Doomsdaying at the 4Seasons Spring Tournament 2023

Hello everyone! I'm Luca Fasoli, aka Fuz65 on MTGO. You may know me for the unconventional Doomsday lists that I play on mtgo. Today I want to write about my experience at the 4Seasons Spring Tournament (March 3rd, 4th and 5th), that culminated with a top8 at the Legacy main event.

Let's start with this: I wasn't even convinced that I was going to play in either of the Legacy events. The Legacy metagame wasn't at its best and I wasn't exactly looking forward to a tournament filled with Reanimator and Chalice decks.

Fortunately, the 4Seasons is more than a simple MtG tournament. It's an event where you get to meet both new people and friends that you don't get to see often. Worst case scenario I'd hang around the tournament hall, spend some money on cards that I don't actually need and have dinner at the Mulino Bruciato. Not too bad, huh? I finally decided to register for the main event a few days before the event and added the Saturday side event to get used to playing my deck in paper again. It might sound stupid, but since I play most of my legacy matches on MTGO, I realized that it's harder for me to process information in paper than it is online, where everything is clearly laid out and sorted. The side event helped with that, and by the start of the main one, I was feeling confident slinging my paper doomsdays.

Choosing the Deck

In the weeks leading to the event I didn't feel like testing much. As I said earlier, I didn't enjoy the online metagame very much and the decks that I used to play to take breaks from combo where all unplayable thanks to Initiative. Then came Mercurial Spelldancer. While the card is not ideal in Doomsday, it's a ton of fun. I updated my Doomsday w/transformational SB into midrange and jammed a bunch of leagues, getting multiple 4-1's with it. As someone with an unhealty habit of prioritizing card draw over actively trying to win the game, (Doishy's editor comments, "Looking at you Marcus!") Spelldancer was exactly what I needed to keep myself interested in Legacy. I wish I had taken screenshots of the time I cast a Preordain with triple active Spelldancer, leading into Doomsday+Oracle from hand with 5 devotion, but this 2 mana kill two Murktide Regents was pretty satisfying as well.

https://twitter.com/Fuz651/status/1624734026836705281

At this point I was leaning towards playing Esper Slow Doomsday at the 4S main event, as I've already had a couple of decent finishes with it. The sudden surge of reanimator decks however, galvanized by the release of Atraxa, Grand Unifier, made me reconsider my choice. Esper's sideboarding space is limited because of all the removal that you're essentially forced to play for Delver. I'd have had to give up on some number of Force of Negations and graveyard hate. The obvious consequence of this was switching to Turbo, even though I'm not the biggest Personal Tutor fan (quite the opposite, actually). As far as Turbo Doomsday goes, is easily my favourite choice. It retains much of the raw speed of the fastest versions, while getting some useful tools to fight in longer games. I enjoy being able to drag the game a little longer to play around multiple pieces of interaction, especially in a longer event where you are likely to encounter scenarios where just jamming an early Doomsday will not leave you enough resources to actually win the game. I ran a couple of variations of the deck through a couple of leagues and 5-0'd both of them. Not bad. I made a couple of changes and submitted my decklist.

The Decklist

Link to the decklist

https://twitter.com/Fuz651/status/1632482398716698625

This build is very similar to my stock version of Turbo, except for a second Thoughtseize over the second Duress (mostly for Initiative) and Waterlogged Grove over the 2nd Daze/3rd Street Wraith. Why did I choose over ? The main reason is Carpet of Flowers, and this choice has some repercussions on the rest of the build. I firmly believe that 4 is the correct number of Carpets in this build, as having less copies will make the sideboard plan inconsistent and leave you with a badly hybridized deck.

Preordain: considered by most an outdated card, Preordain works very well in this deck. It's not card disadvantage and it's more flexible than Personal Tutor, thus allowing you to adapt your game plan to what your opponent is doing. In post board games against blue decks, the additional mana provided by Carpet allows you to cut most of the card disadvantage spells and go for a grindy approach.

