Greetings all!  This is my first real post on this site.  Long time reader, first time contributor.  My name is Brian Coval and I’m a Pittsburgh-based eternal wizard.  I’m a longtime legacy player and recent convert to taking vintage seriously.  My vintage resume, though short, is strong.  I finished 7-2 at Bazaar of Moxen 2010, 7-2 at Vintage Champs 2013, MVPS 2013 invitational Top 16, and a laundry list of top 8’s from smaller events scattered around Pennsylvania over the last few years.  I’ve never made a Waterbury, never been to an NYSE, never made it to GenCon champs, I’m new to the block but I’m starting to get myself out more and hope to meet you all soon.

This weekend was Tales of Adventure Comic’s first Eternal Extravaganza.  Michael Caffrey crushed it with the promotion and prize support for this weekend, if you weren’t there I strongly recommend coming to the next one.  Word on the street is it will be in about 6 months and the main event prize support will be 40 black border duals.  Woof.  I wouldn’t miss it.

When Dack Fayden was spoiled I knew we’d be best friends.  The only thing more powerful than my love of going broken is my distaste for losing to Workshops.  He’s the man who can put the universe right for me.  I tried a few brews but couldn’t quite make the pieces work the way I wanted to, but that’s what friend and neighbor Rich Shay is for.  I asked what to play and he pointed me in the direction of Night’s Whisper.  He wrote a tournament report featuring the 75 I played already (http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=46587.0) so I’ll spare you the primer, but here’s the list for reference:

2 Goblin Welder
2 Baleful Strix
2 Dack Fayden
1 Myr Battlesphere
1 Mindslaver
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Mental Misstep
1 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
2 Fire/Ice
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Pyroblast
1 Ponder
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Night's Whisper
1 Brainstorm
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Tinker
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
2 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Strip Mine
1 Tolarian Academy
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
SB:
3 Ingot Chewer
1 Flusterstorm
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Pyroblast
2 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Mountain
1 Shattering Spree
1 Pyroclasm
1 Toxic Deluge  

The Vintage main event on Sunday brought out 67 warriors for 7 rounds of fun.  I finished 15th in the 267-person Legacy main event the day before, getting knocked out in a round 8 win-and-in by my carmate Steve Rubin, I was hungry to do better today.  The field was stacked with legendary creatures and I was feeling good.

Round 1: Matt with Oath or Gush or something

Matt is an acquaintance of many years.  We’ve battled on the final round bubble for prize finishes in a couple past events, we got the party started early this time.  I won the role and started with a Night’s Whisper.  He played Tropical Island into Preordain so I put him on Gush or Oath.  On my turn I drew Lotus and tested the waters with a Recall, it resolved so I took that as a mandate for destruction.  When the smoke cleared I had a full grip with Jace in play and 1 blue floating.  I used the floating mana to Mystical Tutor for Yawg Will and Matt decided he’d seen enough.

In game 2 I kept Land, Sol Ring, Tinker, Force of Will, Force of Will, blue card, blue card.  Dear lordy!  Matt mulliganed to 4 and passed the turn without a land drop.  I obviously drew a Mox and Tinkered for an unopposed Battlesphere.  

1-0

Round 2: Sith with BUG Fish

My opponent was a nice dude with a cool name.  He disclosed that it was his first Vintage event, so I put him on BUG Fish.  I won the roll and played a land.  He had Tropical Island and Deathrite Shaman (nailed it!).  I had Mox, Dack on my turn.  I discarded Battlesphere to Dack’s +1 and hoped it would still be there later in spite of the Deathrite.  We spent some turns fighting over spells and keeping the board mostly at parity while Dack ticked up.  On turn 5 I went broken with Lotus, Time Walk, and Yawg will.  Sith had seen enough when I went Ultimate with Dack and cast Fire to kill his Bob and steal his Deathrite.

