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jCoKn
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« on: January 29, 2006, 03:32:52 pm » |
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Just 2 months ago I sold my forces and duals to kickstart my modo account (god knows I have infinite now) figuring I'd never see the light of type 1 ever again. I played the devil's advocate with my friends, saying that vintage was "stale" and "uninventive" and to be conpletely honest I think my views are relatively accurate. But then something like Waterbury comes along and because of the rich history tied down to it, it's just one of those things that make you feel like crawling away from a 2x premier event and actually be social for the first time in a milennium. So hell, why not... I started testing the metagame and quickly became bored. I tested Gifts at first, thinking it would clearly be a great choice because it's stupid but I soon realized that I couldn't play this deck with only 1 week of testing if I tried. Same goes for Stax, and to be honest I've never realy tried my hand at slaver in any major shindig so I decided to stick with my roots and play TPS! w00t! I've won power with it before so clearly I can have a repeat performance... so the testing began, from old school Ritual versions, to Confidant/Drain, to Confidant/Ritual and a plethora (!) of random tweekages but nothing could stand up to the unholy trio of Gifts.Stax.CS. So here is where I chose to divert from the "stale and uninventive" trend in vintage and branch out. I built Hulk Smash, circa 2002. Yeah, this is clearly the best choice for Waterbury, if for nothing else then for the nostalgia. But TPS is so good! Dammit... I'll just have to find a middle ground
Hence The Perfect Tog was born
          -thanks to the judge at w'bury for deck name
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Brainstorm
4 Accumulated Knowledge
2 Intuition
2 Cunning Wish
2 Merchant Scroll
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Rebuild
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Deep Analysis
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
3 Duress
1 Mind Twist
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Yawgmoth's Will
2 Pernicious Deed
2 Psychatog
4 Island
4 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
6 LoMoxen
1 Mana Crypt
1 Library Of Alexandria
1 Tolarian Academy
Sideboard
1 Fact or Fiction
2 Darkblast
1 Berserk
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Naturalize
1 Diabolic Edict
2 Energy Flux
3 Chill
1 Tinker
1 Darksteel Colossus
Now for those of you who want an ESPN-esque play by play, you must know my memory blows so you'll not be getting that here. At random points I'll point out a game or two I thought was interesting and how specific card choices made it happen. On paper, it looks like a randomly assorted pile of good cards with no real game plan per se. But anyhow, let's look at why I did/didn't inclde some cards...
Deep Analysis - I bring this up first because having the single copy in my maindeck won me at least 2 matches over the course of the day. To anyone who was watching my top16 game 3 (that was a great match by the way, Bob. Thanks) there was a point where I had like 1 card in hand, a mystical tutor, and my opponent had a 5 card grip waiting to reactivate his library after a counterwar that I lost. My mystical could hav egone for any of tinker, Yawg's will, or anything along those lines, but with 0 card now left in hand and only 5 mana sources, neither seemed like a great choice. I went for Deep and now looking back I realize that I couldn't have gotten a better target. My first DA resolved, giving me a Duress to shut up his library for the time being. The flashback was absolutely insane, giving me a Mana Drain and Yawg Will and the game. I never thought I could have pulled this one out and after an hour and a half long AK war I finally pulled it out with card advantage, and I think it was Tendrils for the final blow. /end aside - I would not cut this Deep Analysis, nor would I play another MD. It's a great control mirror breaker and doesn't have the deck skewing elements Gifts Ungiven does. I may put one extra in the SB.
