Remi Fortier's deck list. 1st place PT Valencia

R3wind · Joined: 24 Jul 2006 Posts: 886

Okie I am not the best deck builder but I had to double check. It would seem that the most obv cards did not make it into the deck. No Gifts? No Loxodon Hierarch maindeck? No Needle in the Trinket maindeck Trinket package? No Leyline of the Void in the sb? 2 vs 3 Counterbalance. Plz discuss the list...

// Lands
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
4 [10E] Island (1)
1 [DIS] Hallowed Fountain
1 [DIS] Breeding Pool
1 [GP] Steam Vents
1 [RAV] Watery Grave
1 [MR] Seat of the Synod
1 [LOR] Forest (1)
1 [LOR] Swamp (1)
1 [LOR] Plains (1)
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins

// Creatures
4 [RAV] Dark Confidant
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
3 [FD] Trinket Mage
2 [FUT] Venser, Shaper Savant

// Spells
4 [MR] Chrome Mox
4 [MM] Counterspell
4 [MR] Thirst for Knowledge
3 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
3 [BOK] Threads of Disloyalty
2 [CS] Counterbalance
2 [SC] Stifle
2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
1 [TSB] Tormod's Crypt
1 [FD] Engineered Explosives

// Sideboard
SB: 2 [TSB] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 2 [FD] Engineered Explosives
SB: 3 [TSP] Ancient Grudge
SB: 3 [UL] Engineered Plague
SB: 2 [RAV] Putrefy
SB: 2 [RAV] Loxodon Hierarch
SB: 1 [10E] Pithing Needle

Blah234 · Joined: 19 Nov 2005 Posts: 125

lennin · Guest

I do like the deck, but he still got lucky in that top 8.

i mean no one has evr gotten lucky to win a pt b4 its never happened right[/quote]

Blah234 · Joined: 19 Nov 2005 Posts: 125

It doesn't matter if people have gotten lucky in the past, the point is here was that even though he has skill, he wouldn't have won if he hadn't gotten lucky (like getting a card a specific moment) throughout the top8.

tin_cup · Joined: 12 Nov 2004 Posts: 10

I am writing this from my hotel room in valencia, since i was a pt competitor. i believe remi's deck choise was a good one but he sertainly got lucky drawing all the vensers in every game he won in the final. he also got lucky enough to draw the second counterbalance one match earlyer when he needed to do so.
Anyway, it was a strange PT. If you notice the decks in the top8 they aren't what we could call... normal. Some of them are build based on unusual game plans. One of the tron for example plays gifts without any way to get the cards from hs graveyard in his hand. Also the metagame was really strange. Everyone had GY hate cards in his s/b but almost none used them.

Jacois · Joined: 05 Sep 2004 Posts: 453

That's the kind of deck list that makes me feel like a scrub. I am impressed. It's amazing to see a 16 year old win one of these things.

FR33BALLA247 · Joined: 14 Oct 2007 Posts: 156

well, it is a good deck, reminds me of legacy fish decks- cheap creatures that do a lot, cheap counterspells, and just overall goodness.

R3wind · Joined: 24 Jul 2006 Posts: 886

Eraser|| · Joined: 15 Mar 2007 Posts: 2

No Riptide Laboratory? Why?

lennin · Guest

tin_cup · Joined: 12 Nov 2004 Posts: 10

The petrified combo isn't new. maybe you could explain the meaning of 1 sphere of law and 1 kataki as well, because i can't. The fact is i didn't know the list, i knew only the petrified field - gifts combo. My team also didn't expect UW-trons to do well since it seemed too slow for the environment. IMO the flood changed many things...
It's a fact that i didn't do well (4-1-5), but i WAS at the PT.

Jkornx3 · Joined: 09 Aug 2007 Posts: 17

I am guessing Mono-red with Blood Moon or Magus of the Moon, wasn't an issue since he is running a total of 7 basics.

I honestly do not see why he would run the deck this way, 3 Sensai's seems unneeded, no removal, Chrome Mox to accel into what?

