GP Melbourne Vintage: Round 5

Howdy Folks,

Sorry for the delay in getting this post out guy/gals but I have spent some time refining some things elsewhere and I am back here. I competed in a Highlander event where I came in the top 8 with my Channel-Mirror deck. I also was interviewed for a job for my first job since becoming sick so I am very excited at the prospects and have lots of ideas for the place. I hope to hear back from them soon.

But when we last left our intrepid hero I was 2-2 in the GP Melbourne Vintage event having just lost to Socrates on his UB Suicide tendrils list. Having lost two rounds I was out of contention for first place completely so was just playing for the points. My final opponent for the tournament was Ben McCoy on a UB Tezzeret list. Ben looks like he had taken queues from the 2011 Bazaar of Moxen winning decklist with some updated cards to include the now unrestricted Thirst for Knowledge.

Ben's List:

My List:

Going into the round I was not sure what Ben was going to be on (I had sneaked enough of a look to see that he was on a blue deck but not much more) so I kept a pretty open hand which Missteped his Voltaic Key and laid down a Painter's Servant. I elected to not counter his Time Vault as I was leading toward an early Tinker for Blightsteel which resolved through his Force of Will. Blightsteel however, was not fast enough as the Trinket Mage in play bought Ben a turn on 9 Poison

Ben casually played the Tezzeret in hand to untap the Time Vault in play and I was left feeling very silly.

For this matchup I sideboarded the same as my round 1 opponent.

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 Added:

Game two was a rather quick affair in which I Strip Mined my opponent early and he was unable to recover as I had the countermagic to hold him off any relevant plays. He got stuck under a Mana Vault which dealt 6 or so damage to him during which time he did not draw any mana sources and I was easily able to resolve my combo to go onto game 3.

I kept the same sideboard going into game three.

During and after game three I felt really sorry for Ben. We are good friends and I felt bad that siding out half my combo really lengthened this game to a point where it was almost unbrearable. Both of us kept permission heavy hands and it was really touch and go for quite a while as we were jockeying for permission with Force of Will and Mental Misstep being the main culprits of our early game interaction.  Over 7 life was depleted between both parties in the opening turns. Where the tide turned in my favour was the resolution of a Painter’s Servant which really allowed by 4 Pyroblasts to go up in value. It was in this position where I had a slight advantage over Ben the whole game for nearly 20 turns as I was always a card ahead. I drew the Blightsteel early and whenever I got rid of the card I would draw it within a turn or two. This meant that Tinker was out and I needed to combo other ways.

The problem was that I had discarded the Grindstone to a Thirst for Knowledge very early on so I knew that my only out to actually win the game besides Tinker or Painter beats was to find my Yawgmoth’s Will which was hiding in the deck. After 30 or so turns I finally found my Dack Fayden with only 12 cards left in my library. I used Deck Fayden to cycle through the last cards in my library to find the Yawgmoth’s Will the second to last card left.

I resolved the Yawgmoth’s and took a long but unexcitingly boring game. It was a good choice to keep in as much permision as possible; it was just unlucky that the game did not end sooner.

It was a great match but being caught at the tail end of the tournament and a long game three put a bit of a dampner on the whole thing. As the tournament structure did not have a top 8 there was very little we were playing for so it did seem to drag on a bit. It would have been a lot more exciting if there were a top 8 because we would have been potentially on a win and in but it was not to be.

In the end I finished on equal 4^th place on 3-2. I felt like I had a list that was worthy of a better record and it was my play that let me down. I will have to put in a bit more testing for the next tournament. I would be happy to continue playing this list for the host of reasons I have written about.

Until Next time.

GP Melbourne Vintage: Round 4

Heading into round four I was 2-1 and looking to win my way out from there. There was no cut so final standings would be based solely on the Swiss +1 standings. 14 players meant that I only had to win two more rounds to easily be in the top end of standings. This round I was paired against the one and only Socrates Stavropoulos. Socrates is the best cook on the barbeque that I know having stayed at his house some 4 years ago for my first interstate Vintage event where he put on a Greek barbeque that I would go back in time for. He also defeated me in the top 4 of that event so like my opponent in my previous round I was out for revenge.

