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Reaper802
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« on: February 03, 2005, 09:02:29 am » |
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I’ve broken this into two parts just incase you find Part I to be lacking. I think it adds a lot to the overall flow and feeling of the piece but I always encourage constructive criticism. I’m an electrical engineer by trade so writing is far from my strong suit, in other words feel free to fix any silly grammatical mistakes I may have missed along the way. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed living and writing it.
Rocky L. McCumbee
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Oath Smoath, a.k.a. The Time Walk Looks Nice, I think I’ll Have That
By: Rocky L. McCumbee
Part I
I find that this report would be much more interesting with a bit of a prelude so here it comes. I’ve been playing Magic for almost 10 years now; I started the game around the time of 4th edition and can distinctly remember when Ice Age came out. Those were truly the good old days when Shivan Dragon was king and Lighting Bolts were plentiful. We have all been at that stage, having no idea what is good, what tempo is all about, or how synergy is what truly makes great decks tick. My basic skills developed quickly and before long I was able to fair quite well in Mirage sealed deck and draft events around the area. Finally I decided enough was enough and dedicated an entire Christmas to Magic. For my troubles I picked up 12 dual lands, Arabian Nights style Serendib Efreets, and a bunch of other old school goodness. And that for a time was how my Magic went; I would win a bunch of games during lunch at school and force my friends to play with stuff like main deck Blood Moon. Funny how some trends never seem to die. During my junior year of High School my Magic playing came to an end when that deck was stolen at school. I was sickened by the loss of my best cards and simply lost the fire I had to play the game. And that they say was that for well over two years.
Fast-forward now two years and there I am in college dealing with all the stress that comes along with the inevitable changes college life can bring. Around this time I hear a new game store has opened in town and it doesn’t take me long to find it. So once a week I would give myself a well deserved break and head to Gatheouse Games to play a few games. This time around I found myself play a lot of Type 2 as the store kept weekly wins and losses as to award the highest ranked player with a new promo card. By the end of the season I had earned myself a nice foil Serra Angel, keep in mind at this time pretty much nothing is foil so this is extreme hotness. It’s a nice card and all but she is still just a 4/4 flyer that doesn’t tap to attack and before long I send her the way of Ebay and collect my 120 bucks. If only I would have had the hindsight to buy some power with that money since at this time you could score a Mox on Ebay for about 100 bucks. So it goes, and that’s how things went for two years until I entered my junior year of college. At this point Engineering school went from pretty hard to just plain silly ridiculously hard and once again I was forced to walk away from the game. What a period of Magic history to miss out on, can you say Urza’s Block?
Finally in the spring of 2003 I graduated from Penn State University with my BS in Electrical Engineering and before long I had found myself working for the Department of Defense here in Southern Maryland. There I was fresh out of school with a nice new job and money in my pocket for the first time in a long time what is a guy to do? Being an avid fantasy football player the first few months flew by but once the Super Bowl had ended I found my weekends to be somewhat lacking. So in early 2004 I fire up the computer and do some googling for the closest game store and find one with little trouble. It’s not the nicest place I have ever been but they have some singles and a decent amount of players. Thus began my third comeback to the game and hopefully my last.
It’s was simply amazing how much the format had grown and changed since I had stopped playing two and a half years before. I used to read a site known as the DOJO but it had long been dead but lucky someone suggested I check out this place called TheManaDrain.com which in turn also lead me to starcitygames.com. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the amount of product this place had available, nothing had really existed like this when I had played before other than ABU.com and this site simple put that to shame. The same goes for the content on TheManaDrain.com, these guys had really helped build a great Type 1 environment while also developing a healthy metagame.
So for several months I did what I do best, I sat back and started reading, watching, and listening. Over that time I got the newest cards that seemed Type 1 viable and started to put some new Type 1 decks together. At the time I had quit I was playing a deck often referred to as Coco Pebbles, which worked around a combo of Goblin Bombardment, Enduring Renewal, and a zero casting cost creature. Trix had just started to become popular around that time also but from what I was reading I had a lot of work to do before I could contend again.
