Magic - A High Percentage of Fun

So, uh, this is it. Number 100. A good day, and welcome to day 100.

Stunning Fact: This is actually blog number 101. I miscounted. Heh. My bad.

What’s the big surprise in my hundredth blog?

It’s a tournament report, yaaaaaay! You’re excited. I am too.

Even better, there’ll be another one after this weekend:

Gamers Lounge – Sandusky
127 E. Market St.
Sandusky, OH 44870
(419) 621-0282

Noon registration
1 p.m. start time
$20 entry fee gets you unlimited proxies
First place gets a Mox Sapphire!
Second, third and fourth all get store credit proportional to the number of participants!

We’ve now had two of these tournaments, and so far they’ve been very popular. Nice, roomy venue, well lit, well heated, with solid chairs and tables and a good selection of singles and other gaming accessories. It’s good times, and I love having these tournaments to look forward to.

Stunning Fact: The Gamers Lounge – Sandusky will hold these tournaments every month on the second Saturday.

For now, though, I’ve got a report from this weekend at the Soldiery in Columbus.

I woke up extra early for this tournament, at 8 a.m., because my mom was in town for the weekend. Luckily she was planning on leaving at nine that morning so she could get to work, so I still had plenty of time to get ready to play. All in all it was a good weekend, hanging out with my mom on Saturday, but given the choice between playing Vintage Magic and hanging out with my mom… Well, I’d probably feel bad about having to miss the tournament.

Anyway, my mom and I went to breakfast at Panera before she got on the road. If you ever get the chance, I heartily recommend the chocolate-hazelnut bagels. They’re delish!

Stunning Fact: Once, I taught my mom to play Magic.

My mom got herself on the road, and I went for a walk before heading back to my apartment. The rest of my morning consisted of doing all the puzzles in the Sunday Columbus Dispatch, making a sandwich to take to the tournament, having a more substantial lunch, and, more importantly, making a sideboard.

This is what I was taking to the dance:

4x Barbarian Ring
4x Bazaar of Baghdad
4x Mishra's Workshop
4x Mountain
1x Strip Mine
3x Wasteland
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Sol Ring
1x Black Lotus
4x Chalice of the Void
4x Crucible of Worlds
4x Jester's Cap
4x Uba Mask
4x Tangle Wire
2x Null Brooch
1x Trinisphere
2x Duplicant
4x Goblin Welder
2x Gorilla Shaman
1x Karn, Silver Golem

I’ve been having a great time playing UbaCaps in the past Sandusky tournament. I love how synergistic the deck is between Masks and Bazaars and Crucibles and Welders, and getting the draw engine up and running is awe inspiring. For this particular tournament, I added Null Brooches—a Wasteland and Mana Vault got dropped for them. Normally, it would have been Mana Crypt that got the axe because it’s three damage is far more threatening than Vault’s one, but I wanted the extra non-Shop mana to run Caps and Brooches.

Usually in Columbus tournaments there’s a healthy mix of Drains (Gifts and Slaver), Stax of all kinds, Long combo, and a few randoms like Fish and Ichorid and some other combos like Dragon and Belcher. As such, I went with this:

4x Sphere of Resistance to bring in against combo
3x Viashino Heretic for the Stax and Fish matchups
3x Tormod’s Crypts for Ichorid, Stax, and Combo
1x Null Brooch for the control matchup
4x Ensnaring Bridge for decks with lots of creatures

It’s similar to the one I used in Sandusky a month ago, but with more Ensnaring Bridge and Null Brooch.

Stunning Fact: I had never gotten Null Brooch into play before Sunday.

I was all psyched to play against some combo and control, let me tell you.

Fast-forwarding to the Soldiery, there’s some drama as the car from Cleveland, loaded with four players, is still in Mansfield with less than half an hour before the tournament’s supposed to start. There’s some yelling and posturing and hasty phone calls and pleading to drive as fast as possible, and we all sort of agree to wait for them to show up before we start. Once they arrive there’s still only enough players for four rounds. Even Stephen Menendian won’t be playing—who’s going to challenge my elite Vintage skills now?!

Stunning Fact: Hahahahaha! I make myself laugh.

