hey pre reg me and cory szamier please ELD

shh stop trying to convince him not to go. tournaments would be far less....ya know. with out ben around.

i never once wanted an artifact accelerant on the day. i am pretty sure you want your mana sources to produce 5c and be able to be used a couple times so that rules out lotus petal. you def need access to consistent mana for post board games.

top 8 was 2 mana'd dredge, 2 tendrils, 1 control slaver, 1 monoblue phid, 1 stax, 1 flash

hey dan, please pre-reg me. thanks, look forward to making it up to another myriad event.

I am not so sure you noticed this interaction.  Earlier in your article you discuss disruption decks not wanting dead draws and any Chalices drawn after Gaddock has hit the board would certainly qualify as dead draws.  Changing your Chalice count to 3 would not solve this interaction either.  You just said you would include Chalice so you could cut off opposing moxen on turn 1, well you would want maximum chance to do so, so 4 is the correct number.

I noticed in your suggestion of a deck using the Thorn of Amethyst you included a fishesque deck which included Gaddock Teeg in addition too Chalice of the Void, just thought I would point out, once Gaddock is in play you would no longer be able to play any Chalices as their CMC will include an X.

just got off the phone with Ray, he lost in a close three to Steve. not too sure about the other matchups, I believe he said Shay was in the finals, and he would be playing the winner of Vincent and Steve so we may see the GAT on GAT finals.

Hey Dan, this is Rich Meyst. I know for sure I would get about 4-5 people up for one of these. Especially if you get one up and running before Grand Prix Columbus. Most competitive constructed players would also make it as a warm up for the Grand Prix. Def a good idea.

as always, good job Gooch.  A dominant performance by Team Perfect Scrubs, maybe this is the begining of a NE dominance? Who will stand in our way? Perhaps a good god squad?

Elias, I have played in every format as you have seen me at all the local PTQs and local Legacy events, as well around the aisles of TMD Opens. I have also enjoyed success in both, playing on the tour and enjoying a TMD Open win and I would def have to agree with you in that the PTQ scene as a whole is hard to win.

Part of this difficulty is not always the players. It is because of the extra three rounds that most PTQs last.  Each round is just more stress and more pressure.  Its hard to get lucky over 8-9 rounds and make it in and still have enough gas and luck for 3 more rounds.  When you are playing vintage, you can string together 4 lucky rounds and double draw into the top8 and win the whole thing before the PTQ even ends their swiss rounds.

Another factor that someone hasn't that I'm surprised no one has brought up is start times.  Majority of Vintage events I have attended have started at 12, and as we all know, NO magic tournament starts on time (even PT Honolulu was behind 20 mins) so we really look at around 1230 or so.  So given that nearly every PTQ starts at 10, that equals less sleep, and for some of us, sleep is the most important thing to playing to the best of our ability.

One thing I have been thinking about in Vintage lately is how much it takes to win a given games.  I have played many times against an oppnonent that was making mistake, after mistake.  Clearly trying to throw the game I thought, but out of no where they win.  They topdeck Will or Tinker or any of the formats other game swinging cards.  In any of the other constructed formats, no cards have this effect on the gamestate.  Nothing is as powerful as a topdecked Will  from a bad player that you just thought ran out of gas and you were setting up your win.  It is frustrating.  In Extended, Standard, and even Legacy there is just so much more interaction.  You have a better chance to out play your opponent as I see it.

I have played plenty of games of Magic where your chances to win the game are very very slim.  It seems that the percentage of these games in any given format is definetly higher in Vintage.

In short, I agree with Elias that it is harder to win at an average PTQ, and not solely based on skill levels, but on many other levels as well.

Im glad you brought this back Dave, great idea.

Here we go:

1. Rich Meyst (I just have too)
2. TK
3. Dave Feinstein
4. Brassman
5. Travis Laplante
6. Evenpence
7. FFY
8. Crossman Wilkins
9. Ross Merriam
10. Elias (not even going to attempt the last name)
11. Eric Becker
12. Dan Yarrington
13. Ben Carp
14. Dan Carp
15. Osyp Lebalphabetica
16. Outlaw

I was actually 4-2 going into the final round but dropped due to horrible breakers.  The deck performed welll again.  I beat MonoBlueControl only because of the Pithing Needles in the board (on Morphling). My first loss was to a straight Tog deck where he just  had the nuts game three of Tinker DSC, timewalk with double force back for my StP.  And I lost a CLOSE match to GrimLong when I made the right call with a Meddling Mage the turn after he Imp. Sealed for a bounce spell for my Null Rod, and I named Hurkl's Recall when he went for a Chain of Vapor.  Instead of dropping a second Null Rod.

