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By: Tarmotog, Naoto Watabe
Aug 30 2012 1:41pm
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Previously, I joined the CQ League 2012-13 #1 in an attempt to get into the invitational that a top 8 promises, wielding a Baleful StrixGoblin Welder deck. That installment can be followed here:
Tarmotalk - Classic Revived: CQ League 2012-13 #1 Round 1

This week, I come back to discuss more about the tournament.

Tarmotalk: The CQ League #1 Decks

From Enderfall's list on the pairings page, he summarized the decks as the following:

9 Delver

5 Oath

4 Snapcaster Control

3 Workshop

3 Affinity

3 Dredge

2 Fish

2 Merfolk

1 Storm

1 Belcher

1 G/W hate

1 “Dark” Maverick

1 Doomsday

1 Show and Tell

1 Dark Depths

1 High Tide

1 Classic Birthing Pod

1 Baleful Control

1 U/W Stoneforge

1 Unblockable Aggro

 

Considering the factors I had taken into account when preparing for the tournament, I scored on there being a large number of Delver decks.
5 Oath decks would be very dangerous for me as I don't have any maindeck answers to its namesake card. There are significantly less Workshop decks compared to what I would have expected and Dredge is also showing badly this tournament (I consider to be a moderately fine matchup).
Also, the presence of Baleful Strix, which I had expected to have a decent showing, was far less than I had hoped it to be. In fact, only 2 decks, including mine, packed it. I had expected some people to pick up on the mirror where my Staff of Nin should absolutely dominate. Not happening in this tournament at all.

 

Blue decks are having a good showing and that itself is not a very common sight if you compare that with one year ago where blue decks hardly made it into the money. I like this as a fan of the format. I am also happy to see a Doomsday deck being played and I think that it has nice odds of doing well given the sparseness of Workshops.

 

There is a large count of outlier strategies as well which I did not really take into consideration. This is actually the more dangerous part of the tournament because I don't have that much explosiveness to outright end the game (like when I have Gushes). My deck is more of a metagame deck that focuses on beating the few decks I have hoped to be popular so I lose a large portion of my deck's ability to win just based on a wrong metagame call. There are about as many of such decks as there are delvers so I am in all honesty very demoralized. This is even before taking into account the very tier 2 strategies of the format.

 

In terms of updated tech, I have to say that the following decks are getting my respect for respecting new cards that have been released over this period of time (there were 2x Oath decks so I picked one of them).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overall, I think that my odds in the swiss rounds are barely good and I would need to make extra effort to make games go my way because of the unexpected diversity in the format which I had hoped to be more concentrated by "Classic decks" at the tier 1 level. I hope that one of the updated decks would do well as I have a biasness for tech and I hope that Classic would be a format that values innovation, insight and playskill.

 

Tarmotalk: Round 2 Prematchup Analysis 

My next matchup is yet another unique deck (urgh what is this): 

 

Looking at the deck, there are two key components. The most obvious is the Birthing Pod engine and below is the breakdown of the creature suite:
1cc: Hex Parasite, Heap Doll
2cc: Myr Retriever, Phyrexian Revoker
3cc: Junk Diver
4cc: Frogmite, Lodestone Golem, Summoner's Egg
5cc: Acidic Slime, Precursor Golem, Zealous Conscripts
6cc: Salvage Titan, Duplicant
7cc: Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Gaea's Revenge

I would believe that the power of the deck comes from its ability to cheat Frogmite and Salvage Titan down for their high casting costs and immediately running up into 5 or 7 before even considering Workshopped creatures.

The low casting cost artifact creatures with their 1 toughness are supported by Skullclamp and they allow the deck to have a source of card advantage and the Myr Retriever and Junk Diver seem to be troublesome cards to deal with. This side of the deck gives the deck its staying ability.

The deck would be unable to hardcast a number of its non-artifact creatures but it can still get them down with Summoner's Egg if it comes to it. Other than using this and Mox Opal, even if not very likely, the deck might be able to stall on some dead draws that are naturally uncastable so this could be one of my advantages going into this matchup.

Without Phyrexian Metamorph, my most valuable kill condition would be Tinker into Blightsteel Colossus to which the only out would be Duplicant. Time Vault + Voltaic Key kill can be neutered by Phyrexian Revoker so its value is significantly downed in this matchup.

By these factors, stopping Skullclamp and Birthing Pod would become top priority. Hopefully Baleful Strix shows up to deal with some of the more troublesome creatures while I execute this plan to get to a winning position. I think the matchup would heavily hinge on its presence and how I manage the flow of the game. I personally don't like my odds because of the how I am not favored in the long game against my opponent because even if I keep Skullclamp and Birthing Pod off the board, Salvage Titan can turn Myr Retrievers into Birthing Pods and small creatures are probably the only weakness of Baleful Strix. For a slow game, I would need some countermagic plus Nihil Spellbomb to do its thing.

On the lands side, there is a lone Strip Mine which means that I can actively search out all my key nonbasic lands more aggressively because there is no merit to searching out basics.

On my life total, I need to be extra careful because I don't really have the luxury of being able to maximize the mileage from Dark Confidant who unfortunately doesn't make a good blocker for 1/1s either.

Post sideboard, it becomes very interesting because I see Grafdigger's Cage being the foil to nearly the entirety of the Birthing Pod strategy other than the fact that it still serves as a sacrifice outlet. If I get it out, I can safely focus on keeping Skullclamp off the board. I see my opponent moving some Thorn of Amethyst and Lodestone Golem in because the other sideboard cards are not too relevant in the matchup. My sideboard plan would be complicated because I would have to juggle between thinking about the graveyard, creatures and artifacts all at the same time and that would shave off too much of the original deck. I would have to make compromises somewhere when I do the actual sideboarding and my opponent can easily outfox me by just removing the pod part of the deck.

Overall, my odds against the deck are not too good especially since I do not have the luxury of dragging the game on too long. My deck doesn't have the capabilities to handle a deck so suited to go into the late game (with its card draw, recursion, pod engine) but my deck does have the ability to end the game abruptly so that is where my advantage comes from. Hopefully I manage to draw into hands that allow me to capitalize on this fact. I generally do not like to face outlier decks for the main reason that my deck is not designed with them in mind. Decks customized for a format can sometimes be awful if attacked from a different angle so I hope that this would not be the case here.

Recording of the Round

As much as I would have liked to comment about how my opponent was also recording and probably story telling on the other side, I can only give a silent show on my side.

Unlike last round, I have some explanation to do.
I kept the hand because of this line of thought:

#1 I can stop both Birthing Pod and Skullclamp. I shall take it as my statistical odds of seeing one of each would be higher than the odds of seeing 2 copies of the same card so I will take that risk.
#2 If I stop those two, the majority of the creatures likely to show are 1 powered so I can buy some time to draw into something relevant.

I think the biggest problem to the hand was that it had my Tinker target in hand. It would have been perfect if Blightsteel Colossus were a land instead. I think that my fear of the core engine of the deck which resulted in my thinking of #1 had made me keep that hand. That's probably what cost me the first game.

The second game was just awful where I had to mulligan down especially since my deck is unable to do explosive recoveries but my biggest mistake going into that game was that I should have sideboarded out 2x Force of Will into Lightning Bolts given the nature of the matchup whereby I could sit on Grafdigger's Cage and 1 for 1 my opponent instead of going 2 for 1 at a bad deal since the advantage from countering a key card is lost with the large recursion count.

I easily lose 0-2 this round due to my poor judgment with the deck.

-To be continued-