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A few years back, my partner Patrick and I looked up the local Magic gaming stores in our area on the Wizards homepage. We noticed a few in the Cleveland area that we had not heard of, and found out that one in particular was advertising a Type 1, Vintage, Friday Night Magic. We had never experienced that before, so we went in search of victory, ‘Old School’ Style. Somewhere along the lines, we decided that after a few failed attempts at declaring a home store for our group, we didn’t need a home store. We were good enough to take our show on the road. And so we did. Upon arriving at the ‘Goblin Trading Company’, yes that was its name, we discovered a good amount of people waiting for the tournament to start. I also noticed, being the pasty, white guy that I am, that Patrick and I were the minorities here. The Black and Hispanic people count was at least 3 to 1 over us. This was something also that I had not experienced before. I had always thought that only bored, smelly, white nerds played Magic, no offense intended.
What is this? Some strange combo that I had not heard of yet? Nope. The kid was playing a bunch of regenerating black creatures, and was relying on Pestilance to kill and kill some more. I had decided to show up playing my Wake deck with a sprinkling of Vintage fun cards. Needless to say, it was not pretty for this kid. I felt bad for him, so I only made a couple copies of Elephants and won both games with 3 Elephant tokens each game. My second round game was a little more interesting, as the person was playing only a 48 card deck. I called the Judge over, not that I had a problem with it, to inform the kid that he should bring 12 more cards next week. Immediately, the Judge starts swearing at me. He was waving his hands all around, gesturing towards the door and pointing towards his chest. Needless to say, he let me know that this store has altered the standard game rules without consulting Wizards about it. In this store, 48 cards was enough cards for this kid’s deck.
Thanks to the cheap cost of most spells in the Wake deck, I got below the Vise and control of the game before death found me. Before this round ended, both my opponent and myself learned a lesson each. He learned why direct damage decks typically don’t work that well. They run out of steam, leaving your opponent at 5 life, and you will always draw mountains from that moment on. I learned that pumping a Fact or Fiction or three through the Mirari is umm.. good. Next round, I met the main player of the store, or so I assumed from the way the other people were fawning around him. Apparently, he had not watched my previous rounds, and didn’t know what my deck was going to do to him. You’re probably sitting there asking yourself, "Chris, how do you know that he didn’t watch your previous matches?" This is because he sat down at the table, and even before putting his deck on the table, or offering a hand shake – or even his name, he put head phones on and was turning his CD player on. I don’t know that I ever got his name, but I know that he got my attention. See, I was nice to the previous guys. I didn’t use my deck to its full potential. I realized that these guys were newer players, and were only playing with the cards that they owned, which is fine. So I pulled my punches and went as easy as I could on them. Even going so far as to encourage them and offer tips and deck hints. I am not one to punish anyone for their lack of cash flow, but I am not going to give a game to a non-friend, because he doesn’y have money either. This guy, however, was rude, arrogant, and all for no good reason. He was playing some sort of control deck, which was not strong enough to handle the control power of Wake. The game got out of hand for him very quickly. He started off the game, slouched down in his seat, collar pulled up tight around his neck to his chin, hat pulled down over his eyes, and music loud enough that I could have sang along with Cypress Hill. While I didn’t know which song he was playing currently, I did know a song that should have been playing, "I Ain’t Going Out like That." To his credit, he did put up a fight, or atleast as much as he could. The only cheesier deck I could have been playing was Tog, and I never really liked black much, so Wake it was. When I played my first Mirari’s Wake, he had to read the card. I knew he was in trouble right there. If you don’t know what that card did at that time period, you really were about be to reamed by it. He merely shrugged and offered a Counterspell, which I Memory Lapsed. He seemed pleased by the fact that he got to draw the counter again next turn. I would not be giving this guy the due credit, if I forgot to mention that going into the second round, he had not said one word to me. He knocked on the table to indicate the end of his turn. He would point at me if he wanted a response from me. He would even push his creatures forward then turn them sideways to indicate who was about to attack. I ended all his creatures, and eventually him, with a 7/7 First Striking Nantuko Monestary. The second round, I actually drew into a Mirari. I can remember one spectator saying how cute it was that I was playing a theme deck surrounding 'Mirari'. When I sent the first Cunning Wish through the Mirari, the kid finally sat up straight and looked at me. I could see the light bulb in his head turn on, and then a little worry crossed his face. The first time I heard his voice all day was ‘JUDGE’. Over came the Judge, ticked at me again. First, he ruled for the store kid, by saying something along the lines of me not being able to Wish for a Wish that was already in my sideboard (with my copy from the Mirari). That’s when my partner came over. See, Patrick is rules junkie. He can’t get enough rules. He likes rules as much as I like Football stats, simply can’t get enough of them. When Patrick heard what the Judge said, he blew up. He said everything from: the proper oracle wording of all the rules, cards involved, past judge rulings, all the way to contacting Wizards and getting this guys Judgeship revoked. The next thing I know, I am holding another Wish in my hand and the Judge was stomping away, mad at me yet again. Of course I couldn’t be nice to this kid now could I? Not in good conscience right? Right? I decided to not only punish this kid, but all the store people involved. The tournament officials neglected to have a round limit for this tournament. I don’t know if you are aware or not, but Wake has an alternate win condition of not running out of cards. Krosan Reclamation in the sideboard allows me to keep restocking my library with countering spells such as Memory Lapse, and utility spells like Moment's Peace and Renewed Faith. I decided the best thing to do was to make 55 6/6 Elephant tokens – just in case he attacked, I needed blockers. I then wanted to make sure that he could not fireball me to death, so I got myself up to 100 life, using Renewed Faith. Then he played a creature, and I got scared of the Fleeting Image, so I quickly casted Wrath of God, and needed to restore my army of 55 Elephant tokens. After about an hour and a half of me stocking up my defense, Patrick rolling around on the table laughing, everyone around just shaking their heads and looking at the clock, and my endless jabber as I disinterestedly went about stalling the tournament out, (At the end of your turn, I'll add 44 blue mana, 24 white mana, and 12 green mana to my pool, I will use one blue mana and one white mana to activate Compulsion to discard, then draw a card. I will then Compulsion again using one blue mana and one white mana, etc.) the judge stomped back over, and made his first good ruling of the evening. He announced an overtime, and if I did not end the game in five minutes, he would call it a draw. This was not an acceptable ending for me, so I decided not to deck the guy one card at a time, but to mug him with my army of 55 Elephant tokens for 330 damage.
