Hi, everyone

Place: Richmond Comix
Day: 11/27/01
Format: Vintage Sanctioned

Deck
4 Nether Void
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Duress
4 Sinkhole
4 Icequake
4 Knight of Stromgald
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Powder Keg
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Consultation
4 Dark Ritual
1 Mox Jet
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
14 Swamp

Sideboard
4 Diabolic Edict
2 Nevinyrral's Disk
3 Engineered Plague
2 Planar Void
3 Dystopia


Caveats
I've only recently gotten into type one(and back into magic after a two year hiatus), so my card supply was limited to what I could attain via eBay during the past two months I've been lurking on this board. IE, I don't have the power nine =) (The mox jet I borrowed from Abe(Katzby)). My background as a type one player only comes from playing before it was called type one, circa 1994, so my perceptions of the environment came entirely from the wonderful type one primers posted on bdominia. Being a control player at heart I really wanted to play keeper, however lack of power nine and duals ruled that out(as well as zoo, academy, etc). Next on my list was parfait(still missing four abeyances), sligh(how fun is this?), BBS(how fun is this?) and Nether Void. Nether Void was selected by elimination.


Deck Analysis
The choice between negators and pump knights was a tough one, but my lack of experience in type one led me down the conservative route, so knights of stromgald made it in case I faced sligh, stompy or WW. Also they can be a beatdown against keeper if they play swords to plowshares. I really wanted to play rishadan ports instead of the icequakes, but again, limited card supply limited my options. Ports are infinitely better than icequakes, and provide much needed mana(and can be played freely) under a void. If you count my mana, you'll notice I only have 4 dark rituals and 20 lands including wastelands/strip which is not nearly enough for the mana hungry nether void. Hindsight is 20/20 and I should have played mishra's factories (which I actually own!) instead of icequakes. They do suprisingly well: they avoid abyss, provide mana, save specters from edicts, stop early beats better than pumpers, do better vs sligh, the list goes on. As we shall see, this mana shortage cost me dearly in the top 8. As for sideboard options, morphling are the creature I most fear, so 4 edicts were necessary. They also do well against sligh and other aggressive decks, and I sideboarded them in frequently. The disks were there just in cast I ran into something like parfait with lots of moats and other nasty enchantments. Engineered plague was for stompy and sligh and did well. Planar void was a mistake as the only recursion in modern keeper decks is yawgmoth's will. Dystopia was never used but I still think it were a good choice. I went in expecting keeper to play moat, sword to plowshares, and gaea's blessing; I ran into fire/ice, diabolic edict, and yawgmoth's will. Gotta keep up with the tech.


Introduction
My name is Jordan Chavez, I live in Herndon, Virginia and am currently attending Virginia Tech. I started playing magic in 1994, quit in 1996, got back in during 1997, quit in 1999, got back in in 2001. Sound like an addict? Well this time the game has lost some of it's luster, so I'm just keeping a couple of type one decks to play when I get the chance. I drove down to Richmond Comix with Abe Corson(Katzby on this board) and his friend Egon who I just met that day. Abe played keeper, read his report for more info. Egon didn't have a deck but ended up playing BBS constructed in 5 minutes(4 main deck back to basics!). Abe told me about this tournament and I was really excited to play in a sanctioned type 1 tourney. It was really cool that people whose material I've read like Darren Di Battista and Matt D'Avanzo attended as well.

Darren Di Battista wore medievel clothes.

Matt D'Avanzo wore a pimp suit.

Well I suppose halloween is only a few days away =)


Tournament
17 people, 4 rounds of swiss with one bye each round.

Round 1: Ian Bennet with sligh
Game 1: He drops turn one beats, turn two double beats, turn 3 ball lightning, turn 4 bolt, bolt, fireblast. I vaguely remember playing a swamp. In go four edicts and one engineered plague, out go four duresses and a vampiric tutor(not sure if this was a good choice).
Game 2: I have a reasonable draw with some discard, LD and creatures. He has another strong opening with turn one and two creatures and cursed scroll. I am able to keg away his permanents at around 10 life and play the engineered plague naming goblins. This was a mistake, as next turn he drops ball lightning and suddenly I'm in fireblast range. He plays another cursed scroll which I cannot deal with and so I lose.

