As I said in the title this is the first Vintage tournament I’ve played in since around 1998 or 1999, and the first non-casual play in the format that I’ve done since selling my collection off in 2002 (You know, a few months before all the prices tripled). I’ve always loved playing this format but there just wasn’t enough local interest for to keep my collection around collecting dust.
Last year I started playing legacy pretty seriously and built up a huge stock of those staples. Legacy can feel a lot like vintage sometimes and I always had the inclination to get back into Vintage but not the cash or trade to pick up a deck. While looking through my binders after the recent explosion of legacy prices I realized that I now had enough Legacy stuff to trade into just about any Vintage deck I wanted. I’ve been playing MUD in Legacy for the last few months and have really enjoyed it, so it seemed logical to build a Workshop deck. After a few weeks of trading up at tournaments and taking advantage of SCG’s sometimes extremely generous trade prices I had a sets of Moxes and Workshops; Nick Coss sent the last Mox and a handful of other cards I needed along with someone (Mike Coyle?) the morning of the tournament and my deck was finished just in the nick of time!
I tried a few different Workshop builds out on Magic Workstation and seemed to enjoy playing Espresso Stax the most. The fact that it doesn’t run Lotus and I was running out of cards to trade off was awfully convenient too (if anyone as a Lotus for trade I have an offer that’s about 200-250$ in your favor, pm me!). Unfortunately MWS vintage tables are few and far between so I wasn’t able to get very much play testing done against most of the major pillars, especially storm and dredge. I decided to send Nick Detwiler a message on Facebook looking for advice on how to play the deck beyond what he has written articles about and he was gracious enough to send me a long well thought out message with tips that I greatly appreciated and that led directly to some of my match wins. He put quite a bit of effort into helping someone that just sent him a random message out of the blue that he had never met before, a truly impressive guy!
So anyway, onto the report:
Round One: Jake Gans - Worldgorger Dragon
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=5806&iddeck=42049Game 1: Jake was a very friendly fellow and I greatly enjoyed our match. I should have however paid more attention to previous Blue Bell results because he came in 2nd last month with this deck. Because of my inexperience in the format I had no idea what he was playing beyond blue spells. I thought I was doing pretty good with a sphere effect out and getting ready to get my stack on and then he dropped Necromancy and my butt cheeks clenched a little in anticipation of my first raping of the day.
Game 2: I go into this game with some pretty high confidence. All my dredge graveyard hate came in, some extra strip mine effects too. Jake, having played the deck more than once before, saw through my insidious plan and boarded in his entire sideboard which just happens to convert the deck entirely into Tezzeret control. I started out strong, I believe an early Crucible of Worlds and Lodestone Golem. I swing in for 10 damage. He drops key-vault. My Butt clinches a little again, but quickly relaxes as I remember that he is at 10 life with a mana crypt out, I still have a little bit of hope. He is running even numbers on the dice to take damage. The first Time Vault turns he rolls odd. Second turn? Odd. Third turn? Odd. Ok I think I can still pull this out if he goes on a run in the other direction. I switch the dice up on him to ruin his streak. Fourth turn? Odd. I presume that die is also cursed so I switched up again. Fifth turn? Odd. It started getting ridiculous and I was running out of cursed dice to hand him. Six turn, Seventh turn, Eight turn, odd, odd, odd. He finally draws an intuition into Tinker, Read the Runes, Read the Runes, and my dream is over. Although I was disappointed in the loss this is a story I’ll be telling for quite some time.
Match: 0-2, Total 0-1
Round Two: Mike Smith – Some white? Homebrew.
Game 1: I started this match off on the wrong foot. When he started reading every card I played and I asked if this was his first vintage tournament, because you know, it’s pretty much my first too. I think he took this as an insult instead and started getting defensive and self-deprecating. I think anything I said only put him in a worse mood. If you read this Mike, I apologize.
The game was over quick enough, I dropped a few sphere effects and a creature and lock him out pretty quickly. Game two was much of the same.
Match: 2-0, Total 1-1
Round Three: Dave Gans – Dredge
Dave is another really great fellow; he was also the father of my round one opponent, Jake. I think that it was ridiculously cool that a father and son play in magic tournaments together. I wanted revenge for the loss to this son and I decided that as his father I’m holding him personally responsible, because he just has to be the type of guy who would raise a kid to play worldgorger dragon combo that entirely negated my sideboard plan by converting into a whole second deck and could control dice seemingly at will.
