I have been playing Vintage now for about 6 months here at the Do and have not been able to settle on a deck yet. I switch just about every week or so, until I tried HellkiteOath. The “Timmy” in me loves this deck. A bad ass angel and a dragon, plus being armed to the gills with disruption, oh yeah! So for the last few weeks I have been rocking this list:
4 Force of Will
4 Negate
4 Oath of Druids
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Impulse
3 Thoughtseize
2 Misdirection
1 Hellkite Overlord
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1 Duress
1 Gaea's Blessing
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Wipe Away
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Scroll Rack
4 Forbidden Orchard
2 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
3 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
1 Island
Side Board:
4 Tormod's Crypt
3 Oxidize
2 Empyrial Archangel
2 Arcane Laboratory
1 Massacre
1 Life from the Loam
1 Wasteland
1 Tropical Island
This is damn near James King's Oath list BTW.
Saturday Night Vintage @ The Do 11-22-2008
Here is my report of the night.
I saw some new faces and a lot of familiar regulars, I had a great time as usual. Attendance has been good, let's hope it stays that way.
Round 1 Jordan- Ad Nauseum Tendrils
Game 1- I win the roll and open with an Orchard. I hold onto my Oath until I find back up. In retrospect a mistake because when I do, I find I didn’t need it. He proceeds to Nauseum and we both get a laugh when I try to Misdirect it. No “target” heh. He goes lethal.
I board out a pair of Impulses for Arcane Labs.
Game 2- I settle on a hand with an Oath and lots of draw, hoping to find an Orchard or Arcane Lab. I don’t have time he drops early Nauseum which I can’t find an answer to. He reveals down to 2 life and plays a bunch of artifact mana. He digs but he can’t find a Tendrils and passes turn. I can’t find either Orchard or Lab but his Mana Crypt does him in.
Game 3- Time is called as we draw our hands. He is turn 0. He Duresses my Force. Turn 1 I play a land Mox go, holding up Impulse. Turn 2 He plays Necropotence and resolves it through my counter-empty Impulse and draws a quarter of his deck EOT. Turn 3 I play the COTV @ 0 hoping to keep his artifact mana at a minimum and waste a black dual. Turn 4 he skips his draw and plays Sol Ring. Having only one black mana source keeps him from going off. He Time Twisters but it still doesn’t help his situation. He Time Walks but I Force it with my fresh hand. Turn 5 I draw into nothing and we draw. 1-1-1
Round 2 Max- Fish
Game 1- He wins the roll and plays Tundra go. I draw a mox and play Orchard and Oath go. Akroma followed by Hellkite = GG
I sideboard in Massacre and two Empyrial Archangels I pull out Hellkite and a pair of Impulses.
Game 2- He plays an early A-call followed by Counterbalance which I respond to with Impulse into my own A-call. Which he steals with Misdirection! I laugh and un-sleeve my custom proxy and trade him for his BEB A-call proxy. I hope WOTC doesn’t find out. The game looked grim from there. I sneak Oath into play past the Counterbalance, although I don’t have an Orchard to trigger it. He drops a Factory and begins to beat face through the Oath. I play a Scroll Rack through the Counterbalance and dig up an Orchard. Once I give him a token, Bob joins the party. Akroma follows. She goes right to work but only gets one swing, as she is Swords’d next turn. Drawing mana doesn’t help my hand support but an Archangel helps, gotta love shroud. Max Demonic Tutor’s then Diabolic Edicts me. Ouch! He summons Meddling Mage to the table and could have sealed the game by naming Empyrial Archangel but he names Hellkite Overlord instead, so the 2nd Archangel ends the round. 2-0
Round 3 John A.- I Like Big Butts
Game 1- I win the roll and open with land drop COTV@0 and pass. He plays land go. At his EOT, I Vamp Tutor for oath. Draw the Oath and play a land. I then play COTV@1 and he responds with Mystic Tutor for Mana Drain. I pass turn. He draws the Mana Drain and plays another land. John now has a Volcanic Island and an Island on the board. He passes turn. I draw an Orchard but I play a Wasteland and waste his volcano. I win the counter war and put Oath of Druids in play. The game is over shortly after.
I don’t have much to board against the hate so I grab another Wasteland and side out an Underground Sea.
Game 2- He opens with a land suspending a Greater Gargadon. I play a Mox Jet and Thoughtseize him, revealing a FOW, Magus and a couple Mana Drains. I want to resolve my A-call I have in hand, so I choose the Force. I play a sea and A-call myself drawing both Gae’s Blessing and Hellkite! Damn. I pass turn. He draws and plays a land go. I draw and play Wasteland. I tap and sac it to destroy a Volcanic Island, he responds by sacrificing it to his suspended Gargadon. He plays more land. Another Thoughtseize pulls the Magus before he gets the mana for it. Duress snags one of his Drains. I play the Oath with Negate back up for his last Drain. Gargadon crawls out of suspension and goes head to head with Akroma while I try to dig for a way to put Hellkite and Blessing back. Akroma comes out on top before it matters. 2-0
*This is the round I put the most effort into playing the tightest games I could. Last time John and I played, “Big Butts” utterly wrecked me.
Top 8 Gene- Ichorid
Game 1-He won the roll but mulled to 1. He plays COTV@0 and passes. I hold a hand with Oath and a bunch of draw. The game grows stagnant as neither of us draw into our needed lands. I finally tutor up an Orchard and end the grind.
I board in Tormod’s Crypts and pull out the Thoughtseizes and Duress.
Game 2-He keeps a seven hand. Uh oh. I have Tormod’s, Force of Will and a blue card to pitch plus an Orchard. He plays Cotv@0 I Force it. He Unmasks pulling the Crypt. Uh oh. He activates a Bazaar dropping a couple of Trolls and a Stinky Imp in the grave. Uh oh. The rest is what should’ve happened game1.
Game 3- While shuffling and cutting decks, we joke about how he had to mulligan to 1 card before game 1. I make a jest about giving him bad luck so it would happen again this game…my bad.
He mulligans to 1 again then scoops.
Top 4 Korey- Repeal Gifts
Game 1- I am holding a hand full of counters, draw and a Wipe Away. He casts Tinker, instead of letting it go and bouncing the robot EOT, I FOW it and get into a full blown counter-war. To make matters worse, I RFG the Wipe Away for the Force! I could see Carlos Mencia leaning over my shoulder yelling “De-de-de!”
He Yawg’s the Tinker back and DSC rolls me over.
I sideboard in Arcane Labs and pulled a pair of Impulses.
Game 2- Engineered Explosives set at 2 and his endless counters kept Oath off the board. My own Arcane Lab proved to be my prison cell while tokens beat face. Spirit tokens FTW! 0-2
I have to find the reason why it is that as soon as I reach the top 4 bracket, I begin to play like an over-excited toddler with a brand new box of crayons. Although if I have to lose, i'm glad it is to Korey. We always have good games and productive conversations, even when he is suffering from sever sleep depravation.
