Friends Don't Let Friends Play Bad Decks

It’s taken me a while to figure out something coherent to write about the past couple of Vintage tournaments I attended. Making the trips to Chicago and Pittsburgh for a total of four days of card slinging, hanging out with friends, and eating some good food was totally worth it.

Worth it even though my overall record for these tournaments was something like 5-16—4-12 with Belcher and 1-4 with mono-red shop aggro.

Yeah.

Pretty bad.

Highlights include 38 mulligans (including 12 games mulling to five or fewer), having Jushi Apprentice flipped against me, seeing Channel meet Arcane Denial, and losing outright to Sen Triplets.

Tallying things up like this is really depressing.

Obviously it’s not worth writing a report about, let alone four separate reports about each day. But what did I learn from all this?

Well, nothing. I’m still going to argue that Belcher is a playable deck. It’s a high-variance deck, sure—high risk and high reward—but it’s playable. The red-green version that I’ve been playing still has the same advantages it always has. It’s very, very fast and has some resiliency against counters thanks to maindeck Guttural Responses and Welders.

Ben Carp told me at day one of Chicago (which, thanks for hosting, Ben) that he has my list put together on Magic Workstation and goldfishes it sometimes. “It’s terrifying,” he says, and I agree. He also thanked me for daring to play and win without using blue or Yawgmoth’s Will.

When I had more success, including a top eight in Pittsburgh, a top four in Baltimore, and a top 16 in Connecticut, the opening hands I was drawing were unbeatable. Black Lotus was everywhere, I had counter or Welder backup for everything, and I was never at a loss for a win condition.

It was great.

And it really helped validate Belcher as a deck choice for me. Mostly I play Belcher because I enjoy it. It’s fun to activate Belcher or to run an opponent over with a horde of goblin tokens.

However, I also have some strategic advantages with the deck: having played for so long, I know Belcher thoroughly, often better than my opponents know their decks and certainly better than my opponents know Belcher. The deck is surprisingly complex, far more so than most people give it credit. The combination presents me with frequent opportunities to outplay my opponents as they underestimate or misunderstand my plans.

So despite my recent lackluster efforts, Belcher is still worth playing. I don’t think this is simple pig-headedness on my part, though that does enter into it.

I still want to play the fastest deck in the format, to make my opponents react to my opening plays, and to have 10-minute rounds that let me relax and watch other people play Vintage. Belcher still offers these opportunities.

In fact, it’s because of this that I’m most upset with my play on day two in Pittsburgh.

The idea, developed over some breakfast testing at McDonald’s was that we should get as many people as possible to play Workshops and wear the United Mishra’s Workshop t-shirts, a fitting tribute to the Mishra-themed prize package and a full-on representation of the Workshop Capital of the World, Cleveland, Ohio.

It was a good thought. I’m all in favor of team-unity, and Workshops are fun to play.

Unfortunately, I had left my Workshop deck and Stax components at home. For me to participate in the mono-brownout, so to speak, we had to throw together a list from the leftovers of Trogdon, Twaun, Yang, and Witherell. So not only was I playing a deck that I wouldn’t normally have played, but I was playing a suboptimal list as well. It was not a good combination.

All day, I was miserable. I was constantly wondering why I wasn’t playing Belcher, and not only because I wanted to prey on the Force-of-Will-less Workshop-infused metagame. It’s entirely likely that I would have gone 1-4 with Belcher as well, but at least I would have been losing with the deck I wanted to play.

Hanging out with everyone was still fun, for sure, and at least I was playing Magic, but the overall tournament experience wasn’t quite complete for me. As Workshop Maestro, Nam Q. Tran said when I voiced my concerns to him, “Friends don’t let friends play bad decks.”

(Obviously no slight to the Pittsburgh tournaments’ hosts Brian Kiel and Mr. Nice Guy Games. They had a great setup that was unfortunately and unfairly beset with low turnout.)

I could, at least, gain some hope from meeting a couple of up-and-coming Belcher players at each tournament. In Chicago, one young man whose name I didn’t get was playing my list card for card. He was positive about his experience and finished day one with a 3-4 record, after having started his day 1-0 against Mark Trogdon.

Likewise Jason Blawas, against whom I squared off day two in Pittsburgh, and who soundly defeated me in three games. Jason suckled at the turn-one teat even before I did, having picked up Belcher just after Michael Simister debuted it, but he only recently started playing Vintage again and picked up my list on the recommendation of the rest of the Cleveland gamers.

I hope players continue to pick up and enjoy Belcher. It’s a difficult deck to live with at times, and many people give up on it before they have time to learn its nuances (which do exist, I swear) or to let the variance swing around to their favor. Not that I’m worried about the deck dying out, of course. There will always be some idiot (me) playing the deck, and it always warms the cockles of my heart to see a Belcher player (especially me) do well.

So from these two awesome weekends of tournaments I guess I learned that I will be linked to Belcher for a long time. It’s the only deck I want to play. There are turn one kills and Goblin Welders and tokens and no lands, so you get to make a whole bunch of jokes about getting manascrewed… again.

Jerry Yang can tell me all he wants that I’m ruining Vintage with my turn-one-kill deck, but I don’t care. People need that sort of terror in their lives. It gives them purpose, makes the heart beat strong, and pumps them full of adrenaline for the next round.

Plus, for as often as it’s just not my day, sometimes it’s just not yours—deal with it. I’ve lost to you Drain-playing slack-jaws long enough. My opponents for the next few tournaments should just expect it. There’s a change in the wind; I can feel it…