the four games I played against Doug on the day, he never fireblasted me or Priced me.
The miser's Jace and Crucible won me at least one game each, which considering I won 5 of my 6 matches in 2 games, says a lot. The submerges were less than ideal, but they were also a necessary evil, as my weakest match-ups were against green mid range decks, like the RUG Delver decks that plagued the top 8. I'm cutting a Red Blast for a singleton Blue Blast. The 3rd Surgical may or may not come out, as it dilutes the deck, but is still amazing in some match ups. In fact, two Surgicals came in for my first round of Top 8 against Doug and they 4 for 1ed him at one point, which you can read about in my report, which should be up today or tomorrow. Smash to Smithereens was also crucial in two games.
I think that there's a decision that you need to make between playing
Price and playing Stifle and Wasteland. It's tough, because sometimes you play against decks that just don't play basics and you poop on them, and sometimes you have a card in your hand that just doesn't do anything. I was originally on the price plan, but it doesn't give you as much room to maneuver. In addition, you win just as many games, if not more, from having stifle and wasteland as you do from having price. Plus, with all the spells snares being played, price is just another target. I think one of the main advantages to playing the straight U/R version of Stifle / Wasteland (as opposed to playing green) is that all of these other decks that play Spell Snare basically have one target in the entire deck, which is Snapcaster. I don't know about you, but if I can almost blank four cards in my opponents deck while forcing them to fetch basics and play around stifle, I'm pretty content with that.
So my full report will probably be up today or tomorrow at Jupiter Games' website at Jupitergames.net, but on Saturday, 12/3/11, Doug McKay piloted a very similar deck to the UR Delver Aggro deck that won Sunday, 12/4/11, to a top 8. I piloted a different U/R Delver deck to a top 4, losing to a RUG Delver deck that ended up winning the entire thing. My deck opted not to play Price of Progress and Fireblasts, instead choosing to go for the Stifle Wasteland route. Here's my list:
Main deck:
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Delver of Secrets
3 Grim Lavamancer
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Chain Lightning
2 Dismember
4 Stifle
4 Brainstorm
3 Preordain
4 Force of Will
3 Spell Pierce
3 Daze
2 Island
1 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Wasteland
4 Volcanic Island
Sideboard:
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Smash to Smithereens
2 Shattering Spree
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pyroblast
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Submerge
This was just short of a 100 man tournament, and most big legacy players on the east coast know Jupiter Games. James won GP Providence for us and Eli Kassis used to own the store. These are not lightweight tournaments, by any means. Just to throw it out there, now that I'm sure people will start talking about it, I'm 99% sure that the U/R Snapcaster deck that plays Price and Goblin Guide was grandfathered in the November Jupiter Games NELC Legacy Tournament by Doug McKay - I just want to make sure he gets the credit he deserves, he is the man when it comes to deck design.
Again, my report is being edited and when it's done it'll be on Jupiter's site and I'll be more than happy to post a link for you all to read.
There is no sideboard yet. People with sideboards at this point are jumping the gun, as there is no known meta. For those going to states, I implore you to expect a lot of Pod hate post board and to plan accordingly.
Choices:
Landbase:
The lands are not perfect. Playing around with the number of basics is what I'm spending most of my time with. I'm also debating playing drowned catacomb instead of a Swamp and an Island. Also trying to analyze the right amount of Forests. Only more playtesting will tell.
CMC 1:
3 Llanowar Elves is alot. My reasoning for playing three is this - even on turn 2 or 3 if I miss an untapped green source, Elves always get me my mana. As much as I like Emissary in an aggressive format, you need to be sure that you'll get your mana when you need it.
CMC2:
Spellskite is going to be very important as artifact removal becomes more prominent.
CMC3:
Slyvok Replica, unlike Viridian Corrupter answers far more cards. As the format slows down, this card becomes much more powerful.
Ruinator is a house, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Glissa, similar to Spellskite, will become better as removal goes up.
My computer is about to die, I'll post the rest later.
Ruinator is every bit as good as he appears to be. He blocks fliers and sword carriers and punches like a truck. Recasting him after poding him is absurdly easy.
Master Thief is a preemptive attempt to answer the mirror and anything using swords. I expect the majority of the meta to be these decks.
Catacombs are extra insurance. The problem with bug is that you must mulligan hands without green or blue so playing swamps is bad. Having the catacombs is just to increase the amount of keepable hands.
Also, as far as the low amount of threes, ideally you either use ruinator, or just use images to skip threes all together unless absolutely needed. Hence why half of our threes are strictly utility and glissa is mainly only good when we need to recur another pod, or replicas
I think you are all getting slightly ahead of yourselves. The problem with pod decks is that you really need to identify the meta before you start putting cards in, because while -yes, certain cards are good almost always- much of pod is 1 ofs that are good in very narrow occurrences.
This is the list I've been brewing for BUG, but it's far from complete. A complete spoiler, as well as a good hard look at what's available is the only thing that will allow the Pod decks to come up with a solid, finite "good" list.
I built this expecting a metagame dominated by two things: creatures, and artifacts. To handle creatures, we have viridian emissary, which is amazing in a creature heavy meta, we have glissa, which is useful both because she wins every fight and because she recurs pods. At four, we have skinrender and the banshee at five. At six, we have the wurm, or grave titan, depending on what the board looks like.
On the other hand, I anticipate an artifact heavy meta. Swords are still around, as are opposing pods, and tempered steel. To combat these decks, we have 2 sylvok replica - these could be Viridian Corrupters instead but I liked the flexibility of being able to kill O.Ring. At four, we have Master Thief, which turns Pod Mirrors on their head, and is amazing at stealing swords. Stealing one of Tempered Steel's creatures is never bad either, or opposing Spellskites. At five, we have Slime, which is both amazing in creature wars and sniping key cards in your opponents field. At six and seven, we stop seeing artifact hate.
There are a few cards that I'm probably not going to run. Spellskite is a universally good card, but might not be good enough. Spellskite's usefulness is directly related to the amount of artifact and creature removal running around, the more there is the better spellskite is.
