Manalink Tournament (May) (tournament complete)

[scherbchen]

yggdra vampire

match 1 vs red force: first turn Dragonmaster Outcast and a follow-up Mana Flare by the AI. no biggie. Vampires feed. Searing Wind to the face does hurt. opponent at 3 cards in hand and me at 7 life. Mana Flare powers up a Drain Life to 10 and two tiny vampirelets finish the job.

match 2 vs cognis BR aggro: opening hand has 3 Swamp, Kalastria Highborn, Night's Whisper, Vampire Hexmage and Dark Depths. thank you for playing.

match 3 vs shantak tramp: draw Dark Depths on turn 2 when I play the second Swamp in my hand. draw Vampire Hexmage on turn 3. cheers for the match.

match 4 vs Yggdra vampire mirror match: 3 Gatekeepers in hand by turn 2 rule the day. Demigod speeds up the kill.

match 5 vs kakodrilo burn: have to ake a mulligan to 6. play bears and win.

match 6 vs Yggdra vampire mirror (re)match: AI actually manages to Swamp Black Lotus Vampire Hexmage Dark Depths on turn 2. Gatekeeper of Malakir can't be kicked on my second turn and the AI wins.

[Brandon822]

Playing with Enigma73_Tarmogeddon. Best of Three.

Game 1:
vs Stroggoii_Swift. Round 1(1-0): Terravores tramped through goblins.
Round 2(2-0): Early big Tarmo ruled the day and AI exiled all my other creatures, but not big Tarmo!

Game 2:
vs Yggdrasil_Vampires. Round 1(0-1): Had to mulligan. Got black Vise and Tarmo: Got Opponent down to 10 then came vampires. AI got too many vampires and I had to WoG everybody, but next turn two bloodghasts killed me.
Round 2(1-1): 2 black Vises + 2 Savannah Lions.
Round 3(2-1): AI combat screwed (Attacked and next turn I killed him)

Game 3:
vs Scherbechen. Round 1(0-1): AI got 2 Figure of Destinys and plowed my Tarmos.
Round 2(1-1): 2 Tarmos + Wasteland + Qasali = Opponent didn't have mana.
Round 3(2-1): Got two early Black Vises = AI to 10. Then AI started casting creature after creature and exiled all mine. One tarmo hold the line against six creatures. I am at 7. Then last minute WoG cleared the table. Got 13/13 Terravore exiled.
Got Tarmo And Savannah Lion. Game at 5 vs 7 to me. AI got Baneslayer, my Tarmo was 4/5, I sacrificed black Lotus for nothing > Tarmo 5/6. Baneslayer blocked. Then kitchen fink after kitchen fink and some other creatures blocked and finally Tarmo got his killing blow. Had fun!

Game 4:
vs Scherbechen(again). Round 1(1-0): Another long game. After couple Armageddons and WoG's and countless exile spells, 15/15 Terravore destroyed opponent.
Round 2(2-0): 2 Black Vises + Armageddon = Big Knight of Reliquary = Win.

Game 5:
vs Brandon_RedForce. Round 1(1-0): AI bolted my creatures and shatterstorm destroyed my artifacts. Blood moon.....AI bolted me to 8. Got black Lotus. Casted 8/8 Terravore and got win.
Round 1(2-0): Got fast start. AI concentraded on casting three Blood Moons and didn't bolt my Creatures.

Game 6:
vs Aww1979. Round 1(1-0): Close game. Went down to three from racks. Finally big Terravore and KoR killed AI.
Round 2(2-0): AI almost got me with three Mind Twists and one Rack. I went down to 3 and finally beat him with my creatures. Good thing that he didn't got more Racks.

Game 7:
vs Yggdrasil_Vampires(again). Round 1(0-1): Round 4 Dark Depths got me.
Round 2(0-2). Black Vises didn't work fast enough. Had to use all StP's and WoG's to Vampires. Then came Demigod of Revenge and I did't have answer to it.

