Disclaimer:
This is not a report about at 35+ man Mox tournament, or about a 20 person Drain tournament. This is a report about a $5 biweekly Vintage tournament with 4 boosters as the prize. I am writing it not because I think winning is some kind of accomplishment or whatever, but rather because it is:
a) the first time I personally have ever went undefeated in a Vintage tournament (or a magic tournament period for that matter)
and
b) the first time I have ever piloted TPS in a tournament.
So it's certainly no big deal as far as what I won, but whatever. Also, I've never written one of these before, and I didn't have the foresight to take notes, so some of the matches might be a little dim in my memory and less detailed then usual- my apologies.
For Reference, here's what I ran:
TPS
As suggested by Eric Charters (with much input from others*)
Creatures
1 # Inkwell Leviathan
Spells
1 # Ancestral Recall
1 # Brainstorm
2 # Cabal Ritual
1 # Chain Of Vapor
4 # Dark Ritual
4 # Force Of Will
1 # Gifts Ungiven
1 # Fact or Fiction
1 # Misdirection
1 # Mystical Tutor
1 # Rebuild
1 # Vampiric Tutor
1 # Necropotence
1 # Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 # Demonic Tutor
4 # Duress
1 # Sensei's Divining Top
1 # Imperial Seal
1 # Mind's Desire
1 # Ponder
1 # Tendrils Of Agony
1 # Time Walk
1 # Timetwister
1 # Tinker
1 # Yawgmoth's Will
1 # Merchant Scroll
1 # Memory Jar
Mana Sources
1 # Black Lotus
1 # Lotus Petal
1 # Mana Crypt
1 # Mana Vault
1 # Mox Emerald
1 # Mox Jet
1 # Mox Pearl
1 # Mox Ruby
1 # Mox Sapphire
1 # Sol Ring
2 # Island
2 # Swamp
4 # Polluted Delta
1 # Flooded Strand
2 # Underground Sea
1 # Tolarian Academy
Sideboard
1 # Infest
1 # Sadistic Sacrament
1 # Tormod's Crypt
3 # Extirpate
1 # Yixlid Jailer
1 # Hurkyl's Recall
3 # Dark Confidant
1 # Pithing Needle
1 # Island
1 # Swamp
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*: (for those of you that read allot of these, you'll notice this list bears a great deal of resemblance to that recently piloted by Marske in Hengelo. Marius has been a huge help to me in learning this deck over the past two months, always taking the time to answer my incessant questions over PM and giving me a ton of great advice. thanks Marius!)
credit as well to the excellent TPS primers written by Stephen Menendian on SCG- they're all out of premium now and a great read.
Ok, so the local shop runs Vintage about twice a month (give or take, more on the take than the give). It used to be more often, but turnout started to drop and they scaled back. The shop opens at 10am, so naturally this freezing cold (by local standards) morning was the one day my bus is early and I get there at twenty-to. Thankfully, the local Tim Horton’s (our country's big coffee and donut chain) wasn’t too crowded and served up an excellent Croissant to pass the time and warm the toes until the store opened.
Start time at 11am. 10:55 and there's three of us - fortunately we got quite a few more just before first pairings went up and ended up with 12 people. Because the store runs an EDH event afterwards (that's every Saturday), we would determine the winner based on standings after five rounds of swiss, with no cut to top 8.
Round 1:I sat down opposite my first opponent, who I've never seen before and so I have no idea what my foe is running. I loose the die roll (typically), and draw a hand with Bargain, Desire, a few other spells, and no mana sources except an off-color mox (ruby I believe). Sigh - "great start" I think to myself. I mull to six and keep this:
Underground Sea
Delta
Dark Ritual
Mox Sapphire
Timetwister
Brainstorm
Being on the draw I figure there's about 8,000 things that make this immediately playable, plus my foe seems overly pleased with her hand, so twister (if I can resolve it) will basically act as a forced mulligan to her and with the mana I've got, just might be enough to get me there.
After I announce I'm keeping, my opponent drops a Bazaar of Baghdad. <sigh> - Ichorid. yep, my fears are confirmed when she activates it, drops a Bridge from Below, a Golgari Grave-Troll, and another dredger (the Imp I think), and passes the turn. Oi.
