Road to MOCS 2014 Day 12 (13 QP)

Last night, I did 2x Legacy DE, going 4-0 in both.

There is a video record of it here. (Not sure how long these videos are held)

Round 1 vs storm.
Game 1, I get stormed out without much effort.

Game 2, I manage to control the board and beat down. I kill a random Young Pyromancer along the way (while he held on to rituals).

Game 3, is as below. I can't tell how the game got to that state but looking at my hand with a boatload of countermagic, I do not think I would have lost that. Seeing that Dark Confidant is in the graveyard, I probably used Cabal Therapy flashback to knock out cards and used Surgical Extraction on Infernal Tutor.

Round 2, I faced RUG.

Game 1, by the time I went down to 6, I had True-Name Nemesis in play with Punishing Fire to clean up creatures. If he had double Lightning Bolt I would have lose there but he did not. I had an active Liliana sitting there ready to mess the game up.

Game 2, Punishing Fire sets the pace of the game and I sit comfortably with a growing hand with many answers. I casually play the squid and have Brainstorm to protect it. I let it clock up and beats him down to 6. He uses Gitaxian Probe and sees that I am not sandbagging lands but a full suite of business spells and promptly scoops. Not as if he could deal with megasquid anyway.

2-0

Round 3, I face the horrific Cloudpost deck.
Game 1, I try my best to disrupt his progression but he gets further ahead via Primeval Titan. After awhile, he gets Eye of Ugin and I scoop.

Game 2, I go aggro on my opponent with Deathrite Shaman and Vendillion Clique.
I disrupt him enough to have Mindbreak Trap and Snapcaster Mage to recast it and that is the safest every route I can take as Mindbreak Trap does not actually counter anything.

Game 3, my opponent keeps a hand with green cards, colorless lands but no green mana. (Thankfully)
I resolve Liliana and Jace (fateseal mode) and I draw into Intuition to get my loam lock and try very hard to knock off lands. There was an instance where I targeted a Vesuva (according to the client) but it somehow changed into a Thespian Stage. I climb to Jace's ultimate and am open for a turn but he does not have an answer and scoops.

3-0

Round 4, I face the Food Chain Misthollow Griffin deck.

Game 1, I Engineered Explosives an early Food Chain and I his creatures and I have Far/Away when he has Consecrated Sphinx (PHEW). I got the game there.

Game 2, I managed to get an early Isochron Scepter with Counterspell on it. It gets Pithing Needled.
I managed to assemble the Dark Depths combo have been tempo-ing his Misthollow Griffin with Jace's bounce. He scoops there when he figured that he had no outs.
(Thankfully I did not have to face any Force of Will-ed Misthollow Griffins from his side)

4-0

I was quite happy to be 4-0 (finally) and decided to join in the next DE anyway.

Round 1, I faced BUG.

Game 1, I kept a double Force of Will hand and I did not have much pressure. I managed to slowly control the game with Maelstrom pulse on double Deathrite Shaman while leaving Liliana in play. (I had Creeping Tar Pit).
I resolved Jace and I managed to be ahead with Life from the Loam (plus Wasteland).

Game 2, we fight at the very early game and I get hit by disruption while a Tarmogoyf joins the fun alongside Deathrite Shaman and a flipped Delver of Secrets.

Without a way to deal with his multiple threats, easily succumb to his board.

Game 3, we have a close game, trading left and right but I get Squid into play and I draw land for Jace, the mind sculptor. I manage to use Jace's Brainstorm twice before he uses Liliana to make me sacrifice it. Out from the megasquid spewed a horde of isopods all backed up by counter magic.

1-0

Round 2, I face a Enlightened Tutor deck (for the lack of a proper name).

Game 1, my opponent gets the Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek combo early and manages to stop my attempts to stop him.

Game 2, the game comes down to me resolving Keranos and me saving it from a Detention Sphere. I think I won this game on Jace's ultimate.

Game 3, my opponent passes the turn twice and I see that his hand is a Serra's Sanctum and make him discard his Land Tax (which I believe was his way to come back into the game). Resolved Jace and simply went all the way.

2-0

Round 3 vs Miracles.

Game 1, I lose to a bunch of Angel tokens and do not have an out.

Game 2, I attack his white lands and he is stuck on just Islands facing a Bob, Deathrite Shaman and Jace. He scoops there.

