I Got Sandusky in My Bathing Suit

If only there were nearby tournaments every weekend. I’d go to every one, my Magic budget would skyrocket, and I’d have an unbelievable amount of fun.

This weekend’s big show was in Sandusky, at the Gamer’s Lounge, the store that’s been like a second home for me. Or something.

Anyway, I love going to the Gamer’s Lounge and hanging out with Dave, so I got up nice and early on Saturday, showered, packed a lunch, ate breakfast, and headed out to the Lounge about an hour early. Unlike in most tournament reports, my drive was uneventful. It was a beautiful day, and I listened to Car Talk on public radio.

The store was pretty much empty when I got there. There were a few smelly nerds talking about Dungeons and Dragons and a couple of small children looking at Yu-Gi-Oh.

Dave told me that because of some mishandled accounting, the Gamer’s Lounge in Bowling Green has been shut down permanently. That sucks. It was a great store too, with awesome atmosphere and a little sandwich bar. I gave Dave my condolences and hope that nothing will shutdown the store in Sandusky.

Support your local gaming scene!

Since by that time registration time had come, I decided it was time I chose a deck. My options were UbaCaps and UB Fish, and the problem is that I love them both. I hadn’t played Fish in a while, though, and it had been pretty good in testing, so I decided to dive in head first. It is my pet deck, after all, and a build of my own creation:

4x Dark Confidant
4x Martyr of Frost
3x Withered Wretch
3x Ninja of the Deep Hours

4x Duress
4x Stifle
4x Force of Will
3x Null Rod
2x Remand
2x Chain of Vapor
1x Echoing Truth
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Time Walk
1x Demonic Consultation

1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Black Lotus
1x Lotus Petal
3x Polluted Delta
2x Bloodstained Mire
4x Wasteland
1x Strip Mine
4x Underground Sea
3x Island
2x Swamp

Sideboard

3x Threads of Disloyalty
3x Black Knight
3x Energy Flux
3x Planar Void
3x Diabolic Edict

I have this deck pretty well fixed up to beat Gifts and combo. It has a good game against Slaver and Stax too, but it runs fewer, weaker creatures than most other Fish builds and has a hard time against them. Black Knight helps a lot out of the sideboard and has made quite an impression it seems on the Fish-playing community. My theory is that, against UW Fish they trade with everything but Grunt—which they block all day thanks to being pro-White—and they dodge everybody’s favorite removal, Swords to Plowshares.

Threads of Disloyalty is a recent addition based on the recommendation, mostly, of Dave Feinstein. I think next time I’d rather just run Control Magic if I’m going with something similar. There’s a few creatures that Threads can’t get to—namely Darksteel Colossus, thumpers brought in by Stax and Slaver, and Auriok Salvagers—and it would be worth it to hit those as well. Alternately, I could use something a bit more aggressive, like Jitte.

Demonic Consultation is something new I’m trying out. It’s instant speed most importantly, and my deck has enough four-ofs that I really don’t feel it’s too risky. Plus, I think I have dreams of going Swamp, Consult for Black Lotus, Lotus, Duress, Dark Confidant. Not in a tournament, though. I tried it against Nam Tran while we were waiting for the final round to end, but Lotus was in the top six. Oops.

One of my favorite cards in the deck is still Remand. Whenever I get to use it, it’s awesome. For a deck based on exploiting tempo, I really don’t see where Remand can be bad. For the next tournament, I will try to fit in at least one more.

Long story short, people keep telling me to play UB Fish, and I’m not above taking requests. Plus, Dark Confidant and Ninja make me happy.

List, pay, chat, pair-off, shuffle, cut, etc.

There were all of nine people at the tournament—a disappointing turnout, but it was a talented field.

Round One – Marcus playing SuiBlack

Marcus seems like a decent guy, just out to have fun. I was worried initially because if he has a lot of creatures or removal, I could be in trouble.

His opening gambit of Ritual, Night’s Whisper, Dark Ritual, Null Rod, Sarcomancy in game one, was a lot less frightening than one that ended with Phyrexian Negator or even Hypnotic Specter. I responded with Martyr of Frost, whee! We shared real Type 2 action trading beats over the next eight turns, but his Dauthi Horror would have been a lot more threatening if it hadn’t had shadow. Once the tokens were gone from his two Sarcomancies, it was all over but the cryin’.

