{"id":2045,"date":"2021-05-08T20:16:43","date_gmt":"2021-05-08T18:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/premodernmagic.com\/blog\/?p=2045"},"modified":"2021-05-08T20:16:43","modified_gmt":"2021-05-08T18:16:43","slug":"report-from-the-premodern-unchained-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/premodernmagic.com\/blog\/report-from-the-premodern-unchained-tournament\/","title":{"rendered":"Report from the Premodern Unchained Tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a tournament by Joshua Nyer from the US, from the recent Premodern Unchained online tournament. Note that this tournament was played with different rules than the standard Premodern rules, and with proxy cards allowed. Enjoy! \/ Martin<\/em><\/p>\n

The format<\/h2>\n

Hello! This is my tournament report from the Premodern Unchained event that was hosted by Flippi Boehm as part of his Premodern Explorer’s League\u2014a series of casual online tournaments with twists on the baseline Premodern rules. The rules for Unchained is the same as Premodern, but any card (with the exception of the ante cards) that is on the Premodern banlist<\/a> is restricted instead. Based on discussions I had with many of the other players after each match, the format felt very much like Vintage, but with a fully unexplored meta unique to Premodern and containing a lot of untapped potential. Part of this writeup will be a play-by-play of my games, but equally important I’m going to include direct quotes from other players on their thoughts on this format variant and whether they’d want to play it again.<\/p>\n

At first glance, the inclusion of the restricted cards leads to the conclusion that storm decks with Tendrils of Agony<\/a> are the best thing to be doing. In practice, however, the many storm decks I faced were inconsistent and not as broken as they appear on paper. There are also a lot of disruptive cards\u2014both proactive cards like Null Rod<\/a> and reactive ones like counterspells\u2014that can get in the way of storm’s gameplan. In the end, several players ran storm decks anyway, but three interesting things occurred.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

First, even though storm was prevalent, almost every single player created a unique variant. While pretty much everyone was casting Tendrils of Agony<\/a> as the payoff, people were getting there by different means. Some focused heavily on Academy Rector<\/a> as a means to get Yawgmoth’s Bargain<\/a>, some went for Burning Wish<\/a>, and one went with Ill-Gotten Gains<\/a> and Intuition<\/a>. So even though everyone had access to the broken cards, creativity was still a huge part in card choices.<\/p>\n

Second, because of the ruleset allowing proxies (since many of the restricted cards are hundreds of dollars), many players wanted to “scratch the storm itch” and play with all the busted cards, but once they got that out of their system, they were open to seeing what other decks people brought to the table and figure out what kind of meta the format would have.<\/p>\n

Third, many of the players owned a lot of the restricted cards already (I saw very few actual proxies), and were happy to have the chance to sling the broken cards on the table again rather than have them sit in binders. A big attraction to playing Vintage is getting the chance to play with the busted cards, and see how non-busted cards fare against them. Anyone familiar with Vintage knows that while turn 1 wins are possible, it’s still not as guaranteed as one would think, and grindy Vintage matches still lead to very interesting gameplay, and the same held true here. In Justin Giovanniello’s words:<\/p>\n

“Gameplay from this format felt like Premodern’s version of Vintage, and I love me some Vintage.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

If there was to be another Unchained event, the only card that I feel might need to be added to the restricted list is Lion’s Eye Diamond<\/a>. Its interactions with the busted cards is insane, and all of the storm decks I faced ran it. I’m not 100% confident it’s necessary, but that was the only non-restricted card that stood out to me.<\/p>\n

Deck choice<\/h2>\n

Let’s talk about my deck choice and the alternate decklists I was brewing and considering. The irony is that while I did end up winning the tournament, in hindsight I am not convinced that my deck choice was optimal. One of the biggest drawbacks to my deck is that it runs a high amount of reactive disruption instead of proactive disruption. While that technically saved my bacon in many scenarios, overall I feel I would have had even better results with a proactively disruptive deck that seeks to slam out lock pieces fast and then win with aggressive creatures. Anyone familiar with storm decks in Legacy and Vintage know that it’s a better gameplan to lay down a lock piece like Sphere of Resistance<\/a> and then present a clock (even better if the clock is the disruptive piece, like Glowrider<\/a>). It forces the storm player to dig for an answer to the lock piece. If you sit back with reactive disruption, they naturally have a lot of Duress<\/a> effects that they can use to strip away your reactive disruption on the combo turn. Storm is historically a sorcery speed deck that is stronger against instant-speed interaction, and less strong against resolved lock pieces.<\/p>\n

The other reason I don’t feel like my deck choice was optimal was that while I decided to metagame and prepare for the kind of decks I thought I was going to face the most, I didn’t anticipate just how narrow my field was actually going to be. Out of all of my opponents, only one of them played basic lands. Had I opted to go with a mono red Blood Moon<\/a> deck containing Sphere of Resistance<\/a>, Pyrostatic Pillar<\/a>, Spellshock<\/a>, and Ruination<\/a>, I don’t think I would have lost a single game. The beauty of hindsight is that once people see the 17 total decks and try to explore more, that kind of hyper-focused meta call probably wouldn’t work in a second event, but if I had gone on that gamble, I would have won way more easily.<\/p>\n

My deck choice for the tournament was UW Stifle-Nought. There are a couple of reasons that I went with this deck, and a big part of it was second-guessing what types of decks I would face. There are many brews that I was considering that would easily coast through a field of storm, but I kept thinking “well what happens if someone else decides to fight the meta just like me and runs a disruptive aggro deck?”<\/p>\n

When choosing a deck, I gave myself the following criteria:<\/p>\n