|
voltron00x
|
 |
« on: January 28, 2012, 06:16:49 pm » |
|
I hope Seth Zulinski doesn't mind me posting this here. I thought this was a great top 8 Vintage report from December's Blue Bell, and wanted to put it on TMD. If this is a repost, then my apologies... if it isn't, then Seth (or friend of Seth), please post these on TMD! You're a great writer and we eat this stuff up!
Original link: http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/28743561/?pg=last
It's been awhile since I've been around these parts, and even longer since I've done an AM write-up. A few things have changed, including my first ever Top 8 (with a Drain list found here in the 3rd place slot). My local meta is the Blue Bell events, which means I'm consistently up against or around some of the bigger names in Type 1 on the East Coast including several Vintage World champions
"But, Seth, what does that mean? Does that mean you're totally awesome now and chicks dig you? Are you a ringer, whatever that means? Does it mean you get a complimentary sports car and cool sunglasses?"
No. No it doesn't. Though some parts of that statement are probably true, as far as any of you can tell. What it does mean, two appearances in, is that I've had to learn a lot (and judging by my lack of a first place finish as of yet, I still have to learn a lot more). Since AM is all about giving an inside view to tournaments and ideas for newer players, I wanted to share some of that with anyone looking for it.
But first, a decklist! Because we love those.
Worldslayer ANT -T1 Combo
Creatures - 0!
Spells - 49
1 x Demonic Tutor
1 x Vampiric Tutor
1 x Mystical Tutor
1 x Imperial Seal
1 x Demonic Consultation
1 x Yawgmoth's Will
1 x Ancestral Recall
1 x Brainstorm
1 x Ponder
1 x Necropotence
1 x Mana Vault
1 x Mana Crypt
1 x Sol Ring
1 x Black Lotus
1 x Mox Sapphire
1 x Mox Jet
1 x Lotus Petal
4 x Tendrils of Agony
4 x Ad Nauseum
4 x Pact of Negation
4 x Duress
4 x Chain of Vapor
4 x Dark Ritual
4 x Cabal Ritual
4 x Chrome Mox
Lands - 11
2 x Island
2 x Swamp
3 x Polluted Delta
4 x Underground Sea
SB - 15
2 x Tormod's Crypt
2 x Slaughter Pact
3 x Hurkyll's Recall
4 x Dark Confidant
4 x Steel Sabotage
First, some notes on this 75 and Dark Rituals in general -
1) I honestly hate Necropotence in this deck - and I *love* me some Necropotence, to the point where I was working on a binder of foil ones preFtV. You can't protect it with Pact, it wins a turn after you cast it at best, and is generally unimpressive in comparison to the rest of the deck. After the tournament, I realized that I was playing 59 cards of an Ad Nauseum deck or a 13 or so card Necropotence deck. It's to the point where I'm removing this entirely and I won't even feel bad.
2) The truth is, I'm not sure I'd ever recommend someone else play this deck. Not this list, exactly, but the deck itself. Maybe even the Dark Ritual pillar. By all counts ANT is a vicious killing machine sent back from the future to destroy mankind, but the truth is it misses out on the best part of fast combo in Vintage. If you're playing Legacy Tendrils, it's because you want to play the most brutal, broken thing you can. If control decks shut you down in Legacy, that's annoying but not always so bad as they usually take several turns after that to kill you or completely shut you out of the game.
Not in Vintage.
It's true, I regularly ended the game on Turn 1 or 2 (I was probably playing a bit more "go for the throat" than was strictly necessary or even safe, but that was a promise I made to myself the morning of), but when the decks packing Spell Pierce, Mental Misstep, Force of Will, Mana Drain, Flusterstorm, etc... are usually only a turn or two behind you unmolested (which, aside from Duress they usually are) the "glass cannon" combo approach loses a lot of appeal.
That said, I'm probably going to stick with ANT until Wizards gives me something else ridiculous to play with. Why? You'll see later in the report.
