The topic is: 'Should stores run proxy tournaments?'... I think that many stores would be dead-set against it but that doesn't mean they're not being short-sighted.

Anyway, I would like to see what themanadrain users have to say about this...

I might move up to smth like that if I decide to invest more in T1. Many decks would have me proxy most (or all) of the P9 and 4 of Drain, Bazaar or MWS. That's actually the idea behind 13 Proxy but I'm still not that close to any good deck.

The WW idea looks interesting. I'd really like to try something like it b/c all those creatures have such good utility.

Thanks for the info.

The number of proxies is 13 but there are also non-proxy tournaments... maybe I should just stick to FCG for those.

With 13 proxies, I'd (probably) have to proxy the P9 for most of the combo decks and have room for 4 other proxies (I have my own FoWs thankfully). I don't know a lot about these decks; between Dragon, Perfect Storm, Doomsday, Deathwish Tendrils and... others, which one would be the best in terms of getting the deck together?

-Mike

For a long time now, I've been playing FCG in T1 tournaments. I've gotten tired of that and now I'm going to look into getting a deck together for play in both T1 and T1 with proxies.

I want to aim for a budget deck that I can actually play in sanctioned T1 tournaments and have a chance with it. Fish might be an idea but I don't know if that's good enough anymore and, if it is, what a current list would be like.

Could anyone out there help me out... I need some ideas.

-Mike

Hi. Where I live, Vintage is the most popular tournament format. Part of that is that it's the 'default' format. Without even considering proxies, it's the oldest format and the one that puts the least number of restrictions on deckbuilding.

So, there are two kinds of tournaments. Sanctioned Type I tournaments where almost no one has any power and therefore the metagame is random (and very far from a 'real' Vintage metagame). The other are 13-proxy (unsanctioned, of course) Type I tournaments, where people do tend to drift toward the best Vintage decks. Although the meta isn't as tough as it might be somewhere in the US or Europe, it's slowly inching in the direction.

My question to all (especially Proxy Tournament Organizers) is:

1. How many proxies do you think is too many for weekly Vintage tournaments?
2. If there is an upper bound, do you think it's possible to promote that philosophy through themanadrain, scg, etc so that most proxy Vintage tournaments adopt that policy? I think that some unity and consistency would be ideal for Proxy Vintage since it has no official governing body.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

This is moreso a community discussion so I'm moving this thread into the appropriate forum.
Toad

-Intro-

Hi everybody. Mike White here, with a tournament report for the last Type I 13proxy Trial at MUN in St. John’s Newfoundland. For those of you who haven’t heard, we’re having a big Type I tournament on June 26th where two pieces of power are up for grabs: a Mox Ruby as a doorprize and an Ancestral for 1st place. The trials give players a chance to win byes for the big tournament. Winning 1st at a trial gives a 2-round bye and winning 2nd gives a 1-round bye, in addition to normal prizes. Here’s the story of one of the most fun Type I tournaments I’ve played in forever.....even though I came up just short of winning a bye.

Lately I’ve been playing Food Chain Goblins in Type I. The concept gained its popularity last year in Extended before Pro Tour: New Orleans. Type I players began thinking about whether the deck would be good enough to expand into Type I. It is and it did

Before reading a primer on themanadrain.com, I played FCG a few times with slightly different builds each time. Since looking through the primer, I’ve become confident that the list there is better than the versions Dave Churchill and I used to play as well as the other versions I’ve seen on the net. Here’s the list I ran this past Saturday:

-Deck List-

3 Skirk Prospector
4 Goblin Lackey
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Goblin Recuiter
4 Goblin Ringleader
3 Goblin Warchief
3 Gempalm Incinerator
2 Goblin Matron
2 Siege-gang Commander
1 Goblin Sharphooter
4 Food Chain
(34)
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Taiga
6 Mountain
(26)

4 Red Elemental Blast
4 Tormod’s Crypt
4 Artifact Mutation
3 Blood Moon
(15)

-Comments on the deck-
The only change I’ve made is adding a mountain and cutting a prospector. I found that the deck was a little light when it went up against decks like Landstill. My main problem with the deck is the board. There’s so much I’d like to have access to and it’s hard to predict what I’ll need most. Right now there’s nothing for aggro matchups and that’s generally fine. But there’s also nothing for the mirror and that could be problematic. There are ways to board against dedicated pure combo decks like Belcher, TPS and Draw-7 but will those ever be a big enough part of the tournament to warrant trying to hate them out? What about Dragon - why do I always have 4 Crypts ready to go only to never run into Dragon?

-The Tournament-

Aw well, let’s move on to the tournament. There were 21 people playing. If there had been more Food Chain players known to me, I would’ve adjusted my board. But, only Josh was running Food Chain so I figured I’d just hope to not have to play the mirror.

