New England Magic; Part The First

[kl0wn]

Yes, my tournament reports are late. I've had to get accustomed to using the bathroom whenever I want and having food and water readily available. Oh yeah, and changing my clothes. And Showering. Bite me plz!!!!!!!!!11 tnks

Onward to the report:

This last weekend, the Binghamton crew rolled into New England to pillage, loot and plunder. The first stop on our itinerary was Your Move Games just outside of Boston, Mass.

We were missing one of our players as CrazyCarl called in to our invasion sick with leprosy so we couldn't quite terrorize the environments as well as we wanted.

After driving through Boston for about an hour searching for YMG and calling Cooberp about five times for minor directions once we found route 2A, we finally arrived at the venue. Well, sort of. We actually arrived three blocks away from Your Move Games since the Boston area doesn't have real streets or real parking.

Team Ghetto milled around the store for a bit while we waited for the tournament to begin. After everyone did the loaned-card shuffle to fill the holes in eachothers decks, I decided to go and get gouged by the store on fetchlands. $20 for two flooded strands wasn't a very reasonable price for cards that I can find in packs of Type 2-legal cards, but I rationalized the purchase (or voluntary highway robbery) by telling myself I would be making quite a bit more than that if I could manage to squeek out a win, so it was worth it.

I noticed a lot of ManaDrainers in attendance and was tempted to walk around introducing myself, but decided against it because I am a ninja and ninjas just don't walk around introducing themselves. It's the ninja code, we're like all stealthy and invisible and shit.

I did, however, see the one-man army of MolotDET and his girlfriend chilling out in a corner, so I decided to blow my cover and say "'sup?". I'll tell ya, any chick who comes on a road trip so her boyfriend can play in Magic tournaments is defintely good stuff. Especially when she has to hang out in a room full of smelly dorks for seven hours with nothing to do except read "The Art Of Happiness". I nominate her for sainthood. Although, I'm sure they had fun with the locale since they actually did non-magic stuff. Thom, you should buy her some flowers or something. I'll chip in since she hooked me up with a little conversation and an extra pair of hands and eyes for my poor hand-eye coordination in Concord.

The real tournament report begins:

For the record, I was playing Trinity Keeper.

Round 1: Jason (leviat) playing TNT

Punk-ass bitches make me play my own crew...

Game 1: I get rolled over badly because my deck hates me when I play against TNT, therefore...

I side in the KrOathan combo.

Game 2: I see nothing but ass and lands. The ass would be counterspells and the lands would be, well, lands. I would have loved to get draws like that if one of those cards had been an Oath of Druids, but nooo...Turbo Bertha is having an affair with Jason, so she lets him win all of his games against me.

The games actually went so fast that I didn't have time to take any notes aside from writing down that I died a horrible, horrible death.

Round 2: Joe playing Mono-Black with Juzam Djinns

Game 1: I manage to Mana Drain something random and throw out a quick Morphling to put him on a four-turn clock. He doesn't get an Edict in time.

I side in nothing.

Game 2: He resolves a Juzam, a Negator and a Nevinyrral's Disk. I toss out a Morphling and play a lot of land in the meantime. His beats can't get around my beats and I fly over his two 5/5 ground-pounders with enough mana left over to keep my Morphling a 5/6 on defense.

Juzams are still cool and Joe gets a bucket of style points for playing them.

Games: 2-2
Matches: 1-1

Round 3: James playing Suicide

Game 1: My first turn play is City of Brass, Mox Sapphire. His first turn play would have probably kicked my ass, if I hadn't decided to Drain his Dark Ritual. Second turn I cast The Abyss. He's smart and knows he can't win under the circumstances, so he scoops and we're on to game 2.

I side in nothing.

Game 2: I get a quick Sylvan Library out and he drops a Null Rod which I have to FoW. He does the usual Suicide routine of blasting my hand and lands, then he drops a Nantuko Shade and beats me for 3. Next turn a Negator joins the fray.
In the meantime, I break Sylvan Library with my newly acquired $10 fetchlands. I Sylvan, take what I want, then shuffle the crap back into my library looking for a Balance. I manage to Power up my Monolith for infinite mana in the process. His beats rip chunks off my life total on his sixth turn and I'm brought to 2 life. Then I Sylvan into Stroke on my turn and kill him.