Game 3, I keep a slow hand and the game goes slow. We fight over resolving Keranos and I get mine. My opponent scoops without bringing it

3-0

Round 4, I face Storm.

Game 1, I have a very slow hand of Force of Will, double Jace, 1x Liliana and 1x Intuition.
The game progresses slowly and I try to keep the game but I fail to find an answer for the goblin tokens that eventually spill down.

Game 2, I have board of creatures, he has some tokens, I get Golgari Charm which kills my guys too but I have double Deathrite Shaman to clean up.

Game 3, my opponent has a very mana-lite hand. I let him keep his discard spells while I try to advance my board since I am sure that he is not going off anytime soon. I get Jace into play and thankfully I get to start using it. I start building up my hand and disrupt his plays. I would not lose with a hand filled with countermagic but he times out anyway.

4-0

With my double 4-0 finishes, I am comfortably set to get into the qualifiers needing only 2 more QPs. I do not expect to be able to clock 35 QPs to get into the main event but we'll have to see how things go.

Road to MOCS 2014 Day 11 (7 QP)

Last night I got into a Vintage DE. I changed the deck a little, removing Edric and adding Gush.

I threw in 2x Extirpate into the sideboard, replacing a Yixlid Jailer and removed a Mental Misstep.

Round 1, I face Wizards.

I lose game 1 when my hand runs out of steam. I try to hang around as long as I can to figure out what my opponent is playing, thinking that it is a Esper wizards deck.
Game 2, my opponent uses Black Lotus to summon a Magus of the Future.
I can't beat that at all.

0-1

Round 2, I faced a BUG deck.

The games were all very close (as I had very bad hands) and we were basically playing off the top of the deck once everything we played got hit by Abrupt Decay. Fortunately, game 2 I had Darkblast to deal with the opposing Dark Confidant and I had that advantage throughout the game.
Game 3, we attacked each other's mana and I resolved and manage to draw a few cards off Dark Confidant. My opponent's got hit by Darkblast which essentially means he would never ever get to come back on a Dark Confidant.

Round 3, I faced a Bant deck.

I lose game 2 as I have only 1 mana out after getting heavily bombarded by Wastelands.
Game 2, I manage to get out a Trygon Predator which eats his 3/1 enchantment creature (very funny to see) and I manage to win via a creature beatdown.

Game 3, my opponent gets a turn 2 True-Name Nemesis. Unfortunately, this deck is not designed to be able to handle that and I have zero outs, not to mention that I cannot even race it.

1-2 drop

A fruitless day, especially when I failed to join the Legacy DE as the client went down a few minutes prior to the event starting time. =/

I'm not sure if I should make changes to this deck from Legacy standpoint to make the deck more resilient to general threats or just to focus on the key matchups in Vintage. I will have to think about the directions for this deck. 

Road to MOCS 2014 Day 10 (7 QP)

This morning, I woke up at 6.30am and managed to get into the Vintage DE, spotting a mesh of the 2 BUG lists I saw on eternalcentral.com.

Round 1, I face Pyrogush, losing game 1.

Game 2, Wasteland forcing him to Gush pushes him into an uncomfortable position as I establish a board position. Darkblast helps to makes things very manageable.

Game 3 is as below. He opts to kill Deathrite Shaman over my Dark Confidant (hoping to race me) but I think that ultimately backfired with me getting enough pressure to come on top.

1-0

Round 2, my opponent does not show up.
2-0

Round 3, I lead off with Dark Confidant and I end up facing an Oath of Druids on the other side. Thank goodness I had Abrupt Decay in hand. He does not draw much and 2 damage goes all the way.
Game 2 comes down to me protecting my hand with Mental Misstep while he does not have any visible plays. The spirit tokens he gives me pressures him all the way from 20, joined by a friendly spirit token and a Snapcaster Mage eventually.
3-0

Round 4, I face a weird dredge build and I scoop game 1 when he has the second Bazaar of Baghdad after I Wasteland his first. Game 2, he tries to Thespian Stage plus Dark Depths but I protected a tutor for Wasteland and had Jace in hand.
Game 3, I keep a subpar hand that has Yixlid Jailer with Force of Will backup, hoping that it would go the distance but he has his own Force of Will and the game spirals out of control from there.
3-1

So I looked up what he was playing and identified his deck's weakness or rather what I should do to attack his deck. From what I see, I only have to resolve double Extirpate/Surgical Extraction on his Ichorid and Narcomoeba and he will have no game left from his maindeck. If I manage to extirpate Dark Depths for his transformational sideboard, that itself should be good. It's much easier said than done but at least I know what I can do against it. Not gonna lose to him a second time.

