The Mountains Win AgainA Study in Brevity
Given that I just completed my longest tournament report ever (TMD X), I opted for a different approach with this report. I’ll keep this relatively concise. Here’s the build I played today.
The Mountains Win Again version 27.21x Mountain
2x Plateau
2x Scrubland
1x Badlands
4x Bloodstained Mire
2x Flooded Strand
1x City of Brass
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Jet
4x Wasteland
1x Strip Mine
4x Mishra's Factory
4x Grim Lavamancer
4x Jőtun Grunt
4x Dark Confidant
2x Swords to Plowshares
4x Cabal Therapy
4x Duress
4x Hide and Seek
1x Pyroblast
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Enlightened Tutor
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Null Rod
1x Tormod’s Crypt
1x Crucible of Worlds
1x Umezawa’s Jitte
1x Engineered Explosives
Sideboard4x Shattering Spree
3x Red Elemental Blast
2x Pyroblast
2x Swords to Plowshares
1x Volcanic Spray
1x Pyroclasm
1x The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
1x Sacred Ground
Recent changes were designed to combat Gifts. We moved the Cabal Therapies to the main and sided the Swords. I added another REB in the side and a Pyroblast in the main. I also diversified the answers against Warrens and tried out City of Brass in the place of a fetch land. This tournament had about 40-45% Gifts and Control Slaver so these changes should bode well. As we’ll come to see, they did not.
Tournament: ELD Mox Tournament II: Scholars at Cole Hall, Bridgeport, MA
Saturday, January 27th, 2007
I begin this event as I begin most events, with preparation. I get everything ready the day before and we plan to leave for the hour and fifteen minute drive, arriving around 11:15, in plenty of time for the tournament to begin at noon. I have a newly acquired cold, so I wanted to get to bed early, but ended up working late. Such is life. I got a decent amount of sleep and awoke to a delicious breakfast. We headed south on I-93. Given that it’s a Saturday morning, there shouldn’t be too much traffic. Just about as we hit Boston proper, we get stuck in stop-and-go, bumper-to-bumper, why-oh-why traffic for an hour. Apparently there were construction delays that required part of the highway to be closed unexpectedly. We call ahead so that people know we’re doing everything we can to get there as soon as possible. Once we arrived in Bridgewater, we have some trouble finding the elusive Cole Hall, given the intricate web of trickeries laid out by the oblong roundabout in Bridgewater. Must have been made by gnomes…magical gnomes…with pixie consorts…powered by Bottle Gnome Energy Drink. Apparently we were not the only players who had difficulty finding the hall, as several others had arrived late as well. We began shortly after we walked in. We had 25 players. There were 6 other players that were supposed to come, but unfortunately their automobile decided to become an auto-immobile. We prepared for 5 rounds of Swiss.
Round 1 Sara
The Mountains vs. Auriok SalvagersHooray! Sara was taking a break from TMWA to try out Salvagers. Sara wins the die roll, as she is wont to do, and sagely decides to play first. She leads with Mox Jet, Mox Ruby, land, Salvagers. I Therapy, missing. She proceeds to get a ton of broken stuff including but not limited to: Demonic Tutor, Lotus Petal, and Black Lotus. I struggle to fight back by ripping away her Lotus with a flashed back Therapy, but she gets Yawgmoth’s Will and Tendrils and I don’t have a way to stop it.
Game 2, I’m on the play. I mull to 5. Sara mulls to 6. I lead with Mox Pearl, Badlands, Null Rod and it resolves. I then cast Therapy and proceed to play Draw Go without seeing another land for the next 7 turns. I die to Salvagers beats. Well, one of us had to win and one of us had to lose. I accept defeat as graciously as I can.
Record: 0-1
Round 2 Bye
The Mountains vs. NothingHooray! I must say I was a bit worried about this matchup, but as this round proved beyond the shadow of a doubt, The Mountains Win Again still has an insuperable advantage against the ubiquitous opponent named Bye and their frustrating tactics of playing nothing. The Mountains cannot be overcome by ennui – it simply makes The Mountains angry and forces my Sinistre Lavamancien to cast distasteful glances in their direction. I win supercalifragilisticexpialido
cious-ly quickly and go off to sweep chimneys and play in a one-man band. And eat a sandwich.
