Howdy, fellow mages. It's been quite some time since I last posted (3 months as of yesterday), so I am going to attempt to summarize my MTG exploits this summer. In general, I've been pretty busy with work and family, and when combining that with my elevated procrastination skills, it has eaten up all of my time for updating this blog. But the wait is over, and I have prepared a monolithic blog post with hopes of diverting your energy from dissatisfaction with my update frequency to general enthusiasm (or at least I can hope).
Old School in Chicago has really grown. Prior to the start of tournament season (NYSE, Gen Con, Eternal Weekend, etc.), we were seeing anywhere from 6 to 12 people at our weekly Old School night at MTG Card Market. Considering it feels like pulling teeth to get more than 8 people to show up for monthly Vintage (at Xtreme Games on the Wisconsin/Illinois border), this is a real accomplishment.
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| A regular 'ol shindig |
It's impossible to deny the enthusiasm players seem to have for Old School MTG. One of the most surprising things is that there are multiple local players that have bought into Old School who were not already playing Vintage. And I am not just talking about picking up Unsummons and Flying Men, but Power 9 and LOAs! What is even crazier is that some of these players have minimal interest in Vintage, yet can't get enough of turning Juggernauts and Serendib Efreets sideways. I think it's a mixture of nostalgia, casual play environment, and the general "freshness" of playing a format that allows cards like Black Lotus, but skips the Force of Wills, Mental Missteps, and Lodestone Golems. There's nothing like being on the play and casting a turn one Ancestral Recall, knowing that there's nothing your opponent can do to stop its resolution.
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| Looks like a promising turn 1 on the play |
Summer marks the start of the US Vintage tournament season with the three largest events of the year happening. Prior to Vintage Champs moving to Philadelphia, Gen Con hosted the championship and boasted the largest Vintage tournament of the year. I've been attending Gen Con for as long as I can remember, and I can say without a doubt that Pastimes has done a terrible job handling Vintage events every one of those years (at least in my opinion). I feel that you would be hard pressed to find a Vintage player that disagrees.
From prize support to security to the basic mechanics of running events, Pastimes has been a large part of the reason why Vintage at Gen Con hasn't lived up to its potential. Because of this and various other smaller reasons, the US Vintage community was elated when Nick Coss (aka Top Deck Games aka Card Titan) started hosting Vintage and Legacy champs as it's own event, Eternal Weekend, in Philadelphia, PA. Eternal Weekend has been a massive success and grows larger every year (more on this later). While Vintage Champs has moved, there are still large Vintage events at Gen Con, and despite Pastimes's incompetence, these tournaments are large enough to be worth traveling for.
Since 2013, Nick Detwiler has been running the New York Stax Exchange Open (NYSE) to great success. Since Star City Games stopped running "Power Nine" events, this is the only American tournament series to offer a Power 9 draft for the top 8. Just like the SCG P9 events, NYSE is a proxy event and attracts some of the best competitors in all of North America every year. Nick awards prizes up through top 16 as well as door prizes and random giveaways. He has many amazing artists in attendance along with top notch vendors. He even hires private security for the event. This is hands-down my favorite American Vintage event.
NYSE III - 6.27.15
The first event of the summer that I played in was NYSE III. I had been on a hot streak with my URW Mentor-Remora deck, and I planned on playing a variant of it at NYSE. The deck had been doing very well for me with every single performance resulting in a win, top 4, or top 8. Despite what most of the minds in Vintage had been saying about Tinker for BSC (that it was terrible specifically due to the omnipresent Dack Fayden), my deck had great success with it. My figuring was that running main deck Hurkyl's Recall, 2x Dack, and a Jace, the Mind Sculptor as well as just playing smart, I should be able to mitigate opposing Dacks.
The other interesting tech that the deck featured was 4 Scalding Tarns, 4 Volcanic Islands, and 2 Steam Vents in the main deck. This, combined with a basic Mountain and 3 Pulverize in the sideboard allowed me to easily have enough Mountains for alternate-casting Pulverize post-board in Workshop match-ups. Main deck Hurkyl's Recall, Viashino Heretic, and Dack combined with 3 Ingot Chewers in the board added to the Pulverize package to make a pretty excellent Workshop match-up.