I draw Duress. At this point, my opponent has a broken dredge next turn - 11 from the bazaar activation on the upkeep, plus at least another 6 from the draw. I figure Twister is my only out, but it's still unlikely (I think) that she will kill me next turn, and if I Twister too soon I'll give her a chance to get back in the game while wasting an opportunity with my only engine in sight. I decide to drop the Sea and play out Duress in case she has Unmask in hand, since I have no way to protect the Twister. I see an Ancient Grudge, a second Bazaar, etc.... and take the Grudge as it is the only legal choice. I pass the turn.
My foe dredges on the upkeep, on the draw, gets a Zealot, two narcomoebea, a Dragon of some kind (her return target, it had haste and devour and seemed good in the other matchups I saw), and other assorted goodies but no Ichorids or Dread Return. She drops the second Bazaar, dredges some more, and passes the turn with about 25 cards in the yard and a good shot at the kill next turn.
Thank God for Timetwister. I draw a second Dark Ritual (which suits my plan perfectly), play and crack the Delta for my other Sea (since she doesn't seem to be running any land destruction, otherwise I'd get a Swamp), play the mox, both rituals and Timetwister. My opponent is not pleased.
to make a long story short, my twister brought me Necropotence, Lotus, and a Ritual and I has enough mana left to play out the Necro. I paid 5 life, saw YawgWin and Vamp Tutor along with Top and something irrelevant, and proceeded to storm out for 12 copies of Tendrils on my next turn.
Sensei's Divining Top BTW was awesome all day. I'm running it in the Grim Tutor slot due to proxy and budget limitations, but the fact that it turns topdeck tutors into in hand tutors was critical in at least 3 games - not so much this one, as I think I would have been alright for at least one more turn, but it did speed up the win, and that's good enough for me.
Game two was short- very short. apparently she was not expecting Jailer, as she readily admitted to not having an out to it (she was running almost manaless except for a Dryad Arbour or two to power out Grudge) when I dropped my Jailer on turn one.
1-0, 2-0 in games.
Round 2:This was another foe I'd not met before, and he handed me my only game loss of the entire tournament. I don't have a clear memory of this match as I was very focused on tight play. he was on Tezz and landed an early key or vault in all three games. Game one I remember having a fairly nutty draw and luring out the FoW with Necropotence while keeping enough mana back to cast Desire that same turn (for 8), which flipped Tendrils directly. Game two he assembled Key-Vault on turn four after playing what seemed like 9,000,000 FoW's to keep me off anything relevant.
Game 3 was tense and lasted 8 turns- he kept countering things, he had a vault turn 1 (but no key), I had Necropotence (one of the few spells that resolved in the early game), by neither of us could get a definitive edge. It was a nail biter, but I finally Necro’d to 1 and in that pile got YawgWin with Duress and Force backup (which I needed both of) to kill him the turn after he played Key after spending a metric Ton of draw spells and finally a tutor or two to find it only to be left short the mana to win that turn. Epic, and I wish I had made notes but we were the last matchup to finish and went on to the next round right away.
2-0, 4-1 in games.
Round 3 I've seen Steve at a number of tournaments in a number of formats before. I know a few things about him:
he has ALOT of foils
he has ALLOT of non-foils
he is very methodical in his play
and
he likes combo and he likes control (the last time I saw him he was playing an all foil (where possible) counterbalance deck to the finals of a Legacy event the week before).
point 4 was the only relevant point of the whole list. really I had no idea what I'd be facing (except that it would be shiny
).
you'll have to forgive the complete lack of description regarding his deck. It turned out he was playing elf combo (with Grapeshot and the attack phase as his win conditions) and yes it was shiny - in fact I don’t recall seeing a single non-foil card the entire match (except his lotus and some lands). I have very little experience with elf combo. I've only played against it once before and don’t have a clear understanding of how the deck works in it's entirety. I know that seeing Nettle Sentinels with Heritage Druids is a bad sign, I know that there's a lot of tapping and untapping and returning and drawing, but the only clear thing I held on to was that big turns seem to often revolve around Glimpse of Nature.
I won game one through sheer dumb luck. I countered the 4th elf he played on turn 1 (should have countered Visionary since he drew about 9,000,000 cards off it, but my lack of experience against the deck caused me to make a nearly fatal misplay), and killed him on turn two off a topdecked YawgWin. I'm fairly sure he could have gone off on the next turn, but that's one of the things I love about running this deck- sometimes it hands you wins when you really have no business winning.
