The Long and Winding Road – The One Where Elias Battles Menendian

September 11
^th
, 2010

Waterbury, CT – Ray Robillard announced that pairings were going up for round 2 and then announced the first feature match of the day: Stephen Menendian vs. Matt Elias. An audible roar went up in the room. The feeling was electric, the energy palpable. I immediately got a sheepish grin. What else was there to do in such a situation?

I mean, really, with 125 players, what were the chances?

Stephen and I had never played a game of Magic against each other, so it seemed fitting that our first match would be at my first Waterbury. I can’t imagine a more fitting introduction into one of Vintage’s most storied tournament series. I was confident in my deck but concerned he might be playing Workshops again; still, something told me he was probably on some type of Tezzeret deck, coming off a poor performance at Vintage Champs with Workshops.

As I was thinking all of this over, a parade of people wished me luck/told me not to lose/demanded that I not lose. Of all the matches of Magic I’ve played, I can’t think of any match where less was on the line, yet the outcome was so important to so many people.

The feature match area was all the way in the back, and for many of the best players in the room, this was the first round of the day coming off the bye round (as byes were available for players who won Vintage events in-between each Waterbury). Therefore, as no one had dropped yet, there was an audience of hardly anyone back in the feature area as we started.

I forgot to bring my play mat with me and was therefore using a green Mana Drain Open mat from several years prior. I get a little superstitious about my play mats, but this one had a nice feel. I decided I’d try to use it all day if I won this match.

I fanned my opening hand, and it was good, featuring this visage:

I was going to enjoy this…

The Mana Drain Open Fourteen: The What, Why, and How

You didn’t really think I’d tell the whole story of this match right at the start, did you?

My TMD Open 14 story really began a month ago, when I decided to play Bob Tendrils at the Blue Bell Game Day tournament on August 14. Bob Tendrils is a version of TPS (The Perfect Storm), a Tendrils of Agony strategy similar to ANT (Ad Nauseam Tendrils) and TES (The Epic Storm) decks from Legacy. There are four major Tendrils decks that operate in Vintage:

TPS
– The Perfect Storm, notable by its heavy use of tutors and “draw sevens.” Two different builds of this deck (one with Preordain, one without) made the Top 8 of this year’s Vintage Champs tournament at Gen Con.

Drain Tendrils
– The most controlling version of Tendrils; this deck will counter something with Mana Drain and use that mana to fuel a Tendrils kill. Recent builds have made heavy use of Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

ANT
– Ad Nauseam Tendrils is defined by its use of its namesake card along with extra, cheap mana acceleration like Chrome Mox. It’s the fastest of the Tendrils decks.

Bob Tendrils
– This offshoot of TPS and Drain Tendrils is lighter on tutors, instead playing Bob (Dark Confidant) as a draw engine to avoid losing a resource battle with control decks and Workshop decks.

The first time I’d really looked at Bob Tendrils was in May, before Preordain was in print; the deck did well at a few Blue Bell tournaments, but I was solidly on the Oath train at that point and didn’t test the deck then; I just made sure I had Mindbreak Trap, so that I wouldn’t lose to it.

Later, after Vintage Champs, I went back and looked at this deck again. TPS is harder to play at an expert level, but Tendrils seemed like a solid strategy in an open meta with no Storm hate. I found the Bob Tendrils deck to be easier to play than I expected and had grown more comfortable with it each time out. I also have a higher opinion of Preordain than most everyone else I’ve talked to. The more I play it, the more I notice its subtle effect on my games: the way it helps me stay at thirteen lands, keeps my blue count up for Force of Will, minimizes damage from Dark Confidant, digs for hate in the Dredge matchup, and scries away cards when using Jace. I think it helps that I didn’t play Vintage Storm decks with four Brainstorm, as I’m not using that as a comparison to this card, which I believe is good when considered on its own merits.

I wrote a tournament report about that event,
here
. I made the top 4 with my losses in the Swiss and in the elimination rounds both being to Joe Brown playing a MUD (Mishra’s Workshop) deck that had a
full set of Null Rods between the main and sideboard, as well as Smokestack. I researched on www.Morphling.de, and I believe the original list was
Ryan Devine’s from San Jose on June 20
. The markers of this build are its use of two maindeck Razormane Masticores and three Smokestacks. Joe also used it to win the
Hadley Grudge Match on August 28
.

