Turtle Splash Prevails in Diverse Meta

Matchup Summary 

2-0 vs UW Weenie - Javier Lugo

2-1 vs Tinker MUD - Duncan William

2-0 vs Landstill - Michael Phillips

2-0 vs WR Weenie - Justin Martinez

2-0 vs Stasis - Marc Bennett Lunde

1-2 vs Stiflenought (Mono-U) - Sven Lutz

2-1 vs The Rock - Anton Glans

1-2 vs Enchantress - Nils Håkan Delphin

Quarterfinal:

3-1 vs RG Goblins - Michael Simpson (video)

Semifinal:

3-0 vs Sligh - Pietro de Sanctis (video)

Final:

3-2 vs Corn Pops (Devourer Combo) - Tom Corrado Metelsky (video)

Match Notes

Javier Lugo (UW Weenie)

I win the die role and take the play.

G1:

My t1: City of Brass

Javi’s t1: Mother of Runes

t2: 2nd City of Brass, Oath

t2: Silver Knight

t3: Oath reveals Saprazzan Bailiff very quickly, and I let its ETB resolve normally, exiling a Lotus Petal from my yard.

I cast Altar of Dementia, then LED.

Sac LED for BBB discarding Animate Dead.

Sac Bailiff to get LED and Animate Dead back and combo off.

I board:

+4 Powder Keg

-1 LED

-1 Duress

-1 Claws of Gix

-1 Dance of the Dead

G2: Javi takes the play.

We both mull to 6.

I keep a hand with Oath, 2 Therapies, Underground River, Lotus Petal, Animate Dead. (Put a second Animate Dead on the bottom.)

Javi’s t1: Savannah Lions

My t1: I Cabal Therapy naming Meddling Mage. I make this choice because Javi saw Oath g1 and is very likely to name Oath if casting t2 Meddling Mage. And surely a deck playing Mother of Runes and Silver Knight and blue mana plays Meddling Mage right? (I also consider naming enchantment removal, but with the other Therapy in hand I can clean that up if it’s indeed there before casting my Oath.) Javi reveals hand and… Meddling Mage is there! Plus another Savannah Lions, a Soltari Visionary, and a land.

t2: Javi attacks me down to 17 and casts the second Savannah Lions.

t2: I draw a Gemstone Mine and drop Oath.

t3: Javi attacks me down to 13 and casts Soltari Visionary.

t3: I trigger Oath and once again reveal Saprazzan Bailiff quickly. I topdeck a Gamekeeper, which is actually quite the rip here. I cast Cabal Therapy targeting myself, naming Gamekeeper. I cast Lotus Petal and then Animate Dead the Gamekeeper. I sac the Gamekeeper to Cabal Therapy targeting Javi and trigger Gamekeeper. After resolving the trigger, which fairly quickly hits another Gamekeeper but not the pieces to actually win when I sac Bailiff to the other Cabal Therapy, I name Swords to Plowshares with the Cabal Therapy still on the stack, which whiffs and I see Whipcorder. At this point I have a consequential decision to make. Do I burn my last Cabal Therapy to sac the Gamekeeper and hope I hit the remaining combo pieces plus another Therapy to be able to sac Bailiff and combo off? With the clock I’m on and Soltari Visionary about to swing in and blow up Oath, which the only other way I have to fill my yard, I decide I must YOLO, and I sac the Gamekeeper. I get lucky and hit Therapy + LED + Claws of Gix + Lotus Petal before I hit another Gamekeeper. I sac Bailiff to Therapy to get its LTB trigger and go combo mode, gaining infinite life, making infinite mana, and casting Dance of the Dead on Javi’s Meddling Mage to name Swords to Plowshares. I also cast 3 Powder Kegs that were milled off of Oath/Gamekeepers. Javi considers possible outs and decides to concede.

I obviously got quite lucky g2 since in sideboarding I had thinned out some of the crucial pieces that allowed me to win in that particular scenario.

Javi was a joy to play against - we had conversations before and after the match about how great Premodern is.

Duncan William (U Tinker MUD)

We chat a little bit about Drop of Honey and Living Plane in Old School before kicking things off.

I didn’t keep great notes for this one.

I lose the die role and am on the draw.

