Pending me getting handed a deck, I may be there to defend my title.

ZOMG JARED IS GOING. IN.

Wtf? Dude, the first place deck was a Tez deck that ran tez in it.

crisis averted. feinstein goes down in the semis.

Oh god, Feinstein is in the semis.

QFT. My head may explode if feinstein wins a gp.

Damn you Ray, not only for making me play more magic but making me choose which format I wanna play. Count me in.

 Thats not entirely true. Granted, having to burn a misd + blue card isn't ideal when it hits a mox in their hand, but multiple scenarios do exist where misdirection a thoughtseize are extremely relevant:

1) You're protecting a bomb in your hand. i.e. tinker, will, dt, ect...

2) They have 1 or 2 cards in hand and are trying to use it to set up their bomb (see listed cards above)

3) You have the exactly enough resources to set up the win or keep yourself from losing and the seize will shit on that.


  And as an aside, theres no need to be a dick and ask " Do you play Vintage" or "you talk but don't actually have any experience".  If you're gonna be a douche bag, take it to pm.

To kick this off, heres the list that I used to win at TMD Open 13:


4 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
3 Island
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Library of Alexandria
5 Moxen
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
1 Black Lotus

1 Trinket Mage
1 Inkwell Leviathan

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
2 Duress
2 Thoughtseize
1 Misdirection
4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Time Vault
1 Voltiac Key
1 Tezzeret the Seeker
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Echoing Truth
1 Brainstorm
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Regrowth
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Sideboard:

3 Tarmogoyf
2 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Annul
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Pithing Needle
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus
2 Yixlid Jailer


  The core of the deck is pretty stock, in that I took Jimmy McCarthy's list from earlier this year and made adjustments based on my expected meta. Living in New England, you always learn to count on pulling the drain pairing if you intend to do well. To compensate, I added Library into the mana base and added Duress effects 5-6 to the board. My other expectation was that dredge would be huge, not just because its cheap to build but its been tearing things up for the past several weeks.  I opted for the varied dredge answers over leylines since I honestly believe that leyline, while the best answer to dredge, is a terrible card in general.  Unlike any other hate card, its a terrible top deck and has a restrictive and expensive mana cost.  I never wound up pulling the dredge pairing until the finals, but if I had to play the list in an event tomorrow, I'd run the same hate package for the match up. The only other real thing to note about the list is that its 61 cards.  About 10 minutes before the player meeting, I opted to add the trinket mage as a 61st card and rework the board a bit to accomodate it. This decision turned out to be a huge boon to me, in that it single-handedly won all 3 games that I drew it.


Round 1: BYE


Round 2: Bill Copes playing R/G Stax 2-0

  I've played Bill many times and hes always playing a shop variant, so I've got a good idea of what to expect while we're shuffling up. That being said, Bill also happens to be one of the better players in the New England vintage scene, so I knew that I couldn't be lax about parising hands that didn't do enough.

Game 1: Bill opens with bazaar, pitching 2 strips and a shop and passes. I open with a basic and a couple moxen and pass back. He strips my land, and we go strip go for a couple turns. He gos for a welder that gets forced and drops a smokestack that gets raced  thanks to yawg will > vault/key > tez.

Game 2: Bill leads with land, mox and tangle wire. My hand is busted, and I lead out with land, mox, lotus into goyf and tinker for inkwell. Bill strips my land next turn, but never really does anything to consequence before goyf and inkwell bring it home.


Round 3: Jeremy Beaver playing 4c Storm combo. 2-1

  Jeremy's deck was 4c grim long with fastbond, gush, and a dual/fetch manabase.

Game 1: This winds up taking 30 minutes, with him resolving timetwister after I force a bait spell. He doesn't kill me that turn, so I get a turn where I dig for counters and pass with force and drain available. Unfortunately, Jeremy has 3 bombs to my 2 counters and eventually hits will into the win.

Game 2: This game consists of both of us duressing each others hands apart until its a top decking war which I win when I rip ancestral into good stuff. A hardcast inkwell takes it home.

Game 3: Jeremy leads out with ancestral on my upkeep, which I happily misd to myself. From there, hes always too far behind and the game ends when I drain gush into key/vault.


