[Report] Team Ogre vs Springfield (ICON) 9-10-05

[vroman]

ICON Report
vroman

In order to fill the type 1 gap in our lives between gencon and the next chicago SCG, I started looking for worthwhile power tournaments in surrounding areas for team ogre to attend. At our shop's last power tournament regulars from Springfield IL put me on to their "I-Con" event for a Timetwister. The drive's only 1.5 hrs and it was a chance to pay back the patronage of some cool guys who frequently made the trip to our shop for power tournaments. We got a stellar turn out of 6 players making the drive, in two cars. Me, Jim Erlinger, Caleb Scherer, Jacob Riehm, Kevin Bopp, and even our oversized front man, Ogre himself decided to play. This required I quickly slap together a 10 proxy build of Ogre's favorite archetype: Workshop Agro. I loosely modeled it after Josh Roughley's list from our Workshop tournament, ie 5C w utility guys instead of juggernauts. Caleb and Bopp were both playing Endres' chalice Oath from gencon. Jim was running his very succesful slaver list. Jacob was playing an experimental UR stax deck he's been working on and I of course was piloting ubastax.
The trip was fairly uneventful, though we did get very lost in the sprawling metropolis of Springfield. We arrived just in the nick of time to watch 2 hours of legacy action waiting for the vintage to start. the GWS team were all there and we enjoyed their company probably more than they enjoyed ours. Bopp is not suitable for public display. Ogre ran the binder business. the rest of the team shopped around the vendors and got some deals. At long last after slivers break legacy in half, round 1 begins.

My current list:
4 workshop
4 bazaar
4 waste
4 mountain
3 b-ring
1 strip
1 academy
1 b-lotus
1 sol ring
1 mana crypt
1 mana vault
5 power mox
4 smoky
4 chalice
4 crucible
3 n-rod
3 uba
1 trisphere
4 welder
2 dup
2 jens
2 g-shaman
1 wheel

side
4 pyroblast
3 maze
3 v-heretic
2 dup
2 lava dart
1 b-ring

I shifted the board slightly w an extra maze when I saw ppl shuffling up elves and goblins.

Rd 1 vs Matt Morrison - Death Long. win 2-0

Game 1
I assumed Morrison was playing 5c stax like the last few times Ive faced him. I kept a dicey hand that had turn 1 crucible off some artifact acceleration. It was vulnerable to chalice or resistor, but then he surprised me w turn 1 windfall, obviously some kind of combo. The windfall backfired for him as my 1st hand had no answers to combo, but my 2nd hand was ridic. Matt filled his board with some free mana and had to pass the turn. I had shop, lotus, trisphere, moxmonkey, which slaughtered his mana and put a fat lock out. He had enough left to cast twister the next turn, which didnt provide an answer to trisphere, and refilled my hand w more oppresive cards.

Game 2
Morrison mulled to 4 restricted cards and no lands. I played turn 1 uba and he never got a board


Rd 2 vs Caleb Scherer - Chalice Oath win 2-1
Ive played against Caleb at the shop many hours with this deck, so knew exactly what to expect.

Game 1
My first hand hand 2xmoxmonkey, 5xmana. I mulled into 2xbazaar, 4xnonmana. I then mulled into 3xchalice, barbarian ring, blank. Caleb played turn 2 oath.

Game 2
Explosive hand that dropped turn 1 chalice @ 0 and smoky. This kept his board empty until I solidified the lock.
 
Game 3
perfect opening hand: 2xduplicant, 2xshop, mtn, welder, bazaar. I set up everything and Caleb had no choice but to walk into duplicant recursion.


Rd 3 vs Jacob Riehm - UR stax lose 0-2
Jacob has been testing this deck with me for awhile now, and it seems quite solid. Its a very pure stax w thoughtcast for draw and null rod.