3) If, for whatever reason you DO decide to take this to a tournament, the Confidants in the board are terrible. Supposedly my go-to "anti-blue" card, I never wanted to side them in against any of my opponents, blue or otherwise. These could be almost anything else, ranging from Silence/Orim's chant, to additional discard, to...well nearly anything. I managed to dodge STAX literally all day (there were around 2 or 3 in the whole room of 44), so the 7 bounce never came up, but I maintain that they're the best 7 I can come up with for the matchup. Steel Sabotage is nuts, and you essentially play like the old TPS vs. STAX matchup - counter or bounce everything they play, give yourself a window, kill them in the window. It's a lot easier when your "window" can be as early as turn 1-2. Slaughter Pact was there for Fish, but wound up being boarded in for Oath (as now you have 2 different colored answers for Iona and generally 6 ways to deal with Non-Blightsteel, non-Giant Jellyfish God Oath targets)
What? You don't want to hear about that? Deck Tech is boring? Murdering hapless opponents with black tendrils made of pain, suffering, and hurty things is probably more your style, right?
Kids today. All gore and action. Whatever happened to suspense...
Alarming Mediocrity - A Tournament Report by Worldslayer
It's a half hour before the tournament starts. My decklist is ready, my sleeves are good. It's about to be all in the cards. Am I relaxing, knowing I'm going to win? The top 8 is a lock, that Ancestral is mine? No. Going in KNOWING you're going to win is a good way to play sloppy, get blown out, and cry in a corner later that night with all the lights turned out while Hawthorne Heights plays on repeat . I came in knowing I CAN win. So I took a moment, looked at myself in a mirror, and told myself how and why.
"You're vicious. Your deck is vicious. Most of their cards don't matter, and they don't always have the ones that do. Most of this room is irrelevant. Play tight, play hard. Go for the throat. If they have it, they have it. Usually they don't."
It's awkward. You kind of feel like a tool when you do it, and you feel a little silly sitting in a card-shop bathroom talking to yourself at 11:30 AM.If anyone saw you, they'd probably assume someone forgot to take their brightly colored "happy pills" today. You know what, though? It put me in the right frame of mind. I AM good. My deck IS vicious. Today, I am the embodiment of everything people think they hate about this format. I am the most broken. I am the fastest. Magic is a deep, complex game and if they trip up ONCE, anywhere from their deck choice to what hands they keep, I will kill them. Truth is, I will probably kill them anyway.
And yes, in case you were wondering, Survivor's Eye of the Tiger was playing in my head the whole time.
Lesson 1) It sounds corny, but get psyched. Get relaxed. Focus. Know what you want to do. If you're just there to play, then play. If you're there to win, tell yourself how. If you're on combo, know why your combo is good. If you're on control, like landstill, tell yourself why THAT's good (I will grind them down to nothing. I am a brick wall. I am the ultimate "No". I am the gate they will never pass through. This is my house. Michael goddamn Jordan couldn't get passed me, etc..) If you're just drawing hands and playing cards without a gameplan, and you're opponent isn't, you're probably in bad shape.
Round 1 - Ryan playing ELVES!
I know what you're thinking. Truth is, I'm running a glass cannon in a blue field that's built to beat me, and even I think this guy's got balls of steel.
Game 1 - He plays Misty Rainforest (ooo, a shiny one!) and a Black Lotus. Already about a dozen thoughts run through my head.
"Misty Rainforest is U/G. Gush deck, Oath deck. Could be an off-color fetch to dodge Needle."
He cracks it for basic forest. Like, the kind that doesn't produce blue. Now I'm really puzzled.
"Demon-scarred Oath usually has a basic Forest in the board for Wasteland matchups. Is he on that, with a build against Wasteland? Does he think I'M on wasteland?"
And the little green men follow. Three or four, I believe. But with that, he ships his turn.
Options -
1) **** around and play irrelevant protection spells. He's playing Elves! for god's sake. How bad can this be?
2) Kill him.
Since from a prior tournament I know Elves can, in fact, turn 1-2 kill (sometimes through some force of wills. My poor teammate...) I went with option two and killed him on turn one with some Lovecraftian horror spells.
SB) He brings in two cards. I bring in Slaughter Pacts for a Pact and a Chain.
Game 2 - He plays Skullclamp, and two elves. I have Chain of Vapor in hand, so can stop any mana production he hasif I blow it now. I decide to wait and see if he has Heritage or something else more threatening, or tries to equip skullclamp. He declines to do either.
I untap, play a bunch of stuff, double Slaughter Pact his two elves to achieve threshold, Cabal Ritual, and start flipping cards over and over and over and over and over until I kill him with magic black octopus arms. My notes says he died on turn 2. Turns out the board cards were Mental Missteps.
