A couple of weeks ago, I found out that Mile High Comics in Denver was holding another one of their $400 cash prize tourneys. If you've read my other report, you'll know that the last time I wrote a tournament report was to share my Vintage experiences; this tourney was Type 2, and I decided to give Daniel Garfield's Cabal Cemetery deck a shot. I have been playing with this deck online and at Friday Night Magic, and have won a considerable amount of games with it.
I chose to go with the decklist from Garfield's second article, not his final article - and for reference, here is the decklist:
Maindeck
4 Festering Goblin
4 Withered Wretch
1 Shepherd of Rot
1 Undead Gladiator
4 Cabal Archon
4 Rotlung Reanimator
2 Gempalm Polluter
3 Oversold Cemetery
3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Mutilate
4 Smother
4 Cabal Therapy
20 Swamp
3 Unholy Grotto
Sideboard:
4 Duress
3 Megrim
2 Haunting Echoes
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Mutilate
1 Shepherd of Rot
3 Chainer's Edict
If you read the original article, you'll know that Daniel's sideboard has one open slot. I decided to fill that slot with a Chainer's Edict just to make playing against aggro a little bit easier.
A little bit after 11 a.m., Aaron posted the pairings and we sat down to play.
Round 1 - Gary - (W/G Fat)
Okay... First match of the day. I sit down across from Gary and shuffle my deck. I win the die roll and start out with a swamp. I have a Cabal Therapy in hand, but since I don't know what's he's playing, I decide to hold off.
Gary lays a Forest and ends his turn. I play a Swamp and a Festering Goblin, quickly followed by the Therapy, naming Wild Mongrel. I miss, and I see a collection of Plains, Forests, and Scrublands. I guess he decided to keep an all-land, seven-card hand.
I start to get the rest of team into play, including a Rotlung Reanimator and a Cabal Archon. Right after the Archon drops, he draws his card, smiles, and lays a Mystic Enforcer. He's a couple of cards from threshold, so I'm not all that worried about it, and he passes the turn to me.
I draw the Oversold Cemetery and lay it down. I've already got a couple of dorks in the 'yard from cycling both a Gempalm Polluter and an Undead Gladiator, so I'm ready to start the infinite Archon tossing. The next turn, Gary taps most of his land and drops a face I haven't seen in years: Good old Serra Angel. Ah, crap.
He also taps the rest of his land to lay a Wild Mongrel. He proceeds to discard three cards to the Wonder Dog, and flies over to bash my face in with a very angry Mystic Enforcer. At the end of his turn, I fling both the Rotlung and the Archon at him to get four creatures in the yard, then I start my turn by drawing the Archon back and by topdecking a Withered Wretch. I play both, and remove two cards from his yard to prevent the Enforcer from maiming me anymore. I pass the turn with two Swamps untapped and prepare to start taking seven a turn.
On his turn, he draws a card, lays a land... And just attacks with Serra.
What? I say nothing, but instead fling my Archon at him. For the rest of the game, Gary sat back with his unblockable Enforcer and slowly died from the same Archon. He never attacked with it again.
Game 2 started out very badly for me. After the fifth turn, I had four Swamps, an Unholy Grotto, a Withered Wretch, and a Rotlung Reanimator on the table. Gary had an Angelic Wall, a Krosan Archer, a Serra Angel, and a freshly-played Northern Paladin.
He smiles and passes the turn without attacking. I topdeck a Mutilate.
I felt really bad for Gary as he watched his army disappear. With two Zombie tokens, a Withered Wretch, an Ensnaring Bridge, and a Gempalm Polluter being constantly recycled via the Grotto, his game ended quickly.
Games (2-0)
Matches (1-0)
Round 2 - Chris - U/W/B UZI deck
In the second round, I get paired up with Chris, running a strange version of UZI that splashes White for Convalescent Care.
Game 1: I play very slowly, because I have no idea what he's playing - but when he drops a Polluted Delta on Turn 1, I Therapy naming Circular Logic, thinking he's playing Psychatog. I see a couple of lands, Upheaval, Skeletal Scrying, Wrath of God, and a Convalescent Care. I flash it back next turn with a Festering Goblin and steal the Upheaval. Another Therapy nabbed the Wrath.
This game was strange; he drew absolutely no threats. Not once did I see a creature, or a Zombie Infestation. He did get two Cares into play - but by that point, I had a Wretch, a Rotlung, a Shepherd of Rot, and a Festering Goblin. With him at nine life and me with a Shepherd that had yet to go active, I couldn't kill him just yet... But I did want to make sure that he couldn't activate both Cares, so I just attacked with the Wretch, bringing him to seven. He mana burned to get to five so that one Care would trigger. He activated Compulsion a couple of times but couldn't find an answer, and he conceded.
Game 2: I side in four Duresses, two Haunting Echoes, and three Megrims to really screw over his deck. I get a fantastic opening hand of Swamp, Swamp, Duress, Therapy, Goblin, Shepherd of Rot, and Unholy Grotto. By turn 3, he had two cards left in his hand. This game went much faster than the other game and he was dead in no time.
The only other comment I want to make about this match is during the first game, after my first Therapy, I went to write down all of the cards in his hand. I know this is perfectly legal - but after giving me about two seconds, he asked if I was finished with my turn. I chose not to respond, because I was busy writing down the cards, and I wanted to make sure my concentration was on that. He got pissy and asked again, this time a little bit more demanding. He said that I can't hinder the game and that I was stalling and therefore cheating. When I finished writing down his hand (which took about five seconds total), I told him I was done. He tried to argue with me about stalling and cheating, but I calmly stated that I have the right to write down my opponent's hand if I wanted. He wanted to argue, but instead chose to drop it and move on.
