Getting 4th at the Mana Leak Open

[Ta Jugs]

Hi everybody I played faere stompy at the TMLO. I heard some people were interested in my decklist so I guess i'll do a tournament report.

Here's the list i played

4 city of traitors
4 ancient tomb
1 polluted delta
1 flooded strand
5 island
1 seat of the synod
4 sea drake
4 serendib efreet
4 cloud of faeries
3 juggernaut
3 trinket mage
4 chrome mox
4 chalice of the void
2 pithing needle
4 sword of fire and ice
1 cursed scroll
2 umenzawa's aggro match decider
4 force of will
3 thirst for knowledge
2 psionic blast

Side board

3 trinisphere
1 pithing needle
1 jitte
1 psionic blast
2 tormods crypt
4 BEB
3 misdirection

well here are my rounds

round 1 fish???
Game 1: i win the roll and go first. I play an island and I Pass. He plays chrome mox plains and a soltari preist. I play a serendib efreet. He plays another soltari preist and swords my guy. I eventually run out of gas and lose
Game 2: I start off with a first turn drake he plays a land an says go. I play sword equip and he scoops.
Game 3: he makes the mistake of imprinting swords on mox 5 turns later i rode sea drake to victory.

Round 2 goblins
Game 1: i win roll and choose to go first i play an island. He plays lackey an passes. I play cloud o faeries and JUGS. he only had expensive spells so i won the race when sword came into play
Game 2: he chooses to play second for some strange reason so i play chalice 1. He reveals his hand/ vial lackey lackey fanatic trips mountain and scoops.

Round 3 UGR threshold
Game 1: i dont like this matchup very much but i try my best. He wins the roll and plays island go. I play pithing needle for flooded strand which hit two of his lands. he misses his land drop an eventually i have the game sealed with chalce for 1 and 2.
Game 2: he plays a mongoose and passes i play chalice he counters but i force he couldnt draw another land and tells me he is so aggrivated he scoops i got very lucky to win game two cause my hand was awful he top 8'ed though.

Round 4 Counterbalance.dec??
Game 1: his deck was awesome he used top with counterbalance to win but my spells had too high of converted costs for him to counter he couldnt deal with one guy so i easily won both games.

Round 5 Affinity
Game 1: i play a first turn drake he doesnt know the ruling and calls a judge but he rules in my favor he continues to quote how powerful the card is i play another one and the game ended two turns later.
Game 2: He has such an explosive hand that i lose in a matter of seconds some thing like land thopter thopter frogmite frogmite go and then land enforcer enforcer scoop
Game 3: It basically ended the same way as game 2 but this time he flinged a 8/8 ravanger at me.

Round 6 Strange Survival Variant
Game 1: He plays land bird and ends. I play first turn sea drake and pass. He plays survival and says go. I attack and pass he discard wonder for squee and squee for golgari cave troll he dredges and plays like werebear dubs eventually i cant deal with his dudes and die a terrible death.
Game 2: i crypt him twice ride sea drake
Game 3: interesting game he does the usual but he saw vial this game i set him back turns because he has to keep getting eternal witness with naturalize in yard to deal with my equipment by the time he tries to stabalize he has grave troll out 6/6 flyer but he is at 4 I draw crypt and attack with cloud of faeries and efreet for the win.

Round 7 reanimator
Ashok is 5-0-1 and tell him that he automatically gets in at 5-0-2 so we draw


Top 8 match round 1 dave feinstein playing G/R sly
Game 1: He cant deal with chalice witch gives me a huge advantage. He starts and plays land bolt i play chalice 1. He plays mongrel i play sea drake and pass he fire balsts my drake and swings for two he misses land drops for the next five turns and cloud of faeries sword and jugs finish the job.
Game 2: i kept the one land hand an never see another i lose
Game 3 : I play chalice 1 he plays land go i play cloud of faeries jugs go. He tries to fireblast my jugs but i misdirect it to his face. Sword of fire and ice ended the match two turns later.

Top 4 match Adam playing UGW threshold
Game 1: this looks like a good matchup for me so i kept a risky hand. He wins the roll and plays. He plays island and says go. I try to chalice for 1 but he bstorms into daze. eventually lots of my spells get countered and i cant race his dubs mongeese with my dubs ancient tomb.
Game 2: I keep a great hand I play turn 1 chalice and he FOW I had Force to but no blue cards. next turn i play trinishere when he dazes it i drew the blue card to FOW. he misses his third land drop twice I thought i was sure to win. I got an attack in with sea drake then he draws his third land he swords my drake so i play another. Once again swords made sea drake farm with jesus. I play efreet and to my suprise he has another sword. He has six land and plays his threshold men I play jugs to try and race him but he drew his last sword. I ran out of gas and he killed me with giant monsters.

all in all congradulations to Adam and to my very good friend Jeff Folinus for not only helping me but for winning the Mana Leak Open

[quicksilver]

Grats, nice job making top 4.

Although it was pretty hilarious how after you lost one match you got so depressed you wouldn't even talk to me.

[Phantom]

Congrats! Always good to see players playing FS, and playing it well.

How did you find Trinisphere? In testing, I've found it pretty awful against Thresh (I thought it would be a nice bomb) and only really useful against combo. I'm a bigger fan of Binding Grasp in that board spot, to help the AS, Thresh, and random aggro matchup.

