All Terra, No Geddon: A Premodern Tournament Report
Written by: Curran Delahanty
“Good luck at your tournament today!” Lorel exclaimed as she was packing her viola away from the rehearsal we had planned the morning before the event.
“Thanks! I’m playing something I’ve never played before and vaguely know what it does! It should be a blast”, I replied in a somewhat snarky tone.
“No Elves?!” Aodán asked playfully, knowing that’s what I liked playing even though they don’t play the game themselves.
“No, no… too much Survival thinking yesterday at the Trios event. I want to switch it up, try something new and just have fun playing the game. If I win, great but I’ll be happy going 3-3 and just learning something new!”
After everyone got packed up, we all headed out our separate ways and I drove to the Lucky Labrador in SE Portland ready to play.
Upon arriving, I pulled up on a street spot that put me right outside the parking lot and patio area for the pub. In the middle of the parking lot, people were standing and talking. Folks had overflowed out of the patio area and into the lot.
Oh man, I thought to myself, it’s definitely going to be six rounds today!
I said my hellos to folks and saw Kelso sitting at a table laying out some cards. I thought that would be a good opportunity to sit down with him and also skim the sideboard of the deck Robert handed me approximately 12 hours beforehand. I saw one too many Crumbles and one too few Pyroclasms in my HUMBLE opinion. So I made the necessary adjustments and registered this list:
4x Wasteland
2x Rishadan Port
2x Rith’s Grove
2x Forest
3x Plains
4x Windswept Heath
3x Gemstone Mine
1x Tranquil Thicket
1x Secluded Steppe
1x Kor Haven
2x Treetop Village
1x City of Brass
4x Mox Diamond
1x Zuran Orb
3x Weathered Wayfarer
4x Nimble Mongoose
2x Anurid Brushhopper
4x Terravore
4x Swords to Plowshares
3x Sylvan Library
3x Call of the Herd
3x Armageddon
1x Aura of Silence
1x Disenchant
1x Seal of Cleansing
SB:
3x Pyroclasm
3x Hidden Gibbons
2x Phyrexian Furnace
2x Pyroblast
2x Reprisal
2x Harmonic Convergence
1x Crumble
Round One: Zaydn on Psychatog
Game One: I had a fairly fine start as I recall but I flooded and drew all 3 copies of Armageddon game one while Zaydn was able to interact with my few meaningful spells, get Psychatog down, slowly pressure me with it and then find a window open to kill me.
Sideboarding: Immediately Armageddon is on my list of bad cards in the matchup due to being heavy in CMC and having to play against Gush. So I cut them, the one Zuran Orb and what I will refer to as the Disenchant package: Disenchant, Seal of Cleansing and Aura of Silence in order to board in two copies of Pyroblast, two copies of Phyrexian Furnace and three copies of Hidden Gibbons
Game Two: This was a game where I got more actions which also means I had a lot more opportunities to try to figure out what I was doing. It was a bad showing on my part and Zaydn expertly took my blundering self out of the game.
0-1
“Hey I got some notes for you if you want,” Robert said after spectating game two.
“Nope! I have plenty of notes for myself. That’s quite alright,” I replied laughing at myself.
“Well what do you think of the deck?”
“This deck sucks and I hate this game. I want to quit,” I said in an attempted jesting tone trying to not let some of the sincerity in my thoughts leak out.
It seemed to work because both Robert and Zaydn cracked up at it.
At that moment, I was feeling defeated. I just walked into the monthly to play a deck I had not even taken the time to really digest. I was auto-piloting and pressing buttons and it just cost me a match at a competitive event. My goal to go 3-3 was off to kind of a dark start. And it seemed like a deck that didn't come to me intuitively so I felt like I was doomed trying to learn it.
I took a deep breath, walked outside to clear my head and took a deeper look at the deck as a whole. Robert had done a good job reminding me before the tournament started about the tricks you can do with Weathered Wayfarer but that was only a small niche piece of the puzzle. I was playing the deck like an aggro deck but it’s a control deck with efficient threats to close the game. Reframed, I walked back in for round 2.
Round Two: Isaac on Deadguy Ale
Game One: This game was fairly straight forward. He dark ritualed a Phyrexian Arena on turn one. We traded blows in interaction and creatures for a while. He got a second Phyrexian Arena in play. But unfortunately 3 cards a turn wasn’t enough to find an answer to some loosie Nimble Mongoosies.
Sideboarding: I brought in one Pyroclasm and cut one Zuran Orb
Game Two: Once again, we traded some interaction back and forth and the game ended much quicker with a gigantic Terravore swinging for the fences.
1-1
Alright. One match won. Two to go! At this point, my opinion on the deck has flipped completely. Reframing from an aggressive play pattern to a more patient play pattern has paid off.
