The Long & Winding Road - A Tournament Report?

Saturday, May 8th I played in the Vintage portion of the Philly Open VI. Coming off a tournament where I did well is always awkward for me. For some reason, I’ve really struggled to string together successful back-to-back Vintage tournaments in which I repeated my deck choice from the previous tournament. This is one of the reasons why I’ve switched up my deck choices so often in 2010; at this point I’m not certain whether this is just coincidence / superstition, or something meaningful. For example, I might playtest more by forcing myself to learn and practice with a new deck, rather than being complacent in my results based on the previous tournament; or, I might choose decks that are ahead of the metagame, rather than decks that the meta is already adapting to from previous tournaments.

Because I’m trying to get into “shape” for Grand Prix: DC, I’ve been playing a lot of Standard, as well as working on Legacy for the StarCityGames.com Philly Open weekend; when I haven’t had a chance to test, I tend to default to Dredge (which usually doesn’t work for me, I tend to do well with Dredge when I actively develop it with a purpose in mind) or just play the deck I used most recently. I chose the latter for this tournament, with a few changes from the list I posted here.

I cut a Massacre from the sideboard and all the Dredge hate, and replaced it with 4 Leyline of the Void, 1 Tormod’s Crypt, 1 Ravenous Trap, and 2 Pithing Needle. To make up for the loss of an anti-Fish card, I replaced the Timetwister in the main with a Show and Tell.

Round 1 — Raymond Robillard

The first time I remember seeing Ray was at the StarCityGames.com Boston Open last year. He was playing a game of Magic against someone using the big, oversized cards they used to give away in various places. It was pretty awesome and a nice-sized crowd was watching. It took me a while to recognize him. Here’s what Ray was playing:

Transmute Vault

Raymond Robillard

Test deck on 05-23-2010

Vintage

Creatures (4)

4 Dark Confidant

Planeswalkers (2)

2 Tezzeret the Seeker

Lands (9)

Spells (45)

Sideboard

This is a dedicated Time Vault deck; playing Borderposts with Transmute Artifact is pretty interesting. Ray played the full 10 proxies allowed in this tournament.

The Boston Open was an interesting experience. I started out really hot both days, 5-1 on Saturday with Black/Green Elves and 4-0 Sunday with Painter/Grindstone control… but poor play knocked me out of contention both days. I wrote about those tournaments, here.

When I planned my trip to Boston, I was anticipating a car full of friends, but ended up going with just my friend Jason. We also got off to a much later start than I had planned, and it took around ten hours to get on-site (rather than the expected six hours). Around 7pm, we passed an exit sign that said there was a Pizzeria Uno in one direction, and a Cracker Barrel the other. Jason voted for pizza, but I must’ve read the signs wrong, and when we passed the Cracker Barrel I pulled in, which was fine by me. What I didn’t know was that Jason had never been to Cracker Barrel before.

What you don’t know is that Jason has a gambling, um, hobby. Yes, that’ll do.

If you’ve been to Cracker Barrel, you know that the portion of the building you enter is set up like an old-timey general store rather than a restaurant, and outside is usually a collection of wicker knick-knacks. This obviously threw Jason, as he was hell-bent on betting me that Cracker Barrel was, in fact, not a restaurant at all.

Shortly after that, I was enjoying some awesome pancakes while Jason was eating some kind of… fish… thing.

He chose poorly.

Later in the same trip, Jason would try to bet me that Kurt Warner was older than 40, and alternately that he was the oldest player in the NFL; he also wanted to bet me that the hotel access road we were on was not the correct road, despite the fact that the Holiday Inn sign was clearly visible in the distance. It was a fun trip.

With nothing to do that first night, and the hotel water being infected by fecal contamination, we hit up the hotel bar pretty hard. When the bartender called last call, Jason ordered a six-pack to go… not realizing they were going to charge us the full price for those six beers. Obviously I felt obligated to help drink them given how much that six-pack cost us, which made waking up the next day something of a challenge.

