Springfield Icon 2-for-1 Tournament report, 1st x2

Vroman, Blaine, and I drive up to Springfield, IL for the Icon. According to the Icon website, the vintage tournament starts at noon. We arrive with some time to spare and hit Labamba for burritos as big as your head.

When we get back to the icon, we find out the Legacy tournament starts at noon, and the vintage tournament doesn’t start till after that. Blaine is pretty happy as he wants to play his legacy tendrils deck, but vroman and I have no deck put together. We put decks together on a whim and I played Blaine’s goblin deck and Vroman played a LFTL Tog deck of his own design. We get our decks together in about 15 minutes, I get a DCI number (sanctioned tournament?), and we are ready to go.

Ack! Goblins!

4 Wooded foothills
2 Bloodstained Mire
3 Plateau
8 Mountan
4 Wasteland

4 Goblin Lackey
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Piledriver
4 Gephalm incinerator
1 Sharpshooter
4 Matron
4 Warchief
4 Ringleader
2 Seige Gang Commander
1 Kiki Jiki

4 Aether Vial
3 Swords to Plowshares

SB:
4 Chalice
3 Disenchant
4 Reb/Pyro
2 Goblin Pyromancer?
2 Shattering Spree

Rd 1 vs Red Burn deck 2-0
Goblins are faster than his burn deck

Rd. 2. vs Black control deck 2-0
I wreck him game 1 and game 2 he has cabal coffers, oblivion stone and 4 Swamps. I attack with my board for 8 damage. He takes it, I waste his coffers, he o-stones in response. I drop piledriver and lackey for the next turn win.

Rd. 3 vs Vroman 2-1 LFTL Tog
I beat him quickly first game by wasting his only land. He beats me soundly second game with a combo of Mazes of Ith, Engineered plague and darkblast. Third game I pull out a win with a lot of dudes on board and lucksacking into a Seige gang commander for 2 turns of flinging dudes.

Rd. 4, ID. There are like 21 people and they are doing 4 rounds? Whatever, it gets us to the Vintage tournament faster.

Top 8 vs bad Threshold deck 2-1
I wreck him first game with all my good goblins.
Game 2 he gets threshold really fast, BEBs my board and nimble mongooses and Jotun grunt own me.
Game 3 he stalled for a while with nimble mongooses and eventually he got out worship. I cast goblin after goblin and had a board of like 7-8 dudes. I also resolved 4 ringleaders this game and got an average of 1.25 goblins per ringleader. I baited out a few of his hydroblasts and counters throught the game and with lethal on board, he has 2 cards in hand and 4 untapped blue sources I waste a land, disenchant his worship and then pyroblast his counter. Weee, disenchant for the win!

Top 4 vs Ichorid 2-1
I play first turn lackey, he plays first turn zombie infestation. I cant get through his 2/2 blockers, but I love zombie infestation too much to be mad.
Game 2 I go first again and race him. I got several piledriver swings in and sealed the deal.
Game 3 I manage to win again. I think he had a slow hand and I am SHOCKED that I beat him. I think a key play was to attack with a 5/2 piledriver, then sac two mog fanatics to kill a zombie token. The 5 damage was critical as he had few cards in hand. I dropped another goblin or two then won the next turn.

Finals vs Josh Roughly and Power artifact deck 2-0.
I offer split, he refuses. We play. I goldfish him both games. Thanks for the 4 tundras.

And now we get to the Vintage tournament:
I play Vromans ubastax list card for card.

For reference:
3 Mountain
4 Workshop
3 Wasteland
2 Rishadan port
1 Strip mine
3 Barbarian Ring
1 Tolarian academy

4 Bazaar

5 Moxen
1 Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring

4 Uba Mask
4 Smokestack
4 Tanglewire
4 Crucible
4 Chalice
3 Null Rod
1 Duplicant
1 Solemn
1 Trinisphere
4 Welder

SB
4 J-cap
4 G-shard
2 T-crypt
3 V-heretic
2 D-cant

Round 1 vs Teammate Blaine with Super Oath Lose 2-1
Blaine goes first and leads with the nutz…Mox orchard oath lotus null rod. My hand has first turn smokey, but without artifact mana, I cant win.