Game 1
I keep an iffy hand w turn 1 welder and not much backing it up. Jacob puts out a fat board quickly w 2x welder, smoky, crucible. I have neither crucible nor bazaar but am keeping ahead of the soot w solemn recursion, and soon have 2x b-ring, and all 4 of my mountains. Im setting up for threshold to cap his welders and then weld away his board. Then I punt bad by using my b-rings a turn too early and lose enough permanents that he can ramp smoky and clear my board, and still have enough permanents to keep his crucible. Im unable to rebuild against his crucible advantage and die to my off-by-one counting error.

Game 2
solid hand w turn 1 crucible, turn 2 smoky, except Jacob gets a god draw of lotus, ruby, land, heretic. Im never able to remove his heretic and lose accordingly.


Rd 4 vs Kevin Bopp - Chalice Oath, intentional draw
Bopp and I decide to draw since a loss for either will eliminate them from the tournament and a win next round will probably make it. Unfortunately for Bopp his tiebreaks suck and despite going on to win round 5, he is the only 3-1-1 not to make the cut.


Rd 5 vs Ogre - 5C Workshop Aggro - win concession
Ogre concedes to me because I own his deck, and he wants to sit around and trade. This puts me at 10 points and into top 8


top 8

rd 1 bald goatee guy - Control Slaver win 2-0

Game 1
CS is usually my hardest match, but both these games were easy. He countered very little and I built up locks fast. I had b-ring ready for his welders and buried him under ubazaar advantage.

Game 2
Basically more of the same. I drew lots of welder removal, and had opportune redblasts. Locks lined up nicely and he never had a threatening play


rd 2 Brian Fisher - Shop Slaver Memnarch deal win 2-0
I think this is a very favorable match up for me, due to his lack of disruption and my null rods. I lost to Fisher at Gencon, but I wasn't nearly as familiar with his deck as I am now.

Game 1
He keeps a hand with only an island for mana. I play turn 1 uba, and he watches lots of uncastable bombs slip under uba. Meanwhile I cast some 4 drops and then get bazaar and wheel away his dead hand. I explode off wheel and seal the game.

Game 2
He plays island, sol ring, and I play mox monkey, then trade lotus for his sol ring. Next I play crucible and he gets his own crucible. I bazaar into artifact mana and academy and am able to pay 7 to eat the crucible, which plays well to the crowd. I have infi mana and bazaar so naturally get lots of stuff in play and Fisher is overwhelmed.


Finals Justin Droba - Belcher - split
This a very good matchup for me. Caleb has been testing Droba's list against me for awhile and even with boarding, its like 80-20 in my favor, w belcher going first the majority. Basically every time ubastax gets a turn, I play something the belcher player has to spend the rest of the game working around. Unfortunately I had a hacking cough all day and was not feeling terrific, and Droba was tired as well, so rather than make us both suffer, I agreed to a split, which ended up with me getting the playset of u-seas and $50 cash. With blue duals now passing the $30 mark, and Twister hanging around $180-200, this was well worth it.

Jim Erlinger and Jacob Riehm both represented the team in the top 8, but unfortunately lost in the first round leaving them prizeless. The tournament itself was competently managed and the convention seemed like a good time for the Illinois uber-geek population. Given the decent turn out they recieved, if the prizes could be expanded to all of top 8, our team will definitely return.

Props:
-La Bamba resteraunt for being the first place we found and having 'buritos the size of your head'.
-Lack of trafic law enforcement as we ran every single red light in town, instead of waiting interminably at empty intersections.
-Our judge for keeping the tourney moving at a good clip. This is one of the few times Ive seen rounds start before time is called.

Slops:
-I got paired against teammates 4 consecutive rounds. Jim's the only one I didn't have to play. Random pairings of course, but we represented 20% of the field, and I played my team in 80% of the swiss.
-Tournament started 2hrs and 20 minutes late. This is a pretty egregious delay.
-Only 2 prizes! Its pretty pathetic to top 8 a 30+ person tournament and go home w nothing. I'm not sure how the finances of Icon were arranged, since we paid at the door to enter the convention itself and then there was no extra cost to enter the tournament. In the future I would recommend a direct payment system so that the vintage organizers have appropriate funds for prize support. We had assumed there would at least be kamigawa packs or something for 3-8. I probably wouldnt have encouraged so many people to come if I had known the prizes were so bare.
-Vampire karaoke.

