I wanted a deck that had blue in it, could play blood moon
and had ancient grudge. This left me with UR as pretty much the only choice
and thus I ended up on the splinter twin plan. Of course I never sided in blood
moon all day but what will you do. I also felt like splinter twin has a little
bit of oops I win similar to painter stone in legacy of which I have played
a fair amount. So despite having never played splinter twin before I had all
the cards for the deck so I sleeved her up with as many miscuts and Russians as
I could muster. My miscut basic lands had more than a few opponents jumping out of
their seats because they weren’t sure what cards I was playing. I could tell a couple of people wanted to
call judges on me but they didn’t know what for exactly…
The list was basically Matt Sperling's from Channelfireball
with a couple of changes to the sideboard and 1 Snow Covered Island instead of 1
regular island (purely for miscut potential J
).
·
4 Deceiver Exarch
·
4 Pestermite
·
4 Splinter Twin
·
3 Kiki-Jiki the Mirror Breaker
·
4 Serum Visions
·
4 Sleight of Hand
·
4 Dispel
·
3 Spellskite
·
3 Grim Lavamancer
·
3 Flame Slash
·
4 Scalding Tarn
·
4 Misty Rainforest
·
1 Arid Mesa
·
2 Halimar Depths
·
2 Cascade Bluffs
·
2 Sulfur Falls
·
3 Island
·
1 Snow Covered Island
·
1 Mountain
·
3 Steam Vents
·
1 Stomping Ground
Sideboard
·
1 Vines of Vastwood
·
1 Mutagenic Growth
·
2 Vendilion Clique
·
2 Grafdigger's Cage
·
1 Relic of Progenitus
·
3 Blood Moon
·
3 Ancient Grudge
·
2 Echoing Truth
G2: He has every removal spell under the sun including
having the 3rd path to exile the 3rd time I try and combo
even though he only has one card in hand. Then he draws runner, runner burn
spells to dome me for the win. I was at 6 I believe so double shard volley does
it.
G3: I sculpt my hand and just keep playing exarchs and
making him burn them out until I can finally combo with kikijiki with dispel
backup. Feeling pretty good because Boros is not a good matchup. They have so much removal to kill all my combo pieces and a quick clock which is pretty rough.
Round 2 (Mono Red) –
Before this round starts I am looking at my opponents life
pad. His opponent’s life goes 20-18-13-6-0 and his life was unchanged. G2 he
loses and G3 he wins again through similar life changes. I put him on Burn or
Boros. At this point I am feeling like maybe I chose the wrong deck to play
since my creatures need to live in order for me to combo. Oh well.
G1: He mulls to 5 and wins. He figures out what my game plan
is and manages to curve out while always keeping burn up to interact with my
combo he also has Flame Javelin which means he doesn’t have to 2 for 1 himself
to kill exarch. L
G2: I start taping his dudes and just playing deceiver’s and
pestermites and attacking for 2 with pestermite and leaving the exarchs back on
defense against his goblin guides and hellspark elementals. Eventually I draw dispel and go for the
combo. He stops the combo but has to 2-1 himself to do so, then I untap and
play kiki-jiki and combo anyway. This
game also teaches me that deceiver exarch does NOT have flying…so yeah that is
important. I attacked with a deceiver exarch on one turn and he blocked with a
goblin guide which surprised me then I read deceiver exarch and found out that
yup no flying key word.
G3: I am at 8 life and he has goblin guide, searing blaze
and incinerate in hand. I have pestermite and deceiver exarch on board both
tapped from attacking. I tap his goblin guide with a freshly played exarch and
then he searing blazes pestermite, I echoing truth my pestermite and exclaim
that I don’t take the 3. Well apparently I should have read searing blaze first
since I still take the 3 damage. It doesn’t make any difference to the outcome
as I still untap and win with my deceiver exarch with the only card that he can
have being combust to interact with me since he only has 1 card and 2 mana. If he had kept both burn spells in hand he
could have made my combo fizzle but then he has a goblin guide to my pestermite
and deceiver exarch + a couple cards in hand.
Round 3 (URW Scepter) – G1: Grim lavamancer kills every card in his deck except for geist. Isochron scepter with telling time on it is cute but just winning is better.
G2: He has some awkward draws (i.e. – scepter in hand but
only drew a couple spells all game mana leak and telling time I think) my
opener is – Island, Fetch, Kiki-Jikki, 2 Pestermite, Deceiver Exarch, Grim
lavamcer, I am on the draw and don’t draw a land for 4 turns. I even attack for
1 damage on turn 2 since he tapped out to counter the spellskite that I drew.
