I don’t write tournament reports these days, which is only appropriate since I also don’t attend tournaments. This does not leave much material for writing reports. This time, due to some people having some bright ideas, I ended up on a plane headed to Rochester for the Shooting Stars tournament. I was never too hot on the idea, but I was asked nicely and rather forcefully and when a website lets you write just about whatever you want, it gets you to be reasonable. I figure I might as well explain what happened and give my impressions of the format.
First, on my deck choice and decklist. I was going to play the decklist that ended up being used by Richard Hoaen, except that I had the fourth Sphere of Resistance in place of Masticore and was working on fitting one Uba Mask and one Gorilla Shaman. Then I spent an hour the night before talking to Kevin Cron, and I learned what the hell was going on with all his wacky card choices. Essentially the argument came down to this:
1. Yes, your decklist is more powerful.
2. But Type I players are sadly predictable, and I know exactly what they are going to do.
3. Every card should contribute to the lock, and Goblin Welder and Tangle Wire don’t do that. Plus people have been building around them and they’re bad against Oath, which will be everywhere.
4. These cards are better against the players who do show up, and will thus generate more wins.
5. This list is more skill intensive and requires more decision-making.
6. Look at my track record!
Those were strong arguments. There were also some internal arguments:
7. I would get the full Vintage experience if I played a list with choices that made little or no sense to the casual observer.
8. I did realize there was at least some truth to his arguments about why he had the cards he had.
9. I might be too conservative in terms of my mana choices; it was possible that with no one else playing safe mana you can’t afford to be safe and needed to play cards that look like you simply cannot cast them.
10. It’s always good to have someone else to yell at.
There’s always that delicate balance. You have a list that you built, but someone else with a lot more experience and results in the format has his list and assures you that it is the way to go. His arguments make sense in theory and you’re confident you can play the deck. If you play your own deck, you deserve the credit, you deserve the blame and Nicolai Ivanovich Lobochevsky is your name. Hey! Strike that, sort of, and reverse it, sort of. Either way, I decided to gamble that this man knew what he was doing. The result was a mixed bag. Kevin is a smart guy, and knows some things, but he also messed up other things. I ended up with this list:
Creatures (5)
Lands (18)
Spells (37)
- 1 Vampiric Tutor
- 1 Yawgmoth's Will
- 1 Swords to Plowshares
- 1 Mana Vault
- 1 Balance
- 1 Sol Ring
- 1 Demonic Tutor
- 1 Ancestral Recall
- 1 Mana Crypt
- 2 In the Eye of Chaos
- 4 Sphere of Resistance
- 2 Seal of Cleansing
- 3 Crucible of Worlds
- 1 Trinisphere
- 4 Smokestack
- 1 Tinker
- 1 Crop Rotation
- 1 Black Lotus
- 1 Lotus Petal
- 1 Mox Emerald
- 1 Mox Jet
- 1 Mox Pearl
- 1 Mox Ruby
- 1 Mox Sapphire
- 3 Chalice of the Void
[This decklist is 59 cards – I have no idea what the missing card is because I don’t have the decklists right now. – Knut]
Why did I play Stax? I played it because I was told it was more difficult to play than most other decks, and because it accuses other decks of not having enough land. This is a fine accusation, because they don’t. Playing Stax wasn’t strictly wrong, and I don’t think it is a bad deck exactly, but it was not the best choice for me in this case. First, Kevin misjudged the metagame; he expected a lot more Oath of Druids in particular as a reaction to all the creatures down south and Fish up north. Second, I think he underestimated how often you would have to deal with Tinker for Darksteel Colossus. Third, let’s face it: The mana was awful! You can’t get away with the sheer mass of colored mana that the deck is being asked to support. Also, the sideboarding was flawed and I discovered this during the course of the tournament.
How to Deal: So Many Choices, So Few Games
There are several places one can try to gain advantage:
1. I built my deck correctly.
2. You didn’t.
3. I have enough mana.
4. You don’t.
5. I’m playing correctly.
6. You’re not.
7. I’m sideboarding properly.
8. You’re not even close.
That’s the basic idea: You want to choose where you think you can gain advantage. If you think that you should win because your opponents are bad, you should focus in on their greatest weaknesses and give them a chance to be awful. If you think you should win because you’re better, you should focus in on your greatest strengths and give yourself a chance to be brilliant. In this case, I decided to attack on #2, #4 and #5 with a side dish of everything else. The problem was that I didn’t do enough of #3, could have done a better job of #1 (but that would have meant work) and only figured out #7 as time went on. In the end, I went 3-2. I was going to keep playing, but then Ben gave me that “we might play in the next round!” comment that I’ve always hated. It’s nothing against Ben, he meant nothing bad by it, but I had sudden visions of all the things that could go wrong and remembered how much I didn’t feel like playing more rounds. I contrasted that against the rewards of trying to go 6-2, and decided to drop.
