Cardslinger Chronicles: Burning on 4/20

          The Cardslinger Chronicles: Burning on 4/20

   It was time for something new, I told myself. You drive to enough of these alone, you learn how to be your own company. Your own sounding board.
   “Why something new? Why not tweak a good thing?”
   Tweak. For the record, I despise that word. Tweak. A little nudge, a little fidget, and presto, problem solved. Tweak. Useless word. I give the voice in my head a disapproving glare.
   “You can't...adjust...the fundamentals. Small choices yes, but not basic operation. Manstill is excellent, sure - in a good field. High tier field, anyway. It isn't really powerful enough to take on the outside gimmicks.”
   I was talking about my last few rounds in Lancaster, a terrible 1-2 drop. The first time I'd failed to make Top 8 at a Vintage tournament in 2013. I adjusted some choices the night before, like always. Recounted my list, like always. I'd probably do well and have to start fighting in the quarters, like always.
   Maybe not always.
   I start the tournament with a grip full of countermagic starting from turn zero if the bad guy tried anything fishy. Well, as it turned out, he was neck deep in fishy.
   “Cavern naming Merfolk, Cursecatcher. Go.”
   I'm dead, just like that. Maybe not every game, but if I played Merfolk "X" times, I might win five or ten percent of the games he doesn't mulligan to oblivion. It was here, on turn 1, game 1, round 1, I realized there was a terrible flaw in my weapon of choice – it wasn't powerful. It has consistency in spades, and a full house worth of control – but there's no power to it, despite Elspeth and Geist pulling more offensive weight than traditional Landstill lists were capable of. Every time it took me to a Top 8 or Top 4, I beat all standard, “inside the box” decks. Thing's you'd expect. Things you could prepare for, and control. Things not diametrically opposed to your entire gameplan, but that fight it head on. Robots, Big Blue, Storm, Tempo – the faces of the format. These I had game against.
   Dredge, though? Cavern Merfolk? Jon Jones' Junk Shamans? No way.
   Of course, I arrived at a bit different choice than some other players might, after that.
   If nobody else wants to play real decks, then the hell with it. Let's play something crazy, Voice in My Head.
   “That's probably the single most sensible thing you've said all day.”

For reference, my last Manstill list and what I was coming from:

“GoST in the Shell”
UW Manstill

4 Geist of Saint Traft
3 Snapcaster Mage

4 Force of Will
4 Standstill
4 Mana Drain
3 Mental Misstep
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Flusterstorm
1 Shattering Blow
1 Spell Pierce
1 Steel Sabotage
1 Time Walk

1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring

4 Flooded Strand
4 Mishra’s Factory
4 Tundra
4 Wasteland
3 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Plains
1 Strip Mine

It was a solid list, and I wouldn't hesitate to take it somewhere I expected the big guns to be brought out. It dismantles big guns very, very well. My decision was my decision, though, and if I had to stand by it no matter what kind of trickery I pulled. You can't make progress staying in the same place, after all. The important thing is just to make your way to new places with intelligence, dedication, and extensi-

   Flash forward to Top Deck Games Vintage 2k on 4/20, and I'm strapped in with a deck I picked almost at random, with maybe an hour or so testing under my belt. I hadn't cast over half of my list in years, at least, and honestly had no idea how it would stack up in practice against a room that was at least supposed to be exactly the field something like Manstill would thrive in. I'd that I honestly didn't believe the archetype I was running was that good, or even as good as the last storm deck I ran for awhile (Ad Nauseum Tendrils). So why was I playing this pile? Two reasons:

1) It was fun. Half of these cards are ridiculous. The game states and board states it could generate were ridiculous. Sometimes it would just fold in on itself, but when it didn't? I'm pretending to be Spiderman crawling along the walls of the Gravitron ride again. That fun.
2) It was powerful. Exactly what I wanted. It was silly, and over the top, and something like sixty percent was copy pasted directly from the Restricted List. It was everything Manstill wasn't. It didn't want to control anything, or edge into long term advantages – it wanted to jump up on the table screaming “King Kong ain't got NOTHIN. ON. ME.” and throw a chair at that guy in the back. Yes, you, guy in the back. You know what you did.

   If you were wondering, this is what I came to and brought to battle:

Burning Oath

2 Griselbrand

4 Burning Wish
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
4 Oath of Druids
2 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Memory Jar
1 Necropotence
1 Ponder
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Thoughtseize
1 Timetwister
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Windfall
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain

2 Chrome Mox
1 Black Lotus
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Opal
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring

4 City of Brass
4 Forbidden Orchard
2 Gemstone Mine
1 Tolarian Academy

SB:
3 Ancient Tomb
3 Nature's Claim
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Mind's Desire
1 Pyroclasm
1 Show and Tell
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Yawgmoth's Will

   I made a few changes to accommodate myself (adding Tendrils to the main, moving Mind's Desire to the board), and a few to accommodate availability (Cabal Therapy really should just be a Thoughtseize, or at least an Overmaster)., but generally a Burning Long/Oath is a Burning Long/Oath. After playing with it, I really want a Demonic Consultation in the main, and am considering moving Desire back in as well. Cuts are to be determined, though I have a feeling one Draw Seven can be boarded safely after wishing I had one there several times throughout the day.
   What follows is what I can garner from my indecipherable gibberish notes, with a Quick and Dirty at the end.

