One Score And Two for the Power 9

So the Star City Power Nine Weekend of Awesome Fun-Times and Magical Card Slinging has finally come to an end. I’m lying on the couch in my apartment in Columbus, and I’m exhausted.

The fun, as promised, was constant. Here’s the list of events as I recall them:

1. Meeting at Thurman’s for feastiality and the pretournament meal

Angel and Juan ordered the Thurmanator, and surprisingly, Angel finished his. Ray Kehr from Michigan got his first Thurmanburger, but couldn’t handle the mushrooms.

I accidentally ordered the Jaeger Burger instead of the A1 Burger. It was still good, but trying to protect yourself from the open-faced sandwich punch is a true challenge that I won’t undertake again anytime soon.

2. Riding to Indianapolis in the Trogvan

We actually had a three-car caravan: Trogvan, Yangmobile, and Blazering the Funk with Randal J. Cunningham. In the Trogvan, Nam and Angel playtested the GAT vs. Stax matchup on the folded down middle seat, while Trogon and I talked tech up front.

I also found out that Trogdon has an insane amount of Magic cards. He said that, with Star City offering to buy commons at a rate of $5 per thousand, he probably has around $800 worth of cards. That’s 160,000 commons, or 40 times my collection.

Trogdon and Yang are serious collectors.

3. Checking in at the Indianapolis Hilton

If Paris Hilton had a mildly retarded younger brother, I bet his name would be Indianapolis.

Anyway, the hotel was awesome. Thanks to Randal for doing all the work for us on that front.

4. Finding ice with the Late JC

Since Nam had brought two 18-packs of beer and we had hijacked one for our room as well, we obviously had to find some ice to cool them down.

Chapple and I had to go to three different floors before we could finally get enough ice to fill a trashbag and, as a result, our sink. Nothing especially exciting happened, it was just kind of funny that we had to get ice.

5. Playtesting against the Late JC

While we waited for people to get settled, Josh Chapple and I played some URPhid vs. UW Moxie Fish. Red cards kill Moxie Fish apparently. Fire & Ice, Flametongue Kavu, even Magus of the Moon are all really good against me. My only hope is to draw, play, and successfully resolve Sword of Fire and Ice and still have an active creature.

Ugh. Bad mojo for tomorrow, but that’s okay, and at least we had icy cold beers

We also took some time to check out everyone’s new proxies. Randal got his Mishra’s Workshops from me, so he could use them the next day in Monobrown MUD, and Ray has some really nice Mox proxies. Really, really awesome.

6. Finding out how much you can drink in a half hour

After playtesting for a couple of hours, we decided to go out as a group and get a beer or two at a bar. Unfortunately, none of us really knew where we were or which direction to go to find said beers.

We ended up at an off-track betting parlor where they had $2.50 drafts, who would be closing at midnight, a few minutes after we got there. That seemed pretty good, especially since we didn’t really want to stay up too late, and I ended up having two beers and two shots anyway.

Juan and I talked about my sideboard options too. He’d played UW Fish before, so he seemed to be a good resource. I was trying to decide whether it was worth corrupting my board with Leyline of Singularity even though it only had application against Ichorid and Flash. I think in the end he said it was worth it, but he could see where my reservation came from.

I decided against Leylines. Here’s what I went with:

3x Waterfront Bouncer
3x Pithing Needle
3x Kataki, War’s Wage
2x Umezawa’s Jitte
2x Sword of Fire and Ice
2x Engineered Explosives

7. Playtesting against Ray

After returning from the bar, there were a few more beers to be had and cards to be slung.

Ray played a Tidespout Tyrant Oath list and I played Fish, and he stomped me. In all fairness, he had Oath by second turn both games, and in the second game he had Simic Sky Swallower, a card I have no answers for. It seemed like a pretty good deck, though, and could be worth a look.

Too bad Ray didn’t fare too well with it in Saturday’s tournament.

8. Sleeping and waking

I slept the sleep of a dead man for almost six hours (okay, probably closer to five), before Jerry Yang called at 7:30 to see if we wanted to go to breakfast.

So I dragged myself out of bed and somehow snuck into the shower to rinse off and feel better. Plus, who wants to be the smelly gamer? Not me, that’s for sure.