Out: 1 Solemn, 1 Welder, 3 Null rod, 3 Uba mask, 2 crucible
In: 4 Shard, 2 Duplicant, 4 Jesters cap

I beat blaine game 2 on a bad mistake by him. I played an uba mask and he brainstorms during my turn. Its ok, I screw up the next game.
Game 3 Blaine plays an oath and I drop a welder into it. Game over.

Round 2 vs Steve with 4x Tyrant Oath win 2-1
These matches were pretty uneventful. The game he stole had him bouncing my smokestack on multiple occasions.

Round 3 vs Noshow. I get a bye as the person never showed up and I am glad to have some time to refocus my energy.

I need to win the next round to make top 8. Again 20+ people, and only 4 rounds…

Round 4 vs Eric Becker (aka Mr. Extreme) 5c Pitch long

First, a history lesson. Eric Becker has never lost to me. Ever. I have played several different decks, he has played different decks and I am 0-infi vs him. He has already beaten vroman and he wins the die roll.

I look at my hand: Welder, Mana crypt, Trinisphere, mountain, rishadan port, smokestack, random.

Eric goes first and wins. Turn 1. Turns out I'd like to see mainphases.

Side out: Solemn, Duplicant, 2 Crucible, 2 Uba mask
Side in: 4 cap, 2 crypt

Game 2 I lock up this game quickly with welder, chalice at 1, and a null rod. I keep his lands in check with a few wastes and cast crucible. Becker Forces it and pitches a timetwister, which I think was the right play. At the time my only artifacts were chalice at 1 and null rod, so I would have to weld one of those out to get it in play. Next turn I topdeck a mox though, and get crucible back to seal the game.

Game 3 Since Becker doesn’t kill me first turn…I waste a land, play crucible, and chalice for 1 the turn before he can rit into necro. He bazaars away a bunch of cards and I lay a crypt. His hand is suffering, I am wasting his sources and in good shape. I cap him 3 times, but his good stuff is already in his hand, so I take lotus, academy, other mana sources, and H-recalls. Finally, I lock him down with null rod (crypting his yard first) and drop the Bomb-omb trinisphere for the finishing touch.

And that is the time that I beat Eric Becker...

Blaine easily gets in to the top 8 and I squeek in tool. Vroman got beat in his last round to a pitch long player who makes it to the finals. He played Pitchlong in 3 of his four matches.

Top 8 vs guy with unsleeved mono-black deck with sarcomancy and Maga. 2-1
I wreck him game 1
Game 2 he casts cabal therapy naming smokestack, and I reveal 2 of them. He then hymn to tourachs me next turn. Then duresses me. Eventually I play a duplicant for blocking and he casts Maga, traitor to the mortals for 4. Eventually I have to chumpblock and lose a few turns later. You got me...
Game 3 is more of game 1 where I steamroll him. He did get his sideboard tech out, though: Kill Switch

Top 4 vs slaver 2-0
Game 1 I get welder, he drains chalice at 1 and I play a second chalice at 1. This one sticks, but he drains into a mindslaver (without activation). He passes the turn and I cast a chalice at 1 again. He seems shocked that I would put out 2 chalices at 1. He slaves me for 2 turns, doing nothing of consequence and welds out one of my chalices at 1 (I later find out he has welder, brainstorm and other 1cc goodies in his hand). I cast a chalice for 2, weld in a chalice for 0 and lock up the game quickly enough.

Game 2 I get another welder and chalice at 1. I get smokey and crucible on board and after stripping several of his lands he cracks a lotus and rack and ruins my crucible and smokestack. After a few more turns, I rebuild and lock him out with many many granite shard activations.

Finals: I get to split with some girl who dominated everyone with pitchlong. She had some fantastic cards all day long and played well too. I get some cash and 4 volcanic islands. Not a bad day.

Props:
-Labamba. Burritos as big as your head.
-Blaine, for letting me play the goblins deck and Vroman for driving. The trip was a lot of fun.
-Me for breaking my 0-x streak versus Eric Becker. Its been like 9 months in the making…
-Dude who makes it to Top 8 in a 25 person tournament with a horrible sui-black deck
-Finishing the tournament before Vampire Karyoke starts. *Shudder*

Slops:
-Crappy website that incorrectly listed the starting time for the vintage tournament. This is the second year in a row that we have had to wait forever to get the tournament started.
-Losing to Maga, traitor of the mortals. I’ll be honest, I didn’t see that one coming.