[scherbchen]

thedrigo wweenie

match 1 vs nyktorion bant: turn 1 play Wall of Blossoms. turn two Knight of Meadowgrain gets Force of Will and allows for a turn three Ajani Goldmane. two walls grow, ajani makes a big avatar. Kitchen Finks throw themselves in front of it. goyfs are puny critters. Reveillark has to do the beating because the ground gets cluttered up. opponent dies.

match 2 vs Yggdra vampire: mulligan to 5 which yields 3 lands. turn 4 I hide behind a Worship with 1 creature in play and no other one in my hand. arghs. AI pounds me down to 1 life. and again. and again. I keep drawing critters and win versus the all-out attacks of the AI.

match 3 vs scherbchen tiny angry men: mull to 6 and keep 2 Figure of Destiny, Ajani Goldmane, Worship (!) and 2 lands. AI is stuck on 1 land for 3-4 turns and Worship is no longer important. a Serra Avatar spawns and goes *smash* a second AI Baneslayer Angel kills Ajani, alas. the avatar still goes *bam* and *pow* and *whack* takes forever to punch through Kitchen Finks but the end result was inevitable.

match 4 vs juzamjedi monowhite: get beaten about by Spirit tokens a lot and lose an Ajani to it. drop Worship. win with Soltari Priest.

match 5 vs cognis BR aggro: mull to 6. die to Blood Moon. or that is what I thought. Black Lotus out a Paladin and a Knight with Worship in play.

match 6 vs aww BR discard. throwing a Lightning Bolt at my head with a Knight of Meadowgrain on the board was probably not a good idea. the knight races The Rack x2.

match 7 vs strogoii swift: I get pounded by a first turn Skyknight Legionaire and only manage to get back with a 8/8 Figure of Destiny at the last possible moment at 1 life. any burn spell off the top would finish me but none comes fotrh and Knight of Meadowgrain bolsters my life while the 8/8 goes *rawr* very close match.

match 8 vs strogoii swift rematch: mulligan to 4 -.- I get overwhelmed by critters.

[aww1979]

I started out with enigma73's tarmogeddon deck. I'm doing best of 3 gauntlets for this tournament, to decrease random luck, since last time I had a few decks lose very early to poor draws. Anyhow, the results were as follows:

Enigma73 tarmogeddon
1) scherbchen 2-1
2) shantak 2-0
3) cognis 2-0
4) cognis 2-0
5) kakodrilo 2-0
6) shantak 2-0
7) stroggoi 2-1
juzamjedi 2-0
9) stroggoi 1-2 LOSS

All the commentary is gone (apparently I was talking into my mic the whole time with 'audio disabled' in camstudio :p) In general, though, most of the decisions were common sense, though you will see several times where I use a fetchland on a forest instead of a savannah; this was done in anticipation of blood moon and/or my own armageddons. Same thing with occasionally not playing lands at all. Also, the first two games of match 1 vs scherbchen were lost due to camstudio crashing.

highlights:

23:53 - AI plays Patriarch's Bidding (goblin, llurghoyf) and then next turn I play armageddon and balance! gg
27:00 - early armageddon powered by black lotus with black vise out dooms AI and I end up winning with nothing but a vise and a mox in play.
36:20 - wasteland a taiga, AI plays no other land all game. Then, at 38:02 I armageddon my own lands away to make the kill with terravore :p
42:24 - AI commits suicide with a fetchland *rofl*
59:11 - Got the dream opening hand with this deck (2 vise, 2 tarmogoyf, savannah, wasteland) and proceeded to kick major ass.
1:22:50 - kept a questionable 6 card hand, not being willing to mulligan further. Played a rather questionable armageddon at 1:26:00, leading to me not being able to play the wrath of god I topdeck next turn for a few more turns (I was hoping to prevent further threats, but ended up cutting off my best chance to survive) At 1:30:00, I am sitting on an enormous Terravore because I need it to deter a 2/2 figure of destiny (I'm at 2 life by now) Miraculously, I still manage to win the game, but lose the next two, ending the gauntlet.

http://rapidshare.com/files/386678810/enigma73.zip.html
(10 download limit for this and all rapidshare links I provide)

[Salbei]

Whow, haven´t played once in 4 Gauntlets

[aww1979]

stroggoi's swift deck performed as follows:

1) scherbchen 2-0
2) salbei 2-0
3) stroggoi 2-0
4) shantak 2-0
5) scherbchen 2-0
6) juzamjedi 2-0
7) kakodrilo 2-0
cognis 2-0
9) shantak 2-0
10) stroggoi 2-1 WIN

I was really rooting for a perfect 20-0 game, but I lost the first game of match 10 (mirror match) to spoil the streak. Stroggoi's deck worked really well in this meta (or at least the half of the meta I've actually gotten to play against so far..); many games were dominated by Kor Firewalker and/or Blood Knight. The firewalker laughed at burn, and blood knight laughed at white removal and salbei's walls. The vast majority of the games weren't even close.