Game 1: Duncan leads off with Ancient Tomb, Mind Stone. I assume that means Devourer combo, which (spoiler) I learn later is true but in a surprising way. Duncan quickly gets 3 ports active and keeps my depletion lands tapped, but isn’t applying pressure. I draw Saprazzan Bailiff and just discard it to hand size in my end step. The next upkeep, in response to all the Port activations, I Intuition for 2x Lotus Petals and an Altar of Dementia and am given a Lotus Petal. I play a land, cast a couple Lotus Petals and a Claws of Gix, Animate Dead the Saprazzan Bailiff, and I’m in combo mode to gain infinite life. I also Cabal Therapy this turn and name Tinker and hit one. That’s enough for a concession.

I didn’t see a win condition from Duncan’s deck game 1 and I sideboard as if I’m up against full-on Devourer combo. I keep in my own combo and bring in Powder Kegs. I also bring in 3 Stronghold Gambit to cheat on mana for Gamekeeper in the face of Ports, but I am a bit worried I may still be running that into Metalworker or something since I’m operating on very little information.

Game 2: I mulligan to a 6 with questionable mana (just a Peat Bog and a Lotus Petal) and get punished. Duncan leads Black Vise, Tormod’s Crypt, then follows up with a Rishadan Port next turn, and I don’t draw any more lands until I’m staring down 2x Sphere of Resistance. gg

I re-sideboard and go all-in on Stronghold Gambit and Symbiotic Wurm. Foolish to try to combo with Saprazzan Bailiff loops in the face of Sphere of Resistance.

Game 3: I keep a hand with 2 Powder keg, a sac outlet, Stronghold Gambit, and lands. I figure that means I just need to draw one of 12 cards: any of the 4 Intuition, 4 Gamekeeper, or 4 Symbiotic Wurm. I get the two Powder kegs out and leave them on 0 and 1. They sit there influencing Duncan’s plays for the rest of the game (Duncan reveals later that Snake Basket (!!) would have killed me otherwise) but I actually never wind up popping either of them. At some point Duncan casts Fact or Fiction in response to their own Tangle Wire triggers, and I’m able to 2x Therapy away the chosen pile - Phyrexian Devourer and another Tangle Wire - on my turn. At this point neither of us has any gas. Duncan has a massive amount of mana with some Thran Dynamos and Worn Powerstones, but no clock, and I’m still sitting there waiting on my 12-out. A few turns of draw go and Duncan casts Altar of Dementia and then Tinker and I assume I’m stone-cold dead. But nope, there’s only one Devourer in Duncan’s list and it’s safely sitting in the graveyard from the earlier Cabal Therapy!! So Tinker gets a Mishra’s Helix to keep me locked down. Still no clock though. Many turns later I finally draw a Gamekeeper. I’ve been sandbagging a Lotus Petal and a City of Brass for a while so I can Stronghold Gambit in the Gamekeeper, which I sac to flashback a Therapy; Gamekeeper’s trigger flips into Symbiotic Wurm which I ride like a Fremen to victory.

Michael Phillips (Landstill)

I’m on the draw.

G1:

Michael t1: Adarkar Wastes

t1: Peat Bog

t2: Flooded Strand, crack for island, cast Standstill

t2: Yavimaya Coast, tap Bog, cast Therapy (cracking Michael’s Standstill) and name Counterspell. I see a hand with no immediate interaction for my combo (something like Swords to Plowshares, Humility, 2x Decrees of Justice, Standstill, lands). I cast Altar of Dementia.

t3: Michael casts Powder Keg (which I hadn’t seen last turn, meaning it was the top deck)

t3: I know I’m in the clear. I cast Petal, LED, Intuition retain priority sac LED for BBB (discarding a Gamekeeper) and search up 3x reanimation enchantments. gg.

I board in all 15 cards in my sideboard and board out the Saprazzan Bailiff combo element. This matchup is why the board is built like it is, after all.

G2:

Michael t1: a land

t1: City of Brass, Lotus Petal crack it, cast Stronghold Gambit, reveal Symbiotic Wurm. The race is on.

Michael gets a Humility out a few turns later, but due to painlands, fetches, and 7/7s, Michael is at 3 life. I have a Powder Keg out stopping the block from a known Faerie Conclave or an unknown Decree of Justice. I’m able to attack with my 1/1 for a couple of turns and get Michael down to 1 while Michael furiously digs for answers. The digging finds a way to blow up Powder Keg, but for some reason (mana constrictions maybe?) Michael isn’t able to make Faerie Conclave an active blocker and dies to the humblest of Wurms.

