Thanksgiving Back to Back - Day 1 - The Hero Zone

This Thanksgiving was one of the more awesome Thanksgiving weekends, and not just because of the back-to-back Vintage tournaments on Saturday and Sunday.

First, I got to take five days off from a job that I don’t enjoy. That was huge.

Then I got to eat Thanksgiving dinner with my family. That was also huge.

Then I got to treat my parents and my fiancée and her family to a celebratory engagement lunch. The bill was huge. (Actually, it was quite reasonable. We ended up going to the Cap City Diner in Gahanna. I had the blackened tilapia po’ boy, which was excellent.)

Then there was a tournament at the Hero Zone in Sandusky, Ohio. That was small, (I’d like to say “intimate”) but it was still fun hanging out with everyone.

On Friday night, before the tournament, I asked my parents what deck I should play and gave them four choices: MUD, Belcher, Ichorid, or BUG Fish.

“BUG Fish?” said my Dad. “I’d play that.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was going to say too,” said my Mom.

So that’s how I decided my deck for the Saturday tournament at the Hero Zone. In the future I will likely not let my parents decide my deck for me. They know nothing about the metagame or indeed anything about Magic at all. Mama Moes did send a few dozen cookies to the tournament, though, so that made up for their misguidance.

Anyway, I played this because my parents told me to:

4x Force of Will
4x Stifle
1x Chain of Vapor
1x Time Walk
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Brainstorm
1x Ponder
3x Thoughtseize
1x Duress
1x Raven’s Crime
1x Extirpate
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Life from the Loam
2x Sensei’s Divining Top
1x Engineered Explosives

4x Dark Confidant
3x Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
3x Dimir Cutpurse
3x Tarmogoyf

1x Black Lotus
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Sapphire
3x Polluted Delta
2x Flooded Strand
3x Underground Sea
2x Tropical Island
3x Wasteland
1x Strip Mine

Sideboard
3x Faerie Macabre
3x Trygon Predator
3x Yixlid Jailer
2x Umezawa’s Jitte
2x Control Magic
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Echoing Truth

Actually, this isn’t really BUG Fish because there aren’t any Null Rods or Cursecatchers. It would probably be more properly named SS Goyf, but, honestly, the distinction is not really worth quibbling over. To me, any Force of Will based deck that disrupts the opponent long enough to win with small creatures is Fish.

I was actually looking forward to playing this since I haven’t played with blue cards in a tournament in more than a year. Stifle is still one of my favorite cards, flipped Erayo is quite a beating, attacking with Cutpurse is like playing Ancestral every turn, and the Raven’s Crime-Life from the Loam combo is one I’ve been wanting to test.

So after I arrived at the Hero Zone, bought some sleeves and some dice in an effort to keep them in business, and chatted with Dave for a while, I was ready for the tournament to get underway. When round one started there were 14 players, including some from Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

Round 1 – Owen Turtenwald – Elves Combo

Owen has a reputation in the Midwest (and the rest of the country, I suppose) as being one of the up-and-coming greats, if not already one of the greats. He has a reputation around Northeast Ohio for being like two peas in a pod with Jeff Blystone. It’s wasn’t the right attitude to go into the match with, but I was looking forward to the drubbing I was about to receive. Losing to better clearly better players than oneself is at least educational. Plus, I hadn’t seen the Elves Combo deck yet, and it seemed real neat.

In game one, I countered a Birchlore Rangers and played an Erayo on my turn but never got the chance to flip it of my own accord. Nettle Sentinels hit play on Owen’s side and started the beats until he could combo me on turn four or so. There was a lot of mana made and cards drawn, and then he played Grapeshot for a bunch to finish me off.

I suspect I brought in Jittes, Explosives, and Echoing Truth.

For game two, I had the broken opener with Black Lotus, Brainstorm, Goyf, and Engineered Explosives on turn one and Ancestral and Time Walk not too much later if I remember correctly. Owen played Summoner’s Pact and comboed a little while I didn’t have activation mana available for Engineered Explosives, but he couldn’t finish me past a Force of Will and died to Pact when I Wastelanded a Gaea’s Cradle.

I probably could have won game three (or at least been closer) if I had saved the Stifle in my hand for the coup de Grapeshot instead of the Skullclamp trigger I used it on. Oh well. I believe I mulliganed to six, and Thoughtseized a Glimpse of Nature to survive until turn three.

Matches 0-1-0; Games 1-2-0

I like this Elves deck. It doesn’t even play many cards exclusive to Vintage. I think the only one I saw was a Mox Emerald in game one. It was also nice to see Fyndhorn Elves get played again.

Round 2 – Jason Jaco – BUG Fish

As I said, any Force of Will based deck that wins with dudesweats is Fish in my book, so this wasn’t much of a mirror match. Jaco had Counterbalance to go with his Tops, and had a Faerie package that included Mutavaults and Spellstutter Sprites. Regardless, I think his deck pooped out on him this round.