Socrates was on a new deck and obviously looking to cash in on the new Dark Petition craze. His list was different from most and looks more akin to the old Suicide Tendrils lists than the current Petition storm lists. The list he played was: 

My list:

Our game one was not close at all. I hit his only land with a Strip Mine and he never recovered. He cast a Sol Ring only for it to be Pyroblasted thanks once again to my Painter’s Servant and I won the game via Tinker on turn 5 or so.

Against Socrates I boarded in the following manner.

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Game two was an interesting game where Socrates commited his mana to the board early and I Mental Misstepped his opening relevant plays. I eventually drew a Thoughtseize when he was low on cards and took an Ad Nauseum leaving him with only a second Ad Nauseum and a Cabal Ritual. Two turns later with only a Mental Misstep in hand he resolved an Ad Nauseum and immediately hit two more Ad Nauseum’ putting his life total in a precarious position. He stopped drawing cards at 4 life having only drawn a few cards he cast a Quicken which I countered. I had figured he needed something else to win as I had seen that he could have Duressed me, cast Vampiric Tutor for the Tendrils and drawn it with the mana he had open. It turned out that it was simply bait for my Misstep and he simply had not seen the line before hand. After having got rid of my last card in hand he tutored for the win and we were off to game 3.

Having seen no draw sevens I assumed that his deck leant very heavily on Dark petition and I sided in 3 Leylines for two Painters and a Grindstone.

I had to mulligan a hand of 5 mana sources and irrelevant plays into 4 lands, an Ancestral Recall, a Misdirection. I ummed and ahhed about this hand for a while and figured that it did not have enough interaction and the Ancestral was not good enough a reason to keep it. My 5 was acceptable with Missteps and a Force but I was hit by three Duress effects in the first two turns of the game. It seems Socrates had kept the hand based on that fact and could not take advantage of the free turns it afforded him. I managed to claw my way back into the game with my Painter attacking him down as I was drawing relevant spells off the top to keep him in check as much I could. On my penultimate turn I Duressed Socrates and saw that he had two Cabal Rituals (whilst tight on mana) with a stocked Graveyard and took one. Socrates had bounced my Painter in a previous turn and I had a choice on my last turn. My opponent had a single card in hand (Cabal Ritual). My hand was Yawgmoth’s Will (with a bunch of Countermagic and my Thoughseize), Force of Will, and Painter’s Servant. I am genuinely interested in what your play would be.  Let me know in the comments below.

I chose to cast the Yawgmoth’s Will for the Thoughtseize taking his remaining Cabal Ritual, rather than cast the Painter and expect to exile Yawgmoth’s Will to my Force of Will but was punished by his subsequently drawn Timetwister which ended up in a lethal storm count.

Socrates played really well and took the victory. I had a great time playing against him and I hope to get my now long awaited revenge next time we face. 

GP Melbourne 2016: Round 3

Welcome back folks.

When we last left our intrepid hero he was 1-1 going into round three after a killer second round which included a 25 minute game one. Having picked up a round I was ready to go and feeling over the moon. My next opponent would be Jeremy Kajfes. I had run into Jeremy a few times in the past but did not have him pinned down on any particular deck. Going into the round I had no idea I was playing against the bogeyman of Vintage; Dredge. I have done poorly against Dredge in past tournaments. Whilst I have been generally fortunate in testing with most of my decks I have lost at least one round to the deck in nearly all of my major tournaments.

Joshua Butler  - URb Painter

Jeremy Kajfes – Dredge

All was revealed when on the play Jeremy announced a Serum Powder and I took a quick check of my hand which included a Painters Servant, a Grindstone, and two lands. I saw my opportunity to possibly steal a game if I could draw some acceleration or perhaps he had a slow draw.  I felt that my deck was quite weak to dredge (even more than blue decks in general) due to the lack of Vampiric Tutor and to a lesser extent Mystical Tutor. This would mean that unless I drew Tinker or Demonic Tutor in my opening hand, my main combo would have to do.

Luckily for me he did indeed have a slow draw. He found the Bazaar in his opening hand but did not have any dredgers. I did play a turn one Grindstone and a turn two Painters Servant. On his third turn after once again failing to find any card with the word Dredge on it he managed to Nature’s Claim the Grindstone. Lo and behold my next draw was the land I would have needed to combo out but alas I had no Grindstone. Instead I followed this up with hitting his Bazaar with a Pyroblast with the help of my Painter’s Servant which meant that Jeremy was in top deck mode.