Our room got itself together, packed up, and headed for the other room, where we waited for a couple more showers before heading out to load up the cars and go to breakfast.

9. Einstein Bros. breakfast

Einstein Bros. bagels are okay. I had a ham, egg, and Swiss sandwich on a potato bagel. Then they suckered me into buying an orange juice because the size of the cups was hidden in ice. Also my banana was bruised, literally.

Matt Hazard caught up with us at Einstein as well. He and I walked to the Convention Center with Angel, while the rest of our group waited on some other dining gamers at Steak ‘n’ Shake.

10. Registration at the Indiana Convention Center

The Indiana Convention Center is a huge place, that is apparently filled to capacity when GenCon is in town. GenCon brings more than 100,000 gamers; Star City filled the White River Ballroom with 130 Magic players and another 100 or so Yu-Gi-Oh and World of Warcraft players. That’s pretty good.

Anyway, I ponied up my $30 and turned in this decklist (you’ve already seen the sideboard):

3x Tundra
3x Flooded Strand
2x Polluted Delta
4x Wasteland
1x Strip Mine
1x Plains
2x Island
5x Moxen
1x Black Lotus
1x Lotus Petal

4x Aven Mindcensor
4x Meddling Mage
4x Martyr of Frost
4x Ninja of the Deep Hours
3x Jotun Grunt

4x Brainstorm
4x Force of Will
4x Stifle
4x Swords to Plowshares
1x Time Walk
1x Ancestral Recall

That’s the same list I’ve been playing and writing about for a couple of weeks now. I’m still pretty pleased with it. There are a few adjustments that can maybe be made, but I’ll get into those at another time. Basically, this was the girl who brung me, so to speak.

11. Round 1 – Juan – Goblins

I sat down across from a familiar-looking chap who presented a familiar looking deck. Dammit, I hate playing against friends in the first round. We decided to play it out anyway. My feeling now is that we probably should have ID’d, but nobody really wants to do that either.

Whatever.

In game one, he opens with an Aether Vial, which I Force of Will. Martyr of Frost hits board opposite a Mogg Fantastic. Marty and the Mogg let us trade beats, but mine turns out to be a Ninja! Ninja dies to the Goblin, of course. Then Jotun Grunt dies to Pyrokinesis. He was running out of cards and baited me into countering Aether Vial before running out Goblin Fact or Fiction, better known as Ringleader. Juan’s first Piledriver took up farming, but my Plains turned into a Strip Mine, which was really bad for me since I stopped being able to play creatures. I died soon afterward.

Game two Juan mulliganed and I got to play Ancestral Recall off a Lotus Petal. It was to begin the first of very much mana flooding. I got to play Ancestral thanks to Jotun Grunt and some fetchlands, and I played Brainstorm as well. Nothing. By the end of the game I had four moxes but nothing especially effective in play. Though I was able to remove a Goblin Lackey and a Goblin Warchief with Swords to Plowshares, Juan’s threats finally overwhelmed my defenses.

Match Record – 0-1-0
Game Record – 0-2-0

12. Round 2 – Danny - Bomberman

I think I’ve played against Danny before, at Becker’s tournament probably, but I’m a little too tired right now to get my old Moleskine and check. Anyway, he’s pretty friendly and talkative, so the match was pleasant, but he was also somewhat slow and deliberate.

Danny won the roll and led with Black Lotus in game one, but it met Force of Will. Not knowing at this point what he was playing, I was hoping that would be enough to wreck his day. Unfortunately he was able to play two Trinket Mages to slow my offence and eventually double block a Grunt, so I wasn’t making any headway against him. I countered his first Auriok Salvagers, but when he ran his second Salvagers into a Swords to Plowshares mid-combo, he used the Force and won the game.

I guess I should have used that Jotun Grunt better. Next time.

Game two he mulliganed twice and I had everything in my opener: Pithing Needle for Salvagers, and Meddling Mage for Trinket Mage. Umezawa’s Jitte and my opponent’s own Mana Crypt took it home in quick fashion.

Danny mulliganed again in game three and opened with a land before passing. I opened with a Martyr that turned out to be a well disguised assassin of Japanese descent. The card advantage carried me forward, eventually digging me into a Sword of Fire and Ice that won me the day on the fourth turn of extras.

