Okay, so I left all of you with me sitting at 5-1 at the end of Day 1. After round 6 I go to the players lounge to find all of the Euros who scrubbed out drinking and playing with an imaginary volleyball – no joke, this actually happened. Myself and little D (Paul Rietzl) joined in the fun and started boozing it up with them. Yes, I was going to compete for thousands of dollars tomorrow and no, I wasn’t going to let that keep me from drinking. After some more boozing, little D and I leave to go get some food and head back to the hotel. I get some sleep and wake up and head back to the site for Day 2. For those of you who didn’t keep up on anything so far I’ll post my decklist again.
Creatures (7)
Lands (24)
Spells (29)
So on to the tournament.
Round 7
12 Herberholz, Mark D [USA] 15 vs. Cruz, Vasco José [PRT] 15
Jose is playing G/B snakes. I manage to throw away game 1 by mistapping my mana so if he draws Seshiro he can attack with his Tribe Elder and kill me, which he does. However, the matchup is so much in my favor that I manage to pull out the next two. Here is how I sideboarded, and I think it’s the correct way to sideboard vs, Snakes.
+2 Kodama of the North Tree
+1 Yosei, the Morning Star
+1 Keiga, the Tide Star
+1 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
+1 Horobi’s Whisper
-1 Hideous Laughter
-1 Cranial Extraction
-2 Wear Away
-2 Sickening Shoal
The reasoning behind sideboarding this way is this, Cranial Extraction isn’t that good vs. them as they have so many fatties that you want to hit its hard to pick one. The only reason I’m keeping one in is that sometimes its nice to Gifts Ungiven for it, Hana Kami, Soulless Revival, and Eerie Procession so you can definitely get it, after they have just cast Time of Need for Myojin of Night’s Reach or something annoying like that. The Sickening Shoals are just a bit too pricy for their effect. In this matchup you want to kill their men by splicing a Horobi’s Whisper or waiting until they overcommit and then casting a Final Judgment. You can also just trade your men for theirs as you have Soulless Revival. You need to remember now to just randomly cast Gifts Ungiven though because they have Nezumi Graverobber, so you have to wait until you have enough mana to get your Soulless Revival/Hana Kami engine going the turn after you cast the Gifts Ungiven. So basically you want to end of turn Gifts, untap go crazy. Wear Away gets sided out because their Jittes aren’t really a problem for you. In fact, I think they probably want to side some number of them out vs. you.
Round 8
5 Szleifer, Gadiel [USA] 18 vs. Herberholz, Mark D [USA] 18
I think this matchup is pretty good for me, since I beat Tim Aten piloting the same deck on Day 1. The fact that they don’t have Nezumi Shortfang and we do coupled with Final Judgment is able to answer Kodama of the North Tree and Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni, makes this matchup good.
Game 1 he is on the play and casts a turn 4 Cranial Extraction on me before I can cast mine, the turn after that he casts Gifts Ungiven for the combo and the game is pretty much over. I go through the motions thinking he might mess up but he doesn’t and kills me pretty handily.
Game 2 I mulligan down to four on the play and my head isn’t in the game. I basically gave up at this point and threw away a game that was perfectly winnable when I don’t remove his Sakura-Tribe Elder with my Nezumi Graverobber when he sacrifices it after damage is on the stack. Had I done that, I would have had a flipped Graverobber and been able to potentially win. This was an important lesson though as it reminded me never to give up no matter how unwinnable a game is. Yes, I mulliganed to four, which is a huge disadvantage, but he could have drawn all land for the rest of the game. Now here is how I think you should sideboard for this matchup.
+3 Nezumi Graverobber
+3 Nezumi Shortfang
+2 Kodama of the North Tree
+1 Keiga, the Tide Star
+1 Yosei, the Morning Star
+1 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
+1 Psychic Spear
-2 Wear Away
-2 Hideous Laughter
-1 Horobi’s Whisper
-2 Cranial Extraction
-1 Ethereal Haze
-1 Eerie Procession
-3 Sickening Shoal
Now siding Cranial Extraction may seem wrong, but after sideboarding you have so many threats almost turns into a dead card. You want to be either a) answering their fatties, or b) casting your own fatties. Cranial Extraction does neither of those. You want to turn into an aggro-control deck here with all of your creatures and you keep in the Final Judgments in case you ever fall behind. Although it would be nice to get a recurring Cranial Extraction going with Hana Kami/Soulless Revival, that thing really only happens in dreams when you are playing vs. Nezumi Graverobbers, Cranial Extractions, and Nezumi Shortfangs. All of the creature removal is pretty dead here, if they have Nezumi Shortfang you probably want to switch some of the Sickening Shoals for Final Judgment, maybe a Gifts Ungiven, and possibly a Soulless Revival. The great thing about playing vs. them is they don’t have a board clearer like you do so you can play all of your guys with no fear. The Ethereal Haze comes out because it is almost impossible to set up the lock after board.