The protection spells: The singleton Daze has to be seen as a 5th free counter. You don't want too many protections that cost mana, from experience I've felt like I didn't want more than 5 in pre-board games. The maindeck Veil of Summer could be a second Duress, but Veil is much stronger in post board games and I don't think the marginal improvement that you'd get by having a second Duress in the maindeck justifies the loss of a sideboard slot. Abrupt Decay is a clean answer to multiple hate pieces such as Torpor Orb, Dress Down and multiple things coming from stompy decks. Nihil Spellbomb is both a nice answer to Endurance and a way to reach a critical mass of grave hate for Reanimator. I like it over Relic of Progenitus because it plays around removal + Endurance, which is harder to do with Relic (you can't exile all graveyards if your deck is empty).

Getting to Bologna

There were four people from my playgroup coming to Bologna: Me and Alessandro came down on Friday Night, Stefano and Matteo reached us on Saturday. Most of the times we come down to Bologna, we stay at a friend's house, and this time was no exception: the Cenacchi's are the kindest people ever and by the time we got there, they had already left everything ready for us. Fabrizio, our friend, joined us for the tournaments on Saturday and Sunday: the team was now complete!

Saturday Side Event

I'd had a pretty intense week, so I slept through my first alarm clock and I think I woke up at 10 AM or something like that. The Saturday event starting at 2PM is chef's kiss. I'm sorry I don't remember all the names, but I have no way of checking (thanks companion!)

Round 1 vs Janus on Cephalid Breakfast

My first opponent is a friendly Danish guy, we chat a bit as we shuffle and finally it's time to start!

Game 1 I lose the die roll, I have a turn 3 win with Force of Will backup but my opponent has the same.

Game 2 I build a very solid pile that plays around Orim's Chant, I make a minor misstep (Doishy's editor comments, "Hah!") while executing it but luckily I don't get punished.

Game 3 is a very interesting one where we trade a lot of resources. At some point I cast Doomsday with Force backup. My opponent goes Orim's Chant, fetch Mystic Sanctuary to put back Orim's Chant and plays Snapcaster Mage into Flusterstorm. I managed to resolve Doomsday (8 life left, facing Snapcaster and Nomad's En Kor) and draw into a Nihil Spellbomb to prevent my opponent from comboing. Knowing that my opponent had Orim's Chant, I had a pile that won both on the next turn and on the following one. Janus untaps and deploys a couple of 1/1's, Chants me in my upkeep and that's enough for him to win the game.

Match 1-2
Games 1-2
Matches 0-1

Round 2 vs Death and Taxes

Game 1 my opponent reveals Yorion, Sky Nomad plays a Plains and passes. I Ponder and set up a turn 2 Doomsday with double Force backup. Cavern of Souls for Human, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. Wasteland on the next turn followed by Rishadan Port quickly close my window.

Game 2 and 3 were not particolarly close, just usual DD vs DnT stuff. (Doishy's editor comments, "F's in chat for DnT players")

Match 2-1
Games 3-3
Matches 1-1

Round 3 vs Alessandro on Death and Taxes

It sucks to get paired against a teammate but at least it's a good matchup I guess?

The games again are just usual DD vs DnT. I lose game 2 because of a mulligan into a sketchy hand, but apart from that it went smoothly. Alessandro usually plays Delver, so imagine his excitement when he found out he had gotten paired against DD while on DnT.

Match 2-1
Games 5-4
Matches 2-1

Round 4 vs Mono Black Stompy

Game 1 I get an early Thoughtseize that shows me Karn, the Great Creator, Plague Engineer but not much else that's relevant. I get a reasonably quick Doomsday and my opponent can't do much to stop me from winning.

Game 2 my opponent reveals a Leyline of the Void at the start of the game and goes land, Chrome Mox, Dark Ritual, Helm of Obedience. I Force it and it's smooth sailing from there. An Opposition Agent was stranded in my opponent's hand for the whole game due to mana issues, but I had double Force, so I would've been able to deal with it regardless.