Game two I brought in an Extirpate and the Infest for Misdirection and a Duress (since so little of his deck is non-creature I figured the Extirpate would do me more good). Turns out I was right - after he glimpsed on turn 2 and I Extirpated it in response to his next play he ran out of gas (has was trying to set up a winning board for the next turn and I think counting on the 2nd Glimpse, which was in his hand), and I basically goldfished him from that point (though I did take heavy damage from the 5 elves he had in play as it took me 3 more turns to kill him - slow draw- meh). Extirpate FTW!
3-0, 6-1 in games.
Round 4:My opponent round 4 is known locally as Big Red. Why? Because he's about 80 feet tall (okay he's like 6'5'') and has red hair. He also has a disconcerting habit of knowing the minute details of how even the most obscure deck works and announcing your spells a split second before you announce them yourself in a quasi-psychic fashion. I know he favoured painter's combo (with 8 blasts) of old, and I put him on Drains because he has a deep love of that card.
At this point in the day I'm getting hungry - most matches have gone to time so it's well after 1pm and I usually east lunch at noon. Fortunately, my 3-0 record at this point spurs me on to focus and play some good magic.
Game 1 I mull to five but end up with a nice hand featuring Bargain, Crypt, Ritual, Duress and a land - I'm only one mana off bargain and I have duress to support. That is, in short, how the game goes, although it lasts far longer than I expected after taking his only gas as he keeps topdecking FoW's to hit my rituals and stop me from doing anything for 3 turns running (I guess he figured keeping me off any mana was better than waiting to hit the threat, maybe fearing more duress?). Eventually he runs out of answers, Bargain resolves, followed shortly by Time Walk, then Desire, then Jar (I was very low on life, well under 7, and had no tutors or draw in hand. it was risky, but I figured he'd used up 3 FoW's already so the risk would be low), then Will, then Tendrils.
Game 2 I brought in SadSac (since Big Red is the kind of fellow who runs light on wincons (like me
). It didn't come up, but post game I asked and sure enough he had less than 3) and an Extirpate for a land (island) and Timetwister (since it seemed like the worst card vs. what so far seemed like Counterspell.dec)
Big Red started with a Leyline in play (Void. lovely- looks like I might as well have boarded out Will lol (ok, not really)) and runs out land, mox, lotus, pass. I has Turn 1 Bargain in hand, but nothing to protect it so I just played a land and passed the turn after drawing FoW but no blue spell. He draw and passed the turn back to me, I drew Gifts Ungiven, used it to pitch to FoW to protect Bargain, and rode the card wagon to a tendrils for... well enough.
4-0, 8-1 in games.
Round 5:Round five I take a huge sigh of relief - I'm playing against the shop Judge, who shares a first name with me and a love of the game, but is far more interested in playing something he enjoys (which is neither combo (except something crazy like Conflux-DreamHalls.dec) nor counterspells) than winning every match. He's also an excellent player and an all-round nice guy, so even if he is on something absurdly powerful the match will be enjoyable.
It turns out he's playing mono-white weenie, which offers no huge threats to me. The only plays of relevance in this match-up are my FoW to his Jitte (which could have gained him enough life to make storming him out before dying to combat damage very difficult), and game two turn 1 FoW to his sideboard Trinisphere (which would have won him the game, since he has a reasonable clock for a weenie deck and once again had the Jitte - it took him to 25), but I had no issues storming him out after finding Desire within Will.
5-0, 10-1 in games.
And that was that- with the start time for EDH passed, and me as the only undefeated player, the standings were set and my first tournament with TPS was won and done.
Props: Marius and Menendian as per above, the store for running Vintage with regularity, my namesake for being good natured about being a virtual bye, and in fact all the players for good sportsmanship and some very entertaining matchups (particularly to Kenny, my Tezz opponent, for some riviting games). Sensei's Divining Top + Imperial Seal for winning at least 3 otherwise lost games
Slops: the store, for not recognising that there are enough players interested in the format around here to charge a higher entry fee and offer bigger prizes (nothing huge, but some duals once in a while won’t go amiss, or even cash or store credit. a $10 fee would be fine for everyone involved I'm sure). the bus, for never being early (or even on time) except when it's not convenient lol.
And here's me, happy with my new deck choice, eager to progress more as a player, and itching for the next larger-scale Vintage in my area( I think there's a $1K event in Jan, perhaps even a Lotus instead, that I'll be making it to).
Cheers!
