I didn’t have much expectations coming into that tourney and I managed to outdo those. I mostly play this format to get to play some old school in real life, since the old school formats I do prefer these days I basically can only play online. Most of my thinking about the 93/94 format (as evidenced by some of the articles on this blog) goes towards fixing what makes it broken and not very much fun for me. There’s some variety in the format of course, but not really at the top level. And as for a challenge, some are convinced that UR decks do offer a challenge to the deck, but that’s just the one deck, and I don’t think that’s all that true, and this tournament is another case in point (talking about the European variants). Still, although slowly, things are moving down here, and the old rule that made tapped blockers not deal any combat damage (which I petitioned for there) is used in this tournament, to try to limit “The Deck”‘s dominance. That’s in addition to the usual BoM (Bazaar of Moxen) rules (tapped artifact’s static abilities aren’t active, mana burn, lose at end of phases, Falling Star errata), and I didn’t hear any complaint so it doesn’t seem to me to be much of a problem to add a bit to the rules.

Initially I’m not sure to go, but the entry fee is low, it’s not far from home, there would probably be some opportunity to do some trades and it wasn’t clear whether there would be a big enough number of players so of course I go. Anyways, with all that, and being involved in other formats (like testing the new and great “Point 94” format, plus some Highlander 93/94 plus playing in and organizing the OGT2 tourney) I haven’t played in the format much for a while and just take my “SinDreams” deck on the go, which I guess has an idea or two but is at best a work in progress, although most likely nothing promising on the competitive level. Just something to get my deckbuilding cogs working. SinDreams because it’s a contraction of SinDbad and Field of Dreams and mostly because it makes me think of Sweet Dreams, which as a child of the eighties works right on my synthpop nostalgia. Anyways, SinDreams are made of these : (ahem)

(Titania’s Song + Moat, now that’s a tune I’d like to hear !)

It’s much more dreams than sin, since the combo is by nature fragile, as small creatures without any form of protection go, and beside is much stronger when using the Sindbad/Sylvan Library combo anyways, which goes like this : upkeep you draw the land that you know to be on top of the library because you left it there last time you used the Sylvan L., then you play your ancestral recall if you have one, and in that case set aside the cards drawn that way, draw phase you draw three cards, and you add the cards drawn during your upkeep to the selection of cards that you may put back with Sylvan Library (as it asks you to put back up to two cards “drawn this turn”, of course if you didn’t keep the land drawn with Sindbad revealed, you have to reveal it again before adding it to the Sylvan mix), you of course put back one land on top, which often will be the land that you already drew during your upkeep, ensuring that you’ll draw two cards per turn as long as you want, unless the opponent can do something about it. But let’s backtrack a bit. At first, searching for cards that may have been underrated in this format, it didn’t take too long to find Sindbad as a candidate, since I have a rule that whenever I find a card with “draw a card” in its text I give it much more attention than it would seem to deserve at first sight, what’s more I could see how you could abuse it. I had read that article by Jaco of Eternal Central about the Millstone/Field of Dreams combo and thought that it might be good enough to see two cards per turn thanks to Field of Dreams to see a land most of the time. What I liked was that it’s in color and since it’s an Enchant World, this could double up as an Abyss killer. Still that’s a bit of a problem to play a card that will almost never do anything on its own like Field of Dreams (although it could really help the opposing millstone player !). But as for Sindbad, I wouldn’t qualify it as bad on its lonesome. Without assistance, you’d still have at least 33% lands in your deck, so overtime you’d end up generating card advantage. While not as explosive, the effect of Sindbad actually has some parallels to that of Land Tax : it makes you draw lands, which become premium cards if you play Armageddon, the advantage being that you can’t really hope to Tax consistently in this format and that Land Tax isn’t very compatible with playing more than two colors in those conditions, while Sindbad doesn’t care about how basic the lands he checks are. And that was the second theme of the deck, since I wouldn’t be so brazen as to imagine that I’d have the combo consistently, I’d still have to try to make those lands count. But in this format Armageddon is nothing incredible, therefore : Energy Flux, therefore : no Moxes or Ivory Tower or anything of the kind, just the Chaos Orb, and the Lotus that I don’t have. Armageddon + Energy Flux can be the bee’s knees, but not every deck is based on big fleets of artifacts so I “only” left two maindeck. Then, realizing that I didn’t care to attack with Sindbad, I thought of a long-time favorite : Moat. I’m not convinced it’s such a good idea to restrict myself to hit with flyers in that deck, but I had some desire for Moat so that’s how things are now : a very slow deck that try to get and protect its combos with an armada of counterspells and finish with a few Serra Angels. In other words a deck that’s as slow if not slower than the deck, but doesn’t even compare on the power level !

