ICBM-Xtreme Open Day 1, First Place.

[OwenTheEnchanter]

*****THIS IS NOT WRITTEN BY ME*****

Hey this is Jeff Rabovsky for those of you who don't know me as jrab89. Having just won a lotus on Saturday, Ben Carp asked me very nicely to write a report to put on TMD; so here I am. To kick things off, this was the list I played:

// Lands
4 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
1 Island
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand

// Creatures
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Vendilion Clique
3 Trygon Predator

// Spells
4 Force of Will
3 Null Rod
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Brainstorm
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
4 Daze
1 Diabolic Edict
4 Duress
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Life from the Loam

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Energy Flux
SB: 3 Yixlid Jailer
SB: 1 Darkblast
SB: 4 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 3 Sower of Temptation

I snatched Tommy Kolowith's list off our boards and took out bad cards for good ones. Thanks TK & Owen! Gotta love the Wisconsinites. The maindeck was perfect but the sideboard probably had one or two more anti-dredge cards than I needed. My short term memory is borderline miserable/nonexistent so don't expect the details to be great since I have no idea what I did with my life pad. Yet, I do recall that the most difficult part of the tournament was finding the store and getting the cards I needed for my deck.

Round One: AJ Sacher with Tezzeret
AJ is a player I have a lot of respect for and I've traveled to several events with him in the past. I haven't seen him since last year's Gen Con so it sucks that we have to play the first round. We proceed to bitch about how unlucky it is for two players like ourselves that aren't brain dead to have been paired round one and that we both probably should have just stayed home and played poker online. I don't have any specifics, but I win in two games. Even in the hands of a level 4 pro, Tezzeret is definitely an underdog to BUG Fish.

Round Two: Paul Mastriano with Tezzeret
Sorry no details here either. I win in two games.

Round Three: Ian DeGraff with Dredge
Someone else I haven't seen in forever! Game one starts with a mulligan via serum powder from Ian followed by a bazaar which gets activated once before I blow it up with a pivotal wasteland. Tarmogoyf later joined by trygon predator on my side both do a good job putting pressure on him as he struggles to accumulate a graveyard without his bazaar. It ends up being close but I have a tutor for time walk to seals the deal. Ian didn't have a very good start game 2, a careful study followed by some manual dredging if I remember correctly. He also has a chalice for zero to stop my tormod's crypt but my predator was able to kill the chalice before I was in much danger.

Round Four: Tim Bartlett with Tezzeret
Game one I'm unable to get an early threat to stick through two spell snares and a mana drain. We play the attrition game back and forth and he eventually comes out on top with a decent sized coatl followed by tinker for colossus. Game two he mulligans and forces my turn one tarmogoyf off a mox, which doesn't make much sense to me. He takes his first turn and proceeds to go land, mox, lotus, tezzeret, search for time vault. I don't have a force or null rod so I lose on the spot.

Round Five: ??? playing BUG Fish
Again remembering games of Magic from three days prior is not something I'm particularly good at. I think I won this match in two games.

Round Six: Owen Turtenwald with Tezzeret
Game I'm on the wrong side of a quick tinker for colossus. Game two is just as lopsided but in my favor. Game three is closer but a trygon predator squeaks it out for me. And yes it sucks having to play a teammate and good friend for top 8.

Round Seven: Mike Mohring with Shop Aggro
We draw in.

Quarters: Anthony Michaels with Stax
I have a very strong start game one after forcing his first turn sphere then playing a confidant off an emerald and jet on my first turn. Eventually trygon predator comes down to finish what bob started, bad news for the shop player. In game two, he keeps me from putting any pressure on him. I eventually land an energy flux but his two welders minimized its effect and I end up losing all of my permanents to a smokestack. I have an early confidant and null rod in game three but he has tangle wire, maze of ith, and tabernacle to keep me from doing anything other than drawing cards and losing life from, which is fine by me. At four life, I eventually have to let bob die but the extra cards I've drawn far outweigh the life I've lost in this matchup. I get a flux and even though he has academy to counteract it. My second flux and wasteland on his academy are too much for him to handle.