Justin Martinez (WR “Death and Taxes”)

I’m a bit fuzzy on some of the details of this match.

I combo’d quickly game 1 after Justin played a Silver Knight, a Mox Diamond, and a Mother of Runes.

G2: I resolved Oath early, but Justin avoided casting any creatures in the first few turns. Around turn 4 or so, I have Gamekeeper, Intuition, and 2x Claws of Gix in hand, but only 4 mana available. I decide to cast the Gamekeeper and try to combo next turn. If Gamekeeper gets Swords’d, Intuition is a redundant way to find another one. Also, how bad can whatever creature Justin Oaths for be?? I pass the turn with Gamekeeper and Oath out. Justin triggers Oath and reveals… Glowrider. D’OH. From here things get whacky. I untap and crack my Gamekeeper into Bailiff and get back a huge grip of artifacts/enchantments including a couple LED, which is enough to combo through the Glowrider the next turn. I tap out to cast the LEDs to set that up and pass. Justin disenchants one of the LEDs and (I think) plays a Port, which puts me off the necessary mana to combo next turn once again. On my turn, I try to set myself up for the following turn once more and pass. Justin casts a second Glowrider. Yikes. BUT I can still potentially combo if I get all 4 LEDs out. The problem is… I’ve already been through all my Gamekeepers (I have one on the board and the other three in exile at this point) but not all 4 LEDs are in my yard. I need to have enough mana to cast the remaining LEDs and an Animate Enchantment in the same turn, which I don’t have yet, and obviously I can’t sac my current Gamekeeper to mill those other LEDs or I deck myself. So I figure my only out is to cast Powder Keg and get it to 3 while stalling with Gamekeeper and life gain from Claws of Gix. Three turns later, and after many funky and desperate Claws of Gix activations to survive, I blow up Powder Keg on 3 to clear away the Glowriders and combo off from 1 life. I feel extremely fortunate to squeak through this game.

Marc Bennett Lunde (Stasis)

I win the die roll.

G1:

I keep a hand with Duress, Ancient Tomb, City of Brass, 2x Gamekeeper, Intuition, Animate Dead.

T1: I Duress. I see Arcane Denial, Stasis, Gush, Chain of Vapor, and 3x Island. I take the Stasis.

T2: I draw LED. I play the Ancient Tomb and main phase Intuition for 3x Claws of Gix and cast one right then, since sac outlets are my “scarce resource” with this hand, and Claws of Gix is good in the face of bounce.

T3: I draw the 4th land and cast a Gamekeeper into the Arcane Denial.

At this point, I’m dropping Gamekeepers or Animate Dead targeting Gamekeeper every turn, which eventually breaks through the wall of counter magic and I combo off.

G2:

I transform into Stronghold Gambit.dec

I mull to 4 (!): City of Brass, Gemstone Mine, Duress, Ray of Revelation.

An early Howling Mine and Black Vise from Marc makes this an interesting one. The Vise is anemic at first because of my mulligan, but eventually it presents a serious clock, of course.

I make good use of Duresses, Therapies, and Ray of Revelations to avoid getting locked under Stasis. I draw a LOT of lands. Eventually I Stronghold Gambit out a Gamekeeper and sac it to Therapy, knowing there are 2x Chain of Vapor in Marc’s hand. A bit risky: if I hit Symbiotic Wurm off the Gamekeeper trigger, Marc can bounce it before I can sac it to Cabal Therapy since there’s a Therapy on the stack waiting to resolve. But I just hit another Gamekeeper. Marc responds by Chain of Vapor on the Gamekeeper. I still name Chain of Vapor with Therapy and get rid of the other one. My plan is to recast Gamekeeper next turn and go to town again. But Marc casts a Tormod’s Crypt, turning off that line. I’m hemorrhaging life to the Black Vise at this point. I recast the Gamekeeper and Marc activates Tormod’s Crypt in response, leaving me without a sac outlet. I attack for a couple turns with Gamekeeper and somehow manage to land a Powder Keg to blow up the Black Vise and staunch the bleeding, but at very very low life. I go down to 2 to cast another Stronghold Gambit, which gets countered, so I blow up all of my depletion lands and Gemstone Mines to just hardcast the Symbiotic Wurm, which resolves. Marc lands the only remaining Stasis. I’m able to attack Marc down to 7 on the next turn, but now Stasis is a problem. I rip a Cabal Therapy and sac a Petal to cast it. Therapy gets countered, but I can sac the Wurm and get insects. I forget what I name with Therapy here, but I see Boomerang, Gush, Annul but no other countermagic. On my next turn I attack and get an insect bounced by the Boomerang, and Marc goes to 1. I have to figure out a way to do one final point of damage while locked under the Stasis. Hail Mary. I cast a Claws of Gix as bait. It resolves. I go to 1 life off a City of Brass to cast a Stronghold Gambit. It resolves. I drop a Symbiotic Wurm. I’m pretty sure that does it, since I can tap my other City of Brass, put its damage trigger on the stack, then spend the mana to sac the Wurm to Claws of Gix and gain 1 life before dying to losing 1 life. Marc draws 2 (because Howling Mine) for the turn but neither card does the trick and I take it the match.

