I sold my Soul to the Boogie Man

I sold my Soul to the Boogie Man: A story of 1st place at The Cary Cup #2

For starters, my name is Garrett Wiley and I play Ichorid (aka The Boogie Man). I got back into Vintage after a fairly long break at the release of Future Sight, this was because I found a deck that was completely unfair, a deck that only allowed one way interaction the vast majority of the time, a deck that abused the minor rules of the game like triggered effects and replacement effects to their breaking point. This deck, of course, is known as Manaless Ichorid. Thanks to the inclusion of Bridge From Below this deck went from a mostly fair deck that would role over and die from a well timed bounce spell or Swords to Plowshares to a deck that produced a literal army of zombie bears that could easily be backed up by their 3/1 captains and 7/10 generals and still have room in the deck to use the most efficient and broken pieces of disruption printed to date. I had to play this deck, regardless of whether people thought it always went on "auto pilot" or it was a "skilless deck", the abuse contained in this deck simply called to me. Since my return I have played a wide variety of decks from GAT and other gushbond powered decks like Tyrant Oath and The Tropical Storm to workshop based decks like Stax, Serum Powder UbaStax and MAD MUD to other strange graveyard based decks like TurboGush. I have yet to find a deck that is more objectively powerful than Manaless Ichorid. Hence my choice for this tournament.

You can find the list I played in picture format here or in text format below.

Manaless Ichorid

Lands (11)
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 City of Brass
2 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine

Creatures (22)
2 Sundering Titan
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Golgari Thug
4 Ichorid
4 Narcomoeba
4 Stinkweed Imp

Enchantments (8)
4 Bridge from Below
4 Leyline of the Void

Spells (11)
1 Darkblast
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Dread Return
4 Unmask

Artifacts (8)
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Serum Powder

Sideboard (15)
4 Chain of Vapor
4 Emerald Charm
4 Gemstone Mine
3 Wispmare

My day started off like normal, I woke up at 6am and tried to fall back asleep for an hour, eventually gave up and just went about the day. After figuring out that I didn't have any other decks fully built I decided to play Ichorid and got myself into the mood by watching Sublime and Hard Candy (both very good horror dramas that mess with your head). About 30 minutes before 12 I started getting ready to go to the tournament, packing bags, taking a shower, printing off a deck list etc. At noon I bolted out the door to head for some Wendy's conveniently forgetting the deck list I printed so I would have to write one out at the store. After a bite to eat I hopped over to the store and meet up with Geoff, Bert and Cody. I pay my entry fee, turn in my deck list and begin scouting. The field looked pretty diverse with no two people playing the same thing as far as I could tell. I end up chatting with Cody some and find out we are only at 15 people, but he says the Recall is still the top prize ... I thought this was pretty cool! Rounds start at around 1:30. My notes aren't perfect but I remember most of it.

Round 1 vs. Darien (GAT)
We're sitting next to Tommy and Bryan. Tommy is piloting an old school PandaBurst deck, which is absolutely awesome since I played that deck in standard and vintage once upon a time. Bryan is fated to be my second round opponent.

Game 1
I mull to 6 and start with a Leyline in play, he keeps his opening 7. Turn 2 sees an Ichorid pop up out of a grave and swing in, causing some brain damage with a cabal therapy (that got shot down by a force of will) on the way out and giving birth to 3 zombies and possibly a returned Titan (I'm fuzzy on this one). He concedes before the onslaught of my army over his already blasted landscape.

Game 2
I mull to 6, he does too but starts with a Leyline in play. I succeed in getting rid of the leyline but have to tap both bazaar and city to do it. He gushbonds into a 20 point tendrils on his next turn.

Game 3
Before beginning Darien says that he "needs me to mull to 1 in order to win the round." He successfully jinxes me and I mull to 1 keeping a Golgari Grave-Troll, he decides to keep his opening grip and plays out a third turn jailer after I draw nothing but therapies and dredgers. He swings in twice as I draw nothing and then gushbonds into a 16 point tendrils for the win. My first Bazaar was more than 30 cards down in the deck, my first answer to the Leyline was still 4 turns away when he won.

Match W-L
0-1-0
Game W-L
1-2-0

Round 2 vs. Bryan (4cc?)

Game 1
I keep my opening grip and draw into a second bazaar on my turn, this doesn't help too much since I don't hit a dredger till turn 4, but its off to the races after that as he hasn't put up any resistance and concedes.

Game 2
I keep my opening grip while he mulls to 5 and starts with leyline. I answer leyline with a charm on turn 2 and begin the madness, alpha striking him down to 3 on my next turn to which he concedes.

