A Belcher Named Desire

Ah, finally.

So after I had a miserable tournament playing SS, I had a fairly miserable tournament playing Belcher.

RIW was nice enough to hold a second, consolation tournament for a Mox Pearl for everyone who didn’t want to play in the Time Walk tournament past the third round. Turns out, everyone who wasn’t eligible to make top eight for the Time Walk wanted to play in the Mox Pearl tournament.

Go figure.

The Pearl tournament was free to enter, it was double elimination, and you didn’t have to use the same deck from the Time Walk tournament as long as you wrote up a new decklist.

I figured, as is my current practice, that Belcher had a better chance in the double-elimination format than SS (or anything else I had with me) would. If my tournament success is going to be determined by a game of Vintage, I want to make sure that I have the opportunity to go broken and win the game right away.

In retrospect, I’m not sure whether SS would have done better against the gauntlet of decks I ended up facing or not. I think my chances would have been about the same, depending on what Josh Franklin was playing in round four.

Anyway, here’s what I put together:

4x Serum Powder
4x Street Wraith

4x Goblin Charbelcher
2x Empty the Warrens

2x Living Wish
1x Memory Jar
4x Goblin Welder
2x Red Elemental Blast
3x Pyroblast

1x Chrome Mox
1x Sol Ring
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Lotus Petal
1x Lion’s Eye Diamond
1x Black Lotus
5x Moxen
4x Rite of Flame
4x Simian Spirit Guide
4x Elvish Spirit Guide
4x Land Grant
4x Tinder Wall
1x Channel
1x Taiga

Sideboard
1x Empty the Warrens
3x Tarmogoyf
2x Shattering Spree
2x Tin Street Hooligan
2x Gorilla Shaman
1x Storm Entity
1x Red Elemental Blast
1x Mishra’s Factory
1x Tolarian Academy
1x Taiga

The big difference in this list—and a big departure from previous lists—is the absence of Wheel of Fortune. I replaced it with the fourth Goblin Welder. Even though Wheel of Fortune is exceptionally powerful, leading to first turn wins and huge hordes of goblins with Empty the Warrens, the Goblin Welder has more reliability and utility. Welder has synergy with Belcher, Black Lotus, and Memory Jar—my main win condition and two of the more powerful cards in the deck.

I kept Jar over Wheel just because it has more use and reusability with Welder. With four Welders, if I don’t get one down before the Jar, there’s a decent chance I’ll have one after. Then the deck becomes explosive. Cards (i.e. Belchers) I discard to Jar can be Welded in, and I can draw eight cards a turn to my opponent’s one.

Another change I could have made to facilitate Welder and Jar would have been to include Grim Monolith over either a red blast or a non-artifact accelerant like Tinder Wall.

The sideboard also underwent quite an overhaul. One change I was particularly pleased with was the inclusion of Tarmogoyf. Fish (and its varicolored iterations) is one of my hardest matchups. Josh Chapple or Geoff know well enough that every card in SS and TMWA is good against Belcher. The hope is that the Fish deck sides out its big creature removal for more Belcher and Warrens hate, while I stomp all over them with a 4/5 or 5/6 monster. Essentially, it’s a better topdeck than Storm Entity but becomes about the same size.

Also missing from the sideboard were the utility lands: Bazaar of Baghdad and Ancient Tomb. There was one point during the tournament where the Ancient Tomb would have been quite useful, making for a slightly bigger Empty the Warrens.

The idea of getting Bazaar never really crossed my mind, but when Justin Droba looked at my sideboard, he commented that, “It’s already built wrong; there’s no Bazaar.” I don’t know. If you don’t like the extra Empty the Warrens or the extra REB, you could run either one or both of the lands in their place.

Not sure I would though. Tolarian Academy might be more useful with another good artifact source of mana, though. You know, like Grim Monolith.

Anyway, enough of this Belcher blather, let’s see how I did.

Round One – Josh Chapple – Drain Intuition Tendrils

Ah, the Late JC, we meet again. Actually, Josh and I had just played in the third round of the Time Walk tourney, only he was playing Belcher then, and I was playing SS. I’m not sure what happened with this round other than the fact that I probably hacked him out of a win.

Sorry, Chapple. I don’t know why I wouldn’t just let you win.

Game one was simply a matter of me Land Granting for Welder, playing an unimprinted Chrome Mox, and using LED to discard my hand. I won on my second turn.

In game two, Chapple opened with Pithing Needle on Belcher, which I was not expecting. I had only brought in the Mox Monkeys and the extra REB to deal with his deck, so my options were a little limited. I had Belcher in play all game after I REB’d his Mana Drain, but my Welder wouldn’t stick and I found nothing else to remove the Needle. I scooped when he played Yawgmoth’s Will and had Tendrils in hand.

Game three was where things got weird. I got Belcher down, but Chapple Vampiric Tutored for Pithing Needle to shut me down. He then proceeded to take 15 damage from Mana Crypt over the next seven or so turns as we both built our hands. I countered a few of his spells trying to get his Crypt to kill him, but he (under the tutelage of Jerry Yang and Justin Dewey) tutored for Rebuild to save himself at two life. With tons of mana and resources, though, he couldn’t quite figure out how to get me dead and almost killed himself again with the Crypt.

Finally he got it, or I scooped.

Or something.

