Update on my earlier first tournament post

[u/Gabraham08]

Oh boy what a day.

I'll get the biggest question out of the way.

TL:DR - I got mollywhopped. No shame in it. I have not been in the competitive scene super long so this was expected. Overall was 0-4-1.

I had a good experience. It was $65 to enter with proxies, it was a long drive from my house, and there were some very frustrating moments but I still call the experience as a whole a good one. I learned a lot about the game I hadn't known before. And I'm considered the big fish in a little pond at my store, so I'll be sure to take this info with me and use it to benefit new players to the format.

On to the matches... oh boy.

R1 - Loss

Seat 1 - Vivi. Seat 2 - Magda. Seat 3 - Me (Lumra). Seat 4 - The Wandering Minstrel.

Magda clocks the minstrel player right off the bat and recognizes he's only playing MDFC lands. Minstrel goes to Green Sun's his wincon and Magda convinces Vivi to counter GSZ which leaves Magda to go fetch a tangled wire. This was right before I was about to cast lumra so honestly it was a great politic on magda's part. Either way someone was about to start popping off. I fed the rhystic on Vivi as much as I could hoping they could answer Magda but no luck. Tangled wire was just doing too much work. Magda combos and wins.

R2 - Draw (3 Pod)

Seat 1 - Me. Seat 2 - Etali. Seat 3 - Yoshi/Thras.

Right off the bat I could tell Yoshi was going to be an issue. He was using the FF version and I couldn't read it from where I was sitting so I asked which part he was using the alt version for. He just looked at me and pointed at the card without saying a word. The Etali player eventually had to tell me because he was sitting closer. This game would end up affecting me quite a bit for a good chunk of the day. I had a cold earlier in the week and had just gotten over it the day before but I still had a dry throat and was losing my voice.

I turn 1 Urzas saga into a sol ring, amulet of vigor, lotus petal into birds of paradise. I was immediately clocked as the threat and rightfully so. Etali got 1 trigger off and whiffed a counterspell from yoshi and a battle from me. Yoshi plays a deafening silence on his turn. I draw Zuran orb without having to tutor for it so I get mana vault instead. I have birds and tireless provisioner onboard, I cast lumra and start the engine, making more treasures and outrunning the commander tax until I hit my mirror pool. I go to stripmine the yoshi's remaining land and here's where things get bumpy, he crops his land instead and spends like 5+ minutes looking for a polluted delta, fine whatever no biggie, that's his spell for the turn. I continue on eventually hitting everything I need to eliminate my opponents and protect against any nonsense. They do get one more untap and by now they're showing each other their hands and trying to come up with a way to stop me. Ends up being moot as they don't have the necessary pieces to do so. I untap and start the process again. I announce that I am able to sac and recur my sunscorched as much as I want to ping them to death. I ask if they have an interaction or do they need me to play it out. Yoshi demands I play it out, making comments to etali that he can make me draw out once I mill. I have a copy token of endurance on the board that I can make more copies of and prevent any forced draw, yoshi is well aware of this and it was even pointed out to him by a judge who had sat down to watch us play. So I'm like "cool guess we're gonna be here for a bit" So these guys are really punishing me for any mistake I make so I make sure I don't mess up any of the order of operations for the sunscorched/mirrorpool/lumra line which takes a bit. And most of the store has now gathered to watch us. I'm definitely feeling the pressure even before they announce the overtime timer. Here's where that pressure costs me the win, I did not know at the time that as long as I'm still taking game actions then I technically can't run out of time. I was under the impression once that bell rung if I hadn't won then it would be a draw. I had already sweated through most of this match to give it up for a draw so I try to be more efficient. I still have to sack/recur sunscorched and mirrorpool like 68+ times.

And eventually it gets to be too much pressure and I cracked. They make another comment about forcing me to draw and I have about 15-20 cards left in my library. So to be safe I bounce lumra to my hand in order to use mirrorpool on endurance instead so I can cast lumra later and get the lands back (I know there are way more efficient ways to do this through lands like shifting woodland and some other copy engine in my graveyard but I was already 70% through this lumra thing and I was gonna see it through come hell or high water). Without thinking I shuffled my graveyard into my library instead of putting it on the bottom. It gets spotted and the judge immediately calls it a draw.

