Report

My expectations were low heading into Crazy Con 2. Last year, I managed to place
30th out of 90 with Keeper in a field full of GroATogs with a 4-3 record losing
to 2 GroATogs and 1 monoblack. Since then, I have become happily married and
hate to spend time away from my wife. I haven't played Magic in over 3 months,
but still have a very high interest in the game. Although I have kept up with
all the new good decks such as Long, Dragon, and Mud, I haven't nearly had the
amount of practice that I needed. I spent a lot of time tuning the deck and the
sideboard and finalizing my sideboarding strategy, but unfortunately, left
little time for playtesting matchups. My end goal was to have a good time and
break even as I didn't think I prepared enough to actually win. My wife wanted
to come along to observe despite knowing that it could be up to 12 hours of pure
boredom. Here is the deck that I took.

Mana (26)
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
2 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
2 City of Brass
3 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
1 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring

Creatures (4)
1 Morphling
1 Meddling Mage
1 Withered Wretch
1 Gorilla Shaman

Counters (8)
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will

Draw (5)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Teferi's Response
1 Fact or Fiction
2 Skeletal Scrying

Search (5)
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
2 Cunning Wish

Filters (4)
4 Brainstorm

Bombs (3)
1 Mind Twist
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Bullets (5)
3 Chalice of the Void
1 Balance
1 Starstorm

Sideboard (15)
3 Red Elemental Blast
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Lim Dul's Vault
1 Rule of Law
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 The Abyss
1 Coffin Purge
1 Planar Void
1 Disenchant
1 Rack and Ruin
2 Serenity

Card Choice Explanations
The strategy is simply find your bullets, drop some creatures and stay in
control. Sideboarding strategy would be to replace bullets with better bullets
and then dig into the search (Mystical Tutor and Cunning Wishes) pool if I need
to remove more cards.

Note that I basically metagamed for Long, Mud, Tog, and Suicide. I wasn't too
far off the mark. The sideboard offers help to artifacts and enchantment,
creatures, graveyard, and combo, some in the form of instant, wishable answers,
and permanent answers to be sided in. Of course, the oddball tech of mine was
using Serenity over Energy Flux or Rack and Ruin or Shattering Pulse. I wanted a
permanent answer for Workshop decks. I figured Rack and Ruin is decent, but only
gets rid of a couple components, while I wanted them all gone. Energy Flux is
good, but can be played around if they have enough mana and can be REB'ed.
Shattering Pulse is not very likely to get online against prison decks. Serenity
seem like the answer as the enchantment would be near impossible to be answered
and the delay didn't seem so bad as long as it got rid of everything. It worked
once last tournament, but I wasn't able to capitalize that time. It also failed
once as a Chalice at 2 prevented me from casting it.

The creature choices offer answers to the threats I expected as well as some
pressure offensively. Gorilla Shaman is good against artifact-based decks,
Withered Wretch is good against graveyard-based decks, Meddling Mage is good
against combo-based decks, and Morphling is good against creature-based decks.

Teferi's Response was something that I added when I heard about NeoTog running
Strips and Wastes. With all the Strips/Wastes and some Sinkholes I was expecting
from the mirror matches, Mud, monoblack, and now Tog, it seemed like a logical
addition especially since Gush slows you down so much. Starstorm used to be a
Fire/Ice. However, I wanted a better bullet than Fire especially since I wasn't
running maindeck Swords. I also figured it might surprise a few mirror matchups
clearing Soldiers and Goblins. Starstorm is also the reason why a Tundra became
a second City.

I don't believe much else of the deck needs explanations.

Round 1 - Welder Mud
If there was one matchup that I wasn't truely prepared for, this was it. Game 1
saw me beat down by a Solemn Simulacrum as I drew no broken stuff and mostly
just lands. There really wasn't even a lock until near the end of the game.

Me - 20,19,18,16,14,12,11,9,7,5,2,0
Him - 20

Sideboard: +1 Disenchant, +1 Rack and Ruin, +2 Serenity, +2 Swords, -3 Chalice,
-2 Wish, -1 Mystical?

The second game was a little better. I dropped an Island, Sapphire, and Pearl.
He dropped a workshop, mox, mox, chalice for 2. I drained it into a Morphling.
He cast a Trisk. I made Morphling flying and attacked. His turn, he REB'ed it, I
made it untargetable, and he pinged it to death. I'm sure I made a mistake here
somewhere, but I can't think of it right now (and it's not that I shouldn't have
attacked). In the next few turns, nothing eventful happened except I wasted his
workshop and he was killing himself with Mana Crypt. With 2 cards in hand, he
cast a Metalworker to join his 1/1 Trisk. I drew a Rack and Ruin, but like a
fool didn't cast it. He drew, used the Metalworker to cast Memory Jar into
Academy, Solemn Simulacrum, Shaman, and maybe something else. I Rack and Ruined
end of turn, but it was too late as I got beat down by a 1/1 Trisk, Gorilla
Shaman and Metalworker.