Dominik, we didn't test the Ichorid match too much. As I see it though, it shouldn't be too bad because of our waste effects and being able to get a kudzu up over a 3/3 will be huge. In the future if it becomes a metagame dominant deck, we could run gy hate in the board.  On day two I tried some Pithing Needles in the board and they shored up a couple matches on that day.  Energy Flux is definetly not needed for the stax match, with oxidize and 9 strips, its hard for them to keep things on the board.  I did not consider Jitte because my creatures will most likely always be bigger than theirs, so I dont need to devote sideboard slots to that.  At the moment I would not make any other changes to the maindeck after adding in the null rods.

I am currently working on a newer updated list and plan on writing a longer post about the deck and card choices in it.. look forward to it.

First off, most of you may not know me at all, so let me just start off by saying I am a mostly type 2 and extended player from Connecticut.  I have played on the PT once, when it was in Hawaii (the best time to get on the train) and have some other smaller accomplishments to my resume.  The big reason I first got into type 1 was because of the players at my local store.  The likes of Jarad Demmick, Keith Johnson, Steve Houdlette, and THE Raymond Robillard.  After some weekly type 1 events, I was hooked, and ever sicne Ive been traveling around with my crew trying to win power.  I have always been a Fish player in this format as it fits my play style completely.  When my team was testing for this event we tried to define the metagame and go off that like we all should.  We decided that the biggest fish deck would be SS and with a huge emergence of Bob in nearly every type 1 deck we noticed how almost ALL decks in type 1 now ran either darkblast or something to deal with little fishies and the big old nasty Bob.  So when building a fish deck I decided we needed creatures that would dodge the typical removal, darkblast, pyroclasm, massacre, and lava dart.  At this point I was watching a game of extended online and saw how huge a Werebear and Nimble Mongoose could get.  There we go, we figured it out, those would be base creatures, and now we just needed another one,  I started flipping though my type 1 crap looking for good creatures, when it happened.  A kid at our local store was trying to build a Critical Mass deck in type two and asked me if I had any Vinelasher Kudzus for trade.  I saw it right away.  The synergy with fetchlands, and stip effects.  We added him in and added in some FOWs, Brainstorms, and some Crucibles so we could keep replaying the lands.  After some testing we realized the Crucibles were actually not very good.  It would require too much of a mana investment, I would rather just keep stripping lands.  At this point we figured if we took an idea from extended we might as well take another and we tried the very good Life From The Loam.  With synergy with getting threshold and pumping your Kudzu's, it was a perfect fit.  At this point we tried the Ghost Quarters and they were never bad.  After even more testing we realized we sometimes had trouble getting the Life in the graveyard, and yet again we turned to the AggroLoam deck in extended, for none other than, Wild Mongrel.  He added another form of synergy with getting the lands back for the kudzu or just getting lands back to pitch to Mongrel to speed up a clock.  We now had too many creatures to run though, and we had to make a cut and unfortunetly the Werebear just couldnt make the cut. We then decided that with our opponents being so short on mana most of the time that Dazes would be good and they went in.  Keith Johnson suggested some explorations to allow even more Battlegrowths to Vinelasher.  When noticing we had no answer to DSC, Nate Pease suggested running White as well which gave us some Swords to run and very good board options.  So with everyones help we had a list ready to go...