For the record, I used nothing but Sylvan and fetchlands to assemble the combo by turn 6.

Games: 4-2
Matches: 2-1

Round 4: Eric (Redman) playing TurboNevyn

Game 1: I play like a control deck, countering his relevant spells while drawing cards and tutoring. Then I eventually sneak in a Stroke for 3,856,439,373,646,548. I love comboing combo players.

Side in: 4 Duress and 2 Call Of The Herd
Side out: Power Artifact, Grim Monolith, The Abyss, Vampiric Tutor, Mystical Tutor, StoP (I was half-expecting Negators, but decided that 2 elephants would cause more problems than an StoP, since he doesn't run moxen and they wouldn't come out quickly enough to warrant a one-for-one trade)

Game 2: We both get Duress-happy and essentially turn the game into a topdecking war since we both know what's in eachother's hand. I throw elephants at him while I keep his combo off the table. He eventually dies to my 2 3/3 critters when I Timewalk for the win.

Games: 6-2
Matches: 3-1

We chilled out and discussed his deck for a little while since I once tried playing TurboNevyn but decided it was a bit too fragile for my tastes, but I found it fascinating nonetheless. His ran Sickening Dreams for the kill and he also had pitch counters. Quite a bit different from the Fire/Ice, no counterpower list that I tried.

The top 8 consisted, to the best of my knowledge, of (in no particular order):

Me-Trinity Keeper
Leviat-TNT
Thombligh-urPhidian
Wicketsnatcher-Lich Donate
some guy-Zombie Infestation/Squee/Bazaar
Jacob Orlove-TNT
someone-something
someone else-something else

Round 5: Thom Bligh (thombligh) playing urPhidian

WHY DO I HAVE TO BUMP HEADS WITH MY OWN POSSE?!?!?!?!?!?

Game 1: We bash eachothers heads in until we have very few cards in hand. I manage to work my Sylvan into assembling my combo in-between counterwars and his Morphling smashing my face and leave Stroke on top of my library because I was short a blue mana to cast it after Powering up. Thom has one card left in hand and I know its not a counterspell because he didn't stop my Power Artifact. I also had no cards in my hand at this point. I end my turn and he Capsizes my Monolith, then kills me within the next 2 turns.

Side in: 4 Duress, 1 Scrying Glass, 1 Aura Fracture
Side out: 1 Power Artifact, 1 Grim Monolith, 1 Vampiric Tutor, 1 The Abyss, 1 Mystical Tutor, 1 Something Else

Game 2: He drops a quick Phid and we strip eachother's counters when I try to kill it. I'm left with a Jet and an Emerald on the table for non-red mana when he topdecks Blood Moon while I have a Force in hand with no blue cards to pitch it to and 4 untapped mana. He finishes me off with a Morphling while I accumulate counterspells.

And that was all she wrote.

We hung out for a little while to see what the top 4 would be like before we decided which one of us would advance, since the Binghamton crew made a pact before the tournament began to allocate any winnings to travel expenses.

Leviat was comboed out by Wicketsnatcher, so only one of us was our last hope. Since he had earned his win, Thom wanted to go for the glory which he did, and then split the prize to be on the safe side (although I strongly believe he would have trashed Wicketsnatcher in the finals).

The prizes were $100 for first place and $30 for second, so our finalists each took home $65.

After being knocked out of the tournament, I played the Hype vs. Enchantress matchup against cooberp on the side. The record was 1-1 unsideboarded before everyone was kicked out.

The real winners here (or I should say WIENERS) were Your Move Games and cooberp.

YMG apparently charged over $40 to hold the tournament at their store while still cashing in on the kinds of purchases that tend to be made when you have nearly 30 people milling about for a cash Type 1 tournament.

Cooberp walked off with over $40 from the pot as well. A pretty good deal for only having to sit around and lose all day while you just take care of the pairings.

Scandalous? Maybe.