Entomber Exarch, pre rotation, was one of the main reasons to go BUG because it was so good against control and combo. Now, with there being to real control deck and no real combo deck in the format (unless you want to call Pod combo), it's much less effective. As a gravedigger, there are probably better things we can be doing, like getting solemn or skinrender.
Evil Twin is slightly iffy. Metamorph is better in the sense that it's more versatile and cheaper, but something about being able to kill it's image just seems very potentially good.
Skaab Ruinator fills a very particular role. For one, all of our four drops are singletons, meaning that each one is very good at a specific role. Skaab Ruinator fills the roll of a recurring 3 drop, to help us find our 4s. This is not to be underestimated in the Pod decks, as the easiest way for us to lose is for our chains to get disrupted. Not only that, but in a format where Mirran Crusader will probably be rampant, Ruinator is a very good blocker.
Master Thief is also on the fence. With Pod decks, alot of deckbuilding comes with a compromise. Consistency Vs Versatility. Master Thief is incredibly versatile. Some games it will completely turn everything on its head, from stealing a Pod, sword, or metamorph, where as in other games it has literally zero targets. It's the type of card that is very much a metagame call.
Viridian Emissary is really only good in creature heavy metagames, when you can block with it or trade it, while still ramping. Considering how creature heavy this format looks to be, I can see making it a four-of. Aggro can be rough for BUG Pod unless we are able to establish an early board presence. Emissary allows us to do so.
Consecrated Sphinx is a very good card. It may not be good in this deck. In attrition based games, Sphinx can literally turn a game on it's head, however there is no guarantee that this format turns into attrition based games. We just can't be sure yet. Also, Sphinx blocks almost every sword your opponent throws at you, considering Body/Mind sees little play. Also, it survives dismember.
Replica is one card i've been most on the fence with. In old standard, it was very important to be able to blow up an artifact on the turn this creature came down, so instead we ran Viridian Corrupter. Based on how much play O.Ring sees, and how good artifacts are, this slot will change. I will say that playing two cards at CMC 3 are probably needed to deal with problem artifacts / enchantments. Also, Replica deals with Torpor Orb, where Corrupter and Slime do not.
I have a decent amount of experience with the deck. I've 4-0ed and 3-1ed almost ten dailies with BUG Pod about three weeks back, before dropping it due to bad Twin matchups. The biggest bonus to BUG Pod is how almost every bad matchup rotates. I'd be hard pressed to find a deck that this deck auto folds too, besides an aggresive combo deck.
Hope this helps and provides some insight into BUG Pod and Pod in general.
I think the rest of the deck is really solid in the mirror. Most caw lists have taken out gideon, which seems good vs most of the field but bad vs the mirror. So I have that. I also have Elesh norn, which while expensive, completely changes the game once resolved. I also dont feel like hawks are that much better than spellskite
Pros of Spellskite Vs. Hawk in Mirror:
Spellskite can block a mystic with a sword of war/peace + not die. Can also block a mystic with f+f and not die.
Spellskite can keep your mystics from being tapped via tumble, or condemned if you swing with the spellskite too.
Cons of Spellskite vs Hawk in the mirror:
Spellskite can't block hawk
Spellskite doesn't find copies of itself
Spellskite can't do crazy library manipulating shenanigans with Jace
So there you have it. Spellskite does some things better and some things worse, and while obviously not having hawk in the mirror is in fact worse, it doesnt change the fact that having spellskite main allows you to run better cards in general. In my oppinion, all of these lists running 6-7 jace in the main are just diluting their deck. Beleren is no Mind Scultor, and it seems weak to run 6 all the time. Theyre really only good in control mirrors, and I'm just not sold on their applications in the maindeck.
So, I'm of the belief that Hawks have become somewhat obsolete in a world filled with Splinter Twin Combo. As such, I've tried to adapt by maindecking Spellskites. So far, in my -limited- testing, its been really good. While there are definitely times where I've missed the hawks (mainly the mirror), spellskite has been better almost everywhere else. The numbers are certainly not fine tuned, however, the most important interaction to note is that in the MD, spellskite is basically the perfect protector for this deck, protecting SFM, your equipment, and your walkers to almost everything.
4 Spellskite
4 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Elesh Norn
1 Sword of W+P
1 Sword of F+F
1 Batterskull
4 Jace, TMS
2 Gideon Jura
4 Preordain
4 Spell Pierce
4 Mana Leak
2 Tumble Magnet
2 Into the Roil
Let me take you back with me. We're not in March. We're not even in 2013. It's the tail end of the last year, the beginning of November, and I'm sitting on Mumble with Tom Leger discussing the final few slots for the list I'd be running at the NELC. Deathrite Shaman and Abrupt Decay had just been released in RTR, and this would be the second tournament with these cards. Jund hadn't been discovered yet, nor the BUG Midrange deck that would soon take over the SCG Circuits. Instead, what we had was a no mans land, as people tried to harness the power of Deathrite and Decay. In my mind, that meant one thing - Junk. I had gone over numbers again and again, tuning numbers, deciding what I was going to see and adjusting my board accordingly. I remember meticulously going over each perfect-fit sleeve, making sure my cards shuffled well, and I had purchased twice the number of KMC Black Mat sleeves just in case something happened and the store was sold out. I was ready to battle.
This would be my first NELC without blue cards. In a way, it was liberating. A few hours later, as I drove away from Jupiter that November day in Bobby Greene's van, I was a winner and it felt good. I thought that I'd just continue winning, and winning, and winning. No one could stop me now! Pro tour, here I come.
I was very wrong.
When I started losing with my deck in playtesting and online, I thought I must just be doing something wrong. I was being lazy, making stupid mistakes, right? That had to be it - how else could I be losing? Clearly, I was just getting unlucky! This deck was insane, I couldn't be losing!