Having lost to MUD, I went back to my team and tried to figure out how to attack MUD with Bob Tendrils. Every sideboard I thought of started with this six:

4 Leyline of the Void
2 Yixlid Jailer

Especially given that this is a Dark Ritual deck, these are the hate cards you want against Dredge, as they’re immune to Leyline of Sanctity. I believe this deck needs six anti-Dredge cards to have a comfortable matchup, but I’d been running seven previously to make sure I didn’t lose to Dredge. Don’t assume that because this is a Tendrils deck that it can just race Dredge like ANT can; this is a more controlling, and therefore slower, Tendrils deck.

The other locked cards were the anti-Tezzeret package, which included:

1 Duress
1 Tinker
1 Inkwell Leviathan

The initial sideboard plan involved more bounce spells; the deck that Bob Tendrils is mostly based on, GWSx, is packed with Hurkyl’s Recall to generate storm count, but given the presence of Fish and Chalice of the Void in the format (as well as Leyline of Sanctity), a nice mix of one-of Chain of Vapor, Hurks, and Rebuild makes more sense. To capture that feeling of having a ton of bounce against Workshop decks, the typical sideboard used to have more Hurkyl’s and Rebuild along with some basic lands.

I feel like this plan is reasonable but not particularly effective in this specific Tendrils deck, which lacks some of the “bounce, untap, bomb” power of a full-on combo deck like TPS. Rather, Bob Tendrils is designed to resolve Bob, Force of Will a resister (such as Thorn of Amethyst or Lodestone Golem), and use Bob to keep mana in play while building up to one big turn supported by the bounce spells.

I briefly considered Energy Flux, but teammates told me that card is weak in this strategy, which is probably accurate.

Then, we came to an alternative: Serenity. Here was a card that could wipe the board clean and give me a free turn. All I had to do was keep Tangle Wire off the board. The new sideboard included:

3 Serenity
1 floater bounce spell
2 Tundra

For the floater bounce spell, I started with a Hurkyl’s Recall, then tried a seventh anti-Dredge card, but ended up with an Echoing Truth; while that card is only mediocre against Workshops, it gives me a second bounce spell against Leyline of Sanctity when playing against Stax, Noble Fish, and Dredge. This change came out of the Blue Bell on September 4. More on that in a bit.

That locked in a sideboard that looked like this:

4 Leyline of the Void
2 Yixlid Jailer
1 Tinker
1 Inkwell Leviathan
1 Duress
1 Echoing Truth
3 Serenity
2 Tundra

The “trick” sideboard I briefly considered involved a different, two-mana enchantment and looked like this:

4 Leyline of the Void
2 Yixlid Jailer
2 Terastodon
3 Forbidden Orchard
4 Oath of Druids

I think this is actually an elegant solution to the MUD “problem” this deck faces. In the maindeck, I changed one Island into a Tropical Island.

I went “pre-boarded” against Tezzeret. My basic anti-Tezz plan was to side out one Cabal Ritual, one Preordain, and one Chain of Vapor. I made that change in the main to free up those sideboard slots with the exception of leaving in Chain of Vapor and keeping three Duresses. The postboard Oath creatures would be Inkwell and two Terastodons – Terastodon being ideal at breaking open games against Workshops in my experience. Any game that opened on a first-turn Oath would give a Workshop deck fits.

As neat as I thought this rough sketch was, it had problems with Leyline of Sanctity, and I didn’t get to test it thoroughly enough to see how the maindeck matchups were impacted by the changes. If Oath and Workshops were the two most popular decks, this seemed like a very good plan, as you can sideboard against Oath by bringing in Forbidden Orchards. An idea for another time, I suppose.

At the Blue Bell on September 4, I ran the Serenity plan but without Echoing Truth and with three Yixlid Jailers and four Leylines of the Void. It
seemed that I’d been slightly traumatized by the events of
this tournament report
. Every time I’ve played at Blue Bell since, I somehow add another piece of Dredge hate at the last minute.

On Labor Day weekend, I was hammered by the mirror in round 1, got a bye, beat up on Oath of Druids, had an unintentional draw against Dredge due to Leyline of Sanctity, then beat Trygon Tezzeret. In the Top 8 I lost to a more traditional Tezzeret deck similar to what Chris Pikula has been running at the New York Stax Exchange events.