Match W-L
1-1-0
Game W-L
3-2-0

Round 3 vs. Chris (Long)
Before I go into this match I would like to say that if Ichorid has a natural predator it is blazing fast combo decks. TPS and Long both have extremely good percentages against Ichorid because they get to goldfish if we don't open with a chalice or leyline. I was very lucky in this round.

Game 1
I mull to 6 and start with a leyline, he mulls to 5 and casts a first turn necro. He goes to 9 off necro on his turn and I begin my prayers and hope for a second turn while piling dredgers into my yard. He combos out on his turn but fizzles at a 16 point tendrils. He goes from 22 to 11 off necro and I get jank on my dredges only putting in 1 ichorid and not seeing any narcomoebas. He can't get out from under his own necro on his next turn and takes himself to 4 after some mana burn. I swing in with ichorid to drop him to 1 and therapy him a couple of times, he concedes.

Game 2
I powder a 7 card hand and keep, starting with Leyline. He mulls to 6 and starts with leyline. He plays a second turn bargain and I scoop.

Game 3
I mull to 5 keeping a hand with bazaar, chalice, unmask x 2 and therapy. He keeps his opening 7 and doesn't Have a leyline. After dropping the chalice and ripping his hand apart with turn 1 unmask and turn 2 therapy I was able to race him to victory. I'm pretty sure that I would have lost turn 1 without the chalice.

Match W-L
2-1-0
Game W-L
5-3-0

Round 4 vs. Bert (Commandeer is Broken)
Bert Kyle the creator of Manaless Ichorid, he is also the one that put forth the philosophy for building the deck that I currently follow. It is fine to give up some of the game 1 percentages in order to make games 2-3 much more winnable. He was not happy to face his baby and was even less happy when it bore Titans to the field and crushed his chances to top 4.

Game 1
Bert starts off the round by saying that he didn't bring any of his ichorid hate in his sideboard today and so I have this almost auto won. What he doesn't remember is that I watched him resolve a cunning wish the round prior and saw leylines and needles. Bert then tries to hex my deck with a voodoo gesture. As you will see Karma bites him in the ass and gives me double bazaar hands both games (and drawing an additional third bazaar in game 2)

We both keep our opening hands (mine has 2 bazaars and I am happy) and turn 3 I dread return a Titan, shutting him out of the game fully.

Game 2
We both keep (I have two bazaars a city and a chain of vapor in hand), he drops Leyline. I bounce it first turn and he replays it turn 3. My second turn puts a third bazaar into my hand after activating the freshly laid one. I charm the leyline turn 4 and cruise in against counterspell.dec. He would have had a much easier time if he had found a pithing needle as the charm would have been more than 6 turns away without the bazaar.

Match W-L
3-1-0
Game W-L
7-3-0

I find out I made Top 4 in third place! I am super excited! Geoff looks at the list at the same time I do and starts cursing. He had one bad match up in all of the top 4 and he has to face it, I chuckle a little and ask him where he wants to sit at.

Top 4: Round 1 vs. Geoff (Tyrant Oath)
I know from my talks with him prior to the tournament that he was playing a version without tormod's crypt in the main, this means I pretty much own this match barring fastbond shenanigans.

Game 1
I mull to 5 and he keeps. He drops a turn 2 fastbond but fizzles with the gush chain which got him to a board position of Oath, Tyrant, fastbond, 3 lands and a mox. I bring forth the 7/10 general and decimate his field. This cinches the game and I end up bringing him from 14 to -3 with an alpha strike of my horde.

Game 2
I mull to five and keep a hand with chalice, bazaar, city, charm and something else (I think it was a powder). He keeps his opening hand and starts with leyline. He drops a mox pearl and U sea and tries to cast oath. That didn't happen like he wanted. My turn I drop chalice and charm the oath. He draws and passes. I bazaar, starting off my game plan. He has another dud turn. I get a narco off dredge and therapy calling force (with 4 bridges in the grave) and seeing Jet, 2x oath, krosan rec, chain of vapor, and (fastbond?). I then dread return titan to destroy his only land, he floats a blue and chains it, I sac a city to chain hos mox pearl. Next turn swings in with a zombie and ichorid with him doing nothing. Next turn he still doesn't see green mana and concedes.

Match W-L
4-1-0
Game W-L
9-3-0

Finals vs. Cody (Drain Tendrils)
At the last tourney I faced Cody in round 1, I got a game loss because one of my cards had fallen out of my library before the tournament began and lost game three after a first turn tinker->colossus, which I bounced and he then went to go brainstorm, yawg will, tinker, colossus. Epic? Yes! Deserving of payback? Yes!