Semis: Mike Solymossy with Tezzeret
He goes turn one one scroll for force and tinker for sphinx. If he had a colossus instead of god awful sphinx I would have not gotten a third turn but instead I live to see my turn six by chumping with a clique. I duressed at some point to see that he had two forces and a drain so odds were slim to none for me to find edict and get it to resolve. His deck declines to provide him the the nuts again and I take him down in three games.

Finals: Jimmy McCarthy with Tezzeret
He offers the split but I I'm 4-1 against his deck so I like my chances. Sorry Jimmy. I mulligan to a solid five card hand that includes two land, duress, and two confidant. Duress grabs a merchant scroll and he doesn't have any other action so my confidants go the distance. Game two I keep a hand with confidant and force but only sapphire and wasteland for mana. I've got a brainstorm plus I'm on the draw so if one of the top five cards of my deck taps for black I'm golden. My first draw doesn't yield a black source so I'm a bit nervous. I find black on my second turn via brainstorm and from there its smooth sailing.

All in all it was a fun tournament, tough to complain about free ice cream and winning a lotus. I wish I could play more Vintage but being in Iowa City ¾ of the year for school in addition to work and a class over the summer it was difficult even to have made it Saturday. Thanks everyone who loaned me cards; you know who you are! Also, thanks to the Swartz brothers, Owen, James King, AJ and anyone else who contributed to the perpetual, ridiculous, loud, and annoying banter during my top 8 matches. It definitely put my opponents on tilt which is awesome since I'm immune to any kind of obnoxiousness having played magic with the aforementioned Turtenwald and Swartz brothers for years.

PS: I'd rather tinker for a ham sandwich than sphinx of the steel wind.

[Shock Wave]

PS: I'd rather tinker for a ham sandwich than sphinx of the steel wind.

Thanks for the report, but specifically for that priceless quote.

[M.Solymossy]

Either way, your answer to Sphinx is the same.  It doesn't matter how many turns you see if you just flat out CANT kill me.  Sure, you get more turns to find your disruption, but BUG wasn't as much a problem for my deck as those stupid extended decks and that Selkie deck.  I did play against RG and would have lost with Darksteel OR Inkwell, but won because I had sphinx.

Also,  I don't feel like you really give me much respect for our match.  IDK if it's because you didn't really enjoy my presence of what, but I feel the need to comment.


Game 2, I echoing Truthed your Null Rod on 4 mana, so if I drew a 5th, or if I was a champion and drew lotus or Academy, I could drop my Meloku, which you just flat out cannot beat.

Grats on the finish though.  Of course I can't beat that matchup when BUG fish is designed to have a 70% win against Tezzeret, AND you're a good player to boot.  No disrespect, you flat-out steamrolled me just like you were supposed to games 2 and 3.


*edit* i find it funny that I offered to post this for you and your response is "thanks but  I'd rather post it myself".  If myself means Owen, that's cool.   

[Moxlotus]

Iowa City?  Someone else who plays Magic lives in Iowa City???????  Yeah, there is no magic anywhere around here which is one of the reasons I sold my power.  You also got to miss out on a huge fucking campus tour which always leads to infinite people not knowing how to use crosswalks and obey traffic signals around campus and not know where the hell they are going driving around town.  Missing that might have been the best part of your weekend!

[Churro4]

This is Tim Bartlett from round four. 

You mention that forcing your game 2, turn 1 'goyf doesn't make much sense, but if I hadn't then you would have had the ability to attack Tezz with your 'goyf breaking up the combo.  Seems like it makes sense to me, as after that you have only the 4 null rods to stop the combo.  Not the most-bulletproof gameplan, but it worked.

Congrats on the finish, you played our games well, including the fight over your A.call in game 1.

I would also like to thank Ben for putting the event together.  Wish they were all like this one, and that I could make it to more of them!

[Implacable]

You mention that forcing your game 2, turn 1 'goyf doesn't make much sense, but if I hadn't then you would have had the ability to attack Tezz with your 'goyf breaking up the combo.  Seems like it makes sense to me, as after that you have only the 4 null rods to stop the combo.  Not the most-bulletproof gameplan, but it worked.

As I understand it, what he meant was that his thought process went something like this:

"You're forcing 'Goyf?  But why?  I have much better threats in a long game..."
"Oh shit."