Sven Lutz (Mono U Stiflenought)

I lose the die roll.

G1: I keep a 7 of Intuition, Gamekeeper, Dance of the Dead, City of Brass, Hickory Woodlot, Duress, Lion’s Eye Diamond.

T1 Sven plays an Island.

I draw Claws of Gix, play a Hickory Woodlot and pass.

T2: Sven plays a second Island.

I draw Gemstone mine for the turn. I play City of Brass and Duress seeing Portent, Dreadnought, Impulse, 2x Island, Wasteland. I take Impulse. I cast Altar of Dementia.

T3: Sven Portents then wastelands the City of Brass.

I draw Altar of Dementia for the turn. I play Gemstone Mine and cast Altar of Dementia off the Hickory Woodlot.

T4: Sven plays an Island

I draw a Lotus Petal, which lets me hardcast Gamekeeper. It gets Counterspelled.

T5: Sven cheats out a Dreadnought.

I draw a land, which lets me cast Dance of the Dead targeting Gamekeeper, but it gets Foiled.

T6: Sven attack me down to 8.

I draw another land, which is exactly what I need to cast Intuition, crack LED for BBB in response, find 3x reanimate enchantments and go to town.

I feel lucky to squeak this one.

G2:

Sven mulls to 5. I keep a discard and land-heavy hand.

I foolishly transformed into Stronghold Gambit.dec, thinking if I can keep Sven off of Dreadnoughts with Cabal Therapy/Powder Keg, all I need to do is have a beater to mop up. The problem is that my dudes just don’t stack up to trampling 12/12s, so if the Therapy/Keg plan fails I’m going to lose. Oath is just bad when it’s only turned on by a creature that outclasses anything I Oath into. At some point I get a Keg on 1, and Sven makes a Dreadnought, I land an Oath, Sven Stifles the Keg, I Oath into… Ihsan’s Shade doh. I Stronghold Gambit out a Symbiotic Wurm which creates a board stall. I draw absolutely nothing while Sven digs until finding a Vision Charm and can use my own Oath to tutor up the second Dreadnought to kill me.

Obviously I board back to the combo, since the transformation was an error.

G3: SALT TIME.

I’m on the play. My opener is Peat Bog, City of Brass, Gamekeeper, Dance of the Dead, Claws of Gix, LED, Cabal Therapy. This hand wins on turn 2 if not disrupted as I can Therapy myself naming Gamekeeper, Dance of the Dead it, and combo off.

T1: I play the Peat Bog and pass. (I don’t cast the 0 drops – deciding to potentially open them up to Sven’s Annuls - because if Sven plays a quick Tormod’s Crypt I have to find a Powder Keg and don’t want to have to blow up my own stuff.)

Sven plays an Island and thinks for a second before passing. Sven’s pause sets my spider senses off.

T2: I draw a Lotus Petal. The only card that keeps me from winning on the spot is Stifle. I tank and eventually decide to Cabal Therapy Sven naming Stifle. It hits!! Spidey senses correct.

The rest of Sven’s hand is Opt, 2x Dreadnought, Impulse, Gush, and also-not-disruption.

I cast all my 0 drops now, and I’m ready to combo again next turn.

Sven Opts eot and puts it on the bottom. Doesn’t play a land on turn 2 and passes with 2 unknown cards.