He win the die roll.
Game 1
Darien tells me I need to mull to 0, as does Bert and Cody. I think Darien almost got me to do it again, but Karma was still hungry for some Bert so it evened out and I only had to go down to 3 Razz

He keeps a hand of 7 and forces my chalice for 0 pitching a thirst. After four turns of not hitting dredgers I run into a pack of dredgers the turn before Cody tinkers out an 11/11 trampler. I'm fine with this as I put forth and army of zombies and return a 14/14 Grave-Troll lieutenant to lead them to victory. Cody can't get a fast enough clock and dies to the horde.

Game 2
I mull to 6 with a pretty decent hand, he mulls to 6 with a leyline and first turn pithing needle. He then proceeds to goldfish.

Game 3
The crucial game three with Ichorid on the play. The only two ways Cody can win this is to pull off another leyline + needle hand or combo out before my turn 3. I'm relatively ok with this but Cody is an awesome player and knows every way possible to speed up the deck so I am still nervous (plus its the difference between a foil dark ritual or an ancestral recall!).

I mull to 5 with a double bazaar hand and say keep. Cody says he will mulligan, he draws his new hand and repeats himself. I get happy and start poking a little bit of fun saying how my deck is designed to do this, not his. He comments (and correctly) that the majority of my deck is just probabilities and we have a small discussion on how true this is while he shuffles up for his new hand. He draws five and complains that it is an excellent hand if it was up against anyone but ichorid, this further reinforces my image of the deck as the most unfair and abstractly powerful deck in the format. What other deck can cause so many fits for nearly every deck in the format? He draws his new hand of 4 and keeps, playing a turn 0 leyline.

I play city and charm his leyline. Turn 2 I draw into a third bazaar, play one, bazaar getting no dredgers but drawing into a charm. I charm my bazaar and get a second activation. Cody plays crypt and some other stuff that didn't amount to anything for me while I played out three bazaars and didn't hit a dredger till turn 6 or so. Cody's deck is also crapping out on him during this time and I finally hit a dredger around turn 7 or 8. From there it was cake, I guess when you can see 32 cards in a single turn you should be able to win huh? My final attack saw a 6/6 troll and 6 zombies swinging in to win me an ancestral recall.

Match W-L
5-1-0
Game W-L
11-4-0

Notes on my list:
Wasteland and Strip Mine are useless in the main and should be petrified fields. You will never play these lands unless you are no longer using bazaar, which means it is either under pithing needle or it has been wasted. Field is more useful in the second situation and has the same amount of utility in the first.
Sundering Titan is an absolute house. It cinched multiple games for me throughout the day, only once not taking out more than 1 land.
If I were to add in an angel of despair it would be for the darkblast in the main. I would move that to the side for emerald charm.
Wispmares are iffy. The only time you want them is against stax, any other time you want charms instead. Unfortunately you need them for the stax match up or you will never get rid of a leyline.

Props
Cody for hosting the tourney and still putting up the Recall even though it means he took a huge loss.
Bert for chatting with me on Ichorid and other projects.
Darien, Geoff, Bert and Cody for signing Zombie tokens.
Everyone commenting on my pimped out version of Ichorid.
Rob Zombie for his remake of Halloween, which I listened to as I typed this.

Slops
Low attendance, we really need a larger crowd for the last one
The 2-3 flies that were around for the last 4 hours of the tournament

Notes on Ichorid
I saw 7 turn 0 leylines in 15 games, technically 7 in 9 games as no one ran them main deck. If Ichorid truly could not interact, or had 0 skill like some people claim I should have lost all of those games. I lost 3 of them, the first 2 were to an extremely fast clock, not leyline. The last one was to needle far more than leyline. If Ichorid was a non-interactive deck there would have been no way for me to beat Chris, where my disruption was the only thing that saved me. Indeed, in my opinion the games with Cody and Bert were the only ones that felt non-interactive and even Bert in game 2 had a lot of interaction with me. Ichorid beats up on reactive control decks like they were children with tasty candy. It can create an army with amazing speed to fend off aggro decks (well, at least ones that don't run 12/12 tramplers) and it runs 8 maindeck discard spells, leyline of the void and chalice of the void to give it a strong game against combo. I hold in my opinion that Manaless Ichorid is the strongest deck prior june 20th. I also fully agree with Cody in that something needs to be done about this deck as it severely warps metagames. If you don't sideboard cards against this deck it is an auto loss for almost everything. So if one person in 50 comes with ichorid you stand a chance of just plain losing a round because you chose the wrong side of "the ichorid bet". Some people have asked me what card needs to go in order to make ichorid still viable but fair. I say this is a no brainer: Bridge From Below needs to be restricted. Bofore this card ichorid was a fair deck. Going back to the sutured ghoul kill would cut its power level in half easily.