Road to MOCS 2014 Day 4 (2 QP)

I couldn't make it at night on Saturday so I tried waking up early instead. Unfortunately, I suppose many of the players were at the PT or something for there to be so few players in the morning timeslot that used to fire frequently. I joined and the count dwindled down from 12. I have no idea why people just cannot seem to wait for 20 mins before leaving to see if people would fill up. The legacy DE following that had 15 people (I could not play in that) and it too dwindled into oblivion.

In any case, I managed to get into a Vintage DE at night.

Round 1, I am facing a blue deck and I win game 1 on the back of Library of Alexandria.

Game 2, I face Library on my side and get whopped when my opponent has a boatload of counters.
Game 3, my mediocre spells do not do much against an unstopped slew of powerful spells.

Round 2, I face a bob deck and I get a landful hand but all my Underground Seas get Wastelanded and my opponent resolves Ancestral Recall and I struggle to do anything.

Next game, I get a Deathrite Shaman out but my land gets Wastelanded and I do not resolve Ancestral Recall. Deathrite Shaman died to Abrupt Decay and I lose in a short order.

0-2 drop.

I then join a Legacy DE with a Punishing Fires-less build of my control deck.

I face merfolk in round 1, losing game 1 without getting my green mana and I mess up game 2 where I would have gotten a turn 3 Marit Lage token if I did not use my Deathrite Shaman. =/

Might be some mental fatigue from losing 2 rounds in Vintage.

Round 2, I face elves which kills me game 1 with a Natural order into a RG guy who deals 6 damage if the opponent casts a non-creature spell. I cast Intuition for triple Jace, went down to 1 life and a Darkblast for his Wirewood Symbiote but he had a Dryad Arbor show up and end it.
Game 2, I have a very strong removal heavy hand with counters. I kill a bunch of creatures and I managed to take the game when my lands miraculously show up at the best possible timings.
Game 3, I use Toxic Deluge twice and my opponent gives up.

Round 3 is against UW miracles and I lose game 1 to 2x Angel tokens.
Game 2, I get to an overwhelming position with Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Life from the loam. I try not to reveal my tricks as I easily finish the opponent off with Deathrite Shamans.
Game 3, I lose a counter war for Keranos and I almost lose the game (vs an active Jace) but I draw Maelstrom Pulse and my Isochron Scepter plus Counterspell lets me get back into the game. It drags out to the point where I offload counters of Dark Depths but I need about 2 more seconds to initiate the attack with my Marit Lage token but I time out. Zzz.

Miserable day. I think I would need to relook at my Vintage deck. I do have a Standstill deck on standby so maybe that might do better. =/ Oh well, no returns today.

Road to MOCS 2014 Day 2 (2 QP)

Went 3-1 today in a morning Legacy DE (I count it as yesterday as I might be able to do something tonight).

Round 1, I won elves that did not seem to have Natural Order.

Managed to get Marit Lage out game one and Creeping Tar Pit to deal 23 damage while playing very defensively against the 4 mana 5/5 championing elf.
The shock of the day was from Punishing Fire not triggering at all.
Game 2 was also quite tough but I managed to stabilize after using Engineered Explosives to take out his 3 1 drops and my Deathrite Shaman and getting Isochron Scepter and Liliana online.

Round 2, I won game 1 against a very unusual opening from my opponent but I manage to find out that my opponent is playing the Summoning Trap Cloudpost deck.

Games 2 and 3, my opponent resolves a quick Primeval Titan and I lose in a quick fashion.

Round 3, I meet Storm which whiffs (probably mistook his Cabal Therapy for an Infernal Tutor/Grim Tutor) and I win without much effort from there. Game 2, He casts Dark Confidant which I Force of Will but he resolves another. Life from the Loam plus Wasteland keeps him out of lands and I slowly control with some discard plus Deathrite Shaman.