Road to MOCS 2014 Day 9 (6 QP)

Last night, I rushed back for the 10pm Legacy DE but it failed to get the numbers.

This morning I woke up at 6.30am to try catch the Vintage DE but it did not fire too.

An hour later, I managed to get into a Legacy DE.
Unfortunately, my deck somehow did not load properly and I ended up with a 14 card sideboard for the whole tournament.(Kinda like what would happen in real life)
I wanted to try Dark Confidant in the Garruk./Xenagos/Grave Titan slot.

Round 1 vs Esper Stoneblade.

My draws are pretty weak and I get mauled two games but I loamlock the opponent in game 1.

0-1

Round 2 vs Miracles.
I do not recall much of the following 3 rounds since they were all miracles. This round ended prematurely with a Liliana being protected from a Council's Judgement. Sure my Loam + Wasteland would make it tough but I don't think there isn't a chance for my opponent to make a comeback.

1-1

Round 3 vs Miracles.
This version runs Stoneforge Mystic.
2-1

Round 4 vs Miracles.
Game 3, I go with a Thoughtseize opening to find my opponent with Entreat the Angels, Batterskull and 4 lands. I was confident to win this especially against such a poor hand.
I tried to be slightly more aggressive but my hand hardly allowed and I wanted to use Deathrite Shaman slowly and not drop all of them down, My opponent scoops after I land Jace.

3-1

Road to MOCS 2014 Day 8 (5 QP)

Last night, the 7pm Legacy DE failed to fire and I got into the Vintage DE at 8pm and double evented the Legacy DE at 10pm. I ended up going 2-2 in Vintage, 3-1 in Legacy. I need to quickly figure out a good Vintage build as I have not been making the money for some time and it does not help that the payout sux.

Vintage DE:

Round 1, I face a Bob deck.

I'm not sure if I won a game but the 2 games I lost came down to Voltaic Key and Time Vault and me not being able to do anything. Game 2, he had a low life count and Dark Confidant out but he had Snapcaster Mage for Vampiric Tutor into Lightning Bolt. Game 3 I did not have enough to fight its resolution.

0-1

Round 2 was against a BUG deck with Mystic Remora.
Wasteland and Standstill went a long way in this matchup. I do not recall much other than that but Remora isn't very strong against a deck that runs under Standstill.

1-1

Round 3 was against Oath of Druids.
Surprisingly I won game 1 on the back of Mishra's Factories facing an active Oath of Druids.
Game 2 was more stable as I managed to keep Oath off. I use spirit tokens and factories to beat down.
We fight over Time Vault but it does not really matter as I have Engineered Explosives for 2 in play.

2-1

Round 4 vs Dredge.
My maindeck does not have any outs vs dredge so I scoop game 1.
Game 2, he has double Ingot Chewer (1 of which I have Force of Will) but I can't stop #2 and he went all the way.

2-2

For the legacy portion, round 1 I faced Zoo.
I won game 1 on the back of Wasteland plus Life from the Loam, locking him out.
Game 2, I deal with the creatures on the board but I get hit by 3 damage burn spells.

Game 3, I control most of the game quite well but I get hit by a 12 point price of progress.

0-1

Round 2, I face BUG with Hymn to Tourachs, Tarmogoyfs, Thoughtseize, Abrupt Decay.
I don't recall much of the game because I was toggling between the Vintage and the Legacy DE and playing on an autopilot mode. In any case this matchup can be closed up easily with Marit Lage since it's uncounterable and they do not run Far/Away like I do.

Round 3, I face Omnitell.

I lose game 1 with a hand with creature kill spells. I side in my boatload of hate.
Game 2, I have 2 Intuition and I get one countered, and resolve the second, getting a plethora of discard spells which ultimately go a long way.
Game 3 was in a similar fashion and I had the natural Dark Depths + Thespian Stage to end the game.