Round Three: Eloise on Psychatog
Eloise and I had the pleasure of playing at the Trios event the day before. She had come up with the East Bay Punks. We actually drew in round one of the event as Cradle Control vs UW Control. But today, we had both made a change to our deck choices.
Game One: Eloise starts Island, Portent shuffle. On her next turn, she misses a land drop and unfortunately this ended up being a non-game in my favor. I got too far ahead before she found her third land finally.
Sideboarding: Runback the same sideboarding from Round One
Game Two: Eloise sticks an early Zombie Infestation and I get a Call of the Herd resolved. After making some tokens, she attacks with 2 Zombies and I go to block with an Elephant before she points to the Wonder in her graveyard. I had felt bad for a moment after she declared an attack because I used an unhinged sheep token to represent the elephant and it didn’t have P/T on it. I had completely missed the Wonder so it came down to a race between zombies with wings vs a crash of Elephants and a Treetop Village. It got to a point where she was having to hold zombies back to fade damage and I was able to pull ahead in the end.
2-1
Alright the learning cycle is complete. We bumbled through round one, locked in to win round two and then beat the deck we lost to in round one during round three. I am now a Terrageddon master. We can get one more match win. We have three chances to do it.
Round Four: Nate on Mono Red Ponza
Nate was 3-0 at this point so I had a shot at making only two undefeated players go into round four undefeated.
Game One: It didn’t occur to me until later on in the first game just how good my deck felt into this matchup. Feeding Terravore and Nimble Mongoose is bad for my opponent so all I had to do was wait to deploy Terry when it was big enough to require multiple pieces of removal from my opponent and leaned on Mongoose to deal early damage since he can’t be interacted with. It worked beautifully and we moved to game two.
Sideboarding: +1 Pyroclasm, -1 Disenchant
Game Two: We made a few land drops, I resolved a Nimble Mongoose and a Sylvan Library. My opponent then starts stone raining the absolute crap out of me. Three turns of untap, draw, play land, stone rain you. I can’t complain I guess. The Goose was eventually joined by another one. An Avalanche Riders came down to play blocking duty for the Geese. I ended up plowing out the Avalanche Riders to open up an attack and get some threshed damage in. A Tormod’s Crypt destroyed all my effort but I did find a Zuran Orb to hopefully find the window to rebuild. It took some dead drawing from my opponent and some patience but eventually after enough land drops and a seal of cleansing to nuke my own Sylvan Library to enable threshold, we found the exact lethal line to close the game.
3-1!
Mission accomplished! We won 3 matches. And wow with two rounds to spare. The deck is obviously very good but to get here, we did get some luck in how the games went down and specifically pairing into Ponza seemed like Magical Christmas Land.
Round Five: Will on GW Madness Zoo (Mad Dogs?)
I saw the pairing and was immediately nervous. Will has been absolutely crushing with this deck lately on MTGO. He had a 4th place finish in a challenge and a recent 5-0 trophy. He had been absolutely digging the deck it seems and I felt that maybe I was at a disadvantage due to just matchup knowledge and also not quite understanding his deck yet as I hadn’t ever had the opportunity to play against it.
Game One: We started with some early land destruction on a Mishra’s Factory into developing a 5/5 Terravore, getting a Nimble Mongoose and eventually a Call of the Herd to kind of just outsize the creatures on Will’s side. Once I found a Swords to Plowshares for Wild Mongrel, I believe that ended up being the game.
Sideboarding: +3 Pyroclasm, -3 Armageddon
Game Two: Will has a very aggressive go wide hand and unfortunately I’m not able to interact meaningfully. A single Swords to Plowshares looking at a Patrol Hound, a Tireless Tribe and a couple Rootwallas made it hard to figure out where to meaningfully interact. I dug frantically for Pyroclasm but it was nowhere to be found. We move to game three.
Game Three: Finally Mox Diamond Sylvan Library opener. I deploy it and we begin playing. Library was quite good for me. Kept me fed on interaction and bigger creatures. He landed a Library of his own. But on a turn where he opted to draw one and put two back, the Disenchant came off my deck and we disenchanted his Library hoping to buy a few turns of no action. It panned out and we did eventually win with a large board.
4-1
It went better than I could have ever hoped. I had pulled myself off a major tilt plane in round one and snapped four round wins off in a row. Now I found myself offering the handshake to my round six opponent to lock up a Top 8 slot in the largest PMPMPMPM monthly to date. I got paired into Chris from the East Bay Punks on Angry Ghoul and we happily ID’d in.
Quarterfinals: Caustek on WRUstek (Jeskai Solution+Dreadnought Brew)
I sat down across from Caustek stoked to play and he was ECSTATIC to be in the top 8 with a deck of his own creation. This intrigued me. I’ve known Caustek to play quite a few different things so it was really cool to see him chef-ing something up for us.