Fast forward to SCG Edison. I'm back on blue. No longer would I lose games because I didn't have the filtering that Junk lacked. No longer would I lose games because my gigantic Knight of the Reliquary met it's unruly demise at the hands of Abrupt Decay. I had resurrected a monster of a deck - Next Level Thresh, or Next Level Ning, as some people called it - a RUG Control deck created and tuned by Eric English and Si-Ning Li, that used Stifle and Counterspell and Force as well as Grim Lavamancer, Tarmogoyf, and Jace. It was sweet. I was going to mise people with Stifles and win games with Jace. I was going to crush control with my army of counterspells. I was going to lose to Countertop after making a bad mistake, then proceed to get crushed by burn, and just like that, my tournament was over.
This miserable showing confirmed my worst fears - things were going down hill. I wasn't going to lie - it was very depressing. Real life was absolutely miserable and now my performance at Legacy events wasn't much better. I wanted to win, and I wanted to win badly. I needed to reevaluate a few things.
Thus began a long road to recovery, which started with an intervention. At Edison, a lot of people were on combo - a lot. In fact, combo took down the entire event. Sometime during Sunday, as I sat defeated, I realized that I needed to try something new. I could spend my Legacy career doing one of two things - I could do fair things and try my hardest to beat the people doing unfair things, or I could just do unfair things and beat everyone. Once I had decided that, I determined that the card that enabled me to do the most unfair stuff was this blue sorcery that cost three and let you win the game, 99% of the time: Show and Tell. I got lucky and picked up four before I even left Edison, and the following day as I took off work and hung out with friends, I determined that Sneak and Show was the deck for me. I was convinced up until I got home, and realized that the deck just felt boring. I started scouring online, and then I found something that made me smile. The Legacy MOCS was won by another Show and Tell deck - Reanimator. I was sold, and I spent the next month grinding games, constantly, trying to see new ways to win and such.
Now, the list.
4 Griselbrand
1 Iona
1 Elesh Norn
1 Tidespout
3 Reanimate
2 Animate Dead
4 Exhume
2 Show and Tell
4 Careful Study
4 Entomb
4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
4 Force
2 Daze
2 Thoughtseize
4 Lotus Petal
4 Undergound Sea
2 Island
1 Swamp
4 Delta
3 Tarn
2 Verdant Catacombs
SB:
3 Pithing Needle
2 Show and Tell
2 Thoughseize
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Karakas
2 Jace
1 Terastadon
1 Echoing Truth
Now it's the day of the March NELC. Pairings are up, and my opponent, B.F.S. sits down next to me. We know what each other is on, and he tells me how miserable the match up is for him. I apologize, with every intent to crush. I then win the die roll. By the time he has a single Llanowar Elf in play, my Iona is making sure that he is casting no more green spells for the entire game. On the second game, I mulligan and keep a decent hand, made worse by his turn one Deathrite, followed by turn two Deathrite. I'm dead this game, unless I draw one of my two outs, and even then I still might be dead. My only out is BFS making a glaring mistake, which isn't going to happen, except it does. With four mana in play, me at fifteen, and four dorks, He taps out for Natural Order with no lands in the graveyard. What this means is that if he gets Craterhoof, I'm dead. I force, which he didn't know about (he had Thoughtseized me earlier). However, now all he has are two Deathrites and a Wirewood Symbiote, with no lands in yard. He swings out. I end step entomb and exhume Elesh Norn and that ends an unwinnable game.
1-0
My first match win with Reaimator and I'm feeling really good right now. For the first time ever, I have thirty minutes between rounds. I stand up, walk around, use the restrooms, eat some of my breakfast, and see how my friends are doing. This is a new experience for me!
Finally, the next round is called, and I sit down next to my opponent. He's a really laid back guy, and we get underway. He's on Esper Stoneblade, and we begin a very interesting round. The thing about Reanimator is that games usually break down into one of three ways. Either you had a turn one or two hand with disruption and you win, or you have a bad hand that gets destroyed by their hand disruption and you do nothing, or you have a hand that doesn't involve reanimating a Griselbrand, but something slightly more interactive. I had one of those last hands - the one's that make it so interesting. On my second turn, I resolved Animate Dead on my Tidespout Tyrant, creating a very, very interesting board state. Because Tyrant isn't Legendary, Karakas doesn't bounce it, and because the only way that Esper Stoneblade can interact with it is with Swords to Plowshares, I can cast any instant or sorcery to bounce the Animate Dead and protect my creature. I proceed to do this while using other spells to keep my opponent on two lands the entire game as I slay him from 20 to 0. Game two is weird - usually, it's game two where I need to do obscure things like kill with Tidespout Tyrant, but instead this game I reanimate a turn one or two Griselbrand with protection, and the game ends.
2-0
I again get a nice break, and I'm feeling amazing. My buddies are all doing okay, and I feel like I can't lose.
Round three, I sit down next to another individual I don't know. He wins the die roll and goes T1 Deathrite off of a Badlands. I put him on Jund, and my first turn I Careful Study a Elesh Norn, cast Lotus Petal, and reanimate it. I feel like I can't lose at this point. Then, he goes Scrubland into Swords to Plowshares and I get nervous. He's on Sam Black Zombies, and I'm in trouble, however he spends a few turns doing very little and I'm able to buy time into Griselbrand, which takes me all the way.
Game two looks grim, as he has two Deathrites on his second turn, but on my third turn, I resolve a Pithing Needle, shut off his Deathrites, and reanimate a Griselbrand the same turn to win the game.
3-0
Because this is a 63 man tournament, it means that I probably can't draw in at 4-0, but I keep my hopes up. I enjoy my free time between rounds, elongated because of the lunch break, and go enjoy some good ole' Chinese food. Yum.
