[Premium Article] So Many Insane Plays -- 1st Place in Vacaville

[Smmenen]

http://www.eternalcentral.com/?p=3506

Blurb:

Hot off his Team Serious Open victory, Stephen Menendian took his Burning Tendrils creation to another 1st place finish in Vacaville.  Read this 13,000 word, 28 page epic double tournament report, seven rounds of tournament Magic play-by-play game coverage and Stephen's characteristic detailed analysis. Follow his thought process in each situation as you learn how to become a better combo pilot by learning from the best in the format.  

I poured tons of time into this article to make this as reader-friendly, entertaining, and pedagogical as possible.  Let me know what you think.  

[cvarosky80]

This was a very well-written and entertaining article. Thanks for writing it, Steve.

[Smmenen]

/Mission Accomplished.  Thank you

[Purple Hat]

Steve, I'm a bit frustrated to spend money on an article only to see major editing errors that make parts of it completely nonsensical.  You've got good insights but there's an enitre section in one of your matches where you discuss the contents of a duress hand, but the picture shown was actually your opening hand and there is no listing of the cards in your opponent's hand.

[Smmenen]

That is extremely frustrating!  It's especially frustrating for me because I put such tremendous care into the development of this particular article, which I really wanted to make a statement with by writing an awesome pair of tournament reports. 

When these things happen please let us know ASAP, and we will get it fixed and send you corrected versions of the article! Apologies!

I've alerted Jaco, the editor, to your post.  We will get this fixed!

EDIT: I scanned the PDF, but couldn't find the error.  Which match/game was this?  Maybe Jaco can spot it.  

[JACO]

It's on page 6, against Bant Fish game 3. The hand when you cast Duress and are supposed to see:
Meddling Mage
Strip Mine
Misty Rainforest
Tropical Island
Noble Hierarch
Aven Mindcenstor
Mox Emerald

Adding opening hand images is the final thing we do before distribution, and I inserted the Long opening hand image over the top of the Bant player's hand instead (accidentally, obviously). I have sent an updated copy to all customers just now. Thank you for the heads up!

[Purple Hat]

Thanks for fixing it guys.  got the update last night.

[Smmenen]

That was a particularly important scenario, which I spent many pages analyzing.   

I'm kinda surprised no one pointed that out before now, but I'm glad we were able to fix that. 

[evouga]

A nice read. Thanks, Steve, for continuing to put the time into writing quality Vintage articles.

Although a win is a win, and I certainly don't want to belittle your accomplishment, I do wish that the second tournament had been fought out, instead of prize-split.

[Smmenen]

It's a passion   I love the format, and enjoy playing Burning Tendrils more than anything in the format (even Gush decks!).   I find it endlessly entertaining, always refreshing and new, and very skill intensive.  

I recently put together my old Doomsday Gush deck, which I played in the Waterbury and won a Meandeck Open with last March, but found it so boring and repetitive compared to Burning Tendrils.  I seem to recall some video game connoisseurs evaluating games according to replay value: well Burning Tendrils has extremely high replay value.  I never get tired of playing it, in testing or in tournaments.  It offers so much game play variety on account of the diverse strategic options and huge number of singletons, at the same time that its so broken and uses so many historically significant and interesting Type I/Vintage cards.   It's extremely addictive.  

So while it  takes a good deal of effort to pour the kind of time and energy into pieces like this, motivation to do so is not lacking.

I think Jaco is going to combine all four of my Burning Tendrils articles (my Primer, MUD matchup, and both tournament reports) into some kind of combo package option for folks who are interested in all 4 at a discount.