Lesson 2) Give anything in Vintage respect or it can kill you. That said, sometimes your gameplan is just better.
Round 2 - Jack playing Iona Oath
This guy was a blast to play against. I think he was 17, and if that's the case he'll be a ringer by 18/19 if he isn't already. Blue Bell's got a generation of Talent with a capital T coming up soon.
Game 1 - I keep a hand that's not exactly where I want to be and get punished for it. He time walks into Jace, and has two mana drains in hand and online by the time I attempt to go off. The "go fast, go hard" plan doesn't work when you fail to do either. He kills me with Blightsteel Colossus while my tiny Spirit Tokens don't do a whole lot of anything.
SB) Didn't bring in anything. He was blue, so I snap-went to Confidants. Then I realized that was probably the worst plan ever against an Oath deck.
Game 2 - I remember what I told myself this morning, and my deck decided it did too. I cast Duress and Ad Nauseum both on the first turn and draw bunches of cards because my namesake lets me cheat without breaking rules. I have to ship the turn, and go to 3 from my Mana Vault in my upkeep, but with all the Duresses I've thrown around he dies to the magical squidstorm.
Game 3 - Was a tense game. He once again opens on Walk into early Jace. I duress him and see Demonic Tutor, Time Vault, and Mana Drain. He has three mana currently in play and a Lotus in the yard. From my blue days, I wanted to take Tutor or Vault and stop him from assembling the Sands of Time. However, with a Drain in hand and a Jace on the table, I'd be locked out soon whether or not he assembled KeyVault. I had to take the Mana Drain, because while KeyVault was an unlikely autoloss, Mana Drain in hand paired with his current boardstate was a definite loss, even if it took longer. I ship the turn, he brainstorms and passes back. I tell him we're going to play a game. A game that's in every game of Magic, but especially games against me. The game is called "Do you have it?", "it" here being any relevant way of stopping me from murdering his face in with black cards.
Turns out, he was better at "do you have it" than I was, and smacked my Ad Nauseum in the face with a Force of Will, then assembled KeyVault the next turn before my Yawgmoth's Will could be cast and I'd just kill him all over again. See what I mean about the control decks not being too far behind?
Total Record - 1-1.
Turn 1-2 Kills - 3
Round 3 - Brienne playing Dark Times
Brienne was an absolute pleasure to play against, and we shoot some bull as we shuffle up. Turns out she's affiliated with a group of some of the better known players in the region, and I'm expecting something blue and headache-inducing.
Game 1 - "Pregame?"
....that's new. I'll be honest, I was a little off and for a split second I thought she was asking me if I was drunk. Then I remembered Leylines existed and that was probably more what she was talking about.
"Oh...yeah. Sure."
Double Leyline of the Void comes down from her side, and I am so glad I am not playing Dredge right now. She hits me with Duress and Thoughtseize, taking a Chain of Vapor ("I don't really like that card") and a Vampiric Tutor, leaving me with...well. A bunch of fast mana and an Ad Nauseum. Two things to deduce from this -
1) She's probably on Dark Times. It's the only deck I know of that runs Maindeck Leylines, basic Swamp, and this much discard/disruption that would fear Chain of Vapor (as it nicely answers their 20/20 indestrucible monstrosity).
2) Playing a "rogue" deck, or at least a deck far enough off the radar that players don't always know about it, has its benefits.
I cast the cards in my hand and kill her turn 1. She seems slightly frustrated but takes it with good grace. Next time, Gadget.
SB) Nothing. I'm really starting to question my 8 non-Stax board cards.
Game 2 - Pregame Leyline comes down again. I Duress her and see a hand of Wasteland (good thing I know Dark Times runs Waste effects, and nabbed basic Swamp), Mental Misstep, Swamp, Urborg after her turn. I take the only card I can, don't play Wasteable lands, and a turn or two later bury her in Tendrils of Agony. She flooded on Swamp by a large margin, but when you only actually have two or so draw steps it can feel like you "flood" against Ad Nauseum moreso than against other decks in the field.
Total Record - 2-1
Turn 1-2 Kills - 4.
Lesson 3) If you have the time, try to be aware of what's out there. In this particular instance, even though I'm probably favored in the matchup, my awareness of her deck (i.e. not letting her Wasteland be relevant, thus further reducing the number of cards she drew that did anything) and her relative unawareness of mine (taking Chain to protect her Marit Lage would be fine, if my namesake engine wasn't a much faster clock than hers) cost her an otherwise far more even game.