Again, this Dredge match had an effect on me and was responsible for the Echoing Truth that ended up in my final seventy-five. In that match, I was able to race Dredge by winning on my second turn of game 1. I used Vampiric Tutor into Timetwister with Sol Ring and Dark Ritual in hand – to make sure I could play the Twister – which won me the game. Game 2, we both played out Leylines, me dropping double Leylines of the Void against a single Leyline of Sanctity. As the game went on, I reached a game state where I was at one life against a Bloodghast and facing death. I had four cards in hand: Dark Ritual, Tendrils of Agony, Force of Will, and Mind’s Desire. I spent the whole game looking for a way to find my single Chain of Vapor – and failed. My game plan became: throw a Hail Mary with Mind’s Desire. The question is: do you just Ritual into Desire and hope to hit a tutor or Chain of Vapor off those two? Or, do you build it to four by playing Dark Ritual, Tendrils of Agony (targeting yourself), hardcast Force of Will to counter one copy, and then play Mind’s Desire for four?

I went with the latter, and the first card I flipped was Chain of Vapor, obviously.

I still almost won the game, as Desire also revealed a Jace, my fourth Leyline of the Void, and a Yixlid Jailer. Jace drew me into two
more
Yixlid Jailers, so that I ended the turn with all four Leylines of the Void and three Yixlid Jailers in play. Unimpressed, my opponent simply played Stinkweed Imp, forcing Jace to bounce it each turn as I was still at one life. I kept bouncing it with Jace and attacking with one Yixlid Jailer because I was dead to a resolved Bloodghast if I attacked with two Jailers. I ultimately lost this game by a turn, unable to find my Yawgmoth’s Will or a tutor for it despite going through over half of my deck. I resolved then to change one Yixlid Jailer into an Echoing Truth, so that I had an out to someone who dropped multiple Leylines of Sanctity to lead off a game.

So, that’s how I ended up with this deck for Waterbury. Here’s what I played – and yes this is the same seventy-five that I posted last week, which was unintentionally accessible through the StarCityGames.com forums the night
before
the tournament:

Now that you have the What and the How, let’s talk about the Why.

Bob Tendrils in the Current Vintage Metagame

To understand why I like this deck so much, you need to conceptually understand how differently it plays than most traditional Storm decks. Regardless of the format, Storm decks are going to build into one critical-mass turn, generally one in which they expend all of their resources. In Eternal formats, Storm decks use cards like Orim’s Chant, Force of Will, Duress, and Thoughtseize to maneuver around or through counterspells. Still, Storm decks are often fighting a difficult resource battle against control decks. They’re obligated to build storm count in often awkward ways that can be stopped at certain points – a key Ritual here, a relevant Tutor there, which breaks the chain. All of the previous cards are lost, resulting in a non-salvageable game state.

Bob Tendrils is designed to be different. It is, fundamentally, a resilient Storm deck that’s capable of drawing cards the same way the control decks in Vintage do – and perhaps even better. While I maindeck Duress, many people play that card in the sideboard in order to squeeze in cards like Gifts Ungiven, Yawgmoth’s Bargain, or Memory Jar; still, in my deck, I have the full set of Dark Confidants, two Jaces, and more tutoring and filtering ability to find those cards than the control decks. I also have significantly more fast mana to get my draw spells into play first (which is kind of what Team Meandeck is trying to do by playing Lotus Cobra in Tezzeret).

If you’re playing a Storm deck that can actually out-resource a control opponent, you have something approaching inevitability in that matchup. This is especially true if your opponents aren’t prepared for Storm and aren’t using cards like Mystic Remora or Mindbreak Trap, which suppress decks like Bob Tendrils and TPS.

To make things even better for Bob Tendrils, many people are basing their Tezzeret lists on Owen Turtenwald deck from Champs, which includes cards like Trygon Predator, which are mostly irrelevant against us; his build is also soft to Tinker into Inkwell Leviathan, giving us a powerful angle of attack postboard. Regular Tezzeret decks that use more hard counters like Mana Drain along with more tutors to assemble Key + Vault are better against Bob Tendrils, as they’re more equipped to race. Still, it’s likely that most opponents, squeezed by MUD, Dredge, and the mirror, are going to cheat on their hate for Storm.

The matchup against Oath of Druids is slightly worse than the Tezzeret matchup, but I still find it favorable given my use of Duress in the main and multiple Jaces. As long as you can keep the early Oath from resolving, you become favored quickly for the same reasons I noted above, except that Oath is often worse when pushed into playing off the top of its library.