Pernicious Deed - I'll be honest. These got boarded out almost every match. I expected there to be a bunch of random fishy decks in the first few rounds but I never managed to find one. This card wasn't even useful until the top16 where it was used twice (shoulda been 3 times, Jacob knows). Once to blow up a couple of Needles, and once was, uh, pretty damn lucky I must say. They almost always were replaced by Tinker and Colossus. Flashback to game 3 of the finals (or to Waterbury II) where Tog and GAT duke it out once again. The first game was a blowout for him, I never drew a black source, or for that matter, a 2nd blue... as my hand of 3x Drain, 2x Duress, and 2x Tog got rolled by a damn huge Dryad. Game 2 I started a counter war on the end of his turn, made him tap out, and resolved Tinker on my turn ftw. Game 3 is the one any spectator will most likely remember, partly due to my savage drawing skills. He was raping me with double dryads and I was at 4. We were keeping each others hand sizes relatively low with counters and Duresses and it was then that I realized I'm definitely losing this game. I had 7 mana available, holding only a drain. It's my turn and I think honestly, that I have only one out, and that's Pernicious Deed. Even a Yawgs wouldn't have saved me because I didn't have enough mana to go for a Tendrils win. So Jigglypuff gives me the halo of luck and I rip the Deed. Sackery. So I nuke his dryads on his attack step and he goes you better still have a drain as he lays a Psychatog. He was every bit as shocked as the throng of specatators when I threw down the Drain. This is what we play Magic for, times of ridiculous excitement like this. At this point we are both out of cards and a small problem exists in the fact that I'm now at 3 from my fetchland, and I'll be floating 3 in my first main. Now I need another topdeck: something with a colorless cc or at very least a brainstorm. To my great excitement I rip a Cunning Wish to go get my Fact or Fiction, which I cast main phase to avoid burning the last colorless, leaving only 1 mana up. The FoF comes up as (Mana Drain,Mox Jet,Deed) (Force of Will,Brainstorm) I took the small pile for the sole fear of him ripping something stupid off the top and me not being able to counter it. I figure that if he doesn't I can go looking for Yawgs will or Tinker or something ridiculous to win the game with Brainstorm. Turn out he draws and casts Gifts Ungiven. I'm left with a scenario where I can try to Braintorm then hope to get the blue card to force, or Force with the Brainstorm... allowing the Gifts to resolve was never an option. I play it safe I suppose by just forcing with the Brainstorm. We're both empty handed now and play draw-go for a quite a few turns. Turns out that during these turns Josh was drawing 3 Force of Wills and plenty of janky blue card sto pitch to it. My hand eventually got to being Yawg Will, Colossus, Tinker, Force of Will, and Mind Twist with a brainstorm sitting on top I have Mysticaled for. I set it up such that I can hope to dodge 2 counters should he have them... he has 5cards in hand and I cast Mind twist for 4. He hardcasts a Force and I allow it and pass turn. I am going to ideally next turn Brainstorm into a blue card, put back my colossus, bait with tinker, then resolve Yawgmoth's will. As it turns out I never get another turn, he rips a Demonic Tutor into Yawgmoth's will, I attempt force removing tinker, but he has another. That ends the game as he goes dryad > tutor > walk. This game was incredibly intense and I'm totally glad we played this one out. Thanks, Josh. I have no regrets anyways, GAT has always had the up on Tog, even back in the day when I was actually good at this game. wow, I just wrote a small essay, so back on to the point.
Rebuild and Chain of Vapor - I've played TPS to much success in the past and from my experiences I've learned that there's hardly anything Stax hates more than a well timed Rebuild and/or Chain on the right target. These cards proved themselves true once again as I played 2 stax matchups and a stax-ish animal farm variant. Don't leave home without these, kids.
Mind Twist - A last minute addition, it actually won me 2 games. Teammate Doug (top16 with Dragon) insisted on my maindecking it on the basis that it alone would win me at least 3 games. Sorry Doug, you didn't meet your quota. Playing this maindeck is based on personal preference but in a control heavy field like ours was it was a real threat whenever I could feasibly set it up.
Duress - I can't say enough about this card, I've always liked it and will continue to for a long time. I think that in TPS Duress was every bit as key as it's other B-cc brother Dark Ritual. I decided to play along with it today and I didn't regret it.
Draw Engine - AK, Intuition, Merchant Scroll, Cunning Wish - I did a bit of testing on MWS prior to Waterbury and one night I was playing against the one and only Grand Inquisitor. He was playing Drain Tendrils with Intuition AK and he was saying how much he adored the engine nowadays because it seemed like it was dying down a lot. I had to agree, and tried out that draw engine in this deck and it worked well. I never turned back... Wish is key, if even a necessary evil, to any Tog deck and 2 spots was the most I could allocate for it. I've always found Wish to be too clunky but it proved me wrong as I went wishing for game ending Naturalize on Time Vault (<3 Jiggly) and Hurkyl's and the ginat FoF in the finals. I like the 2, I think it needs no more, no less. Merchant Scroll is just plain good in the AK build and was happy playing just 2.