The Round by Round

Round 1 – Lance Ballaster on UW Bomberstill
   I approve of Bomberstill in general, and was incredibly excited to finally play against it once I realized what was going on. I steal game one quickly on the back of Burning Wish for Show and Tell, Show and Tell (resolves) in a Bargain, and use Bargain to draw cards. Only things to note in this game is that I actually had to dig very far in to find the kill. My notes see my life total drop from sixteen to one in rapid succession. I am feeling alright about my choice now, as I'd actually forgotten how savage some of these spells can be, but Lance rallies after that and draws “the good half” of his deck in the next two games (i.e. Standstill, Force of Will, Mana Drain, Mental Misstep), and shuts me out with Wastelands both games.

   Lesson 1: Wasteland does a lot more damage to Burning Long than you'd think as long as you can buy yourself a turn or two. Force of Will, blue card, Wasteland are my three cards against Long from the other side of the table, if I'm asking. Null Rod, Mental Misstep, and Mana Drain might be my next three.

   As I sit defeated handily between rounds, I wonder if this might have been a mistake. I then realize manly men don't make mistakes, they make carpets out of grizzly bears with their bear hands. No, not their bare hands. Their bear hands. The ones they got from other bears. I resolve to trounce the next son of a...

Round 2 – Will Magrann on Robots
   You're kidding. Alright, well, I'm on Rituals versus Shops, so I guess I have to win the die roll.

X2xWillMagrannx2x rolls an 11 out of 12.
Worldslayer rolls a 5 out of 12.

   “So Will, I think I'm probably just dead.”
   “You could always scoop.”
   “....Nah. You could always just mulligan to oblivion.”
   Unfortunately he does not mulligan to oblivion. I do mulligan, though also not to oblivion. My first note of the game is “[expletive deleted]”.
   His next thought might have been the same, as his “Wasteland, Pass” is met by “Mox off the top, a bunch of other Moxes, Tolarian Academy, all of the fast mana, Lion's Eye Diamond, and the last card in my hand, which was big Griseldaddy himself. I activate Draw Seven Punch twices, and Will finds out how many drills it takes to kill a Vintage player*. I'm not sure how many it takes, but I know how many I use, which is mathmatically “all of them forever”.
   His game two is a strong Land, Sphere of Resistance, go. Against a normal storm deck with a normal hand, this is a good start.
   Against this pile of nonsense, it's a minor speedbump to Orchard, Mox, Lotus, Oath of Druids.
   I mill into the Laboratory Maniac I swapped in for Griselbrand, and without a Triskelion or Duplicant in hand Will dies before he's ever really in it.
   “Well, I guess I'm just dead.”
   “...apparently?”

Round 3 – Shawn Tappen on UW Bomberman
   Azorius is the new Grixis in Vintage, anymore. I begin with a mulligan to five, but managed to Memory Jar into almost enough gas (read: a bunch of absurd things), and leave him with two life remaining.

   Lesson 2: This deck can apparently afford to mulligan more than some others simply on the back of how gamebreaking many of its spells are, and by the sheer amount of ones that say “Draw a new hand already”.

   I cast Vampiric Tutor during my Jar turn for Timetwister, Do The Twist™ turn 2, and while I can't find a Tendrils to end it he packs it up to Oath and Time Walk.
   Game two is less lopsided, as my gameplan of Orchard, Duress, Untap, Oath is fine...except one Griselbrand is already in my hand, and the other is down passed my Tendrils of Agony and all four Burning Wishes. For those of you not keeping tracking at home, that means we're in Man Mode now. I bash with my Demon like the rugged Oath Decks of the Before Time as he finds Aether spellbomb to buy himself a turn. Unfortunately, Big G does not stay locked up for long, is summoned the good old fashioned way, and Shawn's life total gets eaten in chunks of seven.

   Lesson 3: This deck can hardcast its Big Scary Monster Man an awful lot of the time. I think Griselbrand hit play from actually being summoned almost as many times as being Oathed into play.

Round 4 – Ryan Glackin playing BUG Fish
   Normally, this is a matchup I'd say favors the BUG Fish player – depending on their list and which half of their deck they draw. A bunch of cheap disruption and cheap pressure from all sorts of crazy angles generally makes life as a Tendrils player miserable. Fortunately for me, BUG Fish also expects its opponents to be sensible. Voice in My Head tells me "sensible" is exactly what everything about this day isn't. My memory of the exact way game one pans out is hazy, but for anyone curious my notes read:

“Turn 1 - Crazy **** happens
Stuff → Wish → Will
Tinker → Jar
Wheel
Bargain”

If I remember correctly, it involved a ton of fast mana, Willing it back again, Tinkering a Jar, Wheel of Fortune (with Jar in play), Jarring, then casting Bargain and going from there. I might be making that up, though.

