The Tale of Origins

This will probably be a lengthy report, but I'm going to try to keep most of it pretty short so people can actually read through it. Origins was cool, and by cool I mean totally sweet.

Tuesday, June 22
I wake up around 3pm to shower and be ready for Matrix to show up at my place for 4:30. We make a drive through scenic Connecticut to borrow some stuff from the everhelpful wicketsnatcher, and then it's onward to Long Island to meet up with SamiteDealer, Jeff Anand.

Krez-nair is busy getting his shit (5d GAT) WRECKED by Jeff's Highlander, so Rix and I wander downstairs to tweak Keeper. I make the decision to go outside instead since it's beautiful out, and at about 2:30 am we decide to begin the first tournament of the week.

THE NEW YORK STREETS CHAMPIONSHIP
Finals: Matrix (mirror)
Game one I left him sneak ahead in card advantage, and then I resolve Balance followed by a Scrying for 5 in my second main phase.
Game two he goes turboangel and I can't find a way to remove it.
Game three I keep a hand of turn one angel, turn two angel, turn three angel. He can't deal.
2-1, 1-0

First place! Mise.

Then I crash on Jeff's couch.

Wednesday, June 23
I wake up, shower, and pack my shit up. Jeff's mom gives us New York bagels. Holy shit they were awesome. Then we drive to the opposite side of Long Island to get Jeff's friend Jay, and begin our journey.

I'm not sure how many of you have travelled 17 hours through obstacles such as barren Pennsylvania and the clogged streets of New York duriing rush hour, but I'm willing to bet few of you have had the experience of doing that combined with the necessity of someone riding bitch. For most of this trip, it was Kreznair. For the other half, it was me. The good part about riding bitch is that people are squishy, and car doors are not. Thus, if you're a dick, you can fidgit a lot and prevent various body parts from going numb. Unfortunately, this leaves all opportunities for whining by the other passengers in that cramped back seat. Makes sleeping fairly difficult as one might imagine. Thankfully, Jeff made many jokes about Kerz's mom, so we were well entertained.

We roll up in front of Doug's (Hi-Val) place at like 5 in the morning, and he lets us in to crash in his livingroom.

Thursday, June 24
I wake up, shower, and kill some time on Doug's intarweb before he gets back from work. We take two cards (thank god) to the tournament site, with a stop in between for Wendy's. This is where I would discover the tech of a large frosty and a triple cheeseburger with bacon. OMG so good.

As we show up we see Steve Menendian (Smmenen), Kevin Cron (CH4IN5), Joe Bushman, and a few other Meandeck peeps. Klep shows up randomly and introduces himself, and then we realize that apparently the type one already started and we all get game losses. Like that will stop us.

Thursday Type One
Round One: D00d with FCG
I plow some stuff and beat down with das blütengel. The judge DQs him for having illegal sleeves. Shrug.
2-1, 1-0

Round Two: Zoneseek's friend with Tog
The games aren't very long. Game one I force through an early angel and he can't deal. Game two he resolves some draw spells, so I plow his psychat00ge and go aggro on his face with soldier tokens.
4-1, 2-0

Round Three: Awesome Virginian (Klep's friend) playing Workshop Slaver with Draksteele Corossus
Game one he has first turn tinker for the big d00d. Then he pops a cap in my ass and takes my plows. Game two we both draw a million wastelands, but I'm better at doing that than him. Game three, he forgets to drop the chalice for zero, so I drop some artifact mana and blow up all his shit.
6-2, 3-0

Round Four: Matrix (mirror)
We are savage misors, but I mise Balance first.
8-2, 4-0

Round Five: Joe Bushman with Tog
BUSH MAN! Game one is close, but he takes it. Game two is also close, but I take it. Game three he's at seven and I have two unmorphed Angels in play. One is untapped. He's holding two cards when he topdecks brainstorm in to Lotus, Sol Ring, Yawgmoth's Will. Smmenen goes nuts and has to leave the table. Bushman proceeds to smash my face in with a tog just angry enough to get over my flying speedbump. I die waiting for a life gain trigger. What makes this bad is that I had REB in hand when he brainstormed. Had I rebbed it, he'd never been able to will. Instead I was forced to discard it to a duress from Bushman's yard.
9-4, 4-1

Round Six: Matt C Smith (mirror)
Game one is over fast. I roll him with broken stuff. Game two is REALLY drawn out, and I have problems finding kill conditions. I finally match his angel with two angels and some soldiers, and he scoops.
11-4, 5-1

I take second place. If Smmenen didn't scoop to Bushman in round six, I'd have taken first. Oh well, c'est la vie.