Round 2 — Mike Egan

The last time I played against Mike Egan, he was beating me up at the February NYSE tournament with TPS. I felt pretty confident against this New Yorker as I was wearing a Roy Halladay shirt. Here’s what Mike was playing:

Tezzeret

Mike Egan

Test deck on 05-23-2010

Vintage

Creatures (4)

Planeswalkers (2)

Lands (13)

Spells (41)

Sideboard

The sideboard Tendrils and maindeck Repeals give this Tezzeret deck a very “Dutch” feel. I also love the Seasingers in the sideboard.

There’s a group of New Yorkers that have competed at Blue Bell Vintage events for some time, including Max Brown, Nick Detwiler, Vinny and Raf Forino, Austin Pollack, and others. I’m fortunate to have had the chance to become friends with these guys over the past 18 months, and I think Mike is one of their up-and-comers. He strikes me as a measured and meticulous player, or at least, he has been in our matches. I expect him to have a breakout tournament in the near future.

Mike played ten proxies. He had a real Mox Jet, but had a proxy Sensei’s Divining Top… kids these days, you know what I mean?

Some of you may have read one of my earlier articles, which Nick Detwiler guest-wrote for me. If you haven’t, check it out, here. There was a lot of passion in that article, emotion for the Vintage format and Nick’s weapon of choice at that time, 5Color Stax. In my quest to become the best Vintage player I can be, Nick’s been a huge help, greatly increasing my understanding of Vintage theory, particularly as it relates to Workshop decks. Nick’s done great things for Vintage in New York with his NYSE tournament series, and if you’re at all interested in Vintage and are in the area, you’d do well to stop by in the larger NYSE or smaller NYSE Lite events.

The fact that Nick and I are friends is actually kind of funny, because I was accidentally a huge jerk to him the first time I talked to him.

After a really hot streak in April and May 2009, I started out the June Blue Bell at 1-2, despite doing significant testing and feeling very confident in my deck; in fact, the deck I played at this tournament was a prototype of the style of Oath I’d play later, to great success, in the fall — no Chalice of the Void, no Null Rod, more broken cards, etc. In any case, after three rounds, I was dejectedly chatting about the previous round when I heard Nick say that he was 0-3 on the day. I blurted out something about how the fact that he was 0-3 made me feel a lot better about being 1-2, because at least I was doing better than he was.

What I meant was that it is always refreshing to remember that even great players have off days, but what it sounded like was, “Hello there sir, may I see that wound so that I might pour salt into it, and really rub it in there good, and then punch your grandmother in the face?”

Thankfully, Nick’s a stand-up guy.

For a New Yorker, that is.

Round 3 — John Byrne

I’ve battled against John since he was an awkward, skinny kid entering high school and not the awkward, skinny kid entering college that he is now.

Obviously, I learned little from my Nick Detwiler incident.

I last played against John in a Legacy tournament in March, in which he was playing Dredge and I was playing Miserable Zoo (which should be that deck’s official name, going forward). I got steam-rolled the first game, but won two close games post-sideboard. Or, I just luck-sacked him, if you read the forums. You can read about it, here, and draw your own conclusions.

I knew John was playing Dredge in this tournament as well — here’s his deck:

Ichorid

John Byrne

Test deck on 05-23-2010

Vintage

Creatures (22)

Lands (13)

Spells (25)

Sideboard

John played 10 proxies.

This build has a lot in common with my Dredge deck from the previous Philly Open, and borrows some ideas from the later versions that players like Mark Hornung and Sam Berse have played.

I recently wrote an article about how I think it is sometimes the right call to play a fair deck like Zoo, even in a format which contains the unfair, such as Legacy. Interestingly, I also write a lot about Dredge, especially in Vintage.

In case any of you think I’m always for the fair deck, you should realize that I’m not. I love Vintage Dredge and I think it is one of the most fundamentally unfair and broken decks in Magic’s history. When the slow, resilient build of a deck often wins (or effectively “wins”) on the second turn of the game, you know a deck is busted.

