That Time Again

It’s a good thing I’m not aiming for detailed play-by-play reports anymore. Because the tournament with the most on the line and the one where I played the most interesting deck, the N00bCon itself, has already mostly faded away among everything else happening during the weekend.

I hardly have any photos, and my travel stories are unremarkable. What I do have are three decks and some ramblings about the format.

I was not a fan of the restriction of Mishra’s Factory for this tournament. It meant I had no real idea about what to play, whereas I’d otherwise could just have played either Fantasy Zoo or The Deck and had an almost ready decklist for both. However, in the end I have to agree with Olle Råde that the change was worth it, just to shake things up and raise the interest levels a bit. People had something to talk about, something to prepare for, and it also gave a lt of data on what this change would mean for the format.

From the start, I assumed The Deck would get better and chip-damage aggro would get worse, mostly because the burn decks are so reliant on getting in some early Factory damage to eventually being able to finish off the game with burn. More heavily creature-based aggro would be better because of no blocking Factories, but probably even worse due to more Su-Chi midrange decks and also Abyss being almost unbeatable now. Testing Fantasy Zoo against UW Midrange a bunch on the way home from Arvika proved this to feel mostly correct, and I knew I didn’t want to register Chain Lightnings.

The Deck could now be built in a myriad ways: creatureless with Abyss, Mirror and multiple Fireballs and Recalls; with Su-Chis and potentially Copy Artifact; with maindeck Serras and maybe even Motis; or with something stranger like a Greedy Tower engine. However, another deck that got better was Twiddlevault, and it got actually better, not just relative to the format. In particular, the The Deck matchup improved when it’s harder for the control deck to provide a clock. If everyone is on The Abyss and Su-Chi, being the combo deck sounded very attractive, and I was sort of set on playing Twiddlevault a long time in advance.

But for the Fortress event the day before, I knew I wanted to play something more proactive, for shorter games and more variation. I decided to run a completely untested version of UW Robots I’d wanted to test for a while:

The plan was fine but the list wasn’t great. These were my results:

Atog: W
UR Counterburn: L
UW Merfolk: W
The Deck: W
Mono Black: L
UW Midrange: W

I often had uncastable Trikes in hand, and I also had too few colored sources. Icy was too cute. I should have mulliganed better, probably. I had fun though, and the highlight was decking Simon Gauti on The Deck because he had to burn his Fireball and both Recalls handling some threats early, then not having time to kill with his Clay Statues. Something that wouldn’t have happend with 4 factories, I’m pretty sure.

Talking to Olle over lunch the next day, we worked out that the deck would probably have been better with Juggernauts and fewer Trikes, probably at least 1 Mana Vault and also Animate Dead which I’m rarely a fan of. Yes, Leo obviously knows what he’s doing. For this exact format, Juggernaut might also be a playable card. I don’t expect to try it out again, though.

For the main event, I went with this:

It’s pretty much stock, besides two changes. I chose to go with a white splash for Disenchants out of the board, mostly to handle unknown amounts of hate, like Robots which could play Tormod’s Crypt but also Chains of Mephistopheles. I think Disenchant is better than the more standard Hurkyl/Tranquility/Boomerang package. I even ran the Tundras in the board so I could keep the basic Islands against Blood Moon maindeck, since it’s so hard to board very much in any matchup anyway. I also added one CoP: Black to the board as it’s maybe the only card that answers both Underworld Dreams (badly) and Hypnotic Specter, and I’m so afraid of the Dreams matchup. Not sure the white is worth it, but I think so. The second change was adding a Bazaar of Baghdad over the second Transmute Artifact, a card I don’t own and had to borrow from Will (thanks again!). It does improve some draws, where you are reliant on draw-7s, and hurt others, where you have a bit harder to find the Time Vault. But it is also synergistic with Howling Mine and Sylvan Library, and I wanted a bit of improvement when actually going off. I think it’s good enough but it’s certainly close. It doesn’t make me shell out the cash for a Bazaar of my own, but I could see trading for one. If you have a HP one for trade, hit me up.

MG starting the tournament

These were my results:

Eureka Lich: W
B/u/r burn: W
The Deck: L
Living Plane: W
The Deck: L
The Deck: W
Twiddlevault: W

I maybe got a bit unlucky losing to The Deck twice. The first match of them, agaisnt Stebbo, he had his one maindeck REB when I went off against his board of one untapped mana. And then game 2 I mulliganed to 2. The second loss, against Henrik Storm, I think he just had every answer, like disenchants against my turn-1 and turn-2 Sylvans, but I don’t remember the details. I certainly had a ton of luck when beating Jason Schwarz on Grixis Dreams round 2, and I had a turn-2 kill against David Third in the next to last round.

The final round was against Jeppe Grønbek Jensen who had won the Fortress tournament the day before, and it was maybe my first time playing the Twiddlevault mirror. It was strange for sure, with both of us trying to go off and failing, having to pass the turn with Howlings out to give the opponent a golden opportunity to go for it. I can’t be too disappointed with 5-2 at N00bCon, even though I would have liked a top 8.

So the top 8 was 3 The Deck, 3 Robots, 1 Lion-Atog and 1 Dragon Whelp Midrange. Pretty much the control/midrange meta I was expecting, even though aggro won. And as mentioned, the Fortress event was won by Twiddlevault. I stand by my earlier opinion: the restriction just makes the format slightly more boring. If you really want to give aggro a help, I think I’m with Olle in that it would be fine to restrict Falling Star and City in a Bottle. Those cards don’t really do anything good for the format (besides Bottle helping DFB Green a bit, but there’s not enough Dibs around anymore to make that incrediby relevant). That’s my final thought on the format.

For Saturday, the Mellanmjölk event was actually at Rotary Pub, and it was also the normal Swedish format. I brought cards for Fantasy Zoo for a change, but then Olle unexpetedly also decided to join, which was a welcome surprise. But I hadn’t brought all the cards for overlapping burn decks, not more than 5 psiblats and 4 dibs for example, so I had to do something else. I didn’t feel like The Deck or Twiddlevault, but the Robots deck from Thursday was something I could work on. I arrived at something closer to what Reindeer had been playing (and I had faced him the last round at the Fortress), I think, a UW Midrange build which is really SSS with Sages and Copies over Lions. After spending 20 minutes over breakfast, on about five hours of sleep, I arrived at this:

It could certainly also be improved, but it’s not bad, and I like playing it more than I expected. Sage is a fantastic card. These were my games:

Stasis, W
Mono B, W
DFB Green, W
UW Midrange, L
Atog, W

I didn’t have any clear plan for sideboarding, which definitely hurt me in the semi-mirror against Mitja. Too many of the cards seem good, and I didn’t make any coherent decisions. There is a ton of room for improvement here. I’m always weak at sideboarding and mulliganing when I play an unfamiliar deck, which also hurt me on Thursday. But it was a fantastic small tournament, where I got to play against friends like DFB on DFB Green and Will on Atog. Good games and good times were had.

Thanks all who made this a fantastic weekend.

And see you in Amsterdam next!