Finally we’re actually 15, including two who made the trip from Orléans and a Pro-Tour winner.

Round 1 : vs. Philippe “Figue”

Phil plays a strange UW deck that seems to be white weenie sometimes, or sometimes doesn’t do much more than threatening to play a Sleight of Mind on its Exorcist ! And it even works, at least against my slow as hell deck, which in this case could benefit from more Moat but really I wouldn’t rush to add them. I also don’t remember how I lost that first game but I did. Game 2 looks more like a weenie deck knocking my deck that’s too slow and could probably only be helped by drawing it’s Control Magics, but he’s the one drawing his. GG

Round 2 : vs. Not Sure

My brain is doing its darnedest to forget this match, and I don’t even remember that nice person’s name (sorry). He’s playing monoblack, and game 1 I get my Chaos Orb and play it : I miss. I refrain from putting this in big bold red letters : I missed a Chaos Orb flip ! The effect on my brain is traumatizing, I’ve got a method that is supposedly fool-proof, with a close to 100% success rate, and I don’t take it easy. I concede on the spot. I think that’s when things started to unravel for me, though all that seem to come out of a daze, out of which the only clear fact is the Chaos Orb miss. It’s all on me of course, maybe I didn’t apply the tech correctly, maybe it just happened because it could, but it’s entirely my fault to take it that way. I never fully recovered. Game 2 I missed my chaos orb flip again, but managed to stay in the game, which I won with the help of a Preacher and a control Magic stealing what was on the other side (including one of my Serra Angel that he had thanks to an Animate Dead, which I had neutralized thanks to a Spirit Link.. Spirit Link + Control Magic from the sideboard are quite nice, and that Serra was chocking under the Enchant Creatures stuck on her, but she still got me there). Game 3 he plays an early Order of the Ebon Hand. As most of my removal are Swords to Plowshares and I don’t see any Control Magic in sight, I need to successfully resolve my Chaos Orb. I don’t, so I lose. I’ve managed to not only miss 3 flip in a row, but psych myself completely out of a tournament I was already not very invested in.

Round 3 : vs. Carlo Carboni

I’m only half present, and the half that’s there wonders what it’s doing here. Carlo’s playing maybe some Disco Troll, at least I remember he had some trolls, and some burns, and apparently that’s enough to beat my deck. It also helped that when I was supposed to Recall for a Serra Angel I managed to Recall for a land !, what the ?, oh whatever..

Round 4 : vs. bye

What ? I’m 0-3 and now I get a bye ?!

What seemed like the worst actually turned out to be the best as it gave me time to take some pics, see some good Magic and doing all that made me think about something else than the stupid Chaos Orb obsession and thinking that it’s stupid to think like that etc. I notice two “The Deck”, two UR(x), two Reanimator, two RG beats, one Underworld Dreams combo and one white weenie and a “half” (Philippe’s deck). Vincent Ruaut’s games are the most spectacular. He already made some heads spin with his reanimator deck at the Eternal Week End last October, and he’s back with mostly the same deck.



As it happens, Stephen Menendian has jut published an excellent deck tech/history/report about reanimator in old school MtG, his deck is in a different format but some of the same logic applies : Bazaar of Baghdad isn’t necessarily great only in official eternal formats, it can be a beast in “95 Magic” (with Ice Age added to the mix) and quite excellent in 93/94. Turns out, if about 2 out of three of the cards you discard to the bazaar are creatures, then if you resolve an All Hallow’s Eve the Bazaar isn’t card disadvantage at all but more like unrestricted, unchecked by Strip Mines, crazy good card advantage and board presence. Like :

or :

He wasn’t the only one, as Myrdynn had another version (sporting Sindbad too) of the bring back all the monsters from hell :

I had to ask to be shown the armada as the opponent scooped faster than you can say “Coloss..”.

