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Coggie One...er, Won
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Ok, so maybe I was being a prick all day while I was winning. But hey, arrogance netted me a first place, so maybe we all should be assholes. However, on a serious note, this months Extended tournament did give me some valuable information about the new format and showed what a wide variety of deck possibilities there are. As a matter of fact, no two people were playing the same deck. (Well, except for Destan and Will, although, their decks are different enough for me to consider them separate variants on a theme.) Here’s a breakdown of the format as far as I recall: Eric Hoffman - The Rock Chris Shumard - G/U/R Andrew Whitlatch - Mono-Black Beatdown Justin Kanthak - Trinity Green Shane Sutton - U/G Aggro-Control Will Watters - Reanimator Paul Wang - Mono-Green “pumps” (I’ll explain later) Destan Hoots - R/B “Reanimator” Adam Cherrington - Ehrnam-Geddon And finally, we come to my deck, affectionately named….Coggie 1. This time, Coggie did win. I’ll type up the decklist for you. If you followed Pro Tour: Houston, then you should be familiar with it, since it is the winning deck.
The only difference is the Morphling in the board instead of a Palinchron. Other than that, the deck is pretty optimal. I had tested a bit before the tournament, and everything seemed to work decently; I was winning more than losing - always a good thing. The pairings go, and for the first round, I’m paired against my brother, Andrew. ------------Round 1 - Andrew, Mono-Black Beatdown------------- Black has a lot of potential goodness against my deck: Duress and Cabal Therapy for my Oaths, Edicts for my Coggies, and even Planar Void in the Board against my win condition. Unfortunately, not everything works as well on paper as it does in action. Game 1: I take some beats from Andrew’s little black guys for awhile. Duressing my Oath first turn can really hurt. Fortunately, being the bastard that I am, I draw another and play it. Next turn, I Oath up a Cognivore. Andrew Edicts me, forcing me to sacrifice it. I take a few more hits and fall to eight. I Oath up a fat Coggie and play Living Wish fetching a Gilded Drake. The Drake comes and takes one of Andrew’s Dauthi, giving me protection from his evil Edicts. Coggie is free to fly for a few turns and end the game. Game 2: This time I get the Oath out second turn. Even though after boarding he has more discard, Andrew has nothing to attack my precious hand. Having sided them in, I Oath a Masticore into play. However, Masticore really sucks. Andrew has a Nantuko Shade with Unholy Strength on it, and I can’t even do two damage to it. Thank God he Edicts me so I can Oath out Coggie. Andrew has one last ditch effort with an Edict, but I activate a Treetop and sac it. He concedes, not wanting to be smashed by such a terrible card. 1-0 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------Round 2 - Paul, Anal-Pump--------------- Basically, I knew Paul’s deck was green. However, I didn’t know that it had SO MANY PUMP CARDS. - Seal of Strength, Giant Growth, Muscle Burst, and Mongrel with madness cards. Game 1: I cast my little friend Oath of Druids on my second turn, triggering the third by his Werebear. Out comes a “monstrous” 4/4 Cognivore - which promptly trades with his bear. He lays a Mongrel, triggering the emergence of a nice, tight, phat Coggie. The exactly 20/20 monster flies over for the game. Game 2: He lays a first turn Seal of Strength, followed by a second turn Wild Mongrel. I take my second turn and get another turn two Oath of Druids. Paul pulls a little trick out of his deck’s ass, which is why I call it Anal Pump. He lays a second Seal of Strength, sacs both of them, Giant Growth’s his Mongrel, and discards two cards including a Basking Rootwalla, dealing a total of THIRTEEN DAMAGE. To add insult, my Coggie comes out as a 3/3 and trades with the now timid mongrel for its second attack. However, the two Treetops I have out make short work of my Asian opponent. 2-0 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------Round 3, Shane, U/G Aggro------------------ Game 1: The game starts with him laying a few painlands and Gaea’s Skyfolk. The flying folk smack me down to ten before I get to Oath out a Cognivore. I lay deed, destroying everything sans my Coggie, preventing him from even Oathing, and that’s game one. Game 2: He goes down to sixteen from pain and lays a Nimble Mongoose before I can sneak an Oath past some counters. However, he capsizes my Oath, leaving me open; nonetheless, he neglects to attack and I merely relay the enchantment, getting a Cognivore for the second game. 3-0 -------------------------------------------------------------------- About this time in the