Noble Fish is also a positive matchup in my testing and another that’s helped greatly by the presence of Jace, who is so good at bouncing those irritating hate bears off the field of battle. Some Noble Fish players use Leyline of Sanctity to attack both Tendrils and Oath of Druids, which is another reason to use Echoing Truth, a card already good against Fish’s normal anti-Storm cards like Meddling Mage and Children of Korlis. Certainly Noble Fish
could
have a positive matchup against Storm, but the deck is also squeezed by MUD, Dredge, Tezzeret, and, sometimes, its own mirror match, and therefore most builds have cheated on Storm hate over the past year.

When playing combo against Dredge, the combo deck is often favored despite Dredge’s use of disruption like Chalice of the Void, Leyline of the Void, Leyline of Sanctity, and Unmask. The faster the combo deck, the better the matchup; a deck like ANT that can win on turn 1 is very good against Dredge. TPS is good against Dredge. Bob Tendrils is, well, acceptable. That’s the price you pay for the draw spells that give you an edge against control. You’re not as fast when forced to race. You can win game 1 if you win the die roll. Sometimes you can win on the draw if your hand is very good and your opponent has only one Bazaar, but don’t expect to do so regularly. In fact, one reason I’ll likely play Yawgmoth’s Bargain the next time I play this deck is that card’s ability to win games for you on turn 1 or turn 2. Regardless, with six hate cards, I think the matchup becomes favorable postboard but can be affected by the opponent’s use of Chalice of the Void and/or Leyline of Sanctity.

Similar to Dredge, your matchup against other combo decks like TPS and ANT depends a lot on player skill. You’ll generally find yourself taking on the control role in those matchups, trying to survive long enough for your draw engines to take over the game. Oddly enough, despite being a Storm deck, we’re also cheating on Storm hate ourselves, playing basically nothing for the mirror match. Given the option, I’d rather be on the TPS or ANT side of the table in the matchup against Bob Tendrils.

Of the most popular decks, the only one that feels bad is the Workshop matchup. Even with the Serenity plan, it still feels relatively luck/draw/die-roll dependent. Honestly, for the time being, I can live with that. Workshops make up somewhere between 10-25% of the metagame in most of the Vintage tournaments I play, but at the last few Blue Bells, the archetype hasn’t been represented strongly (in terms of raw quantity). Trygon Tezz and Shops seem to be bashing each other into oblivion in the Swiss rounds, by and large.

A final point. I have purposefully set up my maindeck to attack Tezzeret by including both Duress and Force of Will in the main. Should Trygon Tezz continue to recede from the metagame, it might make sense to move Duress back to the sideboard and reconfigure the maindeck. Given a rise in combo, I’d strongly suggest finding a way to fit Yawgmoth’s Bargain into the maindeck, as that card can be a key racing spell. Having Mind’s Desire over Bargain and Bob/Jace over tutors , plus my inclusion of two Tendrils of Agony, are all concessions to a metagame where many of the best players are using some kind of Tezzeret strategy. My goal with this deck is to defeat those players. Therefore, if you put this deck together and just goldfish it, you may find it feels “off” compared with a normal Vintage Storm deck. You’ll also notice that I side out Cabal Ritual against almost everything, so that may be suggestive of something – either my lack of understanding of Cabal Ritual or a lack of necessity for that card in this meta.

The following are the sideboard strategies I employed when playing Bob Tendrils. I’d hardly consider them definitive, as my time playing the deck is limited to six weeks and three tournaments, so consider them a guide more than hard-and-fast rules.

Against Tezzeret
:
Side out: Cabal Ritual, Preordain, Chain of Vapor
Side in: Duress, Tinker, Inkwell Leviathan

The thought here is that you’re in less of a race and want an alternate win condition; Tinker is an easy way to steal games when you’re keeping an opponent off-kilter with Duress and Force of Will. In the future I suspect that the use of Tinker and Inkwell in this matchup will be less of a lock as many Tezzeret players are going back to the use of Hurkyl’s Recall.

Against Workshops
:
Side out: Mind’s Desire, Merchant Scroll, Tendrils of Agony, 3 Duress, Cabal Ritual
Side in: 2 Tundra, 3 Serenity, Tinker, Inkwell Leviathan

For this matchup, the goal is to use Serenity and artifact bounce spells to set up either a slow build-up of resources via Jace and Bob, a one-shot turn where you can get Inkwell into play via Tinker, or one huge turn where you can use a lethal Tendrils (typically involving Yawgmoth’s Will). Serenity takes some practice to use correctly, so get in some games with it if you want to use this sideboard option.