Round 4: Sean Lind playing UBW fish. 0-2

  I'll never forget this round as long as I live. Game 1 involved my losing to keeping a 1 land hand and losing to a vamped up strip mine and me not drawing anything more mana. Game 2 never happens.  After game 1, we get a mid round deck check. I get pulled aside by a judge, only to find out that I'm getting a game loss. Now I'm not getting a game loss for an issue with my deck, or my deck list. I had several card sitting in my deck box that I was planning to sell later in the day.  What I wasn't aware of was that DCI floor rules forbid this, as they feel it can lead to cheating. Needless to say, I was less than pleased (insert 5 minute rant about how stupid it is, but w/e).  Ultimately, it was my own fault for having stuff in my deck box and I can understand how it looked bad anyways with some of the stuff I was unloading being easily used in my deck should I have had the inclination to cheat.      Let this be a lesson to anybody reading this, don't keep shit in your deck box that isn't a part of your deck. Learn from my mistake you don't have to learn it the hard way.


Round 5:  Jeff Greene playing URB Painter/Remora 2-0

  I've known Jeff for a long time, and its always nice to have a friendly match, especially after I put myself on tilt the round before. Unfortunately for Jeff, he got paired down to me which made the match a lil awkward.

Game 1:  We both mull, but his hand has more gas than mine. Thankfully, duress effects rip his hand apart and eventually I find trinket > lotus > will > broken shit.

Game 2:  This is pretty much a repeat of game 1, with my duress effects forcing through my action spells until I can assemble vault/key for the win.


Round 6:  Jeff Carpenter playing Slaver w/ vault/key 2-0

  Not a whole to say here. Jeff and I have played a million other times and we're playing a "win and in" match.

Game 1:  Both of us ancestral early, but Jeff keeps chaining thirsts together through my discard and counters. Eventually he sticks a welder with slaver in the yard.  I rip mana crypt, which turns the will in my hand on as I was short on mana. Will nets me ancestral which hits lotus and e truth for his welder. Welder gets drained on the way back down and I go infinite a turn or 2 later.

Game 2:  Jeff leads out with a turn 1 goyf, which promptly gets forced. I thoughtseize him turn 1 and take another goyf, leaving him with nothing. Jeff cantrips a couple times with ponder and brainstorm and hits another goyf. Unfortunately for Jeff, I resolve key and dt for vault with drain back up.


Round 7: ID with Andy Farias


I finish the swiss as the 8th seed, which nets me Travis as my top 16 opponent. As travis loves to say, hes never beaten me in a tournament, despite us playing dozens of times of the years. 

Top 16:  Travis Laplante playing WarMammothshopswtf.dec 2-0


Game 1: Travis leads with a welder and passes. I make 7 mana appear with land, mox, sol ring and lotus and pass back. Travis drops a second welder and a seal of cleansing. I thirst in response to the seal and pitch time vault.  Seal resolves and he passes back. I wind up time walking, demonicing for e truth and bouncing his seal, which gets travis to eat my sol ring in response. On my walk turn, I upkeep mystical for will, recast my vault, dt for key and walk into infinite turns.

Game 2:  Travis doesn't do much early on, while I drop a goyf on turn 1. He sticks a 3sphere, but I hurkyl's him at eot to buy some tempo. I rip trinket mage > lotus to get me further ahead. He recasts his board, but I wind up willing to hurkyl's him again and draw some extra cards. Goyf and mage beats bring it home.


Top 8:  Jeff Greene again with URB Painter/Remora 2-1

  Jeff offers a prize split before the match, since we both make more money that way in case the winner loses next round. I gladly accept and we wind up playing a pretty relaxed match thanks to the split.

Game 1:  This winds up going back and forth until Jeff sticks either painter/stone or vault/key with reb back up and I pack it in for g2.

Game 2:  Jeff mulls to 5 and I keep on turn 1 drain mana with force back up. We draw go for a couple turns, with the only mana source that gets drawn is jeff's sapphire which I wind up hitting with an annul.  I rip ancestral and cast it, figuring force back up should be good enough. Unfortunately, Jeff has both commandeer and force to steal my ancestral. The following turn he casts his own ancestral and starts thirsting multiple times. I was pretty sure I was out of the game until I drew black mana and started stripping his hand. At one point, I resolve a top which keeps feeding me with answers to his stuff.  Eventually I find gifts which nets me regrowth and tez, which I then parlay regrowth > thoughtseize to see if the cost was clear. Jeff had nothing but blanks and drew nothing, so tez winds up making one hell of a comeback to send it to a game 3.

Game 3:  This was fairly anticlimactic, in that my discard cleared the way and he scooped to me casting tez with 3 counters in hand.


Top 4:  James Lee playing Mono Red hate??????? 2-0

Game 1:  James has a pretty mana denial intensive draw, with him stripping 3 of my early land drops and sticking null rod with reb back up. Thankfully, he couldn't draw pressure which gave me time to find my e truth for his rod with counter back up. The next turn I cast will into infinite turns which got the concession.

