[Report] 10th @ pittsfield with Stax

[Purple Hat]

Ok, this is my first report in a while, and my notes are a little sketchy for some of the later rounds so bear with me as I attempt to make this coherent...

I drove up to Williamstown Friday night and slept at my friend Niko's house about half an hour from the site.  I was exhausted from spending the day rock climbing with my brother and didn't get to do any of the testing/tinkering I was planning on doing before heading over to the tournament.  I woke up with the sudden urge to play Draw7 and spent about half an hour looking for the cards.  Comming up short I decided to head over to TnT and hope to find someone with the cards I was missing.

I meet up with the rest of the North Adams/Williamstown crew down at the store and discover that I'm short like 7 cards from Draw7 and decide to just stick with Stax.  Here's what I played.

$T4KS
//Lock (17)
4 tangle wire
4 smokestack
4 Trinisphere
4 Goblin Welder
1 mindslaver

//Draw/Broken(10)
2 meditate
3 Thirst for Knowledge
1 wheel of fortune
1 timetwister
1 memory jar
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk

//Kill (3)
1 Karn, silver golem
1 Triskelion
1 Sundering Titan

//Mana (29)
4 Volcanic island
4 Wasteland
4 Blue fetch
4 mishra's workshop
7 Solomoxen
1 mana crypt
1 mana vault
1 tolarian academy
1 island
1 grim monolith
1 strip mine

I realize that the list is still short one card.  I'll have to add an edit when I get home to fix that, sorry.

//Sideboard
2 Forcefield
2 Triskelion
2 Rack and Ruin
3 Tormond's crypt
3 Chalice of the void
3 REB
We got started about an hour late.  The store was packed.  We were only expecting about 25 players, and 38 showed up.  I'd like to appologize to everyone on behalf of our team for the lack of space.  We're working on it and it should be a lot better next time.

round 1: Kent playing GaT
I was pretty happy to draw GaT in the first round as this is one of my best matchups.  Unfortunately it didn't go too well for me.  

Game one: He forces my turn one smokestack, and my turn two Trinisphere, duresses away my two Thirst for knowledges and leaves me with only Meditate to attempt to get back in the game.  I Meditate an pray.  Unfortunately while I'm busy praying his dryad is busy killing me.

Game Two: This one goes like it's supposed to.  I resolve a turn one trinisphere.  He plays an underground sea, which I waste on my second turn.  He doesn't draw a land and when I tinker up the Titan we move on to game 3

Game Three: I keep a no land 5 card hand.  on his second turn he plays time walk, then he plays a null rod.  I wait it out for a few turns to see if time will be called before he can kill me, but I don't see any land and when the dryad hits I start shuffling.

0-1, 1-2


Round 2: Jon playing Sui
So I lost round one but I got to play the bye in round two!!!  there were actually two Sui decks in this tournament.

Game one:  Jon cannot compete with my early trinisphere backed up by tangle wire.  I develop a massive permenant advantage and tinker up a titan for the win.

Game two:  Jon complains that he hasn't seen a negator yet this tournament.  I keep the aggro hand (lotus, workshop, trisk, Karn, volc, welder, some random card) figuring he'll probably see one this game and anyway, it's sui.  My turn one triskelion makes the negator in his hand a dead card and even his Shade dies to it when he is forced to tap out to protect it and the trisk gets welded back in for the kill.  Jon scoops shortly there after as lock parts join the party.

1-1, 3-2

Round 3: Mat playing Oshawa Stompy.

Game one: Mat plays a turn one hidden gibbons.  Wrong hidden card mat, sorry.  I play a smoke stack, which he oxidizes.  Then I lock him away with a quick trinisphere, wire, and another smokestack.  He eats the stack for several consecutive turns as I draw both my meditates. Mat scoops when I explain that null rod doesn't stop smokestack or tanglewire.  He was running out of permenants anyway.

Game Two:  My turn one trinisphere is met by a sex monkey, in from the board.  The monkey looks pretty weak though when I go for the early Tinker to Titan plan (anyone begining to notice a theme?)

2-1, 5-2

Round Four: Steve playing Ravager Affinity
This is a pretty bad matchup for me because if he gets a good permenant hand he can get way too many for me to deal with in the first few turns.

Game one: Steve wins the die roll and plays first.  He plays Glimmervoid, Mana Crypt, Frogmite and tells me to go.  I play Mana Crypt, Workshop Trinisphere.  Steve frowns and plays a glimmer void and a thought cast and sends the froggy.  I drop a land, play Karn and eat his Crypt during his upkeep.  Steve plays an artifafact land.  And plays ravager.  I play smokestack, animate and animate his vault of whispers.  steve is quickly killed as he doesn't draw an answer to the smokestack.

Game Two: Steve drops a vault of whispers and casts Duress.  I comment on the unusual card choice and ask if he boarded it.  He says no.  I reveal Shop, 3sphere, wire, stack, and some random cards.  Steve takes the 3 sphere.  I top deck like a fiend and play my new mox, my workshop, and my smokestack.  steve plays desciple of the vault.  the desciple gets me to 12 but I draw into more broken lock parts then steve can handle and Karn seals the deal.

