Concise tourney report (Keeper in Vienna)

Beyond Dominia: The Type One Magic Mill: Tournament Archive -- ALL TOURNAMENT REPORT THREADS GO HERE: Concise tourney report (Keeper in Vienna)

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By Big Blue on Saturday, October 27, 2001 - 04:54 am:

Tourney starts horribly - I play 1-1-time-out against Powerless Patriot and promptly lose 2-1 against Sligh - how humiliating to lose against Sligh, when your SB features Keg, Fire&Ice, COP and Masticore in addition to MD Keg, Fire&Ice, Zorb, Abyss, Edict... (he had an incredible start in the first game: 3 Jackal Pups and 4 Factories - I could get rid of 3 Factories and eventually dropped an Abyss and Balanced, but I had only 2 lifes after the dust settled and he drew some Bolts meanwhile...). What a start! I have to play on the last table in the 3rd round! Well, of course I win easily (against a very bad mono-U beatdown deck with Unstable Mutations).

Fourth round is interesting, at least as far as statistics (aka luck) is concerned: I play against my own NetherVoid deck. He wins the die-roll. I keep a Mox, triple Land, Mana Leak, Morphling, FoF hand and he starts with a classical first turn Hyppie! Dang! I play Land/Mox, he attacks and - of course - draws the Mana Leak. A Duress and a Wasteland follow, taking my FoF and wasting my dual. I topdeck an Abyss, but its a bad timing for that card - I have only 2 mana on board and an opposing Hyppie. He attacks (draws the Morphling) and plays Sinkhole - Abyss seems more unlikely than ever! I play a land (at least I am drawing some mana...) and pass. He attacks (draws a land) and plays Necro! Now, I could as well concede - only 2 mana, an active Hyppie, no realistic chance for playing Abyss (unless I topdeck Lotus or a Mox), an active Necro (7 cards set aside are waiting for the greedy NetherVoid player) - but...
(of course there is a but, or why do you think I am telling you this game in such detail, eh?)
...I topdeck a Mox and play Mox, COB, The Abyss!
He has 4 answers in the deck: 3 Nether Void and 1 Disk, so game is not over yet. Moreover, he has an active Necro and still 13 lifes. He plays Sinkhole, Port and Vampiric (probably for NetherVoid or the Disk!). Fortuna has mercy after giving Sligh two unfair hands in the second round and I topdeck a Balance, Balancing down to 1 land and no cards! He still has a chance, since he draws Port and Swamp, porting my COB (I have about 10 lifes). But two turns later I draw a Wasteland.
My opponent necros down to 1 life but he doesn't draw NetherVoid/Disk+enough mana, so he has to concede. What a stroke of luck! The second game is not very interesting, I simply win after FoFing thrice.

Last round I play against Suicide Black. First game is quite unfair: He plays Duress, I FoW with a Mana Leak and play Land, Mox, Sol Ring, Lotus, Timetwister... Of course, I win (I didn't even notice he was playing SuiBlack - I thought he was playing Pox, as usual - lol!). In the second game I take complete control untill he concedes (I have Abyss, 2 Kegs, Spiritual Focus, COP: Black and about 10 mana on board and 5 cards in hand; he has 0 cards and 6 mana).

I finish with 3-1-1 on 4th place (3rd place is the Powerless Patriot (3-1-1), 2nd Sligh (4-0-1) and 1st KPFV with Keeper (5-0)), after a real bad start. It could be worse...

My deck:
mana (28):
4 COB
4 Underground
4 Waste
3 Vulcanic
3 Tundra
1 UP
1 Strip
1 LoA
7 SoLoMoxen
blue(22!):
4 FoW
4 Mana Drain
4 FoF
2 Mana Leak
2 Morphling
1 Fire&Ice
1 Ancestral
1 Walk
1 Mystical
1 Timetwister
1 Merchant Scroll (there you go -> it is incredible when Fire&Ice is in your deck!)
black(6):
1 Abyss
1 Edict
1 Demonic
1 Vampiric
1 Mindtwist
1 YagWill
white(2):
1 Balance
1 Seal of Cleansing
artifact(2):
1 Zorb
1 Keg
SB(15):
3 REB
1 Mox Monkey
1 Fire&Ice
2 Duress
1 Keg
1 Crypt
1 Masticore
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Spiritual Focus
1 COP: Black
1 COP: Red
1 Enlightened

Comments on the deck:
I was missing Regrowth and Stroke only for nostalgic reasons, in fact I was quite happy without them. FoF is almost always better, and the optional victory condition Stroke never played a role. Maybe with Extract this will change, but I doubt it. Fire&Ice was again incredibly good (I killed twice two Pups), especially since you can Scroll for it! Fire&Ice was the main reason (of course in addition to Ancestral/Mystical) why I finally concluded that Merchant Scroll is good.
Timetwister was a metagame choice against black and proved its worth. To lose against Sligh was humiliating, but I think I should not overreact - the SB looks ok against Sligh (maybe 2 BEBs, though?).


By dan on Monday, October 29, 2001 - 07:09 am:

When will Keeper players start to understand that Sligh is not an easy matchup?

You should lose game 1 and winning two straight against Sligh is no picnic, it often gets THOSE draws since it is built on redundancy.

How many times have the read the same thing in tourney reports, Sligh got lucky, he drew weenies and bolts?
Where is the respect guys?


By Big Blue on Monday, October 29, 2001 - 10:14 am:

I have great respect of Sligh. But he GOT a lucky draw - 3 Pups, 4 Factories within the first couple of turns is too much and although I drew like hell with LoA, TimeWalk and FoF I was dead at the point where I established control with an Abyss, enough Wastelands, Fire&Ice and a Balance. A single Tutor instead of those useless Morphlings and FoWs would have saved me though (Zorb...).

The third game I lost not only due to his reasonably good draw, but also due to my lack of knowledge of Magic rules (I never have digested the 6th edition rules completely). A lawyer probably would have won this game (first he thought he would have to tap 3 instead of 1 to destroy a Mox and a Kiebitz corrected him without being asked and then I did not know that I can prevent damage of a source with a COP: Red before the source actually deals damage).

Still, I believe Sligh is a good deck and definitely Tier 2. That's why I play Fier&Ice+Keg MD, which should increase my performance versus Sligh. And my SB features also quite a bit of Sligh hate.


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