In my final round, I face BUG which would be a better matchup if Punishing Fires isn't spoilt.
I win game 1 and I get grinded out game 2 with a similar board position of no cards, 3 lands and 2 Deathrite Shaman. However, I draw lands while he drew business and I did not make it from there. I managed to Maelstrom Pulse his Bitterblossom.
Game 3, I get Hymn to Tourached but I did not discard Keranos which I drew a land to resolve. Keranos plus Liliana is hard to beat. He drops Bitterblossom #2 which I contemplate on whether or not I should use my Golgari Charm to kill one or use the -1/-1 later on while burning him for 3 60% of the time and him taking 2 damage a turn. I chose to destroy one to prevent the game from going into a position where he can come back with counters and he scoops.

Road to MOCS 2014 Day 1 (1 QP)

Day 1 (1/8/14)
I got back to find out that the Vintage DE was empty.
So I loaded up my Legacy deck and played in the 10pm DE.
I tried out the Innistrad Garruk in my 15th slot.

Round 1 vs Elves
I won game 1 due to the opponent not having much other than a Quirion Ranger and me having removal.
I won a narrow game 2 because my opponent attacked into my Creeping Tar Pit with his Wirewood Symbiote, probably too obsessed with the Snapcaster Mage in my hand. I struggled to not die to Deathrite Shaman and my Toxic Deluges nor my Polluted Delta could be used at 1 life.

Round 2 vs Counterbalance
I won game 1 with a natural draw of the Marit Lage combo.
I had Force of Will in hand and blue cards to pitch.
Game 2, I won with an overwhelming board presence. It's quite tough to beat this setup.

Round 3 vs Storm
Game 1, he Thoughtseizes me and I hid a Counterspell on the top of the deck.
He went off that turn.
Game 2, I have semi reactive hand and my opponent ends up with Ad Nauseum not getting gas. I used Surgical Extraction on Dark Ritual to limit my opponent's options as I had Spell Snare in hand to prevent the next 2 mana spell (Cabal Ritual).
Game 3, I keep a questionable hand hoping that he plays slow. He doesn't and tries to go off turn 1. If I had Surgical Extraction or my Mindbreak Trap or Force of Will in hand, I would have won. Risky play on his end that turned out well.

Round 4 vs Workshops
I lose game 1, getting lead around by Lightning Greaves, Lodestone Golem, the tinkering construct into Sundering Titan (and I tried to get back with True Name Nemesis) but Wurmcoil Engine came down.
Game 2, I Abrupt Decay a Grim Monolith, Liliana a Metalworker and cast Garruk while my opponent loses lands to City of Traitors and my Wasteland messing it even more.
Game 3, I have a slow hand against his slow hand. I end up Intuitioning for 3x Jace but somehow clicked on Liliana for one of them but my opponent gives me Jace anyway and ends up regretting as he had Wurmcoil Engines. I get lucky with my opponent's inactivity and manage to Thoughtseize plus flashback on Sundering titan and the Forgemaster. With Jace in play, it's hard to come back on Wurmcoil Engines.

My first QP of the season and 2 miserable Vintage Master packs. (The payout is so bad.)

Anyway, you can catch me streaming the DE live on http://www.twitch.tv/tarmotog.

I'll tweet that I'm streaming if I am so follow me at https://twitter.com/wnatog

August is so daunting!

It's a day before August and there is a whole bunch of things going on to make me busy.

There are WMCQs going on in real life (which I am qualified to enter), the is a Legacy big event on the 31st, there is the Legacy MOCS this month and the Vintage Masters Championships. 

To sort things out for myself, I looked at the schedule of things to come.

13 ~ 19 Aug - Vintage Masters Limited Qualifiers

17 Aug - WMCQ (PSB) - Standard

20 ~ 28 Aug - Vintage Masters Constructed Qualifiers

23 Aug - Vintage Masters Limited Championships
30 Aug - Vintage Masters Constructed Championships

31 Aug - WMCQ (SG Cards) - Standard / Legacy tourney (why would the same place organize two supposedly big events??)

3-5 Sep - MOCS qualifiers

6 Sep - MOCS Legacy

14 Sep - WMCQ (PSB) - Standard

That is quite a hectic month if I were to go into the various events.
Realistically, I can try to catch some events at night. Vintage is at 8.30pm if it fires and Legacy is usually 10pm from what I recall. I would not be able to do much Legacy given that it would usually last till around 2am and I wake up at 6.30am on a daily basis.