Game two was one of those ones that has you empathizing your opponent’s bad fortune while inside you’re jumping for joy. He mulliganed to five and conceded on turn three after I Stripped his first swamp. His first land would have shown up three turns later.

I wished him luck and went to watch other games.

Match 1-0
Games 2-0

After a little while, Dave called me over and asked how long rounds usually last.

“You know, there’s only nine people,” I said. “We probably don’t have to worry about timing the rounds.”

Never again, okay.

It was an interesting experiment, and it did reduce the occurrence of draws (obviously), but some rounds took a loooooooong time. A really long time. I won’t name any names because I’m sure everyone who cares already knows who was involved, but some of the hot Drain-on-Drain action took close to two hours.

Our little, nine-person, four-round tournament took nine hours to finish.

Everyone who’s been reading the Star City forums (robertdigregorio what!) and considering the average length of Vintage games being 4.5 turns, just know that in this tournament, the average length was much longer.

Anyway, round two starts promptly after a little more than an hour.

Round 2 – Ray playing Gro-a-Tog 2k7

Ray came all the way from Michigan to play, and that was awesome. I didn’t play against him last time, but he stonefacedly Trickbound Justin’s Tendrils kill.

In Game one, Ray dropped an early Nimble Mongoose, so I was immediately thinking some version of Threshold or some kind of Fish. Then I see an Underground Sea and realize he’s playing Gro. Regardless, game one did not go well for me. He sent one of my Bobs farming while the other one revealed a Force of Will off the top for an open-handed slap in the face. My notes indicate that I was digging for answers (probably a blocker) in the end—“Remand, T-Walk, pray.” It didn’t work.

Game two went really well, though. I Time Walked first turn into a three-mana start and served with the double Martyr of Frost beatdown. Eventually my little guys were supplemented by Withered Wretch and Ninja, while a Wasteland and a Strip Mine kept him without mana for answers (or anything, really). One of the Martyrs did its job and sacrificed himself to stop his Brainstorm and keep him from finding mana. He conceded to me with one lone Island in play.

Ray walked away with the win in game three, though, with a nice, early Tinker for Darksteel Colossus. “Summon random win condition,” I believe he called it. His Engineered Plague against Humans put a damper on my and my Dark Confidants’ spirits and didn’t help my two-turn dig for answers. No bounce, no Edicts, no love for the big man. Oh well. Good games, Ray—we’ll meet again…

Matches 1-1
Games 3-2

Sometime after this match, I saw Dave was doing a bit of tinkering with my pet deck, the one I showed him, Easter Tendrils. Unfortunately, he had gone and Daved it all up and tried to make it landless. So pretty much, it’s bad Meandeck Tendrils that can’t play its Helms of Awakening through Force of Will and win.

Dude, seriously, I know more about that deck than anyone else I know. Someday I’ll have the balls to play it at a Mox tourney.

Just you wait and see.

Anyway, we get ready for…

Round 3 – Lyle playing his new favorite URBana Fish

Lyle and I have played against each other quite a few times now, which sort of worries me since he always claims himself to be a terrible player. If he’s that bad and we get matched up frequently… well, I’d rather not think about it. Anyway, he’s a pretty cool guy, and I appreciate that he once he lost six Mana Crypt flips in a row to me.

Pretty much, game one was just both of us in beatdown mode, but he mulled to five. Pre-sideboard, though, I think my creatures might be just as big as his, so trades are all one for one. His Gorilla Shamans and Magi of the Unseen squared off against my Dark Confidant and Withered Wretch, and my guys came out on top. I’ll admit that Dark Confidant was especially kind to me in this game.

Games two and three are complete blowouts because his sideboard is better able to handle my deck than my sideboard is to handle his. I’ll sum them up together, because the results were largely the same. Essentially, we both got some early creatures and tried to set up some sort of tempo, but his Fire Imps trumped all of my creatures at least once. Wretch, Bob, Knight and Ninja all die to Fire Imp, a lousy common from Portal.

Poop.

Even the Black Knight I Demonic Consulted for in game three got canned.

It really makes me want to sideboard Nekrataal or something. Maybe I go back to Plagued Rusalka? Trading one for one when your opponent is trading two for one just doesn’t work in the long run. If only Plaguebearer’s ability was just slightly cheaper.

