BREAKING EVEN

After last week's article, I was still really pumped about playing Oath. It's one of the few decks I've played that seems to nearly always come out on top against the various stylings of Mishra's Workshop decks in the meta. I did some work on my list, came up with a few changes, and the handful of test matches I had time for went well for the most part.

I was determined to play in a Daily Event, as I had been mysteriously absent from them since August 12th 2015. Here's what I ended up submitting:

I played this list to a 2-1 record. I got the round one bye, so that meant I only got to play 2 rounds. The two rounds that I did play were against Workshop-based decks, so that was a lot of fun.

I lost round two to Bluediamonds, which was a spectacular match to be completely honest. I lost the die roll, and looked at my hand. I had the fast mana to play a turn-one Jace, the Mind Sculptor, so I kept. My opponent played a Thorn of Amethyst on turn one, which ruined my plan for my first turn. Luckily, I top-decked an Oath of Druids and managed to play it on turn three with some extra mana I had built up. My opponent had been chipping away with an Arcbound Ravager, and I was defenseless. Sensing danger and seeing no blockers, Bluediamonds plays Triskelion and I had no counterspell. He then sacrifices almost all of his artifacts to Ravager, attacks to take half of my life points, then sacrifices the Ravager to itself and puts the counters onto Triskelion, which was large enough to shoot me for lethal. That was pretty incredible. If I'm going to lose to a match-up that's normally a good one, that's the best way, in a grand fashion. Game two involved a barely keepable hand that just got worse, and I lost. In the old Daily Events I wouldn't have minded as much, since those were four rounds.

Round three had me paired up against Workshop deck number two, I think that it was Martello Shops as I did not see any Arcbound Ravagers or Hangarback Walkers. I lost the first game to a turn-one Trinisphere, and then I had two games where I Oathed out a Griselbrand. It's usually difficult to lose once you've got a Griselbrand in play, and this match was no different.

So, I played my first Daily Event with a prize-pool consisting of Play Points and I broke even. I spent sixty points to play and won sixty back. I don't know if I'm supposed to be excited about that or not, but I know that I logged off that night wishing for the old events to come back. Will I keep playing in these? Anything is possible. Playing 2-player queues is even worse, and the Tournament Practice room can be a drag at times, depending on the people you're playing with. I'm lucky enough to know a fair amount of the Vintage players online, so I get to find competent players to play against quite often, and there's also the Vintage Player-Run Events run by No_Outs. If first place in the Dailies paid out one more pack, and second place gave out at least one pack, I'd feel a lot better about playing in the "new and improved" Vintage Daily Events. It still would be a downgrade from what we had before, but at least it would feel like the prizes were worth paying to play for.

The list I played was pretty good, Preordain and Dig Through Time go a long ways towards removing some of the negative variance associated with the BUG Oath builds. When I cut Gitaxian Probe I added a Sensei's Divining Top to the deck so I would have one more early play that could help me see more cards. Seeing more cards is the goal, that's essentially what I was talking about last week and why I was running Probes. I've even been playing with Vampiric Tutor again because having the exact right card in a deck like this is quite powerful. Vamp also shuffles the deck, which allows me to see more cards with Divining Top. I'm still not a fan of the -1 in card quantity, but you can't have everything.

The turning point for cutting Probe was casting one on turn one with a mediocre hand and seeing that my opponent had turn-one Jace with Force back up. Jace is a huge pain in the neck for a deck with no early pressure, and if you Oath out a Griselbrand you're forced to have either a Time Walk or something else to deal with it before the dreaded "Jace bounce" occurs. Regardless of whatever headaches a Jace can cause someone, I cut the card because I felt like it was time to do so. Luckily for me, this is a wonderful segue into today's topic...

Nothing is Sacred.

In competitive Magic, we're all playing to win. While some might say that we play to have fun, generally it's the victories that are what actually constitutes fun. One might relish a good run in a particular tournament that just happened to fall short, but it's the epic wins that lead up to that point that are the usual cause for the positive feelings. Losing isn't usually a good time, but the instances where we can seek enjoyment from a loss are generally hard-fought games that were somewhat close. There's nothing wrong with this, and there are other formats and ways to play Magic that cater to the desire to "play for fun" (essentially the casual approach to the game).

Because we are playing competitive Magic with the ultimate goal of winning as many matches as possible, we cannot be beholden to "sacred cows". There should be no card in your deck that you would not at least consider cutting, for any reason necessary. Just because I talked up one card in the past, like Gitaxian Probe, doesn't mean I should continue to play it just to prove a point (especially if that point simply cannot be proven).

There are a lot of cards that I love that have been in and out of this Oath deck I've been working on. One of my favorite cards of all time is Mana Drain, it's one of the few cards in my Magic Online Vintage collection that I actually owned in paper, and it is an longstanding icon of the blue mage. If I let my fondness for Mana Drain cloud my judgement so much that I won't even try to play without it, then I'm doing myself an immense disservice. I could be losing matches that I should have won, and I'm spending time not testing other cards.

I've recently been playing my Oath list without Drains, and things are going well. I really love the card, but the more I thought about it I realized that the dream scenario of using Drain mana to cast a Jace or Dig Through Time just wasn't happening much. I didn't want to be holding up two mana all the time, usually I just wanted a Flusterstorm or Force of Will for an opposing Force of Will.