4 Vinelasher Kudzu
4 Wild Mongrel
3 Nimble Mongoose

4 FOW
4 Daze
4 Brainstorm
1 Gush
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Timewalk
3 Life From The Loam
2 Exploration
1 Fastbond
1 Misdirection
1 Swords to Plowshares

3 Polluted Delta
3 Windswept Heath
3 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
1 Forest
1 Island
4 Wasteland
4 Ghost Quarter
1 Stripmine
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Saph.
1 Mox Diamond
1 Black Lotus

Sideboard

2 Swords to Plowshares
3 Ray of Revalation
4 Oxidize
3 Null Rod
3 Meddling Mage


So Friday night came and I was having doubts about the deck, and after a lengthy conversation with GI, he convinced me to play just a standard G-A-T deck.  Luckily I decided I would build it in the morning and after just 4 hours of sleep, when I got up at 8, I was far to tired to desleeve and build a new deck so I run what I had.  On with the report...btw, I have a bad memeory


Round 1  Dan Richardson w/ Highland WW Rebels

Dan was an amazing opponent. Great guy with a great deck and some balls to bring that to Waterbury.  Fun match.
Game 1 I get down two mongrels to his Silver Knight and Skynight Legionaire, he finds a Jitte and I am in a bad situation, luckily Life from the Loam keeps my puppies out of a Jitte range and I just run him over.
Game 2 I get a crazy aggro draw and Mongrel and Geese over take him after I take 16 from a Skynight Legionaire.

Win 2-0  (1-0 Overall, 2-0 Games)

Round 2  Dave Feinstein w/ UW Fish with Lions and Hounds OH MY!

Dave is a friend and a great player.  He made back to back pro tours and he is very proud of that, as he should be, I am glad to tell everyone that I was part of Pro Tour Hawaii.  Which I think is much better then PT Prague, and PT Charleston just because its in frigin Hawaii.  We both know what each other is playing so it will be a fun match.  Not sure how it should go because I know he has some Jittes coming in for me.

Game 1  He gets a quick start and I stabilize with two Mongrels while Im at 3.  I brainstorm and put back a Life from the Loam and keep a Kudzu in my hand.  On his next turn he attacks with three two power guys and I have to chump block but I messed up my brainstorm because I am forced to discard my Kudzu to keep my Puppies alive.  I lose a few turns later when he draws more guys and I dont
Game 2 I run over him pretty easily with a mongoose and threshold, hard to answer that little trooper.
Game 3 I keep dropping guys and they keep getting StP away, eventually I am about to stabilize but he drops a Jitte and thats the end of this match.

Loss 1-2  (1-1 Overall, 3-2 Games)

Round 3 Samuel Eddie w/ PitchLong

Game 1 He starts to go off and a daze spells doom for him.
Game 2 I board in some Rods and Mages.  I resolve a Rod and he resolves a Necro, and eventually a Will and it is not enough for him to win.

Win 2-0  (2-1 Overall, 5-2 Games)

Round 4 Nick Detwiler w/ B/W Aggro

Game 1 I don't remember much, he drops a Nantuko Shade which could be bad news but I manage to Waste and Strip most of his black mana.  He deals with my creatures and is on the road to winning but double Bob helps me win. GO BOB.
Game 2 I get the same waste/life action going and a couple Geese take it down.

Win 2-0  (3-1 Overall, 7-2 Games)

Round 5  Dan Carp w/ Oath

Game 1 I win the die roll and have an opening hand with Kudzu, Fastbond, two fetchlands, Gush, Timewalk...he doesnt have force and I kill him turn three or four.
Game 2 I am not sure exactly what he is playing but I have a good idea, in comes StP and Mage.  He goes broken turn one with ancestral timewalk, turn two he tinkers out a DSC and passes.  I have an StP in my hand and he now is at 30 life. A long road ahead.  I drop some dorks, strip some lands. and win a lot of turns later.

Win 2-0  (4-1 Overall, 9-2 Games)

Round 6 Willie Munch w/ 5c Stax

Game 1 I lead with forest, goose and he is utterly perplexed. I am holded three GQuarters, FOW and a blue card. I force a COW and waste him away.
Game 2 He leads with Shop, COW. I lead with emerald, oxidize COW, waste shop....he never recovers.

