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Dante
Guest
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« on: August 12, 2002, 10:42:13 am » |
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Gen Con 2002 Type I – Thursday
This will be a very long-winded tournament report that includes some background info.
I live in Chicago and was planning on staying with my buddy in Milwaukee for Gencon, but a change in schedule at one of my clients forced me to work Saturday during the day. So the plan changed to me coming up Wednesday night, playing Thursday, going out drinking Thursday night, playing Friday, going home Friday night, then coming back Saturday night and playing Sunday.
I decided I was going to play Keeper since there’s usually a diverse metagame at Gen Con.
4 Mana Drain
4 FOW
1 Counterspell
1 Misdirection
2 Morphling
1 Balance
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Abyss
1 Powder Keg
2 Shaman
1 Dismantling Blow
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Stroke
1 Ancestral
1 Braingeyser
1 Time Walk
1 Mindtwist
1 Zuran Orb
1 Yag Will
4 Mox (no emerald)
1 Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Strip
4 Wasteland
4 City of Brass
4 Tundra
4 Volcanic Island
4 Underground Sea
1 Library
Sideboard:
4 Red blast
2 Blue blast
2 Dwarven Miner
2 Cop Red
2 Cop Black
1 Cop Blue
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Moat
The Cop Blue was for MonoBlue since they typically have no way to remove an enchantment other than a sideboard capsize.
So I get to Gencon around 9:30 on Thursday. Looking through the book, the Type I tournaments on Thursday and Friday that were originally scheduled for noon (online at the WoTC site) is now scheduled at 4pm. That means it won’t get done until like 10 or later, which will cut into my drinking time. Bad beat.
Before the tournament, I’m talking with Milton, Gilindon and others and see a lot of people preparing Keeper decks, but I know the aggro will show. I spend like an hour trying to find an Aura Fracture/Seal of Cleansing for my sideboard. I was about to give up when a nice guy named Jim gave me the Seal. (Thanks Jim). I see one guy sleeving up his suicide black deck. I recognize a lot of people from the previous year…
We get 46 people for the tournament, so it’s 7 rounds of Swiss, no Top 8 elimination. Top 8 get prizes. Last year we had a full 65 and 5-2 was good for places 4-11, so I figure this year 5-2 will get Top 8. There’s also no decklisting, but nobody that I talked to was really worried about anything funny.
So the tournament manages to start at like 4:50 when it should have started at 4:00. <sigh> more drinking time cut off.
Round 1: Nick Hamm
Nick’s the guy I saw sleeving the suicide black deck – not the best matchup for me.
Game 1 – His first 5 turns were something like Wasteland, Wasteland, ritual hypnotic, Wasteland, Wasteland. Needless to say, I get my ass handed to me by a Negator. Off to a great
Game 2 – side in 2 cop black, moat, side out shaman, braingeyser, and something else. He rituals out a first turn Necro – not good for me. He necros for 5. Next turn he does NOTHING! (he later told me he got 4 land and a hypnotic that turn). I get a third turn cop black, but not a lot of mana or removal, so he’s got 2 negators, sarcomancy, hippie, and a shade out, so he’s pinging me away with the sarcomancy. I topdeck Balance and he concedes. He sides in another card or two.
Game 3 – My opening hand looks like city brass, underground sea, lotus, abyss, swords, merchant scroll, force of will. Can it get any better than that against suicide? He doesn’t first turn Duress, I drop the first turn Abyss. He gets a masticore on the third turn, but that goes farming. Morphling wins and I’m feeling good about winning this matchup.
Round 2 – Nathan Dietsche (sp?)
My notes are very sparse here. I win 2-0 and he had a mishra’s factory in his deck…
So I’m 2-0, good start.
Round 3 – Matt Graham
Matt’s playing suicide.
Game 1 – I get a second turn abyss. He plays a third turn scroll…and a fourth turn scroll. I can’t find a monkey or d-blow and lose. Wasn’t expecting that maindeck, I thought the abyss was game unless he laid a nethervoid.
Game 2 – side same as Round 1. He goes waste, waste leaving me with only a sol ring (didn’t draw any more land first 3 turns), but a cast a keg which kills his shade. He gets a hypnotic out when I’ve got a Drain and a Counterspell. I draw a mana source for 7 straight turns (not kidding) followed by a Moat. I die.
2-1.
Round 4 – James Ludlow
He is the guy who gave me the Seal for my sideboard. He’s playing Keeper.
Game 1 - Not too many exact notes, but there was the usual counter wars, etc. He outdrew me by like 15 cards, possibly more. So I lost right…..no, I won. He ended up having to pitch both his Morphlings to Force of Wills. At one point late in the game, his Morphlings were gone, he had yag will, stroke, and braingeyser in his graveyard and about 15 cards left in his library (I was at 14 life). This game had gone for about 40 minutes out of a 50 minute round, so whoever won game 1 was likely to win the match. He casts regrowth and I assume for the geyser or the stroke. He gets ancestral and ancestrals himself (he later said he counted our libraries and he wouldn’t have enough mana to geyser me out anyway)…I stroke him out and win. There’s no time for Games 2 or 3.
3-1 so far, with a lot of mono black and keeper at the top tables with some zoo/red green decks as well.
Round 5 – Joel Wood
Joel’s from the same town as Milton I believe and is playing Keeper.
Game 1- he wins (that’s all the notes I have)
Game 2 – I side in the 6 blasts and the 2 miners. I win an important counter war because he wasn’t expecting me to have a blue blast. I win.
Game 3 – there are like 5 minutes left in the round and my opening hand is good. But I’m thinking about conceding so that I can go out drinking with my friend. Since the tournament won’t be done until somewhere around midnight, I decide to drop, but make him sweat out the last 5 minutes. So I play around, tutor for something silly and let him beat me down with morphling.
So I drop at 3-2…this is when the fun starts (WARNING, non-magic story beginning here, but funny). My buddy and I go out to a bar on Water Street. We start pounding drinks while watching Baseball Tonight highlights and women all at the same time. Since we got a late start and things close early in Milwaukee (Chicago is open ‘til 4am on weeknights), we have like 10 drinks in the first hour. We see a lot of attractive girls starting to come in, but there are two…less than attractive girls wandering around (that was as nice as I can put it). My buddy says, “Hey, as long as we don’t end up with those two, we’ll be ok.” You can guess where this story is heading.
So like an hour later we’re talking with the bartender and those two come up and order a drink, start making small talk with us and before you know it, we’re making out with them. Somehow I got the fat girl…or the fatter girl rather. I guess it was my turn to take one for the team. Ugh. She kept asking me if I remembered her name. My first response was “No”. By the second time, I really just wanted her to leave, so I said “Does it really matter anyway?” The third time I gave her this really annoyed look and said “Why do you keep asking me that?” They left, we get a few more drinks, then stumble home (and I do mean stumble).
Back to Magic – Next day I find out Brad Lewis went 7-0 with his old school Zoo deck (going through at least 2 good keeper decks) to win. 2nd place was a R/G deck, either Zoo or Land Grant Sligh. My 5th round opponent, Joel, took 3rd and Milton took 4th with his Bloodmoon Keeper. I was glad to find out Brad won because 1. I like Zoo and 2. Brad’s a really nice guy – last year I parked my car in a garage that closed at 10pm, so I got stuck in Milwaukee all night (I had to work that Friday). He stayed and played Magic with me until the wee hours of the morning….
I’ll talk about the Friday tournament in my next report…
Dante
PS Any deck/sideboard advice appreciated..
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