Round 4 - Josh playing Landstill
Playing a teammate always sucks, especially when both of you are on the elimination bubble.
Game 1 - He mulligans to five, which makes me think I actually have a decent chance at this game. He seems frustrated at the keep, but figures the next four can't be any better and keeps. To make matters worse, I turn 1 Duress to see how bad it is. Turns out, pretty good -
Null Rod
Mishra's Factory
Standstill
Time Walk
Force of Will
The easy pick here is, usually Force of Will. Unfortunately, my hand was slower than normal ANT likes and his standstill and/or rod would be active before I could attempt to go off. I have chain of vapor, so I pick Standstill, knowing I can bounce Rod and can probably beat a single force of will. Sure enough, he Rods. I chain, and walk an ANT into the Force (pitching Walk), fight it with a Pact, and go off drawing cards down to two life. My hand is gigantic, but lacks a Tendrils or any reasonable way to find it (Imperial seal being in hand, of course). I cast a Brainstorm earlier, and have a Ponder in hand. At this point, I need to find a Tendrils in some iteration of my top three cards. I ponder, and see two rituals (which are useless. I have the next best thing to infinite mana thanks to a Yawgmoth's Will and a bunch of rituals Ad Nauseum dug up for me) and a Vampiric Tutor (I get it, I get it. Two life. Rub it in why don't you, deck.). Shuffle, random draw, whiff on anything useful. Fine. Yawgmoth's Will replaying all of my Rituals and some Duresses (completely disabling his hand, but his Factory is in play so it's now or never), go go gadget Ponder. Whiff. Shuffle, random draw, Lotus. Neat, but I have mana. Last ditch effort - Brainstorm! Land, land, Mystical Tutor. Would've been good before I blew all my cantrips. My deck is a jerk and I tell it so. At this point, my thought process is as follows -
"Well. Nuts."
AFTER that, though, a relevant thought process takes places -
"I have more black mana than I can shake a stick at - and I am adept at shaking sticks at things. I've exhausted my cantrips, and my only draw spell in the graveyard is Ad Nauseum. I have Mystical Tutor, but Mystical into Tendrils on top, Ad Nauseum to draw it kills me. So thats out. So, whatever I Mystical Tutor for has to cost one or less. But I've blown my cantrips...what costs one that I can Mystical Tutor for that does anything?"
"Hey, dummy. You didn't blow all your blue cards."
"Other voice in my head, yes I have. Brainstorm and Ponder, right there in my RFG pile. You don't tell me how to live, you don't even have a body."
"Ancestral Recall is a card"
"......touche, voice in my head"
Mystical Tutor, put Ancestral Recall on top. Ad Nauseum into Ancestral, going to 1. Stop. Now, I have seen easily half of my library at this point. There are four, count them, FOUR tendrils left. To quote my friend and opponent Josh -
"If you lose this game you're going to rage."
"....Probably, yeah. ONE TIME! Tendrils!"
So I throw Ancestral onto the stack, knock on the top of my deck and ask the universe for some kind of damn justice.
Windmill Tendrils of Agony for infinity.
SB - Nothing. I have Confidants, but I can't attack with them thanks to Factories and I can't really rely on the draw, as I don't think he has enough SB against me to remove his Fire/Ices. I think the last thing I want to do against Landstill is slow down. He's card advantage, but so is making 6/7 of their cards in hand irrelevant by killing them before they come online. Go for the throat!
Game 2 - I keep a hand that can cast some acceleration, and either Sol Ring or Duress. If I go for Sol Ring, I can Duress and cast something else next turn. If I Duress, I can't Ad Nauseum the next turn unless I draw fast mana. I choose Sol Ring. He promptly has Null Rod. I chain, he stops me. I'm beaten to death by Mishramen and fail to do much of anything really since all my mana was artifact. Anticlimactic after Game 1, really. I fail to remember my exact action, but I remember it was a sketchy keep. My notes say "I keep a dumb hand and die like I deserve to."
Game 3 - He's on the draw. I have a turn two hand, but turn 1 is Swamp go. He draws to eight, plays Library.
"Well. Nuts."
Options -
1) Wait for more protection than the one Pact of Negation in my hand.
2) Kill him and hope it's enough.