It's just a game, folks. No need to get all bent out of shape over it.
Games (4-0)
Matches (2-0)
Round 3 - Eric - Mono-R Land Destruction
Game 1 starts out with him laying mountain after mountain. I have no idea what he's doing, so I hold back on my Therapy to see what's going on. On turn 3, a Stone Rain smashes one of my Swamps.
Ahh... Land destruction. Crap. If there's one thing my deck cannot deal with, it's land destruction.
He smashes me down to one land and then drops an Aether Flash. After thinking about it, I concede because I haven't got a single creature in my deck that can take two points of damage. The only way I could do it is to have an active Cemetery, a Cabal Archon, and four mana to drop the Archon and immediately sacrifice it while the Aether Flash ability is on the stack.
Game 2 - I can't sideboard in enough crap to stop him. I dump all of the Mutilates and two Bridges to bring in four Duresses and a Shepherd of Rot. I brought in the Shepherd because he's easier to get out so that I can sac him to flashback Therapy.
This game takes seven turns: I Therapy turn 1 naming Aether Flash, hitting two of them. Turn 2 Withered Wretch, Turn 3 Festering Goblin, Shepherd of Rot. The game was over very quickly.
Game 3: I keep a hand with one Cabal Archon, a Therapy, and five lands. I Therapy on the first turn, naming Aether Flash, but instead I see a bunch of land and two Stone Rains. I draw nothing but three casting-cost creatures for the rest of the game as he proceeds to Stone Rain, Stone Rain, Earth Rift, Pillage, and finally, Aether Flash. Dammit. I concede.
Games (5-2)
Matches (2-1)
Round 4 - William - R/G Beats
This matchup just plain sucks for this deck. It's too fast and has too much burn. I can usually beat it once every five tries, and I know that a 20% win rate is not good enough.
Game 1 is simply idiotic. Turn 3 Call of the Herd, Turn 4 Elephant Guide, Turn 5 Call, Turn 6 Elephant Guide. I'm dead in five minutes.
If Game 1 was idiotic, Game 2 was a waste of time. Turn 2 Compost, Turn 3 Compost. I should have conceded, but decided to play it out anyway. A couple of minutes later I take a Firebolt and a Violent Eruption to the face and move on to round 5.
Games (5-4)
Matches (2-2)
Round 5 - Ryan - W/G Fat
This is another bad W/G deck. At least this guy ran Anurid Brushhoppers.
Game 1 - He establishes an army of Brushhoppers and Elephant tokens. I get squashed. It wasn't very pretty.
Game 2 - I sideboard in three Chainer's Edicts, a Bridge, and a Mutilate. This game took forever. I got an early Ensnaring Bridge to hold his army off while I plowed through my deck the slow way, one card at a time, looking for creatures. By the time I found my fourth creature, I already had three Bridges and three Cemeteries on the table; I had also Mutilated four times to keep the board clear in case of Naturalize. I get the Archon and proceed to fling it at him ten straight times. Very boring.
Game 3 - I get another early Bridge that he can't do anything about.
Games (7-5)
Matches (3-2)
Round 6 - Josh - MBC
Mono Black Control is a real problem for this deck. Haunting Echoes is a back-breaker, and ten-point Corrupts tend to make killing someone two points at a time a real problem.
Game 1, we plow along pretty slowly until he gets two Corrupts in hand (I had forced him to discard the Mirari earlier). With ten Swamps and two Cabal Coffers in play, Corrupt tends to sting just a little bit.
Game 2 took forever. I board in four Duresses and two Haunting Echoes. An early Ensnaring Bridge cut off Visara and allowed me to do twelve points of constant damage with an Archon. With him at eight and me at thirty-two, he plays Haunting Echoes.
Fark.
All of my Archons, Wretches, Goblins, and my lone Undead Gladiator are gone. I have no win condition. Maybe I'll get lucky and draw a Haunting Echoes and do it back to him...
And I did. Earlier in the game, I Duressed a Corrupt from his hand, and after ten turns or so, he never drew a second one. My Haunting Echoes was far more devastating, as I removed every one of his win conditions from the game. After counting the cards left in our libraries, he realized that I had an Unholy Grotto to recycle the unseen Rotlung Reanimators in my deck, he conceded.
Game 3 was much faster, as he didn't want to waste a removal spell on a single Festering Goblin. It did ten points of damage to him before I could get the Archon set up. I did the remaining ten points quickly and he never drew a Corrupt.
Games (9-6)
Matches (4-2)
I missed top 8, but took 15th with a rogue deck that nobody came prepared for. It was a lot of fun, but this deck has some serious weaknesses.
The only thing you have to hold back aggro decks is Ensnaring Bridge. If you can't draw a Bridge against U/G, R/G, and W/G, you're dead. They can beat you faster than you can set up an army. Mutilate will also work on small weenies, but it's not going to get rid of Wurm tokens until much later.
Another problem with this deck is that Compost crushes it. The Ferrett was right to be skeptical of this deck vs. Compost; a turn 2 Compost will end the game. It's frustrating, but there's nothing this deck can do. This deck also doesn't seem to run enough land. Twenty-three lands seem like enough, especially when the average casting cost in the deck is 2.48 (thanks, Magic Online!), but it doesn't seem that way. I really want to add just one more land, but I don't know what to cut.
I wanted to write this report for the people thinking about using Daniel Garfield's Cabal Cemetery deck for Regionals. It works very well and is a ton of fun to play. You will not be able to get past R/G without considerable luck, and MBC is very frustrating to play against. If you go to Regionals with this deck, bring your lucky rabbit's foot.
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