(Lachlan) "Pyroblast your Bazaar." Just a regular old Vintage match. pic.twitter.com/qwIOh2Ppxx

— Magic Judges (@MagicJudges) March 5, 2016

 Jeremy did find the dredger the next turn and I also drew my second copy of the Grindstone and he was not able to deal the 13 points of damage required to kill me and I simply milled his entire library the following turn which was enough to earn me the concession.

This game I had been incredibly lucky. I was lucky that my seven included a combo kill, lucky that my opponent stumbled on finding a dredger, and lucky that I drew the only other copy of my Grindstone the turn after one was destroyed. I had fully expected to lose this game, as one often does game 1 against dredge, and hurriedly began to sideboard.

My sideboard going into game 2 was:

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This was a pretty self explanatory sideboard. I had chosen Leylines and Grafdigger’s cage to be my general Dredge answers as I was running a full complement of Forces, Missteps and a Misdirection which gave me great hope at being able to fight off Jeremy’s anti-hate cards. I had originally had Yixlid Jailers in place of the Cages but felt that my Oath matchup needed some work so I took the overall weaker Grafdigger’s Cage rather than the stronger Jailer to the event.

Game two was an interesting game in which the balance of power seemed to tip back and forth between Jeremy and me, always teetering on the edge of the precipice which would end the game in our favour.

Once again both Jeremy and I kept our sevens and I opened with the Leyline. I had an early line to Tinker which I took but Jeremy was able to remove my Leyline with a second removal spell after I had countered the first. I Strip Mined his first Bazaar of Baghdad but he had a second.  I still had a Grafdigger’s Cage in play but with no more permission to stop a potential Ingot Chewer or Nature’s Claim. Jeremy put some dredgers in his yard and removed my Cage with a Nature’s Claim spell. Feeling flustered I cast a Yawgmoth’s Will just to get back the Strip Mine and cast a Tinker (sacrificing my Painter’s Servant) to put Blightsteel Colossus into play. I was feeling good that I had removed two Bazaars and he that had only a single draw step to find something relevant against my Bightsteel.

It was not to be my game however as Jeremy played Bazaar of Baghdad #3 the following turn and summoned enough creatures to make my Blightseel irrelevant to the outcome of the game. He did block with only a single creature which put him to 9 poison counters but his last turn just exploded with an army of hasty 2/2s killing me in short order.

I chose not to change the sideboard as I felt that I did not see any new or interesting features that would warrant the return of a Thoughtseize etc.

Game 3 I opened with the following cards after my mulligan.

On the play I saw that I would be able to have a Leyline in play and would be able to protect it so I kept. Jeremy exiled 20 cards or so finding a suitable hand. Within these 20 cards he exiled a number of important cards including multiple dredgers, two Bridge from Below, two Cabal Therapies, and a Narcomoeba. I played the Leyline and waited on casting the Ancestral Recall until after he played Bazaar of Baghdad for turn. Jeremy unfortunately was very light on answers for my Leyline as he dug deep through his deck to find additional answers after I had cast Force of Will of the first. A second Leyline came down on turn 4 but by turn 6 they had both been destroyed.

A freshly drawn Yawgmoth’s Will put one of the Leylines back into play and Jeremy was once again forced to exile multiple cards to dig through his library with Bazaar  to find an answer. I was low on threats myself and was not able to stop a Wispmare but having destroyed his only Bazaar just a turn earlier meant that once again he was drawing off the top rather than dredging. Jeremy did find another bazaar but had only a single activation before I was able to tutor for and play my fourth Leyline for the game. Leyline of the Void #5 quickly showed up and from there it was a simple matter of finding the Tinker before my opponent extended his hand in defeat.

It was a rough game 3 for Jeremy, having had to exile so many important cards early, and then having to exile even more must have hurt. Not to mention having your opponent play 5 Leyline of the Void (4 of which were hard cast) in a single game. I got lucky but I was able to beat my curse and was happy to move into round 4 with only a single loss.

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.