all your report are belong to us

-Intro-

Hi everybody. Mike White here, with a tournament report for the last Type I
13proxy Trial at MUN in St. John's Newfoundland. For those of you who haven't
heard, we're having a big Type I tournament on June 26th where two pieces of
power are up for grabs: a Mox Ruby as a doorprize and an Ancestral for 1st
place. The trials give players a chance to win byes for the big tournament.
Winning 1st at a trial gives a 2-round bye and winning 2nd gives a 1-round bye,
in addition to normal prizes. Here's the story of one of the most fun Type I
tournaments I've played in forever.....even though I came up just short of
winning a bye.

Lately I've been playing Food Chain Goblins in Type I. The concept gained its
popularity last year in Extended before Pro Tour: New Orleans. Type I players
began thinking about whether the deck would be good enough to expand into Type
I. It is and it did

Before reading a primer on themanadrain.com, I played FCG a few times with
slightly different builds each time. Since looking through the primer, I've
become confident that the list there is better than the versions Dave Churchill
and I used to play as well as the other versions I've seen on the net. Here's
the list I ran this past Saturday:

-Deck List-

3 Skirk Prospector
4 Goblin Lackey
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Goblin Recuiter
4 Goblin Ringleader
3 Goblin Warchief
3 Gempalm Incinerator
2 Goblin Matron
2 Siege-gang Commander
1 Goblin Sharphooter
4 Food Chain
(34)
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Taiga
6 Mountain
(26)

4 Red Elemental Blast
4 Tormod's Crypt
4 Artifact Mutation
3 Blood Moon
(15)

-Comments on the deck-
The only change I've made is adding a mountain and cutting a prospector. I found
that the deck was a little light when it went up against decks like Landstill.
My main problem with the deck is the board. There's so much I'd like to have
access to and it's hard to predict what I'll need most. Right now there's
nothing for aggro matchups and that's generally fine. But there's also nothing
for the mirror and that could be problematic. There are ways to board against
dedicated pure combo decks like Belcher, TPS and Draw-7 but will those ever be a
big enough part of the tournament to warrant trying to hate them out? What about
Dragon - why do I always have 4 Crypts ready to go only to never run into
Dragon?

-The Tournament-

Aw well, let's move on to the tournament. There were 21 people playing. If there
had been more Food Chain players known to me, I would've adjusted my board. But,
only Josh was running Food Chain so I figured I'd just hope to not have to play
the mirror.

Round 1 - Petter Hurich playing WW/r with Shahrazad
Don't stop reading. This isn't a joke. Around here, someone always plays this
deck (Rahul owns it). It basically plays burn, creatures, metagame hate
(Nullrod, Crypts, etc) and Shahrazad. It is pretty good in that it plays very
well against control decks and will usually beat Sligh and Dragon. However, FCG
is a bad matchup for it.

Game 1: Petter mulligans. I drop 2 Lackeys first turn with Ruby and he drops a
fanatic. Arg. So I hold back, play a Piledriver and Waste his land. He doesn't
lay another land right away. After holding off another turn, I play ringleader
and swing. The Lackeys go away but I play another Ringleader next turn and he's
soon dead. He didn't actually draw any colored sources after the Wasteland so
that wasn't much of a game.
Game 2: He plays a Lion first turn. I draw FC off the top and play Taiga, Mana
Crypt, Chain go. Bad times. He doesn't have a disenchant and next turn I show
him the combo in hand. He scooped without me going through the motions.

Round 2 - Jason Squires playing Sligh
Squires doesn't play magic anymore. He's still very competent but he doesn't
know Type I. He jut borrowed this deck before the tournament.

Game 1: He plays a pup and starts swinging and kills my early creatures. I play
3rd turn FC and combo on turn 4 to kill him. This was the first time he had seen
the combo.
Game 2: I didn't have many early plays here. Again he was beating me down but I
did use a Gempalm to kill his Pup courtesy of Goblin Cadets. He chose not to
cast Wheel on his 3rd turn and I killed him with the combo on my 3rd turn.

Round 3 - Peter Heath playing Grow-a-Tog

Game 1: I'm having trouble remembering this one. I believe he mulliganed and
forced my early Lackey. I got another one and it resolved though. It got through
eventually even though he had a Dryad out because I was able to Gempalm it away.
A Siege-gang entered play and that was it.

Game 2: I boarded in Blood Moons and Blasts. I had a very combo-ish hand. My
early lackey was held off by his early Dryad.....or maybe the other way around,
heh. I resolved a Food Chain and he got a Chill into play soon after. My first
Recuiter was countered but my 2nd resolved and I stacked my library for the
combo except that I put two Ringleaders at the top in case #1 got countered. He
played a 2nd Chill but I had an REB for the one that was in play as a response.
On my turn I comboed off but it didn't work as well with Chill out. For one, I
think I only had 3 Ringleaders left. But also, I probably stacked the goblins
incorrectly considering the Chill. It turned out that I got 1 Piledriver, 2
Siege-gangs, 5 Tokens and 3 Warchiefs outs. That sounds great but he had an 8/8
and a 2/2 Dryad. I attacked with a bunch of goblins leaving 7 toughness in
defense back. The 2/2 Dryad traded with the driver (the 8/8 was tapped). On his
turn, he attacked and I had determined that if he had Cunnish (for Berserk) I
was dead regardless of how I blocked. So, one token got brave. He then Iced* a
Warchief and Timewalked but he still didn't find a wish and that was it.
*He had wished for Fire/Ice earlier in the game. He told me after that he really
should've had Naturalize in his board.