Me - 20-16-15-13-10-8-6-3-0
Him - 20-17-12-9-6-3

Round 2 - Welder Mud
Game 1 - Nothing interesting here. He eventually got a lock and took a while
with Grafted Skullcap to find a win condition.

Me - 20-19-18-17-16-15-14-13-12-11-10-9-8-3-0
Him - 20-17-14-12

Sideboard: Same as before

Game 2 - Not much to say here. In the middle of the game, he had a chalice for
two. I drew a Serenity but couldn't cast it. 2 Welders and a Metalworker were
doing the beatdown until a Karn came much later.

Me - 20-19-18-16-13-12-10-5-0
Him - 20-21

Round 3 - Scepter Keeper
Game 1 - Turn one, he Mystical's for Ancestral and doesn't cast it because he
doesn't have the protection. Later, I Chalice for 1, he drains it with his only
2 blue mana, I cast my Ancestral, get a Force, and leave him with an Ancestral
in hand and no mana to cast it. I resolve a Mage naming Wish that gets removed
somehow (Fire?). A Wretch comes and continues the beatdown. At some point he
forces something pitching the useless Ancestral.

Me - 20-19-18-17-16-15-14-13-12-11-10-6
Him - 20-19-18-17-15-14-12-11-9-8-6-5-3-1-0

Sideboard: +3 REB, -1 Mystical, -2 Wish (I probably made sideboarding mistakes
by keeping a Wish in for a REB and a Mystical for a Chalice in the second game.)

Game 2 - He eventually resolves a Scepter imprinting Brainstorm and a Scepter
imprinting Mana Drain. He takes too long to find a win condition and I take too
long to concede. I concede much later when he gets a Yawgmoth's Will and casts a
Goblin Trenches.

Me - 20-19-18-17-16-15-17-concede
Him - 20-19-18-16-15-14-13

Game 3 - Not much here except I believe I am in control with a Shaman beatdown
and card advantage, but time gets called and I end up with a draw. It would have
been interesting to see if I could have pulled this game off.

Me - 20-19-18-16-15
Him - 20-19-18-17-16-15-14-13-12-11-10-9

Round 4 - Nether Void
Game 1 - Early on, he gets a Factory and a Shade against my Shaman. He just cast
the Shade so he has no black mana. I figured I would get an attack with the
Shaman but forget he has a Wasteland for to activate his Factory. This is
probably for the best as I have a Starstorm in hand and play it for 4 to clear
the board. He gets a Nether Void which I pretty much have no answer for so I am
forced to play under it. I answer his threats fairly effectively despite the
Void. I think I have an advantage with a Meddling Mage naming Shade, but he uses
a Contagion to remove it. At some point, he resolves a Necropotence. I have a
Wretch to prevent his Factory from attacking and I feel that he is digging for a
second Factory. I get a Strip but he gets a Shade on his last card that he could
have played. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for that last creature or he
would have been in a Necro-lock that I could have easily won the game from. I
had a Will in hand, but couldn't effectively cast it and another spell. At one
point, I considering Willing to get a Waste to kill the Factory, but I was able
to topdeck one instead. I am sure if I was on top of my game I could have pulled
this game out.

Me - 20-18-16-14-12-10-8-7-5-3-2-1-0
Him - 20-22-16-10-7-4

Sideboard: +2 Swords, +1 Abyss, -2 Wish, -1 Chalice (because I only want to
Chalice for 2, so I don't need 1 as early)

Game 2 - I pretty much dominated this game. I even got an early Response. As
time was running short, I went to hurry-up mode as I scryed aggressively to get
Morphling and hope to beat him in time. In the end, I was two attacks short, and
missed a Vamp and Will chance with the aggressive scrying as I would need to use
cities to cast the time walk from the graveyard. The purposely stalling for a
minute didn't help either as he asked his friend for how much time was left,
looked through his graveyard, then my graveyard and although he didn't take much
time (probably not even a minute), it ended up being just enough as I missed an
attack and couldn't set up the winning Will for a Time Walk.

Me - 20-19-18-17-12-11-4-3
Him - 20-19-18-13-8

Wrap-up
At this point, my wife was asleep and I was really hungry and really
disappointed. I didn't feel like playing the last two rounds and didn't like the
possibility of play the Goblin Game deck, so I just dropped. I guess it turned
out that I got last place, but hopefully, it has less to do with the deck, and
more with my lack of preparation. I had as much fun as one could get without
getting a victory so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

Overall, I was disappointed in the turnout for this Crazy Con. I think we had 36
players and it took people from Minnesota, Milwaukee, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio,
and Illinois to make it to that number. I would be curious of the total number
of players that would have come, but didn't because of the holidays (although I
don't want this thread to become that). There hasn't been much of a turnout at
the local Chicago tournaments lately either. Unfortunately, this might be my
last tournament report for quite a while as I probably won't be playing in
tournaments again until GenCon. Hopefully, I will be better prepared for then.

As a sidenote, with Long neutered by the December restrictions, now might be the
chance to sideboard those Chalices and fix the deck accordingly.