The Cave People Cup I (updated)

(edit: small update on the winner in the end section of this blog)

The cave people cup was a first time tournament in the Arnhem region, where I live. It was organized by Matthijs and Charly in a venue called the Pukkel (which means pimple in Dutch, not sure if that makes it an attractive name for most, and I forgot to ask where the name comes from). Anyway, the pukkel is a nice small venue where I have played oldschool magic several times, not in a tournament setting but just in a relaxed kitchen table kind of setting. 

This was the first time a tournament would be held in the pukkel, and it would be one of those rare tournaments where I would be able to travel to by bike, which was nice. But first, I would need a deck. The format would be X-point swedish, so no FE, but with the same point system. Which fortunately meant also no 4 workshop decks, which although I really love artifacts, I still think is a really stupid idea. I started off thinking about how I had not played black/green Juzam/Erhnam/Sinkhole/Icestorm for a while (actually, I don't think I have played that for more than 10 years now) but than Johan helpfully pointed out that in the whatsapp group, there had been a call to try to play some more spicy decks. So, okay then. A bit more spicey, but what then? I started flipping through binder I keep my cards in, and stopped at Sindbad. I later on stopped at Hell's caretaker. Hey, why not, I could just try for Sindbad reanimator. 

the thinking process

Initially, I added some more blue. After some thinking, I just skipped on most of the control elements of that idea, and thought that 4 moti's where not spicy enough, and this was my final build for the deck.

My Goals with this deck would be not to at least win one match, but winning more than losing would be nice. Also, I wanted to play all hallow's eve, have lord of the pit in play, and surprise someone with the transformational sideboard. I thought about having a normal sideboard with glooms and stuff, but decided to go for the more spicy option of transformation into full creature mode. I had 14 extra creatures in my sideboard, most of them small to get my opponent off balance. 

On the day of the tournament, the weather was really nice, so the bike ride over there was great. After some announcements, we were off to 5 rounds of swiss. The first match was against mono black. My opponent started off with 2 sinkholes and a blight. That was not good for me, but fortunately I had Sindbad in play. I just used him as often as I could which was also a bit frustrating, because it meant stff like ancestral recall and Sylvan library ended up in my graveyard. It also meant I could get some land in play to compensate for the extra blight that also had showed up pretty quickly. In the end, I also got some lands from sindbad, which gave me an advantage. Unfortunately, after my lord of the pit also landed in the graveyard, I had no animate dead or hell's caretaker. So I had to just cast my creatures and win with that. 

I went for transformation in the sideboard, thinking I would need some cheap creatures to make sure I could get something in play against the landdestruction. One fun move was blocking a hypnotic specter with 2 sprites, then animating the specter. It was not enough though, in the second game I could not get enough pressure and my opponent started with land, ritual, underworld dreams. That sort of kills the entire sindbad idea, so I lost that one. We were not able to finish the first game, so the first match was a draw. 

My second game was also not against a lot of spice, against a pretty fast and efficient Erhnam/Dib/blast/geddon deck. 

I tried to put up some resistance, but spice is just not able to win a matchup like that. 

After I was down 0-1 in a game where I animated a trike, then shot 3 damage at serra, then transmuted the trike into another trike and shot again, I at least got that off the board, but that left me with a Trike to block the Djinn opposing me, which I used to block, than sac to the sage, but it was just not enough. I was psionic blasted to death. The second game was a turn 2 dib with an elf, turn 3 Djinn. I missed a land drop on turn 3 even though I had played Sylvan library on turn 2, so that was that. The game was over in less then 5 minutes. 

I took some pictures of the matches around me, to see if I could find something spicy and found Wouter playing his Arboria deck without Arboria's :) 

Even though not very spicey, a meekstone keeping a troll and Su-Chi locked in was also somewhat spicy I guess. 

After round 2, there was homemade lunch made by the organisation, who were very busy behind the bar making great sandwiches for everyone. There was something for all tastes and they tasted great. 

I faced off match 3 against David, playing mono red. A pretty efficient mono red, just a very good deck. I faced a turn 2 Su-Chi which started hammering. I had Sindbad and Sylvan Library so had some faint hope I might get something big in play to block. 

Something bit I did not get, so I just tried to stave off the onslaught with blocking with small creatures and then animating them. 

That was not enough though, when I finally did get a moti in play, all david had to do is attack with the Su-Chi and the Atog, and when I blocked the atog, sac that and the sol ring for the win. His deck was just to good for mine. Maybe if I had been able to get out the djinn early, but I doubt that would have done enough. 

The second game was not much better for me, it was over so quick I did not even get to take pictures of interesting board states. So, a draw and 2 losses, and none of my goals achieved with only 2 rounds to go. Also, not a lot of spice against me so far. It was nice to see this board state though, having a mana vortex taking out forests so that aspect of wolf does less damage felt spicy to me. 

Next up, for round 4, I was paired against Remko, who I had earlier borrowed some cards for his living plane deck with prodigal sorcerers, pyrotechnics and triskelions. Not a great prospect if your main strategy is to rely on 1/1 creatures like sindbad and hell's caretaker to do something for you. So, my expections were not high, but Remko is an overall super nice guy that is always nice to play a game against. I was able to get out an early sindbad, and just started drawing because I wanted as much lands as possible against the coming landdestruction. I turned over a Tetravus in de process, which I animated and started attacking with, before Remko destroyed my Sindbad with a Triskelion counter. 

I managed to get out all hallow's eve and discard some more creatures, (not that much, but a Trike and a Triskelion and a Sindbad should do something, right? And kept attacking with the Tetravus. 