Match 2-0
Games 7-4
Matches 3-1

Round 5 vs UR Delver

Game 1 my opponent leads on Delver of Secrets. I have Lotus Petal, Petal, Ritual, Thoughtseize, Doomsday, Underground Sea. I go for the T1 Doomsday, but my opponent has Delver, Brainstorm, Lightning Bolt, Wasteland in hand. I take the Brainstorm and go for a pile that plays around anything but a counter. My opponent flips a Daze to its delver trigger.

Game 2 I Ponder twice trying to find lands but fail miserably. I die to a couple of wastelands without ever doing anything.

Match 0-2
Games 7-5
Matches 3-2

Round 6 vs Sean on Mono Blue Painter

This one's not an easy matchup, but my opponent mulliganing to 5 in all the games certainly helped. I still get completely destroyed in game 2, where my opponent plays turn 1 Emry, Lurker of the Loch flips an Ethersworn Canonist and counters the two Doomsdays I'm forced to jam.

I improvised a sideboarding strategy that involves Sheoldred, the Apocalypse and Decays to have an out to Grindstone and Ethersworn Canonist, but my opponent is forced to keep a mediocre 5 and I eventually get there.

Match 2-1
Games 9-6
Matches 4-2

Dinner Meta

Not a terrible result, and I got some practice for the main event.

The main event of Saturday is dinner at the Mulino Bruciato, which is a highlight of our saturdays at the 4Seasons Tournament. We booked a table for 20-something people and it was a ton of fun. As a wheat-intolerant person I couldn't eat any of the pasta based dishes, but at the Mulino they have this amazing Tagliata Fredda (Sliced beef cooked and marinated for quite some time, before being served) and a normal Sliced Beef with salt and rosemary. Basically going Tagliata Fredda into Tagliata Calda is the food equivalent of going Dark Ritual into Doomsday. (Doishy's editor comments, "Getting hungry reading this...")

Sunday Main Event

374 players for the main event! Let's go!

Round 1 vs Gabriele on Esper Attractions

As we start shuffling i notice that my opponent has a separate small deck of cards in different sleeves. That most likely means attractions, which is pretty scary because i have very little idea of what those cards do. That's the downside of testing on MTGO, i guess.

Game 1: Pretty uneventful game, my opponent cast a couple of Cabal Therapys but didn't have much pressure. I managed to resolve Doomsday and win with a pass-the-turn pile.

Sideboarding: I don't recall the exact numbers, but I brought in the Veils for my opponent's Seizes and Therapies, Sheoldred and a couple of Carpets, cutting Daze, Fluster, 2 Petals. 1 Personal Tutor and something else.

Game 2: My opponent gets some pressure with a Baleful Strix and a couple of 2/1's. I Duress him and see double Therapy. Unfortunately my only Thassa's Oracle is in my hand, which means I have to get creative with my Doomsday pile and build something like Sheoldred, Brainstorm, Ponder, Decay, Doomsday. The White Plume Adventurer coming the turn after dismantled my plan and we went to game 3.

Game 3: I open a reasonable hand with Preordain, Brainstorm, Doomsday x2, Sheoldred, Usea and probably a second land. I lead with USea and pass the turn, playing around Cabal Therapy. My opponent plays Thoughtseize instead, takes my Doomsday and tries to Surgical Extraction it. I Brainstorm in response to shuffle away the second copy of Doomsday I had in my hand. The brainstorm shows me Dark Ritual and I draw Veil in my next Draw Step. I deploy another land and pass leaving up Veil. Brainstorm end of turn to hit a 3rd land drop and hit Cavern of Souls. Untap, Dark Ritual resolves, Cavern on Phyrexian and slam Sheoldred. She starts draining my opponent's life total and eventually my opponent scoops after Brainstorming to look for a Swords to Plowshares at 9 life. I had hardcast Street Wraith as a backup plan, though.

Match 2-1
Games 2-1
Matches 1-0

Round 2 vs Damiano on Cephalid Breakfast

Game 1: I open a strong hand and resolve an early Doomsday. I make sure to not die to Orim's Chant and StP and get the win.