I register my deck and pay up, and pairings go up for round one:

Round 1 – Jimmy with Goblins

Crap. This isn’t combo, but it can kill just as fast. I was not counting on playing straight-up aggro, and you may notice that my sideboard (in combination with my deck, especially) is very weak on creature hate.

I go first in game one and play, I think, an early Uba Mask off a Workshop and a Mox Emerald. His first turn has a Wasteland for my Workshop and a Mox Ruby to play Goblin Lackey. My Uba Mask does sort of nullify his Lackeys and Aether Vials, but it’s too late he has enough gas in hand and enough stuff to play out of the Mask, that I lose in a few turns and, apparently, three attacks.

In come the Heretics and the Ensnaring Bridges. Out go Caps.

I manaburn on turn one to play a Chalice for one. I shut myself off from Welder, but I won’t be seeing any Lackeys or Aether Vials. I lose some life to Mana Crypt but get a Viashino Heretic out to take care of that ticking time bomb. He scoops to Chalices at one and two, my second Tangle Wire, and the Crucible-Strip Mine combo.

My first three hands are decidedly weak. There’s nothing I can do with all mana or no mana. My hand of four has a lone Uba Mask, but the means to play it. I keep and hope to draw well. Why bother, though? His first turn is Black Lotus and Strip Mine to play Goblin Warchief and Lackey. Both attack for three, and Lackey gets a second into play. I play my Uba Mask, and he Strips my Workshop. He already has attackers in play, and I have, well, nothing. Then I die. It was sad.

If only that second Lackey had been a Siege-Gang Commander, right? I mean, that’s about as ridiculous as you can get with Goblins. No way I was going to win that, even if I hadn’t mulled to four.

Stunning Fact: Jester’s Caps are terrible against aggro.

My not winning in the first round streak lives on.

Matches – 0-1-0
Games – 1-2-0

Round 2 – Doug Linn with Drain Tendrils

Ah, combo. Theoretically, I should have the upper hand. Theoretically. I mull to five.

I believe I went first in game one and lead off with a Jester’s Cap off a Workshop and a Mox, hoping to sneak it in past that 40% chance of having a Force of Will. It didn’t work. Too bad too because I had the Mana Crypt that would have made it active before he even had a turn. After that, he drew an insane amount of cards with AK and Brainstorm and Fact or Fiction.

This is probably the game I should have brought in the Spheres of Resistance, but I’m not sure I did. They might not be in my sideboard very much longer.

Stunning Fact: Sphere of Resistance can be cast off of a Mox and a land.

Game two, it didn’t matter. I dominated him. I had Welder in play and an Uba Mask with two Bazaars and Crucible with at least Wastelands in the graveyard and Chalices on zero and it was amazing. He scooped in light of me drawing five cards a turn and being able to play anything I wanted. At one point, I Capped him and took two Rebuilds and a Hurkyll’s Recall because his win-conditions must all have been in hand.

It had me feeling good, not gonna lie.

Game three was a good struggle on both sides, but it was getting on in the round and we were headed for drawsville. I Capped him for win conditions, but he had no reason to concede before time. The ball was in my court, so to speak. He Drains my threats and goes down to eight life from manaburn. On the fifth turn of OT, I have three Barbarian Rings, three Mountains and threshold. The game ends with him at two life.

Rats. So close. Given an extra few turns, I might have had the win.

Matches – 0-1-1
Games – 2-3-1

Round 3 – Justin with The Mountains Win Again (RW aggro-control)

I think I’m actually on the low end of the scale in this matchup. Red and white both kill artifacts, and both are aggressive enough to drop creatures and kill pretty fast. So once I realized what he was playing, I was somewhat dismayed.

However, I got my locks into play pretty quickly in game one and even managed to Cap him, which was nice just to see what was in his deck. Things were going poorly for him rather quickly, though as I was putting out Tangle Wires and Chalices and Crucibles with Wastelands. I think I had Ubazaar going as well. Justin scooped to Karn once he appeared in my Uba Mask, I think.

Game two was pretty exciting for a little while. He dropped Goblin Vandal which had me threatened for a good long time, but I threw out a Gorilla that I would have been happy to throw in his way. He dropped a Jotun Grunt, but I found bargain-priced plans for a Duplicant in Baghdad that I Welded up right away. Karn and his artifact minions took it home for me again as Justin struggled to keep up with my draw engine.