[Ta Jugs]

alright dave you can stop bagging on me on how i got depressed:

[Ta Jugs]

what the hell does binding grasp do

[legacyplayer0]

I think it takes control of a creature. Seems kinda mediocre to me. Congrats on the top 4.

[Ta Jugs]

Thank you very much phil sorry you didnt top 8 due to breakers

[legacyplayer0]

I've decided to put that behind me so I can have less to be stressed about. Playing dodgeball with a woodchipper, using dead babies as the dodgeballs helps too.

[Ta Jugs]

hehehe that sounds fun

[Eldariel]

Binding Grasp is:

3U, Enchant creature
Gain control of target creature, it gets +0/+1
At the beginning of your upkeep, pay 1U or bury Binding Grasp.

The biggest gimme is the 3U-cost, so even one Island is enough to drop it. In that Affinity match-up, Grasping one Myr Enforcer would've stopped his whole horde. It also works great against anything that plays creatures save Goblins (too many, too small, not worth investing 4 mana on a single one).


But yea, Juggie seems kinda interesting. Only, it's forced to attack, so it dies to a friggin' Mongoose. Or 2 Gobbos. It seems good against combo, but combo isn't that hard in the first place. I'd probably consider Masticore in the slot. I actually tested it at one point, but it just didn't come up that much. Then there's always Lodestone Myr (taps Chalices et al) and such, but meh. 4-mana artifacts are just kinda underwhelming mostly.

[Ta Jugs]

grasp costs too much and id rather play more spells than to tap out on upkeep

[legacyplayer0]

Control Magic seems a whole lot better, though still not all that good, as Binding Grasp will cut you off from blue for the rest of the game. The upkeep also seems awkward to pay with so many lands that tap for 2.

[Eldariel]

grasp costs too much and id rather play more spells than to tap out on upkeep

Na, 4 mana is a fair cost for a stealing effect (remember, you also get a creature out of the deal in addition to 'removing' one) and while the upkeep is annoying, it's less so than the occasional uncastability of Control Magic. It's awesome against basically everything with creatures BUT Goblins. Love it vs. Affinity, Threshold, Angel Stompy, UW Fish, etc. It's really just an awesome SB-card, and a blue card. That's one reason I don't like Trinisphere, you bring in more artifacts, which lowers the amount of blue pitches you have available. Had you NOT brought in Trinispheres in the semis, you would've had a blue card for FoW instead of Trinisphere and you would've won that game. I just don't find 'em worth it, while Grasp is very much so. It's also great in mirror. Also, tapping 1U is rarely tapping out, or if it is, you're somehow manascrewed anyways.

Manaburn from the upkeep is rarely an issue as the stolen creature either races the opponent or stems the bleeding. Whenever you're paying the upkeep, you're in a position to benefit of the stolen creature. Control Magic is so often uncastable (I want to be able to go after business with my Trinket Mages, instead of having to use 'em for mana) that I rather have a bit worse (don't disregard the +0/+1 though; a 4/5 Myr Enforcer or Werebear keeps a whole bunch of 4/4s home while you swing for the win in the air).


But that's not a question here, nor now, rather talk that in the FS thread. Let me just tell you that personally I've had great experiences with Binding Grasp and it's not leaving my SB until they print a better Control Magic-variant for 3U (hint: they won't).

[legacyplayer0]

Binding in Grasp against threshold seems pretty useless, considering that you need threshold yourself to make the creature you steal not suck.

[Eldariel]

Binding in Grasp against threshold seems pretty useless, considering that you need threshold yourself to make the creature you steal not suck.

Well, if they don't just lose, the games tend to go long ('cause if I resolve Chalices and company, they won't last), so that's no problem (since it means they've cast quite a few counters which gives you Thres too, especially with Thirst for Knowledge, City and company). And heck, just stealing the creature and chumping can occasionally be worth it as they run few creatures and it's still a 'kill'-spell in taht use.

[JeremM]

God That Card Is Shitty

But E. Angel, Werebear, opposing Serendibs, and DSCs aren't.

Congrats on the T4! The BEBs in the SB seem like an odd choice to me, since they have the forbidden manacost of 1 and, quite frankly, Sea Sprites are better at hosing Goblins and Burn's done as soon as your first Chalice sticks.

[NANTUKO_SHADY]

Although it was pretty hilarious how after you lost one match you got so depressed you wouldn't even talk to me.

Lol... this happened before at Millenium once. He lost an unfavorable matchup and was comtemplating not even going to CT to begin with. He also stated he was thinking about quitting magic in general. Lol, besides your emotional fits, congrats Cody!!

Phil, I am very pleased to see your use of dead babies to contain your emotions. Good work!

[jamest]

Congrats on the Top 4 finish. I was the other Faerie Stompy player so I was definately rooting for ya.

[Gekoratel]

Nice job on making the Top 4, I'm glad that you managed to come back from your loss in the 5th round and make it into the T8. I was wondering what happened in your match playing for 3rd place? Did you guys work out any kind of split before playing the match?

- Jeff F.

[Ta Jugs]

Hi Jeff sadly he did not want to split and beat me in 3/4 playofff