Where I come from, the shops don't charge to hold tournaments and the TOs, especially those who are participating in the event, don't skim off the top (much less take more money than has been allocated to the second place prize). Perhaps its just a regional thing that TOs and store managers are complete bags in and around Boston.

Just to make that a bit clearer:
Yes Dan, I called you a complete bag. Yes Mr. YMG manager, I called you a complete bag as well. You can both eat the peanuts out of my shit, you greedy bitches.

Steve, I apologize for the inflammatory remarks and I won't get all pissy if you decide to slap a warning on my lo-fat ass or even ban me, but a man has to stick to his guns. That was just wrong.

All in all, I had a good time though. That was of course, until I found out about people playing grabass with the entry fees.

Oh, and here's my decklist:

Turbo Bertha

Blue
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
1 Misdirection
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Braingeyser
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Power Artifact
2 Morphling
1 Time Walk
2 Brainstorm

Black
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Chainer's Edict
1 The Abyss
1 Mind Twist
1 Yawgmoth’s Will

Green
1 Regrowth
1 Sylvan Library

White
1 Balance
1 Dismantling Blow
1 Swords To Plowshares

Artifacts
1 Zuran Orb

Mana
2 City of Brass
1 Undiscovered Paradise
4 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
2 Tundra
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Flooded Strand
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Dustbowl
1 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Grim Monolith
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Black Lotus


Sideboard:
4 Oath of Druids
2 Krosan Reclamation
4 Duress
3 Call Of The Herd
1 Aura Fracture
1 Scrying Glass

I will be the first person to say that my deck was a bad Keeper.

On the other hand, I am a firm believer in playing a deck that you're comfortable with and know how to play as opposed to the best deck. I did have to adjust to playing with fetchlands and Brainstorms on the fly after playing with Parfait for so long, but I felt much more comfortable with this build than an optimized U/B/w/r Keeper.\n\n

[leviat]

AMEN BRUTHA!!!

[CrazyCarl]

Nice report .  Next time y'all youngins betta ph34r CCW and his mad deckz0rz of d00m

Lookin foward to part 2 ;>

[j_orlove]

So if cooberp had won, he would have gotten $140?  

There's something wrong with that.  

[hulk3rules]

Quote (kl0wn @ Dec. 10 2002,14:14)Just to make that a bit clearer:
Yes Dan, I called you a complete bag. Yes Mr. YMG manager, I called you a complete bag as well. You can both eat the peanuts out of my shit, you greedy bitches.

i think you left out a word.  "I called you a complete [douche] bag"  

but yeah, that sounds like a really gay thing to do, and makes me reconsider wanting to go if another tournament is held there.

Overall though, nice report, and I am also looking forward to part the second

[kl0wn]

Quote (hulk3rules @ Dec. 10 2002,19:06)

Quote (kl0wn @ Dec. 10 2002,14:14)Just to make that a bit clearer:
Yes Dan, I called you a complete bag. Yes Mr. YMG manager, I called you a complete bag as well. You can both eat the peanuts out of my shit, you greedy bitches.

i think you left out a word.  "I called you a complete [douche] bag"  

Actually, the word "bag" is kind of like Madlibs. You can insert any sort of derogatory noun in front of the word "bag" and it works. You can even try it at home.

Just take this phrase: "Bleep is a complete ____bag" and add some sort of rude noun in the blank space.

Examples:

Bleep is a complete dirtbag.

Bleep is a complete scumbag.

Bleep is a comlpete shitbag.

You get the idea.

Once was enough, lets not piss on the ashes of the fire as well. -Z

[spin13]

While I can understand that had Dan sat down and planned to make $40 off you, it'd be ridiculous.  However, if you had to plan around $175 down payment on a tournament, and you expected X people, and charge $Y, and X+Z people came, I don't think you complain and/or ask them to leave.  What would have happened if X-Z people came and Dan were using your money (assuming you won) to pay YMG.

That being said, Dan is still definatly a wiener.  Stupid, money grubbing (#*s.  Heh.

YMG definatly does suck though.