I sit down next to my fourth round opponent on the draw, but I keep a quick, aggressive hand. He goes turn one Careful Study, and shows me he is on Dredge. I have turn two Elesh Norn which ends the game for me, but on his second turn, he dredges into double Narco, double Therapy. He goes to Therapy me, and I'm faced with a really interesting decision. My board state is a Delta, and in hand I have a second land, entomb, and two different reanimation spells. If I cast entomb here, he has to hit with both of his therapies on both my reanimation spells, however then any reanimate spell just wins the game for me. If I let it resolve and he names entomb, I most likely lose no matter what. I decide to entomb, and he blind names reanimate, snagging it, and then therapies me again for my exhume. On my turn, I ponder, seeing the Animate Dead, and I hide it, hoping he can't kill me on his next turn. He gets me to eleven, but I resolve Elesh on my third turn and the game ends.
Game two I get worried that he has hate, and I keep a weak hand that just gets run over after seeing a whole lot of nothing and he therapies what little action I have.
Game three I'm on the play and I have a very aggressive Elesh Norn, turn two with multiple ways to protect it, which wins me the match.
4-0!
I find out that there are three other 4-0s, Maverick, Burn, and Dredge. I decide that if I get paired against Dredge or Burn, I'll play, otherwise we can double draw. I get paired against Maverick, and we double draw.
Top 8, here I come. I finish my lunch and meander for two rounds as my friends battle, trying to make it. Joey Manner, Si-Ning, and a few others manage to squeak in, which is awesome.
Top 8 - against Maverick
I get paired up against Maverick, and I cringe when I see his list. Double Karakas is really bad for me main deck, but I'm pretty excited. I get to a board state where I have Tyrant in play, my opponent is at ten, it's my turn, but I'm at six and he has Loxodon Smiter with double Hierarch. I win as long as I can play a spell to bounce his Smiter, otherwise I have to block with Tyrant and I probably lose. I draw a Underground Sea, and my only spell is an Animate Dead with no legal targets. Yuck.
Game two, I made a huge punt and lose. I Show and Tell in Griselbrand and draw seven before O. Ring eats it. The next turn, I can Show and Tell in Terastadon to kill his O-Ring and his Karakas, and just totally overlook the line. It was pathetic and bad play, and I was playing scared, and it cost me the game. That was by far the worst. Everyone was watching, and I just made a mistake I shouldn't have ever made. I was worried he had something to mise me, and I just gave him the match. It was miserable. I felt like I wanted to vomit. I was at five life, and chose to thoughtseize him. As I cast it, I said I guess I just lose if you have Smiter and two lands in his three card hand. Guess what he had?
I'll write more about it later. I'm at work and I'm slightly rushed, but I wanted to get this out there while it was fresh in my mind.
Going Forward
SB:
-2 Thoughtseize
+1 Inkwell Leviathan
+1 Echoing Truth
o4fm0d5l
Hello everyone. My name is Greg Komar and this is my tournament report for the November 3rd Jupiter Games NELC Tournament in which I split the finals with Eli Kassis. For all intensive purposes, he agreed to give me “the win” which is basically just for pride, so thanks for that!
I decided to play Junk, which is basically B/G/W good stuff. I’ve top eighted a handful of times now, all with blue decks, most usually RUG Delver and then again last month with BUG Delver, but I never felt like I was able to win games against some decks and turn one Delver just didn’t seem good enough anymore. With the printing of Deathrite Shaman and Abrupt Decay, I really, really wanted BUG Delver or BUG Control to be “the deck,” the one that would oust RUG Delver as public enemy number one. So far, that hasn’t happened, and likely I don’t think it will. However, my testing with Abrupt Decay and Deathrite really made me a believer that these cards were the real deal and not just hype so, last month when Eli and Tom both showed up with Junk decks and both did well, I decided to hang up my Force of Wills and Brainstorms and start playing Knight of the Reliquaries. I have no regrets. Junk is a incredibly awesome deck. I drove up with Jesse Adams, Bobby Green (I think that’s Bobby’s last name), Dave Rice, David Choa (Again, I think that’s his last name), and a few others, and no one else was on the Deathrite plan. Later that night, after the tournament, we went to get Friday’s with all of them plus Alex Bertochini and his girlfriend, Shannon (I think? Man, I am bad with names…). David Choa and I played a few games and by the end of the dinner, everyone was on the Deathrite plan – even the Bant deck wanted to splash a black dual or two for him. Good card is good, and as Eli said at one point during the tournament, “Every time I played him (Deathrite) turn one, I didn’t lose.” I felt the same way.
As far as the decklist is concerned, I didn’t come up with the shell – I can thank Eli Kassis and Tom Leger for that, but I took what I liked from both of their lists and made a few changes and tweaks with numbers and came up with a list I was very content with. I wanted consistency above all else, so I kept my tutor package limited (I have some regrets about this) and my numbers high. The most variance in my list consisted of the two Mox Diamonds that both Eli and I played, and though I can’t speak for Eli, they won me infinitely more games than I lost from them, including my third game against Si-Ning in the first round of top eight.
Here’s the list:
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
4 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Liliana of the Veil
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Inquisition of Kosilek
3 Thoughtseise
3 Sensei’s Divining Top
2 Mox Diamond
1 Karakas
1 Horison Canopy
1 Bajuka Bog
1 Mase of Ith
2 Scrubland
2 Bayou
1 Savanah
4 Marsh Flats
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Forest
1 Swamp
4 Wasteland
Sideboard:
2 Enlightened Tutor
2 Choke
2 Ethersworn Cannonist
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Duress
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Golgari Charm
1 Zealous Persecution
1 Darkblast
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Stony Silence
There are definitely some changes that I would make, and I will happily discuss those afterwards. For now, I’d like to get into the games. I make some mistakes at times, which while embarrassing, happens, but I also play tight when I need to and based on my results, it paid off.
Match 1: Hollywood on Manaless Dredge
Hollywood beat me in the first round of Top Eight last month when I was on BUG Delver. I know exactly what he’s playing, and I am both concerned and content. On one hand, I know how insane Deathrite Shaman is against Hollywood, plus I have a maindeck Bog, but at the same time, Manaless Dredge can sometimes just win games from literally nowhere, so it’s not like I felt like I couldn’t lose, but I certainly didn’t feel like this would be a free win.
