Wow, so that is how this event turned out. Congrats to the top 8, especially Doug Linn, for a stellar performance. I haven't seen that guy win anything for a long time...
* * * * *
So I start the player's meeting sitting across from teammate and friend Tom Lapille. We high ten over the table and I comment that it's portentous. Someone next to us asked me if that was a real word, and I said yes, it's like fortuitous. Tom complimented me on my vocabulary. It's a perfectly cromulent word.
I dipped with this:
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Gush
4 Merchant Scroll
3 Disrupt
2 Opt
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Vampiric Tutor
4 Duress
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mana Drain
1 Misdrection
1 Yawgmoth's Statement of Inheritance
1 Cunning Wish
1 Fastbond
4 Quirion Dryad
1 Psychatog
3 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Volcanic Island
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Black Lotus
4 Moxes, Pearl was on vacation
SB:
3 Yixlid Jailer
2 Pithing Needle
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Pyroblast
1 Volcanic Island
1 Rushing River
1 Berserk
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Oxidize
1 Rack and Ruin
1 Fire/Ice
General sideboarding plans were as follows:
GAT mirror and Flash:
-1 Island
-1 Mystical
-1 Vampiric
-1 Quirion Dryad
+1 Volcanic Island
+2 REB
+1 Pyroblast
REBs are key to the match and consequently, having red is important. Volc went in over the Island main, and it was a critical change that made the difference in the semifinals. Against Flash, you bring in Fire/Ice for another Dryad.
Against Stax:
-3 Duress
-1 Misdirection
-3 Disrupt
-1 Dryad
+1 Rack and Ruin
+1 Ancient Grudge
+1 Oxidize
+1 Rushing River
+1 Fire/Ice
+1 Volcanic Island
+ 2 Pithing Needle
The extra land is really fancy.
Against other stuff, you basically do one of these two sideboarding plans. Rushing River comes in somewhat frequently.
As a precursor to the report, I'm bad with details such as names, when games happened or what happened. So bear with me.
1st round: Ray with Oath
I start the game like I will several times today; with broken stuff. I Misdirect his Ancestral Recall on the first turn and then get Library of Alexandria working. I check a lot of books out from it and I Force of Will an Oath of Druids and Duress another out. Ray has Chalice at 1 so I can't go get Fastbond and go outright st00pid, but I manage to make a big Dryad and Time Walk it to win.
The second game, Ray gets locked under his own Chalice for 0 while I'm studying at the Library again. Ray had a good sense of humor about this and asked me to bring him down to one life so he could kill himself with a fetchland. Playing against someone as sporting and good-humored as him was a great way to start the day.
Rd 2: Ben Carp, Stax
In the first game, Ben manascrews me. In the second, I drop a turn 2 Psychatog and he plays a turn 2 Uba Mask. I ride Herr Großerhungrigerverärgerterdoktor a point at a time until I can kill him with a Cunning Wish I tear off the top for a Berserk. In the third game, I make a 5/5 Dryad as a matter of course and he gets Platinum Angel out at a precariously low life total. I eventually have Mystical Tutor to get Oxidize and win when he's in the netherworld of negative life. Ben at one point had Chalice at 2, Ankh of Mishra and a fresh Goblin Welder out. I managed to Rushing River the Ankh and Welder to buy a turn and lock him out of Ankh again. He was a very fun opponent and I enjoyed our games a lot.
Rd 3: GAT
I don't remember a whole lot of this game except that it was the mirror and I think I punished him with Disrupt at one point. He had a large Dryad out but I had Psychatog from the top of my deck. I had Gush in hand and had Merchant Scroll for another, so I forced him into blocking my Psychatog and losing his Dryad. Tog is critical for this matchup. Oh, and once I had my Dryad Smothered but it didn't really bother me. My Dryad philosophy will come towards the end of the article btw.
Rd 4: Flash
In game 1, I got some very lucky early Duresses and stopped anything coming out. I ended up having resolved Ancestral Recall and had Library active, and he scooped to go to game two. In the second game, I had FOW, FOW, bloo card, bloo card, Disrupt, two other relevant cards that included land in my hand. I can't think of a better hand. I cracked off an early Duress to grab Summoner's Pact and sat on my stuff. I baited out a Pact of Negation with a Yawgmoth's Will that I didn't feel like backing up with counters. I probably could have, as I would have Duressed him and Ancestralled myself, but I felt that wasn't necessary as I had active Library in this game as well. Anyway, a few turns later we remember that he didn't pay for Pact so he scoops 'em up.
Rd 5: Jim E. with Ichorid
What can I say, this isn't an entertaining match so I won't bore you with details. I lose the first game and in the second, he Unmasks my Yixlid Jailer I would play on my second turn. I saw that he'd boarded in a lot of dead Reverent Silences and Emerald Charms, so I stored that in my mind. I lose.
