Week 4

James Saltsman 2 - 1 Dave Kaplan

Tom Dixon 2 - 0 Matthew Gottshall

Matthew Gottshall: Game one he starts off with Bazaar and I Strip his Bazaar. He plays a second one turn 2 and goes for a Therapy. I scoop to not give him information.

Game two is very interactive, I have 2 Pyromancers out and a ton of Elementals and a flipped Delver and two unflipped ones. I would have won the game if my Delvers flipped, but 3 turns in a row I saw lands.

This gives me my first loss and I’m not too bummed out we had fun and what can I say, zombies ate my brains….

Brian Kelly 2 - 0 Sean Ottaway

Brian Kelly: I beat Sean 2-0 on Dragonlord Oath (Salvagers Oath w. Dromoka and Griselbrand). He was playing Punishing Dack with Vault/Key. The password for the game was Griselbrand, which ended up being prophetic. As awesome as the Demon is, he’s well beyond scope of what Salvagers Oath wants to accomplish, being foremost a Bomberman deck whose main use for lifelink fliers is sticking it to Null Rod/Wasteland decks (or keeping disruptive opponents from speaking, per Dromoka). Since in practice his lifelink flying body was the primary source of utility, he was cut for Sphinx during the Treasure Cruise era because these guys are always in my hand, so CMC and Force-compatibility are relevant. Unfortunately, Sphinx of the Steel Wind isn’t as foolproof with Mentor so Griselbrand returned.

My opening hand had Lotus, Auriok, Will, Force of Will, Emerald, Mana Crypt, and Tropical. I played Emerald, Trop, Lotus and he played a near mirror image for UR of Scalding Tarn, Ruby, Lotus. Given the Auriok & Will in hand I was dismayed to see him play an early Relic of Progenitus. My next few draws included Jet, Tolarian Academy, and Griselbrand. I used the Academy to hardcast Force Dack Fayden. He had Misstepped my Mana Vault a few turns earlier leaving him no blue card for the inevitable advent of the Demon. I wasn’t confident he would resolve from my end but the Relic was so abusive to the rest of my hand I had to try. I threw him out there, he resolved.

Game 2 was more interesting. I boarded out an Oath of Druids or two since he had no creatures and I anticipated loads of Oath hate. I put in Notion Thief. He led with Cage. After Probing him, I Flusterstormed his Time Walk since he had 2 lands, 2 Dack Faydens, Flusterstorm, and Spell Snare. I started building a mana base and setting up Cavern plays with Sensei Top. First came Auriok but his toys were hiding. Auriok was able to minorly pressure Dack Fayden. He then played Jace, bounced Auriok and Wasted my Cavern. Auriok returned next turn but the Notion Thief in resp to his planeswalker was Forced. Auriok killed Jace. Mana Crypt started getting violent and he Punishing Fired me. I played Yawg Will with Cage in play deliberately just to replay a fetch land to spin the Sensei top and find the goods, while sandbagging Lion’s Eye Diamond. A critical Mana Crypt roll was won, the top found a Gifts Ungiven, which couldn’t be Flusterstormed due to being only the second spell played with me having a hideous amount of mana on board. Gifts resolved finding all of Auriok’s favorite things, Pyrite, Lotus, Engineered Explosives, and Nihil Spellbomb. LED made infinite mana.

White Lotus 2 - 1 MaximumCDawg

White Lotus: G1: He mulls to 5 while i have turn one Ancestral on the play so not much of a game. He concedes before I get to go off and draw my entire deck a few times over + generate hundreds of blue mana in the process =(.

G2: He has two consecutive Hymn to tourrach turn 2 and 3. I manage to get a key and a map on board + 2 mana sources and I find tezzeret after playing a thoughtcast, I am set up to win next turn by fetching up the academy with Map, but he topdecks the third Hymn like a boss and takes away my tezzeret ;(. From there I topdeck blank after blank after blank after Cantrip into blank, … I die a slow and painful death after being beat down from 20 to 0 life by the same lone Vampire Nighthawk and seeing his Liliana go all the way to her ultimate. Crazy Variance.

