[report] RIW Time Walk/Mox Pearl tournament, June 1st.

I haven't played much Vintage lately, the last two tournaments I played in were the two previous RIW tournaments. At both I played my trusty Aether Vial Fish deck, once to a quaterfinals loss, the other to a miserable 1-2 drop. After practically ignoring Vintage, I read Menendian's article about GAT and decided it was something I wanted to play (without Street Wraiths. Boo that guy.) Here's what I settled on...

4 polluted delta
1 flooded strand
3 tropical island
3 underground sea
2 volcanic island
1 island

1 black lotus
1 lotus petal
1 mox sapphire
1 mox jet
1 mox emerald
1 mox ruby
1 mox pearl

4 quirion dryad
1 psychatog

4 brainstorm
4 merchant scroll
4 gush
4 force of will
3 misdirection
4 duress

1 ancestral recall
1 time walk
1 demonic tutor
1 mystical tutor
1 imperial seal
1 vampiric tutor
1 yawgmoth's will
1 fastbond
1 cunning wish
1 echoing truth
1 regrowth

sideboard:
3 yixlid jailer
2 tormod's crypt
2 fire/ice
2 ancient grudge
1 hurkyl's recall
1 rushing river
1 berserk
2 FIRE IMP
1 snuff out

A few things:

-Mox Pearl: I boarded this out a lot because I didn't know what to board out. This might have been better as a second basic Island.
-2 Volcanic Island: I was concerned that the red cards were critical to victory when boarded in, and that many of those decks would have Wasteland.
-Regrowth: I don't remember casting this very often. I suppose it's a decent card. Might be cuttable.
-Imperial Seal: A good card to board out. It did what it does for me in game 1s, and I took it out almost every match.

The sideboard contains cards for Ichorid, Workshops, and Creatures. Unfortunately, my sideboard is missing tools for blue decks. Blah.
-Jailer/Crypt vs Leyline: Ichorid lists I saw boarded 12-15 cards to beat a Leyline. I don't want to fight that fight.
-FIRE IMP: I was complaining about Mindcensor, and Demars suggested this guy. He's pretty good.
-Snuff Out: Soly's idea. I like it for killing Auriok Salvagers. I didn't play against decks where it would have been good, though.

Main event for a Time Walk

Round 1: Ed playing Ichorid

Game 1: He has the Bazaar and has some moderately broken plays, he Therapies me a couple times but doesn't get anything good with them. I have a Dryad vs two Zombies, and I tutor up Will with Imperial Seal with Walk in hand, and I pass as I'm not ready yet. He dredges a good amount and ends up with about 10 zombie tokens. My tutoring was all wrong. I end up Willing, Sealing for Echoing Truth, then Gushing, my out being that the second Gush card is a Mox, Petal, or Lotus, as I need another mana to cast the Echoing Truth. I miss and die.

Game 2: I keep lands, a Mox, Lotus, Dryad, Scroll. I play the Dryad and Scroll for Recall and play it and pass, my hand at this point is Merchant scroll, Yixlid Jailer, and lands. He plays and taps Bazaar. He cycles Street Wraith to dredge, and gets Narcomoeba and Cabal Therapy. Unmask gets one spell, Therapy gets the other, and I'm unable to do anything to win.

Round 2: Bill, playing Oath

Game 1: A combination of disasters. He goes first and plays a land. I play a land and a Mox and Scroll up Force of Will. He plays an Oath, I Force of Will it, he Force of Wills back. I topdeck Duress and see Gaea's Blessing, Black Lotus, and the Forbidden Orchard he needs to start Oathing. I'm holding Vampiric Tutor and Echoing Truth. I decide that I can take his Blessing (to prevent him from topdecking Brainstorm and putting it back in,) and bounce his Oath targets with the Truth and Will. So I Duress away the blessing. He Oaths a Simic Sky Swallower into play. Blah. I topdeck Quirion Dryad. This will let me race with Will, or try. But he's drawn Force of Will. He uses the Lotus to cast it. I'm dumb. I pass. He Saths and gets Akroma. I Echoing Truth it. I Vamp for Will. He Muddle the Mixtures it. Dang.

Game 2: I combo out on turn 3 or 4 or so. Don't remember the details.

Game 3: I also won this game. Too many things happened, I can't remember all of them. Perhaps next time I'll take notes.

Round 3: Forgot name playing UBG intuition deck (Tog? I guess?)

Game 1: I have Lotus, I Scroll for Recall and I cast it in response to something he does. He Misdirects it and Force of Wills my Force of Will. About 7 turns later he finally wins.

