Eternal Conflict – Learning the Hard Way

Round 3 vs whiffy penguin with Oath

Round three and Oath mirror number three, against a strong player. Good think I’m somewhat comfortable with these.

My opponent whiffy starts out with Leyline of the Void and Duresses my Mana Drain. I cast Brainstorm and Ponder in an effort to get something decent in my hand. I cast Thoughtseize and don’t see very much – taking Lotus Petal. He has a Strip Mine, so I’m holding Forbidden Orchard in my hand in the hope that he gets anxious and uses it prematurely on one of my other lands – but there’s no such luck here.

I play out one Forbidden Orchard, which he strips. I now have another in my hand. whiffy plays Oath of Druids, which I let resolve since I have another Orchard plus Vampiric Tutor in my hand. I play out my second Forbidden Orchard and then use Vampiric Tutor to tutor for the third Orchard. I get Iona and Platinum Angel back to back from Oath.

1-0

We both spend a while building up lands, before fighting over his Demonic Tutor. My hand has absolutely no power at this point, and I need to try some drastic measures – so I Mystical Tutor for Tinker and then put Sphinx of the Steel Wind into play. I’ve been having a lot of luck with Sphinx lately. The combination of first strike and lifelink is awesome if you’re facing an Aggro rush, she plays offense and defends – and laughs in the face of Ancient Grudge or Krosan Grip. The major bummer is that she goes down hard to Swords to Plowshares, which is what whiffy uses to take her down.

From this point whiffy gets Life from the Loam, and there’s no way I can deal with this land advantage. I’m quickly overwhelmed and go down hard.

1-1

We start out game three by Wastelanding each other, and I find myself left with zero lands. Thankfully I topdeck Tropical Island and Brainstorm into Underground Sea. I Mystical Tutor into Life from the Loam through Force of Will via a Force of my own. I start recurring Wasteland (and others) and get the concession. We wish each other luck and move on.

3-0 (6-1 games)

Round 4 vs dunkle_stille with Dredge

Not much to say about game one. I Ponder, he plays Bazaar and then I die.

0-1

In game two I start off with Leyline of the Void, which dunkle tries to Chain of Vapor… but I have Spell Pierce. I then Pierce Cabal Therapy (which I think was a big mistake), and cast Oath of Druids. He uses Emerald Charm to take out Oath. During all of this I was forced to give him a few spirit tokens, which are now beating me down. He casts Stinkweed Imp and Narcomoeba to continue the beatdown, and I’m forced to Mystical for Balance to stay alive.

At this point I Vampiric for Helm of Obedience, which means I need to survive one turn to win… but he has double Echoing Truth for Helm AND Leyline – so I go down hard.

0-2

3-1 (6-3 games)

Round 5 vs m0x with Ad Nauseam

We start out by not doing much. He Ponders twice and I topdeck Platinum Angel and Iona within the first few turns. Awesome start! He Duresses away Force of Will and then casts Brainstorm and Ponder. We head back to draw-go and my main goal is to get something in my hand other than Oath targets. I get Senseis Divining Top and things are finally starting to tilt my way. m0x plays Ad Nauseum at the end of my turn and I counter it with Force of Will and Spell Pierce. He plays out double Lion’s Eye Diamond and his last card in hand is Infernal Tutor, which grabs Ad Nauseam and kills me.

0-1

I sideboard into Leyline of the Void in order to shut down Cabal Ritual. To be honest I think I need to work a LOT more on this matchup. I know Oath is supposed to have a big advantage, especially a controlling version – but it’s always been really hard for me. Maybe I’m doing something wrong? I need to test it out much more.

Anyway I start off with Leyline of the Void and m0x plays out a few Lotus Petals. He Duresses my Helm of Obedience, and I play out Senseis Divining Top. I Wasteland away his mana and Mystical Tutor for Tinker, which gets Platinum Angel and the concession.

1-1

m0x starts off with Duress (which I Force) and Chrome Mox. I cast [/card]Thoughtseize[/card], he Brainstorms, and I take Demonic Tutor. I Wasteland away his mana, and Spell Pierce a Duress. I run Helm of Obedience out there, and then Mystical Tutor for Demonic Tutor and Demonic Tutor for Leyline of the Void for the win.