Unfortunately, in two gauntlets, I still have not seen Yggdrasil, thedrigo, nyktorion, jatill, brandon or myself.

Video will be uploaded once I check to make sure it's okay and then put it on rapidshare. (if you are the 10th person to download it or any other video, could you upload it again so that someone else can see it, if they want?)

edit: Okay, uploading it now. I'm hoping that my voice doesn't really sound that retarded... I'll use the excuse that it was the audio codec. Yes, that's it...

highlights:
match 1: dominated both games
match 2: game 1 easy win, game 2 took a very long time due to salbei getting 2x Wall of Denial and loads of removal early. Ended up poking him a couple times with an unblockable Blood Knight and then throwing 2x bolts + 2x helixes to the head. This was probably the most exciting game of the set.
match 3: dominated the mirror
match 4: dominated both games
match 5: dominated both games
match 6: game 1 I dominated, even outracing a baneslayer angel with the weenies :p game 2 was even faster
match 7: dominated both games
match 8: AI got two early mogg fanatics in game 1, cramping my style a bit, but still lost. I made use of the AIs Goblin King with my Dragon Fodder goblin tokens (and went on a bit of a rant about how all the new lords are one-sided :p)
match 9: dominated both games
match 10: lost game 1, another mirror. AI got lots of dragon fodders and I got lots of lands. Game 2 AI made a possible misplay by pathing my Figure of Destiny instead of Kor Firewalker, which it then had no answer for. It probably chose FoD because it could get bigger, though, so it might have been the right call. Either way, it lost. Game 2 I got mox mox black lotus 2x dragon fodder, land. It was done pretty darned quickly :p

This video isn't very exciting. Literally none of the games were even close, except the one I lost, and that one wasn't close either :p It's just stroggoi roflstomping everything that got in his way. I think Ygg's vampires or nyk's bant would have proven great games against stroggoi's, but sadly I never got those matchups.

http://rapidshare.com/files/386724885/stroggoi.zip.html

[Salbei]

Grrr had to cut the Maze of Iths due to the AIs inability to do ANYTHING decent with it.Most of the time it was untapping its own creature and thats it
I knew its gonna be handy, but preventing your own deck from winning was not really an option.

After all its just better for the META for the card not to work - otherwise you would basicly HAVE to run 4 Wasteland + 1 Strip Mine.

[Brandon822]

Playing with Stroggoii_Swift. Best of Three.

Game 1:
Versus Salbei. Round 1(0-1): AI got early Wall of Denial and I pounded him with Blood Knight, but next three turns he casted Baneslayer Angels and I was dead.
Round 2(1-1): First turn Legionnaire and Kor Firewalker dominated. AI threw Balance. I casted 2 Dragon Fodders and that's it.
Round 2(1-2): AI exiled my early creatures and got Wall of Denial and next two turns Baneslayers and I was swiftly killed.

[jatill]

aww-
What settings did you use for cam studio?

[aww1979]

Video:
DivX ;-) MPEG-4 Fast Motion
Quality 100
Set Key Frames Every 200 frames
Capture Frames Every 5 milliseconds
Playback Rate 200 frames/second
Auto adjust checked, scrollbar on left edge by Max Framerate

I have no idea if these are optimal. I just screwed around with them one day until I got something that was a) acceptable video quality and b) wasn't a gigantic file hundreds of megabytes for 5 minutes of video. The one thing that is key (if you think about it, it's obvious) is that Capture Frames multiplied by Playback rate needs to equal one second, or your video will play too fast/too slow.

Audio: I've never even looked at the options for this, I'm using whatever the default is.