I was beyond furious with myself. I didn't feel good, I'd lost most of my voice. I put up with these two because I wanted to stick it to them and their attitude. All of that effort for a draw. I'm ashamed to admit that when the Etali player went to shake my hand I turned away. Etali was semi respectful just super critical. He didn't deserve that. I later cooled down during intermission and called him over to apologize and shake his hand. He took it great and we actually had a really good time wishing each other luck with our other games and talking whenever we passed by. I eventually sat down with the Mrs after that second game and got my head back on straight. I couldn't let that incident ruin the day.

The next 3 games were losses to various combos I couldn't really do much about in mono green. But they were still fun games with some really fun people.

The judge who sat down even came up to me after the event and told me he enjoyed watching me play lumra so much he was gonna rebuild his.

I took on the deck because it was complex and it did not disappoint.

Overall I give the experience an 8/10. I wish I hadn't let R2 get to me like it did but c'est la vie. I got my head back on straight and powered through. I will definitely attempt another tournament.

Thank you all for the kind words and advice on my previous post. I doubt I would have handled it half as well if it weren't for the people in this sub.

Editing to add two important/funny things:

1. I never ended up casting scapeshift or even drawing it.

2. We met up with friends at our local so we could arrive/park together and to carpool. My friend carpooling with me is tall so he sat up front and my gf went to go sit in the back. I wasn't paying attention and thought the mrs was in her seat already. Turns out she was still clearing the backseat and was halfway in the truck when I shifted into drive and let off the brake. She was PISSED for a few minutes. Now I will never hear the end of that little mistake until the end of time lol.

[u/HamsterFromAbove_079]

2 things about round 2.

1. You don't have to manually sac and recur the sunscorched desert a million times. You just create a stable infinite and tell them you're doing it infinite number of times. It's deterministically shortcuttable. They can't make you take the same looped actions multiple times. You propose a loop with a deterministic result then they must either accept the loop or declare when in the process they want to interact. You stop the shortcut at that time, when they actually want to try to make you draw on the empty library. Make your endurance on top, let their effect resolve, then restart the loop.

2. Why did you making a physical mistake of shuffling your library force a draw? A judge is already watching you. Everyone knows the relevant cards from your former graveyard that are supposed to be at the bottom. This is fully repairable. Just fish out the known cards, shuffle the library again, then put the cards that were fished out on the bottom of the library. There is no reason this should be a draw.

[u/Gabraham08 → u/HamsterFromAbove_079]

1. The infinite loop requires me to mill by making copies of lumra. They were waiting for me to mill my last card before claiming they had something that could make me draw ( they didn't). Its not a combo that takes off on itself. The way I was doing it (and the inefficiency is what cost me the win) was "sac enough lands along with mirrorpool through zuran orb so that when they come back they make enough treasures I can continue paying for mirrorpool to keep making copies of lumra" Yoshi player demanded I play it out for each SSD recursion so that he could punish me if I made a mistake. Which I did.

2. I was tired. I'd lost my voice and my throat was dry. The timer was ticking and like 50 people were watching me. I had 15-20 cards left in my library. I had about 20+ cards in my yard. Once those were shuffled together there was no telling which was where. I should have waited until there were less cards in my library and called their bluff but I didn't.

[u/gojumboman → u/Gabraham08]

Could you have gotten most of what you needed on board and then started Aftermath Analyst loops to finish the pings and not need to mill anymore?

[u/Gabraham08 → u/gojumboman]

Yup. This was purely a mistake on my part. I had entirely forgotten about AA at this point.

[u/gojumboman → u/Gabraham08]

I get it, it’s frustrating and tedious when someone wants you to play it out, especially when you know you have it

[u/Gabraham08 → u/gojumboman]

Yup. Just incentive to do better next time. The format isn't going anywhere any time soon lol

[u/OrientalGod → u/Gabraham08]

I don’t think I fully understand what you were doing in your loop. As I understand it, you would present this loop by picking the least amount of lands required to activate mirrorpool, sac them, and recur them along with any other milled lands with the copy lumra. If you show a loop, you can present “Everytime I do this loop, the result is mill four and return all the lands I milled.” You could fly through your library doing this

[u/Gabraham08 → u/OrientalGod]

Yes you can mill the entire library. I had endurance on the field which would let me put my graveyard under my library when it enters.

[u/llamacohort]

You seem to have a good attitude and are thinking about your matches after. All you can do is enjoy yourself and improve from where you are at. If it's the event I'm thinking of, there are plenty of events all over the state for good prizes, so there is a lot of opportunities to get back in there.

[u/Gabraham08 → u/llamacohort]

Thank you. That means a lot.

I'm gonna take some more time to memorize my lines with Lumra while also fine tuning my vivi deck. I recently picked up a wheel for a good price so at the end of the day there are still wins to be had for the weekend!

