Top 8 at College of Dupage

[wierdmtg13]

So I've been playing Vintage for about a year now.  I don't play any of the tier 1 decks yet because I am trying to improve mys kills before justifying spending loads of cash on a deck.  I was introduced to the format my a close friend and have fallen in love with the format.  It is by far my favorite format.  I run a deck that I built and have most of the cards for.  That was the primary restriction to which deck I would be playing.  This is my second top 8 with this deck, but there have been a few changes along the way for the ever shifting meta.

4 Dark Confidant
3 Aven Mindcensor
2 Dimir Cutpurse
2 Jotun Grunt
3 Kataki, War's Wage

1 Ancestral
1 Time Walk
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Darkblast
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Duress
4 Extirpate
3 Hide//Seek
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Black Lotus
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 mox Sapphire
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 City of Brass
2 Mishra's Factory
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scrubland
1 Strip Mine
2 Swamp
1 Underground Sea
3 Wasteland

The board was pretty worthless.  I hate some fish hate and Ichorid hate.  But the only relevant cards were 4 Honor the Fallen, 2 StP, and 1 Crypt.

I get to College of Dupage and meet up with some friends I hadn't seen in a while.  Acquire some cards for my deck and and hour after registration the tourney is underway.

Round 1: Brian with Slaver
His list didnt play drains and included mishra's workshops, ancient tombs, and like 8 artifact fatties like trikes, titans, karn, platinum, and DSC.
Game 1:  I duress and see Brainstorm, FOW, Trike, Gilded Lotus, Platinum Angel, and Chalice.  I take the BS.  I then proceed to waste his lands while riding kataki and Bob to the finish.
Game 2:  I extirpate his FOW, Seek 2 trikes, and ride mindcensor and kataki.
it was a really dull match.  neither of said much and he countered one of my spells.  I wished him luck and we moved on.
Board:  +2 StP +1 Crypt -2 Grunt -1 Jitte

2-0 1-0

Round 2: Newton with Ichorid.
I saw Newton playing my friend Peter the round before so i knew he was playing Ichorid.
Game 1:  He mulls to 3 finding a bazaar, imp, and wraith.  He goes off on turn 2 beating me with a zealot, 6 tokens, and a troll.
Game 2:  Opening hand of 2 Honor the Fallen, 2 extirpate, kataki, 2 mishra's factory.  So i mull all the way down to 4 seeing an honor the fallen, but never get the second mana source to cast it.  he rapes me again on turn 3.  it was clearly his first time playing the deck. He made the mistake of trying to attack with 2 ichorids during his upkeep after bazaaring.  After i told him he had a draw phase still he dredged into the nuts and he had 12 tokens and 1 card left in his library as he smashed my face for a million.
Board: +4 Honor the Fallen, +2 Stp, +1 Crypt -4 Duress, -3 Cabal Therapy.
We played a game three for fun.  I went waste on bazaar.  Followed by extirpate on bazaar and waste on his city of brass.  next turn i extirpated his bridges.  He conceded since it was just for fun and we took our lunch break.

0-2 1-1

Round 3: Danny w/ Slaver
Danny's a cool guy and we chatted a lot while playing and shuffling up.
Game 1:  I win the roll and lead with pear, sapphire, time walk.  Followed up by cutpurse.  He is unable to recover as seek out his DSC and ram out a Bob to increase the insane card advantage.
Game 2: I jam out Bob turn 1 as he tapped out for BS on turn 1.  He sits back and counters everything else I play but the card advantage from Bob was too much from his as I duress amd therapy away his hand, all while seeking out his win conditions.
Board: +2 Stp, +1 Crypt, -1 jitte, -2 Grunt
He was a really good sport about get beaten.  It wasnt even close but his take on the games made it fun for both of us.  After the games were over we sat and watched the match next to us.  It was ichorid vs. pitch long.  Danny joked how neither deck really interacted witht the other and was wondering why we got done before them.  Then we saw the Ichorid player mull to 2.  Getting the absolute NUTS in game 3.  He got troll and Bazaar.  bazaar's into troll and imp.  goes off on turn 3.  How insanely lucky.  he is the definition of luck sack.  i guess that deck just gets there.

2-0 2-1

Round 4: Manuel w/ Hulk Flash, Hulk Smash
Game 1:  He mulls and I duress seeing DT, Hulk, Merchant Scroll, and FOW.  I waste his lone tropical island. later i extirpate his FOW as he fails to draw into mana sources.  I ride kataki, Bob, and cutpurse all the way.
the game ends by him calling a judge to make sure i marked my lotus as a proxy on my registration sheet.  its one of those printed on a card but is actually fake.  i bought it for $10.  he concedes after trying to give me a game loss for misregistering.
Game 2:  I duress snagging a ancestral.  i tear his hand apart via duresses and therapies.  My guys jsut dont get it done in time as he brainstorms into hulk and flash.  he jams out heart sliver, winged sliver, and 2 virvulent slivers.  I stp a virvulent and get smashed by the rest.  dieing to poison counters.
Game 3:  i duress, waste, strip, like a mad man.  He is clearly frustrated at this point.  i proceed to extirpate flash, force, seek out 2 virvulents.  At one point he had 3 outs in his deck. a trop, and emerald, and a lotus to hard cast the hulk in his hand.  I seeked out the lotus and extirpated the trops leaving him with just the emerald to draw in his 25 card library to hard cast hulk to steal the game.  Luckily i drew into more dorks after 2 massacres and eeked it out.
Board: +2 stp, -2 grunt

