all your report are belong to us

In order to fill the type 1 gap in our lives between gencon and the next chicago
SCG, I started looking for worthwhile power tournaments in surrounding areas for
team ogre to attend. At our shop's last power tournament regulars from
Springfield IL put me on to their "I-Con" event for a Timetwister. The drive's
only 1.5 hrs and it was a chance to pay back the patronage of some cool guys who
frequently made the trip to our shop for power tournaments. We got a stellar
turn out of 6 players making the drive, in two cars. Me, Jim Erlinger, Caleb
Scherer, Jacob Riehm, Kevin Bopp, and even our oversized front man, Ogre himself
decided to play. This required I quickly slap together a 10 proxy build of
Ogre's favorite archetype: Workshop Agro. I loosely modeled it after Josh
Roughley's list from our Workshop tournament, ie 5C w utility guys instead of
juggernauts. Caleb and Bopp were both playing Endres' chalice Oath from gencon.
Jim was running his very succesful slaver list. Jacob was playing an
experimental UR stax deck he's been working on and I of course was piloting
ubastax.
The trip was fairly uneventful, though we did get very lost in the sprawling
metropolis of Springfield. We arrived just in the nick of time to watch 2 hours
of legacy action waiting for the vintage to start. the GWS team were all there
and we enjoyed their company probably more than they enjoyed ours. Bopp is not
suitable for public display. Ogre ran the binder business. the rest of the team
shopped around the vendors and got some deals. At long last after slivers break
legacy in half, round 1 begins.

My current list:
4 workshop
4 bazaar
4 waste
4 mountain
3 b-ring
1 strip
1 academy
1 b-lotus
1 sol ring
1 mana crypt
1 mana vault
5 power mox
4 smoky
4 chalice
4 crucible
3 n-rod
3 uba
1 trisphere
4 welder
2 dup
2 jens
2 g-shaman
1 wheel

side
4 pyroblast
3 maze
3 v-heretic
2 dup
2 lava dart
1 b-ring

I shifted the board slightly w an extra maze when I saw ppl shuffling up elves
and goblins.

Rd 1 vs Matt Morrison - Death Long. win 2-0

Game 1
I assumed Morrison was playing 5c stax like the last few times I've faced him. I
kept a dicey hand that had turn 1 crucible off some artifact acceleration. It
was vulnerable to chalice or resistor, but then he surprised me with turn 1
windfall, obviously some kind of combo. The windfall backfired for him as my 1st
hand had no answers to combo, but my 2nd hand was ridiculous. Matt filled his
board with some free mana and had to pass the turn. I had shop, lotus,
trinisphere, moxmonkey, which slaughtered his mana and put a fat lock out. He
had enough left to cast twister the next turn, which didn't provide an answer to
trinisphere, and refilled my hand with more oppressive cards.

Game 2
Morrison mulled to 4 restricted cards and no lands. I played turn 1 uba and he
never got a board.


Rd 2 vs Caleb Scherer - Chalice Oath win 2-1
I've played against Caleb at the shop many hours with this deck, so knew exactly
what to expect.

Game 1
My first hand hand 2x moxmonkey, 5x mana. I mulled into 2x bazaar, 4x nonmana. I
then mulled into 3x chalice, barbarian ring, blank. Caleb played turn 2 oath.

Game 2
Explosive hand that dropped turn 1 chalice @ 0 and smoky. This kept his board
empty until I solidified the lock.
 
Game 3
Perfect opening hand: 2x duplicant, 2x shop, mtn, welder, bazaar. I set up
everything and Caleb had no choice but to walk into duplicant recursion.


Rd 3 vs Jacob Riehm - UR stax lose 0-2
Jacob has been testing this deck with me for a while now, and it seems quite
solid. It's a very pure stax w thoughtcast for draw and null rod.

Game 1
I keep an iffy hand with turn 1 welder and not much backing it up. Jacob puts
out a fat board quickly with 2x welder, smoky, crucible. I have neither crucible
nor bazaar but am keeping ahead of the soot with solemn recursion, and soon have
2x b-ring, and all 4 of my mountains. I'm setting up for threshold to cap his
welders and then weld away his board. Then I punt bad by using my b-rings a turn
too early and lose enough permanents that he can ramp smoky and clear my board,
and still have enough permanents to keep his crucible. I'm unable to rebuild
against his crucible advantage and die to my off-by-one counting error.

