Give me some credit, I beat Bill game one in top 8, but did lose games 2 and 3 handily. Congrats Bill!

I plan on being there!

I plan to be there!

While I cannot directly comment on the viability of Ghost Quarter/Ports over Factories since I run none of the above (I almost always play Mono-R Stax and so need those slots for colored mana), I would without a doubt rather have a card that cuts off more of my opponents mana than does anything else.

When the focus of the deck is locking the opponent out, Null Rods are the business. I have many times seen Null Rod come down as the final straw in a game where my opponent was trying to struggle out of a lock. It shuts off early acceleration, stops vault key combo dead in its tracks, and can be that last thing needed to seal the deal enough to get an opponent to concede. I can't imagine not running some number of them.

I was running both Sculpting Steel and Crucible for a short while, but only 9 spheres at that time. I kept a couple of crucibles main, removed steels all together, and went up to 13 spheres. I have been quite happy with the results. I believe you are absolutely correct when you say to focus on locking the opponent out, and that Crucible is better in that regard than Sculpting Steel.

Primary Team:
Andy Probasco
ELD
Demonic Attorney

Understudies:
Nefarias
failtofind
Oliver Beaumont

Looks like I'll be at this one. Pre-reg for Keith Carpentier please.

I certainly do not want to see my opponent play a Bitterblossom, but I would rather see that than some other 2 mana cards you could possibly play (vault, oath).

The problem with Bitterblossom vs shops is that it is, at absolute best, a delaying tactic. By itself, it is not going to put you, in any practical sense, any closer to winning the game. I might take a few damage from fliers, but you are paying life to put them into play.

Point by point:

1. It is an extra permanent for the sake of Smokestack, but not for Tangle Wire. You can't tap enchantments to Tangle wire, so if a wire is on the board you are probably tapping the fliers and/or mana sources still.

2. The token creatures definitely make attacking with golem a slower clock, but shop decks have access to so many answers/can over whelm the stream of 1 chump blockers a turn really quickly if necessary. Post board, I have access to 8 lodestones (4+4 sculpting steel), 4 smokestacks, some number of powder kegs, some number of tangle wires...it is pretty likely that you are going to need more than one chump blocker a turn to have time to find an out if bitterblossom is your main shop defense.

3. Yes, but oath wins the game, and blossom in most circumstances just slows down the game. There are just too many cards shops can draw that need to be answered that if bitterblossom is the only answer you have on hand, it just is not going to be enough to cut it. If you got out 2, then you would probably be in pretty good shape, but I think that going for the win is going to be a better bet in most cases than going for a stall.

I really like Bitterblossom as a card, and like I said, I certainly do not want my opponent to have it, but ultimately it does not have a terribly large impact on my game plan overall, and I think shop decks threat density is just too high to really be stopped by the card.

It is certainly true that the MUD player will probably have the opportunity to rebuild most, if not all of their board that turn after Hurkyl's resolves, but the opponent has bought themselves at least one more turn in this scenario. In every game I have played in which I have given an opponent this opening using the reasoning that I was going to win on my next turn, I have almost invariably lost on that one turn.

Why give your opponent that additional opportunity?

Congrats guys; nice to see 2 Workshop Aggro decks placing in the top 4.

Just a minor correction on the deck I was playing; It was not actually 5 color stax, just standard, good ol' Stax.

Also I made my first attempt at a tourny report, which due to my resounding lack of permissions on posting, I am putting in this thread. Sorry if this is the wrong place for it!


3rd Place at Myriad Games with 9sphere Stax

Let me preface this report by saying that this was the first Vintage event I have attended in the past six months, so I may be a bit behind the times. This will also be my first tournament report (fittingly enough, as it was my first top 8), so if I am missing many of the details that more seasoned report writers include, please bear with me. I cut out the deck list from this report, as it can be seen in the above post.

Nine Ball Stax

A few explanations for some of my less conventional choices. I ran a single Mindslaver and a single Jester’s cap MD mostly as alternate Tinker targets as well as cards that I would not mind luck-sacking into but I was not counting on as primary win conditions. As for Myr Enforcer, typically I run 2-3 Juggernauts in the deck in case my opponent is not satisfied to scoop it up once I have them locked down and I don’t want to run every match to time with monkey/goblin beats. With the inclusion of so many spheres, I wanted a creature that would fit in better even when I was dropping a SoR as opposed to a ToA. Affinity seemed like the way to go.

 With that note, on to the report.

Round 1: U/B Control (I think)

Game 1: He won the roll. Drops an island and casts Recall, then passes the turn. I play a shop and Thorn, burn, and pass the turn. My opponent laid down a swamp and tried to play a 2cc spell (I think it was merchant scroll), in response to which I explain what Thorn does. He says “Ok, so I would be able to play Ancestral Recall if I used both my lands, right?” I found the question weird, but just nodded, assuming it was an example. He then plays a second Recall (turns out he was running 3), leading to a judge call and a game loss for him.

Game 2: Deck now legal, my opponent plays a land and passes the turn. I have another turn one sphere effect, followed by two more sphere effects, and eventually Enforcer/Triskelion beatdown. I don’t think he played a spell that game.