Against Dredge
:
Side out: 3 Duress, Hurkyl’s Recall, Rebuild, Cabal Ritual, 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Side in: Echoing Truth, 4 Leyline of the Void, 2 Yixlid Jailer

Echoing Truth is used to make sure you have outs to multiple Leylines of Sanctity. The hate cards are relatively standard cards to side in. Another option I’ve tried is to leave in one or both artifact bounce spells and take out something like Preordain instead, but cards that dig for hate are powerful. You might consider leaving one Hurks or Rebuild in the deck if you’ve seen or suspect Chalice of the Void. If you know for a fact the opponent doesn’t have Leyline of Sanctity, you don’t need to bring in Echoing Truth.

Against Fish
:
Side out: Rebuild, Cabal Ritual, Preordain
Side in: Echoing Truth, Tinker, Inkwell Leviathan

Echoing Truth is a versatile sideboard card here that defeats annoying hate bears and bounces Leyline of Sanctity. Jace also helps play around hate bears and Children of Korlis. You could conceivably want to bring in Duress if you know or suspect your opponent is using Stifle and/or Mindbreak Trap.

Against the Mirror/Quasi-Mirror
:
Side out nothing for nothing, but pretend to do whatever you want.

I generally don’t even bother bringing in a Duress, although you may want to do so on the play – perhaps for a Preordain or Chain of Vapor. You may also consider this when up against a quasi-mirror deck like TPS or ANT – decks that are definitely faster than you are.

So, the What, How, and Why are now in your hands. Let’s go back to reviewing how the deck did in mine.

TMD 14: The Waterbury Report

Round 1:

Bye.

Round 2:

Bye.

Just kidding.

My opponent was Stephen Menendian. He’s been known to play Vintage now and again. I won the die roll.

I played a Preordain off an Underground Sea with Mox Jet in hand and found a Dark Ritual. I Ritualed out Necropotence, which resolved. I drew a new hand of seven more cards and passed the turn. On my second turn, I played a Mind’s Desire for four and hit a Tendrils as the most relevant card. Stephen countered the last copy of Desire with Spell Pierce. The Tendrils ended up being for eight copies, putting me back to twenty-eight. I drew ten more cards, and the game was over the following turn.

One game down. We sideboarded and shuffled up again.

I kept a hand without fast mana but with Force of Will, Duress, and Dark Confidant. Stephen played a Mox, a land, and a Dark Confidant. I countered Bob with Force of Will. On my turn, I Duressed, and saw: land, Lotus Cobra, Dark Confidant, and Voltaic Key; obviously the Key went to the graveyard. Stephen played out the Lotus Cobra and Dark Confidant. I could either let Confidant resolve or counter it with my hand of Force of Will and Mystical Tutor. I chose to counter it. I believed that drawing two cards a turn would let me pull away in the game.

I played my Dark Confidant. Stephen drew and attacked. I revealed for Bob, then drew. I hit blanks. Stephen drew and now had two cards in his hand. He attacked and passed back. I revealed for Bob and drew again. Still blanks, just fast mana. At end of turn, Stephen played Vampiric Tutor, and I had no Force of Will. He was obviously going to get Yawgmoth’s Will. He played it into my full grip, but I had no counter. It resolved, and with the Lotus Cobra, he easily replayed the Voltaic Key and took all the turns. I scooped immediately as he already had a win condition in play (Lotus Cobra – or at least, a card with Lotus Cobra’s Oracle text written on it).

I was upset. I felt like I played the game correctly and drew five running blanks to two live cards. I shook off that feeling; I chose this deck because it beats Tezzeret.

Shuffle up. Present deck. Draw seven. No lands, mulligan to six. Better.

Land, Duress. I saw a speculative hand with Spell Pierce, Force of Will, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Darkblast, and mana. Despite not having a threat in my hand, I took Force of Will. I drew holding Brainstorm with an uncracked Polluted Delta in play. I fought off the urge to play the Brainstorm, and waited. Stephen played a Lotus Cobra. I knew he didn’t have Force of Will. I drew and saw Tinker, and it resolved.

