all your report are belong to us

This is going to be a quick one, mostly because the C&J's tournament was fairly
small this last time around, and also because I can't really remember that much
of the tournament. So this is less a tournament report of the style that some of
you may or may not have grown accustomed to from yours truly (not that I've
written one in a while) and more a quick missive for those scoping out the
initial post-Mirrodin results.

This was the first tournament at C&J's since Mirrodin went live. I played a
Chalice Keeper list fairly close to the list that Zherbus posted in the Chalice
Keeper thread with a few minor changes, the most important of which was to cut
one of the Scryings for a Scepter; or more precisely, I never cut BOTH Scepters
for Scryings. Z dislikes the Scepters, I've found them very strong, we've both
done a lot of testing, so I decided to split the difference. Scepter was great
and I think I'm back to wanting multiples again.

The tournament only went to four rounds, and only two of them were truly
interesting from a competitive standpoint.

Round One: vs. a Mono-white deck kinda like Parfait (Tax/Rack, Wrath...) but
with Factories. Kinda fun, but not a serious challenge. The game plan was pretty
much standard issue against White control decks: Find Mind Twist. Cast Mind
Twist. Win.

Round Two: vs. Zhalfirin with Chalice Stax.

Oh, spectacular. Round two and I have to play a teammate and testing partner. I
was hoping we'd get to play last round, but unfortunately it was not to be. Game
one is crazy and takes forever. For a while it looks like I'm down and out as
his Smokestack eats my board, but as always, once you realize you can't race the
Stack you just let it do its thing and hold back for the rebuilding. I start to
drop land again and get back into the game, and he's forced to Twister to try to
find something. I get Ancestral, Force, another blue card, Balance, two land,
and a Wish off the Twister. To make it worse, he drops Welder off the Twister,
and I just let it resolve since I have the Balance. Balance does what it does,
Ancestral does what it does, Force makes sure his stuff doesn't do what it does,
Cunning Wish for Rack and Ruin seals it, and once the little Goblin Soldiers
start rising up out of the ground, it's over.

We go to game two and try to play quickly so that Zhalfirin will have a chance
to win this game and at least tie up the match. I honestly don't remember much
of this, partly because it blends with all the post-tournament testing games we
got in, but I remember that on the third of the five extra turns I had a
YawgWill resolve that would have won me any other game; unfortunately I couldn't
kill in time, but at that point a draw was just as good.

Honestly, the Keeper vs. Chalice Workshops matchup may be my favorite
post-Mirrodin pairing. Maybe I'm a masochistic bastard, but I love the matchup
from both sides. Game one could have gone either way, and Zhalfirin may have
missed a win with a mistake.

Round Three: vs. Madness.

This was the first time I'd ever actually played against Madness. It made me
very, very glad I had The Abyss and Crypts in my sideboard, though The Abyss is
only a partial answer, since they have Anger. I won't go through the particulars
because they're embarassing. I made stupid mistakes that I shouldn't have made,
mostly because of unfamiliarity with the matchup and partly because I was a
little bit exhausted from the last round still. I lost game one, but pulled out
games two and three with some Abyss action and Wastes for his Bazaars. The deck
is pretty scary, though, and it feels a little like playing against TnT back in
the pre-GAT days. I think my opponent should have won this match, but he didn't.
Lucky me.

Round Four: Rogue SEISMIC ASSAULT combo deck.

I shit you not. Don't ask, I don't know how it got to Round 4 undefeated.
Anyway, round one I deal with every last threat in his deck the old-fashioned
way: counters and removal. Terravores die, Assaults get countered or
Disenchanted before they're major threats, and the whole thing is sealed when I
get a Scepter with a Drain on it. Life is generally good even if it takes a
while to finish him off, though mana burn becomes a possible issue near the end.
Game two features me dropping a Chalice for 3 that wins me the game all on its
own.

There were times in almost every round where Scepter was a game-winner or a
massive, massive threat. I want 2, at least to test again. In the meantime,
spevack's UWR Scepter deck did fairly well, too, and it should have been him and
me in the last round except that he made a few bad plays in Round 3 that
unfortunately cost him the match. He hasn't had a chance to play at C&J's in a
long while, so I guess he's entitled to a little catching-up time.

So anyway, small tourney this time around, but for anyone keeping count, that's
another one taken by Keeper.