It was becoming ever so clear at this point that to be competitive in Type 1 you needed at least some amount of power. It was also becoming clear that it would be extremely advantageous to put together some kind of playtest team where members could loan cards to other members for events. The local store had one player who owned power and after losing to him a few times in draft it was obvious that the guy could play the game. There were also a few other guys around that had decent collections but lacked the focus and direction to become great Type 1 players. So I created a flyer for the store announcing my intentions to setup a playtest team to travel to local events. Response at first was less than impressive but I did manage to recruit a few younger guys who wanted to learn Type 1.
My first event back was the East Coast National Championships held in DC last spring. This event really opened the doors up as it allowed 5 proxies to be used in your deck. After debating what to play with my still limited collection I elected for, wait for it….. Sui-Black. It was really more along the lines of Black Control but Sui-Black just gets such a better response from the people. This event could not have started better as I was out of the gate with a 3-0 record, maybe I could still play this game after all. Then I sat down for my round four match with a guy named Shane, Shane Stoots that is. Maybe you have heard of him, part of team ShortBus, one of the fathers of 7/10 Split? So I got a first hand taste of this new deck called 7/10 Split and guess what, it was pretty good. Shane was a great opponent and I felt like I learned more about how the game had changed in that match than any other point leading up to it, an epiphany if you will. After a round 5 loss to another Workshop based deck I dropped as I had seen all I need to see for that day.
It wasn’t long till I was back to the drawing board trying to figure out a way to deal with these Workshops. Of course an interesting thing happened that day in DC, Mark Perez another team Shortbus member won with a deck he called Fish which just happened to run about 5 power cards. It wasn’t long before my teammate Andrew Chamers had a version put together and started testing it. It seemed pretty evident that the deck had promise for the current metagame and I was convinced it would make a big showing at the next major event. Then StarCity did what they do best, they delivered with the first ever Power 9 event in Richmond, VA. I knew my best chance was with something Fish like, but at the same time I needed to put my own spin on it. Since my return back I had become very interested in the new Rock/Paper/Scissors metagame floating around. It no longer contained the simple Agro/Control/Combo elements; it seemed to me that there were now six styles to the table. You could have Agro/Control, Agro/Combo, and the one I found most intriguing Control/Combo, all of which could contain different percentages of each element.
Feeling that there was something viable with the Control/Combo scheme I set out to build something for the first P9 event. What I came up with was an old fashion Wolf in Sheep’s clothing. I expected a lot of Fish hate at the event so what if I could get my opponent to think I was playing Fish in game one only to combo them out for the finish. This would give me an early lead in the match while also avoiding any sideboard hate they might be running. Even better would be if I could finish them game one without using the combo at all only to spring it on them in game two. So after much testing I came up with a deck I named Charbroiled Piranha which had fish like elements but used Mana Severance into a fatal Goblin Charbelcher.
Charbroiled Piranha wasn’t all it was cooked up to be, get it, that’s a pun. The deck just lacked the necessary speed to finish. I found myself having great control of the early game and well into the mid-game but just couldn’t find a way to get the Belcher finish late. I ended that day going 5-3, my losses coming from Madness, Food Chain Goblins, and some kind of Crucible/Zuran Orb lock thing, the last being down right embarrassing. We did have one positive that day as Andrew managed to crack the Top 16 missing the Top 8 after a late round loss to none other than Mark Perez in a Fish mirror match.
At this point I knew we were making progress and were headed in the right direction. The announcement of the second StarCity Power 9 event really had the blood pumping and for weeks I tried to get something together that could compete in the metagame. In the end I simple ran out of time and decided to wait till the next event, there was just no point in trying to run rogue junk with the quality of players in these events. The results from the second Power 9 were astonishing as team Meandeck put four players in the Top 8 with an Oath of Druids build. When I finally saw the deck list I just wanted to kick myself. To me the deck looked a lot like Control with a Combo-esk finish to it, the exact blend I had been searching for.
StarCity Power 9 in Chicago saw Oath so heavily hated out that it didn’t make much noise and with no mention of it being played at Waterbury the week before the latest Richmond event I had a feeling the time might just be right. And that kids brings us to the end of my little rant, on with the tournament report.