Inkwell got in there once but was bounced back to my hand via Hurkyl’s Recall. Stephen was at twelve. Lotus Cobra attacked me to seventeen. I played my Brainstorm, finally, and saw: Mana Crypt, Tolarian Academy, Yawgmoth’s Will. I still knew Stephen’s hand. I had exactly enough mana to play Mana Crypt and Tolarian Academy, play Yawgmoth’s Will, pay for Spell Pierce, replay the Mox I sacrificed to Tinker the first time, replay Brainstorm to put Inkwell back on top of my library, and Tinker a second time to put it back into play. Seemed like the obvious play.

I love Vintage.

This second Brainstorm was outrageously good even beyond the fact that it let me Tinker again and left me with a hand of Demonic Tutor and Time Walk. I was feeling pretty good now. After using a fetch, Stephen was at eleven.

Stephen untapped and sent a Duress my way. Well, sir, would you prefer to die to Inkwell or to Tendrils? Stephen chose Time Walk, opting to die by Tendrils. I untapped and attacked him to four, played Demonic Tutor and made this happen:

Game, set, match. I was 2-0.

Round 3:

My opponent’s name was Matt. He had the same color sleeves as me as well. I lost the die roll.

My opponent was playing Tezzeret and lead with Ancestral Recall. That play seemed good, so I made the same play. I drew a lot of fast mana, Mind’s Desire, Hurkyl’s Recall, and Rebuild. Matt played a Dark Confidant. I played out some mana, played Hurkyl’s Recall targeting myself; this drew out a Force of Will. Matt remarked that he thought I was playing Tezz but now was having second thoughts. I’d never played Tezzeret in a Vintage tournament, as unlikely as that is. The Rebuild resolved, and then I got to make this happen:

Adding in the spells I played after Desire and the Yawgmoth’s Will that let me replay Desire, I think this Desire netted me about six million billion stock mana points.

I looked at my hand for game 2 and immediately felt filthy and dirty all over. I played some cards and ended my first turn with Bob
and
Jace in play. Matt didn’t have the quick Key/Vault combo he needed to stop me, and I started drawing three cards a turn. Death by Tendrils inevitably occurred when Yawgmoth died, and I inherited quite a bit in his Will. What a nice guy!

Round 4:

This round I had the pleasure of being paired against Bill Copes. I didn’t know Bill, but as we played the match, I realized he’s a cool guy and hope to run into him in the future.

I lost the die roll. I kept a hand expecting another Tezzeret match for some reason. Instead Bill was playing the same deck as me and won very quickly.

I sideboarded in a Duress for a Preordain for my game on the play. My seven card hand was a snap mulligan, and my six card hand was very sketchy. It had two Tendrils and the only turn 1 play was Mox, Swamp, Demonic Tutor for something. For whatever reason, I kept. I decided to get Ancestral Recall. I didn’t think Bill had a Duress. Turned out he didn’t, but he had my friend from last round – only instead of a Will, he’d made a deal. You might even say he made a Bargain:

Yawgmoth, you traitorous jerk!

The commodity Bill was craving was cards, and he drew six of them before moving to his discard. I needed a miracle to survive my next turn. I got it.

My Ancestral Recall resolved, improbably, and let me draw Black Lotus, Dark Ritual, and Time Walk. My two Tendrils were suddenly live cards. I nonchalantly played the Time Walk, and it resolved also. I was now convinced that Bill didn’t have Force of Will. I drew Duress. I played Duress. Bill countered it with Force of Will. I guess his hand was very good? I played out all my cards. First Black Lotus (as calmly as one can in this situation since if Bill began drawing cards and hit Force immediately, I’d lose), then Dark Ritual, then one Tendrils. Bill began to draw some cards, and I was suddenly afraid he had Mindbreak Trap or some other craziness. Sanity prevailed, and somehow I’d won.

Game 3 – Duress went back out for the Preordain, and Bill took a mulligan on the play. Keeping this fair, I suppose. I Duressed him and saw a hand with Mind’s Desire and Tendrils of Agony. Bill was one action card away from roughing me up, but my hand was good enough to win on my turn if I got there. It was up to his top deck. Would I get another turn? I did. Tendrils flew everywhere, and I’d somehow dodged a bullet.

Round 5:

A win this round, and I was in the Top 16 with an undefeated record. I was paired down against Eli Kassis. I’d no idea what he was playing. I lost the die roll.