I just don't get it. I love seeing Counterbalence getting up there but I just don't get why run it this way.

mrmath · Joined: 30 Oct 2007 Posts: 3

lennin · Guest

he didnt draw both his vensers every game he won wtf are u talking about. he drew 1 venser each game he won

raichoup · Joined: 12 Sep 2004 Posts: 14

it's funny that when MIHARA dosn't know that Dragonstorm requires 9 manas and not 8 during a Worlds top8 1/4 final vs PV no one says that he is freackingly lucky to get his last mana which he lacks by topdecking a rite of flame thanks to a "last chance repeal" in order to repair his big mistake. People kept admiring his "perfect playstyle" as he "mastered so much his deck" etc...
Is that because he is Japanese that ppl feel that they have to lick his butt ?
But when it's a french 16 year old youngster, not on pro tour for so long, everyone will claim that he has been lucky.
His deck is all about manipulating his library over and over and topping every tour for 4 to 7 different cards. Not surprising that he achieves in those conditions to quickly find what he needs (venser/stiffle/counterspell) during the final.

Why is the chrome mox for ?
The chrome mox is here in order to do things like Turn 1 confident (which will pay back the lost card right in the next turn). It's also here because this deck was to slow vs both aggro/control and combo.
Vs combo u need to put pressure quickly, because your disruption is enough to save your ass for little time but not for long.
Vs Control you need to pressure and disrupt, like every aggro control.
Vs aggro you need to do something before being dead. A turn 2 confident if your on the draw, which is going to be burned by your zoo opponent is just "not quick enough", even followed by the not so strong enough trinket on turn 3.

All in all the sacrifice of a card through the mox is not a big issue for this deck. You basically run a little of everything in the deck, some being good vs aggro, some vs control, etc.. So you just have to discard to the mox what is irrevelant in this match (anti-aggro vs control, etc...).

This deck is all about playing a sample of the best cards in the format, and being able to fetch "solutions" when needed.
When Rispal made it, it was 100% about:
- damn their's so many cards/deck in the format, how can we handle them all?
- True, to many good cards...
- I got an idea, let's play them all, it would annoy our opponents at least.
- ok , let's try to do that !
And "voilà", here's the deck. take ideal deck. It's strong, strong enough to beat everything which has no hate against it. Take dredge, same result. At some point you simply can't have a deck that can cope with so much diversity. So what you try to do is to simply run the best cards as basis, add some general disruption/solution that will fit in most situations, even if not perfectly, or even if for a little amount of time. and then you find a nice teaching tool so that you can fetch solutions when needed, and you got a survival_of_the_fittest_like.dec, which has proven already to be a tier 1 standard as itself, and that's good, especially considering that no-one can meta against it, because it has no specific weakness (neither it has specific areas of strenghts... it's just smooth).

It's also about being extremly strong in the ~middle game~
I mean that with TFK and top manipulation the deck is extremly hard to beat between turn 4 and around turn 10. Before you can maybe outrun it, after you may kill it because it may run out of gaz, if it did not take the control with counterbalance or jitte on the table.

The peething needle is not MD because of the meta, which gave prio to tornods MD (dredge).

A 3rd counterbalance wouldn't be an horror, even if i think that it would be a bad idea personnally (counterbalance is overhyped imo, it isn't a GG vs that many decks, top is really the key, CB is only the cherry on the top of the cake which has a taste of sensei's).

This deck is made of a "core set" of cards like tarmo, sensei, trinket engine, chrome mox, TFK, etc... the rest is up to you, based on your meta. It's really a 'solution' deck, but a lot more pro-active and aggressiv than before, thanks to the tarmobitch guy.

What i don't like in Remi's version is that IMHO it lacks a little bit of threats and focus a bit to much on solutions. I would have perhaps added a fitfh tarmo-like MD, dunno why, but ofc it would have been lower material than tarmo, because you simply can't do better than this broken beast.

I would also never have plaied 3 threads of disloyalty MD. It was a gamble based on the fact that every1 would play aggro oriented deck, most of them being based on tarmolover. However it's really a dead card in to many cases, and you can't recycle it very efficiently like you can do with artifacts on TFK so...
It's probably why the deck sometimes lack of threats vs control or combo, you got threads in hand instead of a real threat, and their's nothing to steal on the opponent side in order to start hitting.
And last but not least, it can't steal genesis very often (sometimes it can, you just have to put threads under genesis, so that your opponent can't read it, or you can run it in korean too, as long as you don't face a korean in fact). I'm just mentioning it because someone recently stole me my genesis with so many confidence that it took me two turns before realising something was wrong and that he wasn't running a "take possession nor a control magic" in his deck!

I would have plaied the same list with threads in SB, maybe 1 more stiffle, 1 more jitte(or CB, depending on meta) and 1 more 2CC stompy creature .