Game 2: I Scroll for Force of Will, then Scroll for Recall. I play it. He Misdirects it, and Force of Wills my Force of Will. A good number of turns later he makes an Intuition pile and casts the Will that I'm pretty sure he'd tutored for two turns prior.

Scrolling for Force of Will is a waste of time. It's much easier to just have two pitch cards in the opener or Brainstorm once and have two pitch cards. Perhaps I played this wrong, I have no idea.

So 1-2, out of the main, into the side event, and very discouraged. Perhaps GAT isn't good.

Side Event for a Mox Pearl

Judge Dave explains that the side event will be run with a double-elimination bracket. Weird. Basically we keep getting paired until everybody accumulates two losses. Whoever starts x-0 will get a bye in the second to last round. Or something like that. Overall, it was an interesting way to run an event, and I'm excited to see how it plays out. Off we go.

Round 1: Belcher

Game 1: He pitches both colors of Spirit Guides to Living Wish for a Mishra's Workshop. He uses that to cast Serum Powder. I do my thing, play the Dryad, tutor up Recall, bash, etc, and it turns out he's really mana flooded and that he should have mulliganed, but he decided to keep his hand because it had Black Lotus in it.

Game 2: He leads with Taiga, Goblin Welder. I can Fire it, or play Dryad. I go for Dryad. On his turn 2 he draws, sits, and thinks, and eventually passes without a play. I Fire his guy (and life total) and attack. I stop another Welder and continue attacking, and he shows me his hand that was just a little short of victory. He had a Red Blast for my Force of Will, but he was short on mana.

Round 2: Bill, playing Oath. Again.

Game 1: We run each other out of cards, trading Force of Wills and Duresses and whatnot, and I'm without a Dryad to win with. He draws an Oath at some point and I can't deal with it. I came either one or two turns away from victory.

Game 2: I took an exceptionally long set of two turns with Fastbond, Will, and Gushes. I had to deal with a Maze of Ith, but I boarded in one Fire/Ice and used it to tap it.

Game 3: I keep 6 containing Force of Will, Misdirection, Brainstorm, 2 other blue cards, something else, but no lands. He Duresses me and takes the Force of Will. I draw a land on turn 3 and pass. He plays an Oath. I Brainstorm and have Force of Will and Misdirection to fight it. He has a Mana Leak and a Force of Will to get his Oath to resolve, but he has no Orchard. The Brainstorm found me lands, but I've got nothing to do. I draw a Dryad after the Brainstorm cards, but don't play it. That turn he draws the Orchard. His next few cards are all really good, Crop Rotation for Maze of Ith, Wipe Away for my Dryad, and Wasteland as the final blow.

1-1, very discouraged, as I'm 2-3 on the day. But I'm still in it.

Round 3: Josh R. playing a blue deck.

Game 1: Opening hand is Force of Will, Force of Will, Misdirection, Misdirection, Time Walk, Mystical Tutor, and a land. Really good. I get Recall and win the fight over it, then successfully stop his attempts at getting somewhere. A Dryad gets it done at some point.

Game 2: I keep a greedy hand: 1 land, a Brainstorm, some other action, and a Misdirection. He Duresses my Brainstorm and I'm kind of screwed. I eventually get some mana and a Dryad, and he takes a big turn where he makes 16 goblins. I have a Vampiric Tutor, and by blocking one Goblin I live at 1 life to play Echoing Truth that I Vamp for (2/2 dryad to live through combat.) After combat he plays Tendrils of Agony.

Game 3: I have two Dryads and a hand of Force of Will, Misdirect, two blue cards. He starts doing things, and Rituals into Will. I Force of Will it, and he doesn't have defense. I search up Time Walk with Mystical Tutor and try to go lethal, he has Extirpate on my upkeep to live some more, but doesn't draw anything to do.

Round 4: Bill, playing Oath, again (apparently, in double elim events, players can play against the same opponent multiple times.) This is our third match of the day.

Game 1: I Duress him, and he plays Ancestral Recall in response. I Misdirect it and it resolves. The Duress sees Oath, Oath, Force of Will (Orchard on board.) I take one Oath and the other resolves. I complain a lot more than I should, as I'm not holding anything that will let me do anything to race. He gets Sky Swallower and passes. I topdeck Fastbond. Now I feel like a jackass for complaining. I Brainstorm and start Gushing infinite times. I Will and Gush many more times, and play lands until I'm at 1 life (I started the turn at 18 life, ended with 1 life after Sealing, and playing 13ish lands.) Two Dryads bash through the guy with Berserk.

