Road to MOCS 2014 Day 19 (13 QP)

Yesterday, I got into the VMA limited champs qualifier again.



I had a very decent deck, highlights being double Flametongue Kavu, double Man-o'-war and double Ophidian.




Unfortunately, in round 3, the memory leak caught me and made me lose a significant chunk of time, especially when the game did not load once I got back in, forcing me to restart and go through the 5 minutes of horror. I ended up needing about 5 more minutes to comfortably take the game.
In round 4, I faced a very aggressive GW deck and lost to it and I was out for the count.
The deck was pretty much as good as it comes but I guess it is too much to ask for to have a smooth path to run a good deck into. =/






I joined a Legacy DE after that.
Round 1 vs storm
My starting hand had a Force of Will plus some removals. Force of Will was taken away and my opponent went off. Unfortunately I did not have another counter magic to stop him. I did try to make it look like I might have drawn one.
Game 2, I got into an odd situation when my sided Dark Confidant was put under a Standstill and I took big chunks of life totals. I ended up at 1 life and cracked my own Standstill to cast Jace to keep me from dying.
With his newfound cards, he cast Empty the Warrens and Flusterstorm did not do anything in the face of extra mana. I could not find a sweeper.

0-1

Round 2 vs Merfolk
Merfolk is any blue deck's bane. I had a decent opening but could not get double black for Liliana and I was blown away by Phantasmal Images copying True-Name Nemesis.
Game 2, I managed to stick an Isochron Scepter with Far/Away. Unfortuantely, sacrificing one creature a turn was not enough without additional removals.

0-2 drop



Overall, I found that Dimir Charm was useful enough to have over Darkblast, finally being able to kill a Mutavault. It would have been good against Infernal Tutor as well (if I had drawn it). I think I would keep it in.

I think that I have a feel for the matchup numbers now.
Jund - 55 (I have punishing fire too)
Miracles - 70 (abrupt decay advantage and I'm a better control deck)
RUG - 50 (they have more wasteland nonsense than bug)
BUG - 60 (punishing fire, wasteland loam)
Storm - 55 (depends on how much hate I draw)
Elves - 45 (if i get enough removals and stop glimpse/natural order)
Burn - 30
UR burn - 25 (they can do it slower)
Painter - 45 (pyroblast is naturally gd vs blue)
D&T - 60 (punishing fire)
Omnitell - 60 (easier to hate on than storm)
Reanimator - 50 (can be very rough)
Sneak and Show - 55 (sneak attack is harder to stop than dream halls)

I think I wanna work on my sideboard to give myself a little more edge.
I should be ready for MOCS and the big irl Legacy tournament once I replan my sideboard.
I need 2 more QPs!!!! GAH.. I did not get any this week!!!

Road to MOCS 2014 Day 18 (13 QP)

Thursday - Played in a VMA Limited champs qualifier, 1-2 drop.
Played Legacy 0-2 drop.
Round 1 vs Burn
Round 2 vs something I can't remember
Friday - Nil
Saturday - Nil
Sunday - Played Tweaker's Oath list in the morning but ran into 2x BUG.
I lose a game where my Misdirection fails to do its job because v4's blown up cards need not necessarily refer to the card in choice.
Played in a VMA limited champs qualifier, 0-2 drop to a mulligan button bug.



Played Legacy 1-2
Round 1 vs BUG (lose)



Round 2 vs Miracles (win)



Round 3 vs Painter (losing to time out - was winning already)

For Vintage, I figured out an answer to blue decks by playing Tweaker's Oath deck.
I shall use and reveal this secret tech next week when I run it in the VMA constructed qualifiers.

In Legacy, I swapped out the maindeck Darkblast for a Dimir Charm.
Dimir Charm's drawback is its colored cost but overall, it kills what Darkblast kills and can be used against Miracles. I used to like Izzet Charm but its Spell Pierce mode was not particularly useful against Miracles.
Dimir Charm is almost the same thing (without the looting mode) and can be used vs Storm's Infernal Tutor/Burning Wish, Show and Tell, Miracles and is an additional removal for non-Goyf creatures.
I'm not sure how it would go but I will try it for now to make the deck more balanced (but more at risk to mana issues).

I want a life gain card but I can't really think of a good card to use. The ones I am thinking of are: Bow of Nylea (may have problems casting), Umezawa's Jitte and plain old Zuran Orb.

Road to MOCS 2014 Day 13 (13 QP)

Last night, I came out with nothing from a Legacy (0-2) and a Vintage DE (1-2).
At this point I am rather worried about the outcome of my Vintage deck as I am not performing at all and the Vintage Championship constructed qualifiers are 2 weeks away.
For my legacy deck, I feel that I am about 95% at where I want to be in terms of deck construction. The deck fares well against the more popular decks and has game against the less popular ones (meaning not outright blown out of the water).

Legacy:
Round 1 vs Dredge
Game 1, my opponent does not get the key cards in the graveyard so I manage to beatdown with Vendillion Clique.
Game 2, I try to stabilize but I get destroyed by Ichorids.
Game 3, I use Surgical Extraction on Narcomoeba but Ichorid + Bridge from Below means trouble and he goes for the Zealot kill.

0-1

Round 2 vs UR burn
This is a bad matchup as I do not always have the answers and I cannot answer his burn well, not to mention the counter magic from the other end that can mess with my development. I can probably only win on Marit Lage.
Game 1, I get hit a few times by a flipped Delver of Secrets, and get burned out of the game.
Game 2, I stabilize at a 14 life but he resolves a 10 point Price of Progress and cleans up.

0-2

Vintage:
Round 1 vs Oath
Game 1, an Abrupt Decay keeps the game in check and I search/replay Abrupt Decays for the win.
Game 2, my opponent has a Jace in play and I have a Spirit token. I am far behind on resources and I scoop.
Game 3, Abrupt Decay does wonders and keeps the game in check.

1-0

Round 2 vs Bant creatures
Game 1, I won with Fastbond + Gushes + Yawgmoth's Will playing Time Walk and Tinker.
Game 2, I get beaten by a lack of mana after my Blightsteel Colossus gets Swords to Plowshares-ed and I have only 1 Underground Sea and double Gush in hand. Trygon Predator comes down to eat my mox and I'm pretty much screwed.
Game 3, I get Gushbond going but am not far. I have a bunch of lands and a Force of Will which I can lay to cast but I choose not to to have more life for the Gushbond Engine. Unfortunately, my opponent drops True-Name Nemesis and knocks me down. I have Time Vault + Voltaic key but need an answer to the Stony Silence in play but I fail to find it. I probably should have dropped all my lands and kept counter mana up.

1-1

Round 3 vs Blue with Abrupt Decay and Deathrite and Dark Confidant
Game 1, I got Gush bond going and I get far ahead.
Game 2, I tutor for Library of Alexandria to try to take the long game but it was not a good plan. He gets Jace in play and I can't really come back into the game.
Game 3, my key spells get countered and I can't really get into the game while my opponent resolves Ancestral Recall twice.

1-2

Overall, I still like Gushbond as an engine but I am running many fair cards in hopes of beating Workshops (which I am not encountering) and I lose to blue decks holding these fair cards. Ultimately the format seems really centered on Ancestral Recall which is incredibly hard to beat. Classic was never this "single card centric" and I could easily play decks that build up advantage to go into the mid game. Perhaps I should do a Countertop and mess these blue decks up. =/

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