T3: I cast Gamekeeper. Sven floats blue and Dazes it. I crack LED and pay, leaving BB floating. Once again, at this point, the only live card for Sven is Stifle. Odds of that being in hand now are ~3/50 + 3/49 - 3/50*3/49 = 11.7%. (I calculated the exact number but my heuristics had me thinking in that ballpark.)

At this point I COULD go to my attack step to get rid of Sven’s floating mana. But then I’m left saccing Gamekeeper to Therapy without the mana to sac Saprazzan Bailiff if I hit that off the trigger. The probability of hitting Bailiff before another Gamekeeper is 25%, higher than the ~11.7% for Sven having Stifle, so I YOLO. I sac Gamekeeper to flash back Cabal Therapy, trigger Gamekeeper, pass priority. And guess what? Sven had the darn Stifle. I name Phyrexian Dreadnought with Cabal Therapy and bin the known 2x of them.

Despite only having 2 Dreadnoughts left in the deck and no way to cheat it in hand on T3, by T5, Sven Vision Charms a Dreadnought, and all I draw is lands for the rest of the game and die.

Them’s the breaks!

Anton Glans (The Rock)

I lose the die roll.

G1:

I keep a 7 with 2 discard spells, mana, and a sac outlet, obviously hoping to rip a Gamekeeper, Intuition, or Oath after disrupting.

t1: Anton plays Treetop Village.

I duress and see 2x Therapy, Recurring Nightmare, Llanowar Wastes, Wall of Blossoms, Wall of Roots. I take a Therapy since Recurring Nightmare is mostly a dead card in the matchup.

t2: Anton plays Llanowar Wastes and casts Wall of Blossoms.

I Cabal Therapy targeting Anton and tank for a bit. None of the known cards matter but I want to be able to cast my sac outlets to play around all the Cabal Therapies and their flashbacks without them getting blown up on the board, so I name Pernicious Deed. I hit!! I then cast LED, Claws of Gix, and Altar of Dementia. I have 8 live draws to combo off the top of my library (4 Gamekeeper and 4 Intuition. Unfortunately Oath is no longer live in the face of a man land and so many ways for Anton to sac own creatures.)

t3: Anton rips another Deed off the top and casts it. BUMMER. That basically seals my fate this game.

I draw only lands and more sac outlets until I die to Blastoderm + Treetop Village.

G2:

Sideboarding

-3 Oath

-1 LED

-1 Dance of the Dead

+3 Powder Keg

+2 Ray of Revelation (out of spite for Deed I guess?)

Anton mulls to 5.

I’m a bit fuzzy on the first few turns of this game, but eventually I’m able to assemble Gamekeeper + Altar of Dementia and I go for the combo. I mill a lot of my library but only see 1 Petal and no reanimate enchantments. But there are some Powder Kegs and more sac outlets, so I go ahead and sac Bailiff in response to its ETB trigger and LTB trigger to get back a hand full of Powder Kegs and redundant sac outlets. To combo off I have to draw Lotus Petal or LED AND reanimate enchantment, or Intuition(s) in place of either, before I die to beatdown or before Anton draws a Tormod’s Crypt.

Anton does indeed go on the beatdown with a Blastoderm and I’m hemorrhaging life.

I draw Intuition, which lets me get the reanimation enchantments and stabilize at 6 life with Bailiff via Animate Dead as a recurring blocker for the Blastoderm.

Anton casts a Deed and activates it for 2, which will wipe my board of Petal, Claws, Animate Dead (and thus Bailiff), Altar of Dementia, Powder Keg.

Since I resolved Bailiff’s ETB already the turn before, I can LTB without exiling anything, so I sac the Bailiff to Altar targeting myself, put the LTB on the stack, sac a couple things to Claws to go to 8, return everything to my hand, then mill 2. I hit Ancient Tomb and LED. I get attacked down to 3.

Anton can flashback Cabal Therapy on me here, but I have redundancy for all my combo pieces (Claws AND Altar, Animate Dead AND Dance of the Dead). Naming Claws would force me to tap an Ancient Tomb to cast Altar of Dementia to combo off, but I have exactly enough life for that to not matter. That’ll do.

G3:

I think about The Rock and its removal suite for a second, and likely sideboard choices available to the deck, and decide that on the draw I’m better off as a Symbiotic Wurm deck.