Game 2: I again lead with Duress, he again tries Recall in response, I again Misdirect it. This time Duress gets his business and my Dryad applies pressure. I get Fastbond and Gushes going and find Will.

I definitely got some ridiculous luck this time, and I felt like a jerk for complaining as much as I did in game 1. Blah.

Round 5: Combo

Game 1: I keep a sketchy hand of two Moxes, Dryad, Scroll on the draw. He plays some Rituals, two Moxes, and a Timetwister with B floating. My new seven contain zero mana sources, he uses his B to add Sol Ring and he plays a Sea. On the board 5 mana vs no permanents after I draw and discard Fastbond. He tries Bargain, I Force of Will and Misdirect his Force of Will. I draw something that isn't a land, and he starts going again. He Rituals a few times and plays Tendrils for 10 life. I topdeck and land and Duress him. His hand is outrageous. It contained 7 cards, one was Ancestral Recall, one was Wheel of Fortune, the rest were good, don't remember. I conceded the game on the spot.

Game 2: I mull to 5 into triple Delta, Gush, and a Mox. I draw Psychatog on turn 2 and play it. On turn three I draw a Dryad, play it, and Gush. He does a short Tendrils after Sealing a card on top so that I can't go lethal on my turn. On my turn, my hand is Vamp and Gush and Force of Will and lands. I decide to Vamp for Duress and Gush into it. It was greedy because I was taking myself off Force of Will unless the second Gush card was Blue. It was Blue, and Duress showed me Echoing Truth and Wheel. I take Truth and pass, he draws Will and I Force of Will it.

I came dangerously close to losing there. I got lucky to draw a blue card after Vamping for the wrong card. I should have gotten Tormod's Crypt. Blah.

Game 3: It wasn't close, Duress got him, then Force of Will got something else, two Dryads bashed, and DT-Time Walk finished things. The deck delivered, for sure.

Round 6: Nicolae Antes, playing UBW Fishes with Counterbalance/Top. Nicolae and I tend to play against each other at these things a lot. I think we're even on matches, although last time we played he bashed me. The winner of this advances to the finals, against someone whose name I don't remember, playing the UG tempo deck the Canadians commonly play at these tournaments.

Game 1: I Duress him and take his Black Lotus, leaving him with 2 lands, a Confidant, a Trinket Mage, a Top, and a Vamp. He defies my Duress by drawing a Lotus Petal, and he leads with the Confidant. I scroll for Force of Will and I do some other stuff to move my game forward. He reveals a land with Confidant and tutors up Explosives with his Trinket Mage. Things get out of hand here. Fastbond, Gush, Will, and dozens of other things happen. I spend way too much time doing these things, as I'm trying to count it all up and plan it all out (it probably looked like a gigantic slowroll.) After it's all over, I have a Tog, and Time Walk with 2 Gushes and Cunning Wish in hand. I attack for 36 with Berserk after spending far too much time thinking about it.

Game 2: He doesn't have a good amount of business after Trinket Maging for a Top. I guess he Topped into all mana or something. I FIRE IMP his Trinket Mage down and start attacking with it. At some point I Scrolled up a Force of Will and most of the game I sat back holding it and Misdrection. He eventually found a Confidant, I topdecked Dryad that turn, played it, and Fired his Confidant and life total. He couldn't find any resistance and I won soon after.

Round 7: We agree to a prize split.

As the day went on, and I got more accustomed to how the deck worked, it seemed to get better and better. The deck is solid, it has the ability to switch roles when required to, it has flexible answers, and its power level is equal to (or perhaps greater than) all of the other decks.

And of course..

Props:
-Brian Demars, for helping make the sideboard better, and suggesting FIRE IMP in particular. That guy is so good that I'm typing it in all caps. Also, he won (split the finals) of the main event.
-Pam for having the tournaments, Dave for judging them.
-13nova and the rest of GWS for deck discussion and assistance on our forums.
-Everybody that played, especially Josh Franklin for being hilarious.
-Fastbond. Not even a little bit fair.
-The side event for redeeming my day.
-Mitch, for letting me use his Imperial Seal, and Marcel, for letting me use a Misdirection.
-A spectating Justin Droba, for suggesting that get rid of the "storm count" and replace it with the "Gush count."

Slops:
-Me, for complaining a lot more than I should have.
-My sideboard, for having too many cards for Fish/Stax, and nothing for blue decks or combo.

Until next time..