Game One: I win the die roll and I happily put him on the play. I keep a hand with turn one Deathrite Shaman and some other action, and keep. Hollywood takes his turn which consists of him saying pass. I draw my card and take a moment before slamming Deathrite. At this point, my hand is Deathrite + Inquisition, which means if I Inquisition him now, I take a card that doesn’t matter and he gets time walked again. I Inquisition him (there’s a Thoughtseise still in my hand) and see a hand of irrelevant spells that I can’t target, two street wraiths, and a dredger or two. I don’t remember what I take, but it’s a non-dredger, non-relevant spell. He draws, comments on how it was a good one, and passes. I play Deathrite, and I’m pretty sure I just win from there by applying some threats and keeping his dredgers off the board.
Game Two: I’m on the play and my hand is Thoughtseise, Inquisition, Knight, Land, Land, Land, Land, none of which are Bogs. I go first, Inquisition, take something irrelevant and pass. He draws and passes. I draw, Thoughtseise, take something irrelevant, and pass. He draws and passes. I draw, play knight and pass. He knows that I play at least one bog, but put me on more than one because Eli is playing three in his Junk deck. On his turn, he comments on how his draw was very good, and discards Phantasmagorican, which is his best card in this position. However, I think because of his concern of multiple Bogs, he plays it slower than he has to, I don’t bog until is absolutely needed (after one of his draw steps so that he wastes more dredges) and I win from there, though on the last turn apparently if he had dredged the absolute perfect five off an imp, he would have won (scary stuff). I think I may have slightly confused some lines between game one and game two, so Hollywood when/if you read this, please feel free to correct me. That being said, playing against Hollywood is always a pleasure. His jovial attitude is a welcome respite against the antisocial negative nancy’s of the magic community.
1-0
Match Two: Chris Scagnelli playing Bant.
I know what Chris is on because the night before I helped him with his deck. I know that this is a favorable matchup going into it, and throught the entire game we were joking around and having a good time. This was a feature match which can be seen on Jupiter’s website, and I won in a close two games which you can watch there. Every time he has a threat, I always have an answer. He’s never in either of the games at all. After game two, he showed me his board, which confused the hell out of me. He brought in Engineered Explosives and Rest in Peaces to kill my guys and shrink my knights, but this line also kills his guys and shrinks his knights, plus dilutes his threat count. I think one of the reasons I won so handily in game two was that he never had any threats, ever.
2-0
Match Three: BFS playing Combo Elves
Brian had asked me for cards going into the tournament, so I should have known what he was on, but I totally forgot. As we were shuffling up, I started remembering that he wanted Surgical Extractions, then Karakas, so I put him on Esper or Maverick or something, then he plays Forest into Llanowar Elf and I remember him also wanted a Mirror Entity. Whoops. It ends up not mattering as I have a reasonable hand and he doesn’t really get to stabalise. The game is entirely in my favor, and at one point my board is Knight x2, each with over fourteen power, two Deathrite Shaman, and three lands. Brian has forest, forest, Nettle Sentinel with two cards in hand. That’s a total of six cards after he draws. On his turn, he had over twenty permanents in play. While I’m not a combo elves player, the series of events that occurred went from somewhere along the lines of glimpse with two cards in hand, play a Quirion Ranger, bounce forest, replay forest for mana, drew a heritage druid off the draw from glimpse, and continues to go off. Must be nice... At the end of the game, there is no more than ten minutes in the round and we need to play fast to finish. Needless to say, I’m pretty much on super tilt as the winner of this round just needs to win one more match.
In game two, I keep an aggressive keep with removal, a turn one Dark Confidant off of mox diamond, and I proceed to keep him off spells while playing a Knight and other relevant threats and win the game in no more than five minutes.
We go into game three with two minutes on the clock. I mulligan a trash heap of a hand and keep a sketchy, sketchy hand that basically is mono-removal, not willing to risk mulling even more. He fails to kill me in turns and I fail to kill him. We wish each other luck and continue on in our tournament. Though I am 2-0-1 at this point, my last match has me tilted.
2-0-1
Match Four: Eli Kassis on Junk
I know Eli is on Junk going into this tournament because he was one of the people I based my deck off of. We go to three games, and while I’d like to give you a more detailed report, my memory is totally shot. I win game one because I have all the answers at the right times, and then in games two and three it’s the opposite. I don’t really think I made any glaring mistakes at all, but I’m pretty convinced that these games are very much based on drawing right more so than skill (obviously not saying that skill isn’t a factor, as Eli played well, as is typical). Our games were jovial, similar to my games against Hollywood, except Eli is slightly more serious than Hollywood is, and we discussed deck lists and changes and such. Overall, it was a really good opportunity to see how another person might pilot the deck and I think I learned a lot from that match, despite being on serious life tilt and feeling like top eight was out of my reach at this point.
2-1-1
Match Five: Ethan on Miracles
Ethan is a super cool guy from Rochester, however I heard earlier that he was going to be moving away and that this was his last NELC. I was slightly guilty that I had to play against him, because a) I had a good matchup and b) when any gregarious regular is leaving the area, it’s sort of nice to have them go out with a bang.
Game One: Despite what I thought about my matchup, I got rolled. Ethan had an early lock with top and balance and resolved an early Jace. My Liliana was just too slow, and he aggressively ultimate me out of the game, countering everything I threw at him and making me feel totally outclassed. Ethan is a good player and anyone that has ever watched him play Belcher online or in person should know this.
Game Two and Three: I win these games, though I never felt like I was winning. Despite not overextending at any point in these two games, I always felt like he could easily Terminus me at any point, and it was here that I realized that a good miracles player always has the Terminus, whether or not he actually has it. As in, it doesn’t matter if the miracles player actually has Terminus, because you are always going to think that there is a Terminus on top of their deck, and there were turns where I prayed for him to whiff, and he did. The only time I actually felt like I was ahead was in game three the turn before he died where he actually cracked a fetch to look at more cards with top and I knew he didn’t have the answers. I know this isn’t the most exciting recollection of the game ever, and it’s a shame because we both played very, very well, but highlights include ripping the one of Gaddock Teeg the turn before he wiped out my board with an Engineered Explosives that was in his graveyard that he was planning on recurring with his Academy Ruins and resolving the next turn to blow me out. That was in game three I believe. Game two I resolved a turn two Dark Confidant off of protection that carried me into the late game with enough fuel to restock after the Terminus that never came.
