The Worst Report You'll Ever Read (Top 8 @ BBGD XVII)

Magic the Gathering is a pretty awesome game. Starting from the humble beginnings of my mom's boss's son teaching me at a Christmas party in 1994, I never expected such thing to become such an all-encompassing part of my life. It used to be something I'd do during the summer, presenting my unsleeved U/B deck with 20 lands and 73 cards to my opponent to cut, having the wind hassle our attempts at playing. It wasn't until July 31st, 2004, though, a month after I met Mark Hornung, that would change my view of the game forever.

I had been doing my research, as I often do, and decided that despite the lack of funds and cards I would pilot a home-brew Atog Affinity deck at a GPT. What happened over the next 7 years could only be described as a whirlwind of gamerism, where I began to throw all my extra funds to get all the cards and to be able to play all the decks. I graduated from Block and Standard to more expensive formats, starting with the accumulation of dual lands in 05 and 06 (back when the expensive one was $20 Undergrounds), and in mid 2008 deciding to take my 5-Color deck to the next level by buying power.

With power came the urge to play serious Vintage. With my first Vintage event came a win and 40 dual lands. I was hooked. This was the format that I played, the one that I truly focused on. Even as I grew weary of the rat race that Magic brings with it, it never died with Vintage, until now.

I have recently decided to downgrade the game from a dream to a hobby. With that decision came the hardest one of all: What do I keep to play with? People who are close to me know that I've been almost bleeding cards recently, selling my collection bit by bit. My decision, after much deliberation, was that I was ok with playing Noble Fish for the rest of my Vintage career. After all, the deck's named after me, right?

The build I present now is a schtick. Yeah, there was testing, and yeah, there are card choices, but I don't optimize. I took my patented 22-card Fish mana base and decided that I was going to create as many 4-ofs from amongst the remaining 53 cards. Being the tempo fanatic I am, and with the printing of Gitaxian Probe and Mental Misstep, I jokingly decided to use all free-counters as well. This was not a rigorous process, and expected to 3-3 my events and get to see the people I wanted to see without committing time and money into designing and testing decks. With that in mind, here is the 75 card stack that I am 2 for 2 on Top 8s with:

MD:
4 Meddling Mage
4 Noble Hierach
4 Qasali Pridemage
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Trygon Predator

4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Null Rod
3 Mental Misstep

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Wasteland
3 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
1 Black Lotus
1 Flooded Strand
1 Forest
1 Island
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Strip Mine

SB:
4 Nature's Claim
4 Path to Exile
4 Ravenous Trap
3 Trygon Predator

My god, it's beautiful.

This is the part of the report that people proceed to list their matchups, specific unique plays, and all that jazz. Hell, there might even be sideboarding tips. If you've ever read my 17th place report from GP Chicago, you'd know that you'll be in absolute agony if I write that way. Hopefully I'm already setting quite the precident that I'm doing this thing my way, and hopefully it'll be far more memorable because of it.

I'd like to thank Matt Elias, now a proud father, for our match. There is a running joke that if I beat Matt in the swiss than I win the event. Sadly, this is the first event that such luck didn't happen, so I'm downgrading the rabbit's foot to only work at getting me the Top 8. I got the creature feature game 2 and Matt didn't go for the nut play game 3, or otherwise I'd been toast. I swapped Probes and Rods for Paths and Traps, which allowed Matt to Therapy away three Paths game 3, which was pretty cool.

Next was Joe Brown, who is definitely one of the more recent friends that I've made through the game, and one that's willing to step outside his comfort zone to hang out with me and my non-Magic friends after the tournament for some brewskis. The match itself was unremarkable, Probes for Paths after board, and we're still friends despite his deck being rather unresponsive.

Josh already wrote about our match, so that's a huge Yhatzee moment for my efforts to write about it. The Mike Noble curse is back, with me now being 7 and 1 lifetime against him since he always plays anti-blue blue and I always seem to be attacking with donks. Probes and Rods came out for Trygons and some mix of Claims and Paths. I honestly forget.

Paul is a good player. Duh. He unfortunately wrote down Mana Crypt twice instead of Mana Vault, and that's how I won this round. Matt Elias commented that I wasn't making this tournament easy for myself, and he's certainly right. First real tech move, I've decided to start boarding out 3 of my Rods against Jace Control, as well as the Probes, for Trygons and Paths. Sadly my only opponent that didn't Top 8.

I feel the need to apologize to Shawn again. Although he still managed to Top 8, I was so insecure about my tiebreakers that I worried about going 4-2 9th place like an idiot and leave with my tail between my legs. I won the match rather easily, and thankfully all is well in the world, but I accept that I'm still a bit of a paranoid jerk. Once again Probes come out, as they always do, and some other things might have come out and things came in. Who really cares about specifics.

Shawn Anthony and I drew. I then proceeded to make the misplay or savage play, depending on what kind of person you are, of going across the street to the Whitpain Tavern for beers and a shot of Liquid Heroin prior to the Top 8. I sided out $19 for a full bladder and BAL of about .07.

Dom won the quarters in two. I could lie and say my deck wasn't performing, but honestly I cared more about my slowly filling bladder and my dinner plans than trying to play right, and probably could of done better had I focused. If there's one thing that I'd like to be taken away from this entire essay that I seem to have written, though, is that I had a blast. I overperformed with a deck that I built as a joke, I won free entry for next time, and got to go out with friends and even introduce two different "worlds" of friends to each other at PJ's down the street. With success like that, who needs slops?