I love everything about Dredge, really. I love how you almost always win game 1. I love the psyche-crushing side effect you get by relentlessly smashing someone in the first game of a match, the defeatist attitude people take toward game one against Dredge decks, how people’s shoulders slump when you Serum Powder and they realize your mulligan to five is not the blessing they thought it was a few seconds earlier. I love the chess game that is sideboarding for post-board games with Dredge. I like putting a bunch of Zombie tokens into play. No, really, I do. I got upset at the Philly Open V when I had more than 20 Zombies in play and only 17 tokens.

One of the more interesting conversations I’ve had about Dredge involved trying to determine what card or cards the DCI could restrict to hurt the deck without crippling it.

Note that I don’t really mind that Dredge is a deck, while acknowledging that the sideboard-warping effect it has on the format can be justifiably frustrating.

A lot of people immediately suggest Bridge from Below, but I’d argue that Dredge as we know it is crippled without Bridge. Narcomoeba is another option, and having that guy restricted would definitely slow the deck by a full turn — although I suspect that a Bloodghast-centric version could recapture some of that loss of speed. Losing Dread Return would get rid of the combo / reanimator aspect of the deck, but Dredge has won Vintage tournaments without Dread Return.

Dredge has also won tournaments without Serum Powder — but that would be my suggestion. I’ve found builds without Serum Powder to be much less consistent, and they tend to be mana versions that use draw spells and are therefore more vulnerable against Workshop decks, and Force of Will. These decks also seem worse to me in post-board games in particular, where you need not only Bazaar or a draw/discard spell plus a dredger, but also colored mana and anti-hate cards on top.

I’m not advocating for the DCI to restrict Serum Powder, mind you, just saying that I think it’d be an interesting choice given the options, and one that doesn’t see significant play in other archetypes.

Round 4 – Chris Panzarella

I don’t know Chris; I don’t believe we’d played before this tournament. He was playing Green/White Beats, a deck that has become decreasingly popular in the less Tezzeret-centric metagame we now inhabit.

Green/White Beats

Chris Panzarella

Test deck on 05-23-2010

Vintage

Creatures (23)

Lands (18)

Spells (19)

Sideboard

Chris played no proxies; he also attributed his deck design to Mark Frias.

Green/White Beats is the ultimate fair deck in the ultimately unfair format of Vintage. Look at that deck, in all of its “Hate Bears Hate You” glory. Go on, bask in its intolerance.

I last played against Green/White Beats at the NYSE V in January, where I had a very cool match against Vincent Forino, which you can read about, here. Previous to that, I’d lost to John Donovan in round 1 of 2009’s Vintage Champs when my Dredge deck malfunctioned in the second game of the match.

When you think about your favorite Magic games of all time, what makes certain games stand out? I think epic comeback games are usually among the most memorable, along with times you top-deck for the win. I know I’ll always remember floating GG2 into my draw step at the Standard Boston Open and hitting the Cloudthresher for the win against Faeries, as well as the Duplicant off the top that let me beat Brad Granberry’s Oath deck in March.

Probably my favorite comeback all-time was against Sligh, with Prison Control, probably in late 2005 / early 2006. My opponent went all-in with Ball Lightning, Lightning Bolt, and double Fireblast for exactly lethal while I had just a Kjeldoran Outpost token and one Plains untapped. I calmly tapped the Plains and played a Swords to Plowshares on the token, staying at one precarious life point. I untapped and drew Gerrard’s Wisdom, immediately recouping ten life, setting me on the comeback path to a game win.

The way these things burn into your memory bank, well, that’s a great explanation for why we play this game.

Round 5 — Bernie Parisi

Bernie was playing almost the same 75 as me, having looked up the deck on a snazzy iPad before the tournament:

Oath

Bernie Parisi

Test deck on 05-23-2010

Vintage

Creatures (3)

Planeswalkers (3)

Lands (15)

Spells (39)

Sideboard

Bernie had one proxy: Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

What do you expect, that card costs like seventy bucks! Just because we’re Vintage players doesn’t make us saps!

