Round 6 --> Justin

Anyway, I really thought I was going to win game 2 after going through 2 standstills and winning the counter war over your Ancestral Recall.  Oath put Griselbrand into play, but I overextended and that Tasigur on your turn really caught me off guard.

Good games by the way.

Well, I get to play for free, so I guess I need to go.  And I need one more FBB Sea still.

Thanks for another great event Shawn.  Turnout was lower than expected, but everyone still had fun.

Congrats to all top 8.  After the top 4 split I just wanted to leave to save time for the drive home, sorry I couldn't battle it out.  You would probably be no match for Humans and Elementals anyway!

Is there ample parking at this location?

How do you like Gaea's Blessing as opposed to Memory's Journey Paul?

I've played Oath to the last 3 or 4 top 8's in Bloomsberg with Journey as it becomes a more combo deck then IMO.

Another good tournament, another top 8, and sadly another quick exit.  Oath needs to stop letting me down in top 8.

Good to see everyone there though.

I never saw the list, but he was on camera a few rounds.  He definitely played Tinker and Blightsteel Colossus in the main.  I think he just sideboarded in 1 Rune-Scarred Demon.  There was a game where he only Oathed once and had Colossus in hand, so I'm assuming 1 Demon for this reason.

I believe it was the Tezzeret deck that won.  Oath transform in board, without Forbidden Orchards (or at least he never drew any and I saw several rounds).

I remember going to that; was a good trip.  And I do remember you trying to kill yourself turn 1 the last several rounds.  I still played Oath then, and let me tell you, Griselbrand is way better than Akroma and Spirit of the Night.

A couple of weeks ago I go turn one mox, dual land, oath, but no orchard.  It resolves.  Opponent says, "I need to make sure I don't cast something into Swan Song".  I obviously don't have mana for it anyway.  He goes his turn one: land, mox, dark confidant.  Resolves and a big thank you.  I get Griselbrand and win.

Good event as always.  One of these times I will win one of these with Oath.  Like 6 top 8s with Oath now and still looking for that first win...

Congrats Matt!  Sucked losing to you in the semis personally, but we had some great games no doubt.  Looking forward to the next vintage tournament.

Pumped!  Will be there, will be playing a "real" deck this time, and will win.  See you there losers.

There is good variance, too bad I play Stax all day long.  Even though it went well, I would prefer not play against that deck even with a like 80-20 favored deck.

Landstill is dumb.  Nice job on the keeper victory though.

I played this deck to another top 8 finish this weekend.  A slightly modified list, it can be found here http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=43851.0.  (Justin Navickas, "Demon Oath")

I played red for REBs in the board, which were nice.  Remoras were good as I thought they would be.  I think if I played the list again I would change the Pierces to Thoughtseizes.  This protects spells and strips of bombs.  Noxious Revival let's you loop with 2 Demons fine, and gives you the opportunity to buyback Recall sometimes, which is awesome.

I lost 2 matches I feel I should have won, not play mistakes, but bad beats, and got blown out in t8 by the nuts both games.

Round 3, game 3: I mulligan to 5 on draw, no FOW.  He goes: Lotus, U.Sea, DT, Channel, Emrakul.  Extra turn attack, land drop, Time Walk, gg.  Well that was fun.

Round 4, game 3.  I ramp and play Remora and we build hands.  Remora going to 6 on stack, thanks to Academy, I Vamp looking for an Orchard, with Oath already in play.  We trade lots of counters.  Vamp ends up being countered.  I drew 4 from Remora plus draw step and found no Orchard, counters, tutors, or sculpting/digging spells.  Boo.

And top 8 he draws nuts both games: counters, Time Walk, Recall, Gushes, Tinker.  I had 1 turn game 1.  And game 2 I had a few but can't compete with 3 Gushes chained with a Fastbond and a last Brainstorm.

Definitely a good deck and will give it another chance next time I can.

Dark Times with White.

Top was definitely subpar for me as well, maybe that is what I could cut for Gifts/Scroll.  I also don't like Ponder, I think Preordain is just better.  Without the fetches you can't reliably take the best card and then shuffle the others away.  I'd rather have Scroll or just a 4th Preordain.  The picture is also better.

Academy is okay.  I had it in 3 games maybe and it was only 2 mana max everytime and once I got stuck with no artifacts.  Which is fine, but this deck doesn't really need mana.  It is awesome when you resolve a Will though, obviously.  Even so, it is still probably better than another dual or basic, so I'll probably keep it anyway.