Part II
We had four guys head to this event, Ron a.k.a. Mr. Power, Chris, Van, and myself. Ron had enough power for himself and Chris to run STAX variants while Van wanted to run a Type 1 Scepter Chant build. Up until a few weeks before the event I had no idea what I was going to run until Ron informed me that they had an Oath deck already built. I said what the hell picked it up and started playing with it in testing. After a few weeks of practice against the decks we expected to see I was feeling pretty good about the deck. I finalized the build around the 5 proxies I would be granted and tweaked the sideboard for the metagame seen at Waterbury the week before.
SMOath – 4th
4 Oath of Druids
4 Intuition
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
4 Mana Leak
4 Accumulated Knowledge
2 Impulse
2 Misdirection
1 Spirit of the Night
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1 Gaea's Blessing
1 Time Walk (Ron’s extra Walk, this will be important later on)
1 Ancestral Recall *
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Emerald *
1 Mox Sapphire *
1 Mox Pearl *
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus *
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 Polluted Delta
4 Island
3 Wasteland
1 Tropical Island
1 Strip Mine
(* = proxy)
Sideboard (15)
4 Arcane Laboratory
4 Energy Flux
2 Control Magic
2 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Iridescent Angel
1 Pristine Angel
1 Platinum Angel
Shortly after we arrived in Richmond Ron informed me that he was cutting Time Walk from his build and that if I wanted I could use it and proxy another Mox. This was a first for me, as I had never played with a real piece of Power and the fact that it was a Time Walk now seems like a bit of an omen. We get registered and before long the pairing are up. Round one is cut short when they announce the pairings are wrong, even now I wonder how this effected my day. The new pairings go up and away we went.
Round 1
EJ playing Cerebral Assassin
Game 1 starts with me forcing not one but two early Goblin Welders while EJ gets an early Bazaar working. I’m stuck with an Orchard as my only mana source for a few turns and end up giving EJ four tokens. I manage to get down an Oath and trigger, hello Akroma who had been signed not too long before. Next turn Mr. Black joins in on the fun and I’m feeling really good. EJ manages to animate a Titan, catching me without counter-magic and putting a serious hurt on my mana base. Titan is good but hey he still can’t fly I’m good right? Wrong, this is Type 1 kids, EJ who now has a feeling I don’t have a counter casts a Yawgmoth’s Will. There is a reason people call it Yawgmoth’s Win and EJ makes no exception as he takes a few walks in time under Will to finish me.
I side in four Energy Fluxes taking Mana Leak out and shuffle up for Game 2. I elect to play and start out fast with a turn two Oath followed by a turn three Energy Flux. I’ve got his locked and as he passes the turn and I start to Oath. Wait a tick, I cast the Oath with my sol Tropical Island not an Orchard and EJ has no creatures on his side. It’s not long before that is ruled as a game loss and I sit there stunned at my own stupidity. EJ was really cool about the whole thing and felt bad about taking a win like that but I assured him that I not only deserve the loss but also a swift kick to the face.
0-1
Round 2
Phil playing TOG, wait people still play this?
Game 1 starts with a turn two Oath with counter backup and it doesn’t take long for Akroma and Mr. Black to finish the job. Of course the down side of this is I really don’t get a good look at his deck and I’m still not sure what he is playing. I saw white and that’s enough for me to side in my COP creatures while I also convince myself to throw Arcane Labs in. He elects to play and game 2 is off.
It’s a slow start on both sides until I manage to Intuition for AK and draw my three. He follows with his own Intuition for AK which I let resolve and then counter his AK for six. I get an Oath out and start the beat down although it’s much slower with the lack of the Haste creatures. Then there he is, Mr. Tog out of nowhere and I have no counter for him which of course leads to the inevitable walk through time with my creatures tapped. A nice sized graveyard and hand are fed to the hungry little guy and it’s enough to force game 3.
Out with those labs, goodbye AK, hello Control Magic and Platinum Angel. Yet another slow start for both of us as time in the round is running thin, I need an Oath now! I find it with an Impulse and get it down as fast as I can. I start swinging but time is called and we enter our 5 turn overtime. Once again Time Walk shows its face, what a silly card, and he saves himself from the fatal damage turn. At this point we both know that with only 60 players a 0-1-1 start for both of us is a death sentence so we roll for it. I see his four and raise to five and move to 1-1.