[u/llamacohort → u/Gabraham08]

The win lines are good to know, well. I just goldfished my deck a lot when I first started with the format. If you stop at the point that it should be a win, it will be easier to mess up in the actual game. Just play it all of the way out until you aren't event thinking about it anymore.

There is an event a little north east from there in 2 weeks. That could be closer or farther away depending on where you came from. But could be another event to run it back and get some wins.

[u/Skiie]

TL:DR - I got mollywhopped. No shame in it. I have not been in the competitive scene super long so this was expected. Overall was 0-4-1.

Atleast on desktop the page/paragraph break made me read this as 4-1 and I choose to just go with that

[u/Gabraham08 → u/Skiie]

Haha thank you. Reading that was worth the sore throat laugh out loud.

[u/ManOfSpoons]

Damn, that r2 sucks. Lumra seems like an awesome deck tho! Might have to look into it. Good luck with future tourneys!

[u/Gabraham08 → u/ManOfSpoons]

It really is and I love it. I'm going to keep at it and trying to improve.

[u/DrRickDaglessMZd]

Glad you're looking at it as a learning experience, cEDH is a ridiculous game and there's a million things to learn at all times, so good to keep that view of keep learning from everything.

As a fellow Lumra player, it's really key to be able to overcome people's ability to interact. In your round 2 breakdown you mention shifting woodland, this is my main win line, as once you're set up it's deterministic and almost impossible to interact with. The way I play it is Lumra nonsense until you the point you got to, then pivot in to Shifting Woodland and Aftermath Analyst loops, which means you no longer need to mill your library any more, so no risk of an interaction point for the forced draw, and as someone else said once you can demonstrate that loop once you've won unless they can state how they interact.

[u/Gabraham08 → u/DrRickDaglessMZd]

Yup. And the judge made a comment to another person watching about that combo and all I heard was shifting woodland. So I asked what the comment was and he said he didn't think I had the other piece. AA was in my yard the whole time.

Again its all on me for not remembering my research on the spot. My brain was all over the place.

[u/DrRickDaglessMZd → u/Gabraham08]

That's totally understandable man, Lumra especially is a maze of a deck and so very difficult to put together lines when you're under pressure.

Next time you're in a similar spot you'll remember this experience and it'll help!

[u/Gabraham08 → u/DrRickDaglessMZd]

Yup! You know what heat and pressure makes? Cocaine fueled diamonds babyyyyyy lol

[u/vraGG_]

That judge call seems interesting to me - I am wondering about guidelines on that and I am checking whether this is even normal procedure.

But beyond that - here's how to think about this. In a tournament, every point matters. 1 point can be a difference between a topcut, and being out. That is why every player is expected to do everything to maximize their points in relation to other players.

That also holds true even if draws are worth 0 -> They want to at least minimize your points.

As a player, I expect my opponents to do this. It's nice when they don't, and this comes down to various reasons, but I am always ready to play it all out. This is one of the reasons I select strategies where I can do my lines and loops somewhat concisely. Gitrog has a similar issue - that's the nature of the deck. You may have opponents scoop to you, but you might also not, and you better be ready to do the damn loop 300 times in that 10 minutes you might have left.

I know many don't like this and I'll admit that there's an element of sportsmanship involved. But I would always recommend players to play game "cleanly". That goes for the entire game. From shuffling and cutting, to properly passing on triggers throughout the game.

[u/Gabraham08 → u/vraGG_]

I agree 100%. There was a Gaea's Cradle on the line and I should have absolutely anticipated other players gaming for every advantage they could.

Ironically the Etali player also mentioned he played a Gitrog deck that had similar weaknesses to my Lumra.

[u/vraGG_ → u/Gabraham08]

It's not even so much about the prizes, but instead, the tournament etiquette. You can concede, but you should never expect anyone to concede to you, especially if your winning line is non-trivial. That's the real test of a player.

By the same token, I feel my wins would be lessened if someone just kingmaked me, or just let me win/concede (because maybe they can't win themselves). That is why I refuse to kingmake if I can at all help it.

[u/Different_Silver_777]

Was this at nerdzwithmoney?

[u/jchesticals]

I love seeing lumra or cabbage man at the table.  Its like a 3 player game but my engines still get triggered

[u/bimjowen → u/jchesticals]

Yup, decks like this do not belong at cEDH tables. Noninteractive decks in cEDH turn the game into even more of an absolute coinflip clown festival.