Before the all hallow's eve went off, I activated the Bazaar (my hand was already empty, so why not) and that gave me another mahamoti Djinn in the graveyard, gaving me this pretty awesome boardstate. 

Suffice to say, I won that game. Cool! Now lets see if we can keep that up. My next game I had a lot of mana to start with, with Sindbad, and I was able to play Triskelion on my 4th turn. Still not very fast, I know, but fortunately for me, Remko's deck is not exactly a speed demon itself. 

A bit later on, I was able to get out Sylvan Library, with Sindbad still in play. That looked promising. 

And it was, two of my turns after that, I was able to draw one from my draw phase, then 2 extra with the 2 sindbads and get through a land clump pretty fast. 

Later on, I used my Bazaar to ditch 3 lands for 2 new cards. The draw engine was working overtime, giving my 2 extra sindbads, but no big creatures or animates. Not that that would have worked, because of Remko's lifeforce. I was not complaining though, because I still had Tetravus to attack with. 

I had to wait for a while to use my powersink from the sideboard to tap out Remko, who had a life force in play since turn 3 or so. Then I was able to play my Hell's caretaker. Now all I had to do was hope for one more turn in which he would not destroy it. And it made it! I sacrificed a Tetravite and got back a Triskelion. Yes! And I also won the game with that, so finally, win! I would not go home totally defeated. 

Somehow though, I was paired against Charley, who had an x-points version of the deck he used to end first in the Swiss of the Camel Trophy earlier this year. That was also not looking hopeful. I played Sindbad. 

He bolted sindbad, played mox en fellwar stone on his next turn, so I faced off a Swamp King on the next turn. I animated my Sindbad, hoping to turn over a Djinn and be able to do some damage with that. 

But all I got was another Sindbad, and Charly played Juzam Djinn. 

As one would expect, I was crushed in that game. On to game 2, let's see if the Transformational sideboard would work. I started off with Sryb Sprites and started doing some damage. A sindbad and another sprites joined, while Charly was playing Su-Chi. Now I really needed something bigger to keep up the damage. The 2 cities of brass were not helping. 

In a cool play, Charly shattered his Su-Chi after attacking, giving him 4 mana, which he used for fireball and then cleared my board with that. That did not help. The trike that showed up after also did not help much. Fortunately for me, my sideboard had provided Argothian Pixies. 

I also was able to play Serendib Efreet. 

Which Charly took from me using control magic. But, what he had not seen coming was my Triskelion, and he was on 4 life. He was not playing white, so no risk of Sword to plowshares. So I just shot the counters at him, and waited for him to lose his last life. That worked! Another goal achieved. Charly had not seen the weenies coming. 

On the third game, I kept a had with Sindbad, Sprites, Pixies and Serendib. I figured I would be able to race him with that, especially since he only played Shivan Dragon als a flyer the last time I saw him playing this deck. Eventually I would start blocking the bigger hitters, and still would have a fair chance of racing him. 

On turn for 4 or 5, he played falling star. The person who ruled that you could potentially destroy 6 creatures should never have anything to do with rules in oldschool, because that is just completely insane and stupid. Fortunately for me, I had kept counterspell in my hand against creature destruction, which was put to very good use here. 

Charly played Juzam Djinn on his next turn, but I was still able to attack with the flyers, and chump block with my other creatures if needed. A second pixies would even give me a chance to block and kill his Su-Chi by blocking with both. 

In the end, I was able to win that one as well. So 2 wins, 2 losses, one draw. A 50/50 score, against 4 pretty spikey decks and one spicy one. Not a bad record. Unfortunately though, Lord of the Pit never made it to the table. There were some times where he was in my graveyard, but then I never got a way to animate him. So, that goal was not achieved, but all the others were, so I am satisfied with this result. 

In the spice division though, Johan's Land Equilibrium was facing off against wouters arboria-less arboria deck. Ivory towers against black vises. Nice :P 

Because my weenie games against Charly were fast, I had some time to snap some more pictures. It seems like most of the field had decided to not go the spice route. 

What was cool though, was that Johan at one time had 2 mana vortexes in play. I can't remember I time when I saw someone do that :)

So, the Top 8 was announced, and I had some time to took some pictures of those. 

Red Atog against Lion/Dib/Bolt

Mono black against Erhnam/Dib/geddon

Red/white Agro against white/blue LionSerra control

Mono Red Atog Valley against Triple S

Semi final Liondibbolt against ErhnamDibGeddon

Semi Atog Valley against Triple S

Final: Triple S against LionDibBolt

Okay, so the top 8 were not exactly surprising decks, Davids Atog Valley was the most original if you ask me, and the Final was definitely nothing surprising. Roelf won in the end with his Lion Dib Atog Bolt deck with white knights. 

The winner

The winning deck

Some of the guys wanted to stay and order dinner, and I decided to join in the food. While we waited, David played my own make-a-FBB-mono-green-deck-that-does-not-suck-only-from-binders-of-other-players deck against my sindbad reanimator. This was a pretty good game because I had an early sindbad and sylvan library, and I was able to stabilize just before dying. Facing off 3 djinns was still not a pretty sight though. Winning that game also was a nice feel for the deck, because I meant I had won more than I had lost during the day with it :P 

After dinner we all went our ways, signalling the end of a great day with great people. Hope to see you guys on the next tournament! And special thanks to Matthijs and Charly for the organization of this first Cave People Cup. I hope that many may follow! Till next time!