So now my back is against the wall and I have to win my next 3 matches to have a shot at the Top 8. Ah well, I like a little pressure, I won 11 straight matches in San Diego to make my first Top 8 so winning just 3 matches should be nothing. Then I hear my name being called for a feature match vs. the best player of all time, Kai. Whoopee!
Round 9
Mark Herberholz vs. Kai Budde
BDM did a really great job covering the match and the link can be found here. Some things of note were game 1 Kai has me slightly locked under a Night of Souls’ Betrayal, so I can’t get my Hana Kami going and I keep shuffling and Topping. Then I get up to ask the judge a rules question and I overhear Kai telling BDM that I am just searching for my one Wear Away or I’m going to lose, I slide over into my chair and declare, “Found it!” and cast the Wear Away on his enchantment. I then take control of the game and realize his only out to win is casting another Night of Souls’ Betrayal and then casting a Genju of the Fens and attacking, so I just play around it the whole time by holding onto another Wear Away or Ethereal Haze. I let him keep playing and having his fun while the time runs down on the clock. Eventually he realizes he can’t win and scoops. Game 2 he keeps a very poor hand after mulliganing I think and I destroy him with a turn 2 Nezumi Shortfang. He then proceeds to call me lucky for playing two Wear Away’s maindeck. He wanders off to tell others of his “bad beat”. In fact, Jelger said he heard the story of our match from Kai about how I got “lucky” at least three times in the span of six hours or so.
Here is how I sideboarded for the matchup, although Kai’s deck was pretty rogue, so I wouldn’t expect to see it in any other tournaments. [Then again, it’s Kai’s deck, so it should see some play. – Knut]
+3 Nezumi Shortfang
+2 Kodama of the North Tree
+1 Keiga the Tide Star
+1 Yosei the Morning Star
+1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
-3 Sickening Shoal
-2 Hideous Laughter
-1 Horobi’s Whisper
-1 Ethereal Haze
-1 Cranial Extraction
This is basically the same theory as vs. the splice decks. In any of the control on control mirrors you usually want to side this way, as your creature removal is sub-optimal and Cranial Extraction isn’t as powerful since they will have too many win conditions.
Round 10
10 Fujita, Tsuyoshi [JPN] 18 vs. Herberholz, Mark D [USA] 18
Tsuyoshi is playing a R/G/u legend deck that abuses Honor-worn Shaku. His deck generates obscene amounts of mana by turning his Jittes into mana producers with the paddle (Shaku), then he plays rather large monsters and attacks. Game 1 he doesn’t really have a way to disrupt my Ethereal Haze lock, so I go right to that. At one point I trick him into giving me the wrong cards with Gifts Ungiven because I place two spells vs. Kodama’s Reach and Sakura Tribe Elder while I’m holding Final Judgment to clear the board. He gives me the two mana fixers, as he didn’t realize I was playing Final Judgment. He messes up on a later Gifts Ungiven too and that is enough to win me the game even though I miss on a Cranial Extraction for Time Stop.
Game 2 I have Cranial Extraction and think for a while and decide to Extract him for Time Stop because Gabe Walls told me he was playing them, he in fact was not, however he was playing Mindblaze and happened to have two in hand. I die shortly after that.
Game 3 He stalls on land and I get a fast draw with Meloku the Clouded Mirror on turn 4. It is too much for him to recover from as I just keep making flyers.
Here is how to sideboard vs. this deck. I would expect to see a decent amount of decks like this in the future PTQ’s as it is good and very fun to play.
-2 Hideous Laughter
-3 Sickening Shoal
-1 Cranial Extraction
+2 Kodama of the North Tree
+1 Keiga, the Tide Star
+1 Yosei, the Morning Star
+1 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
+1 Horobi’s Whisper
Nezumi Shortfang is too slow for this matchup. Other than that you just side in your fatties and spot removal to play the control game. You have more card advantage than them and they have no real answer to your fatties. You could also side out one random Sakura-Tribe Elder, Kodama’s Reach, or Sensei’s Divining Top to try and make them miss on their Mindblaze.