My reward for embarrassing my opponent, the Judge, the store, and everyone in it was that the next round I had to stand and play my game across a Warhammer playing table. Which actually wasn’t all that bad, since I had plenty of room to play all of my permanents. In case you have never scene a Wake deck in functioning capacity, it normally has about 15 lands in play at any given time. It was even kind of neat to play my forest cards, in and around little plastic trees. They felt so comfy and at home. My opponent took game one from me. I expected him to be like the rest of the people playing in the store, and not have a clue. However, when he played Teferi’s Puzzle Box, one of my all-time favorite cards, I decided to see how far this would go. Rule #1 for Newbie Magic Players. If someone plays a janky card, like Teferi’s Puzzle Box, in his deck, you counter that janky card. A newbie player is going to play things like Zephyr Falcon, Rout, Tundra Wolves, and other sub-par cards. They are not playing cards like Teferi’s Puzzle Box, Ice Cauldron, Sands of Time, etc. Janky Card Player is playing Teferi’s Puzzle Box, because he has a combo that works once every 25 play times, and you don’t know if it has been 25 play sessions since it last worked. In this story, apparently, it had been 25 times since the last time it went off successfuly. Plus, I really was interested in seeing what this deck would do. If memory serves, and it usually does not, he was using the Puzzle Box to sift quickly through his deck to recycle a Wheel of Fortune and let Megrim kill you slowly but quickly. Needless to say, in games two and three, the Puzzle Box did not stick around, and neither did Megrim. Wheel of Fortune is actually a boon for me if Megrim is not around, it gave me a new hand to look at, and built up my threashold, so my Nantuko Monestary could wake up and do some kung fu fighting on him. I thanked him for the game, and he was quite the sport about the whole thing, in a comic book character kind of way. Then came round four, and my only loss. See, I got World-Gorgereded. "Chris, what the hell are you talking about, is that even a word?" No, but it happened. Too quick for my Wake deck to even do anything about. One person, did show up with a Vintage deck.
His deck was based around the infinite mana engine of the the Worldgorger Dragon, Animate Dead combination. With the Dragon in the graveyard, you cast Animate Dead, or any other enchant dead creature card which animates the creature, and target the Dragon. When the Dragon enters play his ability is triggered, where he removes all permanents you control from the game except him. He respond by tapping out of his lands. The other permanents go away, The Dragon then realizes that it’s dead, and returns to the graveyard. This triggers it’s leaves play ability and The Animate Dead comes back into play with all the other removed permanents, which are now untapped again, and wants a new target. "I might as well target that there Dragon again…" This pattern is repeated as desired until he forces me to draw my deck and fireballs in the face with the remainder of infinity minus half of infinity of mana. That ended my day with a third place finish. Patrick played the same guy in the finals, with a similar finish. The second game, Patrick led with a Hymn to Tourach that hit Worldgorger Dragon Guy’s reanimation spells, then followed up with a Mind Twist for the game. The third game, WGD Guy later told us that this was the first time he used his sideboard all day, Patrick was World-gorgereded and we all laughed then went home.
Each week afterward for three weeks, we went back to Goblin
Trading Company, and each week, Patrick and I were randomly paired against each
other in the first round, and each week we went 1-1-1 draw to start the
tournament. We won each of those weeks main prize, which was $20 store credit.
After the last week, the Owner of the store, who turned out to be even more of a
screamer and meaner than the Judge, showed up, and verbally assaulted us for
coming to his store and winning. It goes without saying that we left the store.
However, we left as conquerers, cast out by the governing body. The hostile take
over of Goblin Trading Company was complete. You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here. Most Popular
Articles of 2006 |
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As
I sat down for my first match of the evening, I watched my opponent shuffling
his cards… with no sleeves. I was horrified. I wanted to reach out and grab them
and save their lives. Then the kid dropped one during a particularly bad riffle,
and revealed it as a Drudge Skeleton. 
So
what happened in this round? Excactly what I feared. The little innocent kid,
who only owns 100 cards, played a first turn Black Vise, followed up next turn
with two Lightning Bolts. 