Kill Conditions - Tog and Tendrils - While everyone sees this as a straight Tog deck almost, I honestly had many more Tendrils kills today for the sole fact that it was almost entirely irrelevant. Most times, my games would run down to the last 10 minutes or less, with 3 of my swiss matches ending in turns (well, one really didn't end i suppose). The deck seriously just outdraws and handrapes your opponent until he either scoops, or casually waits and nods as you resolve some random broken spell to end the game. Most of the times it was just simpler to kill via Tendrils. Oh, and as mentioned before, Colossus got boarded in alot and actually won more games than Tog.
Ok the rest of the Maindeck is Plain Jane but my sideboard was clearly subpar.
Sure, I had a couple of reasonable cards in there but nothing that really shined. Darkblast was ok, Energy Flux is not terrible, Berserk was cast twice all day, and Edict and Chill were never boarded in/wished for ever. That stuff aside, the rest was decent... but the main point of contention i suppose was the Tinker/Colossus. I boarded him in all the time, if for no other reason than he can't be pithing needled (that card was everywhere). Most of the time he wins just the same as anything else in my deck but the fact that it's so much easier to win with him made my head hurt less all day. By the time I'm casting win conditions with this deck I've already won the game anyway it's just a formality that my opponent must be at 0 life. Granted there are the odd times where a ripped Tinker won me a game or two, they were generally few and far between. I'm not sure whether or not Colossus would be better maindecked. Suggestions appreciated.
But on the whole it just seems like this deck is overpowered. Much in the way that Gifts can, this can randomly draw a game-ending Mana Drain or AK-4 (and Merchant Scroll for either) and just power its way through heavy odds. It does however require a ton of thinking. Every decision made could make or break the game and especially when you're down a game or something along those lines, you can't afford to make the wrong call.
Getting back to my point about the "uninventive and boring" state of vintage, I was glad to see diversity and innovation in the top 16. From r/g hate (teammate Aaron... worst deck ever.), to mono black iggy wasteland tendrils (I WANT to see this list!), to old school Dragon, Tog, GAT, Goblins, and new-school Flame Vault Combo and Confidant Tendrils. I was so happy to not have the top16 inundated with Gifts.Stax.CS. Surely I'm not bummed to leave Connecticut with a Recall, though to be honest the prize didn't matter so much as the pride, I wanted to win so badly for that sole sake. Meh, GAT happens.
Obligatories
PROPS
-Ray Robillard, first and foremost, for running a flawless and much enjoyable tournament. Everyone in that room is and was hats-off to you Ray, we just beg you keep running exceptional events like the one you did yesterday.
-Judging staff for taking the time to walk (no pun intended) me through how ridiculous Time Vault is. I fucking hate that card.
-Jigglypuff (Nate) for being so savagely l33t and knowing how Time Vault actually works. It raped my face.
-Bob in top16 for honestly one of the best game 3's I've ever played. It was tight all the way through the match and the third game was no exception. Go Go Deep Analysis!
-Mike in top8 for randomly scooping to me in game 3 after a mulligan. We were all tired and Mike had a 4 hour drive home... much appreciated.
-The spectator behind me in the finals who noticed I drew an extra card after the Mystical. Thank you so much for pointing it out right away before play ensued.
-Josh in the finals for not being an ass about the Mystical/Brainstorm thing. People all over were calling for game loss, but you were friendly about that and that's admirable, especially in game 3 of a tight finals match.
-My friends from Poughkeepsie NY, and after a long time of being an unassembled band of power winning fiends, we are henceforth known as the Quad Entente. We placed 3/4 members in the top16, go us!
-Any and all of my other opponents, thanks for putting up with my savage topdecks and dumb deck.
-Lack of cops on NY/CT Interstates.
SLOPS
-Time Vault. Blow me.
-My deck for causing extreme mental strain and for being hideously slow to play.
-You randoms who were calling for game loss in the finals. Seriously, just shut up because it's not your decision to make anyways so why be an ass about it. It was 3 am, I was tired.
-That pizza. I was offered a piece for free and I didn't take it, it looked so hideous.
Thanks all
Jon
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