Rd 6: Nicholae with Deez Naughts
Game 1, he's manascrewed because he can't get a second blue source to back up Mana Drain. Dryad gets in. In the second game, I realize that he's playing some stifle/dreadnought deck when he gets it out on the second turn. I'd seen Illusionary Mask before but I wasn't thinking at that point. I scoop up and we go to the third game, where his timely Echoing Truth gets Disrupted and I beat him down.
Rd 7: Owen T. with Empty Gifts
I can't remember much of this match, but in the first game he goes for Yawgmoth's Will with Volc and Sea open, and I Disrupt it. He is visibly shaken, says “this is lame”, pays for it, Duresses me out of the graveyard and passes the turn. Disrupt is Some Good. I manage to draw lots of Dryads and no nongreen cards, even with Library going. He goes from zero cards in hand to Gushing into Fastbond-powered broken. The second game comes close to going to time, and I have him one swing away from death when he lands Meloku. Can't win 'em all and he combats me out before time is called. Lose!
Rd 8: ETW/Gush combo
This is where my deck started to do stupid things. In the first game, there was a point where my opponent tapped out for Force of Will and I Disrupted it, much to Steve's delight (he was standing near me). My opponent later had played ETW for 8 tokens and had an empty hand. I'd drawn Fastbond and had Gush and Merchant Scroll available. Broken things happened. I realized halfway through that I had to do eight more damage off my Berserked Dryad because he could actually block with his tokens. Combat Math is hard.
In the second game, I'd drawn a number of REBs and I think, had Library active. A situation came about where I had drawn three Duresses, Demonic Tutor and Yawgmoth's Will, but only had Underground Sea for black mana. I made sure to Duress appropriately, but a topdecked counter would wreck me. I Merchant Scrolled for Ancestral Recall to bait out a Mana Drain, which was there. On my next turn, I Demonic Tutored for Black Lotus, which resolved. I then broke it for Black and Duressed my opponent to reveal a drawn Mana Drain. I had to generate multiple black mana in that turn so that I could Duress and play Will, which I did. Again, broken things happened.
I kind of wish opponents would scoop up when someone has a 12/12 Dryad on the table, infinite cards in hand, Yawgmoth's Will active, Fastbond down and Merchant Scroll for Cunning Wish for Berserk sitting there in the graveyard, because then both players can save time, get up, talk to friends, drink some water and then get on with life. Having to actually go through with killing people when they had an unrecoverable position didn't annoy me, but it was a little bit of a pain. I wanted to reveal my hand in several games and just say “can we go to the next game?” but that was deemed not classy by me. I can understand wanting to play magic anyway and see it through to the end, but please don't think I'm going to screw up and like, forget to attack after Berserking my Dryad. I don't make mistakes.
So I figured I was playing for a FBB dual at that point; turns out a lot of the 8th round people had played each other and so an X-2 would get in. In Rd. 8, I was paired up, so I was the highest seed there and beat The Talented Mr. Shay by half a point on breakers to get in. Neat! Call the fam, high-five the team.
The T8 coverage will probably be on Brainbust at some point, since people were covering it for that. They took what I think is a fantastic photo of me, but then again, most photos of me look good.
Thoughts on Dryad vs. Storming stuff with Gush: I like Dryad a lot better because you don't actually have to commit resources to making it big. You slide it in somewhere and then it gets stuff done while you're doing other things. Storming or Tinkering actually requires resources to tutor/draw it up, and so there's a larger margin of disappointment if you can't bust through. Dryad also lets you apply incremental pressure; a Dryad that resolves, which happens all the time, becomes a huge threat later on without any work on your part. Definitely a good card, and my preference over storming cards.
Also, I drank a full bottle of water during every match. I realize that I'm a loquacious individual but everyone should be well-hydrated at an event so drink some water if you can. It held off dehydration headaches that would have put me off my game.
This is the part of the post where I make props and slops:
Props:
-Tom Lapille, Willie Milton and Stephen Menendian for loaning me cards.
-Tom/Steve for suggesting turning the Island on the board into a Volc the night before.
-Steve's mad deckbuilding abilities, which I mostly copied.
-Pastimes for a great event and a LUNCH BREAK HOW GOOD.
-Disrupt, for being a good card from Weatherlight like my buddy Phyrexian Furnace
-Mark Gottleib, for letting schlubs like me win power with Gush
-Zherbus for suggesting Disrupt on our team boards
-All the great people I met and talked to and played against at the event.
-And most importantly, Team Meandeck, for being an amazing group of friends and supporting me all the way.
Slops:
-I can't leave this space empty, so my air mattress for being uninsulated on the bottom and freezing me the night before.
Regarding the backhanded compliment that starts this report: I haven't been playing a whole lot of Vintage for awhile, while doing a lot of Legacy. I'd been iffy about the event but Steve convinced me to go by saying that it was 3 hours away and I should play GAT because it's a fishy deck. A year ago I couldn't have won this event because of weird issues including a personal desire to lose. Thanks to my new job and getting out of school, I'm at a happy place now and I think that really came out in my gaming this past weekend.