Round 1 - Petter Hurich playing WW/r with Shahrazad
Don’t stop reading. This isn’t a joke. Around here, someone always plays this deck (Rahul owns it). It basically plays burn, creatures, metagame hate (Nullrod, Crypts, etc) and Shahrazad. It is pretty good in that it plays very well against control decks and will usually beat Sligh and Dragon. However, FCG is a bad matchup for it.

Game 1: Petter mulligans. I drop 2 Lackeys first turn with Ruby and he drops a fanatic. Arg. So I hold back, play a Piledriver and Waste his land. He doesn’t lay another land right away. After holding off another turn, I play ringleader and swing. The Lackeys go away but I play another Ringleader next turn and he’s soon dead. He didn’t actually draw any colored sources after the Wasteland so that wasn’t much of a game.
Game 2: He plays a Lion first turn. I draw FC off the top and play Taiga, Mana Crypt, Chain go. Bad times. He doesn’t have a disenchant and next turn I show him the combo in hand. He scooped without me going through the motions.

Round 2 - Jason Squires playing Sligh
Squires doesn’t play magic anymore. He’s still very competent but he doesn’t know Type I. He jut borrowed this deck before the tournament.

Game 1: He plays a pup and starts swinging and kills my early creatures. I play 3rd turn FC and combo on turn 4 to kill him. This was the first time he had seen the combo.
Game 2: I didn’t have many early plays here. Again he was beating me down but I did use a Gempalm to kill his Pup courtesy of Goblin Cadets. He chose not to cast Wheel on his 3rd turn and I killed him with the combo on my 3rd turn.

Round 3 - Peter Heath playing Grow-a-Tog

Game 1: I’m having trouble remembering this one. I believe he mulliganed and forced my early Lackey. I got another one and it resolved though. It got through eventually even though he had a Dryad out because I was able to Gempalm it away. A Siege-gang entered play and that was it.

Game 2: I boarded in Blood Moons and Blasts. I had a very combo-ish hand. My early lackey was held off by his early Dryad.....or maybe the other way around, heh. I resolved a Food Chain and he got a Chill into play soon after. My first Recuiter was countered but my 2nd resolved and I stacked my library for the combo except that I put two Ringleaders at the top in case #1 got countered. He played a 2nd Chill but I had an REB for the one that was in play as a response. On my turn I comboed off but it didn’t work as well with Chill out. For one, I think I only had 3 Ringleaders left. But also, I probably stacked the goblins incorrectly considering the Chill. It turned out that I got 1 Piledriver, 2 Siege-gangs, 5 Tokens and 3 Warchiefs outs. That sounds great but he had an 8/8 and a 2/2 Dryad. I attacked with a bunch of goblins leaving 7 toughness in defense back. The 2/2 Dryad traded with the driver (the 8/8 was tapped). On his turn, he attacked and I had determined that if he had Cunnish (for Berserk) I was dead regardless of how I blocked. So, one token got brave. He then Iced* a Warchief and Timewalked but he still didn’t find a wish and that was it.
*He had wished for Fire/Ice earlier in the game. He told me after that he really should’ve had Naturalize in his board.

Round 4 - Fergus Brown-O’Byrne playing Slavery

Game 1: I go Lotus, FC, Sol Ring, cycle Gempalm and Prospector. I didn’t get anything good after that and Fergus was able to abuse Memory Jar and get me into a Slavery Lock with Welder.

Game 2: He mulliganed to 4. This wasn’t much of a game. (I boarded in some Artifact Mutation and then some blasts after I saw FoW)

Game 3: He playing turn 1 Trinisphere. Nevertheless, I might have been able to pull out of it. He Tinkered out a Pentavus after that. The long and the short of it, on my last turn I Mutationed the Pentavus getting tokens but I was very low and was facing a few 1/1 flyers. I had FC in play and I needed the combo to win. I played a desperation Ringleader but it didn’t get me anything useful so that was it. I boarded incorrectly here and I think with this experience, I’ll be able to play better against Slavery/Workshop decks in the future.

Round 5 - Paul Dunn playing Sligh
3-1-1 was definitely in so we ID’d. He guessed we’d play in the top 8 and he was right.

Quarterfinals - Paul Dunn - Sligh

Game 1: I get an amazing combo including Lotus. Paul concedes after I play Recruiter and Food Chain, passing the turn back to him.