[jatill]

Gave up on video since I had to pause it so much. Here's my first 4 results. Way to crush my dreams, aww. Your deck obliterated me. Also, I have yet to see my deck appear in anyone's gauntlets. Come on, randomizer!

enigma73 vs:
enigma (2-1) Lost a game to an enormous opposing Terravore.
kakodrilo (2-1) First game was lost due to a quick Firewalker. Second game was almost lost to monkey beatdown (2 Gorilla Shaman + Kird Ape), but I pulled through with Balance on the final possible turn.
Yggdrasil (0-2) Got stuck on 1 land with Werebear in hand both games. Didn't want to mull to 5.

jatill vs:
aww1979 (0-2) First game kept 1 land + double Path. Definately don't want to mulligan against the discard deck. Turn 1 Lotus+Ritual+Mind Twist. 2nd turn double rack. Ouch. Game 2 was similar. I was able to Chastise a 6/6 Nyxathid, but could never get The Rack under control.

aww1979 vs:
kakodrilo (2-0) AI was afraid to attack into Hypnotic Specter, which was held for defense. Easy games.
cognis (0-2) Both games Goblin King made the cognis army unblockable, and I died.

stoggi vs:
brandon (2-0) Game 1 I mulligan a 6-lander (the deck is supposed to be Swift, right?) into a 1-lander. When I finally got the 2nd land on the 7th!! turn, Kor Firewalker was still enough to seal the deal. Game 2 turn 1 Figure + Pump + Dragon Fodder. Smoke slowed things down but a Firewalker closed it.
stoggi (2-0) It was a fair fight so of course the AI lost
scherben (2-0) A straightforward slapfest with some serious ground stalls.
shantak (2-0) I never took a damage form the AI
theridgo (2-0) Use Figure to trick AI into bad blocks. Otherwise nothing interesting.
theridgo (2-0) Same
scherben (1-2) Mistake #1: Don't try to lightning Helix a Kavi Predator. This works in real life, but not Manalink. Mistake 2: Kor Firewalker's ability was not written as optional. The Predator grew to 22/22. The 3rd game I was just overrun by superior creatures and card advantage that not even my uber Figure could hold off.

[scherbchen]

woohoo I get a win!

results for stroggoii

match 1 vs thedrigo WW: mulligan to 6 but get in some early beats with Dragon Fodder and Goblin Bushwacker (awesome card) when the AI drops one Oblivion Ring after the other. I have to give the AI several free basic lands due to tripple exalted on his attackers till Figure of Destiny learns to fly.

match 2 vs Yggdra Vampire: Double Firewalkers keep my life in the solid twenties and no mad Dark Depths opening for the AI but I can't get through on the ground due to some Vampires having had the Urge to Feed and I feel like I need to keep back removal for the fliers. one Demigod and one Vampire Nocturnus consequently hit the bin but I can't stop the second Vampire Nocturnus who reveals a Gatekeeper of malakir on top of the AI's deck. might have played this one too defensively I must admit.

shantak tramp

match 1 versus discard: Oath of Druids turn one spits out a Groundbreaker that grows to 20/1 with the AI at a precarious 13 life.

match 2 vs nyktorian bant: even with Oath of Druids out I can't win versus 3 chumpblocking Kitchen Finks and 2 Rhox War Monk one of which goes beatdown. nasty. might have worked with more than just the 2 lands that showed up.

current standings after 4 runs of the gauntlet:
stroggoii 1+5
shantak tramp 1
nyktorian bant 5
yggdra vampire 5+5+5
thedrigo WW 7

[Yggdrasil]

I just studied the decks so far, they seem overall a little less direct and more subtle than the first tournament. Probably also better, with well-chosen synergies between the cards.
Since we have more time, I'll try 2-win matchs.

[Cognis]

I can't believe that my deck finally beat someone, woohoo. I'll start playing the gauntlet soon and I can't wait. As far as I have seen there no two similar decks which is really interesting. Well good luck, time to start playing

[juzamjedi]

aww1979:
I win the first two matches handily. I didn't take a lot of good notes, but I know at least one of the games I played Mind Twist for 5 with Rack already in play. Lose to enigma73 with his Terravore's and Tarmogoyf's beating me into submission.

Salbei:
The first match is against Yggdrasil and in one of the games the AI gets Marit Lage into play on turn 3. I untap and cast Control Magic, GG? The next match is a Salbei mirror which takes forever and eventually the game crashes. So I will have to replay this gauntlet another time.