 -E

[MolotDET]

Quote  did, however, see the one-man army of MolotDET and his girlfriend chilling out in a corner, so I decided to blow my cover and say "'sup?". I'll tell ya, any chick who comes on a road trip so her boyfriend can play in Magic tournaments is defintely good stuff. Especially when she has to hang out in a room full of smelly dorks for seven hours with nothing to do except read "The Art Of Happiness". I nominate her for sainthood. Although, I'm sure they had fun with the locale since they actually did non-magic stuff. Thom, you should buy her some flowers or something. I'll chip in since she hooked me up with a little conversation and an extra pair of hands and eyes for my poor hand-eye coordination in Concord.

     Veronica thinks this is the coolest thing ever, by the way.  Unfortunatly I now have to deal with the fact that she now thinks she is a saint!!!

   By the way I thought "bag" ment, Bag of Shit!

All in all, thought that the weekend was a complete sucsess, even though some shenanagins did go down at YMG.  And should be repeated in the future, not the shenenagins.

     It was cool to meet everyone that was there, though I am upset that I didn't meet or talk to Redman.

[leviat]

Yeah, RedMan is a nice guy. I felt really bad because I beat him two games in a row with only activating my Memory Jar... once!

He was playing TurboLand. I was playing a G/R TnT

Game 1:
I play a Memory Jar the turn before he goes off. I'm racking my brain trying to figure out if I can use the Jar to mess up his combo. The best I can figure is that he is going to play Seismic Assualt and then in response I can Jar making him lose all the lands sitting in his hand giving me one more turn to survive. BUT! To my amazement, he continues to fill his hand until he has just a few cards left. He then plays sickening dreams, discarding 22 cards to it. !!! I Jar in response and he ends up only having 6 cards left in his library. (Phew!)

Game 2:
He casts Vampiric Tutor on the second or third turn. As he's looking through his deck I realise that there is a small pile of card off to the side. I figure he was setting aside cards that he was considering to tutor but it looked kinda suspicious so I called him on it. It turns out that the cards set aside were his Jar'd hand from the last game and that he forgot to shuffle them in. I feel bad, but I called him on it and he got an immediate game loss.

Sorry for such a cheesy win Eric (RedMan), but thanks for being such a great sport about it!

[CrazyCarl]

Well, guys, to be fair, if I was YMG, i'd ask for a part of the pot as well.  I mean, it would have been cool of them to just let you guys play, but play space comes at a premium, and, well, I dunno, I just understand that they'd want something.  However, Dan, while I appreciate what you did to put it on, i think you should have divvied up the extra money between 1st and 2nd, maybe used it to buy prizes for 3rd and 4th even?  That woulda  been rockin.  Something to keep in mind for next time.....

Carl

[ctthespian]

Despite the lack of support prizes and YMG taking a rather LARGE cut (Hell my friends and I spent well over 100-150 bucks before the tourny even started and thats only 3 of us!) I have to say it was a prety cool tourny.  It was a fun yet competitive environment.
I either didn't realize that there were so many TMDers there or I was just being an antisocial bitch all day, sorry I didn't chat more often.  I was the one asking around for alphas at the end of the tourny. (Check my post in the trade section if you have any.)

-Keith

[cooberp]

Whoa...wasn't expecting this to degenerate into a bash-Dan thread...

I don't see why everyone is so outraged that I kept some of the money for myself for the trouble I put to organizing it.  I put together the tournament because a) I thought it would be a lot of fun b) I wanted the chance to play competitive T1 in a tourney environment in Boston myself and c) I thought if it was successful enough, I could make some money.  We do live in a capitalist society, guys, and we rely on people having an entrepreneurial streak.  I never promised that I would return every last cent that came in in prize money--I gambled that if I offered a $100 prize, I could get enough people to come that I could recoup my investment on top of what I had to pay to the store.  Clearly, enough people were willing to pay $10 to play competitive T1 and have a chance at that prize that the venture turned out to be profitable, thus I'd look forward to doing it again.  Two people walked away with a 6.5X return on their investment.  If I lost money, I wouldn't want to do it again.  I might offer a bigger prize next time, but that would be in the hopes of attracting more people so that it would still work out financially.  What's wrong with that???  I never claimed to be doing this out of altruism, and I don't see why I would.  I had fun, I think it was good for T1 in the region, and I made a little money.  Sounds great to me.  If you object to my treating this as a business venture and demand that tournament organizers put these things together without keeping anything for themselves, go to China.  No one made anyone come.  I advertised a $10 entry fee and a $100 first place prize, and clearly that was an enticing enough proposition that 21 other people showed up.  I've got nothing to hide.