Sideboarding: I bring in Leylines, Nihil Spellbomb and some mix of Decay, Veil and Carpet (1 carpet IIRC). Cut Daze, Fluster, Personal Tutor, Flusterstorm and a Petal for each Carpet

Game 2: We don't do much for the first few turns. At some point my opponent jams a Cephalid Illusonist pretty aggressively. I deal with it and I'm faced with a choice on the next turn: I have double USea into play and Ritual, Leyline of the Void, Doomsday, Doomsday, Carpet of Flowers in hand. I decide to go ritual into leyline and my opponent Forces it pitching Step Through. I finally draw a green source and from there Carpet will do a lot of the heavy lifting, allowing me to cast Doomsday twice through my opponent's Force of Will and a potential Flusterstorm. I quite easily from there.

Match 2-0
Games 4-1
Matches 2-0

Round 3 vs Matteo on Grixis Delver

It sucks to get paired against a friend. Matteo is a very experienced Delver player and certainly not someone you want to be facing this early in a tournament (or at all, to be honest).

Game 1: Matteo wins the die roll, mulligans to 6 and plays Ponder on turn one. Him not having a 1 drop was huge here. I Duress and take a Force, seeing 2 Murktides and Daze. He untaps and plays a 5/5 Murktide. My hand doesn't really have a plan to win in one turn so I'm forced to test my luck and Doomsday down to 8 life. Matteo draws, shows me Dragon's Rage Channeler and Snuff Out and concedes.

Sideboarding:
+4 Carpet of Flowers
+2 Veil of Summer
+2 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
+2 Abrupt Decay
-4 Force of Will
-2 Lotus Petal
-3 Personal Tutor
-1 Daze

Game 2: No 1 drop on turn 1 again, which gives me plenty of time to resolve Carpet of Flowers out of Daze range and win comfortably from there. Veil + same turn win through a potential Surgical was enough.

Match 2-0
Games 6-1
Matches 3-0

Round 4 vs Nicola on Sneak and Show

Game 1: I don't remember much about the early stages of game one, but I managed to cast DD and my opponent answers with Daze, forcing me to crack Lotus Petal, my only available mana source left. I was counting on that one to Brainstorm into Cycler, Cycler, Oracle in case he had Show and Tell. He didn't have the win on the following turn and I was able to just cycle into Cavern + Oracle and take the first game.

Sideboarding: I improvised a bit here and tried to take a controlling approach, given that i was on the draw. I boarded in Sheoldred, the Veils and upgraded some Petals to Carpets.

Game 2: I keep a reasonable hand with Flusterstorm and my opponent Force checks me with a t1 Show and Tell. He puts Atraxa into play and sets up another Show and Tell. I fluster it and take 7 damage. I draw, cantrip and take 7 more damage. My hand is now Dark Rit, Doomsday, Veil and after that. Any cantrip will do. I draw a land in my draw step, Ritual into Doomsday, Veil the Force of Will that follows right after and draw another blank. RIP.

I switch back to a more aggressive approach. No more Sheoldreds.

Game 3: I lead on Ponder and deploy a Lotus Petal. My opponent cantrips and plays his own Petal. I go to my draw step and Nicola Surgicals my Ponders. I interpreted that as him trying to get information to jam a Show and Tell on the upcoming turn, so I went Consider, surveil a blank, draw a land, cycle Wraith for another land. At that point I didn't really have a choice, as my hand was Ritual, Doomsday and lands. I jammed Doomsday and surprisingly it resolved. This was a really tough spot, and I took some time to navigate through it.

I had a single Lotus Petal and a couple of duals in play, plus additional lands in hand. The Petal they had played on turn 1 could have been a Flusterstorm, but given that Doomsday had resolved I was more inclined to think about Pyroblast. The biggest problems in this spot were Magus of the Moon and Blood Moon, which required me to put Island in the pile, but passing an additional turn. I chose to play around those and piled Cycler, Cycler, Oracle, Cavern, Island; so that I could've played the Oracle in case of a Show and Tell. My opponent managed to Show and Tell an Atraxa one turn too late. I held my Oracle safely in hand to avoid Pyroblast and won with Cavern and an empty library.