[Jacob Orlove]

Congratulations on the split! Plus the obvious props for Justin.

Was this connected in any way to the ICON they have on Long Island?

[Smmenen]

With only four mountains I think your whole argument about being mono red is finished.  You have repeatedly lowered your basic land count and now you have 4. 

One lesson from Gencon is that mana bases don't matter.  Look at the top 8.  There is no reason not to add the 5 color lands back in and go bonkers. 

[Polynomial P]

Congratulations Vroman and the rest of Team Ogre for doing quite well in this tournament. I am really happy with how my deck performed. I lost 4 matches throughout the day, 2 to play/sideboarding errors, once to not drawing colored mana, and once to 5 consecutive topdeckings of the best card in my opponents deck.

And despite me handing you your only loss of the day, dont forget who taught me how to play stax and who helped me tweek my deck. Thanks.

[Jacob Orlove]

With only four mountains I think your whole argument about being mono red is finished.  You have repeatedly lowered your basic land count and now you have 4. 

One lesson from Gencon is that mana bases don't matter.  Look at the top 8.  There is no reason not to add the 5 color lands back in and go bonkers. 

The basic lands do let him use Solemn, though.

[Smmenen]

Which can be cut for broken cards like Demonic Consultation and Balance. 

[vroman]

@ smennen
I've been thinking of going back to 5 mtns/2 b-rings. having mtns matters a lot when opp has waste+crucible. basically the deck is mono brown w a red splash for welder and shaman. 5c would be a completely different deck. I like my current selection of lock pieces and dont have room or the mana resources for restricted cards. b-ring would be much weaker in a 5C deck, and dropping it would leave me w either no welder removal, or Id have to use non-mana slots (ie less locks) for creature kill. furthermore solemns are very effective. they act like extra crucibles in the stax mirror.

[Smmenen]

so be it.

[Arakkis]

Jacob- this ICon has no relation to the one on the island that I'm aware of- it's just what the convention organizer decided to call a convention in Illinois.

Overall, once again I'd like to thank Vroman, Ogre, and company for coming to my 1st hosted t1 tournament, the reviews I've seen so far seem to indicate that another one would be acceptible-prize support just needs upping.

[Disburden]

Congrats, Vroman on the finish. Good job!



Uba Stax still amazes me to this day. Good stuff.

Now if only I could find someone to mug and get four bazaars + Shops.

[Komatteru]

Good job as always.  If it hadn't been 2 am I hadn't been up since 7:45 that morning, I would have loved to stomp you in the finals. 80/20 doesn't take into account the JD factors.

I'm looking forward to our next epic battle.  I'm sure we'll be meeting in Top 8s for quite some time to come.

[Polynomial P]

80/20 doesn't take into account the JD factors.

Its true. In playtesting against him, every time I got a sphere of resistance he drew BOTH of his lands. Every time I played null rod he had no artifact mana, multiple ESGs and Dark rituals. I think randomness fails when JD gets land in his hand every game.

[forests failed you]

I've found that you can easily stifle the JD factor by casting, of all things, Stifle.

[vroman]

in terms of riehmstax and ubastax vs belcher, it may be the difference of chalice vs resistor. sphere means an uphill battle for belcher, chalice can make their deck virtualy unwinnable.

@JD
welder has to be great for you in that deck. in the stax match, do you ever find yourself keeping hands predominately because of a turn 1 welder play, despite maybe subotimal potential for actually comboing?