2-1

4-1 (8-4 games)

Round 6 vs Tommstok with Oath

Time for Round Six and another Oath mirror match. I’m paired up against the #1 ranked player. I’m not worried at all though, since I’m 4-1 at this point with awesome tiebreakers – so I’ll be in the top 8 win or lose. If I win I’ll even finish the Swiss in first. Nothing wrong with that!

Game one starts with a Leyline from Tommstok, and he’s sitting there with just a Wasteland – so I run Oath out there with the hopes that he’s mana screwed. He wastes my Orchard, Seals for another Orchard, and I can’t recover. I’m not sure what I was thinking AT ALL in this situation. I threw away my gameplan and the win completely. At this point I was paying a lot of attention to the Jets/Chargers game though, and wasn’t taking the match too seriously since I was locked into top 8… but those are not good reasons for making that terrible decision! He gets Platinum and then Iona, I lose.

0-1

I start off game two with double Thoughtseize, grabbing Krosan Grip and Leyline of the Void. He casts Tinker and I double Spell Pierce it, which forces him to get rid of his Mana Crypt AND Lotus Petal. I Mystical Tutor into Sphinx of the Steel Wind and win.

1-1

Game 3 starts with double Leyline of the Void from Tommstok. I Pierce Brainstorm and then Ponder. He Wastelands my Seat of the Synod (to prevent Tinker) and then Wastelands my Tropical Island. We play draw go for a while and I’m up on lands. We fight over a Vampiric Tutor and I get Senseis Divining Top. I cast Thoughtseize and at the end of it he’s left with a land of double Oath.

So here’s the game situation: He has a hand of double Oath and four lands. I have a Platinum Angel, Spell Pierce, Swords to Plowshares, Force of Will, and then Mystical Tutor, Tinker, and Mana Drain on top of my library with many lands in play. I’m really confidant about this board position when Tommstok disconnects. I’m sitting there waiting for him to come back, mostly paying attention to the Jets/Chargers game – the Chargers are a gigantic favorite, but the Jets are taking it to them! I figure that it’s a bummer to win game three this way, but we were both guaranteed Top 8 so I didn’t think too much of it.

Next thing I know I’m sitting at a garbled Magic Online login screen. I log back in to find out that not only did I lose the match, but I was also dropped from the tournament! I was majorly pissed at this point, not because I lost out on prizes or whatever, but because I spent a whole day on this tournament and didn’t get to play out the Top 8. Even with the loss I ended up in 4th place, but ended up being dropped from the tournament and missed out on the Top 8.

Apparently this is a known bug with Magic Online, but it’s the first time that I’ve run into it. I guess that I’ve just been lucky up to this point, but I’ve never seen this one bug before. If you’re playing in a tournament and it seems like your opponent has disconnected and is timing out, then it may be YOU who is disconnected and timing out. So if this happens to you then log out and then log back in, which apparently fixes the problem. If you don’t take action, then you will get a loss and will also be DROPPED FROM THE TOURNAMENT. So lame.

One thing that’s surprising to me is how many players in the chat were blaming this on me. They seemed to think it was unbelievable that I didn’t know about this bug – and somehow it was my fault. One player told me, “Honestly if you’re Top 8ing PEs, then you really should know about this bug.” I don’t know what to tell you, man. I just did Top 8 a PE without ever seeing this bug before. I don’t get to play many PEs, but I do play a bunch of 2-mans. I’ve never seen this before, I just haven’t – and nobody ever told me about it.

So I guess I learned my lesson – the hard way. I’m not pissed about the packs or tickets, but pissed that my tournament ended in such a BS way after I spent all day on it. Hopefully this article will serve as a warning for someone out there, so please use this information to dodge the problem in the future. Honestly, the fact that this can be a long-running and well-known issue for Magic Online displays a level of incompetence that is almost unbelievable in the year 2010. I’m sure the problem is more complicated then it seems, but this absolutely needs to be fixed!

If you decide to play an Oath list similar to mine then I’d recommend swapping out the Island for another Seat of the Synod. Opposing Wastelands have enough to worry about already, and it’s important to be able to Tinker when you need to. I’d also consider adding an additional land.

The End. Thanks for reading.

Steve Gargolinski

spgmtg@gmail.com

twitter.com/spgmtg