What I found in testing was that Viashino Heretic was very important because it was unlikely that an opposing Workshop opponent could deal with both Dack and Heretic, because he can only draw so many Phyrexian Revokers (I use "he" to identify the unknown Workshop opponent, because I have yet to face a female Workshop opponent in 10 years of Vintage, sorry for the generalization). I also discovered that 7 Mountains in the main deck made it nearly impossible to get completely Wastelanded out of them, and I never felt too bad sacrificing 2 to a Pulverize.
Mentor Remora URW (the 61 card wonder) by Danny Friedman
| Business (38) 4 Force of Will 1 Misdirection 3 Mental Misstep 1 Pyroblast 1 Flusterstorm 1 Mana Drain 1 Repeal 1 Hurkyl’s Recall 1 Fire // Ice 3 Mystic Remora 1 Sensei’s Divining Top 1 Ponder 1 Brainstorm 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Time Walk 1 Thirst for Knowledge 2 Dack Fayden 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor 1 Treasure Cruise 2 Dig Through Time 1 Mystical Tutor 1 Merchant Scroll 1 Tinker 1 Blightsteel Colossus 2 Monastery Mentor 2 Snapcaster Mage 1 Viashino Heretic | Mana Sources (23) 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Emerald 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Mana Crypt 1 Sol Ring 1 Tolarian Academy 4 Scalding Tarn 1 Flooded Strand 2 Tundra 4 Volcanic Island 2 Steam Vents 1 Island Sideboard (15) 2 Grafdigger’s Cage 3 Containment Priest 2 Rest in Peace 1 Supreme Verdict 3 Ingot Chewer 3 Pulverize 1 Mountain |
The reason why I concentrated so specifically on the Workshop matchup was that I found it to be nearly un-winnable without the level of hate above. Mystic Remora by itself is enough to have a strong advantage against blue-based strategies, and I found the board above to deal well with Oath, Dredge, and random aggro.
In the end, I was correct about my Workshop matchup, winning 3 out of 4 matches. I lost to Brian DeMars on Workshops to a combination of multiple mulligans (one to 5) and my own slops. If I had won my last match against Vito Picozzo, I would have gotten myself a Bazaar, but no such luck. Either way I had an amazing time at NYSE and can't wait to go back next year.
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| In the process of smashing another Workshop player |
Between NYSE and Gen Con, I had the pleasure to hang out with a ton of friends and play in the Team Serious Invitational in Ann Arbor, MI. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to play so I tried out Blue Moon. I learned that both Mana Drain and Keranos, God of Storms are awesome. Aside from that, I lost to Workshops multiple times and did very poorly with the deck.
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| One of my very few good moments against Workshops |
Despite bombing so hard at the TSI, it was really nice to see so many friends and jam Vintage in an un-air conditioned basement on the hottest day of the year. I was sufficiently drunk by noon and can't remember being hot any time after that, so it all worked out. Duane was awesome to host this as well as give us a place to sleep. Also, Nat Moes made awesome cookies.
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| The most powerful of all the mana cookies |
Gen Con - 7.30.15-8.2.15
I have nothing MTG-related to report from Gen Con. This year, with Eternal Weekend covering my Vintage fix, rather than wasting my time with Pastimes's horribly-run tournaments, I took my fiancé with and just played board games.
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| Jager Bombs in Jaco's honor prior to the Gen Con dance |
We picked up some pretty bad ass games, and I haven't yet had the time to play all of them. One slop was not buying The New Science before it sold out. I'll be picking that one up soon.
Speaking of games, Elise got pretty good at Dominion after Gen Con and beat the shit out of me playing Dominion: Prosperity last night.
Eternal Weekend
Eternal Central Old School Tournament - 8.21.15
While I feel that NYSE has been "Vintage tournament of the year", Eternal Weekend this year was definitely the best overall MTG event I have ever been to. Last year, Jaco ran an awesome 12-person Old School event out of our room and donated all of the prizes. This year he did the same thing, except 56 people registered for it! In the end, only one person no-showed, and because Jaco didn't want there to be a bye, sat the tournament out and just ran it. Nonetheless, a 54-person Old School event is nothing to scoff at, and is only bested in attendance by the past n00bcon (57 players).