Game 2: He doesn’t really play many creatures in the early game. It was weird. I knew he was using a strange board strategy but I think he forgot that if FCG gets going against Sligh, it’ll win without Food Chain at all. Anyway, I’m light on land for a bit early on. I’m dropping creatures just to draw out burn. Paul is very surprised when I play Recuiter for just 1 Gempalm. My first Food Chain gets Naturalized as expected. Eventually, I’m facing down 2 Mox Monkeys and a Lavamancer. He’s used up his graveyard so my Warchief gets Fireblasted. But my Matron searched up a Siege-gang and the tokens caused him problems. I was still sitting around 10 life and he had used so much burn that I wasn’t too worried. I drew into 2 Food Chains and then a Recuiter. Food Chain was Naturalized but not the second and the combo killed him.

Semifinals - Rahul Chandra play Hulk SMASH

Game 1: Rahul told me afterward he kept a bad hand. From my side, he FoWed my first lackey but my Recruiter got down and searched up 3 more. He played a Tog to stop the beats but eventually a Lackey got through and dropped a Gang-commander. That combined with other goblins I’d been playing killed him very quickly and he was far away from being able to get a kill with Tog.

Game 2: I boarded in Blood Moons and REBs. My early board postion was Ruby, Sol Ring, Land and Pildriver. A 3rd turn deed for 2 set my mana back in a big way but also destroyed some of his moxen. I was sitting on not-enough-land and 2Ringleaders/REBs for a while. At the same time, he didn’t do much except brainstorm and I didn’t think it was worth blasting. He then Twisted me for 3! I was left with just a Blast. Soon after, I did get a recruiter through but his Tog held off the lackeys so that they couldn’t help out my bigger guys. The major turning point came when he Intuitioned for 3 AK and cast AK (for 4, with one already in the yard). This gave him Ancestral as well. The next turn, he was ready with multiplay counters, a large gy/hand, the tog that had been holding me off and a Wish for Berserk. He could’ve done over 100 damage, I’ll bet.

Game 3: I definitely could’ve played this differently. My opening hand was Mountain, Wasteland, Petal, 2 Food Chains, Warchief and Ringleader. I started wth Mountain and he opened with Library. I chose not to wasteland it right away and instead played theWarchief. I should’ve just destroyed it but I was hoping he’d FoW the Chief and then I’d be able to get Blood Moon down. He didn’t FoW the chief, I still tried for Blood Moon and it got FoWed. I should’ve played that more conservatively.
I got mindtwisted again shortly after the Warchief beats continued. But he was drawing lots if cards and I didn’t draw any new threats right away. Time was called but he was able to kill me with Tog on turn 3 so it didn’t come down to life totals. Close.....hopefully this week my deck will perform as well and give me another shot at a trial top two.

The finals had Rahul winning over Peter Heath. If you want to see Rahul’s list and account of the day, check it out on: www.mtg.ca

The prizes on the day were 4-3-2-2-1-1-.....
Until next time,

Mike White

P.S. Paul Dunn, Rahul Chandra and myself will be nats. Maybe some more from Newfoundland as well.

Power Tourney

Date: Saturday, June 26th, 2004

Location: Memorial University Campus (MUN)
Student Centre building, 3rd floor cafeteria
St. John's, NL, Canada

Time: Registration opens at 10:00. Tournament will start at 11:00.

Entry: $20 Canadian on-site registration.

Format: Type I. Not Sanctioned but will follow DCI floor rules. Players may proxy 13 cards total between their decks/sideboard.

Duration: Number of swiss rounds determined by DCI rules. For example, between 33-64 there will 6 rounds and between 65-128, there will 7 rounds. After the swiss, there will a cut-off to top 8 single elimination rounds.

Prizes: A random doorprize of an unlimited [card]Mox Ruby[/card] will given to one lucky player. The winner of tournament (determined by the Top 8) will win a unlimited [card]Ancestral Recall[/card]. Additional prizes, such as product prizes for the rest of the top 8 and doorprizes, will be decided on the day based on the number of players.

Trials: Players can earn 1st and 2nd round byes for this tournament through Power Tournament Trials. This is similar to trial system that the DCI uses for its Grand Prix tournaments.
(see: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=grandprix/byes)
The winner of each trial will receive a 2nd round bye and the runner-up will win a 1st round bye. These will pass down if the player already has a bye.

Trial Info:
There will be trials in St. John's on June 5th, June 12th and June 19th. These will take place at MUN starting at 12:30 and will be Type I with 13 proxy.
There will be 1 trial in each of Grand Falls-Windsor and Stephenville. These will be Type I with 13 proxy. The dates are to be determined.

Additional notes:
1. Decklists will be used. Players must use English cardnames only and must indicate which cards (if any) they are proxying in their deck.
2. There will suggested guidelines on how to proxy posted closer to the tournament date.
3. If you wish to post this event announcement on another magic site, please include links to www.mtg.ca and magic.glasderg.com along with it. We welcome all efforts to promote this tournament.
4. If you have any specific questions about this tournament, feel free to post here or email me at { mikewhite at roadrunner.nf dot net }