I was pleased that we had 17 players in Columbus for the tournament this weekend, and very pleased that 9 of them were actually from Columbus and a few people were probably unable to make it because of the holiday or other reasons. Up until Saturday I had planned on playing Regrowth-Gush Tendrils. It tested well against most blue decks, but I couldn't figure out a sideboard that would work against Workshops reliably. I had tried traditional removal, Tarmogoyves, and Oaths, but none of them was great. The Oath board was okay, but it left me with precious little additional room, including for the artifact removal I expected to need to help Oath resolve if the game went longer. However, I had already been considering a "new" Oath build anyway. Around 3 p.m. on Saturday, I threw that list together and started testing.
The idea was essentially Gush-based Tyrant Oath but with Noxious Revivals, a la Danny Friedman. Revivals, I thought, would be good with Tyrant because I could Oath into the blue monster, play Revival on my upkeep to "tutor" for an Oathed card (bouncing a permanent in the process), and then continue as normal bouncing permanents, making mana, building storm, drawing cards, and so on. Revival also gave me pseudo additional Oaths if one got countered, and it let me do fun things with Ancestral, Time Walk, Lotus, and other Vintage cards. Initially the list started with three Revivals, but I cut back to two; it was less exciting than I had expected with Gush and I felt I wanted a maindeck artifact bounce for Blightsteel.
Nat Moes - Noxious Tyrant Oath4 Oath of Druids
4 Force of Will
2 Tidespout Tyrant
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Crypt
4 Preordain
1 Flash of Insight
1 Time Walk
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Brainfreeze
1 Lotus Petal
1 Fastbond
2 Mental Misstep
1 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Steel Sabotage
2 Spell Pierce
1 Voltaic Key
1 Time Vault
4 Gush
1 Yawgmoth's Will
2 Noxious Revival
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Black Lotus
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Polluted Delta
1 Island
Sideboard
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Forest
3 Nature's Claim
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Echoing Truth
2 Flusterstorm
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Ravenous Trap
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Nihil Spellbomb
The list felt strong all day, though there were zero prison Workshop decks at the tournament to play against. The Noxious Revivals worked as planned, and I was able to translate Tyrants into wins fairly easily. In the future, I would probably cut Flash of Insight for a third Jace or a third Noxious Revival. The Spell Pierces and Mental Missteps can probably change between a few different things as necessary, but I was happy with what I had. Had I known there weren't going to be Workshops, I would have used Flusterstorms over Pierces.
Round 1 - Sam Krohlow - Burning LongI figured Sam would be on Burning Long and he didn't disappoint. I felt comfortable about the Oath-on-Oath matchup, or so I thought...
In game one, Sam was unhappy to Duress my opener (using Forbidden Orchard) to see both Ancestral Recall and Force of Will. He took Ancestral. I matched his Orchard with one of my own and held up a Spell Pierce, giving him a token at the end of his turn. I had the opportunity to win the Orchard matchup when I played Jace and jockeyed the first three abilities around to defend against his tokens, find myself cards, and then bounce one of his tokens. Wait. That's not right. Unfortunately, that is what I did. Instead of putting myself ahead in the token fight, I gave Sam the upper hand and expected to lose since he could activate Oath.
Fortunately for me, he found his Griselbrand four cards from the bottom of his library, the other being trapped in his hand. He could draw no cards and was forced to pass the turn, into Jace. I had multiple counters in hand and waited for him to die to no library.
Sam gave me a lot of tokens in game two and I was able to counter his threats and again find Jace, probably my best threat since both of us had boarded out multiple Oaths. Jace helped me brainstorm into Time Vault and Key, and I used the infinite turns to beat my opponent with his donated 1/1 spirits.
Matches: 1-0; Games: 2-0Round 2 - Twaun P. Pownertown - Rt. Hon. Bill Dredgington III, Esq.Brown sleeves... must be a poopdeck. I don't remember if I knew that Twaun was on Dredge before our match or not. Maybe I saw that he was with zombies earlier.
Anyway, in game one, my opener was great; Twaun mulliganed to six. I opened with Lotus and Mox into Jace, then played Fasbond and Gush into Oath. Twaun did some dredgy stuff and tried to keep himself off creatures on board so that he could have one big turn without allowing me to activate my enchantment. Somehow on his second turn he made a mistake, leaving a zombie token in play. I Oathed into Tyrant and used the bounce ability to make an arbitrarily large amount of mana with moxes and then 40 or so draws with Jace. That led to an easy victory.
In game two, we both kept seven. Twaun had or found double Bazaars and tore apart my hand for the quick Dredge victory.