Which is the occasion to realize that I lost against a deck playing freaking Will O’ the Wisp 🙂 At some point Guillaume brought some proper food for the assembly, some “bouchons” which if I’m not wrong is a preparation from the Réunion island, I can’t comment as I wasn’t hungry, but still, much thanks Guillaume !

Round 5 : vs. Philippe Royer

He plays “The Deck”, sort of, or more like the deck very partially powered, and as it happens that deck doesn’t work very well like that. Anyways, game 1 goes very slow, until I Mana Drain his Mind Twist for 5. The next turn with the help of those 6 mana I can play a second Serra Angel (the first is held back by a Maze of Ith), Time Walk and Recall the Time Walk. Next turn I Time Walk again, then show my Armageddon and win. That took some time and we don’t manage to finish the second game. Hmm, super slow and weak deck, that’s the third combo of the deck and the real killer ! 🙂

Semis are called, it could seem a bit strange to do a semi-final in a 15-persons tournament, but whatever people play and that let a fully-powered The Deck and a White Weenie make a play for the win.

The first semis, sees Pierre “Pedro” Canali (which you might remember from doing quite “well” on the big stage) playing a URb variant on the top seed (and a 5-0 record if I remember correctly), against a not quite as experienced Mathieu Derothe-Renaud playing White Weenie (having gathered three wins, with the best tiebrakers of the lot). Things didn’t go too well for Mathieu and the other semi-finalists had barely started that they were already done there (with a clean 6-points forked fireball off a Lotus + Mana Vault from Pedro to get the exact amount of damage necessary).

Mathieu isn’t as experienced as his opponent and did many mistakes, though that doesn’t mean they changed the outcome. So can we derive anything from our new rule (which really is the old rule) adoption ? They should help such a deck as WW. Too little matches to say. Too many factors at play. Here’s Mat’s deck :

In the other semi, the number 2 seed, Philippe “Figue”, did play some amount of small white creatures too :

Well that’s quite the unusual build (and the nicest Sol Ring ever). Phil really really hates Hymn to Tourach and the black decks that comes around them, and let it be known in oh so many cards ! Anyways I don’t remember much from that semi-final as a lot of glare stopped me from seeing much, and what little I saw seemed predictable : despite having a better score in the rounds, the adventurous deck was no match for The Deck (and drew blanks on top of that in the second game).

Which means we had a classic UR / The Deck final. Or almost as Canali added a bit of black via Badlands to have a chance to cast Demonic Tutor and Mind Twist and doesn’t play any maindeck counterspells. Also the Earthquake seemed to serve him right, as they’re a quite natural fit already, and he had a Mana Vault to add to the aggravation.

He was playing against Cyril Terroy, with The Deck. I don’t get to ask them to play away from the glare in time, but I do get to follow the second game a bit better. Cyril won the first one and now comes the main reason that makes that match-up not as fair as some want it to be : multiple Ivory Towers. By which I don’t mean he has several in play early on (though he ends up with that, and a stupid amount of life points), but that too many chances to get an Ivory Tower makes the matchup not particularly difficult for The Deck. While I’m still surprised to see many The Deck players omitting those, many are aware. In timed rounds things are much harder for the control deck, and both deck can be considered of similar potency in 50 mns + 5 turns. Once unbound by that time constraint, things change, and we all know how. Still, with 4 Blood Moons and 4 Energy Flux, plus the almost complete array of Elemental Blasts, Canali might have seemed equipped, but, in my analysis, he played so few lands, that it came to bite him, and in the critical turn, Cyril Braingeysered for 6 and found no jewelry but he at least got a Strip Mine. Had he not used it to destroy the lone mountain Pedro had, or had there been more than one red mana source on his side, he would have been unable to counter the Blood Moon Canali was hoping to cast. But he did, and then he drew two cards per turn, and with the 8 elemental blasts that he had, was ready to counter each real threat that Canali was showing his way.

I quite like Wrath of God maindeck. When you’ll be facing the kind of board that reanimator decks produce, you’re gonna wish you had a proper mass removal, because it’s not humble Moats or Abysses that would save you from that ! (of course if they have a Concordant Crossroads on top of that then unless you play a fog, you’re done for) He also is quite adamant about playing the entire array of Elemental Blasts as the critical turn/spell battle can be lost on a single mana, and the more of those you have the more spells you may be able to counter in a single turn.

Congratulations to Cyril Terroy !