all your report are belong to us

Sunday the 27th marked the third of GameForce's sanctioned
good-card-payout-tournaments, this time for a mint LoA for first, a choice of
mint UL Chaos Orb or slightly played UL Forcefield for 2nd, Serendib or If-Bhiff
for 3rd and 4t, and an Italian RV Plateau for 5 through 8. There were 34 people
attending, and only ONE of them was unpowered. Eat your heart out, proxy
tournaments ;-) I initially wanted to play Oath, but I couldn't find the cards
in time and Rudy (MoreFling, rvs) convinced me to try the deck he had secretly
been working on with Marco (Big Mac) and which Marco had used to win the Mold
tournament (and an UL Jet) two weeks earlier.

I wasn't at all convinced myself as I had goldfished a similar list Ben Kowal
gave me months ago, and which didn't perform for me in actual testing back then.
Rudy/Marco's list did have some nice tricks though, so I ended up choosing it. I
played Rudy's most recent build, whereas Marco had slightly tweaked his, adding
some of his signature madcap-but-always-strangely-effective technology. I had
only playedtested the deck on the day before the tournament by playing several
games against Pyroman's Mono-U and TurboLich lists (which hardly constitute
serious testing but did get me a feel for how it works). Credits for the list go
mostly to Rudy and partly to Marco (correct me if I'm wrong), aside from me
deciding to drop Old Man from the board in favor of Lava Dart (mostly because I
don't own any), leading me to believe that IT'S ALL ME and calling the deck
BramTinker** ;-) Three people played it that day: me, Marco and Jaap Brouwer
(yes, the lvl 5 judge). Marco and I took the #1 and #2 slots.

Anyway, the list:

TransAm

1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Saphire
1 Mana Crypt
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
2 Gilded Lotus
4 Volcanic Island
3 Island
2 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Mishra's Workshop
3 Flooded Strand
4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Memory jar
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Platinum Angel
1 Sundering Titan
1 Triskelion
1 Crucible of Worlds
4 Goblin Welder
4 Su-Chi
4 Transmute Artifact (gosling good!)
1 Tinker
2 Fire/Ice
1 Mindslaver
1 Time Walk
4 Brainstorm

SB:
3 Eon Hub (!!!1!!1!one)
4 Trinisphere
3 Lava Dart
1 Duplicant
1 Memnarch
1 Triskelion
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Timetwister

As for the sideboard: I was real happy with it. I only didn't ever use Memnarch
(and that was a mistake as I should have in the mirror at least) and Twister,
but I still stand by that since it's good vs. Aggro and Dragon.  As for the
report: I only jotted down opponent's names and life totals, and since I played
9 rounds, specifics elude me.  Some of this might be slightly off, so if you
have more specific info, please feel free to correct me. Here's the gist of it,
though.

Round 1 - MUD (Mitchell Talpe)
Game 1 gave me problems. I was no match for him as I could not pay enough
permanents to race his Metalworker'd Tanglewires and Smokestacks. I conceded.
Game 2 was a lot better. I was forced to pitch an Eon Hub to a Thirst for
Knowledge, thereby revealing my secret sideboarding tech ;-) I Transmuted into a
second one the turn after, rendering both his Smokestacks and Wires useless. Not
playing Welders, he was unable to remove the thing and I won (I think he
conceded). We couldn't finish the third game in time, so we drew.
0-0-1 (1-1-1)

Round 2 - Oath (Stefan Gussenhoven)
Game 1 was a quick loss. He had quite possibly the best Oath opening you could
have, and I just sat there and died.
Game 2 was more interesting. Eon Hub came in after boarding again, as it
completely shuts down his Oath. Unfortunately, he opened quite strongly again,
having an Oath but no Orchard. The plan was as follows: play Su-chi off Shop and
some artifacts, Transmute into Eon Hub, shutting down his Oath and play Crucible
off the remainder of the mana (I had wasteland). I had everything except the
second blue mana I needed for Transmute. During the turns I waited for it, he
found Orchards and counters, gave me tokens, Oathed and won.
0-1-1 (1-3-1)

Round 3 - TPS (Floris Dirkse)
Game 1 I won after he fizzled on a decent Tendrils attempt (I think). We talked
a bit about themanadrain.com, IRC, and the DNS problems. Turns out he's a
regular visitor (Flopmeister) who knows his shit and wants to become a full
member. He seems knowledgeable and up-to-date as well as a nice guy, so I
advised him to Take The Test sometime. I think he'd make a good contributor to
our boards.
Game 2 I won basically because I sided in 4x Trinisphere and was able to play
one quickly (strangely not off a Shop, even :-P )
1-1-1 (3-3-1)

Round 4 - 4cc (Baptist Matthijs)
Game 1: Mulligan to 5. Not good. He was able to play a Morph creature early on
that I couldn't deal with, as any blockers kept getting countered or StP'd. He
beat me for 2 three times in a row and then morphed the Angel, after which I
quickly lost.
Game 2: I sided in Trinispheres again and my extra Crucible. I don't think I
even drew into a Trinishpere, though. He conceded at 11 life after a rather
brutal Slaver, if I'm not mistaken (though Slaver might have been in game 3 as
well).
Game 3: won in spite of 2 Su-chi's getting the StP.
2-1-1 (5-4-1)

