SCG Richmond Top 16 Report Oath

[Khahan]

First, this is only my 2nd major tournament. My first was a Waterbury last year. I took a horrible U/W Isochron deck mostly to have fun and learn a bit about the meta and players. I went in with 2 goals:
1) Place top 8. I thought I had a solid chance if I could just keep my  head on.
2) If I miss top 8, then at the very least, keep a winning record

While I would have preferred to accomplish goal 1, I can't complain about a 5-2 record, except for my own sloppy play in one round (which I'll get into later).


Props/Slops

Props
-To my wife for watching our 2 year old and 4 year old all day Saturday
-To Wayne for suggesting and arranging our trip
-To Wayne for extensive playtesting and deck tuning
-To every player I came across. Every single was was a gracious winner or loser. All were friendly and made the whole tournament experience great
-To Klepp who I never met and can't say I know. Didn't even see him at the tournament. But he proved to be a stand-up guy after.

Slops
My only real slop is to myself for my round 3 play vs Smmemen in game 3.  I had an opening hand energy flux vs his artifact heavy deck. Rather than waiting and playing it after he had stuff on the board, I dropped it asap and gave him the opportunity to play around it...an opportunity he took full advantage of.
My other slop, comes again in game 3 of round 3 vs Smmemen. He outplayed me and I let him outplay and made a few sloppy mistakes in procedure.  Without these mistakes, I had a realistic chance of a draw (though there was still no guarantee).


On to the report
Round 1 vs Ray (Iamfishman) with 2 land Belcher (belcher, a recurring theme for me that day)
Round 1 (0-2) (0-1)
Easily my worst overall round and worst beating of the day. I roll a 1, he rolls a 4. He leads with Land Grant revealing Black Lotus, Cabal Ritual, Dark Ritual, Goblin Welder and Chromatic Sphere (I think he had played a mox, my notes aren't as complete as I thought).  A few quick turns later, its over.
Game 2 I have a good opening hand including Orchard, Oath and a second land. I play that land, Go. He duresses, I have no counter. He takes the oath. A few short turns later, its over.

Round 2 (2-1) (1-1) vs Corey playing 2 land belcher
Corey was a great guy to play against and I think my most intense game of the day was here.
Game 1, he leads Mox Emerald, LED, Tinderwall.  I drop land go. He gets nothing to do on turn 2. I drop land go. He attempts a chromatic sphere which I mana leak.  Back to me, I get Oath w/ orchard go. He passes the turn w/ nothing (got mana screwed). I oath in Akroma. Game.
Game 2, he gets a great hand and its over on I believe turn 2. He stomped me as hard as I stomped him in game 1.
Game 3, this was the big match. I open with Oath, Orchard, Emerald, Naturalize, Polluted Delta, Gaea's blessing, Intuition. I have some decent countermagic that helps stall him. A well timed leak on his LED keeps him from going off. But he still gets the Yawgs will and is set up for the next turn. Meanwhile, he had Necropotence in play and took himself down to 13. I Oathed in Ancient Hydra the turn after his set up and  pop his welder (leaving him with 2 orchard tokens and me tapped out). I pass with a prayer.
He tinkers in Charbelcher and activates taking me from 19 down to 4! He attacks with both orchard tokens, I take it down to 2. He runs out of gas and passes the turn.
I Oath in Akroma, draw a stifle for the turn. Attack and win.

