Vintage is the worst and best format ever.

[Methuselahn]

Vintage Magic the Gathering is a format of precise calculations.  Where sending that Mox onto the board first turn or holding it for Brainstorm can be a monumental decision.  The deployment of lock pieces and how to bait out Mana Drains.  Playing around Stifle with Pitch Long.  Calculating storm 3 turns in advance and abusing Necropotence.

Well, this thread will have none of that, good sir.

This is a tale of ICBM OATH.


So, Saturday morning I get on the horn with my brother Tim.  We talk and eventually Tim mentions that Anthony wants to join us at the monthly Mox tourny at the Monster Den here in Miinneapolis, MN.   Awesome.  I love donations.  And of course, I love bigger crowds at the tournament.  So we make plans for the three of us to get together that night to put together a deck and play some Guitar Hero.  So after some playing and halfway through a case of PBR, we pull out our binders and see which cards we have. 

I had decided earlier in the day that Oath was probably a good choice.  Anthony hasn't touched a mtg card in SIX YEARS.  No lie.  SIX.  As such, this was going to be an uphill battle.   I knew that I had an extra set of Oaths, Orchards, Chalices, Null Rods, Wastes, Forces, and a few key singletons that rock in Oath.  ICBM Oath, it is.   Mostly anyway.  See, we had used up all the proxy slots but still needed creatures.   Seeing as how I don't currently own an Akroma, we decided to just use Razia and DSC in the main. 

We didn't have time to test that night, we were too intoxicated and people started coming over.  So we'd have to settle for a single test game the next morning before the tournament and sideboarding advice on the way there in the Jeep.

So we get to the Monster Den.  We donate his fifteen bucks and wait for pairings.  Now, I had my own games to deal with and didn't really take notes on what happened with Anthony, but this seriously dirty quick-and-dirty is a quick rundown.

Loss
Draw
Win
Win
Win
Win (top8)
Split the Top 4 (which was my advice because he was facing the mirror)

Amazing.  I laughed, I cried, but mostly I laughed a lot.  So Anthony gets his 1/4 of the Ancestral Recall  ~85 bucks.  Jood Gorb Dude.  He is kind enough to donate money to Tim and me for the cards/ride/advice/ w/e.

Maybe I'll build The Guilded Claw for him next month.  Apparently, metagaming hardly matters.  Here's to luck!! 

[Vegeta2711]

6 years... icbm oath... actually splits something in a tourney.  :lol: :lol: :lol:

That's great.

[TopSecret]

     That's hilarious!

I remember buying a 5-color stax deck from a friend,
which he had previously won a mox tourney with,
by casting Trinisphere 8 times first turn over the course of the tourney...
Immediately after it was restricted!

I almost never top 8, and I certainly had never done so at a Myriad Games tourney.

I decided to purposely not test any games with the deck.
I then got 3rd place at the next tourney,
and then top 8'd at the following one.

Yay for Vintage!

[yespuhyren]

I playtest like crazy then run into Landstill and Mono Blue Control.  Yay!

[wethepeople]

When I had just turn 10, I brought mono black Discard.dec to a local tournament in Hadley, without any real testing before-hand, with the exception of Stompy.

I somehow managed to come in first place, and won a good amount of booster packs, at a tournament of roughly 15 people. (Five proxies were legal, those slots I had used for a Vamp, Lotus, Jet, and 2 Hypnotic Specters)

For some reason, your story reminded me of that. It probably had something to do with the fact that I had no testing, and very little knowledge of the game, but miraculously we both still managed to succeed.