[Komatteru]

@Vroman:

In the Stax match, Welder is amazing.  I can use it to stall out for quite a while.  At Gencon for instance, Welder kept me alive for like 5 turns against Mike Lydon while his board was Chalice at 1, Chalice at 0, Trinisphere, and Juggernaut (which I kept welding out, and he kept trying to weld back in).  If I had draw a land grant, I could have Welded out the 3sphere, Welded out the Chalice for 1 and been in business.  The other thing is that against Stax, if I can put my mana on the table and have a Welder, then I can generally win.  If I open with 2-3 Moxes and a Welder, I'm in really good shape, as I can stall Stax out, and buy enough time to build up my mana and such.  In addition to all that, if I can get to 3 mana and get a Belcher in the yard (off a Memory Jar or maybe just discarding it the hard way), then I win, so things like Sphere don't matter in that case.

Chalice affects Belcher differently than Storm combo.  I'm not trying to play 10 spells in a turn, so having things like my rituals shut off isn't that big of a deal.  I only need to play one spell to win the game, so I can spread the mana that pays for that spell out over the course of several turns.  The fact that my acceleration is costed at 0, 1, and 2 diversifies it, and playing 2 moxes into a Chalice to power up Cabal Rit nets you the same mana as if you had played the two moxes and cast the Rit without Threshold.  Chalice is only a problem when you set it at the number that just happens to wreck my hand.  A Chalice for 0 doesn't bother me at all when I have a Land Grant, a Channel, and an ESG, for instance.  A Chalice for 1 doesn't bother me when my hand has 3 Moxes in it.

[PopFenton]

-Only 2 prizes! Its pretty pathetic to top 8 a 30+ person tournament and go home w nothing. I'm not sure how the finances of Icon were arranged, since we paid at the door to enter the convention itself and then there was no extra cost to enter the tournament. In the future I would recommend a direct payment system so that the vintage organizers have appropriate funds for prize support. We had assumed there would at least be kamigawa packs or something for 3-8. I probably wouldnt have encouraged so many people to come if I had known the prizes were so bare.

-Vampire karaoke.

Both tournaments have only prizes for first and second was pretty terrible I got top eight in both tournaments and have nothing to show for it. Also, I don't know if you guys were there in time for it, but the LAN stuff had terribly loud bass playing through most of the 1.5 tournament. I think the best part of all of it for me was having a decent amount of people show up for the type 1 and hardly any of them were casual players, like you would normally expect. Well, thanks everyone for coming to Springfield.

[Rapalaman1]

@ smennen
I've been thinking of going back to 5 mtns/2 b-rings. having mtns matters a lot when opp has waste+crucible. basically the deck is mono brown w a red splash for welder and shaman. 5c would be a completely different deck. I like my current selection of lock pieces and dont have room or the mana resources for restricted cards. b-ring would be much weaker in a 5C deck, and dropping it would leave me w either no welder removal, or Id have to use non-mana slots (ie less locks) for creature kill. furthermore solemns are very effective. they act like extra crucibles in the stax mirror.

I agree with Vroman on this one except that Uba Stax does not seem to be changing. I'm not saying that a deck that does not see that much play(or even a deck that does see alot of play like CS) has to be frequently changing to be competitive, it just seems to me that there is very little you can do with the mono red mana base to make changes.
Also, it seems that the only real bomb that you would want from the 5 color mana base is Balance. This card is waaaaaaay too ridiculous right now. And maybe add Yawgmoth's Will too, it seems pretty good  However the deck is still really good without these things. I just wonder how long it will stay competitive with no changes ever.

[vroman]

as soon as I stop winning I'll look into changing it.
if supresion field makes cronstax more popular I may be forced to.

[virtual]

I've been testing a 5c build for months now.  There are a LOT of bombs.  You do have a more fragile mana base though, and your moxes become more important, so null rod is harder to use.  I can post it if there's interest.  An old version can be found lower down in the tournament forum:  5cuba mask.

-Virtual

[Disburden]

as soon as I stop winning I'll look into changing it.
if supresion field makes cronstax more popular I may be forced to.

Suppression field looks absolutely insane. I can't even imagine what that's going to do to vintage as a card, not only in stax but in any deck. I'm going to feel bad for all combo players if that card becomes popular.

I am currently trying to make 5c and Mono white version of stax with this card.