Win 2-0  (5-1 Overall, 11-2 Games)

Round 7 Pat Broderick w/ Control Slaver

Game 1 is going on for a while, he has cast nearly every brainstorm and TfK in his deck and is not finding much, I am meanwhile stripping and wasting him away while beating with a 3/3 goose.  I resolve a kudzu and get him up to a 3/3 while he is at nine. I have Life and three lands in my hand so I know I almost have him next turn.  He then tinkers.....DSC comes out....im in trouble. I might lose....I draw for turn...Fastbond. Play it and two turns later my Kudzu is now a 13/13 and swining into his 11/11 while my goose takes him down.
Game 2 Null Rod resolves and he draws nearly every mox and i take it down.  Bad luck for him, he drew almost nothing both games.

Win 2-0  (6-1 Overall, 13-2 Games

Round 8 Jeremiah Rudolph w/ Control Slaver w/MD Blood Moon

We ID and go scout out the rest.

ID (6-1-1 Overall 13-2 Games)

I end up in 5th place after swiss and have to play the 12th seed who is...

Top 16  Stephen Padinha w/ Control Slaver

Game 1 I play Windswept Heath and he stops, jokes and reads the card, I then fetch out a forest and drop a goose.  On my next turn I GQaurter his Island and he puts it into the graveyard and looks at me as I declare an attack.  On his next turn he comments on how he should read cards more often. A waste or two later and I put down game 1
Game 2 Null Rod comes down and waster takes him out. At one point he drops a Flametounge Kavu to take out a Mongrel but I am holding StP and Kudzu so I stabilize and win.

Win 2-0  (7-1-1 Overall, 15-2 Games)

Top 8 Roger Sorino w/ EBA (BUW Fish) Good Deck..

Game 1 He resolves a negator and is crushing me but his Bob give me hope as he reveals a FOW and a FOW in back to back turns to bring him to 5, but I lose.  First game loss since round 2
Game 2 I dont remember much about this game cept a nimble Mongoose avoids all kinds of removal and I get off a StP on his Negator on a key turn when he taps out, while he was holding three drains.
Game 3 He leads with Island go, I have nothing much so I decided to Ghost Quarter and much to my surprise he says, "Hmm How ironic, thats my only island..."  I am able to capitlize and drop some threats and am beating down, he makes a last effert and DTs for Recall and casts it but walks right into a Daze, a card he did not see game 1 or 2.

Win 2-1  (8-1-1 Overall, 17-3 Games)

Top 4 Ben Kowal w/ Control Slaver

Before this match up, Dave Feinstein comes up and mentions I should watch out for the Abyss. Take note.  After some seriously funny comments about sexuality we start this match.

Game 1 He goes first and goes ABSOLUTELY FRIGIN BROKEN...I lose.
Game 2 He is drawing cards while I cut his mana, I have some creatures in hand and know not to drop them until I find a Ray of Revalation for the Legends Enchant World card.  After I drop Null Rod, he drops the abyss.  I have him pretty locked out of his mana with no lands in play and just a bunch of artifact mana.  I find the ray, and drop guys and win game.
Game 3 He goes to the board again so I assume he is taking out the Abyss so I board out a ray for a Mage.  He mulls to 6, and seems happy about it, I am forced to mull and on 6 I decide to keep, FOW, Misdirection, Mystical Tutor, Daze, Lifefrom the Loam, GhostQuarter. My logic is any broken hand he has could easily be stopped by my hand.  He leads with Ancestrall...I Misdirect and it resolves. I draw FOW, Delta, Brainstorm. WOW, this is looking good. I drop land and pass.  He has more gas though as he goes land mox petal, tinker, I force and he is left with not much. I find a rod and a mongrel and it goes the distance.

Win 2-1  (9-1-1 Overall, 19-4 Games)

Finals Joel Brauer w/ Stax

I am a little upset I dont get to play Dave Feinstein again because I want revenge, I guess Ill just have to get revenge for Dave. NO ONE BEATS FEINSTEIN..and it should be easy as this is my best match.

Game 1 I go first and lead witha first turn Kudzu. A turn later his brother joins him and a couple turns later they take him down.
Game 2 He has a quick start but I have a quicker one with Kudzu and Fastbond. I am swinging away as he ramps his smokestack to two. He Imperal Seals for what I guess is Balance, but I have the GhostQuarter for his colored source. He decided to keep his mana crypt around while ramping smokestack and he dodged it for the first two turns it was in play. On his third turn he ramps to three which will wipe my entire board, but he is at 3 and I call even on the crypt and it comes up a 4 and thats it...

