Normally I would be scared to post about an 11 person tournament on TMD, but being that I was preceded by OfficeShredder, and that this is only the 3nd Vintage event I’ve even heard of in the UK since early 04, I figured it would be ok to tell my story.
So, here I am in the UK – the only area more devoid of Vintage magic is ANTARTICA! I was going into an unknown metagame, and haven't had the time to create/playtest much on my own. I stayed up till 2am trying to analyse the differences between Brassman’s last 3 lists vs. Meandeck Gifts and trying to decide on the exact gifts build I want to take, or if I wanted to try out Steve Menendian’s Grim Long list from Monday’s article, or heck why not take Ichorid?
Finally I decided that more than likely everyone there would also be net decking and I should play something that they haven’t had any experience against. STAX!!! Still not totally sure what I'm going to be playing, I sleeve up one of Vroman’s lists from his 10Dec report :
http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=31336 I didn’t finalize my deck decision until I arrived. When I saw a combo mirror, kobolds, and a guy to my right sleeving up Grim Long, I knew STAX was the way to go. My main concern was fast combo, hurkles/rebuild, and ETW, so I changed out 6 SB slots, Thought prision - unavailable was replaced with REBs, and 3 slice and dice in place of 3 shards. I’ve never gotten Ubazaar online so I moved UBA mask back to the box and put 3 Sphere of Resistance in their place to end up with:
MD:
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Mishra’s Workshop
4 Mishra’s Factory
4 Barbarian Ring
3 Wasteland
2 Mountain
1 Strip Mine
1 Tolarian Academy
9 SoloMoxenCryptLotusVault
4 Goblin Welder
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Tangle Wire
4 Crucible of Worlds
3 Smokestacks
3 Sphere of Resistance
3 Null Rod
2 Duplicant
1 Trinisphere
SB:
1 Granite Shard //don’t ask
3 Viashino Heretic
3 Tormod’s Crypt
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Slice and Dice
2 Duplicant
I brought my camera and took a lot of pictures, but should’ve brought paper instead.
Match 1 vs. Grim Long (14 proxies, no SB)
Game 1: I lose the die roll, and my opponent plays Underground Sea and passes the turn.
I played out a Mox Ruby, Black Lotus, Barbarian Ring, then dropped a Sphere of Resistance. My opponent responded with mystical for Ancestral. I was holding null rod, and considered breaking my lotus, to play it, but decided against.
My opponent taps Underground for a mox, taps for a mox, and another and, finally a LED.
I played a wasteland, taking out his underground sea, and then played null rod with the lotus.
He plays another underground sea, pass.
I play workshop, Crucible.
He plays City and Brainstorms.
I remember making a mistake rushing to play a Factory before recalling that I had a wasteland in my graveyard.
He uses imperial seal to find a Tolarian Academy.
I bazaar into academy and play it from my graveyard. He concedes and flips over his academy - complaining loudly.
Game 2.
I have a nice hand… or so I thought. I’ll keep. My opponent plays a load of spells and get the storm count to 13 or so, but fails to find Tendrils. He plays Jar, and necro, then takes 2 mana burn, and uses necro for 5.
I play Workshop, Crypt, Sphere of Resistance, then Chalice for 1.
On his turn he breaks jar, then tries to go off again. With plenty of storm, a misplay brought his demise when he used one of his only 2 available Black mana to cast dark ritual into my Chalice! Afterward, he discards his jar hand, including a tendrils, and then refills his hand and Necro's to 1 life, discarding duress and brainstorms and other chaff.
I topdecked an Academy played crucible, then my academy to destroy his, he concedes at one life with a necro and mana crypt in play.
Afterward I discover that my opponent wasn’t playing any hurkles MD, had no sideboard, and his only bounce was chain of vapor.
Record: 1-0 Match 2 vs. Grim Long
Game 1. Lost the die roll.
I go second, with a mox, academy, turn 1 Sphere or Resistance, turn 2 workshop-crucible, null rod. Next out comes barbarian ring then tanglewire. The game kept going my way as I recurred my tanglewire and continued to swing with welder.
Game 2.