After this it's like two in the morning, and we're all exhausted, so we head back to Doug's place for crashing.

Friday, June 25
We're up bright and early. It's a bad time to play something as mentally draining as what I choose for today.

I board in a triple cheeseburger with bacon and smash face.

Friday Type One
Round One: Random guy with Suicide
My manabase is SOOOO solid with the recent changes Toaddy and I made to the list. His wastelands are pretty dead, and he has no way to remove my game winning enchantment from play. Game two is much of the same, but with the added bonus of a Psionic Blast targeting Negator.
2-0, 1-0

Round Two: Joe Bushman with Psychat00ge
I Duress and see a grip of Library, Intuition, Mana Crypt, Yawgmoth's Will, Ancestral Recall, Polluted Delta, Psychatog. Yikes! I steal his Ancestral and pass. He drops his crypt and his delta, and attempts to Intution. I let him do it and he grabs his AKs and passes. I drop my second land and cast an AK for three, in to lotus, brainstorm, time walk, AK for four. Then I drop Battle and he can't deal. Game two he drops a first turn Tog, so I plow it. He tries to get back in the game with an intuition for Deep Analysis, but I Cremate one and cycle in to a second Cremate. I overpower him with card advantage and overwhelm him with disruption and must-counters before dropping Battle of Wits.
4-0, 2-0

Round Three: Some guy with 4cControl
I get the nut against him and drop a first turn battle. Game two, he opens with LoA, which I strip mine. He can't find another mana source for three turns, which is long enough for me to put out battle. This was my fastest round.
6-0, 3-0

Round Four: Kevin Cron with Stax
He drops a first turn Trinisphere. Trinisphere is a strong and key play against Battle of Wits, because it really needs to milk the little spells to ramp up to the big ones. Fortunately for Kevin, I'm holding a fistful of artifact mana, so we go to game two. I open with land, mana crypt, intuition for AKs. He drops a workshop and a tangle wire. I AK on my upkeep, and make a land drop. He poops out some artifact mana and shoots for a hardcast memory jar, which I force. Then I vamp on his endstep for black lotus, and use that and a city of traitors to poop out Battle right now. Game three he has to mull to five, and I easily overpower him.
8-1, 4-0

Round Five: Friendly guy with Control Slaver
He tells me in jest that he remembered to put Gilded Lotus in his sideboard for this matchup. His opening turn features lotus, ancestral, walk, and some other heavy hitters. Unfortunately, all this leaves him with is two lands, a mox, and a fist of expensive artifacts. I drop a land and a mana crypt, and attempt to resolve a Thirst for Knowledge. It goes through, I end up throwing away a Masticore. How weird! He finds himself a welder and casts it, passing to me. Here's where things get weird...
I draw in to a lotus, and stare at my hand for a minute. I end up tinkering for Mindslaver and taking his turn, which lets me REALLY do some horrible things to him with his own strategy. After I've thoroughly raped him of resources, I drop Battle uncontested.
Game two I drop a battle on turn three with the aid of a tutored up mana crypt, but he has a red blast to remove it. Undaunted, I cast Replenish with force backup the following turn, and despite taking my turn with Mindslaver, he can't stop the inevitable.
10-1, 5-0

Round Six: Smmmmemnenemenemen with 2G
Game one he's just beating my face in. He resolves AK 3, AK 4, and then tog. Things are looking grim. I topdeck brainstorm and find Balance, Orim's Chant, Duress. I manage to squeeze out the Balance, but I know what I'm topdecking for two turns and those cards suck. Thankfully, so do his. After two turns I topdeck a Tainted Pact and Pact in to AK 5. I resolve battle one turn later.
Game two is unfair. I therapy him turn one and see he's holding a lot of rebs. I take his force, and then I get a second turn rector thanks to vamp on upkeep for lotus. I grab a battle and remove his rebs before he can find red mana.
12-1, 6-0

At this point I realize I need a theme song. Poor Smmenen is sitting there, rocking back and forth, saying over and over again "holy shit."
It was clearly the awesome.