[vroman]

I spent the last few nights testing a mono white stax w s-field. its pretty weak. As far as I can tell the only home for s-field is going to be cron stax.
white has no draw. it cant play bazaar bc it can play uba bc it cant play welder. it just has a dense mixture of cost modifier lock pieces that are pretty hit or miss in terms of actually screwing opp. if you have 3 threats in your opening hand and only 1 of them truly hurts opp, then they can safely force that and still be up 1 card advantage. I tested mainly against c-slaver and s-field only was allowed to resolve when it was irrelevent. Wstax isnt viable

[Smmenen]

as soon as I stop winning I'll look into changing it.

I thought about calling you out on this but I like you too much and it would seem mean.

Bottom line Rob is that we lost at Gencon.  And when we lose, we get our asses kicked because we are better than 99% of the people who beat us.  I lost to Endress and I lost to Josh Alvarez and despite going X-2, I got my fucking as kicked. 

You lost even faster I know. You lost the night before Gencon champs.  You lost both Vintage events at origins.  You beat me at Gencon because I had a sb card in my deck game one.

Now I don't say all this to be an ass.  If it were a short busser or some upitty reflectionite, I'd be saying all of this with contempt.

BUT I LOST TOO. 

The thing is, you can lose and then say, but look at this small tournament I won here and here and here.  True true.  But our decks failed us when it truly mattered robert.  Your deck did not win you the Vintage championship nor did it even win you the bye the night before.

I say that just cause I wanted to call you out on that - not to be an ass - but because my own teammates have the same problem you do: you become such an expert on your deck that you trivialize your losses and explain them away.  Rich Shay did the same thing - he tried to explain away why he lost.

There are ALWAYS explanations.  But you know what?  Bottom line is that you, me, and rich all lost.  Kevin lost.

When I lose, I move on to another deck.  I'm not saying you should, but I think that you shouldn't say "when I stop winning" when you didn't win gencon or the bye the nightbefore. 

Just like I said in my article that i think it was ludicrious that you weren't running REBs, I think it is equally strange that you don't have a five color mana base.  Your 4-5 mountains do not add mana stability.  What they do is slightly help the workshop match, but barely.  I don't think that you can claim that adding 5 basic lands with NO FETCHLAND is mana stability when you can't play almost anything off a single mountain that matters aside from welder. 

[Dante]

I don't think that you can claim that adding 5 basic lands with NO FETCHLAND is mana stability when you can't play almost anything off a single mountain that matters aside from welder. 

flashing back the Lava Dart is about it.

[Disburden]

I hae to admit I am pretty tempted to try running this deck as 5c myself. Lets see what we get for running a five color mana base:

Balance
Demonic and Vamp Tutors
Ancestral recall
Crop Rotation
Thirst For knowledge (if needed)
yawgmoth's will
Demonic Consultation
In the Eye of Chaos
Tinker

Also you can now run Sundering Titans
(i'm sure I'll forget a lot more)


not to mention your sideboard would improve dramatically consisting of:
sacred ground (for the mirror)
Swords to Plowshares
Arcane Lab
Oxidize/Naturlize
Xantid Swarm
Meddling Mage (Could suck)

I mean the 5c Mana base is going to let you play tons of awesome shit, but has testing proved it to be not worth it? Have you really suffered a lot without the 5 mountains?

[Smmenen]

Not suffered so much as the 5 mountains have proved to have no value.  In Workshop mirrors, I think they are valuable, but highly marginal.  You may not even Draw one! in your first 15 cards or so.  You are going to get most of yoiur land attacked and only the most worthless land is not Wastelandable - the mountains. 

In the fish matchups, the 5 mountains are worthless.  Fish doesn't try to cut you off entirely, just whittle you down.

In my view, I'd rather have the five color brokeness than the supposed "stabilty" of having 5 lands that I can't tutor for or fetch out. 