tournament I feel pretty comfortable as the only one at 3-0. With lunch break about to begin, I stand up and look around. One of my “scouts” comes and tells me that Eric’s hives have started up, so I go and watch him play The Rock, or Herbert as it likes to be called. Herbert would have been my second choice for this tournament, and the revised version that Eric was playing seemed pretty nice - despite his 1-2 performance thus far. Eric finishes up his match and I order a pizza, preparing for the more difficult matches to come. --------------Round 4, Chris, G/U/R-------------------------- Game 1: Looking over my notes, I only now notice that I took a total of 10 damage in pain from my own lands. However, it was being spent to activate the Treetops that were beating down on Chris. As he topdecks land turn after turn, I resolve Living Wish and fetch a Dustbowl, taking down all of Chris’s green sources and all but one red source. The Treetops are doing their job, but are being really slow at it. My hand is total shit, and Chris’s is good, but lacks mana and targets. Chris Cunning Wishes for Urza’s Rage - dangerous for me twofold. It can destroy my only threat, leaving Chris with a full hand of counters and burn against my half full hand and Dustbowl, which has destroyed my own manabase, or it can be cast with kicker to end the game. He’s at eight land, only one Red, so the first danger is more realistic. With Oath on the board, Chris makes me a proposition, “I’m a gambling man, how about a little game.” He lays a Merfolk Looter, which will trigger my Oath. However, he’s got Fiery Tempers in his deck, and so the plan will be to burn me to death. Now, the game gets complicated. He’s at 1, and my Treetop is game if it hits or even tramples. I’m at 6 and have a lot of painful land out. I decide to search with Brainstorm, finding nothing. I sacrifice my Polluted Delta to shuffle away the crap on top of my library and hope for the next turn. I untap and Oath out Cognivore; then, draw and stare at all of my options. If I attack, he’ll Rage the Treetop, since he has to, and probably burn me out. He’s dead next turn to Coggie no matter what and so I roll the dice and do a little searching, this time finding Counterspell. I don’t have enough mana left to counter and attack with Treetop, so I pass the turn. He rages me at end of turn, putting me at two. He untaps and attempts a lethal Fire, which I have to counter. He then taps his looter, draws and discards a Fiery Temper for madness aimed at me. I Brainstorm in response and MUST find both an Island and Foil in the top three cards. They aren’t there and Chris gets the closest of my games all day at one life. For boarding, all I did was throw in a Dustbowl. Game 2: This game, I really can’t complain. I draw the “combo” of Brainstorm and Polluted Delta twice, and each time I Brainstorm, I see the second and third copies of both Oath and Treetop. Chris eventually is pressured into laying some creatures which draw out a Cognivore. I pass the turn and he attempts to Treachery my fattie. I’ve never died to a Cognivore, and now is not the time to start, so I fight with some countermagic. Six spells later, I have one more answer than him and he’s tapped out to take a lethal hit from my 8-mana casting cost friend. Game 3: This is a very unexciting end to the match; with only about two minutes left, I take two pain before the time runs out and neither of us can do anything with our extra turns. 3-0-1 ----------------------------------------------------------- The standings before the final round were as followed Me - 10 points Chris - 7 points Eric - 6 points Andrew - 9 points No one else can contend at this point, and since Eric and I are paired, and Chris and Andrew are paired, I’m rooting for Chris. If Chris wins his match, I still am safe in first because of my opponent match win percentage, but Eric has to win to place. If Andrew wins, then I must as well to stay in first. --------Round 5 - Eric, The Rock a.k.a. Herbert----------- Game 1: Before things can get rolling too far, I Living Wish for Dustbowl and take away his green mana. I also resolve an Oath and end up getting a Coggie. My hand is nonetheless pretty empty because of multiple Cabal Therapies and Duress. Coggie is only a 5/5 and doesn’t get a chance to chunk away Eric’s life because of more damned Edicts (when did this card become so good again?). I search around and end up just getting more land to sac to Dustbowl. Eric draws a Forest and Spritmonger, both of which are in play a little too quickly for me to enjoy. I have to let the ‘monger hit me once, so I can search for a last ditch effort - not the card, but some answer to the 6/6. I do get the Living Wish, which I cast for Gilded Drake and exchange for his Spiritmonger. He untaps, casts Faceless