1 – 0 Matches, 2 – 0 Games

Round 2: GAT

This round is pretty fuzzy, and with my only notes coming in the progression of life totals, they aren’t much help in remembering what happened. Let’s see…

Game 1: I have early sphere effects and a Mox Monkey to cripple any help he would have gotten from jewelry. I think this one was over pretty quick.

Game 2: I know this game took longer, and I know it ended when I hard cast a Sundering Titan to take 3 of his lands and clear his board, I just really don’t remember getting to that point. I will take better notes next time…

2 – 0 Matches, 4 – 0 Games

Round 3: Gush Tendrils

Game 1: There was a lot of back and forth with me playing things and them getting countered. I think I managed to get one sphere to stick and a Crucible, but not really any lands to make it too broken. He then tinkers out the big guy and I’m pretty much ready to scoop it up and go to game 2, but I top deck a welder and he did not have an answer. I take 11 to the face, but weld the beats away and build up the lock before he can recover.

Game 2: I make a terrible play mistake that involves not cutting off gush when I had the chance to do so, which lead to my opponent going broken and tendrilsing me to death fairly quickly.

Game 3: Another fuzzy game. I’m pretty sure I got enough spheres down early on to nullify the threat of another tendrils death. I know I got down to 1 life and there was very nearly a tragic Empty the Warrens till we realized that he was one mana short of casting it thanks to thorn. I do remember there was an incident with hurykl’s recall and rack and ruin that also spelled trouble, but in the end, Smokestack and Myr beats won me the day.

3 – 0 Matches, 6 – 1 Games

Round 4: Staxless Stax

I get paired down. The round earlier, I mentioned to my opponent that I was pleased with all of the Shop decks present, as I had never lost a match up against one. Well, you know what they say about karma…

Game 1: There was a whole hell of a lot of sphere effects on the table, anywhere from 2-5 pretty much the entire game. I smokestacked us both to nothing and came out swinging with a mox monkey, beat him down to 1, but then he drew into answers and lock pieces and I drew no further.

Game 2: A lot like game 1. Lots of spheres, a smokestack reset which, though I planned better for it by holding back resources, my shop got wasted and I never hit another mana source that was big enough to get me out from under his spheres.

3 – 1 Matches, 6 – 3 Games

I am determined to win round 5. I have never made a top 8 at this point, and winning round 4 means that I can almost certainly draw in. I’m not too happy when I find out my pairing…

Round 5: Goblins

This is a match up that I do not like. I appreciate the lack of counter spells, but find the multitude of cheap, efficient creatures to be offensive to the guiding principles of my deck.

Game 1: I lose the die roll and rather quickly the game. Lackey and piledrivers early on pretty much send me packing. Drawing thorns against goblins is not really optimal...

Game 2: I boarded out the thorns and brought in Chalice and Orbs. I get blockers on the table and never let a lackey through. I get enforcers and down and tinker out a triskelion. Victory is shortly thereafter mine.

Game 3: A lot like game 2 but I also got down a chalice for 1 pretty early on. This game was pretty one sided, and was over pretty fast in my favor.

4 – 1 Matches, 8 – 4 Games

Round 6: Goblins

I fortunately was not paired down again and so I was able to ID into top 8.


There was much discussion of a top 8 split, but one person wanted to play it out.


Top 8: Goblins

So I end up playing against the same guy who I IDed with in round 6, yet another goblins match up…

Game 1: I win the die roll for the first time all day. I drop a turn 1 Karn and he blocks the goblin baddies all day long. I get an Enforcer down to take care of business. Sweet, I out aggroed Goblins.

Game 2: It’s just a mess. Warchief and lackey really early on lead to multiple pile drivers coming at me faster than I can handle. I get Karn down again and hold on for a while, but he got gempalmed and I went down soon after.

Game 3: I go broken turn one. I kept a hand that had no land because it had lotus and ancestral, figuring I would draw into something with that. Little did I realize I would draw into a land, a mox, and tinker. I drop the mox, tap/sac it, and use the 2 remaining blue from lotus to tinker. I was torn between triskelion and Sundering titan, but decide to go all out and pull titan. He gets in a few times before my opponent starts to chump with lackeys. He almost recovers by getting guys out faster than I can kill them, but I top deck triskelion and get an active welder to help me kill things off.

Top 4: ELD with GAT

I was both looking forward to and dreading this match up all day. Last time I had played against ELD I managed to win, but this was years back when Trinisphere was a 4 of and Gush was still restricted. This match was an entirely different story with the tables turned…

Game 1: I was really happy with my opening hand, which had a Shop, mox ruby, welder, shaman, a thorn, and some other stuff. ELD plays a land, ponders, and passes the turn. I play shop and thorn, assuming it will be countered. It was. I smiled and dropped the ruby and played welder, figuring that I will on my next turn, play the monkey, play the tanglewire I just drew, and weld the mox out for the thorn, and pretty much claim game 1. ELD ruined these plans by never giving me a turn 2. He goes broken and plays fastbond and proceeds to gush 6 times that turn, time walk, and tog me to death.

