MCM Vintage 11 april 2010

[Eye_of_the_Beholder]

Here is the list I played in the tourney sunday 11 april with some minimal changes compared to the Breda tourney. I cut Ponder for the 3rd Mana Drain. Iona was relegated to the sideboard. Because the non-proxy nature of the tournament I changed Mox Pearl to a Lotus Petal. Seeing not a lot of dredge I changed 1 Crypt to the Terastodon in the board. 29 players showed up so we are off for 5 rounds.

    4 Forbidden Orchard
    4 Misty Rainforest
    1 Library of Alexandria
    1 Tolarian Academy
    1 Forest
    2 Island
    1 Tropical Island
    3 Underground Sea
    1 Mox Sapphire
    1 Mox Emerald
    1 Lotus Petal
    1 Mox Jet
    1 Mana Crypt
    1 Mox Ruby
    1 Black Lotus
    1 Sol Ring
    4 Oath of Druids
    1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
    1 Tinker
    1 Krosan Reclamation
    1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
    1 Terastodon
    1 Tezzeret the Seeker
    1 Time Vault
    1 Voltaic Key
    3 Spell Pierce
    3 Mana Drain
    4 Force of Will
    1 Sensei's Divining Top
    1 Yawgmoth's Will
    1 Regrowth
    1 Time Walk
    1 Mystical Tutor
    1 Merchant Scroll
    1 Vampiric Tutor
    1 Demonic Tutor
    1 Gifts Ungiven
    1 Timetwister
    1 Brainstorm
    1 Ancestral Recall

Sideboard
    1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
    1 Terastodon
    2 Show and Tell
    1 Bribery
    2 Duress
    4 Ravenous Trap
    1 Tormod’s Crypt
    3 Nature’s Claim

Round 1 vs Noble Fish
Game 1 : My fetchland gets stifled , my sea gets wasted and my island stripped.
SB:  +1 Terastodon + 2 Show and Tell , - 1 Krosan Reclamation, - 1 Timetwister , -1 Spell Pierce
Game 2 : I hardcast a Sphinx on the first turn courtesy of an academy , lotus , petal and a mox.
                 I ride it to victory.
Game 3:  He opens with a hierarch. My opening has Orchard, Mox , Oath. He curses his sideboardplan. He put me on Tezzeret/Storm and boarded out his Swords to Plowshares. I oath a Sphinx and a Terastodon.
M 1-0 G2-1

Round 2 vs Noble Fish
Game 1: I lose to quick mana denial
SB:  +1 Terastodon + 2 Show and Tell , - 1 Krosan Reclamation, - 1 Timetwister , -1 Spell Pierce
Game 2:  I spell pierce a first turn Null Rod and follow up with Tinkering out Sol Ring for the Sphinx.
He tries to Rebuild but I have the Mana Drain. Next turn he plays Hurkyl’s Recall but I drew a Show and Tell last turn  and bring the Sphinx back to the party.
Game3:  Jace finds me Tinker and a Key which spells victory.
M 2-0 G 4-2

Round 3 vs TrinketSalvagers
Game 1: I win the die roll , we shuffle up and then the judge swoops down on us and runs off with our decks. After  a good few minutes he returns. Apparently my opponent misregistered a fetchland.
Game  2 (Game 1 bis): I mulligan to 6 and keep a hand with a lot of land among it Library. My opponent has a slow start and I assemble Key and draw into Tinker , and double Oath. He wins a counterwar on the Tinker , has a final counterspell for the first Oath but the second Oath takes it.
M 3-0 G 6-2

Round 4 vs IonaOath
ID
We play one for fun which I win due to Orchard advantage. We decide to scout for the rest of the round.
M 3-0-1 G 6-2

Round 5 vs Noble Fish
ID
M 3-0-2 G 6-2

Quarterfinals vs CombOath
Game 1:  I can overwhelm him with LoA cardadvantage.
SB: - 3 Oath – 1 Island + 2 Duress + 1 Bribery + 1 Terastodon
Game 2:  He gets a start with a lot of artifact accelerants and plays a Dark Ritual which I Force. He has no follow up.  I can tutor up an Ancestral Recall which finds me Yawgmoth’s Will. During my Will turn I can assemble Vault/Key. Turns out he plays Tyrant and Tendrils as wincondition.
M 4-0-2 G 8-2