There are reasons that we might use to not cut a card that aren't actually good reasons. For instance, using the Mana Drain example, if I am winning my practice matches with Drains in my deck, I might couple that information with the fact that I like the card and decide not to try something else in its place. Those wins don't prove anything about the efficacy of the card in your strategy unless it was either useful or needed at some point in the game. If you won the match and never saw a Mana Drain, or if all it did was pitch to Force of Will, that doesn't prove anything positive came about from keeping the card in your list. This also doesn't prove anything negative about the card being in your deck. It's important to evaluate each choice in as honest of a fashion as possible. Ask yourself how often you're actually in need of that effect and make adjustments accordingly.

Life, the Universe, and Everything.

A lot of life lessons that I've learned have application in Magic, oddly enough. One lesson I've learned is that you shouldn't be afraid to admit when you're wrong. Keeping a card in your deck because you're convinced that it's good, even when all empirical evidence suggests the opposite is true, then you are failing to admit your mistake, and it will eventually prove detrimental to your success.

The same goes for deciding one card or one type of deck isn't good just because you don't like it. Sure, some cards could be overrated or narrow, but it's not a good idea just to decide one popular card is bad just to show how original you are. This is a lot like the type of Magic player who frowns on "net-decking". I admire someone who builds their own unique deck, but only if they have the strength of character to know when to give up on an idea and move on. If you keep trying to make Pros-Bloom a viable deck and can't win a match, at some point you have to put it on the shelf and Tinker with something else.

I myself didn't have a lot of respect for Time Vault decks, but I was wrong. A few people managed to do good with them at the Vintage Championship. My personal experience with the deck had always been negative, but I didn't account for the fact that some people might just know how to pilot those decks better. It was easier to convince myself that the deck was not good than it was to admit that perhaps I was just not skilled with it.

Hubris is a dangerous quality. It can lead the mighty to fall, and it's rather unbecoming in the eyes of those who bear witness. I propose that we all be humble and acknowledge the improvements that we are able to make. Having that level of honesty should lead to making better decisions regarding our choice of archetype and it's construction.

I don't wish for anyone to be mired down with overbearing self-criticism. Everyone makes mistakes, as trite as that sounds, but letting those errors leave us unsettled is a good way to precipitate future gaffes. I've let my game-play errors snowball into a match-loss before, and it is not a good experience. The best thing to do is to acknowledge mistakes, and then brush them off - all the while being mindful of them in the future.

All of the philosophical issues I've discussed in this article apply to everyone, especially myself. Becoming rattled over an error is one of my major shortcomings as a player. I've always played my best when I could remain calm and focused, and I think that having that kind of mindset is very important to prolonged success as a Magic player. On the flip-side, it's easy to think of yourself as an amazing player when you're winning, even if that win is due more to you having one of your deck's famous "broken openings". Having an opening seven containing Forbidden Orchard, Mox Sapphire, Oath of Druids, Force of Will and Flusterstorm does not suddenly make you omniscient. Learning to win with a less-than-stellar hand, or fighting through multiple hate-cards takes skill.

Vintage: For the players, by the players.

I've been trying to keep my promise to post information and results about the Vintage MTGO Swiss player-run events that my friend No_Outs has been hosting. This is an idea we hatched back when we first learned that our beloved Daily Events would be getting the ax. No_Outs (Steve Johnson, a friend and great advocate for eternal Magic) has done basically everything, and as a community we all should be thankful. All I've done is to try to promote the event, he's the one who did all the legwork, and I'm going to take a minute out right now to say thanks. Thank you, Steve. This event is a welcome reprieve from the alternative. I appreciate all that you've done, keep up the good work!

For those of you who don't know, you can find information about the events here on themanadrain.com. The events are exactly what they sound like, Vintage format, Swiss-pairings. Registration is done via www.gatherling.com. There is a prize of credit from a bot chain (for first through third), and the best non-powered deck has a prize to win as well. The event is free to enter. I've managed to play in a few, and I had a great time. We've had some really great players playing in these too, TheAtogLord and diophan are a couple of Vintage ringers, you'll have to really earn your victories!

Also, I'll be posting results from the events here, so this is a chance to get your deck published online, just like WotC does for the Daily Events (lists are also posted on Gatherling, so if you're curious about a deck, just check it out). Here's the results from the latest event:

Vintage MTGO Swiss - 9/8/15 TheAtogLord Ravager Shops diophan Delver pkengen25 Grixis Control Kasparadi Grixis Control jbob007h TPS No_Outs Esper Deathblade Bluediamonds White Trash Islandswamp Oath of Druids Correntze 5-Color Humans Rakura Dimir Post

We'll take a look at the winners deck list, and if you followed the Vintage Championship, this should look familiar:

This deck is a beast, it made it to the elimination rounds of the 2015 Vintage Championship in Philadelphia PA, and it preys on both other Workshop-based strategies and common hate cards/sideboard plans. For instance, cards like Ingot Chewer and Pulverize, as well as Dack Fayden are far less effective at dealing with Arcbound Ravager and Hangarback Walker.

Congrats to The Atog Lord, and thanks for participating! The Atog Lord has a Twitch.TV Channel and streamed this event, if you're interested in watching.

That's all the time I have for this week, thanks for tuning in. Before I go, I'd like to mention to my readers that there are some new podcasts focusing on Vintage that you should know about. First off, it The Academy Scrolls by Tom Dixon and Matt Murray, hosted on BlackMagicGaming.com. Then there is the latest "So Many Insane Plays" which features a Vintage Champs review. Then there's Samuel Alaimo's "Eternal Insight" podcast featuring an interview with the Vintage Champ himself, Dragonlord Brian Kelly! I'm super excited for all of this fresh Vintage content, and I hope you all take the time to check it out!

Until next time, may all of your opening hands contain Black Lotus!