The Long & Winding Road - Riders on the Storm

As stated at the end of last week’s article, I chose to play Bob Tendrils at the Blue Bell Gameday on 8/14. Here’s what I sleeved up:

Bob Tendrils

Matt Elias

Test deck on 08-29-2010

Vintage

Creatures (4)

4 Dark Confidant

Planeswalkers (2)

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Lands (11)

Spells (42)

Sideboard

The deck I posted in last week’s article was missing Mana Vault; that is a card you probably want to include, and was an accidental omission. Some people might play Cabal Ritual instead, but given the artifact bounce I think I prefer the Mana Vault, all of which plays into Mind’s Desire. When I looked at the list while building the actual deck, I put Mana Vault in, and somehow left out Yawgmoth’s Bargain. Not an intentional choice, but also not one that cost me too much in the tournament. Some might argue that you don’t want or need to include Bargain and/or Mind’s Desire in a Bob Tendrils build as compared to TPS. I was actually happy with the list as it was, but keep in mind I chose this build (with maindeck Duress and Mind’s Desire plus two Tendrils) specifically to beat Trygon Tezz. In a more open metagame you might want the more guaranteed bomb that is Yawgmonth’s Bargain.

In the sideboard, I ran seven anti-Dredge cards, which is one or two more than most people would play in a deck like this; having played Dredge five times in seven rounds at the last Blue Bell, I wanted to make sure I was (extra) prepared this time. I believe there were 6 Dredge decks in the field of 39 players, so even though I didn’t end up having to play against the deck, being prepared for it wasn’t a bad decision. I was also concerned with Leyline of Sanctity out of Workshop, Fish, and Dredge opponents, and therefore played Rushing River and Echoing Truth in my sideboard; my hope was that having Jace and Chain of Vapor would be sufficient to beat any Fish decks using Meddling Mage or True Believer. Unfortunately, this left me somewhat more vulnerable to opponents playing MUD. I’m not sure how popular Leyline of Sanctity really is at the moment, as Oath is weak and Trygons are abundant.

As I noted last week, I shamelessly stole the core of this deck from LSV, then shamelessly confirmed my selection and tuned it while speaking to Brad Granberry.

Round 1 — Win 2-0 vs. Chris with Trygon Tezz (1-0)

Game 1: I resolved a first-turn Dark Confidant, and leveraged the advantage it provided into a third-turn Jace, the Mind Sculptor. That provided me with an insurmountable advantage as I was drawing three cards a turn at no loss of life, and I rode that to the win via Tendrils.

Sideboard: My plan against Trygon Tezz was pretty basic. I took out 1 Cabal Ritual, 1 Preordain, and 1 Chain of Vapor for 1 Tinker, 1 Inkwell Leviathan, and 1 Duress.

Game 2: My opening hand was interesting, containing only Mox Jet and a Dark Ritual for mana, but also having Tinker, Force of Will, Dark Confidant, Hurkyl’s Recall, and Necropotence. I had to hope Chris didn’t have a hand with Thoughtseize backed by Force, or double Force; otherwise this was a strong hand. Chris opened with Volcanic Island and passed. So far, it was looking good. I drew my card for the turn and saw Black Lotus. Ding! Now the question was, which spell was I going to try to bait with, because Chris’s lone Volcanic Island was still potentially problematic. It could represent Spell Pierce or Red Elemental Blast. I played Mox Jet, then Black Lotus, and both resolved. I then played Dark Ritual and Necropotence; I could use the Lotus to play through Spell Pierce, and Force of Will to push through against his Force if he had one.

Chris responded to Necropotence with a Force of Will, and I played Force of Will back; he answered that with Red Elemental Blast, so Necropotence did not resolve. I turned to Plan B, breaking Lotus for UUU and playing Tinker, sacrificing Mox Jet, and getting Inkwell Leviathan as my only permanent in play. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, as Chris wasn’t able to stop Inkwell. Trygon Tezz is ill-suited to stop or race a fast Inkwell.

I found out after the match that Chris had cut the Thoughtseizes from the Champs list, probably tilting the match-up heavily in my favor.

Round 2 — Win 2-0 vs. Mike with “Ginger” Noble Fish (2-0)

One of the decks I put together after seeing the results from Vintage Champs was a version of Noble Fish playing Lightning Bolts (see below, after the report), but I never had a chance to test it. Mike’s list was different than the one I had brewed up, but was along the same line of thinking. While Lightning Bolt alone doesn’t guarantee protection from Jace, it can potentially do so (since most people in Vintage lead off with the “Brainstorm” ability), and also removes Trygon Predator as a blocker for Jace and kills Dark Confidant.

