December 27, 2008 Legacy tournament report
I played 37land.dec.
Game 1 -- vs mono red gobs
match 1 -- He goes first with a
goblin lackey. I cast a first turn
exploration, and and a
mishra's factory. He swings in, and plays a
goblin matron, fetching a
goblin ringleader. He then plays a
goblin piledriver. Next turn, I play
life from the loam, and pretty soon I have the lftl engine running, completely overwhelming him. He concedes.
sideout:
boseiju, who shelters allsidein:
glacial chasm.match 2 -- While I had a
manabond and life from the loam on turn 1, I utterly fail to dredge any defensive card. No factories, no
maze of ith, not even a single cycling card, which meant I was stuck to one lftl per turn. I did have a
call the skybreaker in the graveyard, but I was down to 4 life, facing several gobs.
It was then I dredge into a glacial chasm which I life from the loam and play. He concedes. Apparently, he had no
wastelands, nor any graveyard hate in the board.
wins-loss: 1-0
Game 2 -- vs RW goblins
match 1 -- I kept an opening hand of life from the loam and 2 maze of ith, 1 mishra's factory, 1 rishadan port, 1 wasteland, and 1
tranquil thicket, but no mana bond or exploration. I figured that with 4 manabond, 4 exploration, 2
gamble and 3
intution I can rely on the maze of iths and factory to keep me alive long enough to establish my engine.
His draws were fairly poor. By way past turn 13, I was still alive. Then again, in those 13+ turns I failed to draw into a manabond/exploration/search (and, no, none of my dredgtes/cycles hit any either). I
barbarian ring his warchief and
siege-gang commander, while my factory dealt with his 2/2's, but eventually I died due to the sheer amount of 1/1 gobs in play.
sideout: boseiju, who shelters all
sidein: glacial chasm
match 2 -- This time, I start out with a hand of mana bond, but no life from the loam.
Again, his draws were pretty weak... but I failed to draw life from the loam, either, and eventually died to a couple of 1/1's while I mazed the bigger threads.
win-loss: 1-1
Game 3 -- vs sea drake stompy
I've played the same player playing the same deck several times in the past. By experience, the hardest part of fighting sea drake stompy was the early
chalice of the voids. A first turn chalice could trap my explorations and manabonds, while I've played the guy enough to know he can also trap my life from the loam with a chalice for 2 on turn 2.
We roll the dice. He goes first. Crap.
Ancient tomb to chalice for 1=loss for me.
match 1 -- He plays an ancient tomb... then says done. Whoohoo! On my turn, I play a
mox diamond, an exploration, and a wasteland, whacking his ancient tomb. On his turn he plays a land, done. I cast a life from the loam, drop a rishadan port, and it all went downhill for him from there.
sideout: 4 mox diamonds, flame jab. While in theory the flamejab could kill some of his creatures if I dump enough land, that would mean I should already have the life from the loam engine well- running, which meant I was already winning anyway.
sidein: 4
ancient grudge (gotta be able to hit those chalice for 1, and the various equipment in the deck), 1
nevinyrall's disk (maybe it could hit the chalice for 2).
match 2 -- He mulls down to 4 (whoohoo!) and plays a land. I play a land, manabond, dump my hand, including a rishadan port, done. He does nothing on his turn. I start life from the loam engine and pretty soon have 4 rishadan ports keeping him pinned, and I eventually win.
win-loss: 2-1
Game 4 -- vs rock
Grah, black. Local black decks have a tendency to play maindecked
extirpates. An extirpate on my life from the loam is pretty much fatal, and as such I loathed playing against anyone packing a swamp.
match 1 -- He goes first and casts
thoughtseize, snagging my manabond. Crap. On my turn, I topdeck a manabond, cast it, dump my hand, and start the life from the loam engine. Several rishadan ports keep him trapped until I could finish him off with a call the skybreaker.
