Power Nine Challenge

Last month (EDIT: a month and few days ago...) Wizards of the Coast introduced Power Nine Challenge and I decided to take part in the upcoming events. I put together a Delver deck because simply I own the cards for Legacy Delver. Affording 5 pieces of Power seemed ...well... affordable. I went through all the cards that were on my modo account and managed to get about 190 tix out of it (out of the crap cards that is, I found out that cards like Emeria, the Sky Ruin or Windbrisk Heights actually cost something o_O, also I managed to sell Wasteland for roughly 70 tix and buy one immediately for 35 or something). All I needed the very day I decided to buy the cards was 220 tix but this went up by a hundred the day after. The Mentor deck was there in my Vintage decklists for quite some time but I did not have all the cards I needed and did not expect to get them any time soon.

For some reason there are 3 Volcanic Islands instead of Tundras and Snapcaster Mage which was supposed to be Jace, Vryn's Prodigy.

After a while I got both decks ready (I still don't own the cards but if Mentor will prove itself, I will get them). I played with both the UR Delver and the Mentor deck. I wasn't really sure if the Delver deck is/was/could be a thing in Vintage so I wasn't surprised that the Mentor deck was more successful even in my hands. It was way more difficult to pilot though so I decided to play the tournament with the Delver deck (I have more experience playing that). I knew that the state I would be in during the Vintage Challenge would be pretty pitiful (I can thank the nature for that!) so it seemed as a better choice to be beating with Insects and elementals. Few days before the challenge though I started to run into completely different decks than before. It was no surprise that Workshop decks disappeared more or less and were replaced by more artifact Time Vault decks. Against these, Null Rod/Stony Silence running deck should be better.

The surprise to me though were Grixis Thieves deck variants. It probably has something to do with the fact that these decks performed well in the last Vintage Challenge. My results with Delver got even worse but I still decided to play this deck because I have certainly more experience with playing Delver than Mentor. The primary reason why I chose this deck was that the Delver deck is more consistent and Null Rod does not kill it. I couldn't figure out how to beat a deck that starts with Key+Vault combo and if that goes awry puts Sphinx of the Steel Wind into play (Consecrated Sphinx is not particularly nice either) and if that even does not work just plays Yawgmoth's Will and casts Voltaic Key again. To deal with this I added 3 Swords to Plowshares to the deck because Bolts just can't beat cards Sphinx of the Steel Sphinx. This way my deck had to play a bit more white so I added Stony Silence and Rest in Peace to the sideboard (instead of Null Rod and Grafdigger's Cage). This seemed to help but still tournament practice is far from tournament play I guess^_~. Among real competitive Vintage deck I encountered decks that were anywhere between old time legacy decks to standard decks with power nine. Some cards though seemed good in Vintage even if they came from Standard. One of those cards is Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. That is not a big surprise and I wrote about it earlier. The second card that surprised me (if I don't count Seeker of the Way dealing lethal damage to me) was Dragonlord Dromoka. Facing this in Standard is not a big deal (unless one plays mono red burn) but when this showed up on the stack during a Vintage game I slowly started to realize how much this card screws my deck...and not just my deck. Any Blue deck.

With all those information and experiences from previous games I looked forward to the tournament. I expected to do pretty bad but I wanted to gather more information and see how competitive Vintage can look like. Because all those decks can do really crazy stuff, except the deck I decided to play with^_^ (even though I consider playing Gush crazy/broken as well..)

On Friday I woke up ill though so I wasn't sure anymore if participating would be a good idea. On Saturday I felt a bit better and tried to take care of myself. But I knew my brain wouldn't be able to think straight for too long (if at all). I spend the whole Saturday wondering if I want to pay 25 tix for a tournament in which my record would be somewhere near 0:6. An hour before the tournament was supposed to start I joined the event with URw Delver hoping to win at least one game by accident. With the moral support of my flatmate I awaited the first round.

As usual in my very first round I encountered The Perfect Storm. I lost the first game without being able to do anything. Just stared at Mind's Desire and wondered if my opponent can hit Yawgmoth's will that would 'instantly' kill me. Well the first card was Yawgmoth's Will, obviously. In the second game I seriously messed up and thus lost my chances to actually win. At this point I was still in a good mood, laughing (streaming the whole thing) and looking forward to the next round.

I don't remember much from the second round actually. I lost one game, I won another one. But in the final one I got to the point that I could win, I knew it but then...it went all wrong. I managed to screw my Flusterstorm and counter my own copies. I guess this has never happened to you^_^. Just try doing that on purpose and you won't even be able to do that (I tried)^_^. This affected my mood quite a lot but I still I wanted to have some fun and hoped to play against something rather fair than Dredge or TPS (I've seen enough Dark Petitions for the few upcoming months^_^).

Then I played against some hyper crazy Time Vault deck. I had a good laugh but well..I lost the match anyway due to Trinishpere.

The following round wasn't any better. I played against another Storm. Then something strange happened - I won my first match! And then another one! (and also the last round as well)

In the last round I played against BUG Fish. In the first game my opponent pretty much played Dark Confidant after Dark Confidant. I really did not want any of those Bobs to stay in play. It led into a Mental Misstep fight, over one of them but fortunately for me I had Young Pyromancer in play already (and I did not really fear Engineered Plague main deck).

In game two I mulled to four and expected to terribly die. I played Gitaxian Probe to see my opponent's hand. I did not really like one particular card - Wasteland. But my land was safe for one turn since he needed to play Dark Confidant first. I was wondering if Confidant could win me the game (backed up with Delver) and this is how it ended.

In general all the games (I actually mean matches, some games I couldn't win at all) I played were 'winnable'. All I had to do was pay attention to what mana I put in my mana pool (putting White in my mana pool does not do much) and what spell I counter (I wouldn't really mess this up in real life). It would also be cool to actually sideboard in the cards I need, in some games they would help me. In some I could do without them. Two MUDs top 8ed which was quite a surprise. When Chalice became restricted everyone seemed to abandon Workshop decks to play more blue decks that can play Thirst for Knowledge (also this meant the resurgence of storm decks because in a format without Lodestone Golems and tons of Chalices of the Void the deck does not need to fear that much). On the other hand some of the players with 3:4 or 4:3 are players that I played before and they also played very strange decks so many decks can work or show up at a tournament. The tournament was really nice even though I could hardly play after midnight. I hope to participate once again in the future.