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| Ilvaldi |
![]() Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 10:17 pm |
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Joined: 06 Dec 2005
Posts: 59
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--- description ---
So I went to Regionals with Grail. Got our butts kicked and so on. Let me explain what happened, and then you can go and laugh, criticize, blah, blah, blah. (bye the way, expect me to rant about what also happened at JSS)
--- end description ---
So what can I say about Regionals? Hmm...
Ah! I know! what I don’t I start off with the fact that there were some rogue decks that were actually good, and that the top players were playing either husk, b/w, or vore.
So, now for the details. I don’t know about anyone else’s regionals experience this year, but aggro got pwned up the butt. If you were playing zoo, expect to see a dose of shining shoal, sickening shoal, wrath of god, wildfire, and faith’s fetters. B/w control style decks dominated against zoo, as well as rogue control decks. One exmple was this rogue deck:
R/W rogue (regionals style)
Creatures:
4 Kumano, Master Yamabushi
4 Sunhome Enforcer
4 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
Spells:
4 Reciprocate
2 Shock
4 Lightning Helix
4 Devouring Light
4 Char
4 Wrath of God
Enchantments:
4 Faith’s Fetters
Lands:
4 Sacred Foundry
10 Plains
8 Mountains
If you take a look at the stats, that’s alot of creature hate. This is my r/w control deck that I took to Regionals and won my first 4 matches and losing only 1 game in the process. Strategy as to how the hell I came up with this idea was based off of what I saw from Osion’s monoblue control deck wayback in JSS when Affinity was still legal and was the killer deck. The model follows as this.
mana leak : lightning helix
unsummon : shock
hinder: char
Keiga, the Tide Star : Sunhome Enforcer
Evacuate : Wrath of God
Meloku, the Clouded Mirror: Kumano, Master Yamabushi
And some of the others were some of my own generic thoughts as well as common sense. Now, I know I recieved a lot of shocked looks from my opponents when I played this, so I bet some of you guys have the same look on your faces as well. Sunhome Enforcer?
Sure, why not? I t worked in every aggro deck I played against. This guy is basically a dumbed down but, in some ways, on par version of Kumano. With the spirit-link + the firebreathing ability, I basically cushion the blows that my opponents send at me, giving me the effect of, "I take ten. You take ten and I gain ten."
Now to add a sense of realism to that phrase. In reality, my life gain may not be able to compete against zoo power and speed. Not to mention, the jitte. Therefore, I’ve got removal that can make any kird ape fall king kong style. Also, the answer that I have to my opponent’s jitte is a simple faith’s fetters which will occur after I kill every creature my plays on the board and is equipped with a jitte.
If the situation gets sticky, let’s say my opponent top decks like crazy and recovers from loads of kill. I drop the bomb: WOG. When the smoke clears, Kumano and his team of Sunhome Enforcers will brush the field. And if somehow, my opponent recovers form that, (by this time, they will definitely have to top deck something very good that could stop kumano and a couple of enforcers) my life total will be 20+ from the enforcers and will have managed to drop a WOG.
Now, early in this article I mention that I got my ass pwned in Regionals. Well I’ll get to that as soon as I go over some aggro matchups that this deck crushed (in other words, ALL of my aggro matchups).
Here’s some from JSS:
husk and b/w deck:
Turn 1
I drop a foundry tapped and my opponent throws down an Isamaru with a pained godless shrine
Turn 2
Shock and mountain; my opponent dumps down a savannah and a swamp
Turn 3
Boros Swiftblade (note: this card was later removed from maindeck as I evaluated it useless during Regionals) and plains; Plains, Promise of Bunrei, and attacks with Lions but I block. My opponent then sacks Bunrei to get four 1/1 spirits
Turn 4
mountain and Enforcer. Beat for two with swiftblade and my opponent takes; My opponent attacks with four and I block with sunhome enforcer, gaining 2 life and losing 3. Thus, my net loss is one life total. My opponent pops a Hand of Cruelty.
Turn 5
Plains and Kumano. My opponent plays another bunrei and attacks w/all; I block with Kumano onto cruelty and let the rest slide in. I’m at sixteen.