Starting today is the new MOCS season so I would need to clock 15 QPs if I want to qualify for the MOCS qualifier. 15 QPs means I have to clock 1 QP every 2 days. So far, my Vintage grinding is not going too well. With my recent re-emergence into Legacy, I suspect that the Legacy side is posting better results than my Vintage side.

In a recent Vintage DE, I tested out welder and have some screenshots.
It came down to fighting artifacts against spells.
I lost to the explosiveness of Gush but I have a strong game against fairer decks.
Welder has some strong interactions but it does not have as strong a comeback as Gush decks so I think I would want to go back to working on it rather than to move out and test.

In Legacy, I have been using my "4c control deck" (for the lack of a better name) and I am doing comfortably.
I am testing out sideboard options which includes Keranos, the M15 squid and most recently, Grave Titan.
I figured that Grave Titan would singlehandedly win the Jund matchup once resolved but it seems to only do that (if I do get to cast it). On the other hand, Keranos is wonderful in grindy matchups and squid has its fair share of being good and not so I am still on the fence.
I am losing to outlier decks more than to the established decks but I do not have a good way around that.
In any case, I should be trying to think of how to schedule my time to clock some games in.
I heard that fetchlands are expensive now so I will use my spares as warfunds. =)

Vintage Reflections

I've been playing Vintage DEs every third day. So far, it has not been a smooth road. (There is the payout issue where 3-1 used to mean 3 more attempts versus 2 at the moment).
I'm currently tweaking my Gush deck which is currently in its second iteration.

Other than the times where I get bad hands and have to fight through blowout plays, I have had a fair share of unwarranted losses (Was winning my second round, just had to cast a Voltaic Key with Mental Misstep and Mana Drain backup against an already worn out opponent when only WOTC sites and MTGO, both new and old client stopped responding. That guy went proceeded to go 4-0 with his Gush deck that had the 1GG creature from standard. It is hard enough to make it into the money without getting blown out and when I get a legit chance shit happens. =/ ), a couple from not having enough time from being summoned pre/mid game (I gave a game to the humans guy from not being able to do a Yawgmoth's Will turn well due to stress from the clock after coming back from being called out and eventually lost to time out and that Humans player went 4-0 too). (Yesterday I lost to Merfolk due to timeout as well - Tinkered into a Blightsteel Colossus when Time Vault would have sufficed but still lost to timeout anyway).

Surprisingly, my deck seems to go into the late game quite a fair bit and that is where Mana Crypt starts to bite me hard. I lost a couple of games to it being in play. I'm not too sure what to make of this as Mana Crypt is a very crucial component to early turn 1 blowouts. I suspect that I might want to relook at this (or maybe replace it with a Mox Pearl).

In any case, I am tinkering with my sideboard to make it more anti-workshops and I have condensed my dredge hate to 2x Extirpate + 2x Surgical Extraction. Extirpate is surprisingly effective in the current metagame where dredge has evolved to deal with most of the common dredge hate. Unfortunately, Extirpate + Snapcaster mage is very difficult for dredge to beat. The game plan is usually as follows: Extirpate Bridge from below, extirpate Bloodghast. A third on Narcomoeba / Ichorid should seal the deal.
I do not have an exact understanding on whether or not it should be 4x Extirpate or can Surgical Extraction work as well. Some builds do run Mental Misstep and Extirpate cares not about that.
I managed to pull off 2 games with the Extirpate sequence.

I am looking at perfecting the anti-workshop build but I have not come to a point whereby I am unbeatable to shops. It is still very difficult to wade through Lodestone Golem and spheres. Their blowout sequences are aplenty and it is hard to get around them (unless they have a mana-ful hand). I hope not to have to choose to run Ingot Chewers (because I feel that Ancient Grudge is technically superior and Nature's Claim hits Oath of Druids and can be Snapcastered).

I am also looking also trying out the various underplayed powerhouses of the format.
Gifts Ungiven is such a beating when the opponent is light on counters.
Thirst for Knowledge is not bad too. I have not tried Fact or Fiction in Vintage but I did get hit by it against Control Slaver which simply made me split 5-0. So sick.