I felt pretty bad knocking Ethan off of the Top 8 Train, but I wanted this badly as well, and Ethan was pretty cool about it. I’m going to miss doing block battles bud, have a safe and happy trip back home and we’ll have to battle on MTGO sometime, eh?
3-1-1
Match Six: Ryan Phramer playing BUG Delver
I knew what Ryan was on because last month I played BUG Delver and as a BUG and Delver fanatic, I had looked at his list and knew what he could do. Before the match I bragged about how I think Confidant is bad in that type of deck and that I thought I had a favorable matchup. I then proceeded to make two major mistakes in this game that should have cost me the game.
Game One: Ryan sticks two early confidants, while I only have one, however I have an active knight for a long time, despite him drawing an extra card every turn. Eventually, I decide that I’m going to shut off his mana as much as I can and then kill him from Bob triggers, however given this is my plan, I make the mistake of shuffling away a top. Despite this one mistake, I played super tight all game and I felt good about my play, but because I’m not a Sensei’s Top player, I just totally undervalued how important it would have been for that game. Unfortunately, drawing three cards a turn makes it so that I can’t actually shut him off of green and the Tarmogoyfs keep coming. The turn that I’m going to die, Ryan is at six with one Confidant in play, flips the one Jace he has left in his deck, and I proceed to kill him with Deathrite Shaman. Ryan was understandably tilted, but it felt good to have the karma gods give back to me after my round three match against Elves.
Game Two: Ryan is saying how his tournament is over, etc, etc, and for some reason I felt like I just wanted to shuffle up as fast as possible and make sure we have a full game two. I sideboarded miserably, kept a miserably hand, and was miserably destroyed when he played around Choke all game. Basically, I gave him an out to win game three with very little time left. It was super, super awkward.
Game Three: Ryan and I play at a brisk pace, but this game goes how I thought games one and two would go – I assemble a quick threat base, use my cheap removal to keep his board clear, and make sure to discard his removal. Everything goes as planned, and the game is over in short, short work. That’s the beautiful thing about this deck – it’s very well balanced, so against fair decks, you have a solid about of disruption, removal, and difficult to answer threats. And just like that, I was in Top 8 with a deck I’d never played before! Woo!
First Round Of Top 8: Si-Ning with TES
Game One: I knew going into this that I was on the back foot. It didn’t help that Ning was going first because he was higher in the breakers. I kept a meh hand with turn one Deathrite which is normally the nuts, but he proceeded to kill me promptly on his second turn by tendrilsing me for infinite.
Okay, this was expected. I slump in my chair and proceed to sideboard in eleven cards.
Game Two: I keep a saucy hand with a hand disruption spell, a confidant, and an enlightened tutor (I believe.) Because I go first, I go turn one hand disruption and see he has the turn one win again, but take him off of it. Despite the hand disruption, if he draws well, I’m still just dead. However, he draws ponder. At this point, I drop confidant, and on my upkeep, I tutor in response to the trigger and draw my canonist and something else. From there, he can’t keep up with my disruption and threats.
Game Three: My hand is perfect. I have turn one Thalia. That is all I can ask for against him. All I need to do is get one turn. Ning mulls and I begin to think that I’m going to win. Ning mulls again and I let out a loud cheer. He doesn’t kill me, and I land the Thalia and it isn’t close from there. Afterwards, I profusely apologized to Ning, not for winning, but for the fact that I cheered when he mulled. I’d like to think that I’m a nice person to play against, and I felt like the biggest of tools after that. I offered to buy him lunch or anything, but he wouldn’t have it, however he seemed much more laid back about it than I did. Either way, he’s getting lunch on me next month, whether he likes it or not.
Second Round of Top 8: Tibbetts with UW Stoneblade
This was a feature match which you can watch online. I make a huge punt and run out a turn one confidant into his open white because I figured that if he didn’t have the swords, I’d just win on the spot. It was a risky, risky play that I didn’t need to make, especially because I could have just run out the turn one discard spell. However, I still stuck the game out super long, but died to Jace’s card advantage.
In games two and three, I played super tight. Whereas game one was the Jace game, games two and three were Liliana games. Game two I ultimate with Liliana which felt insane, and then in game three, I ultimate with Liliana, twice. It was pretty sick. This was a strange game for one reason though – my opponent had a lot of “takesie backsies” with brainstorms and a few other things – nothing major that would have been considered cheating, but had I not been in a great mood, I could have been a total chump to him, and a few people had very strange faces as they watched when I allowed him to do this without calling a judge. I definitely should have, but like I said, I never felt like I was losing in games two and three because I just played like I was supposed to and not like a durdle. My opponent was a nice enough individual and at the end, it certainly felt like an epic match.
After I won, Eli came in and said that we were in the finals and offered the split. I accepted on the condition that I was given first place. He double checked to make sure that it didn’t actually matter accept to my pride, and was fine with it. Was it the win I wanted? Maybe not, but it still felt incredible. I’ve been grinding these for a long, long time, and I’d like to think that after the almost two years that I’ve been going to NELCs that I’ve become a regular face by now. I love the Jupiter Games magic community and the players that make it excellent, and this was such a reassuring, rewarding victory. I felt like though I made mistakes, I was really rewarded when I played tight, and that’s all I could ask for.
If I were to play this tomorrow, here are my changes.