The "safe" method is waiting for Duress and him to tap low on mana. This plan assumes two things -
1) His current disruption is active
2) One Duress is enough to fight the disruption he will have by the time you draw it
3) He doesn't blow you out of the game by having an active library in Pitch counter/ mana denial.dec
"Option one is stupid, and you're stupid for thinking it."
"Voice in my head, we're having a talk after the tournament."
I opt for 2, and fire off a Recall trying to bait counters or just draw bunches of stuff.
"It's good."
.....wait. What? Recall resolved? He's probably just waiting for Ad Nauseum. So Here it is. Bunches of stuff, Ad Nauseum.
"Mindbreak Trap"
That explains the recall...
"Pact of Negation"
"...Ad Nauseum's good."
I wind up Duressing him post Nauseum and it turns out he was banking on The Fear, Library, and the Mindbreak Trap to get him there. Waiting was indeed the last thing I wanted to do.
"If they have it, they have it. Usually they don't." I cheat and draw a third of my deck, and Tendrils doesn't play hide and seek this time.
Sorry, Josh. Next month, bud.
Total Record - 3-1
Turn 1-2 Kills - 6
Round 5 - Sean playing Rune-scarred Oath
We sit down, shoot some bull, and shuffle up.
Game 1 - I wind up mulliganing to five, and think I remember him handing me a loss some other tournament with a blue deck. Awesome. He wins the die roll, and proceeds to cast a Thoughtseize taking Ad Nauseum, leaving me with two lands, lotus petal, and pact of negation. He then proceeds to Ancestral Recall himself the same turn.
"Well. This looks ugly. Guess I gotta win the next two..."
And a whisper travels down the tables...
"What? What's happening?"
A sigh on the wind...
"What did you say?"
a voice in the distance promising a glimmer of hope...
TO: "Sorry everybody, something got messed up. We got a re-pair. Everybody stop. Repaired matches are going up now"
I begin cackling maniacly inside. Even if I get the same opponent, at least it isn't THAT game anymore. Jesus.
Lesson 4 - Sometimes, you need a little bit of luck to win a tournament.
Round 5 Mk.II - Eric playing Oathanimator
Woooooo! Still in it, baby! Still in it!
Game 1 - I have a basic Island, a basic Swamp, and a Mox Jet in play with a Brainstorm and a Ponder in the graveyard. I have Ad Nauseum and Yawgmoth's Will in hand among other things, but unfortunately can't get to the magic number (which is 5, if you were wondering). I Duress him and see Oath, Iona, Orchard, Spell Pierce, Entomb, Reanimate, Reanimate. My best shot here is to take Pierce and hope I draw mana before he can cast both halves of the Entomb/Reanimate gameplan, since any other option leaves him active AND with counter backup. I take the pierce, brick on my mana, and he entombs and exhumes Jin Gitaxias. I fail to draw mana AGAIN, and cannot possibly win before Jin bins my hand and basically locks me out of the game. He already has a full grip, so the odds of me resolving Ad Nauseum without protection even if I HAD the mana is slim. What is a storm pilot to do?
Scoop before he sees the cards I'd bin. As is, he saw blue and black mana and restricted blue spells, so I could be playing half of type 1.
SB - I board in two slaughter pact over Necropotence (it seems far too slow for Oath Plus) and a Chain of Vapor (since both solve an Oathy guy, but are different colors in case he nabs Iona). He seems to struggle with himself over sideboarding, and asks himself out loud if I really am the guy he was sitting next to game 1. It's been such a long day, he's not quite sure. He thinks, he has a feeling.. "But, I didn't really see much of anything game 1..." In the end he boards in two cards.
Game 2 - I brainstorm and Ponder turn 1 game 2, leaving Ad Nauseum as the top card of my library. I have a feeling he ha-
"Thoughtseize you"
Well. Yup. His turn one sees thoughtseize, and he shakes his head.
"Wrong move. Take a [I forget what card he took. Make one up.]. Guess I gotta hope you don't have it on to-"
"Ritual Ritual Artifact Ad Nauseum kill you dead."
"Damnit. Played it safe. Thought you were on storm, didn't know what kind."
Game 3 - He mulligans down to six or so, and I Duress him turn 1 seeing Polluted Delta, Show and Tell, Reanimate, Reanimate, Mystical Tutor. I'll let you guess what I took here. It's a good thought exercise. (Hint: it's the only card that might matter). Truth is, none of them did, as in addition to turn 1 Duress I have Turn 1 Level 19 Kill Him of the Infinite.
