By the way Barney, I watched your stream...and you were planning on playing Delirium Game 5? lmao, at least now I know that if we had went to Game 5, a Vert win was basically guaranteed anyway.

Thanks for watching my stream!

The second you told me the other night that someone tried to play Delirium against you and you laughed it off, i thought it would be funny to try and beat you with Delirium. So i was planning to play Delirium on game 4. It was always my plan to play GeistRamp against you in Game 5 cuz of how often you've lost to it in key matches. I need to stop trying to be cute and comedic in my deck choices, lol.

The five decks I was planning to play:
1. Abzan control - total disaster opening with this versus your esper control. Not getting the 2nd white source was awful
2. Sjokwave's Bant - this was a good choice. I can't remember what happened in this game. I think i was leading and got disconnected
3. Gem's Bant - this was my only win of the night.
4. Abzan delirium - i ended up playing Hakeem's vamps and Joly's superfriends instead of this. I think that was a mistake.
5. Gem's GeistRamp - i think this was a good choice but i mulled to 5 and played horribly. I should have played it in a way that gives me a chance if I top deck a sweeper like Displacement Wave or whatever. I didn't play it this way at all and had no chance.

Those were the five I wanted to bring against you. I don't know if I was allowed to bring 2x Bant and 2x Abzan but I think so cuz the builds are totally different (none of these builds are mine).

The changes I made to Gem's Bant weren't that great. i need to change it back to his envisionned build.

Sorry I couldn't give you a more robust final but i was really happy to play against you. Thanks so much for calling draws on my two disconnects. That was super nice.

Did you laugh at the part when you countered two spells of mine in the same turn and i dropped my f-bomb?

I think my favourite part of the entire match was at one point I was starting to boil and then you did something that was super frustrating and Gem pre-emptively writes, "Barney is about to blow" and then i started swearing like crazy, lol. Gem calling it was so awesome.

My plan was more:

1. Esper Control
2-5. Make picks based on what he's already played and the general score.

Like, I didn't want to play Spirits until Vamps were gone. I guess I'm lucky you played Hakeem's Vamps otherwise I dunno if I would have ever run Spirits. But then, Spirits was my only loss...

Game 2: I really thought you'd steam from the opening loss in a super slow match and go super fast Game 2, which is why I chose Orzhov there. I did definitely luck out Game 2, that was about 2 turns away from a loss.

Game 3 (2): Orzhov was dead and I was up 1-0 and you hadn't played a Vamps deck yet, so I thought something like that was possible. I didn't expect much if any further control, so I decided to run with Grixis Slugs here. It's got alot of sweepers if you went Vamps/Humans/Valor/anything like that. That paid off, you ran Vamps, and I just tried to burn and sweep and burn until I could stabilize. I dumped Disciple early because I figured my main win con was just inevitability by holding on.

Game 4 (3): Vamps were gone, I thought Bant was gone, and I doubted you'd immediately follow Vamps up with Humans, so this was the time for Spirits. I don't show video of myself, so just imagine me muttering angrily about what a cheater you were when I ran into another damn Bant deck lmao. It's actually a pretty damn close matchup (on paper, not this particular game) and going second REALLY hurt me. If I went first, pretty sure I could get 4 power in the air and just seal you out forever with counter spam.

Game 5 (4): As revenge, I charged up my Bant Tempo and ran into Superfriends. Not an awful matchup. I saw your grip on your stream, still feel pretty good about my position. If you bring down Gideon, I'm taking Gideon out immediately by EOT Krasis, activating the Copter, and -2 Nissa to hit him with a 4/4 Copter. And I would be able to hold open mana for Avacyn in hand. I think I could have seriously pressured Walkers. But we'll never know.

Game 6 (4): While we were talking, I basically scrolled through my decks. I had Grixis Control, Jund Sacrifice, Selesnya (+Tamiyo) aggro, and Abzan Enchantments left. I didn't really like the Sacrifice deck and Echantments sucks vs. fast decks, so I decided to just plan for monowhite humans and bring Humans myself, try to outsize you. You played Geistramp and mulled to 5 and died Turn 5.

Game 7 (5) would've been Abzan Delirium vs. Grixis Control, allowing me to finish with a control deck. I think I'm the favorite, but that's mostly because I believe Delirium decks are comical trash deserving of ridicule.

It wasn't that fun for me because that was Spirits and I was behind and you just trucksticked me with the Tracker anyway.

And I didn't notice the Gem thing.

