Mushroom Double Swiss (T2 deck+report *winner*)

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Gizmo

Guest
Ive not played T2 in a dogs age. (Last time I was casting Goblin Patrol, Avalanche Riders, and Hammer Of Bogardan) however it looks as though my Constructed ranking has now reached its lowest ebb since about 1997, so it was felt that it was time to fight back and claim me some points. So with 24 hours notice we started asking around to see what the legal sets were for T2.

I played this, based of Griffith`s old Angel/Life deck, which I call:

"Mushroom Double Swiss" after the BK burger, and the fungal Saprolings.

4 Birds Of Paradise
4 Llanowar Elf
2 Llanowar Dead
4 Chimeric Idol
4 Thornscape Battlemage
2 Flametongue Kavu
4 Fallen Angel
4 Saproling Burst

4 Duress
1 Life/Death
2 Ghitu Fire
2 Persecture

1 Urborg Volcano
2 Darigaazs Caldera
3 Sulfurous Springs
4 Llanowar Wastes
4 Karplusan Forest
4 Swamp
5 Forest

SB:
2 Hull Breach
2 Simoon
2 Disorder
2 Engineered Plague
3 Void
2 Spiritmonger
2 Obliterate

I ended up winning the tourney, it was 6 rounds cutting to TOP-4 (!) from 36 players, and it was going to be very tight to make the top four cutoff, as it was likely to be around 4-1-1.

Rnd1: Wildifre/Obliterate/Nether Spirit. His deck mighy have been ok but he had Arena in and this totally destroyed his deck. As Nethers were his only kill it would take 10 turns to kill me at the very best, and so if he dropped below ten life he would Arena himself to death before he could kill me.
Game one he made an arena, I attacked for 6 and Fired him for 5 the next turn, leaving him on three life.
Game two he made an arena, I swung for 8 and then he was already down to 6 and just died to the Arena even though he Obliterated.

Rnd2: BW Arena. Slightly scarier cos he actually had lifegain to back up his arena. Game one was quite tight but as soon as I saw my Fallen Angel he died as he failed to topdeck Vindicate or Wrath next card and she chomped up my Birdies (yummy) and killed him.
In game two he drew 5 good cards and I only drew 3. Unfortunately for him one of my cards was a Void, which took four if his good cards (Necravolver, Necravolver, Chimeric Idol, Vindicate) and I Duressed his Death Grasp, leaving him to watch as my Spiritmonger smashed him up.

Rnd3: Fires. Game one I turn 3 Persecute his green spells (getting 4 cards) and then make a Fallen Angel, cast Life, and devour him turn 5. Game two I SB in the Voids again, and using these I destroy his cards and beat him up with a few small gribblies.

Rnd4: RGB. I lose this on draw quality. I persecute his hadn out, and his next card is Monger, which destroys me. I lose Game two on being a muppet - the turn before I sac my 2 Elves to the Angel to kill him I needlessly attack with both elves for damage I didnt need to do, and this left him able to topdeck a creature and kill me as he had Fires out to give it haste. He drew Blastoderm. :( Bad bad play.

Rnd5: UW. I win the first by playing my usual cagey style vs U decks. Turn 2 I make a non-kickerd Battlemage, sensibly he doesnt counter it, cos its only a 2/2. 8 turns later, now on 4 life, he realises I`m not going to put another creature into play and finally casts Wrath. I make Llanowar Dead and deal the last 4 damage.
The second is a real git. My opening hand is 5 land, BoP and Battlemage, which I take cos I get the same turn 2 play as last game. I Mage him to 8 life, he Wraths. I play Llanowar Elf and beat him to 2 life. But by now Ive drawn nothing extra but land, and he drops a Mahamoti and starts to beat me. I make every attempt to draw into my Obliterate - chumpblocking it furiously for 5 turns, but finally draw 28 of my 33 mana sources and die. My NEXT CARD was Obliterate. We time out on the third game.

Rnd6: Mono-Black. Weenies/Crypts/Corrupts. If I win I go to 4-1-1 and SHOULD be in, he cannot get in even if he wins but doesnt seem to want to give me an easy ride.
Game One I really struggle to get going as my mana is very unfortunate (I go Forest, KForest, CAldera and Dead) which really slows me down and he is beating fast and furious with a Spitter, Idol and has cast a Scuta by the time I am casting spells. I Battlemage his Spitter, chump, Flametongue a topdecked Crypt Rat, make an Angel that stalls his offence, then next turn make a Burst and fly over for the kill for 15 from my Angel.
Game two he SBs in Meekstones but I get a poor hand and he rides over me with multiple Spitters and my hand was running off mana elves.
Game three I make 3rd turn Persecute black spells, catching all 6 cards in his hand, and thats the game.