Game 2
solid hand with turn 1 crucible, turn 2 smoky, except Jacob gets a god draw of
lotus, ruby, land, heretic. I'm never able to remove his heretic and lose
accordingly.


Rd 4 vs Kevin Bopp - Chalice Oath, intentional draw
Bopp and I decide to draw since a loss for either will eliminate them from the
tournament and a win next round will probably make it. Unfortunately for Bopp
his tiebreaks suck and despite going on to win round 5, he is the only 3-1-1 not
to make the cut.


Rd 5 vs Ogre - 5C Workshop Aggro - win concession
Ogre concedes to me because I own his deck, and he wants to sit around and
trade. This puts me at 10 points and into top 8


top 8

rd 1 bald goatee guy - Control Slaver win 2-0

Game 1
CS is usually my hardest match, but both these games were easy. He countered
very little and I built up locks fast. I had b-ring ready for his welders and
buried him under ubazaar advantage.

Game 2
Basically more of the same. I drew lots of welder removal, and had opportune
redblasts. Locks lined up nicely and he never had a threatening play.


rd 2 Brian Fisher - Shop Slaver Memnarch deal win 2-0
I think this is a very favorable match up for me, due to his lack of disruption
and my null rods. I lost to Fisher at Gencon, but I wasn't nearly as familiar
with his deck as I am now.

Game 1
He keeps a hand with only an island for mana. I play turn 1 uba, and he watches
lots of uncastable bombs slip under uba. Meanwhile I cast some 4 drops and then
get bazaar and wheel away his dead hand. I explode off wheel and seal the game.

Game 2
He plays island, sol ring, and I play mox monkey, then trade lotus for his sol
ring. Next I play crucible and he gets his own crucible. I bazaar into artifact
mana and academy and am able to pay 7 to eat the crucible, which plays well to
the crowd. I have infinite mana and bazaar so naturally get lots of stuff in
play and Fisher is overwhelmed.


Finals Justin Droba - Belcher - split
This a very good matchup for me. Caleb has been testing Droba's list against me
for a while and even with boarding, it's like 80-20 in my favor, with belcher
going first the majority. Basically every time ubastax gets a turn, I play
something the belcher player has to spend the rest of the game working around.
Unfortunately I had a hacking cough all day and was not feeling terrific, and
Droba was tired as well, so rather than make us both suffer, I agreed to a
split, which ended up with me getting the playset of u-seas and $50 cash. With
blue duals now passing the $30 mark, and Twister hanging around $180-200, this
was well worth it.

Jim Erlinger and Jacob Riehm both represented the team in the top 8, but
unfortunately lost in the first round leaving them prizeless. The tournament
itself was competently managed and the convention seemed like a good time for
the Illinois uber-geek population. Given the decent turnout they received, if
the prizes could be expanded to all of top 8, our team will definitely return.

Props:
-La Bamba resteraunt for being the first place we found and having 'buritos the
size of your head'.
-Lack of trafic law enforcement as we ran every single red light in town,
instead of waiting interminably at empty intersections.
-Our judge for keeping the tourney moving at a good clip. This is one of the few
times I've seen rounds start before time is called.

Slops:
-I got paired against teammates 4 consecutive rounds. Jim's the only one I
didn't have to play. Random pairings of course, but we represented 20% of the
field, and I played my team in 80% of the swiss.
-Tournament started 2hrs and 20 minutes late. This is a pretty egregious delay.
-Only 2 prizes! It's pretty pathetic to top 8 a 30+ person tournament and go
home with nothing. I'm not sure how the finances of Icon were arranged, since we
paid at the door to enter the convention itself and then there was no extra cost
to enter the tournament. In the future I would recommend a direct payment system
so that the vintage organizers have appropriate funds for prize support. We had
assumed there would at least be kamigawa packs or something for 3-8. I probably
wouldn't have encouraged so many people to come if I had known the prizes were
so bare.
-Vampire karaoke.