He leads off with gemstone mine, duress. Taking my would-be first turn sphere of resistance. I play a tormod’s crypt bazaar and pass. My opponent gets lands a necropotence off a cabal ritual. I get one spirit token. He draws 6 cards, and I (stupidly) bazaar EOT. I discard factory, tangle wire, then am stuck with 5 cards I wanted to keep. Tanglewire, Workshop, Welder, REB, and Barbarian Ring. I end up discarding the REB, because he only took 6 with Necro, I didn’t really expect him to win in one turn with my crypt on the table. I drew a mox pearl, then played the welder. Passed the turn, he did something, but I don’t recall, except the fact that I had got another spirit token, then he drew several more cards and passed. I played shop, tanglewire, welded in the sphere of resistance for my mox pearl. He cast EOT hurkyl’s recall, then proceded to draw down to 4 life. He didn’t win that turn, and gave me a 3rd spirit token. I untap and swing for the win.
Record: 2-0Match 3, I get paired down against a pitch long player who lost to U/W Fish.
Game 1: I win by a landslide.
Game 2:
He is locked down tightly, and I had just welded out trinisphere for a fresh tanglewire, with 2 sphere of resistance and null rod on the table. I pass, EOT, He taps 2, then removes 3 ESG’s!!! for a rebuild. I lose horribly the next turn. I should’ve conceded instead of letting him play it out. I would've won the 3rd game, instead we went to time after 5 turns with the board completely locked.
I don’t recall exactly how I boarded against combo. Usually it was -2 Duplicant +3 REB’s or -2 Duplicant and -3 Stax for 3 REBs and 3 Crypts. My SB
didn’t positively affect any of my games except against Fish.
Record: 2-0-1.
Before the 4th match we look at the standings. U/W Fish at 9 points, myself at 7, several 6’s and down.
Match 4: vs. Richard, playing Feinstein’s U/W Fish. We had the TO enter an ID, then we played for fun.
Game 1: I died horribly after keeping a hand with 3 mishra’s factories. I got crucible out and was re-playing factories, until Jotun Grunt came to town.
Game 2: In came 8 cards from the board. Viashino Heretic’s, REB’s, and Duplicants. -3 Sphere of Resistance, -3 Null Rod, -2 Ukn
I played Lotus, welder – resolved, 2nd welder 1burn. I then played workshop/Crucible. He played a kataki. I remove crucible, for lotus, then play Duplicant targeting Kataki, stifled. He plays a Jotun Grunt. On my next turn I weld out duplicant for lotus, sac lotus + workshop for another duplicant targeting Jotun Grunt. He swords his own Grunt. I weld out my mox for the duplicant in my Graveyard, taking his Kataki. He scoops after his next draw. Said he could handle one welder, but not two.
No time for a 3rd game.
Record: 2-0-2Cut to top 4.I lost horribly 0-2 to my round 2 opponent, who was playing a list identical to Steve's from last Monday's Starcitygames article.
Being that 3rd/4th place was either a Yawg Will or an Academy, I let my opponent choose, then drafted Masques block. We re-drafted the rares and all I got for my investment of time was a single Thrashing Wumpus.
In the finals, U/W Fish vs. Grim Long:
Grim long tried for a turn 1 win, but ran into a wall of counters, then Grim won on turn 2.
Game 2, Grim tinkered (Fish player let it resolve, thinking it was going for Jar, and Fish was holding Stifle) for collossus FTW.
Overall The field consisted of:
3x Grim Tutor based Tendrils Combo
1x Oath of Druids
1x Kobold Storm Combo
1x Psychatog
1x Welder based deck
1x U/W Fish
1x Stax
2x Charbelcher
Slops:
Having to drive 2.5 hours for a best case scenario of winning 4 sinkholes.
Not having the sense to mulligan aggressively in the finals.
Props:
Thanks to Crispin for hosting the event, who despite having a low turnout, is going to host another event on 15April (with better prizes).
And to end this report I share with you the absolute funniest thing I heard that day. “OMG You just demonic tutored for a Kobold!” That was coming from someone who was getting beat by an interesting flavor of Kobold/Clamp.
A thread on the event at an Oxford site can be found here:
http://ukvintage.informe.com/oxford-ground-zero-dt12.html
