Their prizes were really good. Best I've seen, there were only 26 players but they gave prizes to the entire top 8. Including duals to 8-3 I think.


Game one against Dan he played a turn 1 oath, and I played a turn 1 smokestack... it's like we were both pritty lucky... but the force was stronger in his...

Well, if you're looking for the winner's report, you' aren't going to find it here. Heck I didn't even top 8, but I played.

Round 1

team GWS guy playing IT

Game 1 (lose the roll)
 
He starts out kinda slow, turn 1 land and a mox and nothing else. I think I played a Sphere of Resistance. He plays and Brainstorm and then on his turn he plays a Lotus Petal and then another land. Then I play a Tangle Wire. A few turns go by with little action I play Tangle Wire #2 in here somewhere, eventually he play a Mystical Tutor for Hurkls Recall, but doesn't play it on his upkeep. Then I play Sphere of Resistance #2. A turn or two go by with little action, then while he is tapped out from Tangle Wire I play Sphere of Resistance #3 while he still only the Lotus Petal, Mox, and 2 land.  A few more turns to by, and I get a Crucible Wasteland going, and a turn or two more and I play Karn and he scoops.

Game 2

This game was even worse for him, he mulligains. I play a Smokestack on turn 1 and it starts killin' things. I think he makes it to 0 permanents and then I play another lock piece and he scoops.

Round 2

Dan Carp

Game 1 (I lose the roll)

He leads with turn 1 Oath giving me a token. I lead with turn 1 Smokestack. He starts beating me, I start ramping up Smokestack. I slow him down with a Tangle Wire. Eventually I'm at 5 and he has no permanents. Smokestack then goes away, and he play another 'turn 1 Oath' and I can't do anything about it..APNAP is over rated.

Game 2

He mulligains to 4. I'm actually feelin' kinda bad at this point, I mean 4 cards, who can win with 4 cards? I guess it can happen in Vintage... I play a Ancestral Recall on turn 1, play some mana artifacts and pass. He plays an Oath off a Mox and a Forbidden Orchard. *blink* then I play a Smokestack and he Force of Wills pitching Mystical Tutor. *blink* Where do I sign up to do stuff like this? Maybe I'm playing the wrong deck... This is really the game I wanted to complain about... maybe I was on tilt and thus didn't top 8 because of it...

Round 3

Playing against 5c Stax, yuck.

Game 1

I double mulligain.... *sigh* I lead with a whole bunch of nothing, and he plays good stuff. He eventually gets a Smokestack, and another Smokestack to clear my board of nothing, and that's all she wrote. The game felt a lot closer than that, because I did play somestuff, but I was really just playing catchup all game.

Game 2

I play some stuff, and he plays some stuff. We have a little Goblin Welder war with both of us trying to play him, and then trying to kill the other.. He eventually wins, gets Smokestack going... and I'm dead eventually. I did screw up once that I know of, I play an Imerial Seal in this game and don't really know what to get, I think I got a land but it just got Wasted.

Round 4

Modified Extended Ichorid (with Watery Graves...)

Game 1

Well I know what this guy is playing, and Ichorid isn't exactly a favorable matchup... I mulligain twice because my hand did nothing agianst Ichorid, and Sundering Titan loves to be in my opening hand.... I think I'm going to put Black Lotus in that sleeve.  I do some stuff that doesn't matter and he gets an Ashen Ghoul online, and I do nothing about it... game over.

Game 2

I get an early Smokestack and Tangle wire, but take some Ichorid beats... APNAP sucks! I eventually clear his board, RFG is grave and that seals the deal.

Game 3

This one is a little closer, I RFG his grave a few times, play a Smokestack somewhere, play a Choke to slow him down... I get down to 4 between beats and my lands, but I eventually stabilize with lots of permantents and him with none, he then concedes once he has no hand, graveyard, and board.

Round 5

Team GWS playing fish maybe? or u/r/w aggro?
Pair up, how lucky. He doesn't even ask to concede. But I can't since I have a friend that will have 10 points.

Game 1

He plays a Gorilla Shaman I play a Sphere of Resistance, he beats and Ninjitsus... He gets some card drawing in, I eventually stall with a Tangle Wire. Then get Crucible Strip going and lock up the game.

Game 2

Very similar to game 1. I get a Tangle Wire to stall, get a Crucible Wasteland or Strip Mine going, and lock up the game again.

Had I not won, he'd have made top 8, my friend would have not made top 8, and thus not have won. I placed 10th of 26 players.

I played Uba Stax on Day 1, and 5cStax on day 2.

Do share, I'm in the prossess of writing a report... but I don't see it being completed any time soon.

...Why not have this on Day 2, so anyone who scrubs out can play.

Jason playing 5c Stax.

I placed 7th on Day 2 playing Roland Stax as suggested by JD. It was slightly different from the list posted here, the only thing I can think of at the moment is in the board no Heritic or Fastbond and +2 Choke.

