Bowled Over

Well, it’s gotten to that point again. I finally have more blogs in the works than I have time to post them. That means fairly consistent updates for the next few weeks, hooray!

Before I get to my backup deck review of Meandeck Gifts (which will probably be up later this week) I’m going to talk about a special road trip I made to the flattest part of Ohio, Bowling Green. First, a thing I learned from a friend who was a grad student at BGSU: the highest topographical feature in the city is on the college’s golf course at the top of a hill, which was made by digging a pond for the college’s golf course.

Now that’s flat.

One time, this same friend of mine thought he saw a bad storm coming from the north-west, so he hurried home and closed all the windows in his apartment and his car and turned on the TV to see how bad the storm was going to be. The only storm activity on the weather radar was over Chicago. He’s still convinced that was the storm he saw.

Anyway, Bowling Green is about as flat as flat can be, and I drove there on Sunday afternoon because the Gamers Lounge there was having a no-proxy Vintage tournament with a $5 entry.

It was a lot of fun. I highly recommend it and will post these tournaments on here when I see them. Or, for you self-sufficient people, you can visit their website, of which I don’t have the address and am too lazy to look up.

I was impressed with the store, though. It was, uh, bigger than I thought it would be, and the tables were nice and the whole place was pretty clean. It just had that “new store” feel to it. My feeling was that it was a little dark (in the sense of moody and atmospheric rather than dungeony) and that sometimes that made it hard to play a game based on reading things. I got used to it, though, and I think that adds to the store’s appeal as a snack bar. That’s right, you can get a sandwich and coffee there, which I would have if I ate sandwiches or drank coffee.

Good place, though, and the gamers there were lots of competent college students rather than some other stores’ pre-teen crowds. And the Gamers Lounge in BG had a similar selection of cards to the Hero Zone, or as we should start calling it, the Gamers Lounge Sandusky.

In short, if ever I’m going to Toledo, I’ll try to stop by again. And maybe eat Jed’s balls afterwards. I recommend them highly, especially when they're covered in garbage.
Jed’s Barbecue and Brew
101 S. Main St.
Bowling Green, OH
(419) 353-6164

Regardless, there’s a tournament a-goin’ on. Here’s what brung me to the dance:
Engine

4x Helm of Awakening
4x Darkwater Egg
4x Skycloud Egg
4x Shadowblood Egg
4x Chromatic Sphere
3x Mossfire Egg
1x Sungrass Egg

Gasoline

4x Dark Ritual
3x Cabal Ritual
1x Sol Ring
1x Mana Vault
1x Grim Monolith
1x Lotus Petal
1x Lion’s Eye Diamond
1x Chrome Mox
4x Polluted Delta
3x Underground Sea
2x City of Traitors
1x Tolarian Academy

Creamy Leather Interior

1x Wheel of Fortune
1x Windfall
1x Yawgmoth’s Will
1x Memory Jar
1x Tinker
1x Yawgmoth’s Bargain
1x Rebuild
1x Burning Wish
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Mystical Tutor

Brakes

2x Tendrils of Agony

Junk in the Trunk

1x Darksteel Colossus
3x Duress
4x Elvish Spirit Guide
2x Hurkyll’s Recall
1x Balance
1x Wing Snare
1x Tariff
1x Chainer’s Edict
1x Tendrils of Agony

Uhh… that Junk in the Trunk section is my sideboard if you hadn’t already realized it. (I like typing out combo lists because they’re so dang long, in fact, in the tradition of GrimLong and PitchLong, I’m going to start calling this deck DangLong).

Everything I heard about this tournament said that aggro was the flavor of the day, every day. So I figure I’ve got a good shot. Combo beats aggro, right? And DangLong unsideboarded is certainly combo.

Twelve people show up, pair up, sit down and shut up to play.

Round 1

I’m playing against a guy with a homebrewed Stax-like deck, I think. He dropped, Smokestacks, Metalworker and Goblin Welder and he had Chalice of the Void for zero in the first game and Sphere of Resistance in the second.

Unfortunately for him, in the first game I pretty much draw the nuts and combo out on my third turn. I was worried when he Vampiric Tutored because I thought he was going to get a second Chalice for one and pretty much win right there, but it was not to be. Chalice for zero is ze goggles against me, and I Yawgmoth’s Kill him.

I side in two Hurkyll’s Recalls for Sungrass Egg and Grim Monolith because there are way worse artifacts that he could be packing (namely anything you’d see played in Stax except for Stax, but especially, in order, Null Rod, Chalice for one, 3Sphere and 2Sphere).

Lo and behold, he drops an early Sphere of Resistance. Est non bonum. However, I’ve got the answers. I play a bunch of acceleration, tutor for Rebuild, play it, replay my acceleration, and proceed to go off again with Yawgmoth’s Will. I Tendrils him for—Stifled! What the heck?! Okay, okay, we’re cool. I’m still gonna Yawgmoth’s Win this game.

I play another Cabal Ritual out of my graveyard, and start praying and playing eggs, of which there are three remaining, all in my graveyard. With the first one I draw Demonic Tutor. Erik, who’s standing over the game watching, just hangs his head. “This is why I’m a terrible person! Who the hell does that?” I say, Demonic Tutor for my second Tendrils, and win the game.

My opponent takes the loss well, and we talk about the game and my deck and his. I was definitely not expecting Stifle to get played out of Stax, homebrewed or not.