You can find coverage here and deck lists/photos here. This is hands-down the best Magic tournament that I have ever been a part of. I can't imagine any event being more fun than this, aside from future Eternal Weekend Old School events (or perhaps a future trip to n00bcon). Unfortunately, my deck didn't perform very well and got me somewhere between 20th and 30th place in the end. I brought a fun pet deck that I had been playing for a month or so - U/R Atog (most of the Atog variants that I have seen are R/G so that they can abuse Berserk).
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| Aside from my "Alpha" Volcanics, every other card that can be Alpha is ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED |
U/R Atog is a really fun deck. The deck abuses cards like unrestricted Mishra's Workshop and Copy Artifact better than any other deck I have played thus far. The deck is a heavy aggro deck and runs Juggernaut, Triskelion, and Atog in multiples to put the pressure on. I recently added Serendib Efreets to combat Moat (along with 2 Boomerang in the sideboard which can also help with City in a Bottle). The Efreets are also creatures that don't die to a Disenchant or Shatter.
The presence of a single Mana Drain makes your opponents live in fear of Counterspells, while Lightning Bolt, Fireball, Icy Manipulator, and Chaos Orb serve as multi-purpose removal. The deck only runs 2 Mishra's Factories and a single Strip Mine (it was unrestricted for this event) to allow room for colored lands. Because of how Copy Artifacts interacts with Mishra's Factory, only running 2 was just fine. The basic Island, Black Lotus, and Mox Sapphire allow casting of Blue Elemental Blast on a resolved Blood Moon in games 2 and 3 (and of course, the Chaos Orb).
One thing you may notice about this Atog build is that it isn't running any Relic Barriers and only 2 Howling Mines. The reason for this is that I found Relic Barrier to not have enough impact on many game states when it showed up without a Howling Mine. This is not a prison deck, and Relic Barrier didn't prove to be impactful enough to justify keeping. Because of this, Howling Mine often became too much of a liability. I kept the list at 2 Howling Mines because I can still tap them down with Icy, and they still serve great utility with Atog, of course. I shared my list with Evan Husney and he also didn't top 8, so it's possible that U/R Atog isn't great. Who knows? It definitely needs more work.
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| Who doesn't love a turn 1 Timetwister on the play? |
Vintage Champs Preliminary Tournament - 8.22.15
Every year, there is a Vintage Prelim that runs during Legacy Champs. I never bother playing in Legacy Champs because I don't think it makes sense for those looking to be successful in the Vintage main event. Here is my figuring – if you play in Legacy Champs, you're up early on Saturday and battling something like 10-15 rounds of Legacy until midnight. If you miss top 8, not only is it a waste, but you are now going to be asleep no earlier than 1AM and have to be up early for Vintage Champs (you also miss out on hanging out with friends and getting dinner). If you do make top 8, you are then awarded a number of byes for Vintage Champs the next day, because Legacy Champs top 8 happens Sunday morning during the first few rounds of Vintage Champs. Making Legacy Champs top 8 is amazing, but once you lose (or win the event), you have to switch gears and jump straight into Vintage Champs. With Vintage Champs being a big event as well (almost 500 players this year!!!!), you then have another 8-10 rounds prior to top 8, and then of course the top 8, which ended somewhere around midnight. I don't see a high likelihood of playing well in Vintage with the type of fatigue you will have by the time you are done playing Legacy. Now if you plan on scrubbing out of Legacy Champs, then you should be fine, but why pay $60 and waste your whole day if you don't intend on doing well? This is the rationale that I employ and why I haven't ever played in Legacy Chaps at Eternal Weekend. ::END RANT::
The above being said, I always play in the Vintage Champs Prelim which starts Saturday afternoon. This event also ends late, but it provides valuable experience for playing in the main Vintage event. The prize for winning is a 2-round bye in the main Vintage event as well as credit on Card Titan's prize wall (more on that later). The first-place prize was extended to 2nd place as well because the event had more than 64 players –in fact, the event attracted 109 players.
Going into Eternal Weekend, I really didn't have an idea of what deck I wanted to play. Mike Solymossy had been spewing about his Moat Control deck on Facebook, and he and I had been talking about it for a few weeks prior to EW. He had the whole thing mostly figured out, but I lent some advice about certain cards and numbers (not that Soly necessarily agreed). Basically, the deck was a hardcore control deck cutting many of the popular 1-cost spells to not only dodge Mental Misstep, but also to make it so you don't have to play Missteps of your own (as a chief use of Misstep is to counter other Missteps). It used Mana Drains as hard non-conditional counters, and finished opponents with Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Vendilion Clique, or Dragonlord Ojutai.