Round 3 (Smmemen with MWS/Stax control) (1-2) (1-2)
Game 1, I Mulligan my opening hand and redraw....7 without thinking. I catch it and tell my opponent. He calls a judge to be sure who has me Mulligan down to 5...which is fine. I was going to Mulligan anyway cause my second hand was crap.
I draw orchard, fetch another land Oath along with 2 other cards.  I lead Fetch.
He leads MWS trinisphere. I play land, go. He plays land go. I play orchard Oath.  A few turns later I have game 1.
We side, but he simply out-sidedboarded me and outdrew me in game 2. 
Game 3, I get opening hand with 2 lands an energy flux. I think I'm set playing against an artifact heavy deck. I play flux turn 2 before he has any artifacts on the table (we both had pretty slow hands). Turn 3 I lose my own mox to flux. We play draw go for the longest time and I never see an Oath (though he ends up with a handful Seal of cleansing one of which takes out my flux). He starts to draw into lock pieces faster than I can draw an Oath or counter. Eventually he's got Choke, a few Seals, sphere, 2  chalices, stax, in the eye of chaos. Of course, he beats himself down to 4 life using his Cities of Brass to do so. I try to force an answer to his lock pieces and give him an orchard token. A few turns later, I sloppily try to play a naturalize with 3 orchards giving him an army which he beats me down with.
If I had given him no creatures, he probably would drawn into a tutor or thinker and brought in Karn to beat on me with. But we were short on time and I may have also, at the least forced a draw. Sloppy play and bad technical decisions by myself coupled with smart play from my opponent cost me this round.

Round 4 vs Terry playing Gifts Belcher (2-0) (2-2)
Game I confuse my opponent dropping Mox Emerald, Waste, Sensei's Diving top. Next turn I make it clear what I'm playing when I drop Oath. He had led his turn 1 with a Goblin Welder.
On my next turn I oath in Ancient Hydra and pop the welder.  The old one goes all the way.
Game 2 is pretty much just as lopsided.  I have heavy countermagic with an early oath for very quick beats.

Things had been looking grim. After round 3, I was 1-2, as was one of my friends. My other friend was 2-1. After this round I was feeling much more confident. Play testing had shown U/W fish and belcher variants to be my worst match ups. So far I had gone 2-1 vs Belcher.

On to round 5

Round 5 vs Chris playing....Belcher Gifts (of course) 2-1     3-2
I lead and drop Island go.  He drops Island, Ancestral Recall.  I misdirect pitching Serum Visions. 3 cards refills my hand. I have a plat angel in hand. Ramp up to 7 mana, hard cast (praying he doesn't have mana drain) and get the win.
Game 2 doesn't go quite as well. We play back and forth for a while not going anywhere. I do get an Oath on the table, but no orchard. Finally he tinker's in Colossus with Timewalk.  I think  its ok, he'll hit me once with Colossus and I can hopefully Oath up Platty.  His timewalk turn comes, he attacks. Then casts Burning Wish for Time Walk.
Game 3 must have been very frustrating for my opponent.  I play island go with a Stifle in hand. He drops a fetch, I stifle it.  We go back and forth for a bit, but I feel pretty confident t throughout as I'm drawing a good mix of lands and countermagic. His friend stops by to watch and we tell him about the turn 1 misdirect w/ recall. 2 turns later, he draws his recall...I misdirect. He have a counter war which I win. I get his recall again. A few turns later, I get the oath and still have plenty of counter back up. He makes a good showing, trying to cast his spells. But he ran into a wall of counter magic. Even if he managed to tinker or hardcast in a belcher, I had Stifle in hand.

Great, 5 rounds and I finally have a winning record and am feeling confident. Belcher played me tough all day and I'm convinced I cannot possibly see anymore of it. I've got a 40th ranking and am effectively eliminated from top 8. But I have a good chance of a winning record.

Round 6 Jay playing Kobold-Clamp Glimpse  (2-0)  (4-2)
Game 1 he plays first turn glimpe. Forced.  Second turn Glimpse. Counterspell.  A few turns later his 3rd glimpse Forced. We play draw go. He loads the board up with 0/1 and 0/2's but no Clamp. I get a mid game Oath and win shortly after.
Game 2 he plays a first turn glimpse. Forced.  I get a quick Oath. Its game. Unfortunately my 2 travel partners are playing each other right next to me and I see one fall to 2-4, though the other is at 4-2 with me.

At this point I'm ranked 26. I'm guaranteed a winning record and am very happy. But I see a chance for a top 16 and a prize.