Game 1: I lead off with a Duress, and saw a hand with Force of Will but no Blue cards and a ton of creatures (Noble Hierarch and two Qasali Pridemage) , and Black Lotus for acceleration. The two potential choices were Black Lotus (to slow him down by a turn or two), or Force of Will, to make sure I could continue unopposed. I chose Force of Will. Mike deployed his army of Exalted creatures, and I then had to expend a Force of Will stopping a Meddling Mage. I couldn’t find any action outside of Timetwister, so I went for the Twister with a decent amount of mana in pool. My Twister hand was all right but not exceptional, being full of mana and Yawgmoth’s Will but having no action besides that; the best thing it could do was play Yawgmoth’s Will, replay fast mana, and Timetwister again, so that’s what I did. The next hand was better, and let me Duress, seeing the way was clear. I played Recall on myself, but didn’t draw a win condition; then I played Ponder, seeing Merchant Scroll. My option there was either to blind shuffle, or to draw Scroll and use it to find Brainstorm. I drew Merchant Scroll and cast it to get Brainstorm, giving myself one more shot (with 3 draws) at finding something to win the game. The third card down was Tendrils of Agony.

Sideboard: Against Noble Fish, I didn’t have typical sideboard cards like Doom Blade, Massacre, or Virtue’s Ruin to sweep away creatures like True Believer or Meddling Mage. I sideboarded out 1 Hurkyl’s Recall, 1 Cabal Ritual, and 1 Preordain for 1 Tinker, 1 Inkwell Leviathan, and 1 Echoing Truth.

Game 2: Mike led out with a Forest and a Noble Hierarch, and then played another Hierarch and a Children of Korlis without having a second land, after my Duress stole his Spell Pierce. I also had only one land, a Swamp, and decided to go for it on turn 2 by playing Mox Sapphire, Mox Emerald, Mox Ruby, Lotus Petal, Dark Ritual, and Mind’s Desire for six. The six cards flipped included Tolarian Academy, Demonic Tutor, Duress, and Tendrils of Agony. I had one Black mana in my pool. I played Duress, pushing the spell count to seven. I played Demonic Tutor for Jace (although the best choice, really, would be Chain of Vapor, but really any bounce spell is going to be enough), and then cast Jace using Tolarian Academy, pushing the count to nine. Jace bounced the Children of Korlis to clear the way for Tendrils, which was lethal at 20 damage.

Round 3 — Win 2-1 vs. Matt with Tezz (3-0)

Game 1: I finally had to mulligan, but my six-card hand was pretty decent. Unfortunately Matt opened on two first-turn Dark Confidants, and they flipped these:

Not good. Matt attacked with the two Bobs and then played Time Walk. Miraculously, I still won.

No, no I did not. I did not win this game.

Not even close.

Nope, not even as close as that.

Having seen Dark Confidants and Tropical Island, I put Matt on Trygon Tezz and sideboarded as listed in round 1.

Game 2: I again have to mulligan, as my opening hand had only a Mox Ruby for mana. My six card hand had no mana producers at all.

Ditto my five card hand.

Ditto my four card hand.

I went down to three, seeing this:

Greetings from happy magical Christmas land! Well, Merry Christmas to you, too, and yes it is nice to be here!

There are a few hands that this deck could give you on three that might, possibly, be better than this, mostly involving land, Ritual, Necro or Lotus, Necro; land, Lotus, and Ancestral or land, Lotus, Jace might also be enough to pull you back into a game. Regardless, I was obviously amped to see this hand.

I laid out my cards on the table to see if Matt had a Force of Will, and… he did not. Inkwell resolved. I was in the game!

Matt did play out a first-turn Jace, the Mind Sculptor using land, Mox Sapphire, Mana Crypt, so that left me with the interesting decision of whether to attack Jace and effectively get Time walked, or just try to race knowing that Mana Crypt gave me a potential two-turn clock. I decided to attack Jace. It turned out that Matt’s hand wasn’t able to race Inkwell and Mana Crypt from there.