3-1, 7-2

Round five: Kenton playing U/R/w landstill
not much to say about this matchup.  It didn't go well for me on Saturday but I think I have a favor

game one: I mulligan to 5 and get a turn one 3sphere off a wasteland, sol ring, mana crypt opening.  I waste one of Kenton's lands but they just keep comming.  Kenton  wishes for Rack and Ruin and hits my mana sources.  I spend the game locked under my own 3sphere.  eventually he cycles decree and kills me with the tokens.

Game two: I get my game going early with all kinds of lock parts.  Kenton disenchants my smokestack with 2 counters on it and is disappointed to learn he still has to sac two lands to it.  I drop a karn and another smokestack and start looking to go for the kill.  Kenton ripps a rack and ruin and karn and the stack go away, I never recover.  his man lands do the job.

3-2, 7-4

Round 6: Jia playing random U/R control with Disk.
We find out before the round that one of the 4-2's will make it prior to the round.  Jia looks at his watch and tells me he has to go soon.  We decide to play a game to decide if I get a 2-0 or a 2-1.  

Game One: I decide to keep a hand with no turn one play on the strength of it's turn two options.  I play some mana sources and set up the next turn.  Jia plays a land and lays a chalice for zero.  I drop a trinisphere on my second turn and follow it up with a welder and some more lock parts.  Jia sacs the chalice to a smokestack only to have it welded back for his disk before it can become active.  He didn't realize welder could do that.  I bring the welder beats and then hard cast the titan.  Jia scoops.

4-2, 9-4

I fail to make top eight but capture 10th place.  I sell the store an Illusionary Mask to help make the prize structure better.  Chris donates a morphling and we end up giving away some decent prizes.  Jet for first, morphling + choice of Mask or signed Moat for second, remaining prize for third.

Props:
Bob for representing and defending our Mox.
everyone for showing up
Ted Lou's girlfriend for riding out from Boston and chilling with him all day- I didn't know them prior to the tournament but any girl who sits and watches a magic tournament for 8 hours or so deserves Props.
Sundering Titan for being a total house

Slops:
us for not being ready for the turn out. (sorry, we'll do better next time)
terry for taking the day off


Sorry for the late report.  Thanx for reading such a long report.



-Hale

Edit:  I removed the comment about the match losses.  aparently there was a misunderstanding.  I appologize for offending people.

[hulk3rules]

Slops:
us for not being ready for the turn out. (sorry, we'll do better next time)
terry for taking the day off
the guys who came back 15-20 minutes into round 3 and complained about their match losses and then dropped.

This is total crap.  I don't think any of those guys ever post on TMD, so I'll defend them.  During round 2, the three guys in question all finished their matches early, and left to get food.  When they left, the TO kid had said there was 27 minutes left in the round.  Well, after they left apparently the matches all finished off early, so the TO decided to start round 3 early, with no regards to the people that had left to eat.  When 10 minutes had passed, he gave all 3 guys match losses.  This is absolute crap, and those guy had every right to complain, fight, and even demand a refund.

[Purple Hat]

ok, I didn't hear that story, I was told something different.  I'll edit the post.

[TrixR4Kidz]

Hey, the kids who left were gone for more then ten minutes, when i was playing you hulk, the kid who ended up going on to win the tourny, was sitting next to me waiting for his opponent for a minimum of 20 minutes, maybe we coulda waited a little longer, but the tourny was going slow enough as it is, i don't know which person said there was 27 minutes left in the round, but they are an idiot.

[Kowal]

That's what they call a round clock.

[Purple Hat]

yeah, we definately had pleanty of first time snags, but we will be MUCH more organized next time.  There are quite definately two stories going around about the match losses though.  I caught a random kid standing behind the counter and giving out wrong information cus he thought it was funny right about that time so it's possible that they talked to him.  

I believe we're gonna run a Ruby tournament either the week after SCG or the week before.  We will definately be much better prepared and organized in order to prevent this type of thing from happening again.

[hulk3rules]

Hey, the kids who left were gone for more then ten minutes, when i was playing you hulk, the kid who ended up going on to win the tourny, was sitting next to me waiting for his opponent for a minimum of 20 minutes, maybe we coulda waited a little longer, but the tourny was going slow enough as it is, i don't know which person said there was 27 minutes left in the round, but they are an idiot.

Yeah, he was sitting there, but that's because the previous round ended early.  I know it did for a fact, because I was playing keeper so I made sure to keep track of the time every round.  It definitely ended early, and those guys that were out getting food definitely got the shaft

[TrixR4Kidz]

well it depends on what you call ending a round early, if by ending a round  early you mean everyone was finished playing, then yea it ended early, like kowal said its called a round clock there musta been 27 minutes left on it, I don't really know what happened, all i know is they were gone longer then they said they were, either way, it's obviously not gonna happen again.

[PandaPokemon]

Ted Lou's girlfriend for riding out from Boston and chilling with him all day- I didn't know them prior to the tournament but any girl who sits and watches a magic tournament for 8 hours or so deserves Props.

What makes it more awesome was she was to take a flight home to Singapore the next day which would be like 30 hours of boredom.  In fact she persuaded me to go for the tournament although I wanted to spend time with her.  She must be lucky since I never playtested that deck before (and by playtest I mean play by myself since I have no one to test with   ) and I still did pretty well.  I fell to my worst matchup FCG in the swiss and in the Top 8, while I was pretty confident of the other matchups.  

PS: It is Ted Low heh.