Turn 6
Beatdown for eight w/all, but I pump Sunhome up to four which puts me at 20 again and my opponent at 6. Opponent sends back at me, but this time, w/a topdecked jitte plus a tapped-for-colorless-cave of koilos and two held back spirits. End result: me-17 opponent-6
Turn 7
Pin, ping. Spirits removed. beat for 8, but my opponent removes two counters. 2nd main, mountain and helix. I’m back at 20. Game over.
cards in my hand:
faith’s fetters
char
Now this was pretty much easy. Not to mention, my opponent had a crappy hand or was playing bad to start with based on the plays you saw. Didn’t even look like a husk deck but I saw the husk coming during 2nd game Not intense enough for you? Well...
Heartbeat (game 3)
Excuse me for being a noob, but I didn’t pay attention w/net decks like heartbeat til’ now. Although I said that I would go over aggro matchups, I though that this would be interesting to chat. First game I lost and then I got lucky when he couldn’t somehow manage to cast enough blaze to kill in the second, here’s game 3. In this game, I’ll post my sideboard:
Sideboard: (ideas of sideboard courtesy from Osion)
4 flames of the bloodhand
4 kami of ancient law
2 Isamaru hound of konda (originally before regionals this was in my sideboard and not maindeck)
1 Savannah lions
4 lava spike
Turn 1
Plains and Isamaru; forest.
Turn 2
beat for 2, mountain; island, tribe elder. At the end of my opponent’s turn, helix.
Turn 3
beatdown, but opponent blocks and sacks for an island; I drop a foundry tapped and play lava spike. Plays drift of phantasms. Life totals: me--23, opponent--12
Turn 4
do nothing; opponent plays mountain and kodama’s reach. But before he ends his turn, I say, "wait!" Stroke my chin and go, "hmm, nevermind, you can end your turn now, I won’t play anything--yet!" (aka an eerie foreshadowment). Life totals: me--23, opponent--12
Turn 5
do nothing; plays forest, heartbeat, then does a huge combo with early harvest and another heartbeat as well as a couple of drift of phantasms (man, I can imagine he had a pretty good hand). Don’t know how the combo really went cause my memory ain’t that fond and plays a huge blaze for some sort of damage that’s greater than my life total. I sort out three cards from my hand and put them face down
Dramatic-scene-of-what-happened (highly exaggerated):
ME: OH MY GOD! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN!!!!!!!!!!! (weeps)
Opponent: hey, we win some and we lose some (huge smirk across his face)
Spectators: Look man, its heartbeat and your control, how’d you think you were supposed to win? That was an unexpected victory.
ME: OH...OH...AWW F***....THE PAIN... AGONY.... AHHHH!!!!!!.... WHY????????? WHY ME?! (puts hands over face and starts crying)
Spectators: look, its just a game get over it noob.
Judge: (comes by and sees we’re the last players playing) are you guys done here? You have five turns or its a tie.
Opponent: Yeah
ME: NO!!!!! ITS FAR FROM OVER!!! I HAVEN’T LET DAMAGE RESOLVE!!!!
Spectators: Damn you! Just quit! Its over face it!!
Opponent: Look, good game. (holds out hand for a handshake)
ME: Indeed, (taps foundry for 3 red, mountain for three red, plains for 3 white--char, flames of the bloodhand, flames of the bloodhand) GREAT GAME!! 
Opponent: WTF!!! I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS S***!!! AWW F***
Spectators: 
ME: 
So that’s all I’m going to spill for JSS cause, I don’t want to write so much more. Here’s what happened at Regionals:
Match 1:
Rogue gruul with wildfire. Killed the guy’s creatures in both games--victory was inevitable.
Match 2:
Zoo. Victory was inevitable. Life totals: me 34, opponent 0
Match 3:
Rogue red goblin deck. Guy was retarded into using Mikokoro, Center of the Sea when he didn’t have anything to play. Got mys stuff way fast and pwned anything that came into play with Kumano
Match 4:
Zoo. Won 1st game. Then opponent sideboards to control and we stall till I get kumano with ALL of my lands and two cards left in library. Deals 32 damage in two turns.
Match 5:
Before we go into match 5, my current status is 4-0 with only one game loss.
Lose to Zur’s wierding plus firemane combo.
Match 6:
Lose to uber rogue enduring ideal when my opponent controls kumano + sunforger. 2nd game I win when I sideboard aggro. 3rd, my opponent throws ivory mask at 12 life when I have 2 chars and a flames and three mana. Never drew kami of ancient law and lost.
Match 7:
mana screw and my opponent plays Kodama of the North Tree
Match 8:
Played against untargettable zoo-like creatures--MY ULTIMATE WEAKNESS!!! Never drew wrath and lost as well as dropped.