1-0 matches; 2-0 games

Round 2

I get paired against a Dragon player, and I mean Worldgorger Dragon combo, not Dragonstorm or multiple Shivan Dragons. Historically, I have a bad time with Gorger, leading to the inclusion of Tariff in the board for the elusive reanimated True Believer, which I learned the hard way cannot be removed with Diabolic Edicts.

In the first game he shows me what looks to be a pretty standard non-powered build with Forces of Will and Duresses, but I’m surprised to see Bazaars of Baghdad as well. He said he usually played his deck with 10 proxies, and I bet it would do pretty well as that.

In the first game, he Duresses me turn one (for Tendrils, I think), lets my Helm of Awakening through, and Forces my first business spell. I’m worried because once he gets his combo in the graveyard I’m toast even if he has only one swamp in play. I follow up the next turn with a Wheel of Fortune. He tries to find a counter in the Bazaar, but comes up empty, and I proceed to go off without too much trouble.

He mentioned afterward that he should have Bazaared after I Wheeled, but I’m not sure if that would have helped. Had he countered my Wheel, I would have been KO’d until I could find something else, so letting me refuel with Wheel was probably the worse choice. (I.E. it was more correct to Bazaar in attempt to counter, but less lucky to not find anything). Not to mention that finding Tendrils is rarely a problem, so it’s not usually the worst thing for me to lose to a Duress, Cabal Therapy, etc.

I sided in three Duress against him, probably for Sungrass Egg, Grim Monolith, and Rebuild.

He went first in the second game and I opened up a fairly solid hand against him that included Duress, which he took from me with one of his own. That worried me greatly since if he didn’t want to be Duressed, he must have something to protect. I played some eggs and drew into some threats of my own. Eventually I Vampiric Tutored for Yawgmoth’s Will with a backup Windfall in hand and won on the third or fourth turn, so I gathered it wasn’t Force of Will he was protecting.

2-0 matches; 4-0 games

Round 3

My arch nemesis, mono-black control. My opponent for this round was a nice guy who hadn’t played Magic since Darksteel was in rotation. His deck was pretty classic—Hypnotic Specters, Phyrexian Negators, Nantuko Shade, Duress, Hymn to Tourach, Dark Ritual, etc. And, well, he must have eaten his Wheaties or something because he drew all of them against me.

He also Duressed me on his first turn for Tendrils, but I drew no business, ever, and soon had no hand to work with while he had on board Negators. Things were very, very bad, very, very quickly. (Not quite as bad as the game next to me, though, where the kid playing Elves met first-turn Engineered Plague, elves.)

So, me and the elf guy go to game two.

I side in Colossus, Balance, and a couple of Elvish Spirit Guides for Mossfire Egg, Rebuild, Chrome Mox, and something else.

Then I play first turn Dark Ritual, Lotus Petal, random Egg, Tinkerlossus and win the game on turn three. He shows me Null Rod on turn two.

I side Colossus and Elvish Spirit Guides back out for Hurkyll’s Recall, hoping he’s left his Diabolic Edicts in as a dead card. It really doesn’t matter, though, as he plays First turn Hypnotic Specter, second turn Null Rod, third turn Negator, fourth turn Negator, fifth turn Negator. My response: “Good game.”

2-1 Matches; 5-2 games

My game record is good enough to get me into the top four, it’s bad enough to get me paired up against (guess!) MBC avec Rods of Hey, Your Deck Doesn’t Work.

I know the Rods don’t come in until the sideboard, so I’m all pumped to win the first game and then take one of the next two before he can draw and play Null Rod.

After he Duresses me for my in-hand Tendrils, the first game starts off well. I get my combo rolling am completely in a position to win and somehow end up with a storm count of nine. I have Tinkered for Memory Jar, drawn so many cards, and have Wheel of Fortune and Windfall in my hand, when I Mystical Tutor for what I think is the game winning Tendrils, and Tendrils turns out to be spell number nine. KA-BONK!

At this point, I have two choices: I can Tendrils for 18 and hope that I can win with two lives with only two outs (Burning Wish and Yawgmoth’s Will) left in my deck, or I can Windfall and hope to draw one of those two outs and a way to play it. I decide to Windfall for seven with a black mana floating. I drop an Egg and pass the turn. He kills my land and my Sol Ring and then, with Negators, me.

I side in Colossus and Hurkyll’s Recalls for games two and three.

In the second game, on the second turn, I Demonic Tutored, sacked Lion’s Eye Diamond in response for Blue, and Tinkerlossused.

His third turn was Diabolic Edict, swing with Negator.

Then I died.

I really should have gotten Memory Jar with the Tinker. Really, really, really should have gotten Memory Jar and waited to break it. I mean, I had Hurkyll’s Recall in my hand for his Null Rod. I totally could have won, but I noobed it up like a total noob at a noob festival.

I should not have feared Null Rod, for which I have many answers, including Dark Rituals and Tutors.

Oh well.

2-2 matches; 5-4 games (Really, this felt a lot better than it looks.)

The tournament was still tons of fun. I should have stayed to watch the finals, but it was already pushing 9 p.m., and I had to drive back to Columbus.

Still, good times. Next time I hope they make it 10 proxy or something so that Anthony can’t come in and destroy people’s will to live with fully powered Oath. DangLong's still pretty good with five proxies, but it leaves something to be desired with 10. At that point you should just start playing GrimLong or something.

Speaking of Oath, that’s what I’m planning to take if I ever go there again. So, you know, be warned. I can see Bowling Green from here because it’s so flat, and I’m watching you.