1-1
Round 3
Damn Van my teammate playing Scepter Chant
Well this sure does suck and we just decide to play it out like we have for the past month. I know I have a good shot and before long I’ve finished him off. I felt bad dropping him to 1-2 but that’s what teams do and I knew he would do his best to win as many matches as he could to help the percentages.
2-1
Round 4
Austin playing Control Slaver
Game 1 ends early as Austin makes a play mistake and takes a game loss, man I feel your pain but at least you have two games to go.
Games 2 I draw my hand and I see God, of course he is playing first. He goes land, lotus, pop for black, duress, duress. I can’t believe this just happened and he takes my Oath and my Ancestral Recall. What he did leave me with was a Brainstorm that I used on turn one to find another Oath and drop it the next turn. Akroma and Mr. Black go the distance with no trouble and I’m 3-1
3-1
Round 5
Matt playing Maddness
Matt gets the “Most Entertaining Opponent of the Day” Award; I really enjoyed these two matches more than any I may have ever played. Game 1 I start with an early Oath and once again finish him off so fast that I really have no idea what his is playing. I know I saw Bazaar so I am thinking it might be another Cerebral deck and hence leave the sideboard in the box.
Game two Matt tells me he has some hot tech for Oath and that he can’t believe I am playing it. I inform him that I have felt dirty all day long about playing this deck but it was the best I could do for this event. Matt elects to play and drops a turn one Spawning Pit, that my friends IS some hot Oath tech. At this point I almost want to scoop but I say what the hell maybe I can wiggle my way out of this one. Before long I draw up my lotus and the solution becomes ever so clear, I need to find Akroma and hardcast her. To be honest Matt led me to this solution after I played the lotus, he was a really nice guy. It takes me a while to find her and in the mean time I keep his side clean with well timed counter-magic. I do silly things like Intuition for Oath and Orchard just to thin the deck and help get to Akroma a bit faster. Finally an Impulse finds her and she takes care of business in short order. Matt loved the finish and informed me that Oath was by far his worst match up. We talk for a bit and I compliment him on his Spawning Pit idea, he was a great guy and like I stated before, allowed for the most entertaining games I have ever played.
4-1
4-1 and at this point I’m thinking I can draw into the Top 8. The parings go up and I find that my opponent is 3-1-1 which of course means there is no way he can take a draw, we are just going to have to play it out.
Round 6
Hill playing STAX
Hill is another solid player and it doesn’t take me long to see that he is playing STAX which normally gives me trouble in game one. I pull up an early Oath and give him a token, this is always a good sign. Now most of my opponents that day had been using dice for the tokens but Hill drops it like it’s hot and slaps down a Chaos Orb as a token. This gets Hill the “Most Pimp Move of the Day” Award and it should be noted that he ended up using a second Orb as a token also. I feel the need to give him token number three and wait to see another Orb, Hill confesses that he has no more and instead slaps down a One Hundred Dollar Casino Chip, can you say bonus points? We really need to get Hill a bigger trophy with this late move. By the way Akroma and Mr. Black do the job and we move to game two.
I get an early Orchard but can’t find an Oath for the life of me and before long Mr. Chaos and his brother followed by an angry casino chip put an end to that game. Now the pressure is on, win and move in to Top 8, or lose and scrub out late, just one more game baby.
I get a solid opening hand and cast a turn two Oath, Hill fires off a counter and I force it, to which he answers with a REB which I also force. Hill is stunned and so am I, how did I just pull that out? Up comes Akroma who is quickly followed by Mr. Black for the win. 5-1 and ranked 3rd going into the Top 8, what more can a guy ask for? Well how about my teammate Chris also squeaking in at number 8. Two of four in the Top 8, no matter what happens from here on in the day has been a huge success. Now the real games can begin and we are off to the semifinals.
Semifinal Match
Cody playing an EBA variant
I’m pretty sure Cody knows what I am playing since I believe EJ from round one was a teammate of his so the element of surprise is all but gone. All I know is I better get out of the gate quick if I want to move on. We shake hands and start the match with my dice rolling skills carrying me yet again. I get a turn two Oath down with an active Orchard and for the third time today finish my opponent off so quick that I really don’t get an idea of what he is playing. From the mana base I had seen it really looked like 4CC and I know I need to change creatures so I make the change and shuffle up for game two.