Round 4, I face UWr Counterbalance (with MD REB?!?!? (what a bad move -_-"))
It is a good matchup but it usually takes a lot of time to play out.

Game 1, my get into a very advantageous position but I do not have counters.
I end up using Marit Lage and I managed to use Jace's Brainstorm ability to find Counterspell.
When I attack, he Tops for Entreat the Angel but I stop it.

Game 2 is as below. I get out 2 of my "good vs UW" cards but they meet Council's Judgment plus Snapcaster flashback. Otherwise, I would have gotten very far.
In any case, I manage to stick Isochron Scepter down with Counterspell on it. I mess up some Intuition picks (MTGO v4 problem) and I end up having to do it again with Snapcaster Mage to find my Marit Lage kill. In any case, I end up with just about 5s left on the clock as I beat for 23 points.

3-1

Road to MOCS 2014 Day 6 (4 QP)

Last night, I decided to go into the DE not playing my usual deck. It's not going to work if I can't have its core components bugged.

So I took a storm deck I put together and went into it. Surprisingly, there were people queuing and we fired the event.

Round 1 vs Storm.
Game 1, we spend the first few turns setting up and disrupting each other. My opponent doesn't have the means to go off so I do.

Game 2, I sided in 2x Surgical Extractions and my opponent tried going off but he knows that I have one in hand via Gitaxian Probe. He manages to Ad Nauseum (forgetting to use his LED) into Past in Flames but he lacks the mana and his only way to go off on that turn is if he uses LED and dumps Past in Flames into the graveyard so he Duresses (I hid my Tendrils of Agony on top) and I kill him with a small Tendrils.

Round 2, I faced elves.
I go into the game knowing that the key card in this matchup will be Natural Order. (Since it will get the RG guy who shoots for 6 per noncreature spell).
Game 1, I do the math and kill my opponent without much problem. He had Cabal Therapy but I had Brainstorm.
Game 2, I just couldn't get the numbers I needed to win so I counted and recounted and ultimately decided to Duress since I would die to a Natural order. Unfortunately for my opponent, he did have it and he tried to bring my life down but I had more than sufficient mana to go off with a Past in Flames and not rely on Ad Nauseum.

Round 3, I face Miracles.
For my first game, I try to go off but whiff after losing all my life to Ad Nausuem.
Game 2, I manage to Abrupt Decay Counterbalance and use discard to clear the way for the win.
Game 3, Abrupt Decay clears the way and I go off with an Ad Nauseum but I have one mana short of chaining 1 more storm. My opponent had a counter magic to survive being hit by the last copy. I realized that I did have that extra mana. Anyway, I manage to draw mana to go off with Past in Flames next turn without having to break my LED. I should win from there since I could flashback Past in Flames if I needed to.

Round 4, I face UWR Delver.
Game 1, I go slow and have nothing but double Duress. I play my Tropical Island and play out lands while trying to gain information, setting it up as though I am playing a BUG deck.
Game 2, I reveal myself and see with Gitaxian Probe that he has a weak hand against me. I set up and use Infernal Tutor on Dark Ritual and go off slowly with Burning Wish for Ill-gotten gains and reusing the Infernal Tutor for the game.
Game 3, throughout the game my opponent has a fury of business spells of double Spell Pierce, Force of Will, Counterspell, Snapcaster Mage, Ethersworn canonist and manages to beat down with Delvers.
He has just one more business spell than what I can handle (and I need 1 more mana). Rest in Peace comes down to seal the deal (against my Past in Flames) and I do not have life to Ad Nausuem. I do so anyway as there is a minimal chance that I can come back at 3 life if I draw Infernal Tutor, Lotus Petal, LED, LED, Lotus Petal and nothing else. Of course, I do not.

After the DE ended, another was starting so I got into it, running Miracles as I do not think that Storm is a very good deck to play late at night. I can do control and grindy plays so I should fare better with Miracles at 10pm.

Round 1, I face the mirror. =/
Game 1 I won in a rather grindy showdown but I get stuck without lands and a Jace on the other side in game 2.
Game 3, I come go in on Keranos and have Engineered Explosives to kill the Angel tokens who killed my Jace. It's quite tough for my opponent to come back against 2 cards a turn or just free bolts.