I managed to 5-0-2 and lost to Fisher in the first round of the top 8.

Nice tournament guys. Not the greatest showing, but there were other tournaments that could have pulled players elsewhere. Only suggestion is the cut to top 4 rather than top 8 for a small turnout.

Turn 1 Tangle Wire on the play does nothing. Where turn 1 Sphere of Resistance is huge, it delays mana artifacts, helps prevent counterspells, and there are many ways you can actually cast it on turn 1.

Even if you do play it, you wasted a turn in the life of the Tangle Wire, and they can still play Land, Mox or Lotus and have drain mana for your turn 2.

To get 3 mana on turn 1 with:
Shop
Lotus
Land, Crypt
Land, Mox, Mox
Land, Mox, Sol Ring
Land, Mox, Mana Vault

But there are very few times where I don't have 2 mana on turn 1.

The problem with that is, I'd have to write a lot... i'd rather just print out the card list and tape them to the pages...

efnet on irc has #themanadrain, #themanaleak (i think this is where to find games), #o-gaming (similar to magic league, except uses MWS), #mtgjudge, and a few others.

Download IRC
http://www.mirc.com/get.html

Download MWS
http://www.magicworkstation.com/downloads.php

Cost:    3 ManaBlack Mana
Card Type:    Creature — Horror
P/T:    3/1
Rules Text (Oracle):    Haste
At end of turn, sacrifice Ichorid.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if Ichorid is in your graveyard, you may remove a black creature card in your graveyard other than Ichorid from the game. If you do, return Ichorid to play.

Cost:    3 Mana
Card Type:    Artifact
P/T:    
Rules Text (Oracle):    Fading 4 (This artifact comes into play with four fade counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a fade counter from it. If you can’t, sacrifice it.)
At the beginning of each player’s upkeep, that player taps an untapped artifact, creature, or land he or she controls for each fade counter on Tangle Wire.

Actually, unless I'm missing something that is not a favorable situation because of APNAP. Active player's abilitiys go on the stack like Ichorid, then non-active players abilities go on the stack like Tangle Wire, then you resolve first in last out, so they will tap for tangle wire, then choose to remove doods for Ichorid.  So they may have tapped everything in play when the TW ability resolved, but they get to put into play hasted, untapped ichorids

Sounds like everyone likes this method of bringing in cards, but...

I can't think of an example in Vintage, but not too long ago in Standard there was a Tooth and Nail deck that ran a switch, where you brought in like 8 cards against Red Deck Wins. And if this was your usual method of sideboarding, and you ran it with this deck it was almost a dead give away that you would be running the switch.

I think I prefer the method of adding a few more than what you are really using.


Anyway, back to the question at hand. Those of you who said you like to have a versitile board with answers to strategys rather than decks do you know exactly what cards to take out against a strategy? For example if you are playing Ubastax and you are playing against TPS you know Duplicant isn't very good so it comes out. Do you have some type of list in your head or even on paper of what you want to take out?

How do you organize your cards?

Mine are currently organized by:

Rares:
Non Type 2 in one binder, Type 2 rares in one binder, I have Mirrodin block in a binder and Ravnica/Guildpact in a binder..

Then the commons/uncommons are in 5k boxes, most are sorted by color and common/uncommon. Mirrodin, Champions, and Ravnica blocks are sorted by set then color and rarity.

What my current plan is is to sort everything preferably by Set, then Rarity, then Color.  So I can have all the cards from Ravnica by Rarity, and then color. So when you open a binder, I have all the White Rares from Ravnica, then Blue Rares from Ravnica, ect... then White Uncommons from Ravnica, ect.. But the best way to make sure I have every card either with an empty spot for cards I don't have or to have some type of order is to alphabetize them, so I would need some type of print out. I've seen dealers with binders of printouts of their real binders, I'd like to do something like this, so I can take a 9 pocket page and have a card printout on backside of it, and then put cards in the front. Doing this I think may be difficult so I was hoping someone might have either a program, or a suggestion for a way to do this. It will ofcorse take quite some time, so paper and ink isn't really an issue, I intend to use a high volume lazer printer to print the pages of cards, I just gotta have cards to print.

Thanks,

So if you could lay a turn 1 smokestack you'd still play the turn 1 Welder?  What about Wasteland/Crucible? 

Given enough mana to play 1 thing lock what would you play? You could play Welder, or you could play Smokestack, or you could play Crucible?

I to found it informative. It would be nice to have plays that people have actualy done, and critique them. Preferably from large events in later rounds. And plays that are both successful and unsuccessful.

So when building your sideboard do you specifically look for cards that are going to be good in multiple matchups? Do you still pass up sideboard cards that are going to win you the game if they resolve in a certain matchup?

And you aquire this information from testing? So how is your testing done, do you have your dragon adept tell you what beats the deck, or do you have someone who can play most of the decks in the format play them all and then a group of you figure out what is the best answer?  As someone who played dragon, Pithing is good but it most definatly does not completly shut down Crypts.

