Painting the LCV again

[xouman]

My first final in the LCV, again with painters. Deck is performing quite good, specially with insane openers.

Painting the moon

1 Goblin Welder
2 Trinket Mage
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Painter's Servant
1 Snapcaster Mage
2 Sulfur Elemental
1 Ancestral Recall
2 Thirst for Knowledge
2 Pyroblast
3 Red Elemental Blast
4 Force of Will
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Treasure Cruise
2 Dack Fayden
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
2 Grindstone
3 Island
3 Polluted Delta
1 Tolarian Academy
3 Volcanic Island
3 Flooded Strand
2 Cavern of Souls
2 Mental Misstep
1 Blightsteel Colossus
SB: 2 Ingot Chewer
SB: 2 Sulfur Elemental
SB: 1 Izzet Staticaster
SB: 1 Trinisphere
SB: 1 Engineered Explosives
SB: 3 Grafdigger's Cage
SB: 2 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1 Goblin welder
SB: 1 chalice of the void

1st round Marc Bertolin (Mentor)
He wins the dice, mulligans into 6. My first turn involves lotus, magus and ancestral. He scoops.
He wins the second once he can establish a mentor.
I mull in the third, but magus or chalice appears and his lives go down 4 by 4.
2-1, 3 points

2nd round Antoni Sanchez (Supremacy)
Hw wins the dice, opens with island. I have top. He plays island, In the third turn I play painter, and he drains. I don't have specialIy interest in keep sulfur, but don't want him to have drain mana, so I reb, he flusters, I fow drain, he fows my fow. In his turn he plays tezz, finding top, a sulfur elemental kills the tezz and puts him to 6. Then he gifts, I pyro, drain and I don't have answer. Walk, snapcaster, drain, noxious and I lose to BSC.
I keep and awkward hand with one cage, which does nothing. Soon after he vaults-key me.

3rd round Guillem Alomar (Show & oath)
I win the dice, play magus, fow. He plays orchard oath, resolves, activates next turn finding cenobite, killing tokens. I get a painter, play grindstone next turn but he has emrakul. A sphinx joins the team via S&T and i lose.
I win the second since he resolves omniscience but only finds countermagic, lands and another omniscience. I play cage, welder and trinket and they kill him.
In the third I have T1 trinket into cage, but prefer to wait until he has the oath in play and play painter. However he tinkers into sphinx, but in next two turns I play my 2 trinkets into grindstone and tormods, activating grindstone the turn before I die, and removing emrakul with tormod's

4th round Roger Riera (White eldrazis)
He is upset because he lost last round in T2 and T1 (to Antoni, same who defeated me). He wins the dice and opens with plains, I open with tolarian, mox, mox, sol ring, trinket into ruby, magus. I had no more gas, but he concedes.
In second game he opens with jet, cavern and I open with lotus, mox, mox, fayden and he concedes again, having a quite good hand. He literally quits the tournament

5th round Jose Luis Gallego (DPS)
We are only 30 people, and he thinks that with 3-1-1 can be enough to pact. However lots of people can enter (1 person 12 points, two 10, four 9 and six 7 points) and my opponent has quite bad standings despite being 6th, so we play.
He wins the dice, and my good hand (ancestral, walk, thirst, moxen and lands) goes to bin after land, 2 moxen, twister. My hand is bad with painter, 2 islands, 2 magus, fow and something else, but goes better as my next draws are fetch and grindstone. While my opponent is playing library and preparing the final blow, I combo and he scoops after drawing BSC as his last card.
I lose second game. In my second turn I can choose between magus and trinket, and I choose magus. He has underground sea and swamp, so closing blue mana seems a good plan. However he has lotus, ritual, will... he plays mind desire for 10, gets acceleration and 2 dark petition (without getting 3 mana) and already had tendrils in hand...
In third match I get early painter+grindstone. He gets again BSC without twister or will, so he loses.

Top 8 Marcel Milia (Uwb mentor)
I finished 2nd so I start, keeping a hand with 5 costs 3 and just 2 lands. He plays probe and sees no trouble so he taps, and in my turn I draw mox and play magus, that takes him the white mana. He scoops after a fayden joins magus.
He plays first turn probe again and seems a really similar hand, but now he has basic island and plains, and stony silence. I have welder, since his lives go down 1 by one. Later a bear joins the party, he has a mentor when he is really low on life but I have sulfur elemental and win.