After the match, my opponent pointed out that our first game had taken more than a half hour: “I didn’t think that you’d be able to kill me twice in fifteen minutes playing Fish.” I guess I showed him. Then I wished him luck.

Match Record – 1-1-0
Game Record – 2-3-0

13. Round 3 – Nick – Ichorid

Before I sat down, Nick said something to his friend about having never been able to find a Bazaar in the first two rounds. I figured that was premonition enough for me that I wasn’t going to win this round.

After I sat down, I was hit with a wave of gamer stink that hit, I think, from my left side. Honestly, the “smelly gamer” isn’t a stereotype I enjoy perpetuating, but sometimes it perpetuates itself. Take a dang shower.

Game one Nick shuffled and Serum Powdered and Serum Powdered and mulliganed and mulliganed and mulliganed and Serum Powdered and Serum Powdered and kept a two- card hand with a Leyline in it. Leyline doesn’t do much to me but shut off my own graveyard from Grunts. Marty, Birdman, and Marty II took it all the way. Nice.

And by nice, I mean lucky.

He found Bazaar after one regular mulligan in game two and played around a Jotun Grunt to win the game. Three Ichorids, two Narcomoebas, and a Dryad Arbor were enough to do the Dread Return thing and make a bunch of zombie tokens as a result. Ugh.

Nick had the misfortune of mulling twice to five and Powdering his two Flame Kin Zealots away in game three. I opened with Island and Stifled his first Bazaar activation. Turn two Jotun Grunt to kept him off dredging and a Waterfront Bouncer in case he got a Dread Return targets on the board. I used the Bouncer on zombies to get damage through, finally found a Wasteland, and won the game.

Wow. How lucky. I beat the deck I had basically written off as a match loss before the tournament. Here’s how I boarded, and I think it actually turned out pretty well:

-4 Aven Mindcensor
-1 Time Walk
-1 Lotus Petal
-1 Martyr of Frost
-1 Ninja of the Deep Hours
+3 Waterfront Bouncer
+2 Engineered Explosives
+3 Pithing Needle

Waterfront Bouncers for the game enders, Engineered Explosives for tokens, and Pithing Needles for Bazaar. The Waterfront Bouncers might not actually be necessary (tokens still get Flame Kin Zealot’s bonuses once he comes into play), but they’re decidedly better against a deck with no fetching than Mindcensors. They’re cheaper and they pitch to Force of Will.

Martyr of Frost might actually be better in the deck because they’re the one creature that sacs itself to remove Bridges if necessary, but it’s really not made that way and is hard to use for that purpose.

I’m going to have a bit of an Ichorid review in an upcoming blog, but that’s enough for now, I’m sure.

Match Record – 2-1-0
Game Record – 4-4-0

14. Round 4 – Matt – GAT

Matt greeted me like we’ve played against me before, but I can’t recall when. Going back through my blog, I can’t find reference to him. Oh well, he’s a nice guy and a lot of fun as an opponent, and I have seen him around before. He told me his deck was the typical Menendian GATr, but that he’d made a couple of changes, especially in the sideboard. This was the matchup I’d been looking for.

He opened turn one with a Tropical Island, which he uses to Opt when I Waste it. I catch his first Fetchland with Stifle too, off of Lotus Petal. After that, it’s all but done. I put a Mage on Brainstorm, trying to keep him from digging. Next turn I Mage Dryad too. The Mages and a Mindcensor knock him to three, and he breaks Lotus to manaburn and die.

In game two, I Forced his turn one Dryad while he countered my Waterfront Bouncer tech. I got to keep my Meddling Mage on Gush, though. Keeping him off of lands would have been impossible at this point anyway. He played a Psychatog and knocked me down to 15 with an attack, then got another Dryad onboard, growing it once with a Brainstorm, but his hand was down to one card, a land from Gush.

He played a land and swung with Dryad and Tog, no doubt expecting to either get through with both or grow the Dryad in response to blocking. Oh, I blocked. When he played Vampiric Tutor to grow, I had a choice to either Stifle the trigger and trade or to play Aven Mindcensor and stop the tutor. I traded creatures and sent Tog to the paddies next turn. Mage, Birdman, and a second Waterfront Bouncer took it home with a Jitte.