Semifinals vs TrinketSalvagers
My 3rd round opponent gets a rematch.
Game 1: My opponent has a Time Vault and 2 Trinketmages. I can keep one off the table but the other brings the Key to Victory.  Turn two Oath wasn’t fast enough 
SB: -1 Island , -1 Forest, - 1 Krosan Reclamation, -1 Timetwister , - 1 Spell Pierce + 2 Duress, +1 Iona, +2 Show and Tell
Game 2:  I get extracted and lose the elephant. He has a Seal of Cleansing for my tinkered up Vault and a counter for my Yawgmoth’s Will. Mystical Tutor finds me an Ancestral and I reload on cards giving me Jace.  Jace brainstorms into 2 Oaths. The 2nd one sticks and I Oath up an Iona that gets bounced by a spellbomb and the Sphinx goes farming. My only out is hardcasting Iona but I get extracted for my last white source (Orchard). If my Lotus Petal had been a Mox Pearl I could have used my key to get the 3 white. Sideboarding out Krosan Reclamation and Timetwister turned out to be fatal.
M 4-1-2 G 8-4

I get a FBB Savannah for my efforts and turn it and 'some' euros into a Mox Pearl at the on site dealer.

Props:  
The organization
My opponents, especially my quarterfinals opponent and hies team who drove more than 4 hours from Paris to compete.

Slops:
Nothing  

[Tha Gunslinga]

In the last round, if you had countered the Key instead of the Trinket Mage, would that have worked?

[Phele]

Congratulations, I already saw your great results (and of the other Oath players) on the site of the Magic Club Mol. Very nice Top8. For all the others:

http://www.magicclubmol.be/files/results/20100411.pdf

I have a question:

Did you like the two creature configuration? I play a very similar list and am very happy with one Robot and just one Oath creature so far. You can find the list here:

http://www.morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=1254

The question wether Iona or Terastodon is more less a meta choice, if you expect more MUD or more Tez.

I just want to discuss this point as I think playing two creatures is a viable choice. Basically compared to the common Elefant Oath builds it is +1 Reclamation, +1 Twister and -1 Creature, -1 Thirst. A few notes on that:

-   The creature in the hand is much more useless than Reclamation. I don’t want to say that Reclamation is a powerful draw, for sure not, but at least you can use it. Thirst is the more flexible and overall better card than Twister. But twister is potentially more powerful, a bomb in the Dredge matchup and can be used quite clever in certain matchups.
-   What I really dislike about playing no Reclamation is that your third game plan (Tez-Vault-Key) gets less straightforward. Sure you can still play it, but after you oathed it happened to me quite often that I needed a card in the grave and couldn’t get my hand on it anymore. It’s not that you don’t win after you oathed and/or tinkered. You do it for sure the majority of the games. But it is just, and maybe this is just my personal playstyle, that the deck feels a bit incomplete.
-   But what I think is one of the biggest disadvantages of playing no Reclamation is that you can’t go down to just Iona anymore. I board out all creatures but Iona against Drains and Rituals all the time, making Oath a real bomb in this matchup. Without Reclamation this seems to be very risky, as there is a good possibility to get decked or to have no possible way to win anymore, if Iona gets removed.
-   A good argument for three creatures has been the fear of Sadistic Sacrament effects and being already invulernable against it with your maindeck configuration. But after adding Jace instead of Rebuild in my list this danger has almost disappeared, as I do play now two creatures and two Planeswalker.
-   With two Creatures it already is a bit random, what you oath first. But with three this randomness even increases. Oathing up Sphinx first and then Terastodon makes a difference against lets say TPS. With for example the configuration of Sphinx/Iona you are at least sure that you get a good creature against every matchup by the second Oath activation: Sphinx against Null Rods and Workshops, Iona against Drains and Rituals (and Null Rods for sure as well).

What do you and all the others think about this case? I appreciate the effort Rich Shay and Gunslinga have put in their Elefant Oath list. I just want to discuss, if this could be a way to improve the list.

[Eye_of_the_Beholder]

In the last round, if you had countered the Key instead of the Trinket Mage, would that have worked?

I can't remember if he had counter-backup or not. I believe he had, but I'm not sure.

I have a question:

Did you like the two creature configuration? I play a very similar list and am very happy with one Robot and just one Oath creature so far.

I play only two creatures because it decreases the chance of oathing the wrong creature while still having the ability to Tinker. Ideally there would be a noncreature artifact to Tinker for that singlehandedly wins the game.
The Terastodon vs Iona main was a metagame call.
The matchups where I use Show and Tell, mainly Fish, are a reason to add more creatures from the SB. Sad sac less so because of the 4 total win conditions.
I don't like drawing the Reclamation, but it in tandem with Timetwister indeed strengthens your Tezz/Key-Vault win post Oath. Timetwister is really powerful with the Drains and an extra tool vs Dredge.