I'll start by saying that it's now been over a week since this tournament and my grasp of the facts as they relate to each match up is tenuous at best. As such I'll extend my apologies to each of my opponents as really they are the only ones who will care. The rest of you are probably just killing time at work or taking a short break from facebook/myspace and don't expect usefull information in a tournament report from a guy that was maindecking control magic and sided in four Serendib Efreets almost every single game 2.
Section One: The Preparation
Not having played magic at all in just over a year I came into this tournament with absolutely no idea what the current Vintage meta looked like. as such I did what I always do when returning to an activity after a long hiatus, I threw together a pile of crap loosely based on decks that seemed interesting to me and added some cards that I just enjoy playing like control magic and fact or fiction. then I fill a side board with crappy cards that don't really help me much but serve to entertain me in the later rounds of a tournament (by which time I'm usually x-2-x ing my way back into national anonymity) in this case four revised copies of Serendib Efreet. I also looked at the most recent banned and restricted list and shed a tear for brainstorm.
That said here's the list that everyone could beat once but no one could beat twice (I lost every game 1 the entire day but didn't lose a match)
FRANK, a.k.a. Frank (take that Dan)
4x Force of Will
4x Mana Drain
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Ruby
1x Black Lotus
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Time Walk
4x Goblin Welder
3x Volcanic Island
3x Underground Sea
1x Tolarian Academy
1x Sol Ring
1x Tinker
1x Brainstorm
4x Thirst for Knowledge
1x Darksteel Colossus
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Yawgmoth's Will
1x Fact or Fiction
1x Mystical Tutor
1x Merchant Scroll
3x Flooded Strand
3x Polluted Delta
3x Painter's Servant
1x Trinket Mage
2x Grindstone
1x Mindslaver
1x Mana Crypt
1x Control Magic
2x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Empty the Warrens
1x Island
Sideboard
3x Red Elemental Blast
4x Serendib Efreet
4x Skeletal Scrying
1x Echoing Truth
1x Repeal
1x Stifle
1x Pyroblast
Ok so I suppose a couple of these card choices deserve an explanation so here's a short list of justification
Maindeck
Control Magic. this is probably the card that jumps into everyones mind when they read this list, but just hear me out here.
control Magic is really really cool, most people completely overlook the fact that control magic allows you to take a creature that your opponent controlls and for a paltry four mana gain control of that creature permanently. you don't have to give it mack till it dies or the game is over. you can attack with it, use all of it's special cool abilities and totally rag on your opponent the entire time in a sing song voice saying "I've got your creature, I've got your creature" back in the late 90's at my home store in Concord NH (the birthplace of Proxy vintage) control Magic was, to steal a saying from the times, the bees knees. along with other fantastic cards like Drain life, Clone, Serra Angel and the nearly unstoppable Mahamotti Djinn. I really don't understand what caused these fantastic cards to fall out of favor but I think they are perched for a swooping return to the forefront of the Vintage Metagame. after all one more set of restrictions and 6 mana cost creatures will probably be playable again.
Fact or Fiction: I'm not going to lie here, I know that the whole Gifts ungiven thing if supposedly like way better and totally kick ass but every time I cast it I look through my deck like six times and get really frustrated and confused, as I only intend to play the game once a year or so and then only for fun I feel no obligation to myself or my peers to run an optimal or even good deck when I do play and as such I just ran fact or fiction instead.
Painter's Servant / Grindstone: I looked at the New thing and said to my self "wow, a 2 card colorless combo that comes out for a totalled 3 mana and resolves for another 3, that's usefull in a deck that runs welders and tutors." I don't really think I need to say much more, this only won me one game and spend the vast majority of the day in my box while Serendib Efreet took home the glory, and rightly so.
Sideboard
Serendib Efreet: It shouldn't come as a surprise that a 7 turn clock that erodes your own life and comes out for 3 was an auto-include for a guy that's fond of running pains reward and left team Meandeck 'cuz he "wasn't feeling it" (actually I left team Meandeck twice, the first time was just practice) this
REB / Pyroblast: These cards are good in any deck in vintage, and a deck that runs painter's servant should probably have at least one or 2 in the main deck. whats odd here is that I didn't run them in the main and with the exception of one game that I can remember they were never in the deck at the same time as the painter's servant at all.