Game One: Caustek hits me with an early Dreadnought after I start Weathered Wayfarer. I use the Wayfarer to dig up Kor Haven and mentally strap in to playing the slow game of using Kor Haven to buy time until I can find removal for the Shrimp. Caustek takes a draw and attacks me to 8. I untap and draw ready to play the Kor Haven. Off the top comes a Disenchant and all of a sudden, we’re out of the woods. From there, Nimble Mongoose and Call of the Herd ended up dispatching Caustek and we moved to Game Two.
Sideboarding: +2 Reprisal, +1 Crumble, +2 Pyroblast, -3 Armageddon, -1 Zuran Orb, -1 Anurid Brushhoper
Game Two: This game ended up being much more grindy. Lots of traded resources. A Lightning Angel hit the table on Caustek’s side and pressured me while I stared at a Reprisal, a Crumble and a Disenchant in my hand. I did eventually find a way to go wide enough to race. The details are a bit hazy on how it all came down to an end but it was a great set on Caustek’s part. With that, we move to the Semi Finals.
Semi-Finals: Mose on Mono Black Braids Ponza
So this is where things are a little hard to remember because I was on my fourth cider at this point. Bear with me here.
Game One: Mose and I end up having a pretty quick game as I recall here. It was an aggressive draw on my part and Mose had Choking Sands’d a land which only fed the Terravore and Nimble Mongoose I had. After a few turns of attacking, we moved to the next game.
Sideboarding: +1 Pyroclasm, -1 Aura of Silence
Game Two: Mose ended up on a painful mull to 6 on one land which only presented Dark Ritual into Powder Keg on turn two with no accompanying land drop. I used a Disenchant to clean up the Keg before it could get to one to blow up Nimble Mongoose and after a few turns of missing lands, Mose extends the hand. I was sad that we didn’t get to play a more eventful game but I did promise him the next time we play, it’ll be a good set of games. Hoping to live up to that promise.
Finals: Zaydn on Psychatog
Full circle-ahh ending to this event. Either Zaydn puts me in the dirt forever to take the big win home or I demonstrate that I had indeed learned what I was doing and we take a well deserved win.
Game One: On the draw, I open a seven that is just unplayable so I send it back and see a one lander with two mongeese and a Zuran Orb. Let’s ride. I ended up finding my way into two gemstone mines which allowed me to cast a Call of the Herd which is met by a counterspell but the Mongeese are on an unopposed board chipping away. Eventually, I smell the blood in the water and sac all my lands to thresh up to find my way to the win.
Sideboarding: Having thought about the presence of Zombie Infestation and Tsabo’s Web, I opt to leave the disenchant package in to board out the Wayfarers instead.
Game Two: An Early Zombie Infestation comes down and the zombie vs elephant war starts up again when I find Call of the Herd. Unfortunately on a turn I tapped significant mana, a Tsabo’s Web hits the table forcing my Treetop Village and Rishadan Port to stay down. Eventually, Zaydn is able to overrun me with Zombies while I’m stuck looking for ways out.
Game Three: Another early Zombie Infestation vs another Call of the Herd. This time a Chain of Vapor there to answer the first elephant token. I drew a disenchant late into the match and it came down too late. Zaydn slowly cleared my 3/3’s with double blocks and eventually pivoted to the Psychatog plan while I had a single Mongoose left to block. Unfortunately even if I had found removal for the Tog, I think Zaydn was ready with a few cards still in hand.
2nd Place Finish!
Premodern Post-Mortem Analysis:
The first thing I did was reach out to my friend Aidan J. aka joyfulwaffle since he had been playing a bunch of Terrageddon lately and asked him more details about how he would board for Psychatog. He told me he would board the same seven cards I’ve been boarding in but cut the disenchant package, the zuran orb and the wayfarers. Leave the Geddons in. This came as a surprise to me. All day I had boarded out the right cards but not at the same time. I just assumed that Geddon was not what we wanted but even Zaydn admitted their absolute worry about the card in the Finals coming to take him out. So, I had definitely misboarded and misunderstood Armageddon through the entire tournament.
But to continue the thought, I didn’t cast a single armageddon today and almost wonder if they're necessary. I assume this is probably an extreme stance to take on the archetype. I think the lists with Cataclysm make more sense to me personally and would try just straight up Cataclysm over Geddon next time.
I would also move away from Crumble and Reprisal altogether personally. I think the Crumble should be another disenchant or seal of cleansing. The Reprisals could be literally anything else. Feel free to tech for your local meta I suppose. I don’t know enough about glaring blindspots in this list.
10/10 would play again. Thanks for the great games everyone and see you next time!