I start off kind of slow and have a hard time finding an Oath while Cody builds up a large source of mana, if this is 4CC I’m going to be in big trouble before long. I finally get an Oath in play and manage to get a swing or two in before good old Yawgmoth shows up. At this point I know Cody has me but I have to make sure he can solve it for himself. It takes him a good fifteen to twenty minutes to finish his Will turn which also lead into a double Time Walk which slammed the door shut. The only positive from this game was I saw the Negators and now I know he is playing some version of EBA. I’ve also seen the Meddling Mage and it becomes very clear that I need to get Oath ASAP or I’m going home very soon.
Game three starts and I draw up my hand and wouldn’t you know I see God AGAIN. He sure is a nice guy, and I lead off with the turn one Orchard Oath which Cody tries to force, but once again I have a force to answer and the game is all but over. A few turns later the damage is dealt and I am moving on to the quarterfinals. Cody’s opening hand had not only the force but a first turn Mage that would have ruined my day. I think those two hands really sum up what Type 1 is, broken things happen and sometimes silly broken things happen. Cody was a really cool guy and a great player; I hope to play him again, in a Top 8 of course.
Quarterfinal Match
Jay playing STAX
I’m close, so close I can taste it. Before the match starts I find that Chris lost his semifinal to a Dragon build so now I really need to represent. Jay sits down we shake hands and away we go. This match was covered by Jim Ferraiolo and was a really great experience; I’ve never been in a match with this much attention and pressure. My notes get pretty slim here since I really wanted to focus on the game so most of this is coming from memory and I highly recommend Jim’s article on StarCity as he did an outstanding job writing this round up.
Game one starts and Jay gets a first turn 3Sphere, this could be big trouble for Rocky. I draw my card and see a Wasteland and without hesitation I take out his Workshop. This play turns out to be clutch as I lock him under his own sphere and before long Akroma and Mr. Black finish the job.
Again I have pulled out a game one win verse STAXS all I need to do is win one of the next two games and I’m in the finals. In goes the Energy Flux plan and away we go. Jay starts out and makes the greatest play I have ever seen which went a little something like this. He bates my force on a Memory Jar which tapped him out and I feel good, then Jay plays a Mox Ruby from his hand and uses it to cast Goblin Welder, which makes me feel bad. The one thing I can’t let on the board in this match up is Welder and I know this is all but over. A few Jars latter there is a Smokestack on the table and he has me locked. It’s all going to come down to game three.
Game three starts and I have a solid hand after a paris which was by far the most agonizing decision I had to make all day. I drop an Island and pass the turn only to see Jay start with a Shop in to a 3Shpere. I brainstorm looking for a force but fail. If he doesn’t drop the 3Shpere there I have a turn two Oath after the brainstorm but that folks is Type 1 Magic for you. I hang around and get a one turn window to draw a mana and cast Oath, I draw the card and I know it’s over. Jay finish me off quickly and I shake his hand, another high quality player to add to my list that day.
Chris drafted an Emerald and in a strange turn of events I ended up with the Time Walk. I mentioned to Ron how the Time Walk I had used that day was the first Power I had ever played with and that I found it ironic that I ended up with the Time Walk. Ron’s response was nothing short of classic, “Dude, forget that, next time you get to use the Lotus!”
All and all the event was a huge success for us and I couldn’t be happier. The only thing I need now is to do it again, until I do that this Top 4 finish means almost nothing. Our trip home was slow thanks to the ice storm but we got to eat at The Iron Skillet, I highly recommend the Rib Eye steak. It turns out steak always tastes better with a side order of Power.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank StarCity for running an outstanding event and offering Type 1 players like myself these events to look forward too. I think the Top 8 shows that we have an extremely health metagame at the moment and I look forward to the evolution of the metagame with decks such as Cody’s EBA build with Mages and The Riddler which took the whole thing. Until next time kids, if you’re going to ride your bike tonight, please do wear white.
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