Round 11
7 Herberholz, Mark D [USA] 24 vs. Roy, Jim [CAN] 24
Jim was playing a G/B/U splice deck with maindeck Rootrunner and Waking Nightmare to try and “lock” you once he gets the Hana Kami/Soulless Revival engine going. Game 1 he did just that and beat the crap out of me with it.
Game 2 and 3 Nezumi Shortfang owns his hand while he spends his turns Cranial Extracting me, another reason why I think that Cranial Extraction is sub-optimal in the mirror.
His splice deck was a little more controlling than the other builds but I sideboarded much the same.
+3 Nezumi Graverobber
+3 Nezumi Shortfang
+2 Kodama of the North Tree
+1 Keiga, the Tide Star
+1 Yosei, the Morning Star
+1 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
+1 Psychic Spear
-2 Wear Away
-2 Hideous Laughter
-1 Horobi’s Whisper
-2 Cranial Extraction
-1 Ethereal Haze
-1 Eerie Procession
-3 Sickening Shoal
Again Cranial Extraction is just not good in the mirror, you want to change your deck to be more aggressive. If they spend their turn 4 playing Cranial Extraction and you spend your turn 4 playing Kodama of the North Tree, then who will win that game?
Round 12
2 Ruel, Olivier [FRA] 27 vs. Herberholz, Mark D [USA] 27
Olivier is playing a G/W/u Heartbeat of Spring deck with Sway of the Stars to try and Upheaval while floating mana then lay a fattie and kill you before you can answer it. I lost both games because I sideboarded incorrectly, didn’t know his deck well enough, and I wasn’t really trying because I was guaranteed Top 8. Now I wasn’t throwing the game or anything, but I was basically just going through the motions. It is very hard to win a game when your heart isn’t in it – you don’t read your opponent for his tricks, you don’t play around anything, and you don’t really have a game plan. All you do is play your cards and hope they win. A lot of the time they don’t. Our Top 8 match is a much better representation of how this matchup should play out even though I choked in game 3 which definitely cost me the game and very well could have cost me the match and a chance to win the whole thing.
So I had just made my second Pro Tour Top 8. It was a good feeling – it made me think that the first one wasn’t just a fluke. I celebrated by going out to dinner with the Euros and then retiring to my hotel room to have some drinks with Little D, Sam, Jelger, and my barn. I practiced about 10 games pre-sideboard and then another 10 post-sideboard to get an idea for the matchup. Game 1 is all about who resolves the first Cranial Extraction. Whoever does that should win. Games 2-5 go in my favor if I get a turn 2 Nezumi Shortfang in play. But in all honesty, the matchup comes down to whoever has a better draw. I think its basically 50/50, but if it favors anyone I think it’s me because of the power of Nezumi Shortfang and because I can search out my Cranial Extraction game 1 with Gifts Ungiven.
Top 8 Quarterfinals
Mark Herberholz vs. Olivier Ruel
BDM covered the match here.
I already went through what Olivier was playing. Game 1 I mulligan on the draw and keep a hand containing Swamp, Sensei’s Divining Top, Cranial Extraction, Kodama’s Reach and two more irrelevant creature removal spells. I figure that this hand is better than any five-card hand because it has the two most important cards in the matchup game 1, Sensei’s Divining Top and Cranial Extraction. I proceed to miss my third and fourth land drops but he gets off to a slow start and just establishes his mana base with Kodama’s Reach. I finally get five land in play and have to cast Cranial Extraction for his Cranial Extraction so I can protect my Final Judgment, then I have Eerie Procession to survive next turn and I have to find another land and a Final Judgment either on top before I Eerie or after I Eerie, Hana Kami provides me with another turn here also. All he has in hand is Sway of the Stars, which he can’t cast, and Hero’s Demise. He rips Sensei’s Divining Top, then tops into Yosei, the Morning Star casts it and Hero’s Demise’s it to tap me down so I can’t win… That was a little sour.
Game 2 I get an early Nezumi Shortfang to get advantage and he plays the whole game trying to catch up. I never overcommit, so he can’t fix the game with a Final Judgment. At one point he stabilizes with a Meloku in play, but I top into one of my Final Judgments with about 20 cards in my deck. I win with a dragon shortly after.