Butcher, removing the ‘monger from the game and swings away for the kill. This game took WAY too long. We both drew so much crap at one time or another, and in the end we both ended up having to topdeck at some point. However, we had a total of two minutes for the second game, so it didn’t look too good for me winning the match. Fortunately, Chris had come over after his match and threw down a signed foil - a little souvenir Andrew was giving out to those who had beaten him. With the foil in Chris’s possession, I felt a little more comfortable about my standing. Game 2: I joke around about taking all two minutes to shuffle, guaranteeing me only one game loss, but I’m not a TOTAL prick and quickly offer my deck to Eric for further shuffling. I draw a hand with two lands and some search and hope. But, my deck decided to give me the worst draw of the day and I don’t draw another land for five turns, even with search. By then, Eric has Dustbowl and I have only the one land. I topdeck some more Islands at the start of the extra turns, and by the last attack Eric has a Treetop and an Elder that can only get me to 11. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The final standings put me in first, Chris in second, Eric in third, and Andrew in Fourth. Review of the deck: Oath of Druids is still a strong card. The deck, consequently, is still strong too. Gone are the days of playing control though, Oath is a combo deck now. The counters protect the win condition and yourself. Unfortunately, the win condition is very unstable. You can kill creatures pretty easily, and sometimes it comes out as a very small creature indeed. The worst is when I Oathed out a 0/0 Cognivore and it died immediately. Also, sometimes, you’ll just end up drawing out because you can only recur two cards with the Krosan Reclaimation. Don’t get me wrong though, I think the deck is really good. It has versatile answers to everything and can even win without the Oath. The Sideboard was not very helpful to me at all. I think I only sided the Masticores once and a lone Dustbowl twice. The Engineered Plagues are needed against combo decks and are good against Trinity, so I think they should stay. I just didn’t need anything other than the Gilded Drakes. However, I think everything is there for a reason, and messing with it wouldn’t be very helpful either. If I had to pick a best deck in the field, I’d still pick The Rock. In this matchup, the Rock has more answers and can prevent you from “going off” because of its sacrificable creatures. The Rock has answers to just about everything. I disagree with Kai Budde; Reanimator can’t be the best deck in the format. All the other top decks have natural answers to it, making Reanimator powerful, but manageable. In short, I think the top decks can average about 50/50 with each other and a mix of luck and skill is needed to win a match. I’ve never gotten to do props and slops before, so I think I will. Props: Andrew - Signed foils to people who beat you is a good idea. Chris - For making a deck that could go toe to toe against the other top decks and for the article that you submitted that should be up at the same time as this. It may be cheesy, but it’s true. After looking at the statistics from our tournaments and realizing that half of the people never come back, I must agree with a lot of what you say, and I hope you stay in the game. Not to point any fingers, but some members of our group can be very loud and uncivil, even without provocation. (Although, something that was provoked can go too far as well. i.e. FUCKING HEADACHE!!!) It’s amazing some of the people even bother staying. To be honest, it kind of surprises me that this comes from you, but Casey’s does need to be cleaned up in more ways than one. Casey’s - for consistently throwing in extra money to the prize. Justin and Adam - for giving us some more players and adding to the diversity of decks played. Will - for being such a good sport and all around nice guy who will always remember that Powder Keg only destroys things with casting cost EQUAL to the number of counters on it. Slops: Eric - for NOT taking notes to write a report Destan - for once AGAIN criticizing my net-decking. Fact is boy, even if you did, you probably would still lose - making three blatant mistakes in your game against Will in five minutes time. Rudy - For setting a tournament date and not even showing. Having a kid is no excuse :D Onslaught - worst packs ever. Hives - Damn them! Well, that about does it for this time. Have fun, and keep playing. -Adam Whitlatch- awhitlatch@hotmail.com awhitlat@knox.edu |
Last changed: 08/01/2004 by AMWDirect any questions you may have to awhitlat@knox.edu
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“Goddamn your arrogance, Adam.” - Eric, after the first round.