The bigger problem was that I didn’t do enough to make myself enjoy the format. I could have chosen a deck that would have made the games less about mana, such as Slaver, but instead I put everyone’s mana under attack. Playing the percentages can be a good way to win, but it also is often a good way to prevent a lot of games of Magic from breaking out. Therefore it is possible that my deck choice has a lot to do with my negative view of the format. I won’t turn this into a strategy guide for Stax, but I will give out my Top Ten Tips:
1. Some number of Goblin Welders probably belong in the deck, but only if you have Tangle Wire would you want four. My guess is two Welders would be about right, the card is great for you but you don’t want to overdo it.
2. Tangle Wire is likely not the answer.
3. In the Eye of Chaos is surprisingly effective, but it can’t be right to maindeck two and sideboard none. Either you sideboard in number three or you only start 0-1.
4. Lotus Petal is beyond terrible, and has no place in the deck.
5. Meddling Mage is a great card but also has no place in the deck. Give up your pipe dreams and maybe you’ll be able to cast your spells.
6. Also needing to go is Yawgmoth’s Will, especially given your sideboard.
7. If you’re not maindecking four Sphere of Resistance and four Chalice of the Void, you are a fool as I suspected.
8. Sideboarding is difficult, but I will at least say this: Going first and going second are totally different problems, and quite possibly can lead to a swap of as many as nine or ten different cards in some matchups with some sideboards. Wow. Kevin never told me about this, I figured it out on my own.
9. Thank God they restricted Trinisphere. Anyone who thinks that wasn’t a good idea has been playing Vintage too long.
10. If you’re playing cards that don’t contribute directly to locking your opponent down or making sure they can’t stop the cards that do, get them out of there.
All right, not all of those are tips, but what can you do. My basic conclusion is that you should play Stax if and only if you understand how it works and enjoy playing this type of game. You also need to make sure there’s nothing you like better. The deck is a valid choice, but I still have not found a deck that seems like it lives up to what you should be able to do in the format. The biggest problem is that too many of the cards your deck wants to run are not artifacts. This leaves two choices. You can narrow your colors and have a real mana base, or you can play a horrible mana base that can backfire in any number of ways.
If I played the deck again, I would start (as I noted above) by cutting out Meddling Mage and then go down to one maindeck In the Eye of Chaos. I like it as a rude shock, but I don’t want to go too far. Swords to Plowshares is a bad Goblin Welder, as far as I can tell, so that’s another easy switch. Yawgmoth’s Will is terrible (in this deck), so it goes, and so should Lotus Petal. That’s five easy slots, which I’m going to turn into one Uba Mask, two Goblin Welders, the fourth Chalice of the Void and another mana source. That would be if I didn’t want to return to the more logical build that has four Goblin Welders and uses Tangle Wire.
Now on to some observations on the format as it applies to P9 tournaments:
1. REL 3 doesn’t work.
This is not a rant against the players or the judges or anything else, it’s simply an observation. REL 3 does not work. You need a minimum of REL 4 to play Magic: the Gathering and not be at a huge disadvantage against anyone who seeks to take advantage of that lax rules enforcement. Even at REL 5 there are any number of things you can do with little or no risk of being punished even if caught, but at REL 3 this is a joke. Play two lands, draw two cards, stack two decks, take two aspirin and call me in the morning. Did anyone pull anything shady against me? No. None of my opponents did anything in any way unethical, so don’t think that I’m taking a dig at one of them. That’s not to say they were all class acts, although most of them were. One challenged my sleeves before I could even pick up my first card, which I suppose is his right, but that just hammered the point home: Even if I had been cheating, there’s no way I take a penalty there – in fact, if I had been trying to cheat, I guarantee I would have been untouchable. It was also a rule three violation, especially after his whole “it’s better to get that out of the way early” defense afterwards. I realize these are casual tournaments, but I simply can’t see playing for a Black Lotus at REL 3. There were other pros whose experiences in this realm were less pleasant than mine.
2. Timetwister to 9th place!
Don’t you think Black Lotus is enough for the winner? Ninth place sucks, and this would make it very much not suck. Even better, have a playoff between places 9-12 for it (9-16 has the potential to extend the tournament.) Take that, bizarre Legends packs full of multicolored cards with no text box! If the top 12 or even better top 16 were playing for a Timetwister, two losses wouldn’t feel like a knockout, and as a player I know that is a huge bonus. You don’t hurt the Top 8 much and make the tournament feel a lot more open.
3. I officially endorse (for now, from the standpoint of a player) the unrestrict Tinker campaign
Of course, by unrestrict Tinker I mean it in the same way that people want to unrestrict Yawgmoth’s Will. There were simply too many games that could be summed up in one word: Tinker. A player got Colossus, and the game ended two turns later. This is not acceptable, as especially with the coming of Imperial Seal there are too many ways to find it. I find myself without a good reason not to put the Colossus into every deck that contains artifacts to sacrifice and Brainstorm to put the Colossus back, which is most decks out there. If you want to put Darksteel Colossus in the majority of your Vintage builds with no other practical way to cast it, then something is seriously wrong. Of course, I could easily be persuaded that I’m wrong, but I think it belongs in Fish. That’s scary. Remember, when you add the third counter to Aether Vial, you’re supposed to hold out a card and say “It’s Coming!”