Game 2 Sith only had Lotus and Sapphire for mana.  He cast Bob and Grafdigger’s Cage off the Lotus.  I Fired Bob on my turn and got Spell Pierced.  He flipped Mox Jet to Bob, played the Mox and passed the turn.  My Pyroclasm resolved on my turn, Sith had no action on his, the Dack arrived to Frenzied Tilling his Sapphire to my team.  Soon I was miles ahead and Sith packed it in.  

2-0

I managed to fire a Yawg Will straight into his Grafdigger’s Cage in game 2.  Luckily I was so far ahead that it didn’t cost me the game, but I resolved to tighten up after that.

Round 3:  Jon with the Mirror

This mirror match is pretty fun to play.  It is skill intensive and despite the sheer number of cards this deck can draw there are a small subset of cards that can swing the game on their own.  In our first game we both played our cards a drew more cards and developed our boards.  I won a counter war that ended up with Dack on the board and he went about winning the game for me after that.

Game 2 I keep a sketchy one with only Library for mana.  I played the library, drew a card, and immediately had to discard.  I found a land on my second turn, and a mox on my 3rd, but it proved to be too slow and by the time I was casting real spells I was too far behind.

Game 3 Goblin Welder arrived for the first time.  Luckily he was on my side.  Dack joined him in the midgame and I ended up winning the match with my own Battlesphere and his bashing in tandem.  

3-0

Round 4: Nicholas with Forgemaster Shops

I played Nicholas the day before in Legacy I won a squeaker against my nightmare matchup (me on Elves, he on Miracles), it was time for a rematch.  I knew of him from the MVPS Invitational a few months back and was fairly confident he was on shops.  The enemy.  The reason I made this deck choice.  Time to see if it’s worth it.

Game 1 I kept a hand of Library, Dack, Dack, Force, Force, Misstep, Drain on the draw.  He lead with a Revoker on Mox Sapphire.  I played the library and drew a card.  He wasted it immediately leaving me on no mana and no lands in hand.  I drew a land for my turn!  He wasted it.  I drew another!  Stripped it.  But I kept drawing them and playing them slow and steady.  He played a Tangle wire and we went into draw-go for a while, me taking 2 from Revoker each turn.  When that Wire was running low he played another and the draw-go continued.  I found a 3rd Force during the standoff and used all 3 of them keeping any actual pressure off the board.  When the second Wire ran out I was at 8 life and he deployed a Batterskull.  All my Forcing had left me with one card in hand, the greatest thief in the multiverse Dack Fayden.  I slammed him into play, stole the Batterskull and turned the game around with my 4/4 monster…

…Those of you who are paying attention may realize that what happened there doesn’t actually work.  When you gain control of an equipment it stays on the creature it was attached to until you move it to another.  That Dack was actually a huge punt and the play I made doesn’t affect the board at all.  If this had been any other equipment attached to any other creature I would have noticed my mistake immediately.  But the accepted shortcut for Batterskull is that we treat it like it is the creature itself.  My brain didn’t register that there’s a Germ involved whose control doesn’t change.  Apparently my opponent’s didn’t either.  We didn’t notice the mistake until after our match was over when a spectator said something that drew our attention to it.  It sucks finding out you won by breaking the rules and I felt really bad about it, but the result was in and it was too late to do anything about it at that point.  Nicholas handled losing the match to a rules mistake very well and we both used it as a learning experience rather than causing a problem over it.  It was a classy display in a bad situation.

Game 2 he Shopped me as Shops tends to do on the play.

Game 3 we reached a board state where he had a lot of spheres and only 1 threat.  I pushed a Vamp Tutor through his spheres at the end of one of his turns and he conceded when I showed him the Dack.

4-0

Round 5: Shawn with Shops

Shawn owns a store in Bloomsburg, PA that runs monthly Vintage events that I played at a few years back before I moved to Pittsburgh.  We did some catching up then got ready to battle.

Years ago when I played at Shawn’s store he was into decks with blue and green in them.  In my mind I had him on Oath.  My 7 had Sol Ring, Pearl, Emerald, and colored spells.  My 6 had no mana, my 5 had only Academy, my 4 had no mana, my 3 was 3 lands.  Keep!  Turns out Shawn was on Shops and I died instantly.