Match 2-1
Games 8-2
Matches 4-0

Round 5 vs Andrea Mengucci (!) on Grixis Delver

I enjoy a good challenge and Andrea was obviously one of the strongest opponents in the field.

Game 1: I lose the die roll and face a turn one Channeler. I cantrip on my turn 1. Delver joins the Channeler and I go down to 18. Untap, play USea and Petal, Ritual into Doomsday, Trade Forces and cycle into a standard Brainstorm pile. Had it all.

Sideboarding: See match 3.

Game 2: Andrea has double one drop again, but this time my hand isn't as broken and with Wasteland and Counterbalance joining the party I get destroyed pretty quickly

Game 3: I mulligan into a 6 that jams turn 1 Doomsday and has as a backup Island + Brainstorm + second Doomsday. I'm not a huge fan of Force checking people, but my chances weren't going to improve by letting Andrea take a turn so i jammed and he didn't have the Force. The Island in my hand made me Wasteland-proof, I Brainstormed as soon as my opponent tapped his Volcanic Island to speed up my pile and won comfortably via Cavern + Thassa.

Match 2-1
Games 10-3
Matches 5-0

Round 6 vs Marco on 4c Control

Marco is a friendly guy and we chat a bit as we shuffle, when the judges come and take our decks for a deck check. I usually don't enjoy getting deck checked because I just want to start playing and focus on the game, but my opponent came prepared! He pulled out a chess board and we got to play a game while waiting!

Game 1: Now, I'm bad at chess, I expected to get utterly destroyed, but I somehow avoided obscene blunders for the first 20 moves or so. I was lucky enough that we played a variation of the Italian where I knew some theory, and I feel like at some point I had some sort of an attack, but the judge came back and we had to stop our game just as my position was starting to get shaky. By the way, it was my first OTB game with a clock and i kept forgetting about it, so I would have probably lost to time anyway.

https://twitter.com/MarcoMontani17/status/1633363236069179392

The judge came back with bad news. I had listed 2 Duress/1 Thoughtseize instead of 2 Thoughtseize/1 Duress. I had exported my list from MTGO and forgot to update the submitted list after i changed it. Game loss.

Game 2: I get Doomsday with Force back up but my opponent doesn't really have anything. I build a simple Cyclers + Oracle + Cavern pile with Force backup and get there.

Sideboarding:
+4 Carpet
+2 Veil of Summer
+2 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
+1 Nihil SpellBomb
+1 Abrupt Decay
-4 Lotus Petal
-1 Edge of Autumn
-3 Personal Tutor
-1 Force of Will
-1 Fluster (not sure about this one)

Game 3: Now this was a crazy one. Marco goes for turn 1 Carpet of Flowers, while in my turn I just play a Verdant Catacombs and pass. My opponent's turn 2 is much scarier, with Sylvan Library hitting the battlefield. At that point I know I have to resolve Doomsday ASAP. I untap and Thoughtseize seeing Force of Will, Brainstorm, Ice-Fang Coatl and Dress Down. Not an easy one, but I've had a few spots like these in the past and I already have a general idea on how to navigate this scenario. Play Carpet, second main jam Doomsday. My hand at this point is Underground Sea, a cycler and Nihil Spellbomb. I have Underground Sea and Bayou in play. The pile has Cyclers, Thassa, Cavern and Abrupt Decay. My opponent draws 3 with Library and plays Narset, Parter of Veils. Annoying. I'm gonna need at least one more turn. I play Spellbomb and EoT Cycle a Wraith, Marco draws cards down to 3 life and we finally reach the final turn.

Cavern on Wizard.
Cast Thassa's Oracle.
Dress Down.
Respond to the trigger with Abrupt Decay on Dress Down.

Nihil Spellbomb covers a potential Endurance and my opponent concedes with a hand full of Forces and Red Blasts. Whew, this was a stressful one. (Doishy's editor comments, "I'll say! Really strong showing for the splash cards here.")