   Lesson 4: This deck is silly.

Game two reads simply, “He counters Twister. I cry”. I'm imagining my first bomb met a spell pierce and I couldn't get in the door after that while I died to something or other.

   Lesson 5: The deck is absolutely a zero or a ten.

Game three involves Duressing a Null Rod, getting Duressed back, resolving a Griselbrand because why not, and bashing him to death. Yes bashing. By the time Grizzlebees came around my life total was nearly depleted (around ten), making Vampiric Tutor for Tendrils, Draw Seven Ultimate Attack a lethal line of play thanks to his Deathrite Shaman and a Mox Jet I nearly missed. One turn and +7 life later, I took several minutes minutes of considering whether or not to just “go for it” and hope one of four Burning Wishes is in the top seven of twenty one remaining cards, but I chose to take the safe route because if I whiffed I died despite having Griselbrand against BUG Fish. My notes say “Gdaddy beatdown, because I can, and thinking is hard”. I looked after the game, and turns out he was just dead the turn I attacked. Burning Wish was in the top seven cards twice, which means I could have just gone for it.

   Lesson 6: Just go for it. This deck pretty much always wants to just go for it.

Round 5 – Vincent Pau
   I'm on the pair down, and have to play it out for the last round to make Top 8. Vincent has brought the third Bomberman deck against me today, though his was an Esper variant. Game one, sending my Griselbrand farming only delays the inevitable, as Burning Wish for Will picks up the slack. Game two is much closer. He stops my initial pushes (double Burning Wish we both knew was finding a discard spell) and makes a board of Bob, Clique (taking my best action), and an Orchard token. He swings once and I mark six on my life pad, and feel myself start to check out.
   “Where the hell do you think you're going? Get back in here, dummy. I'm not playing for you.”
   I resolve to have a talk with the voice in my head about saving energy after the game, but manage to pull in enough to see his reaction to “six”.
   I draw, I pass. My only hope is to hardcast Griselbrand next turn.
   “Attack.”
   “For...?”
   Look right at him. Don't look at the Orchard token. Don't even look at the board. Just look at him.
   “Five.” He turns Bob and Clique sideways, bringing me from seven to two life.
   Untap. Mana source. Hardcast Griselbrand to stabilize and go on to win the game...one black coming from a City of Brass.




Top 8 – Round 1 – Joshua Potucek on Empty Gush
   Josh and I, the faces of UR Landstill and UW Manstill, in the finals of a Top 8...and neither of us on anything resembling a Landstill variant.
   Awkward.
   We trade the first two games, and awkwardly begin game 3. He eventually storms out to make himself twelve total goblin tokens, and I figure it's now or never. I go deep in the tank, and eventually Hurkyll's Recall his Nihil Spellbomb, forcing him to pop it and clear the way for a Will path to victory, and fire off a Draw Seven. I storm, and spell, and cast things, and eventually Tendrils – for fourteen, dropping him to four. I can't remount an offense in time, and am unfortunately knocked out of the Top 8 by little green men.

Quick and Dirty
Round 1: 1-2 vs. UW Bomberstill
Round 2: 2-0 vs. Stax
Round 3: 2-0 vs. UW Bomberman
Round 4: 2-1 vs. BUG Fish
Round 5: 2-0 vs. UW Bomberman
Top 8 Quarters: 1-2 Vs. Empty Gush

   Looking back, hindsight and Voice in My Head (as well as Josh and the onlooker to our game) tell me Hurkyll's Recalling myself to bounce my three Moxes in play would have made the tendrils lethal. It's a good argument, and probably correct...but would I say the same if I had drawn a Will-based seven new cards? Would I be kicking myself for not making him pop the Spellbomb before Wheeling away Hurkyll's Recall? It's hard to know for sure, and probably the single most frustrating thing about this pile of ridiculously awesome things – so much of it is just doing whatever you can in a hand, firing off a draw seven, and praying to whatever intergalatic spaghetti monster you happen to pray to that your new seven is good enough to kill them so hard they die to death. There are certain points you just can't see past with this list, and no amount of calculating can ever really convince you. It's an all or nothing proposition, through and through.
   It's also a gigantic blast to play, pain in the ***, the single cruelest thing that's been done to my brain lately, and one of the most incredibly absurd seventy-somethings I've slung in awhile. You can...adjust....things here or there, but you're never really going to make this more stable, or more consistent. Stability and consistency just isn't what this deck does, or what it was built for. It isn't the deck's fundamental nature. Schitzophrenia is.
   All of that said, I can't in good conscience recommend anyone pick this deck up. I can't really recommend they don't, either. Just know that when you sleeve a Burning Long list up, you need to be ready to spin the wheel. You need to be ready to go hard, and go fast. You need to be ready for silly things. You need to be ready for zeros and tens, and be ready to go again next round no matter which one you land on.
   Above all, though, you need to be ready to just go for it.

Seth Zulinski
Worldslayer on themanadrain.com