Round 2, I face the mirror again.
However, my opponent scoops very prematurely into the games after getting hit by early Spell Pierces.
Game 1 I have counterbalance. Game 2 we have a small counter war and he scoops after losing the war.
I end up 2-0 in a very short time span. Weird but I take free wins.

Round 3, I face the Carrion Feeder + the 2/1 zombie for 1 that you can cast from the graveyard if a zombie is in play.
Game 1, I spell pierce a Faithless Looting (afraid that it would be reanimator) and he casts the 2/1 zombie. I drop Snapcaster Mage to beat him and get an early Entreat the Angels for x=2. I beatdown for a quick win.
Game 2, I struggle against Carrion Feeder, the 2/1 zombie and Bloodghast. I eventually stabilize the game when I spin Sensei's Divining Top into a very strong setup and I get 3 Angel tokens down to block his team.
He makes feeder big and trades one of them and I go into beatdown while topdecking Swords to Plowshares to make the game further in my favor.

Round 4, I face RUG Delver.
I lose game 1 to a Nimble Mongoose that goes all the way plus a bolt while I keep trying to find Terminus.
Game 2, it goes along the same lines and I struggle to get back into the game while being light on lands.
Unfortunately things did not go too well for me.

With my double 3-1 results, I get +2 QPs for a total of 4 this week. I suppose just doing 4 every week and getting the minimum 15 QPs is good enough for someone who only gets to play minimally.

Anyway, if you want to watch the legacy DEs, I stream them at http://www.twitch.tv/tarmotog.
I'll post when I do so on twitter https://twitter.com/wnatog.

Road to MOCS 2014 Day 5 (2 QP)

Yesterday, I tried to get into Legacy at 7pm, Vintage at 8.30pm but both failed to fire.

With my recent losses to blue decks, I decided to go for Landstill in Vintage instead since it is very strong against blue decks in general. Its advantage comes from the fact that you run 5x Ancestral Recall (4 of which are Standstill) and that you do not have cards that do not do anything by themselves like a Voltaic Key to untap moxes and that it does not run Tinker so only Misdirection and Force of Will use up 2 cards.
Running Wastelands also makes games harder for Vintage decks to handle because they generally only run 1x basic Island in most builds. In any case, I did not get a chance to try it out in the DE.

I managed to get into the 10pm Legacy DE, running the fireless deck again.

Round 1, game 1, I win Cloudpost by using wasteland and having a Liliana lock my opponent's hand while beating down.

Game 2, my landless hand forces me to play Standstill to buy time but Eye of Ugin + Cloudposts is an easy GG.

Game 3, I mulligan down and I have one Wasteland. If I get Surgical Extraction on Wasteland early or if I get Life from the loam or Intuition to find it, I can also lock him out of the game but none of that happened and the game spiraled out of reach.

0-1

Round 2, I got a bye. (Cool)
Round 3 I faced Shardless BUG.
The key to beating Shardless BUG is the Punishing Fire setup which basically kills everything but Tarmogoyf.
In fact, it adds resilience against Hymn to Tourach, Liliana and can help vs Jace. It's so good here.
Unfortunately, it's still unusable this week so I lose that big edge against them.
The only plus I have in this build is Misdirection which can turn Ancestral Visions at me and Hymn to Tourach at them.

Game 1, I get goyf beatdowned.
Game 2, I have an early True-Name Nemesis which my opp is not equipped to fight as I have a Deathrite Shaman in play. He drops goyf but goes down to 6, enough for True-Name Nemesis plus Creeping Tar Pit to end the game. I have Misdirection back up and he can only have the Disfigure to buy a turn but he does not anyway.
Game 3, he suspends 2x Ancestral Vision and I do not have any counters. Wasteland buys time and I do not have any good removal versus a playset of Deathrite Shaman and a Tarmogoyf. Urgh.

1-2 drop.

With my QP drought, I am considering going into M15 events to farm for points. (More flexible timings and I should be ok with core set limited)
It is quite tough to grind through Legacy without as much inevitability as the original build which is still as fair as fair decks go. Damnit MTGO. Fix Punishing Fires!!!
I suspect that I would not be able to get into a DE today so I need to rethink how I can get to 15 QPs at this rate as I need an average of 4 QPs a week if I want to even make it for the qualifiers. =/

Maybe I'll run Storm if I can get into the 10pm DE so that I can run a deck at full power. Probably less taxing too.