Stunning Fact: Karn and me are like crossed fingers. He will be godfather to my children.

I think that’s the problem with straight-up RW TMWA: unless you force something in there, it doesn’t have a draw engine. I like the lists with Dark Confidant I’ve seen. Plus, Dark Confidant is awesome and is a man wearing makeup.

Pat Chapin thinks Ancestral Recall is the key to winning games. Dark Confidant is that but attacking for two a turn.

Matches – 1-1-1
Games – 4-3-1

It’s not looking too bad for me at this point. I have a winning record in games, and Doug and Jimmy are both in contention for the Top 4 so my tiebreakers are pretty good. (With so few players, we were going to Top 4 instead of Top 8 as usual). In fact, if I win this match, I should be in contention in the final rounds.

Round 4 – Lyle playing Urbana Fish

Usually Lyle plays Slaver. This time, for some reason, I had the impression he was playing Ichorid. I’d like to say that threw off my early game one strategy, but, well, not really.

This part will be pretty sketchy because my notes for this round say three words:

Force Uba
Welder

I didn't even draw in the arrow I usually use to indicate that Force of Will hit my Uba Mask. Apparently that happened in game two.

I hate to do this, but I think I’ll just give you a rundown of my impressions of this round, because I really have no recollection of which game or what order these things happened:

• It’s bad that I’m playing another deck with a bunch of creatures. Jester’s Caps really don’t work very well against decks like that.
• He played a lot of land destruction against me. In one game I’m pretty sure I had two Workshops in the first two turns, and both of them bit it to Wastelands. He countered my Crucibles to keep me from recovering.
• I played Chalice for 0 at one point and stupidly threw a later Mox Jet into it to build threshold rather than holding onto it. Lyle then bounced my Chalice and played three Moxen.
• Remand is still awesome, especially against Stax. I say it’s underutilized, especially by Fish-type decks. It’s a Time Walk that lets you draw two cards, I swear. The only thing you really can’t use it on is Moxen, and at least then it cantrips.
• Magus of the Unseen? It’s not a card you see very often, but it has its uses. He used his to steal my Ensnaring Bridge in game two so he could attack.
• I took a bunch of mulligans in this round too. Normally this doesn’t happen since UbaCaps is filled with four-ofs, but today just wasn’t my day.
• Viashino Heretic is a pretty decent card to bring in against weenie creatures. I mean, I had heard this before, I just didn’t realize.
• Planar Void is really good against, like, the format. It's especially good against things like Crucible and Welder.
  

Anyway, it was a beating. I lost pretty decisively in two games, and apparently, to quote my own notes, “Force Uba Welder.”

Matches – 1-2-1
Games – 4-5-1

Ick.

Stunning Fact: That 4/5 could be something like Adarkar Valkyrie, but in reality it’s Blanchwood Treefolk.

Oh well. Mark Trogdon and I played the Land Game against each other. He had some good ideas I might steal later on. It’s still interesting as a two-player battle of top-decks, but it’s definitely more fun as a multiplayer game, and I have to make up some cards with the game-text on them so that new players won’t have to keep asking what the cards do.

The top four was quick and painless. Angel Rivera and Jimmy the Goblin King lost to Doug Linn and Paul Mastriano, who split the cash for the Pearl.

With the tournament thus resolved, 11 players piled into three cars and headed south on Rte. 315 to the Greenlawn exit and Thurman’s Café, where there was good food and gossip to be had. The post-tournament meal, I think, may actually be why I play this game, and I’m already looking forward to Diana’s on Saturday and sweet, sweet poopcake.

Stunning Fact: Poopcake is just a rumor, but I still wouldn’t order the Black Forest cake.

So that was it. When I got back, I told my friends that they missed a “pretty okay” tournament. I feel like I should be disappointed in myself for misjudging the metagame that poorly, but really, I think there were a lot of times where things were not in my favor.

For example: Lotus, Strip Mine, Warchief, Lackey, Lackey, versus mulling a whole lot.

I still had a good time, though, because Vintage players are friendly and Magic is fun. In fact, I had such a good time, that I’m already looking forward to this weekend’s tournament in Sandusky!

I hope you all make it out to see me take home a Sapphire.

Happy 101st Blog!