Waterbury 7 :: The Jason Zheng Experience :: 4-3 Droppage

[Nantuko Rice]

10/22/05
Waterbury 7 Report

Waterbury, the only name that makes me bust out the magic cards. The place where the finest large scale type 1 tournaments are held. It’s been a while since I’ve touched a magic card because college started for me this year and I finally decided to seriously retire magic. But how can I pass up a Waterbury. I could use the boost in my greedy craving covetous ego, where I’m a semi-celebrity. I open my box, I look at my little invention, Wu Tang Fish… how fun it was to smash face with flying men and javelineers. Perhaps I could find that enjoyment again.

As the date slowly approaches, I get phone calls from my friends @ Team Dubya. They tell me not much has changed. Gifts, Tinker, and Yawg Will are still broken. Stax and Control Slaver are still out there. The top three decks are gifts, stax, and cs. Hopefully Wu Tang still has fight left in it.

The day of Waterbury, I leave my dorm room for home and get a good night’s sleep in my own bed. Pete from Team Dubya picks me up the next morning and we head off. He asks me what changes I’ve made. I haven’t made much, but he insists that I run Kataki, he will be the house against every deck.

I’m reluctant at first but eventually decide to run him. Usually the trend is, my teammates make really good obvious suggestions, I decline them, and then I win. This time their advice actually does me good, and I smile every time I see Kataki in my hand, but then I am disappointed because I either see him too late or can’t play him (explained later).

Round 1: Jason Zheng vs Bye
Yay for the good old boring bye. I get to watch my teammate Pete play against our buddy Travis (JuggernaughtGO who eventually wins). Pete gets the luck shaft and can’t win the game, while Travis yells out MARCH OF THE MACHINES! Pete is generous and gives me half his cookie. It was really good.
Then I win a door prize. Woohoo, Waterbury loves me.

Round 2: Mike with Storm Combo
Game 1: We both mulligan and I get some men out. I try to resolve standstill. He ancestrals, I misdirect, standstill resolves, he breaks it for mystical tutor. He has tolarian and he tries to resolve some moxes which I force. He dies to beats.
Game 2: Single Meddling Mage beats for the win. Counterspelling brainstorm and stifling fetches is vicious.

Round 3: Eli with Gifts (feature match)
OMFG. I get more cookies. They’re so good.
Game 1: I have flying men and meddling mage naming brainstorm. They beat.
Game 2: On my upkeep he ancestrals and then I draw misdirect. Perfect timing! </sarcasm> I try to resolve Kataki, but he forces, and I misdirect, but he forces again. He gifts and I have to give him drain/force instead of reb/pyroclasm. He then plays EE for 2 and my mage smiles because he turns into a ninja. Eli again gifts and again I have to give him force/drain over reb/pyroclasm. Hopefully ninja goes the distance. But Eli has a reb and a handful of 4 drains, 2 forces by now.
Game 3: I have it all planned out perfectly until the crowd points out the illegal play. Eli has a mox, volcanic, and island. I have a flying man just turned ninja. I go to waste his volcanic, hoping he’ll tap it for red to reb my ninja and he does! I’m thrilled because he doesn’t have UU for drain, so I misdirect it, which he responds with gush. Then the crowd murmur’s and a judge makes his way over and we go back in time. Ninja gets the shit blasted out of him. I try to play standstill, he forces, I misdirect, he forces again. Jeeze! I have one card and one tundra untapped. He had one card in hand. He goes for Yawg Will… which walks right into Orim’s Chant! The crowd goes wild. I laugh but he just flashbacks recoup for tinker and I die to a giant colololololossus.

Round 4 – Patrick with Stax
Game 1: I daze welder, then he lays two more. I play standstill because he has no artifacts in play to weld and he lets me draw cards, but I lose as he locks me out of the game because I can’t put up a threat.
Game 2: He has me under crucible/waste lock but one island and one mox pearl summons a slew of flying men, mages, and javelineers.
Game 3: I haven’t seen a single counterspell since my daze from game 1. Patrick gets sphere out and I can’t draw the land to play Kataki. Dual Kataki and Flux sit in my hand. Patrick locks me up and Karn beats me to a bloody pulp.

Round 5 – Patrick with Rector-Oath
Game 1: I play null rod and weenies that beat.
Game 2: Oath -> Colossus.
Game 3: He mulls to 3 and I have my best hand of the day. Why couldn’t I have a decent hand when it mattered?

Round 6 – Matt (UG Vial Fish)
Game 1: We play a game of attrition, wasting, stifling, and stripping. He gets ninja, I get ninja. We have a Mexican standoff but flying men slowly eat his life. Finally, blitzkrieg!
Game 2: He gets jittw down but has no men, 2 lands, and 1 mishra. As long as he doesn’t get a 4th land I should be fine, but all I have is mage. We each swing every turn and eventually he gets more land but I have more men. At some point he gets 2 counters on jitte but it doesn’t matter at that point. I was at 3 life. It was close.