We both mull to 5. I keep Powder Keg, Gamekeeper, Cabal Therapy, Ancient Tomb, Gemstone Mine, and put Symbiotic Wurm and Altar of Dementia on the bottom.

t1: Anton plays a Swamp and Duresses me, taking the Powder Keg.

I play the Gemstone Mine and cast Cabal Therapy. I tank and decide to name Cabal Therapy in order to protect my Gamekeeper as best as I can. I whiff and I see Haunting Echoes, City of Brass, Mishra’s Factory.

t2: Anton plays City of Brass and casts Wall of Blossoms.

I play the Ancient Tomb and pass.

t3: Anton plays Mishra’s Factory.

I play another Gemstone Mine and cast the Gamekeeper, immediately saccing it to flashback Cabal Therapy. Gamekeeper trigger flips through another Therapy and hits Gamekeeper. I name Haunting Echoes with the Therapy on the stack, and see Naturalize and a land. I sac the new Gamekeeper to Cabal Therapy and hit more Therapies and then Symbiotic Wurm, and nab the Naturalize.

t4: Anton plays a land.

Life totals at this point are me at 18, Anton at 19.

I attack with Symbiotic Wurm, which gets chump blocked by Wall of Blossoms.

t5: Anton casts Deranged Hermit.

I top deck Dance of the Dead. I swing with the Wurm, which gets chumped by Squirrels and Hermit. I trigger Wurm’s LTB and have 7 insects, and I Dance of the Dead the Symbiotic Wurm.

Anton does as much blocking as possible to buy time, but eventually the army of Wurms and Insects does its job.

Nils Håkan Delphin (Enchantress)

I’m writing this a few days after the match and I’m happy to report that the details of the match remain pretty vivid.

I won the die roll.

Game 1:

I keep a hand of 2x Oath of Druids, Altar of Dementia, Lotus Petal, 2x City of Brass, Undiscovered Paradise. Pretty bad if my opponent doesn’t play creatures but totally bonkers if they do, so with no knowledge of what Nils is on I roll the dice and keep the hand.

Nils mulligans to 6.

Turn 1 I City of Brass, Lotus Petal, sac it, cast Altar of Dementia.

Turn 2 I Duress and see 2x Parallax Wave, Brushland, Serra’s Sanctum, Enchantress’s Presence. I take the Presence of course.

The Oaths are dead in my hand, but I don’t have to wait long before ripping an Intuition off the top and comboing off.

G2:

Sideboarding:

-2 Oath of Druids

+2 Ray of Revelation

Although I could probably sneak Wurms in off of Stronghold Gambit - there are only 4 creatures in Nils’s deck and they likely get cast quickly, usually - I think Wurm is just too slow against a deck that can consistently assemble 2x Sterling Grove + Solitary Confinement.

I remember my opening hand this game has Cabal Therapy, Ray of Revelation, Gamekeeper, mana sources.

T1:

I believe Nils goes turn 1 Brushland, Wild Growth on it.

I Cabal Therapy Nils naming Argothian Enchantress and see Enchantress’s Presence, Aura of Silence, Sylvan Library, Serra’s Sanctum.

T2:

Nils casts the Aura of Silence.

I Ray of Revelation it.

T3:

Nils cast the Enchantress’s Presence.

I play my 3rd land and a Lotus Petal, have a Cabal Therapy and a Ray of Revelation in my yard, and 2 Gamekeepers, a Claws of Gix, and a land in my hand. I see two lines here. Line 1 is to do nothing this turn (leaving up Ray of Revelation mana) and on the next turn (turn 4) play the 4th land, Claws, cast Gamekeeper, sac Gamekeeper to Cabal Therapy with 1 mana available via Lotus Petal to sac Bailiff to Claws. But there’s a fairly high chance I flip another Gamekeeper before Bailiff without milling another Cabal Therapy, at which point I would have to just pass the turn and try again on turn 5; or, there’s the scenario where before flipping Bailiff I mill LED and a reanimate enchantment but not another Lotus Petal, which, once again, forces me to wait until turn 5 to combo. Line 2, however, is to tap out this turn (turn 3), sac the Lotus Petal, cast Gamekeeper, and set myself up to combo off on turn 4 with 3 mana up and a Therapy in yard, which, in all likelihood, is more than enough mana/sac outlets. There’s just one problem, which is those Parallax Waves I saw in game 1. But SURELY, I reason, Nils boarded those out, since they are terrible against me except in corner cases like this very one that’s about to happen. Furthermore, I just saw Nil’s hand not long ago and didn’t see one. Since Line 2 is much more likely to combo off successfully on turn 4 than Line 1 is, and it’s only weak to a card I expect to have been boarded out, I jam the Gamekeeper. Sure enough, though, Nils casts Parallax Wave and Sterling Grove, and sends my Gamekeeper into limbo. Now, even though I have another Gamekeeper + Claws in hand, I’m well short of the mana for a combo attempt.