Round 7 Chad (oldbsturgeon) playing WGD  2-1  5-2
Game 1 I don't know what he's playing and keep a so-so hand. I do have a creature in it, but I've got some digging and a bit of countermagic.  Unfortunately my digging (serum visions and brainstorm) draw me into Plat angel, ancient hydra and a gaea's blessing. No oath. This is about turn 4. I know its game over, but I play it out to see more of my opponents deck. He had a welder on the board and used it to bring in 2 Trikes. I hard cast an ancient hydra just to make a showing and have no mana left over. He pops the 5/1 with a trike token and beats me down like I'm Rodney King at a policeman's ball.
I do the lightest siding of the day, bringing in 3 Tormod's crypts and 1 arcane lab.  Game 2 is tough and long but goes well. I get the oath online in game 2 with an opening hand that includes Forbidden Orchard, Black Lotus, Oath of Druids, Gaea's Blessing no other land and some countermagic. I pop the Lotus for green, tap the orchard play the oath and gaea's blessing targeting the lotus to shuffle it back in and avoid mana burn.
On to game 3. My opening hand includes mox sapphire, arcane lab, 2 lands and oath.  Turn 1 drop the Oath. Turn 2 I drop the lab. I draw into a tormod's crypt and drop that as my opponent filled his graveyard looking for an answer. He finally gets one in ray of revelation, popping my lab through 0 countermagic. I remove his gy, he flashes back ray and pops my oath.  Unfortunately, I've had a plat angel on the table already from oathing the prior turn.
I draw for my next turn...another crypt. Drop it. Attack, pass. Meanwhile, he has an army of 6 orchard tokens and I'm at 6 life. All he needs to do is draw an answer for plat angel. I sweat out his turn...and he doesn't draw it. I attack next turn for the win.

In all I'm 5-2. I finish in 16 place and claim my prize. Now the excitement begins. I see the top card in my pack as a UU casting cost and starts with (what looks like) Br.
I rip it open, only to find that the R mana symbol does not show through the wrappers very well. No Italian mana drain for me. But a great tournament experience. A great trip and a very solid showing.  I'm hoping the next Waterbury doesn't fall on my Storm Duty week at work where I'm on call.  I'm psyched to go to another tournament and improve my finishing spot.

I played Meandeck Oath skeleton and made some changes. Some of the changes were based on my card pool and a 5 card proxy tournament.  When I found out this was 10, it was too late to overhaul the deck.  Proxies are marked with a *

Countermagic:
4x Force of Will
4x Counterspell
1x Mana Drain
2x Mana Leak
2x Stifle
1x Misdirect

Drawing/digging/Searching
4x Brainstorm
4x Serum Visions (scry 2 is nice)
2x Sensei's Divining top
2x Intuition
1x Ancestral Recall*

Creature base
1x Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1x Ancient Hydra
1x Platinum Angel

Combo
4x Oath of Druids
4x Forbidden Orchard
2x Gaea's Blessing

Utility/Recovery
1x Time Walk*
1x Rushing River

Mana base
1x Black Lotus*
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mox Pearl*
1x Mox Sapphire*
1x Forest
4x Island
4x Polluted Delta
2x Tropical Island
1x Stripmine
2x Wasteland
 

Sideboard
2x Null Rod
2x Naturalize
2x Chalice of the Void
2x Energy Flux
2x Arcane Lab
3x Tormod's Crypt
1x Iridescent Angel
1x Living wish

The last 2 were for any match up where I might see Swords to Plowshares. Didn't see a single deck all day that would play them. Kind of tough when you face 4 belcher variants in 7 rounds.  But my 2 loses, I can honestly say I got outplayed. No whining about bad draws, mana screw, bad match ups etc. Ray and Steve outplayed me, plain and simple.

[Lunar]

Living wish is cool STP tech, ive been running it MD in my cerebral assasin builds for a while now...its good stuff. (especially in CA where stuff like furnace and crypt are used to remove stuff as well)  Ive even converted the SB over to a wish kind of SB to allow full regular use of 2 MD living wishes...

good job on the top 16 finish, good of you to not drop after going 1-2 like many players do...

