OK, before anyone flips out a deck playing Wall of Wood didn't make any Top 8 (as far as I know). But Wall of Wood figures prominently enough into my Report that it bears marquee billing
The Thursday (late night) event in Columbus was my first ever t1 event, as I mainly stick to what I best know with sports games like MLB/NFL Showdown. I've played in a few t2 events since a friend of mine is more into that format but I don't find the competition to be particularly fun to play against in Type 2 (many of them take it far too seriously IMH estimation, esp at Regionals)
I really enjoyed this event though and even recognized a few of the "name" players from this site (if vaguely, since I don't follow TMD so much)
Anyway my brother and I were at Origins primarily for a different event with airfare/accomodations to Chicago on the line but we also have a big box of old Magic cards around that we bust out from time to time.
Now, we got to the Convention Center behind schedule due to some directional mishaps and had less than an hour from when we got there to when the Type One event started.
And no we didn't have our badges yet. This would normally prompt a rousing "Badges?! We don't need no stinkin' badges!" but we were too exhausted for such schtick I guess. And, yes, the Registration server was down.
Despite all of which, we made it on-time and had decks to play (or reasonable facsimiles thereof). Well I did anyone. Those in attendance will definitely remember my brother's deck as he was the guy with Wall of Wood and 380ish cards. No, not Battle of Wits. His "philosophy" is that since he has little (NO) chance to win, why not go down swinging with his favorite cards. Since I work this into every report I ever write (albeit not Magic reports normally) I'm going to break for an aside paragraph at this point that has no relevant value whatsoever. Here goes:
My brother (hereafter "Woody" in deference to his namesake card) is a Poli Sci guy (brain-washed commie liberal or clear head amidst a sea of flag-waving mindless patriotism depending on your perspective). He once took a class in Political Philosophy (Locke, Hobbes, Nicolo "Asshole" Macchiavelli etc) and had to submit the usual term blah blah papers. Now in proof-reading this I couldn't but notice a particularly, shall we say, *bodacious* sentence in his opening paragraph. It might help to explain that Woody is a product of our fine public school systems that teaches the formulaic paint-by-numbers approach to essay writing. It reads "Since we are common men and not great ancient philosophers..." Anyway, "Common Men" is now our punchline for hilarity. Sorry for the anti-climactic ending here, but let me just say that we're glad to be common men and not great ancient philosophers, whatwith the pedophilia and all...I guess if I was Sun Tzu I could be hitting the lecture circuit with this whole "Doctrine of Preepmtion" craze
Back to the tournament I suppose.
Round One was easily the most hilarious/bizarre of the tournament for me. And whoever played my brother too I would imagine. First game my opponent drops some crappy white nomad creature or something. I'm like "Wait, don't tell, I've seen thsi deck before...OK I give up...what the hell are you playing?" I find out on turn 3 when that crappy white dude (Tireless Tribe) becomes ~1/21 and then gets About Faced for the win.
I perk up quite a bit when my opponent tells me that he last played Type One less than a year ago and threw his deck together hours ago, not 5 minutes before the tourney. HE had to check his graveyard to see if he'd discarded any flashback cards or not that he might want to use. Nice. That and he sided out a white flashback card that lets you prevent combat damage from the color of your choice (no idea what the name of it is but how many cards like that can there be?)
So tahts a decent segue into...my deck:
(list may not be accurate since I grabbed the cards at the very last minute):
Mean Green
4 Rogue Elephant
4 Vine Dryad
4 Hidden Guerrillas
4 Rushwood Legate
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Bounty of the Hunt
4 Rancor
4 Briar Shield
4 some combination of Seal of Strength and Giant Growth and an Invigorate
1 Berserk
4 Null Rod
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
6 Forest
4 Windswept Heath
1 Chrome Mox
Sideboard: crap although it had some Naturalizes
I'm pretty sure I had 3 of some of the creatures listed above since I remember casting Skyshroud Elites and Ridgebacks and Whirling Dervish too.