Maindeck:
-1 Marsh Flats
-1 Inquisition
-1 Horizon Canopy
+1 Scrubland
+1 Windswept Heath
+1 Thoughtseise
Sideboard:
-1 Enlightened Tutor
-1 Nihil Spellbomb
+1 Worldly Tutor
+1 Bojuka Bog
Here’s why:
Maindeck, I needed a seventh land for Knight. Canopy was just bad for me on the day – not because the lifeloss was relevant, but because I usually just sacrificed it to try and find a land for knight to eat up when I drew it naturally. Inquisition is also just worse than Thoughtseise. In several matchups, had I drawn Inquisition, I would have died. Against Hollywood in round one, because I had double Inquisition, it was much closer than it ever should have been.
In the sideboard, I always wanted at least a second Bog. Worldly Tutor also gets me Thalia and Teeg against combo which is when I need to bring the tutor package in.
All in all, Saturday was so insane. I had such a great time, the drive back was so much fun, the guys I drove with were hilarious, and it was pretty exciting seeing my grinding finally coming to fruition. I’m sorry if my report isn’t the best, and not the most detailed – I hadn’t really expected to get as far as I did, and I just didn’t take notes. Sorry guys! That being said, I hope I was able to relive some of more epic moments of the day. I’ll see you all next month.
Komar
http://jupitergamesonline.com/2011/883/greg-komars-tournament-report
Price and playing Stifle and Wasteland. It's tough, because sometimes you play against decks that just don't play basics and you poop on them, and sometimes you have a card in your hand that just doesn't do anything. I was originally on the price plan, but it doesn't give you as much room to maneuver. In addition, you win just as many games, if not more, from having stifle and wasteland as you do from having price. Plus, with all the spells snares being played, price is just another target. I think one of the main advantages to playing the straight U/R version of Stifle / Wasteland (as opposed to playing green) is that all of these other decks that play Spell Snare basically have one target in the entire deck, which is Snapcaster. I don't know about you, but if I can almost blank four cards in my opponents deck while forcing them to fetch basics and play around stifle, I'm pretty content with that.
So my full report will probably be up today or tomorrow at Jupiter Games' website at Jupitergames.net, but on Saturday, 12/3/11, Doug McKay piloted a very similar deck to the UR Delver Aggro deck that won Sunday, 12/4/11, to a top 8. I piloted a different U/R Delver deck to a top 4, losing to a RUG Delver deck that ended up winning the entire thing. My deck opted not to play Price of Progress and Fireblasts, instead choosing to go for the Stifle Wasteland route. Here's my list:
Main deck:
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Delver of Secrets
3 Grim Lavamancer
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Chain Lightning
2 Dismember
4 Stifle
4 Brainstorm
3 Preordain
4 Force of Will
3 Spell Pierce
3 Daze
2 Island
1 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Wasteland
4 Volcanic Island
Sideboard:
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Smash to Smithereens
2 Shattering Spree
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pyroblast
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Submerge
This was just short of a 100 man tournament, and most big legacy players on the east coast know Jupiter Games. James won GP Providence for us and Eli Kassis used to own the store. These are not lightweight tournaments, by any means. Just to throw it out there, now that I'm sure people will start talking about it, I'm 99% sure that the U/R Snapcaster deck that plays Price and Goblin Guide was grandfathered in the November Jupiter Games NELC Legacy Tournament by Doug McKay - I just want to make sure he gets the credit he deserves, he is the man when it comes to deck design.
Again, my report is being edited and when it's done it'll be on Jupiter's site and I'll be more than happy to post a link for you all to read.
Thanks,
Greg Komar
My name is Dyvith, and I've had a fair share of practice with BUG Pod pre-rotation. I've 4-0ed a few dailies and 3-1ed many more.
This is my list, and I'll try and elaborate on some choices.
4 Birds
3 Llanowar Elf
CMC2:
2 Emissary
2 Phantasmal Image
1 Spellskite
CMC3:
1 Glissa
1 Skaab Ruinator
2 Sylvok Replica
CMC4:
1 Evil Twin
1 Metamorph
1 Skinrender
1 Entomber Exarch
1 Master Thief
1 Solemn
2 Acidic Slime
1 Banshee
CMC6:
1 Massacre Wurm
1 Consecrated Sphinx
1 Grave Titan
4 Ponder
4 Pods
4 U/G Dual
4 G/B Dual
4 Darkslick Shores
7 Forest
2 Island
2 Swamp
There is no sideboard yet. People with sideboards at this point are jumping the gun, as there is no known meta. For those going to states, I implore you to expect a lot of Pod hate post board and to plan accordingly.
Choices:
Landbase:
The lands are not perfect. Playing around with the number of basics is what I'm spending most of my time with. I'm also debating playing drowned catacomb instead of a Swamp and an Island. Also trying to analyze the right amount of Forests. Only more playtesting will tell.
CMC 1:
3 Llanowar Elves is alot. My reasoning for playing three is this - even on turn 2 or 3 if I miss an untapped green source, Elves always get me my mana. As much as I like Emissary in an aggressive format, you need to be sure that you'll get your mana when you need it.
CMC2:
Spellskite is going to be very important as artifact removal becomes more prominent.
CMC3:
Slyvok Replica, unlike Viridian Corrupter answers far more cards. As the format slows down, this card becomes much more powerful.
Ruinator is a house, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Glissa, similar to Spellskite, will become better as removal goes up.
My computer is about to die, I'll post the rest later.
Please use deck tags. Verbal Warning.
Master Thief is a preemptive attempt to answer the mirror and anything using swords. I expect the majority of the meta to be these decks.
Catacombs are extra insurance. The problem with bug is that you must mulligan hands without green or blue so playing swamps is bad. Having the catacombs is just to increase the amount of keepable hands.
Also, as far as the low amount of threes, ideally you either use ruinator, or just use images to skip threes all together unless absolutely needed. Hence why half of our threes are strictly utility and glissa is mainly only good when we need to recur another pod, or replicas
This is the list I've been brewing for BUG, but it's far from complete. A complete spoiler, as well as a good hard look at what's available is the only thing that will allow the Pod decks to come up with a solid, finite "good" list.
