INTRODUCTION GOES HERE
(I’m playing the current Matt Elias list of the time (Summer 2010), the mana version with Leyline of Sanctity in the board, Breakthrough’s main. I’ve never played dredge before, and have goldfished the deck about 3 times. Dan Royde is furious that i’m playing a format I don’t know with a deck I’ve never played, hence the title of this report).
Round 1 – Kevin Rogers (Tezz):
Kevin is one of the Irish players I’ve seen at previous Vintage events at GB Nats, who has flown over very early this morning just for this event, and is heading back first thing tomorrow – that’s dedicaton for you! After greeting one another, I explain I’m pretty new to the deck and format, and apologise in advance if I take a little time than would be expected over my plays. Kevin very kindly tells me not to worry about it, and we carefully shuffle each other’s decks. “You can riffle it if you want, I’m just not that good at it.” Neither am I, so I just do a few mash and side shuffles before winning the die roll. Some would have you believe this means i’ve won the game already, but despite my relative naivety, I know this is just an advantage rather than an auto-win. I’m anxious about mulligan decisions with the deck, but the first hand I see is very easy to send back – no Bazaar, no dredgers, no Breakthrough. We shuffle again, then I draw 6, and Kevin is a little upset to say he’s accidentally drawn 7 again. I feel a bit guilty for it, but do what I know is the right thing and call a judge over, who curiously takes 2 random cards from Kevin’s hand of 7 and shuffles them into his library. I say curiously because I was sure the ruling was a forced full mulligan to 5, but whatever. Both our hands are still bad (Kevin has had his mana sources removed), and I mulligan down to 5 while Kevin goes to a shaky 3 or 4, I forget exactly.
Of course, I then make a misplay on the very first turn of the tournament. I play Lion’s Eye Diamond which resolves, then announce Breakthrough with X = 0, and pop the Diamond to pay for it and discard my hand, which includes a dredger, before drawing. “You can’t do that,” comes a chorus of hardened vintage players around me, and I feel very foolish as I look across a couple tables at Mike, who looks back confused, as he’d earlier told me this was a good line of play. A judge is called, and explains the errata that mans this is no longer possible, and backs the game up. I then look back at my hand, at the other 3 cards and realise there was a strictly better line of play anyway. Nice work, Dan! I play the LED, then an Undiscovered paradise, before a Breakthrough for 0 off the land, cracking the LED for “I dunno, umm, blue?” in response (I later realised this could be for a Deep Analysis), and discarding my hand. I dredge into another dredger and a Bloodghast, before passing the turn. Kevin’s hand has a mox and a Sensei’s Diving Top, which he plays. I then spend a couple turns dredging in my draw step and attacking him with free men before making some tokens and killing him from 8 on turn 4 or 5, as he spun and flipped his top to try and get some mana and get back into the game. I feel bad for the forced mulligan and my slow and sloppy play, but Kevin again tells me not to worry – “You were grand!”
I sideboard as written on my scrap of paper, then keep a solid hand on the draw, which includes a Bazaar, Cephalid Colosseum, dredgers and Breakthrough. Kevin plays some mana and passes, then I play and activate my Bazaar into another dredger and a Cabal Therapy, which I discard with the 2 highest value dredge cards. Kevin plays a Bob (I think),then I Bazaar dredge in upkeep and dredge in my draw step into some Narcomoeba and Bloodghasts. I Therapy him with a Bloodghast and see Jace TMS, Transmute Artifact (which I read for 30 seconds before deciding is utterly irrelevant), Thopter Foundry, and another Bob. Seeing the coast is clear, I play Colosseum returning the Bloodghast, play Breakthrough, dredge into Flame-Kin Zealot and kill him after Dread Returning it and making a load of zombie tokens in the process. My first ever match-win in Vintage!
1-0-0
Round 2 – Jim Brophy (Painter/Grindstone):
Jim also travelled over from Ireland early this morning with Kevin, and shows his love for the format with a pewter pin attached to his jacket that reads “vintage”, below a (presumably black) lotus flower, plus a selection of event logos he has attached to his playmate, including a couple of Bazaar of Moxens. The man clearly means business.
After a warm greeting, I lose the die roll, we joke about being “in the late-game now” while mulliganing to 5 each, and then I quickly lose on turn 2 or 3 to Painter’s Servant plus Grindstone, powered up by fast mana and the missing piece found with an Enlightened Tutor at the end of my turn, having not had a fast start myself. I make a bold move and go off my crib sheet, boarding in 4 Chain of Vapor, 4 Leyline of Sanctity and a Wispmare for a selection of one-of’s. I figure he needs to target me to win with Grindstone, so Leyline must be better than Force of Will, right?
I keep a hand which includes Bazaar, land, 2 Chain of Vapor, that seems like a pretty safe keep, and Jim is happy with his 7 also. He begins the game with a Leyline of the Void in play, then has a land and a Black Lotus on his turn, so my probable misplay of Bazaar turn 1 (rather than land, Chain) turns out to be not the worst decision ever. I draw naturally, play my land and pass the turn back to Jim, who then plays and activates a Helm of Obedience, X=1. I have no idea what it does, and the old-style wording confuses me as I read it, until Jim explains quite succinctly that I’m going to lose unless I do something about its combination with his Leyline. I bounce the Leyline with a Chain in response, put a card into my library, then use Bazaar and find a dredger. I untap and Bazaar again, and dredge once more for my draw step, getting some free Narcomoebas along the way. On his turn Jim replays Leyline and activates the Helm again, then just looks at me and shrugs, expecting he’s won. Being extremely fortunate in my starting hand, I repeat the Chain on Leyline play, then kill him on my own turn. Him having seen the Leyline of Sanctitys I boarded in from my dredges, I check that the wording on each of Helm and Grindstone includes “target player/target opponent” – “Yes, they both say target, your Leylines work!”
