*2nd* at Breda (40 player) with Dredge winning a Drain

21st of march 2011, Vintage Breda, the Netherlands
Approximately 40 people showed up and I took 2nd with a Fatestitcher build I made some minor tweaks on. Credit where credit is due, meadbert deserves it for his excellent work on this archetype.

4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Serum Powder

4 Undiscovered Paradise
4 Cephalid Coliseum
1 Black Lotus

2 Dakmor Salvage
4 Golgari Grave Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
2 Golgari Thug
1 Darkblast

4 Bloodghast
4 Fatestitcher
4 Narcomoeba
2 Ichorid

4 Leyline of the Void
4 Bridge from Below
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Dread Return
1 Flame-kin Zealot
1 Terastodon

Sideboard
4 Force of Will
4 Chain of Vapor
3 Echoing Truth
2 Ichorid
1 Darkblast
1 Petrified Field

I am a player that likes to prepare well for the tournaments I attend and this usually pays out nicely. So I did and spent a lot of time theorizing and playtesting various decks. The metagame at last Breda tournament was dominated by Shops, so I figured I had to play a deck that had a good chance against Shops. My first thoughts went out to playing a mono red shop deck, geared to have an edge in the mirror, but I couldn’t quite find a way to actually beat the mirror and still have a good shot against the rest of the field. Also, I figured a lot more people would gear up to beat Shop. I then tried various dredge builds, including one that played Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors to play Null Rod to stop Relic, Tormod’s Crypt and Nihil Spellbomb, but this obviously didn’t work out and Duncan slaughtered me in testing with Rav Trap, Timetwister and Pithing Needle. I turned back to a Sharuum build I played in a previous tournament that has Cephalid Coliseum to get around Needle and FoW to counter Rav Trap. It occurred to me that Cephalid Coliseum is also an excellent way to prevent losing to Wasteland. The limitation of Coliseum is ofcourse that it only taps for blue mana, so I was forced to replace Nature’s Claim with Echoing Truth.

Fatestitcher were detrimental to my succes, they speed you up a turn and enable you to shred the opponents hand or just kill him before he can TV/Key, Tendrills or Painter/Grindstone you. In Vintage you often can not give your opponent 3 undisrupted turns so you might lose game 1, if you lose game 1 then you are up for a rough, rough fight (the no Stitcher build kills on turn 3, so you give your opponent 3 turns when on the draw).

When reviewing the T8 lists of Breda, the 5 Shop decks in the Top 8 all opted for Tormod’s Crypt, Needle and Relic of Progenitus. The all in approach doesn’t work against these decks and as others have mentioned Ichorid helps in beating them. Force of Will is good here, as they will often be forced to mulligan down to a hand with GY hate and lands with very little relevant spells, so FoW can slow them down enough that you can play the slower make zombie tokens game.

Leyline of the Void was maindecked to help win the mirror. I noticed that with ~40 palyers it’s quite easy to scout the entire field and people will most likely know what I play and I will most likely know what my opponent is playing. Dredge has 0 answers to Leyline of the Void game 1 except for a Leyline of it’s own, so I figured including Leyline would ensure I would not receive an autoloss against Ichorid game 1.

The day of the tournament:
Duncan Keijzer and his brother Kevin Keijzer picked David Martinez and myself, Guus de Waard up to make the trek to Breda. On the ride there we obviously discussed Magic, I mean, what do you expect when you pit 4 Magic players together and make them drive to a Magic tournament.. Arriving there I got to greet the 2 of the most awesome Vintage players in the Netherlands, possibly the entire world, Frank van Rijn and Arjan Bos (can’t help myself, just have to namedrop these guys).

Match 1 against a very nervous Belgian playing Reanimator/Show and Tell/Oath created by SCG writer and teammate Matt Elias.
Game 1: I open a strong 7 with Bazaar and Leyline. I later Therapy him to see Vamp, Reanimate, Entomb and some other cards. He gets another turn, but could not do much due to Leyline.

Game 2: The first surprised face of the day as I FoW his Nihil Spellbomb. He Mystical Tutors for Show and Tell on his upkeep and then passes the turn. A costly misplay as I Therapy it out of his hand, although I don’t think it would have mattered as I had another FoW ready. I win with graveyard shenanigans and finish with 0 cards in my library while a Terastodon brings his 3/3 buddies along and I kill him.

Marius (marske) dropped by in between rounds and we had the chance to catch up a little bit. I hope you get the chance to compete during the next Vintage tournament again!

Match 2 against Paul de Rijk with Espresso created by teammate Nick Detwiler. Paul has a stunning deck, with beautiful near mint Beta power.
Game 1: He starts with a Karn, and a few Moxen, so I have to be deliberate with my Bridges. The Karn just proves to be a minor nuisance and I play around it.
Game 2: He mulligans and Serum Powders a bit. He opens with Needle on Bazaar go. I’m not sure how I won, I could have either dealt with the Needle with Chain or FoW or I could have played around it by slow dredging.