Well, there you have it. I don’t think I’ll post how grail did, since he’ll probably write it himself. However, I will mention that he did the same thing I did when he played heartbeat (minus the drama). You can see that I had a problem with some control decks as well as creatures that can’t be targetted. Therefore, I’m trying to fine tune this baby so I can work it against control and untargettable creatures.
Here’s bonus casual match that I played with the semi finalist:
Me: lots of lands
Him: lots of bouncing of lands and stone rains
Him: Meloku
Me: Enforcer
Him: Vore and attacks but I block vore and gain 2 life, taking damage from tokens meloku which nets out to 2
Me: wrath
Me kumano
Game
But let me say, although we didn’t finish our second game, he would’ve won as he had 3 wildfires in his hand + meloku and vore + five lands in play.
That’s it. If you have any suggestions as to how to beef this deck, post’em. Oh, and...um...you can rant on how much Grail and I sucked at Regionals now. |
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| Arbitrary |
![]() Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 2:33 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2006
Posts: 6
Location: TopdeckLand
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Haha, this article was amusing to read, congrats.
Your slang caused some of my ear lobes to burst in bloody pools (pwned up the butt? king kong style?!?) and some of the matches could have used more than a sentence descriptors, but good job
+tech on the heartbeat kill. |
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| La_Sin_Grail |
![]() Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 8:41 pm |
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Joined: 14 Aug 2005
Posts: 806
Location: Maryland
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| Yeah... I built the perfect Zoo and everybody played anti-agro. It’s SO NOT FAIR lol. Seriously, though, if the meta weren’t all anti-agro decks, I’d have made a decent record. |
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| Felipe Musco |
![]() Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 9:48 pm |
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Joined: 18 May 2006
Posts: 2434
Location: Florianópolis, SC, Brasil
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| Why don’t you take a look at my creature-less deck? That’s sure to surprise quite a few people. You could add Early Harvest, I didn’t quite think of it... (naive, I know) It would most likely deal with agro, and control decks would be totally lost. And I don’t quite think there’s a lot ou countering decks, nowadays... |
| I don't like YOU. |
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| La_Sin_Grail |
![]() Posted: Fri May 26, 2006 2:54 pm |
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Joined: 14 Aug 2005
Posts: 806
Location: Maryland
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Think again. I faced a game where flames of the blood hand was remanded three times and then mana leaked. Counters are common as tools in U/W agro and U/G agro to avoid things like wildfires and wrath of god.
Also, I saw many rogue U/W control decks running dovescpae, and they counter all the time. Counters are rampant outside Orzhov.
Heartbeat did okay, but most build got smashed- nothing like it’s former dominance.
Edit- not much strategy, though I liked the story. |
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| Guest |
![]() Posted: Fri Jun 02, 2006 5:29 pm |
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| agro did not get "pwned in the butt" it made the strongest showing, with Husk and Gruul being the top two decks qualifying people for nationals. |
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| Ilvaldi |
![]() Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2006 11:42 am |
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Joined: 06 Dec 2005
Posts: 59
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FYI: After 4 matches, the top decks w/ a 4-0 record were no longer aggro, but control.
FYI: The majority of top 8 were control
FYI: the finalists all played control.
FYI: this was evaluated from MD’s regionals game in which Grail, who was playing aggro, got screwed over by all of the control.
Also, if you didn’t noticed, this article was for an entertaining use, not strategical. |
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| Guest |
![]() Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2006 12:45 pm |
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| maryland regionals was split half and half in the top 8 between agro or mid range, and control. |
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| Ilvaldi |
![]() Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2006 11:20 pm |
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Joined: 06 Dec 2005
Posts: 59
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| the 2 out of the top 3 used control when I last checked at the regionals game in MD. One was vore, the other was Orzhov, and the third was husk. |
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| La_Sin_Grail |
![]() Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2006 12:00 pm |
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Joined: 14 Aug 2005
Posts: 806
Location: Maryland
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Ghost husk isn’t true agro- well not the builds that went. I guess it’s a better classification than other things... when I said agro I meant true agro- the biggest, most POWERFUL creatures, not ravenous rats and shreiking grotesques.
The reason Orzhov is so good against what I would call real agro is because it has a few control elements, but with better speed than control. Hence, it’s more of a blend.
As for the article being for entertainment, I know. That’s exactly why I said something. This is the strategy article forum, Ilvaldi, and I thought this might do better under discussion or something else. |
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