Forty-eight players registered for the first day of Dice City’s sold-out Winter Ball.

The prize pool included a CE Mox Sapphire for best unpowered, a custom-etched magic-card-sized trophy for first place overall, and calligraphy cards for other “prestige” prizes like Top 8, most creative, and the most cards from The Dark and Fallen Empires in a decklist with a winning record. And Jeff Menges made a killer playmat just for the event, which you can see in the background of the calligraphy prizes below:

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There were three of us unpowered in the Top 8; the first place deck was powered, but second place was Nathan’s unpowered White Weenie deck with a full set of Mesa Pegasus (see the first round below).

Top creativity went to Greg’s tribal treefolk deck. It used Arboria, Millstone, and Large Individuals, with a Eureka sideboard plan. Second place creativity went to Adam’s “Big Butts” deck, featuring Jacque Le Vert and … several G/W derpy legends from Legends, like Sir Shandalar. Adam played Walls twice last summer, so I think he definitely has a type.

Another standout deck from the tournament was Dustin’s 5-color Millstone/Field of Dreams deck in 4th place.

Here’s what I played — it might look familiar:

My sideboard was:

2 Energy Flux

3 Blue Elemental Blast

4 Psychic Purge

1 Hurkyl’s Recall

1 Boomerang

1 Power Sink

1 Control Magic

1 Tormod’s Crypt

1 Amnesia

This is not a terribly good sideboard, but it was decent enough.

My buddy Wes accompanied me on the ride down and settled on my mono black deck. We outfitted it with a couple extra Strip Mines for the day and I set him loose on the world.

There were some special guests there, too: Barry Reich, the first playtester (ever), and Jeff Menges.

Round 1: Nathan with White Weenie

Nathan demolished me in about 10 minutes. White Weenie is probably the best deck in the budget box against Stupid Blue, but with four Strip Mines it becomes a hell of a beating. The first game he plays out a Tundra Wolves and Mesa Pegasus. After he plays Crusade, I had to control magic the Pegasus to stop the bleeding, but he just kept attacking with Wolves and followed up with a Thunder Spirit. A handful of Strip Mines for my Deserts and Factories ensured I wasn’t going anywhere. Second game was much the same, but probably even worse for me; I mulliganed into a land-light hand, and he helped things along for me with more Strip Mines.

Round 2: Jason (from the Lancaster, PA area) with The Dark Red

Jason was going for the most The Dark prize, which he won; he had a whopping 25 cards from the set, including Brothers and Sisters of Fire, Fissure, Blood Moon, Goblins of the Flarg, and some others that I didn’t get to see (I think Ball Lightning was in the mix, too). He’s also playing Mana Flare and X Spells.

Game 1 he gets me down fairly low with a Brothers of Fire and some miscellaneous beats, then goes for it with an 11-point Fireball to end it. Unfortunately, I have a Mana Drain, which gives me enough mana to activate the Disk I have in play, then drop Mahamotti, a Disk for safety, and an Aolipile. I protect Momo and we go to game 2.

I put in the anti-red package. I still didn’t really know what he was playing, but my plan was to keep his deck off Mana Flare. I ended up with a Time Elemental that bounced a Flare several times, and I just kept him off balance while protecting a handful of threats to get there fairly quickly.

Jason gave me a sticker for his playgroup. We’ve seen each other at past events but this was my first time playing against him.

Round 3: Tom with Mono Black (with Bad Moon)

Mono black is usually a fun matchup with this deck, as it feels quite fair and is usually pretty close, even when one of the decks gets a good hand. (I’m not completely dead to a first turn Specter, for instance.) He’s playing most of the standard critters, but he also has Stone Throwing Devils.

First game goes my way; he does get in a little bit of disruption, but Desert is rough for his deck (“that card seems unfair” was, I believe, how he put it), and he can’t really do anything about Control Magic. Factories did most of the damage, and I Psionic Blasted him to end it.

I side in the Purges. Second game I get run over fairly quickly, as he has double hymn on the second turn after I mulligan. I put up a bit more of a fight but he gets there.