TESTING
MWS is my program of choice and so I loaded the above list into it and substituted Servant of Volrath for Painter's Servant. I then proceded toe thoroughly Goldfish it twice and I was good to go.
Section the Second: Holy shit this guy is playing Serendib Efreet
I get to Myriad early to find two of my compatriots and fellow doublemidnight alumni waiting outside for the store to open. Andrew Fox and Seth Patterson. We chit chat for a bit till Dan's trusty employee Tom ( I think it's Tom, might be Tim, one of the two for sure) Ton/Tim open the door and we start filling out reg sheets. Fox starts designing a deck from the ground up and people start to filter in. I wont bore you with the details of the hour of schmoozing we do before the tourney I'll just cut right to the games.
Round One: Bill Copes playing Stax
Bill seems like a nice buy till I see that he's playing Stax and realize (by way of a concrete Magic formula I learned from my 4th grade math teacher) he has no soul.
Game one, I lose to stax, I can't really remember what happened here but he was playing Stax so if you've played in a vintage tourney in the last 5 years you have some idea of how it went.
now that I know that I'm playing against the Antichrist I side out my combo and side in four serendib Efreets, the results were fairly predictable.
Game Two, I win with Serindib Efreet
Game Three, I win with Serindib Efreet
Round Two: Jeff Rogers pretending not to play belcher (but actually playing belcher)
Jeff Rogers likes to mislead people, which is fine if you are me but not if you are you. you shouldn't mislead people, it's mean and as we all know mean people suck
Game One: Jeff wins the die roll and drops a Taiga I say "dude It will kick ass if you drop a kird ape" he responds with that would be sweet and drops a tinder wall, having played less than 10 games of magic in the past 2 years It doesn't occur to me that he is probably playing belcher and not RG beats. I'm a sucker and he wins game one
Game Two, now I know what he is up to and so I side in stifle and hope for the best. I get it. I stifle his first belcher activation and then weld out the belcher. ha ha, take that, I then combo off for the win
Game Three, similar to above but he doesn't get the belcher out
this is the only Match that I don't side in the Efreets, it's a miracle that I won.
Round three Craig Dupre playing Izzet Control a deck created by a Brittish guy who is trying to take over the country, I haven't figured out how yet but I'll prove it some day
Game one: he plays Izzet guildmage and wins with it.
Game two: I side in Efreets and Rebs and win with DSC
Game Three: not sure how I won but I did
Top 8
(I'm tired so I'm going to just steal from his post 'cuz it's about right by my recollection)
Top 8 Tyler
Game 1 I bust out a huge amount of Empty the Warrens tokens and I saw none of his deck. I thought he was playing a painter combo deck, but as it turns out, it was basically a welder control deck.
Game 2 I boarded out my robots, as I expect to kill him with his own combo. He had boarded out the combo in favor of Serendibs, and I die despite getting Slaver online, and having access to Tinker. He was at one life, and I had missed attacking with Welder to bluff Thirst several times in the early game.
Game 3 An early Serendib chips away at the life totals and Welder joins in, while Duress starts to clear the way for me. Gorilla Shaman keeps his Welder at bay, but I'm mana flooded hard. I end up in bad shape, seeing only mana and Mindslaver off Top. I eventually have a chance to stack the draw from Top, and Tap to draw, which would have given me Black Lotus and Mindslaver in hand for the hardcast and activation. I don't make the play, and I end up losing. Had I made the play, I would have been able to use his welder to recur slaver enough times to draw into Mystical for Yawgmoth's Will. The total number of turns would have actually been enough to kill him with his own Serendib damage. The delayed turn from not using top optimally would have been acceptable, if he didn't tinker on his turn into a Mindslaver of his own. He wanted to get DSC, but it was in his hand, so he grabbed slaver disappointedly. Had he been able to grab DSC, I would have been able to begin my Slaver turns and get there.
Props
ELD for losing to me finally after more than 6 years
Dan for holding the best tourneys in the country
and Fuddrucker's for allowing me to consume a 1 lb bacon cheeseburger and squeeze as much cheese sauce onto my fries as I want
Slops
my schedule for not allowing me to play any more frequently