Game 2 I got squeezed out by chalices and spheres and was never really in it.  That’s life.

4-1

Round 6: I forget the dude’s name (sorry!) with Shops

I lost the roll and he had a turn 1 sphere.  I had a land and a Mox.  He had another sphere on turn 2.  I had a land.  He put some pressure on turn 3, I played a land.  He bashed me on 4 and I played a land.  He bashed me on 5, I played a land and Tinkered for Battlesphere through his disruption.  That was that.  Hitting land drops is all you need to do sometimes.

Game 2 his first few turns yielded Chalice on zero, double Thorn of Amethyst, and Revoker on Dack.  I calmy made my land drops.  On turn 4 I Demonic Tutored for Library.  On Turn 5 I cast Ingot Chewer the hard way (Having Thorn over Sphere hurt him a lot here).  On turn 6 I played Jace.  On turn 7 and 8 I played 2 more Ingot Chewers.  They chewed up his artifacts and his life total in short order.

5-1

Round 7: Rachael with Merfolk

Rachael was undefeated in her first Vintage event with a deck she borrowed from her boyfriend.  Impressive.  We were able to draw into Top 8, which is probably good because, although I’ve never played it, I can easily see this matchup being a challenge.  Her deck does exactly one thing very consistently while my deck would require a specific combination of a small number of answers to stay alive long enough to fight back.

Top 8: Bob with the 75 card Mirror

Bob had been talking to me throughout the day because we both got our lists from Rich earlier in the week and he saw that we were up to the same thing.  We both knew each other’s decks and had shared much of our experiences from playing throughout the day.

Bob was the higher seed so he got the play.  His turn 1 was Mox, Mox, Mox, land, Whisper, Whisper.  My turn 1 of land-go was an unimpressive return volley.  On subsequent turns Bob Whispered again and got Thirsty for Knowledge while I kept making land drops.  On my 4th turn I somehow managed to win the counter war over my Dack despite him having outdrawn me by 8 cards and having a ton of mana open.  Dack put up a fight for a little while but the card advantage and a Yawg Will eventually buried me.

Game 2 we both kept slow openers, mine with 3 Whispers in it, his with Library.  We drew cards and accumulated resources for a long time before I went for a Jace.  I won the counter war but it left me with 2 cards in hand to his 5.  On his turn he Tinkered for Mindslaver and took over my mind.  His inexperience with Vintage left me in better shape post-slaver than I expected to be, but it took a lot of wind out of my sails.  I still had my buddy Jace to keep me in it if I got another turn.  He drew Pyroblast for his turn and blasted Jace then hardcast his Battlesphere.  My draw step was Demonic Tutor!  Dack arrived and stole his Battlesphere.  On his turn he drew Jace and bounced battlesphere.  He wisely attacked Dack with 3 of his residual Myrs and me with 1, playing around the Fire/Ice I had been saving to protect Dack.  Impressive read and well played.  He recast his Battlesphere, my draw step wasn’t a second miracle and that was all she wrote.

The event was a lot of fun.  The deck was a blast to play.  Though I didn’t have to play against it I feel like Oath would be a nightmare, though sideboard adjustments would help.  The Shops matchup was everything I wanted it to be.  Short of my mulligan to 3, the deck had a lot of fighting power to get through the hate.  Here in Pittsburgh there is a monthly zero-proxy Vintage event and I will be developing this deck further for those events and it would take some convincing to get me onto anything else before Champs in a few months.  It was a great event with a great deck.  I’m looking forward for more of both.


If anyone is interested, here is my Top 16 report from the day 1 Legacy main event:  http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?28414-Top-16-at-Eternal-Extravaganza-with-Elves-8-2-14

I'm willing to believe Slaver and Titan have both been obsoleted by better cards.  And I'm willing to test Snapcaster in my blue-based make-myself-discard-cards deck. 

What should I be looking at to replace Slaver and Titan?  I like a maindeck Nihil Spellbomb.  The other spot can be something that interacts with the board.  Jace?  Lightning Bolt?  Pyrite Spellbomb might be a better bolt for the deck?  Engineered Explosives (too bad recurring these with welder doesn't do much)?  Thoughts?