Hey, so because you know the order I would have played my games if I hadn't disconnected or been distracted by Hakeem and Gem into changing decks, let's just see what would have happened if I had stuck to my plan:

Game 1 - I lose this no matter what cuz I'm always playing Abzan Control here and losing to your Esper
Game 2 - Sjok's Bant beats your Orzhov. We are tied at one apiece.
Game 3 - Gem's Bant should have shown up here against your Grixis Slugs. i have NO IDEA who wins this. Do you? I'd trust your judgment here.
Game 4 - Abzan Delirium shows up here against your Spirits. What happens there? I lose, right?
Game 5 - Gem's GeistRamp against your Bant Tempo. Again, I have no idea who wins this.

Let me know how you think Games 3 through 5 would have gone there. I don't think you would have played your Spirits ever though cuz you'd always be waiting for my vamps which I had zero intention to play.

Hard to predict I guess...

Game 3 is the real swing, because I also don't know who wins that and who wins or loses that likely changes my deck decisions. If I ran Spirits against Abzan Delirium, I'd probably win, but I am skeptical I would run Spirits there.

If I lose Game 3, I probably go slightly into panic mode and might play Spirits just because of its pure power level and just pray to avoid Vamps. I might also play Grixis Control, because it has a ton of spot removal, expecting hyper aggro.

If I win Game 3, I'd definitely save Spirits for Game 5 and would probably run Bant Tempo here, hoping to match with Vamps/Humans.

I dunno, the disconnects make everything screwy and complicated lol. It's also hard for me to predict any loss Game 4, because I think Delirium is a joke deck. We could always play some games for funsies to see how those matchups play out. I haven't broken down any KLD decks yet.

i haven't broken them down either. nah, let's not do the mock matchups cuz I'll just get mad if I win. Yeah, the disconnects screw everything up so in our scenario-testing, let's assume that there were no disconnects. You're right that game 3 changes everything.

I HAVE AN IDEA! If you want (and only if you trust me), when we have a real match for the hill this season, we could recreate one of these scenarios. i wouldn't touch my deck, i'll keep it the same and hopefully you would do the same.

...anyway, i don't know if that would be fun or not. We could just play a normal king of the hill match-up and maybe it so happens that we pick those decks. But we're both probably moving onto AER in short order anyway. I'm building two new ones tonight!

So wait, you're okay playing the matchup with stakes in KOTH match but you'd get mad playing the matchup with zero stakes?

And I dunno what you're mad about, the $40 first place money is there for the taking. You just gotta go and take it.

oh I'm gonna take it bruh. Just you wait.

Yeah, I think it's more fun to play a match like that for stakes (like the Hill).

I don't think I want to telegraph my punch in a Hill matchup. I take this ish seriously.

Unless it's Spirits against Delirium, because lmao, sure, let's do that.

ok i'll keep the decks in the hopper in case this might happen. You're right tho, with a prize pool of at least 80 bucks, we should take it seriously.

Do you think Pure needs to shore(sp?) up any of the rules if there's going to be more significant cash prize like this? I hope not, things seem to be going really well. We probably don't need to fix anything.


also i can't believe you play the 5/10 table, that's so cool. I don't have the bankroll for that.

Nah, the only thing that could be an issue is that it could end up too same-y, which is why I stuck the notice in the OT thread. Hopefully the money motivates more bodies.

But hey, if they aren't on the list, I don't want to hold up the list for them to GET on the list. So I don't see any obvious rules changes needed. The big ones are already covered by Kryder's excellent fairly comprehensive rules list (with the catch-all of "hey **** don't cheat" taking care of things like Aether Hub+Growth glitch junk).

I like the current playoff format.


EDIT: Also, thanks, I love poker and I love money, so I was always destined to flow up the limits.

I don't think i can take the variance of the big cash games but I don't mind shelling out for the bigger tournaments. Played in WSOP once, was awesome.

ok, i think the koth stuff is just fine too then. Pure is running it really well and we haven't had a single problem. I mean you and I were playing for a 60$ prize and I was trying to give you a win for a disconnect and you were trying to call the game a draw. You can tell it's league play

Vert awesome sauce. Sharpen your weapons plebes...

So, next season we'll do 1st.= 140$ 2nd. $25, 3rd. Lulz unless someone wants to add...

Contributions brought to you by King, ney Overlord DivineVert and PureSynesthesia, get some. Season starting soon...

$140 for first? Holy ****, now we gotta ****ing game.

Thanks Pure and Vert for the awesome pool. Can't wait

Yeah, where the hells my money ?? Lol

When is the OP being updated? Are there any new improvements for this season?