My notes on game three include, “Fire Imp = Okay.” He is.

Matches 1-2
Games 4-4

I’m pretty sure this was the round that had a Tog toting Twaun playing against Gifts. This match took close to two hours and could have been ended favorably and quickly by the Gifts player in game two, who had a clear shot at Tendrils combo but used Vampiric Tutor to get Tendrils instead of Demonic. Then, after playing Gifts for Recoup and mana, he probably could have Recouped Demonic Tutor to get Darksteel Colossus and played it on the same turn at the low, low cost of 17 mana.

Later, he misplayed his two Tormod’s Crypts against Twaun’s Psychatog, lost that game, and ended up taking the draw in game three, afraid a loss would put him out of the finals.

Ah well, watching Magic is fun too.

I think I ate my sandwich and Oreos that round. Lunch is tech.

Round 4 – JR playing Megaman

JR’s a pretty cool guy who appreciates a good Thurman burger. He’s a good player too. He’s done great things with Bomberman, most notably adding Merchant Scroll. His secret weapon is Trinket Mage for Lotus, Merchant Scroll for Recall, Recall. That seems pretty good.

I’d never played against Bomberman with Fish, but I have a good matchup against Drains, so I was optimistic.

In game one, things started out rather auspiciously. He mulliganed, and I Duressed him; eventually his hand is empty. Empty! He drew out of it. I draw a bunch of lands. Are you kidding me?! It was disgusting. Looks like I attacked three times from my notes, but a couple of those could be fetchlands.

Games two and three, I jumped out with the upper hand and first turn Planar Void to slow down his combo. With that out of the way, all I had to do is keep him off of Salvagers, better known as “Moat.” I mustered the troops, and JR scooped to double Ninjas and a fistful of counters and hate. No problem.

Planar Void showed up in game three as well, but JR really didn’t have mana, so it didn’t matter. Again, I had double Ninja and put him away pretty easily. It looks like I was attacking with a lot of creatures, because his life went from 20 to 14 to 10 to 6. I’m not sure how I managed that, exactly, but I’ll take it.

Matches 2-2
Games 6-5

So, it was a fairly average tournament performance. I like UB Fish a lot, but I agree with Feinstein that Fish isn’t a deck for small tournaments. Its consistency will carry it through a longer tourney, especially if it gets out of the mire of random aggro that usually pools at the bottom, but it can live and die on its matchups and draws. Since it can’t do anything terribly broken, it’s harder to recover.

I notice there’s a direct correlation between games where I have success and games where I have Dark Confidant or Ninja for an extended period of time. My deck has a lot of answers as long as I draw them, right? Isn’t Magic all about drawing the cards? And my ways of drawing cards just happen to swing for two.

Really, though, there aren’t a lot of changes I would make to the ol’ Fish list. Martyr of Frost is proven and playable and has performed well even though people are sometimes incredulous that it’s in any deck. Dark Confidant reveals Force of Will every once in a while, but I blow it off—it’s worth it. Remand might go to a three or four of, like I said before, but I don’t know what I would cut. Demonic Consultation will take a little more testing, but I’m optimistic.

If I were attending this tournament with what I know now, I’d probably try to get some Mishra’s Factories into the maindeck somehow (drop a Wasteland, a fetchland, and an Island?), or at least test them. The problem is that my cards are pretty thick on color, especially Withered Wretch, and I’m not sure that the build could handle losing colored mana. The extra creatures, especially ones that don’t die to 2/2s could help a lot, though.

Also, apparently, no need for Energy Fluxes in the sideboard—more creature killers!

Anyway, the top-four broke off as Matt Hazard playing UW Fish, Ray Kehr playing Gro-A-Tog, Anthony Michaels playing Tog 2k7, and Brendon McGrail playing Gifts.

Ray beat Brendon and Twaun beat Matt in the semi-finals, and Ray beat Twaun for the Mox. Better yet, Dave was awesome enough to give out the Sapphire anyway. It was a nice one too—great looking front, just some whiting on the back.

All in all, it was awesome. Great players—for such a small turnout, the competition was really stiff.

There will be other tournaments, of course. We just have to wait until after the holidays.

I hope I make it.

Oh, and by the way, the Lots of Shrimp at Diana’s has as many shrimp as advertised: lots.