Game 3
This is where I throw the match. He plays a turn 2 Elder and I drop a turn 2 Nezumi Shortfang, he then opts to attack with his Elder rather than sacrifice it. Tip off number 1. Then he plays a Kodama of the North Tree on his turn 4 after ramping up with a Kodama’s Reach. Now I have the option of using Nezumi Shortfang or casting Kodama’s Reach to be able to Final Judgment on the next turn. However those are the only spells I have and I will be left with only the lands in my hand and my Top in play while he has the spell(s) in his hand that he has been protecting from the Shortfang. So I decide that I need to Shortfang another spell away to be able to win this game. However this plan of action lets him win if he has one of his two Yoseis in hand and I don’t drop another creature next turn. He does and plays it leaving him with lethal damage next turn. I untap disgusted with myself for losing this game when I had one of my best opening draws and I can still survive it I Kodama’s Reach and activate Top blindly to draw a card and I draw into a Nezumi Shortfang or a Sakura-Tribe Elder. However I am so distraught that I threw this game away I just say go hoping that he will drop a land or play a spell before combat so I can activate the Shortfang and flip it before damage. He obviously doesn’t and I lose.
Now some of you might be agreeing with my play of using the Shortfang, but the reasons I shouldn’t have are this, he seemed very confident for facing down a turn 2 Nezumi Shortfang, one of the worst cards for his deck, and the fact that he was attacking with his Sakura-Tribe Elder. Also he may have had a spell left in his hand or he may be bluffing, but even if I Shortfang him I can’t get his last “best” spell so I still have to answer that. Also, if I Wrath I still have my Top in play which can easily get me out of this situation. Basically I just was over-confident and lost the game and as it turns out the match because of it. This is just a lesson for when you think you have a huge advantage, you shouldn’t be thinking about how you can’t lose this game, but you need to think how your opponent can possibly win this game and play around that.
Game 4 I mulliganed twice on the play and he bashed me. On the last turn he made a mistake and attacked with his Meloku, which gave me the out to draw into my Meloku or Final Judgment to get back in the game but I just end up drawing a land.
Well here is how I sideboarded for this matchup.
+3 Nezumi Shortfang
+2 Kodama of the North Tree
+1 Keiga the Tide Star
+1 Yosei the Morning Star
+1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
-3 Sickening Shoal
-2 Hideous Laughter
-1 Horobi’s Whisper
-1 Ethereal Haze
-1 Cranial Extraction
After sideboarding you want to win with your Nezumi Shortfangs. Cranial Extraction isn’t very powerful as he sides in counterspells and has too many threats. His Extractions aren’t really a problem, as he has no way to recur them. So he probably wants to hit yours first to protect his Sway of the Stars. I was thinking about siding them all out to make him miss on his Cranial since he will probably name Cranial with it. I also think you want to name Final Judgment with your Cranial Extraction post-sidebaord as that leaves him with no answer to your Nezumi Shortfang or your fatties.
Well that’s my story of how I made the Top 8 only to screw up.
Props to the people who lent me cards, Rogier and Gabe for building this deck, the rest of the supergroup for your help in testing, Sonne for not splitting with me, BDM for willing me to win, Linde for betting on me in round 11… you had to know I would win brah.
Slops to FFej for not playing the deck, Kai for complaining, the new payout structure, and Frenchies in general.
Mark Herberholz
Herberheezy
p.s. sorry Flores for letting you down, I wish I could be your next Finkel.
p.p.s. I almost forgot.
ffej: ffejersplice
Marmalarma: is it suited hineys
ffej: yea
ffej: I’ve never missed cash at a block pt
ffej: and havent missed cash in the last 4 extendeds
ffej: im the nuts at cons
Marmalarma: and that is
ffej: and that
ffej: is
ffej: the
Marmalarma: did u post ur list
ffej: nah
ffej: top secret
Marmalarma: ship it
ffej: like im gonna give it to kk
ffej: yknow?
Marmalarma: lol
Marmalarma: ok so ship
Marmalarma: brah
ffej: 9 Forest
1 Island
8 Plains
1 Eiganjo Castle
3 Final Judgment
2 Genju of the Cedars
1 Hokori, Dust Drinker
2 Kodama of the North Tree
4 Kodama’s Reach
2 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
1 Myojin of Cleansing Fire
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
3 Orochi Sustainer
1 Patron of the Kitsune
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
ffej: 4 Sensei’s Divining Top
2 Tendo Ice Bridge
3 Time of Need
4 Umezawa’s Jitte
4 Yosei, the Morning Star
Sideboard
4 defiance
1 thoughtbind
1 dosan
1 shizuko
4 empty shrine
2 splinter
2 haze
Marmalarma: seems like a gigantic pitstain
ffej: it’s actually a tank full of premium diesel
Marmalarma: lol yea im sure
Marmalarma: sure ud like to play vs me round one with that deck
151 Cunningham, Jeff W [USA] [D] 2 US$350
7 Herberholz, Mark D [USA] 12 US$3175
and
that
is…….