After this, we play some type four, and I draft with Carl. My draft deck is awesome, but his has Moulder Slug and two Murderous Spoils. I lose to him, and he wins his box with minimal effort.

Then it's off to Doug's to sleep.

Saturday, June 26
We wake up and decide to not do Wendy's this morning. That makes me sad, so I board in Cajun food and smash face. Zoneseek (!) randomly shows up and introduces himself, and apparently isn't playing because he forgot to bring his deck. We offer him one to borrow, but he turns it down in favor of observing.

Saturday Type One
Round One: Sui
He finds all nine strip effects, and I find nothing. How embarassing. Game two I play an angel and win, like I'm supposed to. Game three looks the same, but when angel hits, his hand is Edict, Edict, Edict, Dark Banishing (!?), Dark Banishing. I sign my match slip and wander off to the bathroom to spill my guts. Ugh.
1-2, 0-1

Round Two: Workshop something
My rage is vented and I crush him before I know what he's playing.
3-2, 1-1

Round Three: Tog I think
I win too quickly to bother taking notes.
5-2, 2-1

Round Four: Mirror (Matrix again)
I summon Yawgmoth's Will. Grand Inquisitor's presence causes it to float to the top.
7-2, 3-1

Round Five: Control Slaver
I get mana screwed game one. One of my misplays didn't help the matter much. Game two I crush him. Game three he has first turn blood moon with mana drain and force of will backup. I find no moxes in twelve turns.
8-4, 3-2

Round Six: GAT
Plow. Plow. Angel. GG. Game two, Plow, REB, REB, Plow, cycle Decree, GG.
10-4, 4-2.

I take tenth. How bad. I decline the midnight type one to sleep and play Type Four, which appeared to be the play since the infamous awful judge was the one in charge of that one.

Sunday, June 27
I grab delicious Wendy's tech, and decide at the last minute to play Douglinn's gay/red. This deck is so unbelievably gay. As Smmenen put it, it has a million gay options.

Round One: Keeper
Game one I Stifle a fetch and blow up his library. Some clouds and factories reduce his life total by four each turn. Game two I stifle a fetch, waste two seas, and have two wastes untouched in play. He scoops with my intimidating permanent as a Cloud of Faeries.
2-0, 1-0

Round Two: Kevin Cron
Game one he opens with a first turn pair of trinispheres, which is way better than my one force of will. Game two I do horribly gay things. Game three he finds four smokestacks and four workshops just when he wants them. I frown.
3-2, 1-1

Round Three: TnT (It's dynomite!)
Game one I mana screw him hard. Beats beats beats. Game two he resolves blood moon, so I'm forced to have red mana for Rack and Ruin and Lavamancer that I didn't have at the time. Sweet.
5-2, 2-1

Round Four: Tog
Game one I wreck his face with mana denial and stupid little dorks. Game two I red blast his bad cards and fuck him up with Spiketail Hatchling.
7-2, 3-1

I take second, getting beat out of first by the 4-0 Kevin Cron.

Before we all leave for the weekend, we play a little bit of type four and eat some chow. And then, after our goodbyes, we begin trying to figure out how to go home.

Despite bitching by myself and Kreznair, and a complete lack of interest from Jay, Matrix and Jeff decide it's a good idea to wander around town and take in the atmosphere. We wander through "dirty hippy square" in which Matrix tries to get laid by dirty hippies on several occasions. Finally we decide to head back after I'm beginning to die from a migraine. After two hours of driving, we decide to stop at a hotel.