Top 4 Oscar Rubi (GWB bears)
I mulligan into T1 magus, but decide to play walk since playing magus means losing blue mana right now. In fact even after walk i have to play magus losing access to blue mana, but he scoops after seeing magus.
In second matcg I have T1 izzet staticaster with 2 moxen and a land to kill his kataki (in his upkeep, after kataki taxes his mox). Next turn I have welder and then painter, which gets claimed, but returns next turn with welder. Next turn he plays swords on painter, which now goes to the grave returning the mox into play. In the meanwhile he has lost a sanctum prelate after attacking into a painter, and staticaster kills it. Staticaster also kills recruiter of the guard and another sactum prelate after I return again painter's servant, helping me with statiscaster. Finally i get grindstone and kill him while he has no cards in hand.

Final Toni Anaya (Urw delver)
I open with welder, he plays delver, which flips next turn. I play ancestral and defend it. A trinket on my side joins welder matching the 3 damage of his delver, until my attack stalls and I have to play snapcaster into pyroblast over ancestral (it is mandatory to remove delver since I'm at 9, and my SDT tells me that ancestral is bringing no good). Nevertheless from that point he chains a little drawing and few turns later he gets me.
In second match he mulligans next one but starts recovering until I can gather painter and grindstone. They win.
I have a quite combo oriented hand for final game, with tinker, pyro, reb, painter, misstep and 2 sources. I don't misstep first turn delver (flipping next turn) and go for painter x 2 (blue and white) and tinker for grindstone. I allow bolt on one painter, pyro the other, and then he plays fayden on my grindstone. I have to reb grindstone and painter kills fayden, but he still has the delver and soon 2 pyromancers appear. I have magus to block some tokens and snapcaster to trade with one pyromancer (after reusing reb for delver) but at the end tokens get me.

Pretty lucky all day with explosive openers. Magus T1 is insane, even T2 or 3 is really good. Chalice is also brutal, even when I play a bunch of CC1 cards . They often give time to build the right hand.

On the other hand, deck lacks draw engine, is not really fast and gets behind if opponent has free access to all drawing spells.

[PeAcH]

Congratulations on another great performance!

[yugular]

Congratulations! I would love to read more in-depth report or even watch some vids from your games. This deck seems a ton of fun!

[xouman]

@yugular Unfortunately, I barely take notes of my matches beyond life count, and after 8 rounds I mix gameplays So going into further detail would involve some fantasy from me.

About videos, LCV hasn't recorded anything for years, but cockatrice stores matches for a short term, and I played several games the days before the tournament. Maybe I can access them, haven't ever tried.

PD: the deck is not specially fun, unless you have an active welder. What I like is the possibility to switch roles, since you can win via aggro with bears, unexpected combo from the top, playing mana denial (understanding moons as secondary colors denial) or just control mode with the 11 counters. Some people asked during the tournament why I often counter probe: I don't want my opponents to know which cards do I have in hand so they cannot know which role do they have to play. But even knowing my hand can be a liability: one player played T1 probe to see that magus was coming on T3, just to tap in T2 and look at my T2 magus with the help of a topdeck mox (losing access to white mana, effectively losing STP).

I consider fun decks those that allow lots of optimal choices. With this deck there are lots of lines, but usually are decided by topckeds, not me (SDT is one of the best cards in the deck). Of course there are still choices:
-in the third match of the finals I had 2 painters in play, tinker and 2 rebs in hand, but only could play 1 of them. My opponent had lots of cards in hand, delver in play but I still had like 3-4 turns to survive. Should I go for BSC, and hope I can defend it from swords/dayden? Grindstone? In both cases I have to wait for next turn. Luckily I went for grindstone, since he killed one painter, I had to use REB to save the other, and he still had mana to play a fayden, stealing grindstone (which I had to REB next turn). If I had tinkered for BSC I couldn't REB it once stolen.
-Another example: in fifth round, second match, I could play magus or trinket. Trinket could go for tormod's (graveyard only included lands and 2 probes), but no chalice (it was in the side, my bad), magus would left him with mountain and swamp. I played magus just to see dark ritual, lotus, y.will... for a desire for 10. With tormod's that desire would have been far smaller (maybe just 3 or 4?). Of course if lotus or petal were not involved, there is no blue mana to play desire or other drawers...

[yugular]

@xouman said:

@yugular Unfortunately, I barely take notes of my matches beyond life count, and after 8 rounds I mix gameplays So going into further detail would involve some fantasy from me.

Yeah and it can be disturbing to try to record whats happening. Its better to just concentrate to the game itself