Round 5 - TPS (???, Baptist's friend)
Game 1: I win by quickly taking him to  with Su-chi, and when I was pretty sure
he no longer had any counters, Transmuting it into a Titan, killing most of his
mana.
Game 2: I keep a strong hand with 3sphere amongst others, but obviously he
starts and Duresses it out. My hand's still decent though with a Lotus and
Su-chi / shop / draw and whatnot, so I take my turn and build up nicely. Then,
ofcourse, I pass the turn...
Game 3: Turn 1 Trinishpere seals the deal (it was a weird trun one trinispehere
and involved something like blue mox / land / crypt / sol ring / Transmute Crypt
for 3sphere or something, but it did the trick.
3-1-1 (7-5-1)

Round 6 - Stax - Arthur Tindemans
Game 1: I lost quickly. His Stax robbed me of all permanents I had and I
conceded.
Game 2: A Smokestack came out quickly again but I could race his permanents. He
eventually cleared his whole board while I had a Su-chi out.
Game 3: Relatively bad opening for him with Gemstone Mines and such. Eon Hub saw
play but it did little more than prevent me from getting Crypt burn (and him
too, by the way :-P). That is to say: it didn't came out when Stax were already
on the table, but just being there made most of them useless. We both got out
Welders and Triskelions. We shot eachothers Welders and had a Trike faceoff for
a bit. he attacked me and I blocked his, sending both trikes to the graveyard.
He had a backup welder, but so did I, and I was able to Transmute into another
Trike (I think that's how it went but I'm not 100% sure) so that basically won
me the Welder war, the game, the round and my place in the T8.
4-1-1 (9-6-1)

Top eight.

Quarters - Oath (Stefan Gussenhoven)
Game 1: I had to mull to 4. Nuff said. I delayed him Oathing me with a couple of
well-placed Firce/Ices to burn the damn tokens, but it wasn't enough.
Game 2: I won fairly quickly. Eon Hub stopped him from Oathing, and looking at
the life totals it looks like Su-Chi went a long way.
Game 3: he got out an Energy Flux, albeit one turn too late. I lost a shitload
of artifacts (as I started with a no-land hand with vault and crypts and lotus
and stuff) but I managed to pay for my Su-Chi which did a lot of damage.
Eventually, I lost even that one, but at that time he was down to 2 and I was up
to 4 spirit tokens.
5-1-1 (11-7-1)

Semi finals - 4CC (????, regular German visitor and TMD reader/ member)
Game 1: he had 3 Seals of Cleansing maindeck, which might account from him
ending so high. He opened with a Seal for my Su-Chi (4 burn :-/ ) and one for my
Crucible. He needed to spend a lot of resources to slow me down, so ended up
outdrawing him and won by raping his mana base with a Transmuted Titan.
Game 2: I think 3Sphere slowed him down a bit. Eventually, he Tinkered for a
Darksteel Colossus, but I Transmute a Gilded Lotus into a Duplicant. gg.
6-1-1 (12-7-1)

Finals - 5tinker.dec - Marco Kiewit

Best.finals.ever. Everyone left, so it was just my opponent, the judge (both of
whom are on my team) and the store rep. So we beat up the store representative,
cleared out the register, broke open the safe for their full Summer set, took
their AL, BE and UL binders and moved to Argentina.

Actually, we decided against a split (neither of us needed either the LoA, the
Chaos Org or the cash, and splits are freakin' lame anyway) so we just played to
see what happened. The mirror match of course was the ONE thing I hadn't counted
on, although Marco did post a 'see you in the finals' message on our boards the
previous evening...

Game 1 saw him drawing one of his patented INCREDIBLE hands, but mine was decent
enough, too, so I sort of recovered, but not nearly enough before he got out
Welder and had me in a Slaver lock for at LEAST 7 consecutive turns. Time to
concede.
Game 2 saw me making some savage boarding mistakes (like boarding out Titan). He
had another brilliant hand, but mine was on par with his so it could go either
way. He had sided in Gilded Drake (I didn't have that in my board) and Old Man.
He Draked my Welder from his Jar hand, but I Darted it. I could Mindslaver a
turn or so later (w/o Welder) but mistakenly attacked with Drake on that turn
(which meant I couldn't make it chump Old Man on his turn). Oddly, this mistake
may well have won me the damage race and hence the game. The Slaver turn wasn't
brilliant; best thing I could do was Cap him (I don't run jester's Cap myself)
to take out most of his win conditions (there was a Welder in there, too, but he
had already had his Twister (which I don't run main), and so although there was
still 1 Welder in his deck, I decided against taking it since I had 2 Darts in
my yard and 1 on hand). He could still shit out 2 Su-Chi's soon afterwards and I
failed to find a Welder. he was at 6 so I attacked with Gilded Drake, and
flashbacked all 3 Lava Darts to his head. Game.
Game 3 was the one that counted. I kept an OK hand, but his was once again
incredible. I couldn't recover from his insanity. Best thing I could do was
Tinker up a Duplicant to kill his Titan (destroying ALL my mana base...). He
even found a way to remove the Duplicant though. He Rack & Ruined my Duplicant
and some Mox of his and sealed the game.
6-2-1 (13-9-1)

So, 10 hours and 23 games later, I took home a minty UL Chaos Orb and all was
well with the world.