In game one, we had a couple turns of nothing except me Thoughtseizing a Tarmogoyf and countering a pair of Spellstutters. Mutavaults got in for him until I found Wastelands for them, and I got a Tarmogoyf to stick. Things started to turn for my favor when I played Life from the Loam and started recurring Wasteland and Strip Mine, but I missed a dredge for one turn, allowing him to Vampiric Tutor for Ancestral and get himself back into the game with Dark Confidant and Top. Fortunately, by that point, Jaco was already too low on life and died to fetchland activations, a Force of Will, and Bob.

I decided to go with the man plan for game two and brought in Jittes, Explosives, Echoing Truths, Control Magics, Trygon Predators, and Jailers.

Jaco and I both opened game two with Thoughtseiezes for opposing dudes. I had the good fortune to draw three Dark Confidants, though, which gave me the luxury of baiting Force of Will with one and trading another with a Mutavault before playing the third and sticking a Jitte to him. Between a Jitte-wielding Bob and depleted mana, Jaco decided to scoop.

Matches 1-1-0; Games 3-2-0

I was happy that someone was playing Spellstutter Sprite and told Jaco how I felt about the card, but he pretty much said that it sucked. I don’t know. I still think it’s a good way to open a game and grows incrementally with the opponent’s spells, especially if it’s paired with Mutavault or other Faeries.

Round 3 – Jeff “The Brain” Blystone – Manaless Ichorid

Jeff’s deck seemed eerily familiar, perhaps because it was mostly my cards with just a few changes. I knew I was in for trouble, especially game one, unless I got lucky and he mulled to oblivion. Unfortunately for me, that didn’t happen. Stupid Ichorid.

I opened the play with a Dark Confidant that got in for an attack while Jeff did his Bazaaring and dredging and stuff. The next turn I was being beaten down by a couple of Ichorids and a Narcomoeba. The turn after that, I was dead.

I brought in Echoing Truth and Explosives, Jailers, and Faerie Macabres. Silly me, thinking I had a chance.

I played a land and hoped to Stifle a Bazaar activation, but Jeff only drew and discarded a Golgari Grave-Troll, which I summarily Faeried away. Unfortunately, I drew no black mana and was unable to play the Yixlid Jailers that would save me. The Wastelands I was drawing did no good as my opponent never played Bazaar. It was a depressing but quick loss to Ichorids.

Matches 1-2-0; Games 3-4-0

Ugh. What a beating. I thought eight cards were supposed to be enough against Ichorid, and I even had Extirpate and Explosives maindeck.

Round 4 – Jimmy McCarthy – Tezzeret

Jimmy and I haven’t played I think since a previous Hero Zone tournament where he played Goblins and I played UW Fish, before he moved back to Wisconsin and I moved to Virginia. I believe I’m 0-X against him lifetime, and I saw no reason to change that now and scooped in an attempt to get him into the final rounds of the tournament.

We played anyway.

In game one, I opened with Erayo and flipped it pretty early. I may be getting my games crossed but it was either flipped by a counter-war or by a Chain of Vapor on a Mox; I think the latter. Anyway, from there, I got Cutpurse going and took a commanding control of the game. Jimmy scooped at 15 life to the Erayo-Cutpurse lock.

I don’t think I sideboarded much. I think I just brought in a Control Magic for the likely Tinker for Colossus ending.

In game two, Jimmy Tinkered for Colossus on turn two.

Yeah. That’s pretty much it. Good thing I sideboarded.

Jimmy mulliganed twice in game three and kept a hand with Mox Jet and Sensei’s Divining Top. That was not good enough. I flipped Erayo again and soon had two Dark Confidants and a Tarmogoyf to finish the game.

Matches 1-3-0; Games 5-5-0

Of course, with my concession, Jimmy’s opponents had a combined record of something like 2-5-1, so his tiebreakers were terrible and he still had no chance of making top four. Oh well. I was happy just to play the games.

So that was it, my triumphant-ish return to the aggro-control world of Fish.

It was fun. An experiment and not one I’m likely to try again soon, but fun nonetheless.

After the tournament, Mike Smar and I played some more of the Tezzeret vs. Fish matchup and I won the majority of the games, something like 5-2. Basically, unless he got a really broken start, I was bound to win the game one way or another. There were just too many areas where I could get the advantage—extra cards from Bob or Cutpurse, extra mana from Wasteland and Life from the Loam, and spells from Erayo and Raven’s Crime. If the game went long enough, I was just toying with him.

Anyway, I think Juan Rodriguez, Jeff Blystone, Anthony Michaels, and Nam Tran top-foured with TPS, Ichorid, Ichorid, and 5c Stax, respectively. They split the money, but played it out with Juan meeting Jeff in the finals and winning the bye (and the honor) for the next day’s Warzone tournament.

Like I said, it was a lot of fun. Maybe next time there will be some more players.