G3 he has turn one lotus into Hymn + inquisition of Kozilek. He chooses Twister from a hand with Land, Imperial Seal, Voltaic Key and Timetwister. Which leads me to tap my first land for key, play second land and seal for Time Vault on my turn. His only removal is Vindicate so I play the mana crypt I topdecked in order to be able to activate the TV the turn I cast and cut his outs to 0 (seeing as he only has one land). Some might argue that taking the twister is the clear wrong choice, but due to the Mana crypt topdeck if he takes the seal I get to empty my hand and draw 7 new cards which would have completely voided all he had accomplished with the lotus + triple discard line, and put me in a pretty good shape to win with only one land on his side. The mana crypt deals me a few damage but I am able to quickly find Vamp into tezzeret and seal the deal by attacking with a 5/5 army of Black Lotus and friends.

MaximumCDawg: This was a frustrating match. I had some technical issues on my end, but I got them fixed enough to play. Then, when I manage to squeak by in G2 in hilarious fashion, I end up crapping my pants in G3. Here’s what I had, what I did, and what I should have done.

I mulled to 5 and kept a hand with Lotus, Plains, Inquisition, Liliana of the Veil, and Nighthawk. He leads with mana. I put out Lotus and Plains, and then crack the lotus for black, giving me WBBB. I decide to Inquire first, reasoning that if he had some counter out of the board I wanted Lily to resolve. I then see a hand involving Stroke, Twister, and Seal. Key was either in play or in his hand, I dont remember. Anyway, somehow the ol’ grey matter did not connect the dots between Key and Seal (I blame the lack of card images, surely I’m not that stupid) and so I reason that the Twister is the biggest threat he is close enough to cast. As soon as I take this, Storm Angus, the Cow of Thunder, points out that I just lost. He then begins telling me the sad and obvious truth that Seal will protect his Vault from discard. When White deploys a newly-drawn Mana Crypt next turn, I stick around to see if he’s going to kill himself. He’s not that dumb.

Here’s what I should have done. I should have led with Lily, since I had not seen any countermagic from White. I did not believe he was not at least running Force, though, and probably something out of the board to protect his combo, like Spell Pierce. Anyway, I should have gone with what I knew and resolved Lily first to make him discard. That way, he would have had to commit more strongly to one line of play or another based on what he discarded, and then my Inquisition would have been more effective. As White points out, he probably would have retained either Twister or Seal regardless, and given the Crypt he drew, either probably wins him the game; I can’t deal with him on the stack.

Stormanimagus 2 - 0 Wappla

Wappla: Lost 0-2 to Stormanimagus. He is on Workshops, playing a interesting build with Ravagers, BC style four Buried Ruin, maindeck Crucible, and some other cards that had no relevancy to this particular match. I thought Storm, also sitting at 0-3, would be on either Shops or Dredge, and decided to cheat on SB cards for the former, figuring that I gained much greater percentage vs Dredge with two additional cards than against Workshops. Running Shops myself was a consideration, but I knew he would be prepared for that matchup, as he plays JGS later this trimester.

For this I was summarily punished. The type of Shops list Storm is running is called ‘California’ shops, as the heart of the deck is a large number of Buried Ruin, something Blaine Christiansen has done at both of the past two Vintage Championships to very high finishes. Storm wanted to call the deck MC Buried Ruin, but I told him this would lead to lots of people making jokes about it every time someone plays it. Hence the name became ‘California’, which, if you do not speak the fine language, is Italian for “A Workshops Deck which runs four Buried Ruin, some Smokestacks, and a non-zero number of Arcbound Ravager.”

The games were non-interactive. The usual things happened in the first. In the second my hand of seven had one land and my hand of six had one, but also Hurkylls, Steel Sabotage and Force of Will with another blue card, so I was obliged to keep. He had a fine hand of seven with Lotus, Crypt, Ancient Tomb, and things to play. We exchanged our hands and a couple turns later he had a Lodestone and I had a Swords to Plowshares I couldn’t cast.