The problem with that is that I hate to destroy the principle that there are effectively no banned cards in Vintage. The ones that are banned are banned because of reasons like ante that are hard to argue with. If there were other banned cards, an argument could be made that Tinker is an easy axe. It doesn’t destroy a card with a gigantic cash value, and it creates a lot of fast wins that don’t feel like Magic games. But you’re not reading this, are you? It’s in italics, and therefore it’s invisible. I just thought you needed to be reminded of that.
4. Flavor text on your proxies, boys!
There’s no excuse. I do it for every card out there, and you can’t find anything for your power? Change it every tournament. Have fun with your own format. For example, this is the new official text on Mox Sapphire until I switch it to something else: And the lord said that thou shall have dominion over all the other colors, and Richard looked upon his work and saw that it was profitable. Oh, and Demonic Tutor is “No, no, no. It’s pronounced nuclear.”
5. Where have all the real men gone?
It is sad that Wild Mongrel is considered a large creature in Vintage, and it might have been the second largest creature in the room after good old Darksteel Colossus. It should be clear by now that Oath of Druids decks that try to win with Akroma are being silly and are far better off going for the throat. I think that it is sad the extent to which decks in Vintage have given up on Real Men, although I’m not sure what can be done about it. You need to shut down crazy stuff, which means not wasting time on attacking or doing it as efficiently as possible, but I do think that the possibilities of creature transformations have been overlooked. Mana Crypt kills people, why can’t you?
Additional Vintage Coverage
I’m undecided on whether I will continue to work on or write extensively about the format. There is much to discuss, but there is much to discuss elsewhere and Vintage has been well covered in many ways. I run into the problem of needing to retrace other people’s steps before I can do original things. There will probably be a full Stax article at some point either way. Should I continue? Tell me in the forums! I admit, last time that I said to do that I didn’t get much of a response, but a man can dream.
In Italics (That means that this has no practical significance but I figured I’d put it in anyway) : The Hall of Fame
In my first commentary on the Hall, I made a very basic comment: If you don’t vote for Jon Finkel, you don’t deserve to vote. Jon Finkel should be like George Washington, the unanimous choice of an electoral college that understands that there is no choice in the matter. The only other player who deserves this treatment is Kai Budde, who isn’t on the ballot this year so that he can make my life harder down the line. After Jon there are several people who make sense. To me, there are two locks and then four people trying for my other three votes. The other lock is Darwin Kastle.
It is impossible when looking at Darwin’s record to deny that he has earned his slot in the Hall of Fame. Players will inevitably remember only the statistics that make them and their friends look good, and forget those that make them look bad, but Darwin’s winnings, Pro Tour Points and final day tally make it hard to deny he has been the second strongest player on this ballot. He won an Invitational and gave us Avalanche Riders, for those who think things like that are important. He’s been integral to the Pro Tour’s history, being part of one of Magic’ most important teams both in terms of Team Pro Tours and playtest groups. I think he has much to teach us, if he can figure out how to explain it. When I talked to him about his game, it was clear that he was thinking about things that most people don’t give a second thought. He thinks about how to keep opponents off balance, and he does it in ways that mean they don’t even realize he’s doing it.
It has often been said that Darwin makes a lot of strange plays, and some go so far as to call his decks and plays terrible on many occasions. While no one is perfect and he is no exception, I think that he hit upon something important: By playing solid but unexpected cards, you cause your opponents to have decks that are suboptimal and then play and sideboard them incorrectly. For example, take Houston: Most players tried to finesse their Rock decks, but Darwin dominated the field in large part because he didn’t try to be correct: He just gave people more of the cards they had trouble with than they could handle. The Dragons in Venice were like that too: Give people more Dragon than they can handle. These strategies are not my strategies, but make no mistake. They work. I can hear him now: “Oh, good.” There are those who won’t agree with me and vote for someone else, and that’s fine, but don’t do it because “he isn’t any good” or because his record isn’t good enough. It simply isn’t true, and I think there are a lot of people including me who would be able to take our games to the next level if we understood the things Darwin has to tell us. Perhaps I’ll expand on that in the future.
On the flip side, I would make the following argument against certain players I don’t feel any need to name: Anyone who gets, to be polite, less than a perfect score on integrity and sportsmanship should not get your vote because of accomplishments he would not have if he had displayed the integrity and good sportsmanship that he tossed aside in the name of guaranteeing victory. I believe that people can change, and that doing one shady thing once shouldn’t doom you for life, but I think we should refuse to reward those who built their names on such behavior.