Binghamton Lotus event - Scrubtacular!

I'm not gonna lie, I scrubbed out of the event this weekend.  Hard.  Like, take the worst you've ever done at a tournament, and then pretend that I'm you, and that was how I did.  I suppose it would have been prudent for me to have tested the format some, or to have actually attempted to tune my deck for some sort of predicted metagame.  Instead, I went in blind, and was thanked for it by a 1-2 drop record, and spent the day in the bar.  Here's what I played:

Lands
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
2 [CHK] Island (3)
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
4 [R] Tropical Island
3 [R] Tundra
2 [u] Underground Sea

Creatures
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
3 [RAV] Dark Confidant
2 [LRW] Sower of Temptation
2 [ARB] Lorescale Coatl
2 [ARB] Qasali Pridemage

// Spells
2 [FD] Vedalken Shackles
4 [CST] Swords to Plowshares
4 [5E] Brainstorm
4 [CS] Counterbalance
4 [NE] Daze
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [LRW] Ponder
3 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top

Sideboard
SB: 3 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 4 [R] Blue Elemental Blast
SB: 2 [TSB] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 2 [FD] Engineered Explosives
SB: 4 [7E] Engineered Plague

I hated the deck.  I mulligained at least three times in all three rounds - twice to 5, once to 4.  I hit a land on Counterbalance almost every single time I played it.  I would top into irrelevant cards with no way to shuffle them away.  I hated Lorescale Coatl because it cost far too much mana, and I almost never wanted to see Sower of Temptation.  I hated Bob, because he forced me to expose my manabase, and made it really difficult to have all the mana colors I wanted at the same time.  Having a Bob, a Pridemage, and two fetchlands in your opening hand was a beating all day.  Which one is more important to play?  All in all, this was a pile of cards I do not intend to bring back to an event again.  Honestly, I had a ton of fun playing with Natural Order Thresh, and I may just go back to that.  Anyway, I was smashed by Landstill round 1, and then beat my friend with Elf Survival round two (which knocked him out of the event - I HATE doing that), and then was knocked out myself by Merfolk round three.  Lame.

As an aside - even with three Merfolk decks making top 8, I still don't know if the deck is what it should be.  I've been thinking about it, and aside from the Islandwalk, I'm not convinced the deck wouldn't be better if it ran a creature base more similar to thresh.  It already runs Goyf in many lists, so what if it ran something like:

4 Cursecatcher

4 Goyf

4 Bob

4 Coatl

2 Wakethrasher

I dunno, something like that.  I think Cursecatcher is retarded, but I'm not sold on any of the other creatures as individual threats.  It's like, if you can answer the horde, the individual guys aren't all that scary.  Something to consider, anyway.

So, I scrubbed.  Yep, I do that on occasion.  They say that even the best of the best players in the world only win approximately 60% of their matches.  I'm by no means on that level so I can't claim the same, but I'd say this was one of those "40%" days.  It happens.

After round three, I decided to hit the bar.  The event was at a VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars), which is a membership-based club where vets go to hang out and tell stories.  They're also awesome to hold tournaments at, and I got to spend my day paying $2 for drafts.  I think I know who the real winner was at this event.  I spent the first hour in there talking to the other patrons and the bartenders, and then after round 4, Colin Chilbert (Di on the Source) scrubbed and joined me for some casual Magic.  After a few games of EDH, we got down to brass tacks, and started Winston drafting a cube provided by eventual top 8'er Dominic Lodovichettie (Happy Gilmore on the Source).

I'm going to make a bold claim:  I firmly believe that I have Winston Drafted cube more times than any other Magic player alive.  I've had a cube in my house for almost two years, and my roommate and I have spent DAYS doing nothing but shuffling, drafting, playing, and repeating; over and over and over.  It's an excellent waste of time, and we've probably done over a thousand drafts.  I'm not saying this makes me the best cube drafter, but experience does factor into the equation.  Of course, Jack "I know everything about everything" Elgin asserts that I have my entire strategy of drafting completely backward.  He's wrong though.

Anyway, for the first draft, I went UBr with a bunch of Ophidian type dudes and Psychatog.  This strategy is risky, especially depending on what you do and don't see in the draft.  It looked like we shuffled a little light, because we hit a pocket of about 25 non-basic lands about halfway through the draft, which completely threw off all the strategies I had considered.  Colin drafted a RG sligh deck, and managed to take games one and three.

For the second draft, I took a risk and first picked a Workshop.  This sets me up for a very particular strategy, and if it doesn't come together, your deck is a PILE.  It ended up getting there with Braids, Elspeth, Ajani Goldmane, and The Abyss rounding out my serious color contributions, and Sundering Titan being bombtastic.  Colin lost both games we played with this pair of decks, taking most of the beatings from the Abyss.  His deck simply wasn't structured well enough to be able to keep up with The Abyss + Braids (with Lightning Greaves on it!).

In the final draft, I set out to make a UW control deck using Weathered Wayfarer to get ahead in card advantage.  What ended up happening, though, was that my UW deck turned into a UB deck, which then turned into a Wg weenie deck.  I know.  Still, with three different Pacifism effects (Arrest, Prison Term, and Faith's Fetters) as well as Loxodon Warhammer and Armadillo Cloak, which could help out my Swans of Bryn Argoll in smashing face, it worked out well.  Colin was not to be trifled with, however, with his four color monstrosity which contained bomb after bomb after bomb.  I managed to squeak out two wins of the three games, but by no means was this an easy victory.  He had me on the ropes the whole time, no doubt.

I'll say this - my BW Braids/Workshop deck would have beaten the piss out of any of the five other decks we drafted on the day.  As I said, if the Workshop deck gets there, it's amazing.  If not, it sucks.  This one got there.

So, that's pretty much what we did all day.  I had a bunch of fun with the cube and EDH, even though I didn't do so well at the event.  I managed to get pretty drunk, and ate a lot of food that was pretty awful for me at the same time.  In terms of performance, the event left much to be desired, but I would still call the day a success.

Topic for discussion in the comments - How high do you value Moxen, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, etc in Cube drafting?  Does it matter if you're Winston Drafting or Pack Drafting?