Game 3: This time, Matt had to mulligan. He played out a Swamp, Mana Crypt, Black Lotus, Dark Confidant, and Sensei’s Top with one card in hand. I tried a first-turn Tinker and he countered it with Mana Drain off the Lotus. That’s a pretty spicy six-card hand. I passed the turn back. Matt’s Bob revealed a Library of Alexandria and he revealed his drawn card to be Merchant Scroll. He then spun the top to find a land, drawing one, and used the Scroll to fetch Ancestral Recall, and sent the turn back to me. I had nothing much exciting to do that turn so I played a land and shipped back with a probable lethal hand as long as I got one more turn. Matt revealed Top from Dark Confidant, drew, played the Top, then passed back. On my turn, I then went for Yawgmoth’s Will, which resolved. That led into a sequence of plays where I could Tendrils for lethal damage, replaying Tinker for Black Lotus for the exact mana for lethal. During this sequence of plays, Matt waited to play his Ancestral Recall until I replayed the Tinker; he played Recall in response to Tinker but knew he had no outs (having seen the cards previously by way of Top), so it was just to put pressure on me to misplay, basically. I’ve seen a lot of opponents, even those with experience with Storm decks, punt Yawgmoth’s Will turns, so this is a reasonable strategy, but I think a lot of people would’ve taken a counterspell like Spell Pierce or Force of Will with that Merchant Scroll as opposed to Recall. Not saying that’s correct, either, but I think that’s what many people would do.

I found out after the fact that Matt was not on Trygon Tezz but was playing a more traditional Tezz deck, with a sideboard into Oath strategy.

Round 4 — Win 2-0 vs. Jeff with Trygon Tezz (4-0)

Game 1: This is a match-up I wanted, but not a player match-up I wanted; Jeff is a teammate and a very strong player. Unfortunately, the mulligan bug bit him pretty hard this match and he had to go down to five this game. I was able to resolve a quick Necropotence, and kept drawing hands full of action spells and Rituals but no more lands or artifact mana. I used the Dark Rituals to draw out counters from Jeff’s hand, but he kept preventing me from doing much meaningful. Finally I dumped my hand into a Tendrils for 14 to put Jeff at 3 and get myself back up to 17. Knowing that I had Ponder in hand, Twister on top of my deck (thanks to Brainstorm), and my other Tendrils in my hand, I felt pretty sure I had the game, and forgot to Necro again now that I had my life total back. Turned out it didn’t matter as Jeff’s deck didn’t cough up a Thoughtseize, so Ponder into Tendrils was enough to win. It was still a bad error on my part.

I actually felt my use of Necro was pretty poor the entire game, as I was drawing very conservatively for no particular reason, but in fairness, this was the second time I’d resolved Necropotence in a tournament game in 15 years (literally).

Game 2: Jeff again has to mulligan, and I’m able to resolve a Dark Confidant, which establishes a solid advantage so that I can Duress into him and use Force to protect myself. I then resolve a Tinker into Inkwell and ride that team to victory.

Round 5 — Lose 1-2 vs. Joe with MUD (4-1)

Game 1: There were three players at 4-0, and I was the unlucky one to be paired down, so I needed to play this round. The mulligan bug bit me pretty hard this round, and I lost the die roll, so I was staring down MUD with five cards. Game 1 was a blowout as Joe resolved a Lodestone Golem on turn 1, into Razormane Masticore on turn 2, which killed my Bob and then that team pulverized me.

Sideboard: I didn’t have time to practice with this deck against MUD, having just started playing it two days before the tournament. I took out 3 Duress, 1 Mind’s Desire, 1 Jace, 1 Cabal Ritual for 1 Hurkyl’s, 1 Island, I Swamp, 1 Echoing Truth, 1 Tinker, and 1 Inkwell Leviathan. Not sure if that’s a good plan, but it’s the one I used.

Game 2: I played Island, Mox Ruby, Sol Ring, Timetwister, drawing a new seven-card hand with four mana established on the board. The Twister hand had more mana and a Dark Confidant, plus Force of Will, and Joe’s new hand didn’t really have much going on. I played the Confidant with the plan of playing Mystical for Tinker. Instead, Bob revealed Tinker on my upkeep, which meant I got to Mystical for Time Walk instead. GG.

Game 3: I got bit by the mulligan bug again, going down to five cards and getting completely blown out by Chalice, and resistors, and a Golem.

Round 6 — ID with Brad (4-1-1)

Brad is playing a similar deck to mine, having helped convince me to play it. He’s sitting at 4-0-1, so we ID into the Top 8. How I’m ever going to push past Brad in Blue Bell Player of the Year points if he keeps making Top 8 of every tournament is beyond me.