2-1 3-1

Round 5: Peter with Bomberman
Game 1: By the end of my turn 2 he was left with 1 land on board and 1 land in hand.  he pitched 1 force of will to counter my duress, but then i extirpated it seeing his hand and ripping it apart via therapy and flashing it back w/ mishra's factory.  I ram out Bob and kataki and he tops in trinket and explosives.  he also played out chalice at 1.  he had a spell bomb on board at this point.  he makes an odd play.  He bounces my Bob and explodes for 2 killing kataki.  i sword the trinket and replay Bob and explode at zero getting a 4 for 1.  bob goes the distance.
Game 2:  another long game of trading 1 for 1 with 2 powered dorks. he gets the spellbomb salvagers combo going.  but i rip stp like a mad man to stop that shinanigans.  in top deck mode for both of us he jams out mindcensor eot.  i was holding darkblast for quite some time.  i play it.  he bounces via spellbomb.  then a series of him replaying mindcensor and me dredging takes place for 5 turns as he continually has bounce or a counterspell.  it takes us to time.  and we are unable to finish in turns.

1-0 4-1

Round 5:  Ben Carp with Oath
We ID but play 3 games for fun.  game 1 he gets out 2 angels and rapes.  game 2 i get 4 strip effect and crush.  Game 3 he draws into life from the loam.  i get a bob, a kataki, 2 cutpurse and some spirirts on board.  he gets out akroma and i seeked out razia.  we start smashing at each other.  at one point i go to seek and we discuss wut to get.  im thinking FOW b/c i have Bob out and and it doesnt put my out of akroma smashing in 2 turns anyways but he suggests blessing b/c its more relevant.  so i get blessing.  when im at 1 i reveal stp and die.  so if i wouldve got FOW i wouldve won but irrelevant.

i make top 8 and am paired against Ben.
game 1: he discard akroma after ancestral so i extirpate it.  then untap and seek his razia.  game was over quickly after that.
Game 2: he sets chalice at 1 and gets an oath on board.  i scramble to get an explosives but dont find it and die to SSS beat down.
Game 3: i open with city of brass, lotus, katkai, cutpurse, serenity, sword, sword.  i go for the turn 1 cutpurse hoping he doesnt have force.  he ends up forcing my lotus. he gets loam engine going then jams out trinisphere.  i never see a third land.  he gets strip and mishra's factory out.  so i concede.

1-2 4-2-1

i walked away with a tundra and respect from a lot of people who thought my deck was shitty. I agree it isnt that great but it fits this environment well and i had a lot of good match ups.

Props:
-TK and Peter for borrowing me cards
-Damien for putting up a good tourney
-Ben for getting 2nd
-I@n for getting top 8

Slops:
-the 2 choaders who said they were gonna drive in from madison and pick me up on the way to the tourney that canceled on me the night before the tournament

[Grand Inquisitor]

he jams out heart sliver, winged sliver, and 2 virvulent slivers.  I stp a virvulent and get smashed by the rest.  dieing to poison counters

If you had stp'd the winged sliver it looks like he'd only get off 6 poison counters on the first swing (assuming your guys were tapped).  Did you have at least two guys for the next turn to take out the two virulents?

Also, the round 1 deck was a workshop slaver variant which plays much differently than drain based slaver.  I thought they were pretty much extinct.

You seemed to get a lot of mileage out of extirpate.  Was it ever dead weight?

[wierdmtg13]

against flash i didnt have nay guys out after he flashed in the hulk and got the sliver package.

extirpate was always really good because at the least id was able to rfg FOW so against most decks allowing me to attack their hands and win conditions unhindered.

i still fear my worst match-up is fish and am constantly searching for ways to improve the match-up.  everything i try looks ok on paper but then fizzles in play.  any suggestions for the board against fish?

[bebe]

My tech for Fish was always Massacre in the side. Just so long as you do not overextend this works out quite well.

[salthecarp]

Congratulations on your strong finish.  I was the guy playing Bomberman whose dreams you crushed with a timely Swords to Plowshares.  Playing against your deck made me realize that our friendly neighborhood Bird Wizard from the Future helps tons against extirpate and hide // seek.  I was expecting an easy game when I saw City of Brass game 1, but by about halfway through the game I was pretty sure this deck was a legitimate contender.  It certainly helped you that I was expecting the City to be shooting out Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast left and right.  Drinking malt liquor instead of playtesting is also a bad idea.  Then again, given my match against Phil's URBana fish I feel justified in being a little paranoid about those 1-mana red counterspells.  Maybe it's my inexperience talking but I feel what makes your deck a contender is that it attacks many fronts and makes the opponent try and play around the disruption.
Congratulations and good luck in the futue,
Peter Ambrose