Game three we both mulligan again, but I draw a “burn” heavy hand. He hymns me when I have three cards in hand, two of which are lands, and one of which is a Purge. He’s already taken a little bit of damage and I top deck a Sol Ring and then a Djinn, which makes the Hippie he draws very sad. He has a tiny drain life to stay alive an extra turn but says there’s nothing he can imagine drawing that will keep him in it. I have a stylish Psychic Purge for the last point of damage as well.

Round 4: Andrew with Percy.dec

Andrew’s always a blast to play against. He’s on a monowhite control deck with Tax/Tower, Serra Angels, and four Personal Incarnation.

You’d think casting Control Magic on a Personal Incarnation would be a fantastic idea, but it looks a little bit worse when he Spirit Links it. He doesn’t have anything else for a little while, though, so I’m able to get in a position where I can protect another threat. I get him low enough that I can attack with his stolen Percy to kill him with damage on the stack. Sindbad actually did nothing but attack this game … little champ just wanted to get frisky.

Game 2 goes very, very long, but we manage to stay out of turns. This was an extremely weird game, as I’ve sideboarded into a very heavy control plan. Several turns in I end up in a situation where I have two Disks and The Hive in hand, but he’s got a Tax and friggin’ COP: Blue out. I make the boneheaded mistake of Psionic Blasting him while he has mana up, and I start to think that regardless of what happens I don’t deserve to win this game. But I figure he probably doesn’t have three disenchants, so I decide I’m going to just run the Disks out there and eventually just win with The Hive. (Even if he gets Ivory Tower and a couple Wraths, I can probably race him by pumping out tokens every turn.) The second Disk sticks, though, and I blow up a handful of things on the board, including, I think, a Serra Angel. He’s got a board full of artifacts, though, when I draw a Flux. I even Amnesia him at one point, though I think I pulled the trigger on that a little too soon. He keeps a Jayemdae Tome (which I think I let him cast even though I had multiple counters in hand — my thought process was that I wasn’t winning any time soon, and my game plan revolves around protecting a threat that he can’t Wrath away). He also pays for a Tower around but lets the Jalum Tome and his moxes go.

This is where things get weird. I pump out some hive tokens, and then get my Air Elemental and toss it away by trying to kill Percy with the elemental and Desert. (Derp.) Again, I start to feel like I have no business winning this matchup. I go to steal his Angel and he casts Swords to gain life, and he has a Disenchant to finally get rid of my Hive. I’m in a very sticky situation, but I still have outs: There’s one control magic left in the deck and …

Ghost Ship off the top.

I look carefully at his library, and play a land to make sure he can tax, which he takes me up on. I block with my tokens to keep Percy from killing me, and I have a Factory to block, too, until he’s run out of basics to tax out. I drop the Ghost Ship with Counterspell and regeneration mana up, and Andrew starts looking through his graveyard and realizes what’s going on: he blew his last Swords to Plowshares on the Angel, and I’ve exhausted his deck’s threats. We play it out and he decks.

Side note: Spirit Link on Percy is just beautiful.

Round 5: Jimmy Cooney with “Dwarves and Derelors”

This is Jimmy’s first build — literally put together that morning — of his new R/B deck featuring a bunch of Fallen Empires cards, bolts, Trolls, and Disks. It’s a nasty deck and plays a lot of good disruption. It’ll probably get a bit of tuning in the future, but he was at the top tables all day with it.

These were all good games, but I feel like my deck’s answers matched up a little better against his deck than his did against me.

Game 1 he gets me to single digits in short order, when I start to pull it out. He’s got a couple Trolls and a Dwarven Lieutenant. I take a Troll (planning to block the Lieutenant) and he drops Orgg. I answer with Mahamotti, so the Orgg is staying home. He can’t profitably get through with a Troll until he gets a bolt, and he doesn’t want to just toss away the Lieutenant, so we stare at each other. He has Blood Moon at one point to turn off my Deserts and a Factory (and to make the Lieutenant more dangerous), which I’m fine with. I pull ahead on cards with a Mana Drain on his 4-drop into Braingeyser for 5 (he ribs me a little about this), and I decide that I can’t just let him draw multiple bolts and kill me, so I drop a Serendib (to stay untapped and keep the Orgg at home) even though it’ll put me in double-bolt range in three turns, so that Momo can start getting in there. I draw another Control Magic to take his second Troll, and the game is now very much in my control.