Game 1: Once again, this is a match-up I wanted (and I think there were three players on this deck in the top 8), but I was hoping not to face Jeff until the finals. Jeff again had to mulligan to six, but resolved a Dark Confidant. I went for an early Yawgmoth’s Will while still having some gas in hand should I not have enough to kill him; I thought I could get the storm count high enough but came up one Storm short, leaving him at 2 life with a Dark Confidant while I was at 36. Dark Confidant killed him immediately on his upkeep by flipping a Trygon Predator.

Game 2: We both kept, and Jeff played Thoughtseize, taking my Ancestral Recall. Jeff played out a Time Vault on turn 2. I used Mystical for Timetwister, played Dark Ritual, and went for Timetwister, which resolved. This is obviously a dangerous line of play given that Jeff already had Time Vault in play. My Twister hand had two Confidants and a Duress, so I used Duress, and things looked ok for me. Unfortunately Jeff had Top in play and used it to find Key immediately, winning the game.

Game 3: I resolved a Dark Confidant to start this game. Confidant revealed Jace to put me to at 16. I drew and resolved another Dark Confidant, while Jeff resolved a Recall and then had to discard, choosing Spell Pierce. I attacked with the Confidants to put him at 11, and then used Yawgmoth’s Will through his Mana Drain (by way of Force of Will) to send over a lethal Tendrils.

Semifinals — Lose 1-2 vs. Joe with MUD (5-2-1)

Game 1: This was another rematch from the Swiss. I again lost the die roll, but at least I was able to keep a seven-card hand this time. This game looked reasonably winnable, but I kept finding myself a few cards short of what I needed. Ultimately I had to play a Hurkyl’s Recall to stay alive and then Tendrils for 12 to push my life back up to 18. Unfortunately I couldn’t punch through for the last few points of damage after Joe reestablished advantage after the Hurkyl’s.

Game 2: On the play this time, my hand was very good, while Joe went to six cards. I played Sapphire, Underground Sea, Demonic Tutor for Black Lotus, played Black Lotus, and Tinkered for Inkwell. Inkwell got me there. In hindsight, this was a somewhat dangerous line of play in that Joe was playing Karn, Tangle Wire, and Smokestack, but with Ancient Tomb being his accelerant and none of those cards, he wasn’t able to survive.

Game 3: This was never really much of a game. I kept a hand with a lot of mana production, including Mana Vault and Mana Crypt, but Joe had a Tangle Wire, and then another Tangle Wire, and a Duplicant to stop my Dark Confidant, alongside a Thorn of Amethyst. I used Rebuild and Hurks a few times to try to reset things, and off the Rebuild turn had I drawn a small handful of relevant cards I might’ve turned the game around, but it wasn’t to be.

In the end, the tournament was won by Nathan Thompson, who also won the last Philly Open in May. He was playing Trygon Tezz, a match-up I would’ve loved to face again. Still, I was happy with third place for my first try with this deck.

One of my flaws as a player is that I tend to stay with familiar decks instead of trying new ones, even when I strongly believe another deck is the best deck in the format. I get convinced I’ll be out-played when using a deck I don’t know; I’d been doing very well with this earlier in the year when I was playing different archetypes every Vintage tournament, but have fallen back into bad habits recently. This tournament was a good reminder that it is often correct to just play the best deck or a deck you think is positioned well against the best deck, a lesson I’d ignored at Vintage Champs.

Having not played with Bargain, and not noticing that I didn’t have it all day, I suppose I’m not inclined to believe it’s a must-include, but the card is obviously ridiculous. A lot of people will play either Force or Duress in the main of this style of deck and sideboard the other; if that is your decision, include Bargain and another Cabal Ritual, and possibly Gifts Ungiven.

As far as cards that didn’t impress me, while I wasn’t blown away by Preordain, I didn’t despise it either, and it let me hide some nice cards on top of my deck as well as dig for action, and it keeps your Blue spell count high to support Force. It isn’t as good as Ponder. I don’t believe it needs to be Restricted. I like Jace a lot in this deck in that you can set yourself up for another Storm attempt if your first attempt fails, or you can use Jace with Dark Confidant to set up an insurmountable advantage, but that set-up is for a specific field of slow Trygon Tezz decks and may not be fast enough in some metagames. I was also happy with Mind’s Desire, since it gives you a card you tutor for in your upkeep and just play out in the face of opposing counterspells. Honestly, I’ve always loved Mind’s Desire and one of my main reasons for wanting to play this deck was just to have the chance to play that card again, and it did not disappoint me on the day.