Round 4 - Fergus Brown-O'Byrne playing Slavery

Game 1: I go Lotus, FC, Sol Ring, cycle Gempalm and Prospector. I didn't get
anything good after that and Fergus was able to abuse Memory Jar and get me into
a Slavery Lock with Welder.

Game 2: He mulliganed to 4. This wasn't much of a game. (I boarded in some
Artifact Mutation and then some blasts after I saw FoW)

Game 3: He playing turn 1 Trinisphere. Nevertheless, I might have been able to
pull out of it. He Tinkered out a Pentavus after that. The long and the short of
it, on my last turn I Mutationed the Pentavus getting tokens but I was very low
and was facing a few 1/1 flyers. I had FC in play and I needed the combo to win.
I played a desperation Ringleader but it didn't get me anything useful so that
was it. I boarded incorrectly here and I think with this experience, I'll be
able to play better against Slavery/Workshop decks in the future.

Round 5 - Paul Dunn playing Sligh
3-1-1 was definitely in so we ID'd. He guessed we'd play in the top 8 and he was
right.

Quarterfinals - Paul Dunn - Sligh

Game 1: I get an amazing combo including Lotus. Paul concedes after I play
Recruiter and Food Chain, passing the turn back to him.

Game 2: He doesn't really play many creatures in the early game. It was weird. I
knew he was using a strange board strategy but I think he forgot that if FCG
gets going against Sligh, it'll win without Food Chain at all. Anyway, I'm light
on land for a bit early on. I'm dropping creatures just to draw out burn. Paul
is very surprised when I play Recuiter for just 1 Gempalm. My first Food Chain
gets Naturalized as expected. Eventually, I'm facing down 2 Mox Monkeys and a
Lavamancer. He's used up his graveyard so my Warchief gets Fireblasted. But my
Matron searched up a Siege-gang and the tokens caused him problems. I was still
sitting around 10 life and he had used so much burn that I wasn't too worried. I
drew into 2 Food Chains and then a Recuiter. Food Chain was Naturalized but not
the second and the combo killed him.

Semifinals - Rahul Chandra play Hulk SMASH

Game 1: Rahul told me afterward he kept a bad hand. From my side, he FoWed my
first lackey but my Recruiter got down and searched up 3 more. He played a Tog
to stop the beats but eventually a Lackey got through and dropped a
Gang-commander. That combined with other goblins I'd been playing killed him
very quickly and he was far away from being able to get a kill with Tog.

Game 2: I boarded in Blood Moons and REBs. My early board postion was Ruby, Sol
Ring, Land and Pildriver. A 3rd turn deed for 2 set my mana back in a big way
but also destroyed some of his moxen. I was sitting on not-enough-land and
2Ringleaders/REBs for a while. At the same time, he didn't do much except
brainstorm and I didn't think it was worth blasting. He then Twisted me for 3! I
was left with just a Blast. Soon after, I did get a recruiter through but his
Tog held off the lackeys so that they couldn't help out my bigger guys. The
major turning point came when he Intuitioned for 3 AK and cast AK (for 4, with
one already in the yard). This gave him Ancestral as well. The next turn, he was
ready with multiplay counters, a large gy/hand, the tog that had been holding me
off and a Wish for Berserk. He could've done over 100 damage, I'll bet.

Game 3: I definitely could've played this differently. My opening hand was
Mountain, Wasteland, Petal, 2 Food Chains, Warchief and Ringleader. I started
wth Mountain and he opened with Library. I chose not to wasteland it right away
and instead played theWarchief. I should've just destroyed it but I was hoping
he'd FoW the Chief and then I'd be able to get Blood Moon down. He didn't FoW
the chief, I still tried for Blood Moon and it got FoWed. I should've played
that more conservatively.
I got mindtwisted again shortly after the Warchief beats continued. But he was
drawing lots if cards and I didn't draw any new threats right away. Time was
called but he was able to kill me with Tog on turn 3 so it didn't come down to
life totals. Close.....hopefully this week my deck will perform as well and give
me another shot at a trial top two.

The finals had Rahul winning over Peter Heath. If you want to see Rahul's list
and account of the day, check it out on: www.mtg.ca

The prizes on the day were 4-3-2-2-1-1-.....
Until next time,

Mike White

P.S. Paul Dunn, Rahul Chandra and myself will be nats. Maybe some more from
Newfoundland as well.