Game 2: I’m looking for a hand with double sphere and a way to play both. I figure my only shot is to get solid disruption down on my first turn before he got a chance to roll me again. I mulled to 4 before a saw a mana source. I was able to hold on for a little while, chump blocking dryads and goyfs, but it was still over pretty fast.


In the end, I felt no sadness over losing to ELD. It was only the 5th Mox sized event I have been to in my magic career, and my first top 8, so I was pretty happy to end up pulling third out of that. I have some ideas for changes that I am going to make to the deck for the next Myriad in December, so hopefully I will have the upper hand next time around.

It was a great event. This was my first time at a Myriad and I had a great time. Thanks Dan! See you next month.

Keith

Hello everyone, my name is Keith and I am another New England area vintage player. I have a few posts up on the forums, and I have been lurking around for quite a while, but never actually threw up an intro post.

I started playing around the time when 4th Edition came out, only very casually at the time. A few years later I moved to Rhode Island and ended up going to school with Brassman, Nefarious, and a few other lesser known Vintage regulars who got me into playing more seriously.

Since I was first introduced to the concept of Welder MUD a good few years ago, Shop decks are the only thing I have played in a competitive sense. I have only been to a handful of events and have yet to make a top 8, but I always just miss.

I recently moved to a much more central location for New England Vintage (Salem, MA), which though it has no apparent vintage scene of its own, is within an hour of Myriad, ELD, and various other events, so I hope to be making an appearance soon.

I would try to find a way to work sphere of resistance into the main deck. It is a great way to buy time against flash and anything that tries to combo out with storm, and if GAT does make a comeback it is one of the best tools stax has to combat it.

I'm not saying that anything was necessarily better, just that the deck was already more than able to handle Gush + Fastbond without it. I feel like the effect of orb would probably be more trouble than it was worth with stasis in the picture; dropping it before or after playing a stasis will slow you down much more than dropping a sphere of resistance, and sphere is going to hurt the opponent more because thats one more tapped permenant for every spell they want to cast, not just for every permenant they play.

I could see it as being a potentially useful tool in a workshop deck, but certainly not necessary to counteract Fastbond + Gush brokenness. The earliest forms of Stax were made primarilly to beat GAT back before Gush was restricted in the first place, so saying that a card that was not even around then is now going to be necessary in the deck probably is not true.

Breaking a stasis lock becomes much, much more unlikely if there is a Sphere of Resistance/Trinisphere in play. For that reason more than any other, I think stasis could see play in some sort of stax deck that could easilly power out one of those artifacts turn 1. The normal lock pieces slow the opponent down in exactly the same way in a traditional workshop deck, adding in stasis just gives you another spell to cast that your opponent scoops to.

I have been toying with the idea of making a Workshop prison deck that uses stasis as yet another lock piece. I have a tentative list that is still undergoing major changes, but basically it looks like this:

Creatures

4 Chronotog

Lock Pieces

4 Stasis
4 Tangle wire
4 Smokestack
4 Sphere of Resistance
1 Trinisphere

Other

4 Gush
4 Black Vise
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Tinker
1 Tinker Target (Karn, Sundering Titan, etc)

Mana Sources

5 Moxen
1 Black lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
4 Mishra's Workshop
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
9 Island


Now some reasons behind these choices so far.

First, I went mono-blue for a few reasons. Since just about everyone has 7+ graveyard hate sideboard slots, I figured that running a Welderless list makes sense. This cuts down my dependence on a frail guy that needs to survive a turn to be useful, and at the same time, probably makes my opponent board completely incorrectly for game 2.Running only one color also lets me bulk up on the amount of islands I can run to support Gush.

Normally, dropping a Chalice for 2 is one of my favorite things to do with a workshop deck. Unfortunately, considering that Stasis, Chronatog, and Sphere are all 2 drops, this did not really seem like a viable option for the deck. I could still see running them to drop at 0 and 1, but right now, I don't have them in the list.

Crucible did not make this initial list for the same reason as Welder, in an effort to make the deck as graveyard independent as possible. I could see running this though, since I have the 5 strip effects in the deck.

I have not done any testing with this list yet, so I'm not sure how well Gush will play in it. Anytime I get a chance to draw a few extra cards in a workshop deck, I try to take it, and since gush pairs well with stasis, I figured I would give it a try. I am considering running Meditate in place of/in addition to Gush also.

It would be nice to run some counters, particular force/misdirection since I am running a higher concentration of blue cards than I normally would in a workshop deck, but so far I have not been able to find a way to include them and all of the lock pieces I want to run.

Black Vise is probably overkill, but it works with the lock as well as with the alternate kill (getting out a tinker target, probably Karn). I also have not ruled out boarding into Workshop aggro, in which case dropping a first turn black vise or two would help the damage add up that much faster.

The deck might be a bit too mana heavy as I am not running as many high casting cost artifacts as most Workshop decks do, so I am considering cutting back in that area to possible add a few counters/crucibles.