This deck does face several challenges, including a mediocre to poor MUD match-up (unless you’re really good at rolling dice), and the deck has a short window of relevance that may already have closed depending on how the field changes (for example, it isn’t as good against faster Tezzeret decks and is weaker against Oath of Druids as well).

Vintage: Coming Soon

In a few weeks, the best Vintage players on the East Coast are meeting in Hadley, MA to do battle in a Grudge Match and Black Lotus tournament, followed shortly by The Mana Drain Open 14 in Waterbury, CT. You can find details on these events on The Mana Drain. If you’re looking to get your Vintage fix, you need to attend these tournaments.

As far as the metagame; the Trygon Tezz deck is a predator for MUD and traditional Oath, and it is going to influence the field heavily. As an example, there were nearly no players using Oath of Druids at Blue Bell on 8/14; however, an NYSE tournament the next day with 23 players revealed two Oath decks in the top four. This is becoming a deep and nuanced metagame, and adoption of the Trygon list is not yet universal.

This is my early version of Noble Fish with Bolts; I haven’t tested it at all, so it may be terrible, but I thought I’d put it out there as a starting point for anyone interested in refining this strategy. The mana is a little tricky, because I suppose your optimal mana base is going to be able to fetch Tropical Island and then Plateau, since you need G/W for Pridemage, and U/W for Meddling Mage, and R for Bolt. Given Noble Hierarch, the need to hit Island and Forest against Wastelands, and needing Islands for Daze, I think it is probably worth trying with just Volcanic Islands to see if that’s enough to support Bolts. For whatever it’s worth, access to Bolt gives you an advantage in the Fish mirror.

Electric Fish

Matt Elias

Test deck on 08-29-2010

Vintage

Creatures (20)

Planeswalkers (1)

1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Lands (16)

Spells (23)

Sideboard

Playing without Null Rod at all opens things up a bit, and if you want to be on that plan, I’d suggest replacing the two Null Rods with +1 Selkie and +1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor. With the ability to counter, attack into, and Bolt opposing Jace along with Bolts for Dark Confidant, you can get your own draw engines online against other blue decks.

Next week: The Vintage Budget Challenge…

Bonus Content: Top 10 Favorite Videogames

I had no idea it would be this hard to whittle a list down to my favorite ten videogames, but once I started listing them out, I realized how huge a list it really was:

Shadow of the Colossus
Worms 2: Armageddon
Perfect Dark
Goldeneye
Mario Party 3
Halo
Halo 2
Gears of War
Fallout 3
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Suikoden II
Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (SNES)
Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo
Contra
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out
Mario Tennis
Super Mario Kart 64
Burnout 3: Takedown
F-Zero
Final Fantasy Tactics
Final Fantasy VII
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
The Secret of Monkey Island
Mechwarrior 2
Call of Duty 2
Lemmings 2
Bio Shock
Resident Evil 4
Marvel vs. Capcom 2
We <3 Katamari
Uncharted 2
Little Big Planet
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Might and Magic IV
Counterstrike
Portal
Tekken Tag
Okami
Dragon Force
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Super Mario 64
Metroid
Tetris
God of War
Panzer Dragoon Saga
Metal Gear Solid
Military Madness
Card Fighters Clash: SNK vs Capcom
Metal Slug

That’s one long list, and it doesn’t include games that I played for hours upon hours. I’ve been gaming for 25 years so you’re looking at a mix of NES, SNES, Genesis, Saturn, PS, PS2, PS3, Xbox, and Xbox 360 games (plus a Neo Geo Pocket game — look, I worked at Electronics Boutique off and on for five years, I had a videogame habit).

If I was forced to cut this list to 10, I don’t think I could do it in any order, but it would look like this:

Fallout 3
Tetris
Worms 2: Armageddon
Perfect Dark
Halo 2
Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo
Counterstrike
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Shadow of the Colossus
Mario Tennis

Contra is #11. Portal is #12.

Discuss. Remember, these are my ten favorite games, not necessarily the “best” ten games ever. I suspect that won’t stop you from criticizing heavily.

Here, I’ll get you started: “Obviously you’ve never heard of Chrono Trigger or the Legend of Zelda games.”

Matt Elias
[email protected]
Voltron00x on SCG, TMD, and The Source