Match 2-1
Games 12-4
Matches 6-0

Round 7 vs Rodrigo Togores on RW Initiative

Another strong player, but luckily I was reasonably sure that he was on Initiative.

Game 1: I lose the die roll and Rodrigo plays a land and passes. I play Usea, Lotus Petal and pass. Cavern on Human allows for an uncounterable Elite Spellbinder on turn 2, I Brainstorm in response and Rodridgo takes a Consider. I untap and jam Doomsday. A simple pile of cyclers and Oracle should be obvious here, as I have Force backup for a potential Chaliceof the Void on 2. The only thing that worries me is Anointed Peacekeeper. I call a judge to double check that it is in fact a human, but ultimately decide against playing around it, as it's not seeing relevant play in mono white, I certainly don't expect it out of RW Initiative.

Sideboarding:
+2 Abrupt Decay
+2 Force of Negation
-1 Flusterstorm
-1 Veil of Summer
-1 Duress
-1 Waterlogged Grove

Game 2: I keep a weak 6 with a Force of Will + Pitch, Lands, Dark Ritual and a cycler. Rodrigo mulligans as well. My opponent starts with City of Traitors + Lotus Petal into White-Plume Adventurer and I force it. My hand is not nearly fast enough to deal with a resolved Adventurer. Fortunately Rodrigo misses his second land drop and we just do nothing for a couple of turns. I sacrifice a Waterlogged grove and eventually get to Doomsday. He finds a beater right after that, but by then I had already a win that he couldn't interact with.

Match 2-0
Games 14-4
Matches 7-0

Round 8 vs Erik on UR Delver

Ugh. I got paired down and my opponent had to play.

Game 1: My opponent has turn 1 DRC on the play. I Duress and see double Expressive Iteration + Daze. My hand has a very slow Doomsday, so taking an Iteration seemed reasonable there. Erik plays iteration milling Force, which tells me he most likely drew one in his draw step, finds Wasteland and I draw a couple of bricks before dying.

Game 2: I mulligan into a hand with Sheoldred and Doomsday, hoping to be able to find a Carpet or a Ritual. I sadly die without doing anything.

Match 0-2
Games 14-6
Matches 7-1

Round 9 vs Angelo on 4c Control

Last round I'm against another friend, and a strong player as well. I should be able to ID into top, but it's not guaranteed, rating can be a bitch. I had finally settled on playing when Angelo just conceded to me, as he was pretty much guaranteed to be in even with a loss.

This was a really nice gesture on his part, I was honestly pretty dejected after getting paired down while 7-0. Thanks Angelo, I won't trick you into opening chests on mtgo anymore! (No guarantees, though).

Top 8

I'm in, and Angelo got in as well! Also shoutout to Marco Montani, who clinched his second top8 in a row. Impressive stuff.

The prizes were pre-split, which allowed me to get back home at a somewhat decent hour, which is pretty good for work on monday.

Post-Event Thoughts

This is my best result in legacy so far, and I'm happy that it came with Doomsday, a deck I've put a ton of work in. Playing the version definitely paid off, as I don't think I would've been able to win some crucial games (round 6 being the most important one), it's nice to finally reap the benefits of having put the work towards the development of a deck. The deck felt good and the only change I'd consider making right now is going back to 2 Duress, 1 Thoughtseize because I expect Mono- Initiative to be played much less.

As always, props to the 4Seasons staff for always delivering well run events and nice prizes.

I'd like to thank all my teammates who I always go to tournaments with, I wouldn't have even gone to this one without them. Shoutout to the online community, too. I enjoyed meeting a bunch of mtgo players I had only faced online so far.

Last but not least, the Italian legacy community. Lots of great people and honestly a big part of why going to these tournaments is so much fun!

That's all for today! If you want to reach me on social media you can find me on Twitter where I often post my results and brews.

Thanks for reading!

Doishy's editor sign-off: Thanks so much to Luca for submitting this report to publish! Remember anyone is able to submit content to the Wiki and we'd love to see more from the community! Congrats again to Luca who is my favourite Dakkon lover and champion of the splash!

https://twitter.com/Fuz651/status/1632876228683202561

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