4-1-1. 13 pts. I make it in on tiebreaks, one player on 13 didnt make it.

Top-4: The GRB deck I lost to. Revenge is sweet this time, and I simply overpower him in game one with the trusty Angel/Life combo cropping up to seal his fate on the 6th turn.
Game Two I keep desperately pinning his mana back with my 187s just out of fear of him getting 5 mana for Monger before I get 5 mana for Void. I succeed, Void for 5 and take a Monger and Burst from his hand leaving him empty-handed. I cast Spiritmonger and begin to serve but he repeatedly chumps, then topdecks a Shivan Wurm. In fact for one turn he can kill me, by attacking with the Wurm and double-saccing his two Fires to make 11 Trample vs my 9 life and 2 toughness of monsters. Fortunately he, like all of my opponents, has been a total scrub and he misses this. I kill the Wurm next turn with Void because the whole room made noise when he didnt kill me so he knows something is up and will possibly kill me next turn. I finish as the Monger powers through his pitiful monsters and wins.

Final: Mono-Red Seismic Assault/splash Trade Routes. His deck is very interesting, using a whole host of wierd Lairs just because they let him return land for the Seismic, I think. He has mana of ever colour available at one point, and is using these Lairs to activate Kris Mage. Go figure.
Game one is tight as my hand runs of early mana elves and he gets a double-Seal and Kris Mage start, so I`m sat drawing land slowly. Just as I am about to bust out two Bursts and win he makes a Tangle Wire and I STILL cant get to him. Finally the Wire clears and the Bursts take him out.
Game two is vastly easier as his draw quality is low while I make turn 3 Burst, turn 4 Spiritmonger and roll him up really fast.

WOOHOO! I win, maybe I`ll even get some DCI points. That would be a nice change. :rolleyes:
 
R

rkoelsch

Guest
Those are some very strange decks. Did people get tired of playing the same thing all the time. You only ran into one deck with counterspells were you lucky or are they absent from your area? Congratulations

PS did you use Death at all?
 
G

Gizmo

Guest
The blue decks died at the last. I think there were 3 in slots 5-8 at the end of the tourny. This was a field of total scrubs, Ive not played in a tournament as bad as this for a LOOOOOOONG time. There were 4 good players involved, three of them were the contents of our car and we were the only players there with PT points.

There was a lot of BW, which is a terrible deck. The local guru had gone for BW Arena/LD with Rain/Despoil/Befoul and all his lackeys were playing the same deck, they were beating up on the blue decks a bit but losing to Fires.

I cast Death 0 times. Death is mainly used vs counter decks and I met none of them, I SBed it out fo Void in almost every match cos of the pairings giving me endless creature matches.
 
Z

Zadok001

Guest
Giz, your decks never fail to have my shaking my head in amazement. :)

I'm curious about your choice of Llanowar dead. It occurs to me that in the current environment (obvious not in the one YOU played in for THAT tourney, but in general), that Yavimaya Barbarian or Shivan Zombie are superior attackers. Have you chosen the Dead because of their mana producing ability, and if so, did it help out? I haven't found them to be exceedingly useful, myself, and tend to end up with Nomadic Elf in G/B or one of the Invasion Bears in G/B/r. Does the mana smoothing make up for the loss of Protection?

[Editted typo - Zadok001]
 
G

Gizmo

Guest
I wanted more mana producers, and felt that these were actually a very powerful card. In retrospect I probably should have played 3 Dead and 3 Elf, not 2 and 4. They gave me non-pain black mana which I needed for Persecutes and Angels and the like. If you compared my curve to that of the basic Fires deck two things are apparent - I lose Blastoderms from 4cc and Fires from 3cc, replacing them with 5cc Angels and 1cc Duress. In both cases there was a require that the Dead filled - a cheaper drop to replace the Fires turn, and more mana produciton to get to the Angels in time.
They were very solid.

As for YBarbs. They didnt produce mana, and they were red. I was aware of wanting to make the red a splash to ease mana issues.
 
Z

Zadok001

Guest
Cool, I'll have to devote a little more testing time to them. I've always prefered Nomadics, but then, I usually ran with casting costs maxed at two colored and two colorless, meaning the extra mana PRODUCTION wasn't as important as the extra mana balance. Learn something new every day.
 
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