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I have a crazy week of work coming up after I get back from Nationals so I am going to get a head start on a tournament report.

I am going to skip T2 MP for now and do T2 2P.

Round 1 vs Matt Sinclair

Matt and I play pretty regularly against each other online so I knew his deck pretty well, and as soon as he saw a couple cards he knew which deck I was using. Started the game with a pretty bad draw...all evil cards plus New Jerusalem. I didn't draw a lot of early Lost Souls, and unfortunately this meant I just kept having to discard evil enhancements from hand clog. I did draw both my Rain Become Dusts early so that kept Matt from going too crazy with drawing, but eventually he got rid of both because I had to make half-hearted rescues that really had no chance of being successful allowing him to discard them. Then he started drawing quite a bit and I was still fairly hand clogged. The key moment of the game was when I was forced to use Mayhem holding 11 cards just so I didn't have to discard anything more and hoping for a miracle redraw. It didn't happen. I kept the game close and had I drawn SoG it would have been really close, but every time I searched my deck, SoG was hanging out near the bottom. Matt played very well and kept the pressure on constantly. Final score: 4-7.

Round 2 vs Brad Coverdale

Everything that went wrong against Matt went right against Brad. I was delighted to see Samuel, both WWWs and Rain Becomes Dust in my opening draw. He went first and after playing down about five cards, he dropped Mayhem. I was really bummed for a couple seconds before remembering it was still the first round and Mayhem could not be played. The only bad part of my draw was no ECs so he walked in for a free LS, but I was not at all worried because I knew I was going to be drawing massively really fast. AutO-Sam-David beefed my hand up quick and RBD kept Mayhem from slowing me down. The key moment in this game came a couple turns later--RBD was still active when Brad played Mayhem after dropping his hand down to 2 cards. I pointed out that I still had RBD active and unfortunately for him, his SoG was discarded as a result. He had picked up a couple more LS before that misplay but I got one back with Falling Away, and after the Mayhem/RBD mistake, I walked in for the rest. Final score: 7-2

Round 3 vs Kirk Dennison

Based on the results thus far, I correctly assumed I would be playing Kirk in round 3. I switched to my second deck that had some extra anti-Choose the blocker because Kirk had beat me at WI State with a CtB deck, and I had heard about his CtB combo deck he used at Midwest Regionals. Those were in fact the two decks he was playing and I got to face the combo deck. An early Darius Decree and Kir kept his choose the blocker from starting his combo, which he pretty much had ready to go by turn 4 or 5, but needed a way to choose the blocker. The counters forced him to be a bit more aggressive in attacking, and the key moment in this game was him making two attacks trying to get initiative to start his combo. He had an EC with Horses in his territory which allowed me to use Lot's Wife, band to his EC, and play Stone of Thebez in two straight blocks thus not giving him a chance to start the combo. He made one final attempt and did get off a choose the blocker play, but I had been saving Grapes for awhile and that thwarted that last attempt. Meanwhile my offense eventually overwhelmed his defense that was primarily for setting up his combo, and not really blocking.
Final score: 7-0

Round 6 vs Dayne Maust

The first time I had played Dayne was the night before in T2 MP, but other than that I had no idea what to expect in terms of deck build or play style (as T2 MP is significantly different in both regards). All I knew was that he is a very active member of the board and has a very firm grasp of rulings, which to me means someone who pays attention to detail and ergo is probably a strong deck-builder who understands the nuances of the game. The game started a bit like my first round game with Matt where my offense came very slowly and I had a lot of defense right away. However, because I wasn't drawing much on offense, my Souls also came pretty slow which would come into play later in the game. He jumped out first with a 2-0 lead while I waited to draw some offense. Finally I drew into some, but the slow start had given him ample time to set his defense. Finally after several turns, I finally broke through for Soul #1. Meanwhile I had defense, but I was having trouble getting the right characters. His Moses had won a few rescues and my Forgotten Histories were useless with my smaller Survivors, Astrologers and Chaldeans. He got to 4 I believe while I rescued my 2nd, and then was fortunate to draw into both SoG/NJ to get to 4 as well. I believe it was around this point that a battle occurred that ended up determining the game. He rescued with Moses and I had finally drawn an Invoking Terror which I thought would save the day. I had considered underdecking Moses on my turn, but wasn't sure if Dayne wouldn't just play another one from his hand so I held off. He was using Urim and Thummim so knowing I had IT he still rescued with Moses. Figuring he just wanted to force me to use it up, I blocked with Chaldeans and used it. Unfortunately he had Eli's Sound Advice--one of my favorite cards, but not at that moment. With the experience credit and 3/3 from ESA, Moses was at 15/15. My Chaldeans were 5/7 with IT. I had 2 Words of Discouragement, a 2K Horses and a Forgotten History in my hand which would have forced a stalemate, but would also completely empty my hand of defense. As I mentioned earlier, I had not drawn a ton of LS and the one I surrendered to Moses was the last in my LoB. If he had SoG/NJ, the game was likely over as soon as I drew LS anyway, so I decided to go with the premise that he did not have them both and save the defense. I handed over Soul #5. At this point he was also running low on defense and my Simeon/AutO/Moses walked in for my #5. I had drawn the NT Only LS, but he was not using any NT Heroes so that kept him from rescuing, however, he battle-challenged with AutO/Jair to draw cards so this made me think he was digging for SoG. I decided that even though it was a battle-challenge, this was the opportunity I needed and I blocked with an Archer equipped with Horses. I used Words of Discouragement x3 plus Forgotten History to bring his hand down to just a few cards and win the battle. That would turn out to be the difference as he never had the opportunity to draw into more defense and Simeon/AutO/Moses walked in for #6 and #7 the next two turns. Final score: 7-5

I ended up taking first place with 4 wins, 1 loss and 1 tie. Hope you have enjoyed the play-by-play. I will post my decklist with some commentary in the tournament winning decks section. I tried not to be super specific about my opponent's decks as I want to respect anyone who wishes to keep their deck and strategies from being public knowledge. I was more specific about Gabe's since he posted it on the forum already.