A turn or two later, a really interesting and tricky decision happens where, at the end of my turn, Nils sacrifices that Sterling Grove to go get another Sterling Grove (without me having done anything to provoke that move!), and I tank a while on what to do with my Ray of Revelation. I decide to blow up the Parallax Wave to free my Gamekeeper and cut down on Nils’ Serra’s Sanctum mana. I really hadn’t foreseen Nils sacing that Grove thereby exposing Parallax Wave to the Ray, so I hadn’t cast my Claws of Gix (I was trying to protect it from wayward Seals of Cleansing etc). If I had cast Claws, the game would have gotten especially interesting here, as I could have “mini combo’d” in response to what happened next, which is that Nils cast Replenish. I would have been SO happy to have been able to Gameeker into Bailiff here to bounce all enchantments out of Nils yard to hand (and mine as well of course) effectively blanking the immediacy of Replenish. Anyways, back in the real world, Replenish resolves without incident, which is game over for me from this particular position since Aura of Silence comes back and Parallax Wave comes back and Gamekeeper goes buhbye again. Alas, the tools were there for me to have taken this game in a very different direction…

G3:

My sideboarding stays the same and I’m back on the play.

My hand is Intuition, Duress, Gemstone Mine, Ancient Tomb, Gamekeeper, Animate Dead, Ray of Revelation.

Turn 1 I play Gemstone Mine and cast Duress, seeing 2x Sterling Grove, Karmic Justice, Sylvan Library, Argothian Enchantress, Brushland, Forest. I take the Sylvan Library.

Turn 2 I play Ancient Tomb. At Nils’ eot I Intuition for 3x Altar of Dementia.

Turn 3 I cast Altar of Dementia. I just have to draw a land or a Lotus Petal to combo off on turn 4.

But Nils casts Seal of Cleansing, which, in conjunction with my lands staying coyly hidden away somewhere in the depths of my library, slows me down plenty long enough for Nils to draw a bazillion cards and assemble the 2x Sterling Grove + Solitary Confinement lock. I’m obliged to concede.

At 6-2 with good breakers I just make it into the knockout rounds.

Quarterfinals:

I didn’t write down any notes, but there’s video of the match:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHFrfZvOXm8&list=PLIPmxWQ8E7WxFHHbU9SGJqWRekqhhS0kn&index=2

Semifinals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM4U7OtWTfc&list=PLIPmxWQ8E7WxFHHbU9SGJqWRekqhhS0kn&index=5

Finals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SApTg-x9eNQ&list=PLIPmxWQ8E7WxFHHbU9SGJqWRekqhhS0kn&index=7

Ate a bowl of Turtle Splash beforehand.

My mantra going into the match was “mulligan unless you either have discard or a turn 3 kill.”

G1: Fascinating game. When I attacked with a 3/3 Devourer that I had Dance of the Deaded from Tom’s yard, I could possibly have been greedy trying to exile a 2 cmc thing before damage to turn off Tom’s ability to tap his painful lands, but I had Gamekeeper in hand and thought I would win the next turn and decided it wasn’t worth the risk of exiling Saprazzan Bailiff while simultaneously losing Devourer.

Game 4: mulliganed a hand of Lotus Petal, Cabal Therapy, Animate Dead, City of Brass, Gamekeeper, Intuition, LED. Thought long and hard about this one: it can turn 1 Cabal Therapy self, turn 2 Animate Gamekeeper, turn 3 possibly win? But it is BAD against Tormod’s Crypt and doesn’t get to disrupt them.

Game 5: Opening hand is Ancient Tomb, City of Brass, Duress, Gamekeeper, Powder Keg, Altar of Dementia, Animate Dead.