Match Record – 3-1-0
Game Record – 6-4-0

15. Round 5 – Rhyno – UR Landstill

Ryan “Rhyno” Spindler was my last opponent at the RIW tournament, we had a heated battle between UR Spaceman Slaver and UW Moxie Fish. He’s an awesome opponent. Not only a great player, but enthusiastic and friendly as well. He told me while we were playing that he was thrilled to have had such success with UR Landstill in Vintage, as that’s his favorite deck of all time. Things did not go well for me, but I’m glad he was having fun.

Since I didn’t know what he was playing on turn one, I was of course hoping to take him out of the game early by Stifling his first fetchland. He needed it badly enough to Force of Will it, then he dropped Standstill. We played draw-go for a turn, then I opened up with a Jotun Grunt, when he responded with Mana Drain, I Forced, but he Forced again. Oh well. He protected his Mishra’s Factory from harm with another Force of Will (this time on Swords to Plowshares, again played through Standstill), and he Stifled a Wasteland. I couldn’t get another creature to stick and lost in two-damage increments to the Factory.

Game two saw him play Standstill three times and Ancestral. He had creature removal coming out his ears and it was diverse enough that Meddling Mage was useless. He killed the one on Fire & Ice with a Flametongue Kavu, the one on Flametongue Kavu with Sudden Shock, and the second one on Flametongue Kavu with Force of Will. I managed to get Jitte to stick, and even equipped a Martyr, but it was not enough. Card advantage definitely won this game; I was behind the entire time.

One more loss and I’m out!

Match Record – 3-2-0
Game Record – 6-6-0

17. Trading to get Smokestacks and Gemstone Mines

Since I’ve been playing TranStax as part of my testing gauntlet and have been enjoying it so much, I figured it was about time I took it out of 20 proxy range and put it closer to 10 proxy range. So I turned in a Pact of Negation, a Korlash, two Loxodon Hierarchs and some cash to get Stacks and Mines. Now all I need are five moxen, a Lotus, a Recall, four Workshops, and a Bazaar.

17. Round 6 – Troy – Mono-Red Control

It seemed to me early on that Troy was a little out of his element, and when I asked, he said that this was his first ever tournament. Not bad, I thought. He was friendly, polite, and excited to be competing well, a fine addition to the Vintage tournament scene, I thought.

In game one, we both mulliganed. I opened with a first turn Martyr of Frost; he matched with a Mox Monkey. We traded beats for a while, and he dropped a Magus of the Moon, fortunately, I had been guessing this was Stax and had gotten nothing but basics into play so far. We traded beats some more, and he eventually ran out. I’m not sure what menagerie finally did him in, but I know he suspected I was playing Bomberman as he put a Pithing Needle on Auriok Salvagers.

Still suspecting Stax, I brought in Kataki but I don’t remember what else. Good thing, though. He opened with Mox Monkey again and dropped a Pyrostatic Pillar. I played Kataki and he dropped another Pillar. We traded beats like that all game: Monkey took one; Kataki took two, somewhat unfairly. I had a fistful of counters and removal depending on what he did, but it never came—we just discarded every turn. He lost, rather uneventfully, with me at eight life right behind him.

Like I said, though, he was a nice guy. I asked him where he was from (Bardstown, Kentucky, Bourbon Capital of the World) and how far that was from Columbus. Then I put him in touch with Exton, who’s also from Kentucky and who comes up for Meandeck Tournaments. I hope we see him there.

Oh, also, I told him he should show his deck to Mark Trogdon.

Match Record – 4-2-0
Game Record – 8-6-0

18. Demolishing a bag of chips

By this point, I was starving. Breakfast had been seven hours ago, and all I’d had since then was my usual apple. My new best friend Randal was there with a bag of TGI Friday’s Potato Skin chips, and I’m pretty sure I ate 90% of it. Sure they made me really thirsty, and my mouth kind of tasted like a garbage truck, but I was hungry and they were worth it. Thanks Randal!

19. Round 7 – Brandon – Ichorid

Oh no, not again.

Brandon had no trouble finding Bazaar against me, even though he Serum Powdered to begin all three games. As he dredged and Bazaared his way to glory in game one, though, I noticed something odd. No Cabal Therapies? Really? I wondered how he possibly made it that far. To tell the truth, I’m not even sure he had a sideboard. Without most of the control, though, the deck was just packed with combo. Even when I Forced Dread Return in game one, he had another to back it up.

