GP Melbourne Vintage Event – Round 1

As I wrote a few days ago, going into GP Melbourne’s “Big Tix” Vintage event I had settled on playing a URb Painter list modelled after Andy Probasco’s list with which he made top 8 in a MTGO Vintage Premier event.

It was a tumultuous start to the tournament. The day started with my arrival at the tournament realising that I had left my decklist at home. I borrowed the last cards I needed and after rewriting the decklist I went about the room trying to work out how many players we had for the tournament.

Ten minutes before the event was scheduled to start I met with Nick Chmielewski who cheekily said that he would play if I were to write out his decklist for him. This took longer than expected however there was no cause for concern as the tournament did not actually start until 25 minutes after the scheduled start. The tournament had a disappointing 14 player turnout.This was especially painful as Melbourne’s last GP in 2013 had fully 50 players.

My first round opponent was Will Wong on his Marc Lenigra style circa 2012 style Grixis list. He was running the usual Confidant/Snapcaster/Jace draw engine which was supplemented with additional planeswalkers in Tezzeret and Dack Fayden.  I went into the match blind and kept a disruption heavy had leading with a Thoughseize on the play revealing the following cards:

I took the Dark Confidant  expecting to be able to win the counter war on his turn three Jace. He cast a blind Demonic Tutor on his first turn and passes back to me. As I had surmised earlier, I won the fight over his Jace on turn 3 and also countered his Voltaic Key the same turn which he cast with a Mana Crypt. Unfortunately for me, I did not have any counters remaining for his subsequent Tezzeret which found the Time Vault and took all the additional turns he wanted. Will took some damage from his Mana Crypt but was able to remove it to take game 1.

Boarding for Will I removed:

for

I reasoned that the 15^th land was a little superfluous as I was not expecting my opponent to pressure my mana base. I found myself cutting the first two of the Painter combo quite frequently throughout the day as a way of fitting in more control elements whilst still allowing the combo to remain in the deck.

Unfortunately for me I took a mulligan down to 6 and kept a sketchy:

This hand is keepable and I do not think it was a mistake to keep it. I knew that I had more free countermagic than he did, had Thoughtseize on the play and could protect it from a Misstep or a Force. In the best case scenario I A) thoughtseize a threat, B) Pyroblast another, and C) draw a blue source to draw me back into the game. Whilst I managed to do both A and B, C came a little too late and I was stuck on just Ruby and Jet until turn 3. The turn after I found the blue source and was holding mana for an EoT Thirst he cast a Tezzeret the Seeker. I redblasted the Tezz and Misdirectioned the Force but he still had  a Jace which kept me threat light until it was able to ultimate and win him a important game 2.

I feel that this set of games is not representative of the matchup between the two decks. I had felt that I had the upper hand in any game where he did not lead with an early Confidant. In both games I was able to deny him this but lost to him having a higher density of game winning threats. Perhaps I was incorrect in my assessment of the matchup but I felt that the games we a lot closer than the 0-2 would suggest.

Overall it was two brief games that came down to the wire and were well played by Will. With a round one loss under my belt I headed for round two.