In game three, I opened with two Tormod's Crypts and Time Walk. I used the Crypts aggressively, noting that Twaun had Powdered away two Bloodghasts and a Narcomoeba, so that I left him with only one of those creatures in the remaining half of his deck. I remember also worrying about his discarded Riftstone Portal and Ancient Grudge, but I'm not sure why. I found Oath quickly, and it took only a few more turns to find Orchard for the win.
Matches: 2-0; Games 4-1Round 3 - Greg Price - Grixis ControlGreg has been coming to our regular Vintage meetups. He played Five-Color Stax for a long time but is branching out into the blue control realms now. (Seems like there are a few players who are "training" to use blue decks, which is interesting.) He did well with the deck, eventually joining the top eight.
In game one, Greg mulliganed and was on the draw. I played a turn two Jace and backed it up with Force. And Jace found Oath for turn three. Greg scooped to its going active.
Greg opened with Library in game two against my mulligan to six. He drew several extra cards before playing Mystical Tutor for Ancestral Recall on my end step. I responded by playing Surgical Extraction to make him shuffle, and we fought over that, eventually dropping Greg below the seven-card Library threshold. That wasn't enough to turn the tide in my favor, however, and Greg recovered to win with Time Vault in short order.
Greg mulliganed again in game three and I again opened with a fast Oath. When Tyrant hit the board, the Noxious Revival plan worked as I was able to Revival Voltaic Key to my hand (bouncing my opponent's land) to go with the Time Vault that was already there. Infinite turns made winning easy.
Matches: 3-0; Games 6-2Round 4 - Riley Curran - UW Landstill (Draw)Riley usually plays Elves! or UR Landstill, so I was surprised that he was packing a UW Landstill build with Swords and Stoneforge Mystics. His deck seemed pretty good, and he drew into T8 as well.
In game one, Riley played land, go, and I opened with Mox, Orchard, Oath. "Thanks for the token, idiot!" said Riley and played Spell Snare. I had Mental Misstep. Oath happened and he scooped once I showed him the Tyrant combo. I think I was able to make lots of mana into lots of Jace activations.
Games two and three were similar. To each other, unfortunately, and not to game one. My openers were not as spicy, and Riley was able to use his overwhelming number of counterspells to shut down the threats that I drew.
Matches: 3-0-1; Games 7-4Round 5 - Paul Blakeley - Rogue Black Guy Combo (Draw)I had built Paul's deck for this tournament, using the list from Stephen Menendian's Eternal Central article on the deck. The sideboard transformed into Belcher to avoid the graveyard hate.
In game one, I had a Force of Will and either a Spell Pierce or a Mental Misstep in my opening hand and was able to prevent Paul from winning long enough to get Jace and Oath online. I don't remember exactly how the endgame of this played out other than Tyrant being good.
For game two I switched to the LabMan combo, which I realized was wrong when I Oathed and Paul won while I was waiting for my next turn. Tyrant would have allowed me to do crazy things and potentially not pass the turn. He had opened with Leyline of Anticipation, which prevented me from tapping out, since that would shut off my Spell Pierces and Flusterstorms. Paul was able to to resolve Belcher and win.
Game three saw me back on Tyrant, and again I opened with a Force of Will and another counter. Paul kept Leyline of Anticipation again and played some dudes to attack with. I used a Noxious Revival to put Force of Will on top of my library, giving me two Forces and two blue cards in hand. I used one to counter a threat, Demonic Tutor, I think. Next turn, I let him resolve Channel, stupidly, which allowed him to play through Flusterstorm and Spell Pierce to resolve Timetwister. Thank goodness his 'Twister was garbage. I used my refilled hand to win the game through Oath again.
Matches: 3-0-2; Games 9-5The top eight split and each took home $50. We took a lot of flak for this, but I'm not sure what the big deal is. My priority is generally to hang out with friends and play Vintage, in that order. So we cut out and went to dinner at Thurman's. I had the western burger (generously paid for by Paul Blakeley in exchange for the deck) and a couple of beers. Then Sam and I went to the bar and met up with Twaun, G, and Jake later. I had a Manhattan and several more beers. I lost at foosball and threw several darts.
Mission accomplished, I'd say.
Special:After meeting up with the guys at the High-Beck, we had some interesting discussion. You can answer these at home or in the thread if you like:
What card in the history of Magic has drawn players the most cards?
What card in the history of Magic has dealt the most damage?
What creature in the history of Magic has dealt the most damage?
What Vintage card do you see get misplayed most often?
What Vintage card do you hate but you play anyway out of obligation because it's too good?
What's your favorite Magic card?
What's your favorite Vintage card?