Turns out the "play it safe" move Game 2 was Show and Tell -> Teeg. He didn't know if I was on TPS or what, though (since he didn't see the Ad Nauseum game 1, thanks to me entering scoop phase), so Force of Will -> Action, or Big Scary Robot, or Half of the Sands of Time were all blowouts if he ran it out blind. Bad beats, homie.
Total Record: 4-1
Turn 1-2 Kills: 8
Lesson 5 - You gotta know when to hold em, and know when to fold em. If the benefits of staying in a game and revealing more information to your opponent don't outweigh the cost (i.e. that said information is being revealed), then pack 'em up. Give them nothing. Take from them everything. I'm all for playing to every out, but the truth is there just wasn't one in the first game, and keeping him in the dark made all the difference game 2.
Round Six - Draw and In playing Let's Go Get Some Food
Nom nom nom. It was even more delicious because it was Ali's (my teammate).
Round Seven - Top 8 Quarterfinals - Matt Elias playing Grow-A-Goyf
Game 1 - I mulligan, he wins the roll and keeps, and opens with mana and Mystic Remora.
"Well. Nuts."
Now, as an aside, JUST a Remora isn't that scary. Remora is not pressure. Remora is not a win. I can sit there all day and wait a Remora out, and the next one, and the next one if I have to. And at the end, you'll have a hand full of counters, and I'lll have a hand that doesn't need Ad Nauseum and will just storm you to death as your blue spells fuel my magic black serial killing octopus.
So he follows it up with some other junk, and a Tarmogoyf.
"Well. Nuts."
NOW I can't wait forever. I chain it to buy a turn, he replays it and keeps Remora up. I take a few hits, but by now he lets the Remora die, replays another one, and swings for more. He's at 11 from Fastbond, Forcing, and fetching. I try to go off, unfortunately into Mystic Remora -
Flashback - Days of Knights FNM, a local player and I are grinding some type 1 games of his TPS vs. my somewhat janky Remora Drain Gifts list. I have a Remora on the table as another player who's not totally versed in vintage rolls up and proceeds to ask -
"Don't you just go off soon? You have some protection and he's getting resources everywhere."
"You ever seen a storm deck go off into a Remora? It doesn't end well."
Flash forward - Nope, it doesn't end well. Rituals (draw) rituals (draw) Ad Nauseum (draw) Force of will, Pact of Negation (draw) Force of Will.
[Removed The Ambiguous Force of Will bit.]
SB - He runs dudes, so Confidant can't get in. He runs Gush and broken spells, so Confidant seems slow. Of all the matches this probably is where I want it, but decide I still don't like him. My best bet here seems to be to mulligan aggressively to a turn 1 and hope I have one more move than he does. "Do you have it?" "Usually they don't"
Game 2 - I mulligan to a five that does not kill him turn 1, but at least has Duress. He has goyfs, and resolves Remora. He also resolves Jace, later, to begin sculpting my draws making sure I can't just tendrils. My teammate to my left has just been 0-2'd by Shops also in the quarters, and staring at a board of Jace and Remora with known Goyfs in hand, and everflowing mana for him to pay with, as well as (later) a SECOND Remora sitting alongside the first, I know when my luck's run out. The last time we played, I won nine mana crypt rolls in a row at 3 life or less, so I assume this is just the balancing of the universe.
"Hey, Ali. You lost already, right?"
"Yeah, destroyed."
"Ready to go home?"
"Absolutely".
My only hope for a win at the moment is to go off with a bunch of rituals into Ad Nauseum through two Remoras and a Jace and hope he just bricks in the top ten or so (I mean, I bricked on Tendrils through twenty or thirty or so earlier, right?). I COULD have attempted to wait one Remora out, and take a hit or two from Goyf, but that's something like three or fours turns (which is most of the cards he's going to draw anyway if he brainstorms with Jace every turn, or about half of that amount if he fateseals me to lock out any gameswinging draws) down the road of what could only be described as an oppressive board state.
"Alright. Let's go home."
I play it out. He doesn't brick on the first Force. I Pact. He doesn't brick on the second either (though he does specify the target, this time. It's Ad Nauseum. Surprise!). Sometimes, they DO got it - and when you're on a goldfish list like ANT there just isn't much you can do about it.