[Clown of Tresserhorn]

The mountains are better than you think. The fact that they aren't wasteable is huge. In the shop mirror, having access to mountains means waste+crucible doesn't hurt you nearly as much. Plus, I think a big reason to run mountains is solemn. That card is nuts in the shop mirror. It generates permanent advantage, grabs you a non-wasteable land, works wonders with welder, and even replaces himself when he dies.

With vroman seeing as much shop as he does (this is only an assumption, as he resides in the midwest, where shops run rampant), I think keeping to 1 colors isn't all that bad of a call.

-Bob

[Disburden]

 I see the point of Vroman running mountains, but the fact is that he runs four- five of them, not ten of them. So it isn't like he'd drawing many of them unless he resolves a Simulacrum. I played this deck about 30 games so far and Mountains didn't turn up all that often unless I got a 4cc Jens out. When I have enough mana open to cast something that is 4cc I want it to be a Mask or a Smokestack, with a Jens in my hand too this makes the play even more of a nusance instead of just playing a lock. The big question to this subject is this:


 Is the 4-5 mountains with Jens better than running Ancestral Recall, Balance, Tinker, Crop Rotation, Chains, In the eye of Chaos, Demonic/Vamp, Will, Swords, Sacred ground in the SB for the Mirror, Titan, Arcane Lab, Choke, Etc. etc. etc.

[vroman]

@ smennen
thanks for your advice and candor. however, I am not aiming for literal perfection. true I didnt win any byes at gencon or origins but I top8ed both events. I consider those succesful outings. I am inevitably going to lose some matches, when it happens in single elimination, too bad. In fact gencon worlds is the first tournament I have NOT top8ed since April, and I think I made it to every event in reasonable driving distance. Ive won 2 power tourneys since then and am very satisfied with my overall performance. I certainly dont consider gencon a disillusioning defeat.
as for the deck, Ive stated my logic for R vs 5C, and stand behind it. bazaar is simply more consistent than broken draw spells. the mana base is actually a careful ratio. I have 7 red spells [4xwelder, 2xmonkey, wheel] and 9 red sources [4xmtn, 3xring, ruby, lotus]. If I were to go 5c, I would presumably keep the existing 7 red spells and then add X restricted color cards, while having no space to add more colored mana. This would uncomfortably increase the frequency I have a color spell and no color mana. furthermore I would have to reduce the number of b-rings (possibly to zero) which would make vulnerability to welder an even more pressing issue. I also say solemn is gold. obv jens is not as good as balance or tinker, but the card is very solid at what it does. Its basically crucibles 5 and 6 that give me 3 turns worth of work for one investment of 4 colorless. against any deck w wastelands, this is one of my favorite drops.
I hate to use this copout, but I am slowly writing a very detailed primer which will reveal a lot of the intricacies.

[Polynomial P]

I felt that vroman's Gencon list had some very questionable cards in it. Sphere of resistance was terrible and the deck was rolled by Control slaver in testing. Going into gencon, I had beat Vroman 3-4 times in a row 2-0 with control slaver during the local tournaments. Since then he has changed things around and is running a better list that doesnt just fold to CS. Running basics in shop mirrors gives you a huge advantage and the mountains allow for lava dart in the SB which is simply amazing.

[Disburden]

I felt that vroman's Gencon list had some very questionable cards in it. Sphere of resistance was terrible and the deck was rolled by Control slaver in testing. Going into gencon, I had beat Vroman 3-4 times in a row 2-0 with control slaver during the local tournaments. Since then he has changed things around and is running a better list that doesnt just fold to CS. Running basics in shop mirrors gives you a huge advantage and the mountains allow for lava dart in the SB which is simply amazing.

I think the mana base issue all depends on where you live in the country. I live in the North East (approx an hour and a half north of manhattan), I see a lot of mana drains as a result, so I don't mind running 5c mana base with the tons of brokeness. Also In the Eye of Chaos kicks ass against Drains.

But at the same time I see that Vroman lives in the midwest and probably does see a lot of shops, although from small tourney reports I see a lot of deverse decklists in the top 8, not just shop filled meta.


Does anyone has any testing to prove which is the better variation? That'd rock. I work too much to test the differences