The choice to play Ojutai was specifically to have a win condition that you could tap out to play, but then wouldn't have to worry about protecting until the next attack with it, where your mana sources will be untapped and hopefully you have a Drain or 2 in hand. The inclusion of Moat was amazing because it allowed you to let your opponent's non-flying creatures resolve without putting yourself at risk. The deck takes advantage of versatile removal in the form of Swords to Plowshares, Engineered Explosives, and Wear // Tear.
U/R/W Moat Control by Mike Solymossy (tweaked by Danny Friedman)
| Business (37) 4 Force of Will 2 Mindbreak Trap 3 Flusterstorm 2 Swords to Plowshares 1 Wear // Tear 2 Engineered Explosives 1 Moat 3 Mana Drain 1 Sensei’s Divining Top 1 Brainstorm 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Time Walk 3 Impulse 3 Dack Fayden 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor 4 Dig Through Time 2 Vendilion Clique 1 Dragonlord Ojutai. | Mana Sources (23) 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Emerald 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Sol Ring 4 Scalding Tarn 2 Flooded Strand 3 Tundra 3 Volcanic Island 1 Island 1 Snow-Covered Island 1 Mountain 1 Karakas Sideboard (15) 2 Containment Priest 3 Ingot Chewer 1 Ravenous Trap 1 Wear // Tear 1 Pyroblast 1 Swords to Plowshares 1 Supreme Verdict 1 Shattering Spree 2 Pithing Needle 1 Rest in Peace 1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir |
Surprisingly, the list performed very very well. My only loss in the swiss was round 1 to Josh Potucek who blew me out with Black Lotus into Scab-Clan Berserker (I think that exact play happened G1 and G2). Aside from Josh's aggro deck, I played against 1 U/R/W Mentor-Remora deck, 1 U/G/W Hatebears, and 4 Workshop decks in the swiss. My friend Lee Hillman beat me with his Shops deck, but gave me the win to go grab food (thanks man!).
Some of the highlights from the swiss:
I beat Steve Menendian in 3 awesome games. Game, 1 I out-controlled him on Burning Oath. Game 2 he comboed me out. Game 3 was probably the most hilarious game I played the entire weekend. I don't remember all of the specifics, but here is what I remember:
Steve resolved a turn 1 or 2 Brainstorm or Ancestral Recall (not sure which, but I think it was Ancestral). The three cards he ended up with were Lotus Petal, Necropotence, and Dark Ritual. As you can imagine, if Ancestral resolved, so did Petal, Ritual, Necro (no, I did not have a Mindbreak Trap). Steve then set aside 6 cards with Necro, putting him to 13 life, having either tapped a Mana Confluence/City of Brass. Next turn I lay mana sources and keep up counter magic and pass. On Steve's turn I counter a spell or two and he does nothing else. On my turn, I draw Pithing Needle and play it. Steve Responds with Necro for 9 (putting him to 4 life, keep in mind, he doesn't get these cards until his next end step). Needle resolves and I name Necro (could have named Memory Jar or Black Lotus, but I didn't want him Time Walking and drawing a few cards with Necro – this was probably wrong in retrospect). At this point, i have Karakas, Sol Ring, and two blue duals untapped and pass the turn (I believe it was 2 blue duals, but I could have had FOW and a blue card – sorry, the day is hazy at this point). During Steve's turn, he is forced to tap both a Mana Confluence and a Forbidden Orchard (giving me a Spirit token) to play a Demonic Tutor, which I counter. Steve then moves to his end step at 3 life, to which I respond by tapping the remainder of my mana (Sol Ring and Karakas) to play a Containment Priest. With the 1/1 Sprit and the Containment Priest, I will have enough to kill Steve during my attack step. We move to the end step, Steve looks at his 9 cards from Necro and scoops, making sure to fill out the match slip incorrectly in his favor ;)
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| Good thing the judge caught it! |
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| At this point he had no enchantment removal in his deck |
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| I was either going to deck myself or kill him with his own boredom (the 2 Digs were in my hand) |
After round 7, I was sitting at 4th in standings and ready for the top 8.