Total Record - 4-2-1
Total Turn 1-2 Kills - 8
Ali (on Tempo Thresh, of all things) and myself net $120 store credit total for two quarterfinal finishes, and manage to trade a few duals, an Italian drain, and some standard/draft cards we had lying around into a very pretty Mox Sapphire.
Overall, this tournament was a success for me, both personally and in terms of being a team player. I helped pick and "Vintagize" the decklist that carried my friend and teammate to an equal finish as myself, I played Ad Nauseum Tendrils to a top 8 finish in a highly competitive blue-based metagame at a time when blue decks have never been more hostile to me (Mental Misstep? Flusterstorm? Mindbreak Traps and Misdirection and Spell Pierces? In the maindeck? Why am I playing Dark Rituals again?), sometimes through mental gymnastics. I managed to avoid the tournament ending Punt I typically engage in every tournament, and at least by my standards played tight, stuck to my gameplan, and awed several players with my apparently metal-based testicular fortitude.
While I probably could have played Game 2 of the quarters more slowly, or tried to grab outs, the truth is that decklist is just something seemingly designed to take me apart piece by piece from every angle ANT doesn't want pressure from. The more GoyfGushRemoraBrokenHighlande r is played in an area, the less you probably want to be on Ad Nauseum Tendrils - and the reasons to play ANT weren't super high to begin with. I realize that it is not entirely the lists, though. I realize my play could have been better, my testing and awareness could have been higher, and my sideboard could use serious work as almost none of it happened to be relevant (though the STAX hate is sort of like Dredge hate for everyone else. You like when you don't need it). That said, I'll be working to address these issues in the coming months - and awareness of matchups is part of that. I now classify GushGoyfRemora in the same category as Stax on the play - Nightmare. While perhaps reactionary, it should make me ready for when that deck catches on (and it will).
That said, and as referenced earlier, I probably will continue to play Ad Nauseum Tendrils for the foreseeable future. I am better with it than I am with my Drains, and even if Drains or Shops or Bazaars are the better pillar on any given Sunday, I'M better with this, I trust myself with it more, and I trust my ability to competently play it to every out through all the rounds of a tournament while making the least amount of mistakes. I plan to continue playing this, especially if I can find some board card that doesn't sit there and rot like Dark Confidant does but is actually relevant versus the Remora deck or perhaps blue in general.
I will see you again in a tournament in January, Tendrils - and with any luck, I'll be back with another success story to add to AM. It's a bad place to be, and I play in a rough meta to win in. Vintage Champs coming out the wazoo and Vintage adepts abound, and even the newer players are playing with some pretty nasty toys. My plan of achieving both a Mox Jet and a Black Lotus in time for next year's Vintage Championships seems like a pipe dream, at times. But you know what?
I still like my chances.
I AM good. My deck IS vicious. Today, I am the embodiment of everything people think they hate about this format. I am the most broken. I am the fastest. Magic is a deep, complex game and if they trip up ONCE, anywhere from their deck choice to what hands they keep, I will kill them. Truth is, I will probably kill them anyway.
Lesson 6 - Never let it get you down. I've been playing Magic since fourth grade (I'm currently 23). I've been playing Vintage since Underground Seas were about twenty bucks and Force of Will was still 15 or under - and this year has seen my first top 8s. But I HAVE gotten there this year. Finally. Heck, I got there twice. There's plenty of room to go downhill from here, but there's also more room to go up - I got the Top 8 I wanted, now it's time for a first place finish. So I will keeping playing, keep learning, keep getting better - and hopefully keep passing some of it on to any new players who read these.
Good luck, cardslingers. Until next time!
-WS
Props -
Everything about this tournament. My opponents were awesome and took not playing Magic with about as much grace as you can possibly muster. The tournament was well run, timely, and with more or less plenty of space. Alternate Universe is a great place for anyone in the PA area to play Magic, especially at Nick Coss' vintage events. Nick Coss is, as always, a gentleman and a scholar who possesses something in the neighborhood of several trillion Zimbabwe dollars (which, it turns out, is worth about fifty cents) and worked with half of the four Delaware players in his neck of the woods to turn some store credit into a piece of Power to take home. Team Delaware God We Need A New Name for putting 50% of its players in the tournament into the Top 8. Ad Nauseum and Tempo Thresh RUG Delver for putting said players into said Top 8 despite neither of them supposedly having any real credibility in the format. Free pizza.
|