Round 2: Jamin Shanti with sligh
Game 1: He has a weak opening with only one creature. I am able to trade it for a pump knight then hymn/duress away his hand while he's tapped out. I quickly get a specter under a nether void and he concedes shortly thereafter. In go four edicts and one engineered plague, out go four duresses and a vampiric tutor(not sure if this is a good choice).
Game 2: I draw engineered plague in my opening hand along with nether void and multiple LD spells. He plays a turn one echo pup(not strong) so I am able to sinkhole/strip away his land early to leave him with no mana. I edict his pup then play plague naming ball lightning. Soon after I play a hyppie and the first discard hits a dodecapod(!). I have to yagwill the edict in the graveyard to get rid of it. Finally I drop nether void and after a LONG time of both of us drawing no mana, I get the kill with the specter.

Round 3: Chuck Myers with mono black(specters, shadows, discard, LD, cursed scroll, kegs/disks, no nether voids and morinfen!)
Game 1: I play first and duress away his duress(the other option was his sinkhole), then sinkhole/wasteland his swamp and wasteland. With no threats from him, I safely play hypnotic specter and hit him 6 times with it. He eventually kegs it away and plays some shadows which I am able to keg away. He then draws a LOT of mana while I apply beats with a pump knight. In go three edicts and one disk, out go four icequakes.
Game 2: Another strong opening for me with turn one duress, turn two sinkhole, turn three hymn. He plays early creatures which I edict away, then I tutor for yawgmoth's will and destroy his creatures/hand/land with multiple dark rituals and the will. He plays cursed scroll, I play nether void. He scrolls me down to 6 but cannot cast spells fast enough and does not draw enough mana to finish me with the scroll. I keg away his scroll and strip/sinkhole his land to keep him at a low mana count and finally get enough mana for a knight when he plays a dauthi slayer. I am forced to delay my offensive to play edict but he has no further threats so the pump knight finishes him.

Round 4: Rich Mays(Egon) with BBS
We decide to draw into the finals but play anyway for fun. I wreck shop three games in a row.

At the last round of swiss, I'm 2-1-1 which guarantees me a top 8 slot. Abe and Egon get in as well.


Round 5(quarterfinals): Darren Di Battista with OSE
Game 1: This should be a good match. I go first and hymn turn two. He counterspells followed up by ancestral recall then lots land/moxes. Great, my opponent now has lots of cards and lots of mana. He counters my specters and knights then proceeds to cast yawgmoth's will. The details are too gory to go into. I think I took out a icequake for a disk.
Game 2: My hand is insane, with swamp, swamp, ritual, ritual, duress, specter, nether void. I ritual out first turn hyppie, second turn nether void. He does not counter. I win right? His first turn library begs to differ. Now this is where my mana shortage really bites me. By the time I get five mana, enough to cast a hymn under the void, he has 15 out, an abyss in play, a hand full of counterspells, and an active library. Had the icequakes been lands, I would have won for sure, since I had 3 of them in my hand. Eventually he mind twists my hand and wins with masticore and mishra's factory.

My final record was 2-2-1, totally and completely average. Not bad for a first time type 1 player, and the field had some good players and my deck was not optimized. I don't think I made any game-costing mistakes; the deck pretty much plays itself. Next time I plan on having all the cards for the deck I want to play, preferably keeper.

Final Comments
I miss the northern virginia magic scene. The main shop in the area stopped hosting tournaments and all the good players quit or moved away. People like Andrew Cuneo, who first introduced me to type one when I played against his Doomsday deck and his Su-Chi madness deck, later to become teletubbies. John "BP" Shuler was someone who actually made the game about fun rather than winning. But now all we have are a bunch of little kids and bad players =( Times change I guess. Hopefully I can look forward to a new bunch of people to play magic with, even if it is only once a month.


We don't use props and slops, we use greetings and beatings.

Greetings
- Frank, the owner of Richmond Comix, for being a really cool store owner.
- All the people at the Richmond Comix tournament for being a great crowd
- Abe and Egon for keeping up the VT pride with strong top 8's
- Matt D'Avanzo's keeper deck for being all beta/foil, basically the most expensive it could possibly be WOW
- BDominia for providing me with the knowledge
- eBay for providing me with the cards!
- Hypnotic specter for being such a beatdown

Beatings
- That guy on ebay who STILL hasn't mailed my 4 abeyances. WTF it's been two weeks!
- VT football for losing to syracuse

Later,
Jordan