Game 1: Dave drops one of the most beautiful proxies I have ever seen in my life, an entirely artist drawn Bazaar of Baghdad. Unfortunately my proxy-awe soon ends as I realize I’m playing dread. My heart sinks and butt begins to clench. I’m about to get raped by a whole family. My hand was not at all prepared for dredge, and I knew the game was lost. I let it play out for a little bit so I could see as much of his deck as possible before he gets around to casting cabal therapy on me to which I would concede.
Game 2: I get what I thought was a great hand. I don’t know the details exactly anymore but it had a wasteland and two relic’s of progenitus. On my second turn I pop one after his first bazaar activation where he discards three dredgers, destroy his bazaar of Baghdad, and drop the second relic of progenitus. I totally misread the situation he was in and pop the second relic too early. As the game unfolds I realize that he had three bazaars in his hand almost right off the bat. I do what I can to stall with spheres but he gets in for the kill after a few turns.
As I said I really enjoyed playing Dave and he gave some great advice afterwards on methods of playing against dredge in the future which is going to help me out immensely.
Match: 0-2, Total: 1-2
Round Four: Josh (Unfortunately I forget your last name even though we did quite a bit of trading afterwards!) – Metalworker MUD
Game 1: We do the usual thing that Workshops do to each other, destroy mana bases and dropping spheres, trying to squeeze out whatever advantage we can. I get out a Golem and that along with his Ancient tomb provide a beating down to 4 life. He stabilizes with a Steel Hellkite, destroys my Golem and beats me down to 5 over a few turns and drops a Wurmcoil Engine. Desperate for anything I rip a Duplicant off the top and remove his Hellkite. I block the Wurmcoil the next turn, but fail to magically rip a second duplicant and lose the game.
Game 2: Crucible, Lodestone, Wastelands. I forget exactly how the game started, but I dropped turn 1 Workshop, Mana Vault, Sol Ring, Crucible of Worlds, and something else, probably a chalice for 0. Next turn I drop a wasteland and lodestone golem, and its game over.
Game 3: I believe I started out Turn 1 Crucible of Worlds, and it ended up much the same as the last game. Crucible of Worlds and 8 strip mines puts a world of hurt on the mirror match.
Round: 2-1, Total: 2-2
Round Five: Ed Carey – Welder Workshop
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=5539&iddeck=40100Again I should have paid more attention to past Blue Bell results, Ed won the January tournament with a list very similar to what he was playing this weekend, though I did notice very few small differences after looking at the January list.
Game 1: I draw the nuts, Turn one Crucible and I think a sphere. I follow it up with trinisphere and smokestacks and he’s never in the game. He decides to concede before I learned any more information about his deck. This was an extremely smart move on his part because I did not realize that he was running a Welder deck and I board out my chalice of the voids.
Game 2: Again I start out turn 1 crucible of worlds and turn two ghost quarter. I’m sure he enjoyed the look on my face as I watched him search his library and pull out a beautiful Arabian nights mountain. He would repeat this process at least 5 additional times this game. Welder ends up dominating the game, that along with ancient tomb end up dealing 20 damage to me.
Game 3: Chalice comes back In. Turn one – Crucible of Worlds. Turn 2 Wasteland. I drew a chalice but it just happened to be turn 3, moments after he dropped a goblin welder. He follows welder up with a smokestack, cranks up the heat every turn and takes control of the game again, shrewdly playing the right amount of spells to wipe the entire board and start over. After the board is clear he drops a mountain and a welder. I rip a Workshop or a tomb and I believe drop a sphere. He doesn’t have mana for an artifact and for at least I’d say the next ten to fifteen turns and either swings in for one or welders out the threats I am dropping, completely controlling the game despite the vast difference in permanents. Eventually I draw a duplicant and followed it up with a lodestone golem and that was all she wrote. The luck I didn’t have in the first round passed on to my opponent in the last round.
Round: 2-1, Total: 3-2
All told I had a great time. I can’t say I am disappointed in my record at all. I made some play errors, though far fewer than I was expecting though this is a format where even one error can mean a game lost. I think the greatest part of the weekend was something that I haven’t felt in a while, nervousness, maybe even almost that butterfly feeling you get in your stomach the night and morning before a magic tournament that you are extremely excited to play in. Hopefully this will be the first of many that I’m able to play in.