Game 3 starts on turn 0, with 2 Leyline of the Void for Jim, and a Leyline of Sanctity for me. “turn 1 is too slow these days”, remarks a passing Tim Willoughby. With all these Leylines in the way and little else in our hands, the game grinds to a near standstill, and I make the first of two fundamental errors: rather than just play mana-producing lands and cast crappy dudes very slowly, I play Bazaar and try to dig for 2 Chains. This is obviously wrong for a number of reasons, chiefly that I am more likely to find multiple castable creatures than I am multiple Chains, and I have more of these than Jim will in his deck, at least one of which (Stinkweed Imp) beats all of his (Goblin Welder and Painter’s Servant) in combat. In addition, if I Chain one of his Leylines, he can copy it to bounce mine, then win straight away if he has some combo pieces in play. Altogether very poor from me. However, after Jim casts and a turn later attacks with the first of several Goblin Welders, I see the error of my ways and copy him in going back to the “world’s worst draft decks” plan. Sadly i’ve already thrown away 3 mana lands and at least two castable creatures (picking up 1 Chain in the process), but better late than never I guess. Several turns later and I’m at 12 to Jim’s 16 (all of it from his City of Brass), with 2 Narcomoeba’s and a Stinkweed Imp on my side to his team of triple Goblin Welder. Here’s my second fundamental error – not attacking with the Narcomoebas. In the midst of playing the most complex and expenive Magic format, I fail to do some draft-level combat math and see that even if he attacks every turn with the team, i’ll easily kill all his guys with Stinkweed Imp before he kills me, and this still applies when he plays a Painter’s Servan the following turn. However, I’ve got the fear now and keep everyone on defense. Time is called, and neither of us can win in the remaining turns, so a draw it is. Friends of each of us point out the combat errors, and raise the issue of Chain of Vapor reading more than just “U: bounce a permanent”, and I feel pretty foolish. Again.
1-0-1
Round 3 – Andrew Smith (Tezz):
My third round opponent is a smiley, mohawk-sporting fellow, who in game 1 has a turn 2 Time Vault and Voltaic Key on the play, each of us having mulliganed once. Possibly the strongest 6 card hand I’ve ever witnessed! Not having seen anything other than artifact mana and this combo, I assume Andrew is playing a Tezz deck, and board according to my sheet.
Game 2, I win on turn 2 with no resistance with a horde of hastey zombies, which I found to be a little odd, as after game 1 Andrew definitely knew what deck I was playing, even mentioning that he had “sideboard cards for Dredge”. He shows me his hand, which has no disruption for me, and a turn 3 or 4 (depending on if he drew another mana source) Vault + Key combo. In game 1 against an unknown opponent this would surely be worth keeping, but once he knew my deck, I found it strange he’d keep something with no interaction.
Game 3, he begins with a Leyline of the Void in play, and fortunately I’ve kept a hand that includes a Chain, along with a City of Brass to play it with, and a Bazaar which is currently not much use. I decide to wait on playing the Chain until I can straight away use Bazaar twice (at his end of turn, then in my own upkeep before he has a chance to replay it), so just draw, play Bazaar, and pass back. On his turn 2, Andrew dumps all but two cards in his hand, playing more mana, then casting Tinker to fetch out an Inkwell Leviathan. I figure if I can get Bazaar going, I can easily create enough chump blockers to win through his giant creature, so this isn’t as scary a situation to be in as many other decks would find it. However, here misplay epically again – on my turn I draw a Cabal Therapy, but intead of playing it to see what is left in his hand, I just say to myself “well he obviously doesn’t have Force”, play my land and pass back to him. Of course, when I then go to Chain his Leyline at the end of his turn, he pitches a blue card to counter it with Force of Will and I lose the game on the spot. Despite recognising my path to victory, I was still far too fearful of taking 14 from the Leviathan before I could get going, and so blew my Chain a turn too early, when I could have made sure it would resolve by playing Cabal Therapy first. So this cost me the game for sure, and again I feel pretty silly.
1-1-1
Round 4 – Simon Cooper (Tendrils):
SEE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KECbCoo6OvI
2-1-1
Round 5 – Ben Lei (MUD):
Ben, a good friend and TGC regular, is feeling awful due to having not taken his medication on time, but doesn’t scoop despite clearly needing to go home and take it. He can’t concentrate at all, and makes some big misplays (like not playing either of the Tormod’s Crypt in his opener g3) that allow me to win.
3-1-1
Round 6 – Calvin Skentelbery (Zoo):
I combo out quickly in game one, then during sideboarding he flips over a Ravenous Trap, so I know exactly what do Cabal Therapy for to clear the way before my “big turn” in g2.
4-1-1
Quarter-Final – Martin Gaught (Oath):
I have never beaten an Oath deck. Ever.
Also he had Oath+Orchard out on turn 1 and turn 2 IIRC.
K.O.’d
