Mathieu kindly sent me his report from the last Fishliver Oil cup (more detailed than mine), I had the chance to translate it…..

Friday 6 am, what a rough awakening but it has to be done, moving towards “Gare du Nord” to join the french parisian crew before going to “Charles de Gaulle” Airport to fly to Genoa.

No way to playtest while flying, plane is too tight to take out the Decks.

Arrived in Italy, we go directly to the hotel where the Saturday tournament will take place.

Continues..

One week after the hUUUge Italian weekend (3 days !), time for some report ! Mathieu’s report will be coming in the next few days and will be filled with more photos 🙂

Fishliver oil cup is a 3 days tournament : Friday was Eternal Central rules (70 players), Saturday using Ravenna Rules (~130 players), and Sunday playing Premodern

The Parisian group arrived early Friday around noon and was composed of Guillaume, Arnaud, Mathieu and myself (Rodolphe dropped us at the last minute).

After leaving our luggage at the hotel, going for some pizza (well, pasta because no pizza for lunch, only dinner because of the preheating of the oven), then doing some last minute changes in our deck, we went to the lighthouse meeting the rest of the -almost french- team : Sébastien, Aveline, Laylaouhamesh and François.

My deck was, without shame, taken from Mg’s Party crasher / DeadGuy Ale with few adaptation made for Eternal Central Rules :

Side looks vaguely like  2 warp artifact, 4 ivory tower, 2 StP, 1 spirit link, 2 greater realm, 1 cop:red and few beers….

I’m having a hard time remembering my score, but probably like 3-1-2.

2 remarkable matches :

• the first round vs François : he timewalked on first turn, then put 2 sedge troll on second turn…. then organizers told us there was a misdeal in the pairing and that this round was canceled, first relief of this weekend \o/ and a bad sign for François 🙁
• Last round…. around 1 am : against a mono white prison (nice time for this kind of matchup ) this was truly epic, for 2 reasons : how it ended and how I met a wonderful person : Danny friedman
  • we were on the 4th extra-turn and Danny decked himself (thanks Howling Mine) while I would have died on my turn (5th and last of extras) for 2 reasons : no more cards in library and damage from his Black Vise 🙂

My feedback on this deck’s version and the EC format :

Serra Angel :
Win con, works perfectly with spirit link but takes all the hate
Definitely needs more creatures in deck so that opponent has less removal left for her (since hypno dies way to often to bolt, see below)

Hymn to Tourach :
Works well with an aggro deck but in this deck, doesn’t help that much, except if I can chain them like turn 1 hymn, turn 2 hymn (which I did)

Hypnotic Specter :
Isn’t strong enough in this format without the help from other creatures, if he’s alone on your board without another threat…

Moat :
Really helpful but with Serendibs all over the place, less effective than I expected

Side :
Too much protection, and less threats, CoP and Ivory Tower are just too much, I will probably drop the CoP

Armaggedon :
The format is too aggro and I’ve never had the upper hand… so it was useless

Land Tax:
Very powerful with Ivory Tower (first time I played these 2 together and I was really surprised), problem is that your opponent have to have more lands but again, with so many aggro decks in the format with such a small mana curve it was difficult to trigger it ; and since Armaggeddon was useless, it lost its interest

To sum up : Nice to play a white control-oriented deck, first time for me. Interesting to see synergy between Ivory Tower & Land Tax
I will probably  add more flyers like Sengir, and need to find a solution to calm down the heat from the firsts turns.
But I think classical DeadGuy Ale would be better for EC, except its win con relies on the luck you have (juzam/tourach on first turn)

After the 6th round we didn’t go overtime and went quickly to bed (except for someone) so saturday morning wasn’t so bad 🙂

For the Ravenna Rules OS, I decided to go with some dreams control I saw on wak-wak blog – link

There were many misplays and some tuning to do :

The problem with this kind of deck, there is too many “base cards” you can’t remove, Howling Mine + Relic Barrier works together, Dreams + Drawing cards also, you need white for control…. so you’re left with no dead-cards unfortunately.

Adding to that, BBB is very difficult to have for casting dreams

I had the idea to put in side every things to make it a 4C dreams combo and really more aggressive deck (with 4 dark ritual, 4 lightning bolt, 4 black vise), but I was too reasonable and decided to drop that strategy 🙁

Flash counter was MVP, when going back to classic dreams combo, won’t forget it 🙂

As for the result, I went 3-3

I won against UWB skies, a missing opponent and another deck I can’t remember, lost against Atog, ErhnamGeddon and MonoBlue

On a more general critic for both Friday/Saturday, I think that when working on sideboard cards and tuning decks, I’m too scared about City in a bottle, Blood moon and energy flux. Will try to ignore these threats/answers for future decks, because I cripple myself in 100% of my games with my Land/Artifact choices, while losing to CiaB, Blood Moon or Energy Flux would occur less.

For the last day, it was time to move ahead in time and play 95-2003 cards : Premodern !

I decided to go for some junk deck, taken from the premodern blog : link and decided to add some flavor to it, because after some training, it felt like it needed some more aggro, so after few research (link), decided to go with this version (missing 2 lands) :

Some feedback :

Wasteland : caused some mana issues for me and 50% useless since there are not so many non-basic land in this meta

Spiritmonger : hard to cast because need to keep mana to regenate Lynx, but when my opponents played it, definitely a win con for them… so I think having 2 is a good choice

Phyrexian negator : won me almost every match, this will be my deck signature 🙂 Even if the meta isn’t completely in his favor, really brings lots of memory to me and seeing the face of my opponent while casting it, priceless 😀

Cabal therapy/Duress : MVP, will need to work on my knowledge of the meta, I did some terrible mistake while being cast on wak-wak’s twitch… My first Duress, then never being used to watch my graveyard… Old-School habits

Treetop village : was very usefull, maybe will play more than 2

Definitely needs more Enlightened Tutor for this deck, because i really need it post-side games, even when I brought in 6 to 8 enchantments I never drew them….

Will probably test more “three deuce” approach, adding river boa, rancor, more treetop village, cursed scroll while keeping StP and vindicate
but need to remove bird and find a way to mix duress / cabal therapy. But removing birds will add some mana consistency issue, probably will remove gemstone mine because it has a really short lifespan, and it’s not vintage 😀
Second option : keep the same, add more tutor, spectral lynx was good, but maybe river boa will be better considering the meta

Went 2-1-3

On Sunday evening, we decided we needed more than a simple pizza, because after all, as French, it’s our duty to find the perfect meal ! We went on mission finding the restaurant called “Le Scuderie dell’Astronauta”

And we did have a delightful time  over there for 2-3 hours, here’s some pics :

Well, obviously, when the chief told us “crab”, Arnaud didn’t expect to find this beast on his plate. Hopefully for us, we were able to make some protection…

It was a great weekend, this time I spent more time chatting with people and really enjoyed it, looking forward meeting again Danny, Alexander, the almost french community and of course the organizing italian dream-team  🙂 Next time will try to make more photos, write report while playing (help remembering) so that I can report every matchup.