Second game Jimmy gets a very fast start featuring an early Derelor an a third turn Mind Twist for my whole hand (I rib him a little about this and we decide we’re even after my geyser in the first game). He buries me in beefy dorks and we go to game 3.

Game three he gets a quick Derelor, which I Psionic Blast. He protects it with Red Elemental Blast, and then I untap and Control Magic it. A couple turns later he plays a Disk, which I let him have because it’s going to blow up his Sol Ring and two moxes and leave him with only a couple lands, and I’m more worried about Trolls than anything else in his deck at this point. He played friggin’ Gravity Sphere this game, too, which is a beautiful bullet and a friend of the trolls for certain. After he Disks, I drop Sol Ring and a Djinn with multiple-Counterspell backup, who takes it home in short order.

Jimmy and I talked a little after the game, and I don’t think he really made any mistakes; I think Disk was just the wrong answer to have. He also talks a little about bringing in City in a Bottle against me and thinks he should have brought in two, but I tell him that I took out Sindbad and two Djinns, leaving just Deserts and a single Efreet for the bottle to hit. Probably still reasonable (it would have Stone Rained me the third game), but it’s not going to cripple my deck. I had a slight leg up just knowing that he owns Bottle and is the sort to use it, but I don’t think he was surprised by any of my sideboard cards.

Round 6: Abe with Sligh

Abe is essentially on Matt B’s version of Sligh, which includes the Dwarven Lieutenants and Soldiers, though he doesn’t know it because it’s a borrowed deck — and his first old school tournament, coming from a legacy background.

This is an exceptionally close matchup, almost a coin flip, which he wins. The first two games go about how you might expect; if I survive to the point where I get something big on the table, the game goes my way, but if he keeps me off balance or I can’t deal with a Ball Lightning, it goes his way.

I side in the Purges and the red blasts, but I take a very, very long time to decide what to take out. Eventually I decide on a Mahamotti, the Power Sinks, and some of the artifacts. My idea is that I can block Ball Lightning with an Efreet if I need to, and otherwise it’s a bolt-proof way to try to race.

The game comes down to the wire, and in classic fashion I blow it at the last minute. I have Air Elemental and an Efreet. He’s on seven life, and has a Factory, Dwarven Soldier, and Balloon Brigade. I’m on 4 life with multiple Factories remaining on Defense and a Psionic Blast in hand. His Brigade floats up to block my Air Elemental, and I Blast it, putting me at 2. He bolts me and that’s the ballgame.

Here are the reasons it was such a lousy play: First, he’s dead to the Blast even if he blocks, so killing his blocker gains me nothing. Second, he can’t get through an attack that kills me next turn, so if he has a bolt, he’s dead without a Lightning Bolt, so I should pay as if he has the bolt, not as if he doesn’t. If he has one bolt and not two, he needs to wait until my upkeep, when the Efreet will put me to three, to bolt me, and then I can just Blast him in response to end the game. At the very least, I can tie the game if he gets me below 3.

Still, he outplayed me for certain and was extremely patient with the bolt, so he very much deserved his third-place finish. He narrowly missed winning the Mox on tiebreakers, but it was a great finish for his first old school event.

Wrap-up

I get a couple sweet pickups for the collection: A foreign black-bordered Disenchant with calligraphy to commemorate my top 8 finish, which goes in the White Weenie deck along with the White Knights and Preacher from past events, and a community-signed foreign black bordered Air Elemental to go straight into Stupid Blue Deck.

Props:

Dice City as always for a killer event.

Jeff Menges for signing the Thallid deck’s Tracker.

Andrew for having the guts to put four Percy in a deck in a room full of black decks.

Slops:

Chaos Orb deciding matches. Wes had two matches that went to time, and losing both Chaos Orb contests is just a crappy way to end up with a losing record. I pretty much hate the card and this policy is doing it no favors in my mind.