BUG POD:
LANDS (23):
4 U/G Dual
4 B/G Dual
4 Darkslick Shores
2 Drowned Catacomb
1 Swamp
1 Island
7 Forest
Creatures:
CMC 1:
4 Birds
2 Llanowar
CMC 2:
2 Phantasmal Image
3 Emissary
1 Spellskite
CMC 3:
1 Glissa
1 Skaab
2 Slyvok Replica
CMC 4:
1 Evil Twin
1 Metamorph
1 Solemn
1 Entomber Exarch
1 Skinrender
1 Master Thief
CMC 5:
1 Morkrut Banshee
2 Acidic Slime
CMC 6:
1 Grave Titan
1 Massacre Wurm
1 Consecrated Sphinx
CMC 7:
Sheoldred
4 Ponder
4 Pod
Notes on this deck:
I built this expecting a metagame dominated by two things: creatures, and artifacts. To handle creatures, we have viridian emissary, which is amazing in a creature heavy meta, we have glissa, which is useful both because she wins every fight and because she recurs pods. At four, we have skinrender and the banshee at five. At six, we have the wurm, or grave titan, depending on what the board looks like.
On the other hand, I anticipate an artifact heavy meta. Swords are still around, as are opposing pods, and tempered steel. To combat these decks, we have 2 sylvok replica - these could be Viridian Corrupters instead but I liked the flexibility of being able to kill O.Ring. At four, we have Master Thief, which turns Pod Mirrors on their head, and is amazing at stealing swords. Stealing one of Tempered Steel's creatures is never bad either, or opposing Spellskites. At five, we have Slime, which is both amazing in creature wars and sniping key cards in your opponents field. At six and seven, we stop seeing artifact hate.
There are a few cards that I'm probably not going to run. Spellskite is a universally good card, but might not be good enough. Spellskite's usefulness is directly related to the amount of artifact and creature removal running around, the more there is the better spellskite is.
Entomber Exarch, pre rotation, was one of the main reasons to go BUG because it was so good against control and combo. Now, with there being to real control deck and no real combo deck in the format (unless you want to call Pod combo), it's much less effective. As a gravedigger, there are probably better things we can be doing, like getting solemn or skinrender.
Evil Twin is slightly iffy. Metamorph is better in the sense that it's more versatile and cheaper, but something about being able to kill it's image just seems very potentially good.
Skaab Ruinator fills a very particular role. For one, all of our four drops are singletons, meaning that each one is very good at a specific role. Skaab Ruinator fills the roll of a recurring 3 drop, to help us find our 4s. This is not to be underestimated in the Pod decks, as the easiest way for us to lose is for our chains to get disrupted. Not only that, but in a format where Mirran Crusader will probably be rampant, Ruinator is a very good blocker.
Master Thief is also on the fence. With Pod decks, alot of deckbuilding comes with a compromise. Consistency Vs Versatility. Master Thief is incredibly versatile. Some games it will completely turn everything on its head, from stealing a Pod, sword, or metamorph, where as in other games it has literally zero targets. It's the type of card that is very much a metagame call.
Viridian Emissary is really only good in creature heavy metagames, when you can block with it or trade it, while still ramping. Considering how creature heavy this format looks to be, I can see making it a four-of. Aggro can be rough for BUG Pod unless we are able to establish an early board presence. Emissary allows us to do so.
Consecrated Sphinx is a very good card. It may not be good in this deck. In attrition based games, Sphinx can literally turn a game on it's head, however there is no guarantee that this format turns into attrition based games. We just can't be sure yet. Also, Sphinx blocks almost every sword your opponent throws at you, considering Body/Mind sees little play. Also, it survives dismember.
Replica is one card i've been most on the fence with. In old standard, it was very important to be able to blow up an artifact on the turn this creature came down, so instead we ran Viridian Corrupter. Based on how much play O.Ring sees, and how good artifacts are, this slot will change. I will say that playing two cards at CMC 3 are probably needed to deal with problem artifacts / enchantments. Also, Replica deals with Torpor Orb, where Corrupter and Slime do not.
I have a decent amount of experience with the deck. I've 4-0ed and 3-1ed almost ten dailies with BUG Pod about three weeks back, before dropping it due to bad Twin matchups. The biggest bonus to BUG Pod is how almost every bad matchup rotates. I'd be hard pressed to find a deck that this deck auto folds too, besides an aggresive combo deck.
Hope this helps and provides some insight into BUG Pod and Pod in general.
Sincerely,
Dyvith
Pros of Spellskite Vs. Hawk in Mirror:
Spellskite can block a mystic with a sword of war/peace + not die. Can also block a mystic with f+f and not die.
Spellskite can keep your mystics from being tapped via tumble, or condemned if you swing with the spellskite too.
Cons of Spellskite vs Hawk in the mirror:
Spellskite can't block hawk
Spellskite doesn't find copies of itself
Spellskite can't do crazy library manipulating shenanigans with Jace
So there you have it. Spellskite does some things better and some things worse, and while obviously not having hawk in the mirror is in fact worse, it doesnt change the fact that having spellskite main allows you to run better cards in general. In my oppinion, all of these lists running 6-7 jace in the main are just diluting their deck. Beleren is no Mind Scultor, and it seems weak to run 6 all the time. Theyre really only good in control mirrors, and I'm just not sold on their applications in the maindeck.
4 Spellskite
4 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Elesh Norn
1 Sword of W+P
1 Sword of F+F
1 Batterskull
4 Jace, TMS
2 Gideon Jura
4 Preordain
4 Spell Pierce
4 Mana Leak
2 Tumble Magnet
2 Into the Roil
4 Inkmoth Nexus
4 Tectonic Edge
4 Seachrome Coast
4 Celestial Colonade
3 Glacial Fortress
3 Island
3 Plains
1 Scalding Tarn
SB:
2 Divine Offering
2 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Mortarpod
2 Day of Judgement
2 Jace Beleren
2 Flashfreeze
2 Twisted Image
2 Condemn