GP Seattle Side-Events

Greetings,

I had the good fortune to attend the recent Grand Prix in Seattle. While Legacy was on everyone's mind, I travelled out just for the Vintage.
With three side events scattered over the three days, I figured it would be a blast, and I was not disappointed.

I tend towards the workshop pillar, and it was my intent to possibly tool around with a different workshop archetype each day. My best laid plans were thwarted by the immense amount of cool things to do at the GP and my reluctance to stop a good thing.

Here is pretty much the list I ran all three days:

Artifact (28)
2x Batterskull
1x Black Lotus
1x Chalice of the Void
2x Crucible of Worlds
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Null Rod
3x Smokestack
1x Sol Ring
4x Sphere of Resistance
3x Tangle Wire
4x Thorn of Amethyst
1x Trinisphere

Land (22)
4x Ancient Tomb
4x Mishra's Factory
4x Mishra's Workshop
4x Mutavault
1x Strip Mine
1x Tolarian Academy
4x Wasteland

Creature (10)
4x Lodestone Golem
2x Phyrexian Metamorph
4x Phyrexian Revoker

Sideboard (15)
1x Crucible of Worlds
2x Dismember
2x Ghost Quarter
4x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Null Rod
2x Orbs of Warding
2x Ratchet Bomb

The sideboard was more than a little hasty. The rationale behind going terra nova was that I wanted to play smokestack. The rest sort of fell into place. I know some stax decks eschew lotus, but I really like it when things break on turn one. It is part of the fun of the format.
Pardon as my notes are woefullly incomplete for a full write-up.

Friday
With this being a Legacy GP, we had 47 players for sanctioned Vintage on friday night. This was a "Battle" side event, so 5 rounds, with prizing based on record at the end of five rounds. These events paid prize tickets which were redeemed on the prize wall. The eternal singles were fairly marked up, but if nothing else 10 tickets nabbed you a pack of legal sets in standard.

Round One was against a friendly Seattle Native. While my ability to record games is terrible, I remember a lively conversation with him about a phone app he programmed for the Netrunner ccg as a rules reference resource. This is why I love Vintage; the opportunity to meet fascinating people. i win the die roll and wonder what I'm up against.

Game One I don't really see much of my opponents deck, because I open with enough moxen and a shop to run out trinisphere/sphere on turn one, then a lodestone on turn two and very quickly beat him to death.

The next game he reveals it is a ____ city vault variant, and turn two has him demonstrate that time vault and voltaic key are still a thing.

For game three, I brought the null rods in, and drop a phyrexian revoker and a null rod. He plays the time vault and key on his first turn anyway, waiting for a way to deal with the answers I dropped on the table. He doesn't find a suitable solution before man lands and robots bash face.

Round Two I unfortunately remember very little, save that it was control slaver and boarding in null rods still proved to be an elegant solution to vault/key that my opponents laid on the table.

Round three was against Seattle local Michael Kiesel, who ran Martello to a 19th place finish at Vintage champs. We would spend much of our between game and after game discussing the state of workshop decks, as I have a soft spot for Martello decks. He was on a Jeskai Pyromancer/Delver list.

Game one I jumped out to an early lead despite losing the die roll, deploying multiple lock pieces and then sending robots, germtokens with large equipment, and man-lands in.

Game two was extra close, both of us playing off the top of our decks and within one turn of killing each other. He got there with a late delver flip. I enjoyed this game thoroughly.

Game three I kept a hand a little light on action, dropping a turn one Orbs of Warding that ate a Force of Will and a turn two Batterskull that was blown up. Mike played tight and just answered the tax effects until I drew into more mana sources and he deployed threats that overwhelmed me.

Round four I unfortunately have sparse notes on. It turns out my opponent was on storm, which I learned after he bounced my lodestone and sphere on the end of my turn three and went for it on his next turn. He dug deep and got the storm count to twelve, but never found a finisher and passed the turn. When he memory jarred I 'll admit I got a touch concerned. He was down to two cards and robots and spheres came back down, sealing game one.

Game two saw the appearance of a restricted Chalice of the void in my opener. So I did what any sane shop pilot would do, dropped mana makers, put chalice on one, and deployed a sphere effect. After I dropped a lodestone on my next turn my opponent packed it up.

Round Five was against Monowhite Hatebears. I remember little of these games. It was past ten in the evening and I was looking to wrap things up quickly. All I remember from this was that stony silence is not all that scary against the workshop deck maindecking null rod.

And that saw the end of day one. It was late in the eve, but a 4-1 record awarded 360 tickets. Since my birthday is in the near future, I snagged a box of Khans of Tarkir for drafting with friends. I went back to the hotel, and dreamed pleasant vintage related thoughts.

I'll edit in the second and third day as I finish them!

Saturday
Also known as rise of the robots.

Sunday
36 people for some sanctioned vintage action? Yes, please.