Cardfight Vanguard: Lock On Victory Passwords

There are certain promo cards in the game that are only accessible with passwords, as in the previous Ride On Victory. When you use the code, you get 4x of each copy and this code is not restricted to one person's usage. 

Updated  7/10 with the final 2 cards, passwords are all completed.

1) たぬそいをんなし - Nightfall Star-vader, Darmstadtium

2) けすされへひき - Storm Bring Dragon
3) わくんりへもら - Chain Blast Dragon
4) ねかもあのみり - Dimensional Robo, Kaiser Grader
5) めるこさなおうあ - Unbeatable Mutant, Abectrozeus
6) めへねわけさこ - Apprentice Idol, Karen
7) はおぽくはあぞ (watch out for the o and " to add) - Blaster Blade Burst
8) らにがじげおどん (watch out for the " to add) - Kuraudia
9) もすかろしつね - Minivan Sleeves

10) なてひかそねた - Minivan Sleeves

11) なあおわちみむめ - Minivan Sleeves
12) まりめしちとれ - Minivan Sleeves

13) るさへほねきすお - Shine Spear Liberator, Reinet
14) たけちるむきせ - Binary Star Twin Gunner

15) けさみよんをて - Knight of Extravagance, Toulouse 

16) ろすふひんえへ - Minivan Sleeves
17) けせそはおさすひ - Minivan Sleeves
18) すくよてろえまこ - Minivan Sleeves
19) へぬろにつすゆか - Minivan Sleeves 

20) まろちさゆてな - Papilugal
21) とにりうかなえん - Partner Edge Dragoon

22) をらさちすかしひ - Seeker of Bravery, Ars

23) んちまるせふすり - Pentagonal Magus
24) きれすやくむふ - Gust Blaster Dragon

25) きをしちまよは - Minivan sleeves
26) おのわえりさそを- Minivan sleeves

27) のゆいえほせめ - Alluring Succubus
28) せきしよいたるも - CEO Amaterasu

Vintage Start!

2x VMA sealed and 1x Vintage DE!

Got a natural 4-0. Did not offer to split this time since it was the first DE of the season. A double Saproling Burst is hard to beat. Too bad Sol Ring did not turn up fast enough to throw games into my favor.

3-1.
Lost round 1 to a play where I had Dack's Duplicante copying a white 2/2 flier at 3 power and Deftblade Elite + Brilliant Halo.
My opponent was at 5 life and I had Solar Blast in hand.
My opponent was wide open and I attacked with only the duplicate which became 4/4 and got hit by a Radiant's Judgment so I missed the opening to win and lost the game.

I had trouble deciding how the deck should be made as red is quite deep as well but white gave more stability. I had games against UW and UR (bounce heavy) where I moved all the white out to go into UR.
I won one game with a Crater Hellion sealing up the game by just coming down into the battlefield.

Classic DE

I went 3-1 with my Gush deck as above.

Won vs Bob. I had a very strong board position (7 card hand with Library of Alexandria with Jace the Mind Sculptor in play) vs a lone card from the opponent. He searched for and cast Ancestral Recall but targeted me. He scooped there.

Lost to humans on the back of time and the inability to process a complicated board state under stress.
Although I had survived to that point on winning the Mana Crypt coin flip twice, I had a big Yawgmoth's Will turn but did not have a way to win immediately. I ended up putting Mana Crypt into play but not Nature's Claiming it away. I had another window to gain life with Deathrite Shaman but I missed that as well.
Was called out in the middle of the game and that time loss made a big difference.
That guy managed to go 4-0 at the end of it. -_-"

Won vs Oath because my opponent's side is buggy.
Made a big mistake playing Brainstorm (and not putting Blightsteel Colossus back). I was probably still affected from the previous game.
In any case, I had a big advantage and he probably just went to claim back entry.
He mulled to 4, and I had Abrupt Decay for his Oath of Druids.

Won vs blue angels on the back of the high powered Vintage spells. Tinker into Blightsteel Colossus after a proper interaction both games. Had Library of Alexandria out game 1 to help with my land-light hand.
Game 2 I managed to go ahead on the back of Gush and Fastbond. Yawgmoth's Will pretty much sealed the game with Time Walk + Tinker.