[Hyperion]

Round 5 vs Chris playing....Belcher Gifts (of course)
...
I lead and drop Island go.  He drops Island, Ancestral Recall.  I misdirect pitching Serum Visions. 3 cards refills my hand. I have a plat angel in hand. Ramp up to 7 mana, hard cast (praying he doesn't have mana drain) and get the win.
Game 2 doesn't go quite as well. We play back and forth for a while not going anywhere. I do get an Oath on the table, but no orchard. Finally he tinker's in Colossus with Timewalk.  I think  its ok, he'll hit me once with Colossus and I can hopefully Oath up Platty.  His timewalk turn comes, he attacks. Then casts Burning Wish for Time Walk.

It wasn't 100% clear to me from reading this how he was able to Wish for Time Walk. Was it RFG'd using Skeletal Scrying? Phyrexian Furnace? I'm assuming if he'd resolved Will you would have made a note of that, plus he wouldn't have needed to use the Wish anyway if he'd had the mana for TW on his Will turn.

[Khahan]

I believe he had cast a Yawg's will the turn he cast timewalk. .

[oldbsturgeon]

hey hows it going. its too bad that you didnt get any good cards in your pack. i really wish i could have had an answer for your angel in that third game. oh well. 4-3 is fine for me for my first vintage tournament. great job.
chad

[Ufactor]

pardon the OTP, but did anyone notice the complete lack of free coverage on SCG?  They gave nothing to the non-premium users - NOTHING, squat, bubkus...not one fucking iota of information, not even a top8 list.  I can't be the only one WTF-ing this!

[Kerith]

pardon the OTP, but did anyone notice the complete lack of free coverage on SCG?  They gave nothing to the non-premium users - NOTHING, squat, bubkus...not one fucking iota of information, not even a top8 list.  I can't be the only one WTF-ing this!

[All 110 Decklists Will Be Posted Shortly!]

And as deck lists are free, you get a "fucking lot of information". Don't whine.

[Ufactor]

[All 110 Decklists Will Be Posted Shortly!]

And as deck lists are free, you get a "fucking lot of information". Don't whine.

cool, that's really all I wanted.  Though, I missed that part of the announcement by scrolling down and seeing that there wasn't anything to click on that wasn't in a premium box.


...and apparently, you don't know what an "iota" is 

[Revvik]

Coverage WAS one of the things promised to Premium members as a way of saying "thanks for forking over those dimes."  And the non-premium users gave SCG zip...
Of course, you could prevent high blood pressure in the future and just sign up.
And there are two lists.  Eric Miller's 'Riddler' and Orlove's Fish list.  Check out their deck database, and check under Vintage for format, and Power 9 tournament for event.  Should be the very last two lists.

ON TOPIC: How effective was Serum Visions in this build?  Considering that your deck looks relatively light on draw, but has the improved consistency (and probably never have to worry about holding a creature in hand) due to the redundant effects of visions and divining top.  Although this improves selection, do you feel (after the tournament) that keeping a full hand is better than cutting a couple chafe cards to the bottom of the deck?

Also - now that you can go ten-proxy, what changes would you make to the deck?

[jpmeyer]

pardon the OTP, but did anyone notice the complete lack of free coverage on SCG?  They gave nothing to the non-premium users - NOTHING, squat, bubkus...not one fucking iota of information, not even a top8 list.  I can't be the only one WTF-ing this!

Just to set the record straight, we always give out the decklists for free once we get them all inputted.

With regards to the fact that coverage is Premium, coverage is pretty expensive to do.

[Khahan]

ON TOPIC: How effective was Serum Visions in this build?  Considering that your deck looks relatively light on draw, but has the improved consistency (and probably never have to worry about holding a creature in hand) due to the redundant effects of visions and divining top.  Although this improves selection, do you feel (after the tournament) that keeping a full hand is better than cutting a couple chafe cards to the bottom of the deck?

Also - now that you can go ten-proxy, what changes would you make to the deck?