We both played Ancestral Recalls, and they both resolved. I played Duress, and I saw Ill-Gotten Gains and Gifts Ungiven along with some bounce spells. I’d no idea what to take. I’d never seen anyone play IGG in Vintage, but it seemed wrong to let him keep Gifts Ungiven and set up a Yawgmoth’s Will instead. This lead to an IGG; Ancestral Recall followed, then Wheel of Fortune, then Timetwister, then eventually I went to one from a Tendrils. I drew my own Timetwister, which I played but drew a bunch of junk and lost.

I sideboarded in a Duress. Eli took a mulligan to six. On his turn, he played Time Vault and Voltaic Key and I lost, as I had no Force of Will.

I still had no clue what I was playing against this round, but it kicked my butt just the same.

Round 6:

I was on a win-and-in again, this time against Dave Gans. To know Dave Gans is to love Dave Gans. He’s one of the nicest guys you’ll have the pleasure to battle against. Still, it was my job to slay him. I knew he was playing Dredge.

I won a die roll, and Dave took a mulligan down to four. My hand was decent but lacking mana, so I figured playing Ancestral Recall would fix that up. I drew two Dark Confidants and Mind’s Desire and now had three Dark Confidants in hand and no second land or any fast mana. I drew for turn and still no land. I Dark Ritualed out a Dark Confidant, but it didn’t help me; I was dead.

I opened game 2 with a Leyline of the Void and a Dark Confidant, and the Confidant flipped me a Force of Will. I rode the Bob for a while, and the advantage was enough to win pretty easily.

Hate flew all over the place in game 3 after we both mulliganed. I had enough hate that Dave decided to try to go the beatdown route using a Narcomoeba and Bloodghast against my Yixlid Jailer. I won the race when I sent over a Tendrils – and another, and another, and another, and another – to supplement the damage I’d already dealt.

Round 7:

Intentional draw.

And just like that, I was in the big show.

I got a club sandwich from the hotel bar and chatted with Joe Brown and Nate Thompson as well as Bill Copes. He was also in the Top 16, as was Joe. I talked Joe up a bit. The guy was on fire. I talked strategy with Bill and found out he also dodged Workshops through the Swiss rounds.

The final standings were posted, and I was in fifth. I didn’t know Matt’s final record, but Stephen ended up 5-2, Eli 4-2-1, Bill 5-1-1, and Dave 5-2, so my tiebreakers were very good.

Top 16:

I was paired up against Willie Munch. I’d never heard of Willie and had no idea what he was playing. We rolled dice, and I lost.

My hand was very good. Willie played Bazaar of Baghdad. I thought about how he snap-kept his seven. Suddenly my hand looked less good. All I had was a first-turn Dark Confidant. When Willie played a second Bazaar and dredged into all four copies of Bridge from Below, an audible cry of “Brains… Brains…” erupted from the crowd, and I lost.

Actually that brains part didn’t happen, but I heard it in my mind, and it made me chuckle.

In game 2 I snap kept my hand with Leyline of the Void, Force of Will, obligatory blue card, and Dark Confidant while Willie had to mulligan to five. Willie led out with his own Leyline of the Void. He played out a Bazaar, then a City of Brass and debated casting what I read as Nature’s Claim. I drew my extra card each turn from Bob. Finally I attacked and put Willie to twelve. I cast four spells. My fifth spell was Yawgmoth’s Will, which with Leyline in play pushed the storm count up one and did nothing else, but I found that funny, and my sixth spell was Tendrils. I told Willie to go ahead and Nature’s Claim his Leyline to buy a turn, knowing I could just counter it with Force of Will. He chose to Nature’s Claim my Leyline instead, so I let that resolve.

One more game. We both mulliganed. Willie used Serum Powder. I mulliganed again. My five card hand was:

It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do. I played Leyline of the Void and Sol Ring. Willie played a Bazaar. I drew a Dark Confidant. I played Dark Confidant and Island and shipped the turn. Willie dug using his Bazaar. He untapped and played a main phase Chain of Vapor on my Bazaar, and then dumped some dredgers into his Graveyard. I revealed and drew. No second black source. No Yixlid Jailer. No blue card.

Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Your Waterbury is over.

I won back my entry fee, along with a million billion Vintage cred points for winning my feature match.

All in all… good weekend.

Matt Elias

[email protected]

Voltron00x on SCG, TMD, and The Source