He untaps and exclaims “life doesn’t matter in this matchup” and takes 3 from
fetch plus untap dual (cue forshadowing). I also play a sleight of hand
(bricking on lands) and another grim lavamancer after he kills the first. At
some point I miss just shooting him for 2 damage with lavamancer when I have 4
cards in graveyard and he is tapped out because of telling time or visions. He
cliques me on turn 5 or so and sees - Kiki-Jikki, Splinter Twin, 2 Pestermite,
2 Deceiver Exarch, Dispel. He take splinter twin and I draw a land and
mainphase pestermite untapping a land (for dispel or grim lavamancer). He
starts playing threats but I just start playing my flash dudes to tap his guys
and race. Taking the extra 2 damage from his land earlier probably lost him one
turn but he probably still loses this game (and I should have domed him for 2
with a lavamancer activation as well). This is the first time I got to win
without the combo though which felt pretty good.
Round 4 (Bant) – I recognize this guy from way back when I
played in an extended PTQ in 2002-3 or so. I remember getting beaten down my
Troll ascetics and other tricksy or shrouded green creatures with big
equipment.
G1: He leads with misty into noble. I know he is probs on
some sort of bant so I just sculpt my hand and win. He does get geist down but
I can just combo him out.
G2: I should have won this game but I misplay because I
forgot to mark 2 life from a shockland I played earlier in the game…Dual lands
make life so much easier. Not blocking meant I couldn’t do my winning play with
dispel backup since I would be 1 mana short and 1 blocker short due to having
to chump…lame.
G3: This time I don’t fuck up and I just combo him on turn
5-6 with kiki jiki while he has the answers only for the twin half of the combo
since he has pridemage up and ready to go (this happened several times
throughout the day).
Round 5 (Twin) –
G1: I have no idea what to do in the mirror match. He plays
3 sleight of hands/serum visions and combos on turn 4 because I have nothing.
G2: I still have no idea how to play this and lose because I
try to race him when we get into a weird board state (with both of us having
spellskite) but life is irrelevant because he just untaps and combos so I
cannot life race him. I made him go to 3 because of spellskite and I was at 5
with two echoing truths in hand. I misplayed which cost me g2. I could have
forced at least a g3. Round 6 (Meliria Pod) –
G1: Seriously this is a real deck? He combos on about turn
4-5 meanwhile I try and spellskite and activation of his sac vampire cry guy
(turns out I cannot do that) so he combos but cannot draw to kill me. I untap and
combo him. J
G2: Side some hate in…no reason but whatever. He has kitchen
finks, pridemage and birthing pod in play and it is turn 5. He sacs kitchen
finks to get what I think is going to be linvala but instead he gets the guy
that shoots me for 2. I say ok then untap and combo with Kiki-Jiki. Prior to
this he also tapped both of his lands to activate birthing pod then fetched the
little goblin guy but then says I paid the life so I get to untap my mana. He
needed the mana up for pridemage (which was irrelevant) but he doesn’t know
that. I just call a judge and the judge is like umm your opponent can let you
take it back but you already searched your library and did something so it’s
tapped. I don’t let him take it back then untap and combo.
Round 7 – ID with a twin opponent. My opponent definitely
makes it into t8 with a draw because he has the highest breakers of all the
15’s (of which there are 7). The top 4 all draw and we are at table 3. I decide
that if I play and lose I am auto out of the top 8; whereas there is a chance
of an unintentional draw elsewhere since every other 15 has to play (I was 6th
seed going into last round). I also don’t feel comfortable with the mirror
match having played it exactly once...
So as a lucky miser it turns out the one match that I needed
to draw did in fact draw so I made t8 as the 8th seed. J
T8
URW (Joe Bass)
G1: He has everything and I landflood a lot with just two
combo pieces and a card draw card as my only action of the whole game. Geist
does the damage while he just burns through me and my guy.
G2: More of the same though I do blow him out with vines and
mutagenic growth to save my deceiver. He draws 3 burn spells in a row though to
finish me off when I am at 9 life and ready to combo next turn.
All in all a pretty fun deck to play though I wish I had at
least played a couple games with the deck before hand to get the feel for it a
little more. Edit -
Link to decklist.
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=990189
-Cheers-
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