Serum visions I really liked in the deck. The scrye 2 was amazing. However, I'll admit it was one of the first cards I would cut while sideboarding. My first change will probably be -1 or -2 serum visions and +1 or +2 sensei's divining top.  But I would recommend people tinker with Serum Visions. Its sorcery speed is a drawback, but not as drastic as you'd think. If you have it opening hand, you can simply hold it a turn or 2. That way you've got mana on the board after casting it for mana drain/counter. Or, it can be pitched to force.

If I were to do this as a 10 proxie deck, to be honest, I'm not sure  how drastic I would change this.  I only own 1 mana drain which is why I cut 3 from the Meandeck build. From there, I found Intuition to be much less effective.
 Hence I cut it to 2. After that, AK was useless and replaced by Serum Visions.
Since the deck seems to be working well w/out mana drain, I see no reason to force it back into the build. So the drains/intuitions/ak would be unaffected.
With all that in mind, I don't see me turning this into a mana drain deck. While its certainly viable I just don't see the need for it. Personally I think the builds are pretty equal.
If anything, I might simply try out Timetwister in the deck (which was there until late last week) or add a few more moxen for more 1st turn oath potential.
Other changes I'm thinking of trying (such as main deck living wish, crop rotation which I've already cut but now think I could use) I wouldn't need to proxie.
In fact, since I acquired a Mox Pearl after the tournament on Saturday, its one less proxie slot for me to worry about, either way.

[Ufactor]

Just to set the record straight, we always give out the decklists for free once we get them all inputted.

With regards to the fact that coverage is Premium, coverage is pretty expensive to do.

Thanks for pointing that out.  A couple of decklists is all I really expect to get for free.  I forgot that with the new database (universal brokeness that it is) it takes way more time to add a decklist.  When I didn't see them, rather than looking for an explaination, I completely over reacted.  I'm just so used to big websites (Brainburst, Wizards) bending people over on a regular basis, that I didn't think twice that there might be more to the situation.  Sorry

[KrA0nS]

Eh, I want to see the decklists so badly, admiering the the rogue decks that made Top 16 is what I live to see from Vintage tournaments, I also want to hear what he's going to change about Goblins, he says FCG never really helped.

[Klep]

Congrats on hitting top 16 man, and sorry again about hitting your car.  At least it brought us together to make that power trade

[oldbsturgeon]

im glad that you found someone to trade off that extra emerald to.  you know i dont think you played a serum visions in any of the 3 games against me. also when we were playing i thought you brought in the platinum from the board but i guess when you oathed and went real low in the deck that it was in your hand. i actually probably like it more than spirit as a 3rd creature.

[Lunar]

@jpmeyer

why is event coverage so expensive??? it seems to be you walking around watching games, writing something witty down about the match, then posting it on line...where is the expensive part? Just cause im curious. (ie, not trying to be a smart ass.)

I am a premium member so I appreciate the reports (its better than the old "hey I got a phone call, here is the scoop on one guy" reports we used to get on here.

[Khahan]

im glad that you found someone to trade off that extra emerald to.  you know i dont think you played a serum visions in any of the 3 games against me. also when we were playing i thought you brought in the platinum from the board but i guess when you oathed and went real low in the deck that it was in your hand. i actually probably like it more than spirit as a 3rd creature.

OldB, I believe you saw Serum Visions turn 1 game 1 from me. After that it was -4 visions, +3 crypt +1 lab.

And yes, I did have the platty in my hand against you game 1. Thats how I knew I was losing game 1. I couldn't get rid of it. My best chance to do so (when I brainstormed) showed me a second creature and a blessing.

[Revvik]

Eh, I want to see the decklists so badly, admiering the the rogue decks that made Top 16 is what I live to see from Vintage tournaments, I also want to hear what he's going to change about Goblins, he says FCG never really helped.

I'm looking forward to Menendian's Stax build, due to some coverage comments about his sideboard / maindeck choices, plus Kochis's updated Landstill (gotta love it).