Back to Round One. Games two and three also end pretty quickly but in my favor. Tireless Tribe without About Face turns out to be less than superb *shock and awe*
Round Two, was against a Sligh deck who I beat in two games. Game One he mulliganed a no-land hand and game two he chocked on mountains as I leisurely beat him down with a lone Rogue Elephant (and by "choked on mountains" I mean he had 6-7 in hand). Fast forwarding a bit I remember some uprorar when the Final Standings were posted that Wall of Wood boy finished in front of Sligh. I wonder this was that guy? I didn't think his deck was *that* bad...
Round Three saw me at Table One (!) vs Matt Smith although I didn't realize who he was til I saw his name bandied about later on here. I'm going to rant for a little bit about why Vine Dryad is awesome here so let me get the actual result-related details out of the way here: he trounced me.
To be a little more explicit, he was playing tons of creature control as far as I could tell. Main deck Plague-bearer for sure and also main deck Maze of Ith I think plus it seemed like 5xSwords to Plowshares (his double Maze in game 2 or 3 was brutal against me). Game One I commented that a Balance could spell disaster for me (even though I typically don't find that to be the case) and of course he showed me the Balance. I lost 4 creatures or so but discarded my only card in hand to Wild Mongrel meaning it was a top-decking war. I normally like that scenario but not this time. He eventually Yawg Willed and Balanced again yadda yadda yadda
I actually won game one so here comes the Vine Dryad story. Game one saw him kill all my creatures but tap out in the process. He was on 1 life. I play Vine Dryad at the end of his turn (surprise?) and.........it resolves! Game over.
At some point he also taps 3 for his Plague-bearer and trys to kill the Dryaf (4cc). This is on top of another round where my opponent tries to block my Dryad with a Tropical Island in play (forest walk). One an entirely different occasion my opponent announces Mana Drain on it then pulls it back. This was ostensibly bc he was at one life and would've mana burned from some of the Drain mana...(forgot to ask him for sure)
So, all in all, I think the much-maligned umm, "VD", is a defensible choice (also harder to Deed it remember). Just to get this in along the same lines, playing cards people are unfamiliar with sometimes works to your advantage. One time I had a Hidden Guerrillas in play when my opponent dropped a Lotus and did some decently broken play. The next turn I said "I attack with my 5/3 trampler" and he goes "Wait! Go back...". The atmosphere was very loose though as take-backs seemed pretty common (at least in my games) so it wasn't too big of deal
Round Four is indicative of Clint Eastwood's (other) tag-line "Man's got to know his limitations". I don't have any pretense of being a good player. In many cases this round, my opponent was clearly agonizing over brain-wrenching strategical decisions, any one of which could potentially cost him the game. I was busy trying to get my d20s to spin on a rather disagreeable table mat while I waited for him to pass the turn. Then I announced I was attacking with everything and crapped out another random d0rk maybe. It was close to midnite at this point probably. He was very frustrated about the round since I beat him 2-0. He was playing Grow-a-tog I think.
Round Five Psychatog+Cunning Wish==>Berserk = I lose.
Somewhere in here, probably Round 4, my brother played Terrible Tribe (I thought that was the name of the card until after the event when I looked it up) in what had to be the "Feature Match" of the tournament.
They played to a 0-0 DRAW!!!! Terrible Tribe had multiple Soul Wardens and some life-gainer triggered off discarding cards (50+ life) and my brother had Walls and crappers like Gerrard's Irregulars out. Truly an embarrasing specatcle (although my brother would have won had they continued playing via decking)
Round Six I don't remeber alot about this match, except it was control and I think he played Morphling. I won in 3 games and afterwards he offered me a prize split based on him having better tie-breakers for a chance to make Top 8.
I'm not sure on the etiqutte here, but the 4-2 finish, Top 8 or not, was good enough for me, so I turned it down. I ended up 8th (yay) and won some packs.
Many of my opponent's commented that I put up more fight than they expected from mono-green and were almost always grimfaced and wracking through their hand before conceding a game. My victory line typically went something like "I figured you had an answer for that..."
I had a lot of fun and don't have any illusions about being competitive so thanks for keeping this format alive and kicking guys! I fell sorry for you if you read through this whole report