Game 2:  James leads with a 2 power 1 drop and a chalice for 0. Luckily, my opener had no moxen and sol ring. His next turn saw him dropping another 2 power guy and a mogg fanatic. I ancestral on my turn and pass it back. He lays some beats and goes for a null rod that eats an annul. I wind up ripping a goyf, which brings the beat down to a screeching halt. We draw go a couple turns before he starts attacking again to try and force damage through. The game winds up ending when I misd a bolt to one of his guys and tutor up vault/key for the win.

 
  At this point, I flipping out, beyond excited I'm 1 win away from the TMD Open title I've been chasing since TMD Open 2.  The finals were supposed to be against an old friend of mine in Sean Orcutt.  My original intention was to play it out, but Sean offered to drop and give me the win in exchange for the split. This got debated for several minutes, with both of us finally accepting he terms. Sean wound up walking out in the end with more money as he hadn't prize split with anybody else, but I'm fine with that as the next TMD Open will have playmats and shirts with my deck on it and this one goes in the books as me finally scoring a TMD Open championship.  I've been asked by multiple people why I would up splitting when I was so hell bent to play it out. The answer to this is pretty simple: I hadn't played in 6 months prior to this event. I mainly came because you just don't miss out on playing at one of Ray's events. They're the best around and I get to hang out with people I rarely see.  Splitting the money sucks a lil bit, but I've known Sean a long time and actually helped him learn about the format back our old local store.  If I'm gonna split with someone, it might as well be someone like him and I finally get my TMD open win to boot.  But this has dragged on long enough, so if you made it this far, thanks for reading.


Props:

The boys on TPS for helping me get the stuff I needed to play and helping me test.
Ray and his judging staff for throwing one hell of a show.
All my opponents for being fun to play against and being generally good guys.
All the random people I hung out with over the course of the day.


Slops:

Me for being dumb enough to keep shit in my deck box and getting myself a game loss.
Yugi-Oh players for being loud and obnoxious.

Any questions about the list can be asked here or in the improving tez thread in the open forums.

-Matt

Thanks. In regards to the Thoughtseize/Duress count, I really liked the 2/2 split main. It never came up where I needed a duress to be a thoughtseize.  The deck could easily be run 3/1 main with another 2 duress in the board, but it depends on what your expected meta is. I geared my list more towards the control mirror and dredge matches (main deck relic and the addition of library over the 6th fetch). The annuls were sick all day. Every time I drew one, it was huge. It ate null rods and random lock pieces perfectly. 

For those interested, this is the list I used to take down TMD Open 13:

4 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
3 Island
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Library of Alexandria
5 Moxen
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
1 Black Lotus

1 Trinket Mage
1 Inkwell Leviathan

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
2 Duress
2 Thoughtseize
1 Misdirection
4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Time Vault
1 Voltiac Key
1 Tezzeret the Seeker
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Echoing Truth
1 Brainstorm
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Regrowth
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Sideboard:

3 Tarmogoyf
2 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Annul
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Pithing Needle
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus
2 Yixlid Jailer

Ideally, I'll do a quick report sometime this week.

I'll take that as a congrats.

You may not like it travis, but sean and i split the prize and he scooped em up to me, so that next set of playmats and t-shirts are gonna be littered with stuff I used to put it inside you in the t16.

Does travis playing desire into necro in stax count?

Tommy's list is 2 cards short. Congrats on the event Ben. Vintage needs more events like the ones that you run.

The top 4 split the prizes and played it out for the glory. In the end, TPS' Ross Merriam took the whole thing down playing Mono Red Shop Aggro.

Number 1: You're not undefeated against me. You can think that all you want, but it doesn't make it true. And Number 2: If I was going to this thing, I'd gladly thrash the living hell outta both of you. Enjoy your weekend off and the empty top 8 slot that would normally be reserved for me, I'll be out for blood in Enfield.

Prereg me please.

You talk all the shit you need to to get by, all the "coffee" in the world won't save you from me next time.

Grats on the win Jer, but its McNally dammit.

I'm in. Please pre-reg me.

Unless I'm mistaken, whenever a new set is released, it becomes legal in all formats on the 20th of that month. This has been the standard since Mirrodin.

For reference: http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/5267.html

TPS will be there to win it again, obv.

For those who are interested:
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=7766

Dear god, Mixing Mike is back!

If I have a Yixlid Jailer in play, do all my cards in my graveyard lose flashback?

QFT

Dave will have lists and pics up before too long.

Just as weird as the Ancients was that the "Gro" deck ran 1 Gush and 3 Deep Analysis. Hell, there were substantially more Deeps in the Top 8 than there were Gushes. Strange results.