Monday, June 28
Waking up after the check out time isn't tech. We fly the hell out of there with the desk lady's blessings, and after a short nine hours we're back in Long Island, swapping luggage from Jeff's car to Matrix's car. Here's where my adeptness in use of the force comes in to play.

Some background information: I had all my directions written down in my notebook, which went missing some time around friday. In addition, Long Island is super confusing, and Jeff's last minute directions were something like "it's simple, you take a right, a left, left at the light, right at the stop sign, and then take the Long Island Expressway to the Cross Island Expressway and then take the left lane to exit 36 and then exit 31 or 32 to 495 and then take that to 95 north" As strange as it may seem, I actually managed to retain most of that, albeit out of order. The major problem was that the entrances to the various streets we were supposed to be going on were closed for construction, and it was raining so hard we couldn't see twenty yards in front of us.

Highlights:
Matrix taking the wrong entrance ramp to a highway, and realizing that the two lanes don't merge, then peeling out in reverse, driving through the left lane during traffic, and taking a left through the correct entrance at ~65 with a cop nearby. We escape unharmed.
The last minute right turn on to a highway I "have a feeling about" whilst weaving through four lanes of traffic.
The "if you want to hit 495, take it! Go ahead" "Fuck no!"
After a half an hour of frenzied navigating, my spidey sense tells me to take a left exit coming up. Lo and behold, we end up on the exit towards 95, which was definately NOT marked, not even as a detour for the construction. I end up in my driveway at 2:30 in the morning.

Props:
Matrix and Jeff for driving this trip. How insane.
Doug Linn, for putting up myself and my crew for several days.
My opponents, for being "good people"
Toaddy, for working with me on the tweaking of BoW
Wicketsnatcher and Kevin Cron, for loaning me some odds and ends
and Crazy Carl Winter, for being the only other person in my pod who had ANY IDEA what was going on in our draft

Slops:
Whiny people
Bushman, for getting the most retarded brainstorm ever
Incompetent judges
The convention center cafe ($2.50 for a bottle of water, $5.50 for a chicken sandwich, and an apparent one dollar surcharge per purchase)
Pennsylvania. h8.

Stay tuned for the Battle of Wits primer by myself and French supercomputer Matthieu Durand (Toad), featuring the decklist I played in this event as well as Toad's optimised five color build.

To keep you happy though, here are the other two lists I played for Origins.

Keepar

4x Force of Will
4x Mana Drain
4x Brainstorm
3x Cunning Wish
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Time Walk
1x Fact or Fiction
1x Mystical Tutor

3x Skeletal Scrying
1x Mind Twist
1x Yawgmoth's Will
1x Demonic Tutor

3x Exalted Angel
2x Swords to Plowshares
1x Balance
1x Decree of Justice

2x Gorilla Shaman

1x Black Lotus
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Ruby
1x Sol Ring

1x Library of Alexandria
1x Strip Mine
4x Wasteland
4x Flooded Strand
3x Tundra
3x City of Brass
2x Volcanic Island
2x Underground Sea

sb:
3x Red Elemental Blast
1x Fire/Ice
1x Plagiarize
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Coffin Purge
1x Skeletal Scrying
1x Swords to Plowshares
1x Blue Elemental Blast
1x Gush
2x Disenchant
2x Rack and Ruin

Gay/Red

4x Spiketail Hatchling
4x Cloud of Faeries
4x Grim Lavamancer
2x Voidmage Prodigy
1x Gorilla Shaman

4x Curiosity
4x Standstill

4x Force of Will
3x Stifle
2x Daze
1x Misdirection (I think, I can't remember)

2x Null Rod

1x Ancestral Recall
1x Time Walk

4x Mishra's Factory
2x Faerie Conclave
4x Flooded Strand
4x Volcanic Island
4x Wasteland
2x Island
1x Strip Mine
1x Library of Alexandria
1x Mox Sapphire

sb:
3x Red Elemental Blast
2x Rack and Ruin
1x Unsummon
9x Island