During sideboarding, I watched his hands. I don't know what he sideboarded, but definitely more than 4, and they weren't a set of 4. This was significant, because it meant he wasn't side boarding in
leyline of the void, which was almost invariably 4x of, and people siding in leyline were often obvious, as they'd take out a block of 4 cards from their sideboard with next to no thought. So...
sideout: 3 mox diamond, 1 boseiju who shelters all
sidein: 4 chalice of the void. It was my only hope against extirpate, and incidentally could snag
tormod's crypt as well, as some players didn't like leyline and instead used crypts. If he had other graveyard hate (like
yixlid jailer) or I made a mistake in analysis of him not using leyline, I'd just deal with it on game 3.
match 2 -- Bleh, he has both tormod's crypt and extirpate, and my life from the loam gets hit on turn 3.
quote: (looking at my deck while extirpate resolves) "How many life from the loam do you have in your deck?"
me: "Do you seriously expect me to tell you? You might make a mistake and miss one."
match 3 -- I manage to cast chalice of the void for 1 before attempting to cast life from the loam. He hits it with a
putrefy, then hits the life from the loam with extirpate. Joy.
win-loss: 2-2
Game 5 -- vs stasis
match 1 --
In casual games, I've _always_ lost to stasis. Given land.dec's tendency to almost completely tap out whenever it can (cast loam, cycle a land, dredge the loam, cast loam again, repeat, tap opponent lands with ports, swing in with factories, etc), a single stasis was a guaranteed lock. Despite this, I still won game 1. He was playing probably a deck with less than 20 lands, given that in our first game he had 2 lands for over 15 turns, and 6 lands up until the end of game 2. I won game 1 when I played two rishadan ports that kept him helpless until I killed him with a couple of mishra's factories.
Game 1 took a little over 30 minutes.
sideout: 4 maze of ith, obviously, unless he had some weird sideboard creatures. flame jab. 2 mox diamond. Glacial chasm.
sidein: 3 ray of revelation, 4 ancient grudge (for the
howling mines and a couple of other artifacts I saw like
ebony owl netsuke). Nevinyrall's disk.
Game 2 -- more of the same. 2 ports kept his land down. While in theory he _could_ lock me down, it would have been difficult given that I had 3
ray of revelation in hand and enough mana to cast and flashback all of them in a single turn. Even if he did, somehow, lock me down, I still had a decent sized library and had stopped dredging a while back -- he won't have the time to kill me, not with a stasis deck. I also had a few
ancient grudges to take care of things like howling mine, so there were no mines in play.
He finally casts stasis after time had been called and it was the last 5 turns of the game. That's when he begins trash talking.
"I'm going to lock you down and win, but I'll give you the win anyway."
He repeats this statement (and something along those lines), I dunno, half a dozen times, to the point that even the spectators were getting agitated.
random guy watching: "Mondu's going to win anyway."
"No, I'm going to give him the win."
I later learned he managed to piss off his other opponents. What a guy.
win-loss: 3-2
Game 6 -- vs landstill
match 1 -- He goes first and plays a
nantuko monastery. Ah, so he was playing 4c landstill, a deck that had next to no (if any) basic lands. I knew wastelands and rishadan ports were my key to winning.
I play a land, exploration, wasteland, whack his monastery, mox diamond, chuck a land, done. On his turn he plays a volcanic island. On my turn, I cast life from the loam. He concedes.
sideout:
flamejab, since he had no creatures I could hit with it;
maze of ith, since if he could establish control to the point that his factories/monastery could attack, then I was already humped and maze of ith won't help
sidein: 2 ancient grudge, in case he manages to cast
crucible of worlds, 3 ray of revelation for
pernicious deedmatch 2 -- a bit like game 1, except he manages to get to two lands and cast a
kataki, war's wage before I manabond+wasteland+life from the loam him into oblivion. He winces at my boseiju, but it wasn't relevant to the current game.
win-loss: 4-2
4-2, unfortunately, wasn't enough to get into top 8 (I needed 4-1-1 at the minimum for that), landed 9th.
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). congrats to the top 8 (3 of which are good friends and team members).