Round 1 of the top 8 was against my good friend JR Goldberg on Dragon with Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. Game 1 was a big blowout, with me having Force of Will in my opening hand as well as Swords to Plowshares when he entered his Dragon loop. I won that game (of course making a major slop and playing a Flusterstorm on Animate Dead, stupidly treating it like an Exhume or something of the like). Next game was an equal blowout, with me constantly drawing gas while JR drew nothing. The hilarious highlight was how bad his summoning-sick Jace, Vryn's Prodigy was when I drew my Karakas on my draw step. I must have bounced it 3 times before JR stopped playing it. He scooped the match a few turns later (not sure what the board state was, but I am pretty sure I had a Planeswalker or 2).
My top 4 match was against Obert Chan on Workshops (Metalworker/Staff of Domination). I won the roll and opted to play first. My opening hand had land, Lotus, Jace, and I proceeded to kill Obert with Jace's ultimate ability. That is a first for me against Workshops, and I'll take it.
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| Gotta love main deck Wear // Tear |
Game 3 started off to a good start for me, but Obert turned the tables in a single pivotal turn. In a single turn, where I had a board with 2 Moxen, an Ingot Chewer, a Sol Ring and some amount of lands (hazy at this point), Obert played a Phyrexian Metamorph (which resolved, as I had no counters) copying Ingot Chewer to destroy my Sol Ring. He then played a Ratchet Bomb, blowing it at 0 to destroy my Moxen. Finally, he played his land for the turn, giving him multiple untapped Wastelands, and wasted 2 of my lands. So, in a single turn, I was reduced by 5 permanents, all of which produced mana. Over the next few turns, my opponent drew Workshop, Lodestone, Lodestone and absolutely wrecked me. I remember playing a Dig Through Time and not hitting anything that could save me. And there you go, that is how to lose to Workshops!
Obert was super friendly, and a complete joy to play against, so congrats to him for splitting the event! For 4th place, I got 720 points for Card Titan's prize wall. Once I realized that items like From the Vault: Realms were going for more points than I had, I realized that I had paid $25, played Vintage for 12 hours, and gotten 4th in a 109-person event, to get less than $200 in winnings. The next morning a couple of the other top 8 competitors mentioned this issue to Nick Coss who agreed to let us trade 10 points for $3 store credit at Card Titan's booth. With my $216, I picked up a MP Beta Gauntlet of Might, a Japanese Metalworker, and a Chinese Worldgorger Dragon. I'll consider this a win!
Vintage Championship Main Event
After doing so well with U/R/W Moat Control, I wanted to play it again. I swapped the Karakas for a basic Plains to make the deck better against Wastelands. I also had big issues with Dragonlord Ojutai. a 5/4 simply isn't big enough. It cannot live through a Lodestone Golem block, nor a Steel Hellkite. Because of this, I opted to swap out the dragon for Consecrated Sphinx. In retrospect, a Keranos would have also been great, as it cannot easily be interacted with post-resolution, similar to Ojutai.
To make a long story short here is a summary of what happened:
Round 1: Beat Workshops 2-0
Round 2: Lost to U/R/W Mentor/Pyromancer (Won game 1, and threw game 2 when in a position to win by miscounting my mana, lost game 3)
Round 3: Lost to Workshops in 3 games
Round 4: Beat Merfolk in 2 games (Moat was a powerhouse)
Round 5: Lost to Workshops in 3 games, the last game wasn't even close
Dropped to get Pastrami sandwiches from Herschel's at Reading Terminal Market with JR.
Even though I did really poorly in the Vintage main event, I had fun playing and the weekend was a total success. I can't wait for Eternal Weekend next year, and I'll try to update this blog a bit more frequently so that you don't have to read through massive posts like this.
/Danny
Great read! Atog needs Berserk though! Would also love to show up for Eternal Weekend next year :)
ReplyDelete//Frippan
Thanks man. I totally agree. Atog isn't strong enough without Berserk, and I also like that it can be protected with Avoid Fate when in on green. Playing U/R is nice for avoiding blowouts against 4x Strip Mine, but it's possible a RUG build would be better. It would be great to meet you at Eternal Weekend! I'd also love to make it out to next n00bcon (was talking about it at one point with Mg). Next year is shaping up to be really busy, but who knows, maybe!
Delete/Danny