December Vintage Landscape

Two weeks into December, Two tournaments in and with one more still to come the vintage bug is going strong. 

Two 14 man tournaments at two different stores is huge... with only one week between them!!! What's even better is the spread of players between the two stores, it was not the same 14 people at both events, there were a few at both events such as Andy Horne and myself at least half of the faces at Good Games were not at Next Level Games the week before. Special props to the Canberrans who were down for the PTQ and came along to play in the event.
Next level games on December 1st had 14 players and 4 rounds with no cut to top x. We never worked out how long we would be playing for and some of our players had to leave at the end of the swiss so we left it at that which seemed fine. Prizes were paid out for the top 4 which ended up:

1) Forgemaster Shops
2) Turtle Dredge
3) Mono R Shops
4) U/W Bomberman

and filling out the rest of the top 8

5) Verbrannte Ranken
6) Affinity
7) Oath
8) Walking Fish

Way to go the pillars of Vintage: 2 Blue Decks, 3 Shops Decks (2 Prison/ 1 Aggro), 1 Dredge Deck, 1 Ritual Deck and 1 Fish Deck. Almost exactly what you would hope to see in a healthy format.

In this event I ran my Verbrannte Ranken list with a couple of changes.

5) Joshua Butler – Verbrannte Ranken

4 City of Brass
4 Forbidden Orchard
2 Gemstone Mine
1 Tolarian Academy

2 Simian Spirit Guide

1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth’s Bargain

1 Ancestral Recall
2 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Chain of Vapour
2 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Rebuild
1 Vampiric Tutor

4 Burning Wish
1 Demonic Tutor
3 Duress
1 Mind’s Desire
1 Ponder
1 Regrowth
1 Timetwister
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Windfall

1 Black Lotus
2 Chrome Mox
1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Memory Jar
5 Moxen
1 Sol Ring

Sideboard
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Balance
1 Shattering Spree
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Thoughtseize
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Ravenous Trap
4 Xantid Swarm

The addition of Diminishing Returns was something I had been audibling so finally cut the second Tendrils of Agony for it. This meant that I always had a engine in the board which meant that I would hopefully never be short of a source of card draw. An emergency draw 7 is helpful as it turns all your Burning Wishes into card draw if you are in a top deck war.

I also turned the Pyroclasm into Balance as I expected there to be more Tarmogoyfs than usual so I decided that balance is the better card to have in that matchup.  Its also a must counter vs U decks or watch all their lands/hand hit the bin.

I also turned the MD Flusterstorm into a Chain of Vapor. I did this as Dandenong has generally had a very strong Shops presence and Flusterstorm is a very dead card in that matchup. It is also a MD out to Stony Silence which I knew (thanks to arming my opponent) would be making an appearance. 

The list ran well. I lost round 1 due to playing the mull to 5 game. I mull to 5 game 1 and lose. Dan mulls to 5 game 2 and loses and on game 3 I mulled to 5 and lost. Woooo. I won my next to matches and unfortunately draw round 4 due to a stupid mistake when I did not lead my turn with a duress effect and get my mana vault misstepped which meant I was 1 turn too slow and won on turn 6 of time which as we all know, is too late.



Good Games also had 14 players including three guys from Canberra who had come down for the PTQ.  5 rounds were played before a cut to top 4 and a very different top 4 resulted.

1) Grixis Control
2) Walking Fish
3) 5C Control
4) Noble Fish

I cant remember the rest of the top 8 but I finished an unfortunate 9th place after going 3-2 on Martello Shops. Having two Noble Hierarch decks in the top 4 is great. Andy Horne was having a chat with another Vintage player a couple of weeks ago defending the Noble Hierarch decks while this other player kept saying the decks were not very good. Having three in the two most recent top 8's is surely contrary to that view.

 I lent Verbrannte Ranken to Wei-Ning who went 2-3 overall after winning his first two rounds (I think).  The list I played was:

4  Ancient Tomb
4  Mishra's Factory
4  Mishra's Workshop
1  Strip Mine
1  Tolarian Academy
4  Wasteland

1  Duplicant
4  Kuldotha Forgemaster
4  Lodestone Golem
3  Phyrexian Metamorph
3  Phyrexian Revoker
2  Steel Hellkite
1  Sundering Titan

1  Black Lotus
4  Chalice of the Void
1  Mana Crypt
1  Mox Emerald
1  Mox Jet
1  Mox Pearl
1  Mox Ruby
1  Mox Sapphire
1  Sol Ring
3  Sphere of Resistance
4  Tangle Wire
4  Thorn of Amethyst1  Trinisphere

Sideboard:
4 Grafdiggers Cage
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Razormane Masticore
2 Crucible of Worlds
2 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Precursor Golem
1  Phyrexian Revoker

Martello shops seems a fine list but I am just not sure that it wouldn't be better without the Forgemasters. I won a couple of games using them e.g.  getting Steel Hellkite vs Merfolk or getting Sundering Titan vs various U decks but I felt that they were largely win more. They did not help locking my opponents out; I never felt "If I just draw Forgemaster here" and they are a pretty big crosses in my mind for designing a shops deck. I'm not calling myself a master at shops decks in any way but I want ever card to be active and sometimes Forgemaster was just not. It's just a threat that's sometimes not a threat.

[To be continued]