Round 7: Carl Winter with Gifts – Feature Match
This is the 3rd time today I’ve gotten cookies! Carl wins this match but I got the real prize, the cookies!!!
Game 1: I mulligan and refuse to mulligan further. I have to draw into a blue source. I start the game with mox pearl, javelineer. Two more javelineers follow. They all beat. He had crypt out for 3 turns but only got hit by it once. At the end of this game he is at 3 life while colossus beats the tar out of me and my javelineers.
Game 2: At some point in the game I lose a very crucial counter war because I have 2 forces, 1 misdirect, and one land in my hand.

Deck List:
Standard decklist.

Slight changes?
-Swords
+Echoing Truth
Swords is good against tinker creatures, oath, and other fish.
Bounce is good against tinker creatures, oath, and somewhat stax.
Bounce can also get REBed.
Big mistake switching swords for bounce. Although it doesn’t really matter cuz I saw neither all day.
Other considerations?
The misdirect and stifle slots are always up for change, although stifle and misdirection are probably the best choices. I toyed around with Extract and Pithing Needle.

My day was very fun but I got too tired and dropped since my teammates were leaving. It was still nice meeting up with the type 1 crowd again, but I’ve been out of the game for too long. I also knew that the luck gods were not on my side today because you see, there’s a correlation between my success in magic tournaments and my progress in getting laid. So next time I win a tournament, you’ll know how my social life is going. J

Plus, the same trouble cards (when I say cards, I really mean card, and when I say card, I really just mean tinker) that exist still bother me. I haven’t gotten a chance to look at Ravnica but hopefully something changes in type 1 to make it more fun again. All the “fun� but playable decks have disappeared in the face of efficient diabolical machines such as gifts and control slaver.

I refuse to conform and play such decks.

“That’s like rooting for the Yankees.�

Uber Props:
MYRIAD GAMES FOR BRNGING AWSOME C00KIES!!!!eleventy-one!!!11``
(that deserved all caps, grammatical errors, and excessive exclamatory points)

PS: Travis, I’ll see you in the Waterbury Tournament of Champions!

[Komatteru]

Your list is missing.

[moxpearl]

Game 3: I have it all planned out perfectly until the crowd points out the illegal play. Eli has a mox, volcanic, and island. I have a flying man just turned ninja. I go to waste his volcanic, hoping he’ll tap it for red to reb my ninja and he does! I’m thrilled because he doesn’t have UU for drain, so I misdirect it, which he responds with gush. Then the crowd murmur’s and a judge makes his way over and we go back in time. Ninja gets the shit blasted out of him. I try to play standstill, he forces, I misdirect, he forces again. Jeeze! I have one card and one tundra untapped. He had one card in hand. He goes for Yawg Will… which walks right into Orim’s Chant! The crowd goes wild. I laugh but he just flashbacks recoup for tinker and I die to a giant colololololossus.

Sorry, but what's the illegal play?  I presume you were misdirecting the REB to your misdirection, which seems legal.

[Jacob Orlove]

Game 3: I have it all planned out perfectly until the crowd points out the illegal play. Eli has a mox, volcanic, and island. I have a flying man just turned ninja. I go to waste his volcanic, hoping he’ll tap it for red to reb my ninja and he does! I’m thrilled because he doesn’t have UU for drain, so I misdirect it, which he responds with gush. Then the crowd murmur’s and a judge makes his way over and we go back in time. Ninja gets the shit blasted out of him. I try to play standstill, he forces, I misdirect, he forces again. Jeeze! I have one card and one tundra untapped. He had one card in hand. He goes for Yawg Will… which walks right into Orim’s Chant! The crowd goes wild. I laugh but he just flashbacks recoup for tinker and I die to a giant colololololossus.

Sorry, but what's the illegal play?  I presume you were misdirecting the REB to your misdirection, which seems legal.

REB is modal, so when Eli cast it targeting the Ninja, he chose "destroy target blue permanent". That's now all that REB can do. In order to Misdirect it, you'd need a second blue permanent just lying around. This is basically the only reason why REB is better than Pyroblast (which, though also modal, can be Misdirected to any permanent). Pyroblast can up the storm count, though, and get put in a gifts pile, so it sees some play.

[Myriad Games]

Thanks for the tournament report, Jason.

You're welcome for the cookies. I'll pass on the gratitude to Sara, Maker of Divine and Awesome-Looking Baked Goods. We'll be featuring these cookies at our upcoming November 12th Vintage tournament and at most future tournaments from now on. We may even bring them to the next Waterbury if we can attend.

Plus, the same trouble cards (when I say cards, I really mean card, and when I say card, I really just mean tinker) that exist still bother me. I haven’t gotten a chance to look at Ravnica but hopefully something changes in type 1 to make it more fun again. All the “fun� but playable decks have disappeared in the face of efficient diabolical machines such as gifts and control slaver.

I refuse to conform and play such decks.

I concur, which is why I created and have been developing The Mountains Win Again. It's so much more fun to actually interact with an opponent and play Magic rather than play two separate solitaire games racing to brokenness. That's the goal and the challenge: to be competitive with (and in some cases run circles around) the top decks, all while playing with ridiculously fun cards...like Mount Fuji 

So thanks again for coming out to visit the Vintage community and we're glad you enjoyed the cookies!