Match 3 against Peter Reynders (punki) with Painter. Peter is a very polite gentleman, everytime I have to play him I am pleased because I know the games will be fun.
Game 1: I mull to 1 and get no Bazaar; he kills me on turn 2.
Game 2: He plays Leyline, I play Bazaar. He plays Trinket Mage  Pithing Needle and Yixlid Jailer and beats me to death.
This match probably illustrates why a lot of people probably don’t like to play dredge, sometimes there is just nothing you can do. On the flipside, I think this is basically true for Vintage as a format. I accept it, don’t complain and wish him the best of luck.

Match 4 against Jeroen Schaffhausen (hope I spelled it correctly)
Game 1: I powder 3 hands away and those include 3 Bridge from Below. I actually have to win in a calculated fashion and finish the game with a huge Grave Troll and a few Zombies with exactly 0 cards in my library.
Game 2: I think he played a Needle, but I had means to deal with it, not really sure what happened here. I do know that I won.

Match 5 against Arjan Bos, teammate on R&D, with TPS. Arjan organizes the Breda tournaments, so props to him.
Game 1: I win the die roll and would have definitely lost the game if Arjan could begin. I lay Bazaar, he plays Ponder and Mox Emerald. I have 2 chances to Therapy him. I name FoW first, while I should have named Dark Ritual, as I knew he was TPS. He has Vamp, Demonic, Ritual, land, Gifts, Repeal and Preordain. With my next Therapy I name Demonic and have to pass. Arjan draws, plays land, Ritual, Gifts for Timetwister, Ritual, Mox Saphirre, Black Lotus. I hand him the Twister and the Ritual and he scoops them up as he could not cast the Twister. Had I given him 2 sources of mana, he would have been able to Vamp for Will, Repeal his Mox and go crazy. Had I given him Twister + Saph or Lotus, he would have been able to Timetwister. I just had to pray he didn’t rip a Lotus Petal from the top to Twister me.
Game 2: was very uneventful as Arjan had to mull to 4 and I had a FoW for his Pithing Needle and easily won from there.

Match 6 against Goswin Zeeman
Goswin has 13 points while I have 12. 13 and up get in the next round. Goswin could forced me to play this out as he was lock for T8 anyway but tells me he will ID to me anyway because he does not have a grudge against me (we have a word for this in Dutch; gunnen, but I can’t figure out how that translates to English..). Anyway, thank you for this Goswin, I will help you out next time if I can!

Top 8:
Quarterfinals against Belgian pro player Christophe Gregoir with Tez
Game 1: Dredge does what dredge does.
Game 2: He kills me on turn 2 with TV/Key, I ask him to show me his win condition and get to peek at approximately half his cards and I do not spot a single hate card. I ask him if I can see his deck, he obviously refuses but it was worth the try.
Game 3: I put him on having no hate for me and crush him the way only dredge can crush people.

Semifinals against Goswin Zeeman with Tez.
In between rounds I had some good laughs with Duncan and Goswin so I was pleased to play him.
Game 1: I find a Bazaar and win.
Game 2: He has to mulligan 1 or 2 times and leads off with Leyline of the Void. I play Black Lotus, he Spell Pierces it, I play Bazaar. Next turn I play Cephalid Coliseum, he doesn’t do much and I EOT Chain his Leyline and activate Bazaar. I put stuff in my graveyard and win. After the match he wonders if he should have Pierced the Lotus or not, I played around Spell Pierce either way so it didn’t really matter I guess.

Finals against MUD
Game 1: I have a sick hand with dual Bazaar, his Thorn and Wasteland do not matter. Highlight of this game was a Therapy, while he had 2 cards in hand and I figured the only thing that he would not have played and that would have mattered would be Tangle Wire, he shows me Tangle Wire and Workshop.
Game 2: He leads off with Needle, Thorn or it could be Lodestone not sure. I draw, do not find a dredger to discard. This continues for a few turns, while he lays Spheres and pressure until he finally kills me.
Game 3: I am on the play and he Serum Powders a hand with Leyline, Lotus, Thorn, and 4 non manasource irrelevant cards. I rejoice and tell him there are now only 3 Leylines left, he draws 7 new cards, decides to mulligan, draws 6 cards and keeps. He looks unfazed, I ask him if I can begin, he puts 2 Leyline of the Void into play. I have Chain of Vapor, Bazaar, dredger in hand and a couple of lands to cast the Chain and was on the play, so I would have basically beaten anything but double Leyline. To add insult to injury he also played Pithing Needle. I tried to put up a fight with hardcasted Bloodghasts, but he ripped Precursor Golem from the top.

I am not used to the behaviour he displayed. For example he shouted: stop whining! after I expressed my disappointment when he had double Leyline in game 3. He also continuously told me: How many cards!! I am a bit of a joker during Magic tournaments and like to trash talk, so perhaps this annoyed him. After the match he told me I played well and he apologized for his behaviour. I have to admit that he played very well and rightly acknowledged the strength of dredge during testing and therefore took the right decisions with his mulligans.

Fortunately I was able to shake off my bad beat and leave in good spirit. Duncan drops me off at my girlfriends place and I grab my bike to get some much needed food at the Burger King and then watch the TSL (Starcraft II tournament) to finish this awesome day.

- Guus de Waard of Team R&D