So if you are playing Dragon for instance and you know your opponent can bring in: Ground Seal, StP, Ray of Rev, Tormods Crypt, ect... how do you determine what to have in your board for that hate? Any deck can run Crypts, so you should basicly always bring in Pithings with that reasoning. Then if you run Rays you can bring those in against Ground Seal see what I mean?

When you take a deck to a tournament do you know exactly what comes in and goes out for the top x decks?

Do you just copy a list and hope to figure out how the creator used the sideboard?

When metagaming, how do you figure how much 'hate' to bring in against a matchup?

When playtesting how often do you play with sideboards?

--- My answers


It would be best to know what exactly goes in and comes out. Granted there are some decks that are the same type of deck but are up to 10 cards off the regular list which can change how you would sideboard. I try to do this, but I've not yet perfected it as I just never have enough time to sit down and figure out what to board, and what to take out, and then to memorize it.

Generally when I netdeck, I copy card for card and try to figure out what the creator was thinking with maindeck choices and sideboard choices. But if I can't figure out what card x is in the deck for it will get cut for something that I know how to use.

If I expect a field of 50% of something then I can guess that half of my matches will likely be against this deck. But depending on the matchup depends on the sideboard. If I feel that I have a 70% win against a deck, and that I can board in x cards against it and take that up to 90% then I would rather use the slots for card x than have a 10% win against a deck and board card y against it to bring my win up to 20%.

It's been said before that 2/3 of your games are likely to be sideboarded, so that should mean that when playtesting 2/3 should be also. But when I'm playtesting it takes that much longer to get ready, and currenly I'm playing Ubastax so I'm still trying to learn the main inside and out, so I've only played a handful of games post board. But once I feel I'm playing the maindeck well, then I'll start playing with boards.

Anyone that is close to Terre Haute, IN or along the way (I'll be taking 70 a good part of the way there) interested in car pooling?

Someone suggested bumping this thread...

While the deck is choked full of broken things, if it is a 1 of you can only draw it a small percentage of the time. Why would you want something that looks like it would be inconsistent?

Well, he runs:

4 welders
4 dark confident
2+ withered wretch
2 shaman
2 phyrexian negator
1 dark blast
1 stp
1 naturalize
1 oxidize
1 ancestrial
1 vampiric
1 imperial
1 demonic
3-4 crucible
x jitte
x sword of fire and ice
5 moxen
1 lotus
1 sol ring
1 mana vault
1 mana crypt
4 wastelands
1 strip
3-4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
x Bayou
x Badlands


These numbers I know from playing against him last night. It's quite the pile, I'm not sure about all of the numbers but I think they're really close. I'm fairly sure his goal with the deck was to beat stax.... since thats what I was playing and it seemed to be successful, I probably went 4-6 against it last night. I ran out chalice for 1 asap, and a few times followed it up with chalice for 2 which usually sealed the deal. What would you classify that as? It doesn't look like something that would beat ubastax but it did.... granted I'm sure I'm not the best pilot, I'd like to think I'm pritty good. He did seem to get lucky by drawing his 1 ofs when he needed them, which is what the advantage of 5c is right?



EDIT:

Also, is Academy really necessary? I would think it can act as shop number 5, but unless you've got a mox heavy hand it isn't like shop number 5 on turn 1. Why not run another red source? Or something that you can be sure will add two mana like City of Traitors?

Has Glimmervoid been tried instead of City of Brass or Gemstone Mine? It seems most of the time it would be just as good as Gemstone since you've usually got moxen, or some other type of artifact, and it has potential to live longer.

I've got Vromam's build together now, and while playing a local guy who is running some type of 5c stax concoction I can't seem to gain a positive win percentage. All of his one of's are bombs, and they seem to trump everything I play.  Which seems like 5c stax while less consistent, it is more broken and I have to have win the roll and lock on turn one every game to have a chance. Any specific suggestions for a uba board to have for a 5c stax heavy meta?


What kind of hands can you keep and not keep?  Like is it ok to keep a wasteland/crucible hand with no other business? How about multiple welders and no locks? What about a few locks with only needing to draw 1 mana source? What about a broken hand with need of drawing a mox/shop?  Just a few of the hands I kept...and lost with.

I've found that when people take the time to even out the CCs in a deck it is a lot more balanced. If anyone that has done this has some type of formula that would be great to know. Also how big? 100? 200?

This starts tomorrow at 6pm.  We'll have 8 player booster drafts, Friday Night Magic and many other events running all weekend.

Would anyone care to go into not only their sideboard but how they sideboard with thier board.

What to take out for what you are putting in in a matchup?

What a SOB![/s]
This post was useless, and should have been a PM.
-Matt

Actually, it's a flame, and merits a warning and a link to the rules: http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=18027.0
-Jacob[/color]