|
Dante
Guest
|
 |
« on: October 01, 2002, 02:29:07 pm » |
|
Type 1 Tournament Report – Crazy Cards, Suburb of Chicago, 9/29/02
Here’s the deck – explanation of cards below
4 Mana Drain
4 FOW
1 Misdirection
2 Morphling
1 Balance
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Diabolic Edict
1 Abyss
1 Moat
1 Powder Keg
1 Shaman
1 Disenchant
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
3 Wasteland
4 City of Brass
4 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island
4 Underground Sea
1 Library
1 Undiscovered Paradise
1 Mishra
Sideboard:
4 Red blast
1 Keg
2 Cop Red
1 Cop Black
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Pyroclasm
2 Tormond’s Crypt
1 Meekstone
1 Scrying Glass
1 Teferi’s response (I wanted a MisD, but the store didn’t have any more)
I traded my main-deck Counterspell from previous builds in for a Braingeyser. There are a lot of people who play reanimator (3-5 out of 14-20 is usual I believe), so I wanted extra creature kill, thus 2 edicts and 2 plows. There’s not too much Mono-U and one of the guys who plays it sometimes uses Mishras, so the Plows and Moat aren’t useless against him. There are several U/b OSE builds that use ‘phids or Finkels, so the Plows/Moat aren’t useless against those match-ups either. The Disenchant was left over from the last tourney – I was going to switch it for a Dismantling Blow, but forgot. The meekstone in the side looks janky, but I had gotten beat down by misc large reanimated creatures that I couldn’t target and may have had friends (rendering edict useless). This at least would make sure they only hit me once.
The first time I played there, there wasn’t as much sligh as I thought.
This tournament had just under 20 people with a lot of varieties of decks – a couple mono-black, my keeper, a pandeburt, a survival deck, several ose decks, a rebels deck, and some others I never saw.
Round 1 – Steve Bala, Mono-black
Game 1 – I make a huge error that leaves me with only 1 blue untapped (I really don’t want to mention it). He casts a specter that I should have been able to counter. He wins. (As usual, I was fairly hung-over. Yes, this usually hurts my play in the first match, but such is life).
Game 2 - I side in Cop Black and Teferi’s Response. I get a 1st turn abyss (which is usually good). He beats on me with a factory until I am at 8 and get a moat in play. He had also slipped a cursed scroll through that knocked me down to 5 before I got rid of it. At this point I’ve stabilized, but don’t have much of a hand. He plays two janky black creatures that are 2/2 with flying that can be pumped (I’d never seen them before – they were overcosted). So I need to draw creature control, don’t, and lose.
0-2, 0-1 I shouldn’t have lost that game (or the first one). My game 1 mistake gave me mental clarity and focus for the rest of the tournament.
Round 2 – Ray A, Rebels
Game 1 – This game was really, really close and took a long time. He gets out a few rebels, but I get out moat. He has 1 flying guy out, but is able to keep pulling flying guys out of his library and I can’t find a Plow to save my life. He gets an active scroll, getting me down to 4 when I topdeck Zuran Orb. Two turns later I balance away down to zero creatures and land (I have a ton of jewelry out) with no cards in hand. I draw into a morphling and start beating on him. He concedes to save time.
Game 2 – There’s like ten minutes left in the round. I side in a keg and a pyroclasm. I’m not going to stall, but I’m not going to speed up my play and risk a mistake either. My opening hand is 6 cards and a mox ruby. I mulligan. My next hand is 5 mana sources and a Yag Will. I mulligan again – my opponent kind of rolls his eyes as he has a chance to win this game (or so he thinks) as he has a fast deck. I show him my hand and he looks relieved that I wasn’t just mulliganing to waste time (I thoroughly shuffle after every mulligan, regardless of time). I get a reasonable 5 card hand with a city, underground sea, an edict, a plow, and ancestral. There’s no way he can win in time. (Draw).
I win 1-0-1, am now 1-1 matches
Round 3 – Brian – survival deck
Not a TnT deck, but more control-ish survival deck with Shapeshifters and Force of Will.
Game 1 – I’m going second and have a good hand – (3 mana, Loa, Mana drain, disenchant). I get the library going (it stays the whole game, I drew a ton of cards). Maybe 3 turns later he land grants, and I see 3 survivals in his hand (at this point I have 1 counter and 1 disenchant, but couldn’t stop the third one, and I do have moat out and Abyss in hand). He has a shapeshifter out (if the top card in his graveyard is a creature, shapeshifter gains those creature’s abilities) and a wall of roots. He survivals his morphling into the top of his graveyard, planning on flying over the moat at me with the shifter, but on my turn I play abyss, the wall of roots dies, and his shifter now can put counters on itself for green mana. He survivals over and over, but doesn’t ever put anything in his hand that I would be scared to go into his graveyard. I get morphling out and start beating.
Game 2 – Side in 2 crypts, 1 seal cleansing, but again, there’s not much time left. We draw.
1-0-1, matches 2-1.
Round 4 – Ricky S, Pandeburst.
This is a good matchup for me as I can out counter him.
Game 1 - I knew what he was playing, so I 1st turn Vamp. for LoA and ancestral. I draw a ton of cards off the LoA. I let him do all his search/graveyard manipulation and just concentrating on countering key spells (replenish, and any of the combo pieces he would try and hard cast). I take control and beatdown with Morphling.
Game 2 – Side in 2 crypts, not sure if anything else.
Same as last time, I let him have a bunch of manipulation, but counter the replenishes. I crypt away all of his graveyard (maybe 30 cards) and lay morphling. He concedes.
2-0, 3-1 in matches. I’m worried though as there is 1 undefeated person, and two people who ID’d into 3-0-1 (top 4 for single elimination), leaving 1 spot for 4th place for 3-1 people. Sure enough, I come in 5th due to my two 1-0-1 wins.
Can someone explain the exact tiebreaker formula for me? Cuz the 3-1 guy who beat me out was my third round opponent that I beat. Turns out he had a first round bye! The judge said that the bye doesn’t count as any win percentage and that I was hurt by my 1-0-1 wins. If I hadn’t screwed up my first match, I would have been in, so I’ve no one to blame but myself.
Top 4 was my 3rd round opponent (Survival), CD playing Reanimator, Manuel playing U/b OSE with Finkels, and somebody I didn’t know playing U/b. The U/b was mostly a black discard deck (duress, hymn, hippie) with some blue for ancestral and some 5/6 blue flyer that cost UU5 or some huge amount, but that you could play for UU if the opponent had no hand. Whatever. That guy beat the reanimator and Manuel beat the Survival deck.
Game one of the finals, I’m standing behind the U/b player (his deck is 95% a suicide black deck and should be played as such). His opening hand is Shade, Yag Will, Lotus, and mana sources and he KEEPS it!!!@$! I can’t believe he kept that hand. On top of it, he didn’t play the shade right away. Somewhere around turn 8, he tries to hymn Manuel, but it gets misdirected grabbing the lotus and the yag will. <sigh>. Manuel wins. Game 2 is more of the same – the U/b player tries a turn 7 hymn, which manuel Mis-D’s back at him, again. <sigh> I didn’t bother staying for the rest of the game/match, I knew who was going to win.
Again, I had fun and all my opponents were cool and gracious in either victory or defeat..
Afterwards, I heard two guys talking about the Library of Alexandria and how it wasn't that good (there was one in the store for $90). One guy was commenting on how he wouldn't pay more than $50 for it as it wasn't that good. I told him how it basically won me two games today and he replied " The library didn't win anything by itself, you just used the extra cards to win". Duh! I just smiled and said "ok".
Dante
|