Record: 1-1
I also take this time to complete a brief metagame analysis and find that there are approximately 9 Gifts decks, 2 Control Slaver Decks, a handful of combo decks, 3 Salvagers decks, about 3 Fish-ish decks, 4 Workshop decks, and one U/R Goblins deck. That bodes well. I prepared for just such a metagame. Surely I will play against either a combo / control deck (which the deck has been adjusted to handle) or a Fish or Workshop deck, which the deck has a very strong matchup against post-board. Guess which deck I ended up being paired up against…
Round 3 Jon Foster
The Mountains vs. U/R GoblinsI’d played against Jon previously and was happy to play him again. We complete the exchanging of another set of foil lands and begin. We both keep our opening hands and I’m on the play. I lead with Scrubland and Cabal Therapy naming Goblin Lackey. He has 2x Wasteland, 1x Goblin Matron, Brainstorm, Mox Sapphire, and 2x Volcanic Island. Alright. I can certainly deal with that. He predictably Wastes my Savannah…Badlands…Scrubland and passes it back to me. I drop Mox Pearl, Scrubland, Umezawa’s Jitte. Now I just need one of the 16 creatures in my deck and I’ll be all set. He Brainstorms, casts Matron and gets a Piledriver. I proceed to take some beats from Goblin Piledriver before he resolves a Null Rod. I Cabal Therapy again, seeing a maindeck REB (nice!) and a Stifle along with the previous duplicate versions of Wasteland and Volcanic Island. I resolve a Grim Lavamancer and eat away his gobbos over several turns. I don’t draw another land for about 9 turns. After I clear his board and exhaust my trash heap, I start swinging with Lavamancer, for about 7 damage total. Still no more land… I do draw a nice useless Mox and then another one to complete the set. He eventually gets up to 5 mana and hardcasts Kiki Jiki which I manage to kill by discarding 8th excess cards. At this point I have nearly all the artifacts in my deck that have activated abilities either in hand or in play (thanks Null Rod), but still not one of the many other lands remaining in my deck. That’s alright, I have plenty of sideboard slots. I keep a spotty hand in
Game 2 and hit a Goblin Lackey off a 1st turn Therapy. I do catch a peek of Goblin Goon! Unfortunately, I fail to see any of the creatures in my deck or any of the removal beyond one Engineered Explosives. I do see about 8 lands out my first 12 cards. The Goon and Friends pummel me into the aether. I extend the hand, in a friendly sort of way. We had a great match with a lot of laughs. I wish Jon the best of luck.
Record: 1-2
At this point, the renowned Mage Dave Feinstein wanders into my general area and I inquire if he has a cold as well, since he looked a bit flushed. He says he was indeed coming down with something and shouldn’t have come today since he’s doing terribly. He says he assumes that since I’m happy, I’m 2-1 and winning. I inform him that I am in fact happy, but am no Norin the Wary. I am instead a Dwarven Thaumaturgist. He says that I’m always happy. I hope to continue to prove him right, regardless of my match record.
Round 4 Mike Bergeron
The Mountains vs. Mono BlackSo this time I play against Mike “Gravestorm” Bergeron and his crazy Black Knights that took out Isamaru, Jotun Grunt, Meddling Mage, and Kataki, all before lunch. We have a couple of interesting games with mirrored Confidants and Crucible on his side Game 1 and on my side Game 2. I got Jitte and a Creature (combo!) in Game 1 and took it home from there, eking out from under Strip lock thanks to a pair of Moxen. Game 2, he wasn’t so lucky when I got Strip lock on turn 4. He drew a ton of cards off those Gravestorms though! We played another game for fun after the match completed and it was the most epic, with lots of back and forth before he got me locked down and took it home with 3x Mishra’s Factories. At the point where one would normally lose the game, we chose to continue playing (“A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.” --James P. Carse) We simply adjusted the rules as necessary to keep the game going, while still maintaining some semblance of sense and balance. It all came down to him guessing what card was on top of my library after casting a Cabal Therapy by sacrificing a Confidant in response to a Jitte counter killing it. If he gets the card right, he wins. If not, we’d figure out something appropriately dire. We’d attracted quite a crowd of spectators at this point, since all the top tables had drawn and we were apparently the most entertaining match in the room. Mike thought for a while and randomly guessed “Bloodstained Mire”. I flip over the top card of my deck……….......... Bloodstained Mire! And the crowd goes wild!!!
Record: 2-2
Round 5 Stefan Ellsworth
The Mountains vs. The Extended Perfect StormStefan had wanted to drop since Brassman’s deck had apparently betrayed him. He conceded and we decided to play Extended again. The only impediment being that I didn’t have an Extended deck. That turned out to be fine since I just played The Mountains, modifying cards on the fly to be cards that are legal in Extended (Wasteland becomes Ghost Quarter, STP becomes Condemn, etc.). Suffice to say, Vintage Mountains is not suited to the Extended format.
Final Record: 3-2
I had a good time overall. Sara, Mike, and I headed to dinner and discussed Vintage and Magic in general. The general consensus was that we were looking forward to the next set freshening things up a bit, starting with the
Myriad Games Vintage Power Tournament on
February 10th, featuring special guest: Planar Chaos. Once a format becomes 40-50% one deck, it feels too predictable. Granted that’s not true for everyone – some people love well defined formats with 3 major decks so that they can prepare for everything and know all the matchups well. Others prefer the wide open formats where you can have 20 different decks that are all fun and competitive. I prefer formats where I can play Mountains, so I guess I’m pretty much set no matter what!
Well, there you have it. My shortest tournament report by far. I hope you enjoyed it. The Mountains will certainly be changing quite a bit with the release of Planar Chaos. Stay tuned for more on this story, as it develops, and as always, have fun!
Until next time, may The Mountains Win Again!