Win 2-0  (10-1-1 Overall, 21-4 Games)




Overall it was a great tournament, well run as usual and I think me and my friend Ross Merriam just stumbled across something that may be a new budget aggro deck to work on.  The only changes I have made since was cut the Mox Diamond, and the two exploration for the three Null Rods main to make it even more mana denial heavy.  Hopefully this willl spark some debate.  And now im off the the world of type two, to prepare for the NAC and take home even more money!



PROPS

Puff for telling me to add White to the deck
Ross for telling me to play the undertested deck because I felt like it
Feinstein for the heads up on The Abyss
Dan Richardson for playing a cool Highlander WW Deck
Todd P. for the Windswept Heaths and Trops
Ray Robillard for running a great tournament
Ben Kowal for casting Ancestral Game 3
Steve Houdlette keeping me up convincing me to change decks, making me so tired I couldnt build it

SLOPS

Mox Monkey for reading Windswept Heath but not Ghost Quarter
People that run only one basic land
Ray Robillard for not giving me a feature match when I was winning with KUDZUS!
Ben Kowal for trying to play footsies during our match
Black Lotus being old and played




Well let the discussions begin! See you all at the next TMD Open where you will get to see a VINELASHER KUDZU on a playmat next to a Windswept Heath and a BASIC FOREST.

THE FOREST WINS AGAIN!!




Team Perfect Scrubs, finally winning Loti

Ill be posting the list and an indepth tournament report on the newest deck in the format, WTG...not way to go, but Worse Than GAT...

If an Ichorid is in my graveyard at the beggining of my upkeep, can I stack that ability and then use instant draw like bazaar and a Golgari Grave Troll in my gradeyard to dig for a black creature to RFG to the Ichorid ability. I haev been told I have to remove the creature to just put Ichorids ability on the stack.

in any particular order

1. Travis Laplante
2. Brassman
3. Outlaw
4. Jigglypuff (he'll find enough sac to get him into it)
5. Rich Meyst
6. Dan Gaagooch
7. Ross Merriam
8. Justin Bransfield
9. Vroman
10. Roland Chang
11. Dave Feinstein
12. Stephen Houdlette
13. Keith Johnson
14. Mike Roach
15. Sam the Best
16. Ashok Chitturi

Akroma will always be known as the Swiss Army Knife of Wrath, she has everything including a can opener.  She happens to open cans of whoop ass.  I was the one piloting that deck and I must say the maindeck I would not touch one bit. It works so well. I would not have taken down Outlaw without those Energy Flux in my board and I would not have survived a Fish beatdown if i didn't board in my one darkblast.  I lost to 3-land belcher in the top 8 because game three he got a late game Memory Jar off and all i had in my new hand was oxidize and annul, neither of which stops a Yawg Will with a stacked graveyard.  Not sure if the red splash I added is worth it or not but the REBs did help me win two seperate matches. And on one situation Razia would have been better then Spirit of the Night, besides that Spirit of the Night was fine.  Great deck and its time someone in New England started to play Oath to some success

Apparently LaPlante is good at slapping beotches, everyone better watch out, I hear he can even reach us from LasVegas! Be warned!

I believe he meant someone whose name he did not catch and someone he did not reconize by using the term "random." Almost everyone has a ManaDrain name and just because of that he is supposed to know your name?  Have you done well at a local tournament and screamed out IamIvanTheTerrible!!! because if you did then he def should know your name then. If you notice the people he names in his report are people that are easily reconizible at any T1 tourney. Everyone knows people like BrassMan. So before you go and get all bent out of shape because he called you Random, think of a reason why he should know your name..

The BANE of this deck more over than any other Fish deck is Tinker. If Tinker resolves then you are in trouble because most likey an 11/11 is coming to town toplay with your dogs and lizards. Having 4 Chalice in your deck is a necessiary evil because you will stop them from playing their Tinker tragets unless they have a Sol Ring or Vault or even artifact land.