I think Ryan Glackin will catch that one.

I’m sure I had talked to Bernie at some point before, but I really got to know him at last year’s GenCon. As it turned out, Bernie, Nick Coss, and I all went 0-2 drop in Vintage Champs, but I think I took it the hardest; my dreams of a triumphant article about the tournament were over before I knew it. Depressed, Nick and Bernie dragged me out to lunch. We settled on a Cuban place, where the service was poor but the food was amazing, and the mojitos were even better. Nick helped me adjust my understanding of events like Grand Prix tournaments and GenCon over the course of that day; instead of viewing the success of the weekend on how I did in tournament play, I started to look at it in terms of the experience as well. Probably the best time I had at this GenCon was hitting up the Cuban place and the dealer’s room with Nick and Bernie.

Particularly memorable to me was playing the “how to play Magic” demo. The best part of this experience by far was the guy that “countered” my Peek by just refusing to let me see his hand.

I suppose the play-set of Show and Tells I snagged for $2 worked out pretty well too.

Round 6 — Joe Pace

This was a fitting way to end the Swiss — a grudge match against Joe Pace. Joe was out for revenge from the close three-game match we played in March, which I covered here.

Joe is buddies with Jeremy Beaver, Chris Materewicz, Dominic DiFebo, and some other solid Vintage players from the Scranton / Wilkes-Barre area of PA. They’ve been on one hell of a run so far in 2010, dominating the team and player of the year standings. I’m one of the few players that’s had success against them, outside of my matches against Chris. He’s smashed me twice with Noble Fish, both times when I was playing Dredge.

Here’s what Joe had sleeved up:

Oath

Joe Pace

Test deck on 05-23-2010

Vintage

Creatures (3)

Planeswalkers (2)

Lands (16)

Spells (40)

Sideboard

Joe had no proxies.

In the spirit of the article to this point, I won’t reveal what happened in our match, except that it ended with one player drawing, over a sequence of draw steps, Gifts Ungiven, then Ancestral Recall, then Time Walk, then a Yawgmoth’s Will called-shot (by Lucas Siow, who was watching the match — “Show me Yawgmoth’s Will, one time!” ). This match was easily the highlight of the day for me, just as the previous match versus Joe was one of my all-time favorites. Honestly, I’d be happy to play Vintage matches against Joe all day, as they’re always close, tense games that highlight everything I love about the format.

There were 41 players in this tournament, so round 6 concluded the Swiss rounds. I had a lot of fun in these rounds, battling against the mirror, Tezzeret, Time Vault combo, Dredge, and Green/White Beats.

So how did I do?

For those who are interested in such things, here’s some info on this tournament. Again, there were 41 competitors.

Proxy Breakdown

No Proxy — 13
1-5 Proxies — 13
6-10 Proxies – 15

Metagame Breakdown

Oath – 9

Tezz – 7

Dredge – 6

Tendrils — 6
(Drain Tendrils – 3, TPS – 3)

Workshops — 4
(MUD – 3, Workshop Aggro – 1)

Noble Fish – 4

Other — 5
(Remora, G/W Beats, Dark Times, Helm Combo, Salvagers)

The Top 8 included Oath of Druids, 2 Drain Tendrils, 2 MUD, Tezzeret, Noble Fish, and TPS. Decks with Tendrils did very well on the day, as did MUD; Drain Tendrils and MUD both placed two of the three players that ran them into the Top 8. Oath, Dredge, and Tezzeret made up over 50% of the players but had only one representative in the Top 8; no Dredge player had more than 7 points.

Stephen Menendian and I both predicted increased success for MUD and Tendrils decks as the metagame continues to evolve, although he likes TPS while I endorse Drain Tendrils. In the lead-up to Vintage Champs 2010, these are definitely some of the strategies to watch.

And for those who think he’s just a flavor of the week, the 6 Blue decks in this Top 8 included a total of 9 copies of Jace, the Mind Sculptor…

Matt Elias
[email protected]
Voltron00x on SCG, TMD, and The Source