[Grand Inquisitor]

Viva la capital, you tell em cooperb

     

[LoA]

I have to agree with cooperb here.  Everyone knew what was at stake going in to the game, it's tough to complain after the fact.  It's easy to want to foster "community" for Type 1 players, but that doesn't mean cooperb needs to sweeten the pot.  It can be a difficult transition going from playing in the dorm room to playing somewhere that actually needs to make money in terms of one's mindset, but there is a huge difference.  I know this is a little counterfactual, but if 8 people had showed up, cooperb would've been obligated to bite the bullet and pony up $20 of his own to cover the prize.  That's what he was responsible for, nothing more, nothing less.

[Azhrei]

At VA States last year SliverKing and I kept all the cash in entry fees to cover the Juzam and the Mana Drain we put up as prizes. We each ended up making between $100 and $150 by the time it was all said and done (I won my own Mana Drain) and SliverKing traded his (my) 3rd place Psionic Blasts and a bunch of t2 rares we had from winning t1 tournaments for the Juzam back, so we collected about $300 bucks total in fees and lost about $20 in cards (in terms of actual cost to gain) overall.

From my perspective, that was a good day. GO DAN.

[leviat]

Quote (Azhrei @ Dec. 11 2002,20:31)At VA States last year SliverKing and I kept all the cash in entry fees to cover the Juzam and the Mana Drain we put up as prizes. We each ended up making between $100 and $150 by the time it was all said and done (I won my own Mana Drain) and SliverKing traded his (my) 3rd place Psionic Blasts and a bunch of t2 rares we had from winning t1 tournaments for the Juzam back, so we collected about $300 bucks total in fees and lost about $20 in cards (in terms of actual cost to gain) overall.

From my perspective, that was a good day. GO DAN.

What hell is wrong with you people?

Did you go home with a chubby thinking about all the people you ripped off. Do you sell life insurance perchance? You make me sick.

I have no problem with someone putting a card up for a tournament or even making a little money off it. But if there's a larger turnout than expected, then put up a second prize. And for God's sake, don't play in the tournament to win.

Merry Christmas everyone.

[Vegeta2711]

"SliverKing and I kept all the cash in entry fees to cover the Juzam and the Mana Drain we put up as prizes. We each ended up making between $100 and $150 "

I can understand getting repaid for the cards here, espically Silverking. You still made a decent sum... tho that's somewhat more understandable... and at least you guys WON some of your cards back which amounts to some of that...

The thing with cooper is it's no so much that you kept some of the money. Just the thing is you were playing in the tourney with a shot at winning it. And that despite losing badly you made more money then the 2nd place guy.

When the TO brings home more winnings than the the 2nd top finisher and 1/2 of what the first place guy did, something is wrong....

[kl0wn]

Regarding YMG charging for use of space:

The purpose for a store holding a tournament is to bring in more business. YMG wasn't losing any money by devoting their space to a Magic tournament for a day. Charging excess money for people to organize a tournament is completely assanine since they will make more sale-generated profit by having more customers in their store.

The tournament is an attraction to bring in customers who will in turn increase the store's sales.

Regarding Cooberp walking off with a chunk of the entry fees:

I would understand him taking some of the money if he decided to not play in the tournament or if he intended to drop before the top 8, voluntarily keeping himself out of contention for the prizes. Had he decided to go this route, he would have been perfectly justified in keeping a portion of the entry fees as he would have not competed in favor of devoting 100% of his attention to running a smooth tournament and taking care of any rules issues.

One of the unwritten rules of organizing a tournament (at least where I come from) is that you don't take money from the entry fees as long as you intend to compete for prize money.

Based on how others have responded, I guess we just do it differently around here.\n\n

[riverboa11]

Thanks for the report kl0wn, but I don't see anything good coming from it in the direction that it is headed.  Closed. - Boa