As someone that players in my local area have dubbed "The Fish Guru" I can see one major flaw with your list and that is the inclusion of Standstills over the Brainstorms.  This is a deck that is much more worried about finding the right threat rather than just getting sheer card advantage.  In a deck like UW or UR Fish, Brainstorm is horrible because it will just show you three more cards that arent gonna be an amazing threat off the bat. When you Brainstorm into your first Mongrel of the game when the Vial is set to two then you are in buisness. This decks goal is to get a threat down as quickly as possible, protect it, and ride it to victory; where as UW or UR Fish's goal is to lock you out of the game with good lock cards and sheer card advantage. UW and UR Fish are also heavily based on tempo and stealing it from your opponent. If I were you, I would at least try out the Brainstorms over the Standstills, and also maybe try to squeeze in another Jitte main because when that thing hits, you are in total control of almost ANY situation involving creatures. STP are not entirely necsarry in this deck either. You are usually the player playing beat down so I would suggest cutting the 2 from the main for the 3rd Jitte and another Ninja. Having 4 Ninjas is never a bad thing when you run AetherVial Mongrels and Rootwalls to return,  they also pitch to Force of Will quite nicely. Also if you have FCG and RG in your meta, try some Blue Elemental blasts in your sideboard. Replace the Icatian J. with them. BEB's kill Lackeys and Welders as well as countering Pyroclasm which is becoming quite popular in some decks. A well timed BEB on Recoup will also win games. Well, good luck in your area.

Another point of irony I have just realized. Josh truly is the hero. Instead of being like Smeagol and being corrupted by the box of power, he had the will and desire to over come its power, much like Sam Wise Gamgee, who was the true hero in the Lord of the Rings.

This whole talk of teams sounds like a pretty solid idea. I mean an extra few bucks for your team is not too much to ask, and not only do you get bragging rights when you win, you'll get some kind of prize! With this in effect, we will see how good Team Meandeck or a Team Hadley can stand with a solid way of saying they did better then each other. Who knows, maybe a team like GGs will walk away with it, or maybe a brand new team no one has heard of before..

Just another fun idea that may refresh this Waterbury Experience.

BTW, I vote for no Portal until Day2.

The only problem with U/R is its weakness against all the other decks in the format right now. Sure it will do good against U/W Fish decks and such but what happens when it runs into WorkshopAggro or any kinda of Combo deck. Lavamancers also have trouble taking down a Wild Mongrel. Almost any other deck will just find Tinker and beat these U/R Fish decks also.

It is def funny how NullRod wrecks another Fish Deck more than almost any other deck in the format, except for maybe Sensei Sensei.

Yes, R/G Beatz tears Fish a new one. This has been proven time and time again. The biggest problem is when R/G gets paired agasint any form of combo. R/G is not running much permission and puts up a little fight. Sure Root Maze hurts but most decks will just bounce it EOT or build up a much more solid hand and wait a few turns before going off. And I'm not exactly quite sure how R/G handles Workshop Aggro. I see the match as WSA dropping big threats, like Juggs and Welders, and R/G forced to burn those creatures out leaving not much in there hand and they get into a top decking war with the WSA decks. WSA now runs card draw with TfK and Brainstorms as R/G runs.....yeah. In this field I do believe you will see random R/G Beatz decks tearing it up, but when it comes down to it, it needs perfect pairings to win a tournament. It needs to face Fish Variants ALL day long.

A card that I have run to some success in my local area for the Fish mirror believe it or not is Wonder. More often are than you think will you have lethal damage in a Fish mirror and he has those pesky Factories. So you just discard to mongrel and send the team. Currently I am not running the Skyfolk so I was dying to 1/1 beats from Faeries so I discarded a Wonder and let my dog eat some faeries! Wonder pitches to FOW as well. I am only running one as of now and would probably not increase that. Just a little good sometimes.

BTW, killing with a flying DSC is sweet.

They indeed are but you might be cutting down on some better disruption for them. Whats your full list looking like, because then I could make a better statement of how good both are.

To fit in the Mystical/Tinker/DSC I cut Standstills. Too many times have my Standstills been broken and me draw three cards that are not threats. I would much rather have them be threats.

4 Wild Mongrel
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Ninja of the Deep Hour
3 Rootwater Theif
1 DSC

Thats a solid creature base. I don't think you can run both Mages and Theives effective. You are losing out on better cards to run more creatures. You need to disrupt and beat, not just beat.