The meta where I played a quite a bit of blue and combo, so I'll probably true to squeeze Remora or something into the sideboard next time.

I also wanted to mention: voltron00x had suggested Gifts or something.  I never had a problem generating mana with this deck.  You could easily run Gifts or something in here if you wanted to.  I don't really have any suggestions on piles nor am I giving it any thought, because I don't know what I would cut for Gifts, but it would be doable strictly mana-wise if you were interested.

So I haven't played Vintage in 3 or 4+ years, but I recently moved and Vintage is more popular than Legacy here so I gave it a wing yesterday.

I played this deck and it was very good.  I played the exact list on the front page, except I only had 1 Rune-Scarred Demon and the dealer/store didn't have any, so I had to proxy 2 and thus had to change to other cards I planned on proxying.  I ran 3 Underground Sea and a Library of Alexandria and changed the Mox Pearl to a Lotus Petal (which was actually probably better because the blue mana was nice and definately helped at least 1 game and wasn't a problem in any games).  The only problem I had was the gripe I always have with Oath, even though I love it; drawing dead cards.  It happened probably like 9 out of the 11 or 12 games I actually played.

I went 3-0-2 in swiss and lost in the top 8 to TPS.  In the top 8 I had to mulligan 1 game and keep a 6 with a dead card (which happened a lot) and just got blown out by Mind's Desire.  And in the other game I played Orchard, Mox, Oath.  He Chain of Vapors Oath and drew a Force to counter it when I replayed and that was pretty much game.  I think I mostly lost because I had some really bad draws that round.

All in all the deck was really solid though and is definately powerful.  I will be playing this at the next tournament I get a chance to soon.

I'm moving to the area (Danville) and looking for some place to play Magic.  I have stopped in the store before a long time ago and am interested in attending this.

Also, I see your store is open 4-9 throughout the week.  Do you guys host any other tournaments throughout the week?  Any legacy, FNM, drafts or EDH tournaments?  Let me know.  Do you guys have a website?

Nobody will be at this due to GP Providence.

Very nice article Steve, I really liked this one.

Vintage has been at a bad standstill for some time now, and I've also been awaiting the unrestrictions of both Gush and Flash, which I feel will be forthcoming this summer...can't wait for that.

$25 entry, 81 players was the total = $2,025

seeing as no mod moved this

post to bump

this tourney is tomorrow hopefully we can get a good turnout!

it was a very good/healthy meta in my opinion...had a great time at this tournament, miss playing gush however

hopefully next time i don't play mistake myself out of top 8

Intro
Since gush was unrestricted last year I’ve basically dedicated myself to playing the card.  It’s just too broken not to play, and I believe any deck with it gives you a better chance of achieving victory.

Here’s the list I played:

Gush Storm
1x Darksteel Colossus

1x Ancestral Recall
1x Black Lotus
4x Brainstorm
1x Demonic Tutor
4x Duress
1x Echoing Truth
1x Empty the Warrens
1x Fastbond
4x Force of Will
4x Gush
1x Lotus Petal
4x Mana Drain
4x Merchant Scroll
2x Misdirection
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Mystical Tutor
1x Regrowth
1x Tendrils of Agony
1x Time Walk
1x Tinker
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Yawgmoth’s Will

3x Flooded Strand
1x Island
1x Library of Alexandria
3x Polluted Delta
1x Snow-Covered Island
2x Tropical Island
2x Underground Sea
1x Volcanic Island

Sideboard
4x Annul
2x Blue Elemental Blast
3x Extirpate
2x Fire/Ice
1x Spawning Pit
3x Trygon Predator

As you can see it plays a lot of control with duress, force of will, misdirection, and a complete set of mana drains.  It’s similar to TTS (The Tropical Storm) except I play the drains over rituals, and the likes of necropotence/timetwister/doomsday.

The sideboard is dedicated to beat the meta there, which is usually no ichorid (thus no leylines) with the extirpates for mirror matches and flash.  The annuls are hopefully helpful against stax which is about the worst matchup of all time.

Tournament Report
(This is over a week ago and my memory is not outstanding; thus the matches will probably tend to be brief)

Round 1: Dan Herd

Dan is playing a BUW meta hate deck with confidants, aven mindcensors, extirpates, etc.