Carsten Kotter included this list at the end of an otherwise non-vintage-related article earlier this month.  He called it a rough draft that needs more ways to interact with the board.  It's also short one sideboard. 

Dack seems awesome.  With TFK restricted, Dack can fill in as copies 2-4 from back when Control Slaver was playable.  He also has the massive upside of drawing cards every turn and/or stealing artifacts.  Dack seems like The Truth, anyone have any ideas where to start tuning this list to be competitive in current vintage?

My local store runs monthly zero-proxy Vintage events.  I'd like to try this deck out at the next one.

Creatures (6)

    1 Myr Battlesphere
    1 Sundering Titan
    4 Goblin Welder

Planeswalkers (3)

    3 Dack Fayden

Lands (15)

    2 Island
    3 Polluted Delta
    4 Scalding Tarn
    2 Underground Sea
    3 Volcanic Island
    1 Tolarian Academy

Spells (36)

    1 Black Lotus
    1 Lotus Petal
    1 Mana Crypt
    1 Mana Vault
    1 Mox Emerald
    1 Mox Jet
    1 Mox Pearl
    1 Mox Ruby
    1 Mox Sapphire
    2 Sensei's Divining Top
    1 Sol Ring
    1 Time Vault
    1 Voltaic Key
    1 Ancestral Recall
    1 Brainstorm
    4 Force of Will
    1 Gifts Ungiven
    4 Mana Drain
    2 Mental Misstep
    1 Mystical Tutor
    1 Thirst For Knowledge
    1 Vampiric Tutor
    1 Mindslaver
    1 Demonic Tutor
    1 Merchant Scroll
    1 Time Walk
    1 Tinker
    1 Yawgmoth's Will

There's been nothing official, but the general buzz seems to be that it will only be in the first print run which has already sold out at the distributor level.  However, if you're buying cards from secondary dealers those boxes can only be the first print run at this point (obviously).  So for the time being any box you can get your hands on will have a chance, but you won't find any for less than triple digits.

Is this card a viable sideboard choice as an answer to Tinkered Colossi/Inkwells?  It costs BBB with kicker.  It just so happens that one of the format's engines produces BBB.  It's a mana more than Tariff and Edict, but it leaves a 2/2 body on the table.  Since this card would work best alongside Dark Ritual it would be a sideboard option in storm decks, every swing with him means one less storm is necessary for the lethal Tendrils.  Thoughts?

I'm a judge/TO in Central Pennsylvania and I'm trying to get a Legacy group together.  There's a handful of players in the area now, but any outside interest would be great.  If we get enough people interested I'd be willing to judge, sanction, and provide prize support for regular tournaments.

Looks good.  I'lll be there.

It's made pretty clear in the article that the way this deck will win is by piling on as much disruptive pressure as possible.  Turn 1 Shusher is a strong play that will maintain its value no matter what else you draw as the game goes on.  As long as you have a green open, you're feeling pretty good about your situation.  Vial is very strong as well, but it'll take you two upkeeps to be able to do anything with it.  Vial also doesn't attack.  By the time you can flash in a Teeg, your opponent will be 4 life higher than they deserve to be if you had played Shusher instead.  And I think the biggest hit to Vial's viability in this deck is the strength of Null Rod.  As it stands now, T1 Shusher into T2 Null Rod is hella sexy.  T1 Vial into T2 Null Rod is a mull to 6 and a wasted turn.

Vial is a very strong card, and I'm sure there are other budget and creature decks that can abuse it.  But it goes against the current of this deck.  Null Rod and Teeg are your best disruptive spells.  There's no reason to use a slot for a card that gets shut down by your own game plan when there's a card with a similar funtion available that doesn't.

Also, while on the draw Shusher can't get Duressed.

Has anyone actually sleeved this up and tested with it that can share results? 

I read the article twice through and the theory all seems sound, but it is only theory.  I'd like to see something solid before I take the effort to build it for real.