Game two, I boarded as I did above and led with a turn one Pithing Needle on Bazaar. That was pretty much all the time I needed, though I put a Meddling Mage on Ancient Grudge and a Waterfront Bouncer out for good measure. Jotun Grunt was just good game for me.

Frustrated at having to play against such a stupid deck again, I bonked in game three and didn’t counter a Chalice of the Void that I should have. I had a Jet in hand, which was reason enough, but my first draw was the Emerald. Since I don’t have the mana, my threats come too late. He got all four Bridges into the yard and ran me over.

I guess my gamble against Ichorid not being prevalent did not work out. I think a lot of locals and new Vintage players brought Ichorid just because it’s so easy to build and relatively easy to play.

That’s cool I guess.

What’s really odd is that I faced only one deck running Gush all day. I guess that’s what happens when you try to claw your way out of the losers bracket.

20. Dining with friends

We were all starved by that point, but there was some hesitation on going to dinner since Ray had just gotten into a TSB draft, Trogdon was still embroiled in a pivotal game three against Menendian in the top four of an Imperial Seal tourney, and everyone else had just Cube Drafted. It didn’t take long for everyone to realize what the score was and head over to The Ram for food, though.

I think there were three defining moments for me at dinner:

First, our waitron got changed from the lovely Stephanie to a big black man named Nate. Nate said to me, “You belong to me now!” and I was afraid.

Second, we had some scintillating debate and conversation about Sandwich Punch. Is a blob of ketchup on top of the sandwich bun considered a guard or a condiment? If you pierce the sandwich with a French fry or a pickle spear, is that a guard or part of the sandwich? If you describe the game to your waitron and get them to declare themselves “In,” can they go up to someone and punch their unprotected sandwich?

Also part of this conversation was debate on the Sandwich Punch expansion pack, Acts of Trog. Basically an Act of Trog would occur only when Mark Trogdon (who is not in the game, so don’t punch his sandwich) takes the guard off your sandwich and eats it.

As an example, if I put a potato chip on top of my Thurmanburger and then go to the bathroom to rinse previous Thurmanburger off, and while I’m gone Mark Trogdon eats the potato chip, then my burger is thus unguarded and open for fisting. This process has not been made canon yet, but it can be. Let me know if you think this is acceptable or not.

Third, a short play:

Lovely Stephanie: Can I get you guys anything more?
Twaun: Yeah! I was thinking I might order a drink.
Lovely Stephanie: Sure!
Twaun: I’d like a Melon Squeeze.
Lovely Stephanie: No problem!
Twaun: [Puts his hands up to squeeze the melons.]
Lovely Stephanie: [Knocks his hands away.] You’re terrible!

No, really, she was totally cool with it, even though Twaun was totally expecting to get the glasses slapped right off his face.

So yeah, dinner was good.

21. Heading for home

After dinner, we all got in our respective cars and drove home. Well, actually Twaun skied home, but whatever. The talk was about how badly we all got wrecked at SCG and how Gush is a piece of crap and needs to die.

The most apt comparison of our day was that Team Ohio was like the American soldiers at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan. Sure, some of us made it up the beach a ways, but most of us got taken down just after hitting the sand. I was like that soldier who gets shot in the helmet, takes his helmet off to see what happened, and then gets shot in the head. I think the bullet was Ichorid.

I’m sure there was some other good conversation too, but I forget most of it now. It was late and I was tired.

22. Getting to Columbus

It was decided around Springfield that everyone would rather stay in Columbus over night than continue driving back to Randal’s house in Elyria, then back to Twaun’s house in Toledo, then back to Ray’s house in Michigan, so the plan was enacted.

When we got into Columbus, Twaun and the Late JC went to go get beers, while the rest of us watched Snatch. I hadn’t seen that movie in a long time and had forgotten how good it is.

More Magic was played and beers were drunk, but at 2:30, I had to crash. Star City Indianapolis was done, and so was I. Thank goodness.

All there is now is to wait for Star City Chicago, which was announced by fliers at every table at the tournament. November 10 and 11 (two days!)—mark your calendars. It will be even more amazing.

I’m in! Who’s coming with me?