Because of the oddities involved, we decided to play a quick replacement game three.

Both of us mulled to five, but my hand made the win first, quickly and easily.

This whole round left a bad taste in my mouth. Game one and two were no problem, but game three was a mess of hassles, as Chapple could probably have killed me three or four turns before he actually got around to it, but then he got coached a whole bunch and still had trouble.

Round 2 – Nic Antes – Ubw Trinket Counterbalance Fish

Nic and I played in the first round of Becker’s Tournament back in, when was that, March? He didn’t remember me, but I remembered him saying that he had given up playing Fish because he was tired of Empty the Warrens and Darksteel Colossus and Tendrils of Agony killing him every game. He’s a liar, but he’s still a really fun opponent. I look forward to maybe beating him at the RIW Lotus tournament in two weeks.

We both mulliganed to start game one, and I opened with a Living Wish for a 4/4 Storm Entity that struck twice before taking up farming. His creatures were Trinket Mage and Dark Confidant, so I suspected Bob-Bomber man as he found first tutored for Pithing Needle on Belcher and then Sensei’s Divining Top to keep Bob from killing him. It was pretty quick once things started working for him, but he made it close as he was at five life when I died.

If game one was bad, game two was worse. He Force of Willed my first turn play—a Tarmogoyf. Then he Tutored for some hotness—maybe Counterbalance, though I don’t know. Then Phyrexian Negator beat the crap out of me.

Seems good. He revealed after the match that he did not have the Auriok Salvagers or the Spellbomb to combo off with, so he really was playing simple Trinket Fish. Still, nice deck.

Round 3 – Josh Franklin – I don’t know

This is how Belcher was meant to be. I think I saw two lands out of him and a Brainstorm. That was it.

In game one, I mulliganed to five while he went to six. My opening hand was Mox Ruby, Welder, Channel, Memory Jar, Street Wraith, and Street Wraith brought me a Black Lotus for the low, low cost of two life. I played Ruby into Welder, no counter. Then I played Lotus, no counter. Then I played Channel, then Memory Jar. Memory Jar showed me a Belcher, which I played with Red Force backup, so I won.

Game two was similar. I used Red Force on his Ancestral Recall on turn one. Then I played Land Grant into Rite of Flame, Rite of Flame, Belcher. On my second turn I drew Tinder Wall and played it and a Mox Pearl to fire and win.

For those of you counting at home, that’s a first turn win and two second turn wins to go with my three losses and some weirdness.

Round 4 – Geoff Moes – TMWA

Mountains is not Fish, but it is exceptionally Fish-like—lots of answers to lots of threats. He’s got Null Rods for Belcher, Sphere of Resistance to slow me down, and Bloodfire Dwarf to kill my goblin tokens. One person I did not want to play against was Geoff.

Geoff led with a Badlands in game one, and I replied by emptying my hand and the Warrens for 12. Vampiric Tutor came out and got Lotus to make Bloodfire Dwarf and wipe the board. From there, things pretty much went downhill. Sphere of Resistance slowed me down, Null Rod stopped me cold, and I died after a few attacks from some tiny creatures.

Game two, I launched a Memory Jar on turn one and had the fortune to find Black Lotus, Channel, and double-barreled Belchers inside. I won easily.

Game three, he Duressed my Belcher. I managed to play Tin Street Hooligan and Tarmogoyf, though, as a backup plan. Goyfy went to live on the farm, however, and the Hooligan eventually traded with a Bob. Welder stuck long enough to bring in Belcher (after Geoff made the mistake of not playing Null Rod for some reason), but my Belch did only ten damage as I ran into Taiga halfway through. After that, I was pretty much sunk as my final hope was that he would reveal Hide & Seek off of Bob.

Geoff seemed tired of playing, though, and scooped me past him into the next round, saying that Belcher probably has a better chance in the future than Mountains does.

Round 5 – Nic Antes – Ubw Trinket Counterbalance Fish

I don’t have notes on this, so just go back and read my Round 2 report again. It was like that. The highlight for me was getting to hardcast Serum Powder twice, once to get around Engineered Explosives.

Anyway, so that was it.

Would Mountains have had a better game against Trinket Fish? Theoretically, yes, I think. Unfortunately, Nic was running Negators and Tombstealers, which are gigantic against other decks with creatures. Geoff and I may have been on even footing against the Fish deck, but it’s hard to say.

Regardless, I lost most of my games, but somehow made it to round five of the side tournament. I’m Blanche DuBois, I guess, always depending on the kindness of strangers.

Belcher will continue to be my pet deck. It’s strong and fast and could thrive in the current environment. It can often play around one counter from anything with Force of Wills, and it’s fast enough to blow through Stax’s lock pieces. From what I can tell, those will be the popular decks in the next few months—Stax and Gush.

Running into Fish is decidedly not fun, though. There are too many permanent answers in that deck for Belcher, especially random excellent ones like Extirpate.

I’m getting close to a really good one-land list, though. I’m winning far more games now with Belcher rather than Warrens, and it’s a far more robust win condition despite the fact that it can be hit with Force of Will directly. Cutting Wheel of Fortune is a radical idea, but it’s not without merit, and Serum Powders and Street Wraiths so far seem to be correct.

More on the deck as it develops, I guess. Maybe more after the Lotus tournament.