OldLong and Eggs

So this is going to a big Magical weekend. I love it when that happens.

On Saturday, Eric Butler is coming down from Sandusky to play in the Two-Headed Giant States tournament. I’d like to say he’s going to be the Arthur to my The Tick, but more than likely, I’m going to be his sidekick. This is just a theory, but even though I’ve played in three 2HG tournaments, he probably has more experience in the limited arena in general.

It should be fun, though. Two-Headed Giant is one of my favorite formats. Actually, any semi-casual format is way more fun than trying to be serious about this game. Friendly is better.

Anyway, after a full day of two-headed action, there’s a Legacy tournament in Columbus at The Soldiery for a $200 prize. Sounds good to me! It’s either that or drive three hours to Michigan for another Mox.

I just really wanted to play Magic some more.

Meandeck Legacy
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Registration at 12:30, Round 1 at 1 p.m.

The Soldiery
4256 N. High St.
Columbus, Ohio 43214

Prizes will be based upon attendance, but first is guaranteed $200!

Entry is $15 and it’s sanctioned, so bring your DCI card and no proxies.

Yeah, I haven’t decided what I’m playing there either. It will either be cruddy homemade Gro or cruddy Belcher with EtW. I’m not really sure either one can win more than a handful of games, but I’m viewing this as an interesting experience and a chance to go to Thurman’s afterward, and that’s good enough for me.

Regardless, I’ll have two tournament reports coming up within the next week or so, no doubt.

In the meantime, going back to my casual bent, I have another modern Vintage list as it might have looked in 1995: GrimLong.

Oh yeah.

No Duress, no Force, no Xantid, no Memory Jar or Tinker. No Yawg Will! Heck, there’s not even a Tendrils. What we do have, though, is Drain Life and a bunch of ways to make black mana.

Okay, two ways to make black mana.

4x Drain Life

Seems like a reasonable thing, starting with the win condition. Knowing this is going to be our primary focus, the rest of the deck becomes pretty easy:

4x Mana Flare
4x Dark Ritual
4x Sacrifice
4x Birds of Paradise
5x Moxen
1x Black Lotus
4x Bayou
4x Badlands
4x Underground Sea
4x City of Brass
4x Swamp

Primarily, OldLong focuses on making mana. If it makes 22 mana (21 of it black) in one turn, with a Drain Life in hand, it wins the game. Usually. Either that or it gets countered.

You may be asking about the use of Sacrifice since all I have to Sacrifice are Birds. Well, no, I have creatures to protect me too, since the metagame on Spells of the Ancients consists mostly of creature decks.

4x Royal Assassin
4x Wall of Bone

Yeah. Both of these creatures serve to keep me alive until I draw or tutor for Drain Life, and both of them will lay their lives on the line to act like Dark Ritual in a pinch. Royal Assassin in particular can hold off throngs of attackers singlehandedly and is amazing with recurring Time Walks.

Wait, you didn’t know about Time Walk. Of course I included the usual brokenness:

1x Time Walk
1x Time Twister
1x Wheel of Fortune
1x Regrowth
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Fork

With a good hand, this goes off on turn four or five, without backup, of course. And if my opponent happens to be playing Howling Mine, all the better. Actually, it’s not a bad deck for the environment (i.e. Spells of the Ancients and their mechanical pilots). Like, if Wall of Bone could be Duress it would be pretty successful, I think.

Mana Flare is always a risky play, but it does have its benefits outside of being able to multiply the effectiveness of your lands. Namely, your opponents will take mana burn. They have to. I mean, it would be ludicrous to have the computer opponent sitting there waiting until it had an even total converted mana cost to throw out there in one turn. It would miss out on so many good opportunities to beatdown. So in the meantime, they reduce your overall need for mana.

The Time Walk tutor chain (Demonic Tutor, Time Walk, Fork, Regrowth, Timetwister) is still amazing, especially when you can accelerate into all of them and take many turns in a row. The only problem is that it necessitates having at least one of Demonic Tutor or Time Walk in hand and hopefully two of the other parts as well. Also, it misses not having a bunch of Howling Mines to use as well. They could probably go in place of Wall of Bone if you wanted.

Anyway, it’s a fun deck. It loses to Winter Orb, Counterspell, and embarrassingly, CoP: Black.

It’s similar to the deck I hoped to play at the Legacy tournament this weekend, actually: Easter Tendrils. Okay, the similarities pretty much end at the “I need black mana to make you lose life while I gain it” part, but I’ll show you what I came up with anyway.

4x Lotus Petal
4x Simian Spirit Guide
4x Dark Ritual
2x Cabal Ritual
2x Underground Sea
2x Polluted Delta
2x City of Traitors
1x Ancient Tomb

3x Tendrils of Agony
4x Duress

4x Helm of Awakening
4x Chromatic Sphere
4x Chromatic Star
4x Darkwater Egg
4x Shadowblood Egg
4x Skycloud Egg

4x Mystical Tutor
4x Draw Spell

Now, I played Easter Tendrils for a long time both in an unpowered format and with five proxies. I even took it with me to Bowling Green in the fall of last year, so I have some experience with the deck. The skeleton—everything but the Draw Spell slot—is pretty much correct. I cheated the number of eggs and mana producers up and made room for Duress, which I felt I needed since decks play Force of Will now.

Anyway, the big problem was that there’s not a really good draw spell in Legacy. There’s no Windfall or Wheel of Fortune, there’s not even Memory Jar. The best I could do in reference to a draw-7 is Diminishing Returns, but double blue mana is hard to come by in this list. Single mana of any color is easy, but double mana is hard for everything but black or red (if I went with Rite of Flame over Dark Ritual).

Usually, in the unpowered Vintage version, I would play out my opening hand, draw a few cards off the eggs, then tutor for Wheel or Will or Windfall and keep going. With the card advantage from that, I’d win the game. There’s no analog in Legacy. Ancestral Knowledge, Night’s Whisper and Thirst for Knowledge are close, but they won’t do it. Drafna’s Restoration tries to be Yawgmoth’s Will, but playing the same eggs over again just builds your storm count; you don’t see anything new.

So in the end, I had to scrap the idea of playing Leggacy.

It’s probably better that way anyway, though I still say I’ll bust out the Helms and take it to a Vintage tourney sometime. It’s still my favorite combo deck.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll see you around the Magic scene this weekend.