I’d like to say I gave myself a vacation from blogging and took a little R&R time for myself, but unfortunately, that’s just not the case. The past few weeks have been busy at work and at home, as I’ve had numerous projects to work on (like a 40 page calendar that had sports schedules for everything including boys and girls varsity and JV water polo) and have been in the process of changing apartments.
I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, though, and this blog should be proof of that.
First, some good news: Dave lowered the entry fee on the September 23 Gamers Lounge Vintage tournament from $15 to $12.50. Everything else remains the same, so you get the same amount of Magic for 5/6 of the price! The flyer for the tournament is somewhere. I'll try to get it uploaded soon so that you can print it out and show it to your friends! For now, though:
Full Proxy Vintage Tournament
Gamers Lounge Sandusky Grand Re-Opening
127 E. Market St.
Sandusky, OH 44870
(419) 621-0282
September 23, 2006
Registration: 12:30 p.m.
Round 1: 1 p.m.
First Place: 4x Volcanic Island and $25 store credit
Second Place: 4x Steam Vents and $25 store credit
Third & Fourth: $25 store credit
Second, the bad news: I really haven’t played a lot of Magic lately. I had the best month of my Magic career when I came in second with my girlfriend in 2HG at the Coldsnap Prerelease, top 8’d in Columbus with UB Fish, and split first in the Friday night Hero Zone tournament. Then I followed all that up with a two-week unintentional hiatus.
Boooo.
So, yeah, what’s goin’ on?
There’s some things I want to share with you, but I kind of don’t because I feel like being all secretive and techy about it, like if I don’t tell you then I’ll have some super premium advantage should I ever play in a Vintage tournament again. I’m sure I’ll get around to sharing at some point, though, and probably before the Gamers Lounge tourney.
Most recently, I played Ire & Splice at the Dungeon to a pathetic Ophidian finish of one and three. Unfortunately I did not negate damage and draw a card whenever I attacked because Ire & Splice lacks creatures. Card drawing would have been nice, though. I faced just one aggro match all evening, stomped him in the first game, and lost in the next two games to my deck pooping out on me. The other decks I faced had big, hard-to-burn-out creatures, the most notorious of which is Angel of Despair, which is so bad for me because I can’t bounce it and stay alive. Attacking for five’s pretty good too.
It was especially disappointing after the recent success I’ve had with the deck. I mean, I know it’s a janky pile of ten-cent commons, but it does have a solid strategy and game against combo. I just have to remember that Standard is not my format and that if I really want to be better at it, I’ll have to invest in some cards, which I don’t particularly want to do.
I didn’t realize how much mana building and fixing went on in Standard right now. I know I’m old school and prefer playing one-, two-, sometimes three-color decks, but I don’t understand why Standard isn’t run ragged by five-color toolbox and good-stuff decks since it’s obvious that the mana structure is available to do so.
Actually, it’s easy to see why. Wizards made the Ravnica block gold cards so good that you can easily get away with three or four colors and have the exact same utility. I don’t think I would mind splashing green or blue for Simic Sky Swallower, for example (though I’d rather Oath it out).
It’s crazy, though. So many games have a medium or long duration that sees both players have twenty or thirty permanents in play that produce mana. How exciting when a game is determined by who makes more of their land, bounce land, and signet drops on time.
Sorry, I’ll stop making fun of Standard.
I only do it because I can’t play it…
I’m too smart and my parents weren’t related.
Seriously, though Standard embraces a lot of concepts that Vintage would do well to relearn.
Using all of your mana every turn, for example. When I play Ire & Splice, I want to have first turn Reach Through Mists, second turn Eye of Nowhere, third turn Murmur’s from Beyond or Reach Through Mists splicing Glacial Ray or something. (That second turn Eye of Nowhere on the play is key actually, and if I can string those together I do really well.)
There are a lot of times in Vintage, though, where you’re waiting to counter something or have too much mana or everything’s free and you’re just wasting turns. One of the top 8 decks at the Vintage Championship at last weekend’s Gencon tried to improve that. It was Control Slaver (Mana Drains, Thirst for Knowledge, Goblin Welders, and game winning artifacts), and it used Night’s Whispers in place of some of its utility cards to fill in the CMC gap on the second turn with something useful. This way, instead of bluffing a Drain to no avail or sitting through a first turn with Mox and Underground Sea, it could at least draw cards. And we all know drawing cards is good, right?
It’s a solid plan. It means you’re playing your deck to its fullest capabilities; none of its potential goes wasted. The problem is that lots of Vintage decks are too fast for their manabases. Rarely does anything cost more than four, and there aren’t really a lot of those around either. Plus, when you can go land, Mox, Mox, spell on your first turn and be nearly out of cards on your first turn, or go Force of Will pitching Chain of Vapor even before you take a turn, you start playing behind the card drawing curve very quickly.
Sometimes drawing cards is nice just because it makes you look threatening. Your opponent doesn’t know what you have after card draws, and it could always potentially be the card that absolutely wrecks them. Even better though is that it gives you something to do with your turns.
I don’t know.
I’ve written this blog over the space of about six hours, so it’s probably not very coherent.
I’ll just leave you with the advice to start looking through those Vintage decklists for something you want to play. It’ll be fun, and you won’t always die before you get to take a turn. Heck, if you get really good with GrimLong, you might even get to kill someone before they take a turn! You’ve got five weeks to choose and test a deck, and I don’t want to see any janky random aggro crap. You have all the proxies in the world to play with, and you should use them.
The tournament guidelines are right here in my hand, and don’t forget the price was lowered to $12.50!
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