Game 1 he gets a confidant in play and my life goes down by 2 for a couple of turns as where his goes, 20, 19, 17, 16, 0 and he is tendrils out.
Game 2 I remember he establishes early control and drops 3 meddling mages on key cards and I quickly succumb.
Game 3 is a long fought duel.  I eventually empty the warrens for like 8 tokens and ride to victory.

1-0   (2-1)

Round 2: David R

Game 1 we both play some fetches and forces and it’s quickly obvious this is the mirror match.  He tinkers a colossus into play but I’m holding for an end of turn echoing truth.  On my next turn I tinker in my own big man and his life totals show 15, 4, dead.
Game 2 I quickly empty the warrens for 8 and ride that for a few turns.

2-0   (4-1)

Round 3: Ryan

Game 1 he opens with fast beats and over the next couple of turns I die to R/G Beats.
Game 2 he gets in his quick beats and I just sculpt my hand and try to deal with threats and eventually tendrils him.
Game 3 my deck basically gives me nothing and by the time I try to combo out he has double lightning bolts.

2-1 (5-3)

Round 4: Jeremy

Game 1 he controls me with duress/thoughtseize and plays doomsday. He’s got me where he wants me but his doomsday pile is wrong and I win.
Game 2 he gets gush-bond and we all know how that ends.
Game 3 I get control with my duress and control package and win off a mini empty the warrens over a couple of turns.

3-1 (7-4)

Round 5: ?

Game 1 he opens up with kird ape or something so I’m in for R/G Beats again.  He basically smashes my face for a few damage a turn. When I get to like 8 life I get a tendrils to bounce back up to 20 and then gain complete control and drop colossus and walk like twice.
Game 2 I fan open my opening hand of 4x force of will, mystical tutor, misdirection, and ancestral recall. I keep and basically force every card he plays until I draw a land on my second turn and combo out quickly there after.

4-1 (9-4)

Round 6: Justin T

I know he is playing flash and we both draw into top 8.

4-1-1 (9-4-1)

Top 8 quarterfinals: Jason Jones

I make top 8 which consists of 2 gush decks, 2 g/r beats, and 4 flash decks.  I obviously drove 2.5 hours here to play with one of my teammates that came along in the top 8.

Game 1 I get a nice hand and resolve some duress effects with forces and quickly combo out on turn 3.
Game 2 I again establish control and when he tries to go off I extirpate his hulks and after taking a couple damage combo off.

Top 4 semifinals: Jeremy (rd 4 opponent) with TTS

So I basically beat this guy in the swiss due to him making a mistake so I’m not too confidant. In all honestly he had about the only deck in the field I didn’t want to play so I was quite disappointed having to play him again.

Game 1 he opens with like sea duress, lotus into necropotence.  I get like 2 more turns but I can’t break through.
Game 2 we both have minimal disruption and just before he is going to combo off I topdeck yawgmoth’s will and ancestral recall into the nuts of like fastbond, lotus, and gush or something completely ludicrous like that and pull out the victory I don’t deserve probably.
Game 3 he opens with duress and is control from there out. He kills me with a bunch of 1/1 goblins via empty the warrens.


I finish in 3rd/4th so I’m quite pleased with the performance the deck gave me.  The cards I’m not sure I would play are the mana drains.  They are quite slow and it showed in the matches with Jeremy.  His deck seemed very streamlined and I really liked what the doomsday added to the deck.

All the annuls went unused so I’m still not sure on them, but they have use against stax and oath. I played neither of those matchups as the field was quite diverse although the heaviest played deck was definitely flash, so maybe I need to add the REBs back in the side.

Props
Well ran tournament
My team for 2/3 making top8
My deck for running pretty well
Nice restaurant shop next door

Slops
Expensive gas
Playing the same guy twice and getting rocked basically every game although splitting the rounds
Playing teammate top 8

Thanks for reading and any deck suggestions reply.

i haven't been able to make the past 2 since my first time there...hopefully i can make more in the future...i was also wondering how it went and looking forward to a nice report...

sounds like a fun tourney, sadly i couldn't show up and represent with Dragon again, oh well, looking forward to next tournament

nice reports, keep up the pictures, they make them the best

TO DAVE FEINSTEIN!!!

great report as always, best reads on this forum, all u need is pictures for icing on cake