Type 1 two part tourney, Longmont Colorado

So a month or so ago, my roommate and I were looking for card shops in the Boulder/Longmont Colorado area. All the stores we go to are in Denver suburbs, but take 30-40 minutes to get to, on average. We managed to find a store in Boulder, Time Warp Comics, and found out their sister store in Longmont was going to be holding a Type 1 tournament. It was scheduled to be on two seperate weekend days with a 35 person limit. We signed up and paid the entry fee.

Last Saturday (Dec 21) was the first day of the tournament. The format was extremely "different" to say the least. The majority of the people there play Type 1 "casual" and don't like going to tournaments really. Especially if it's single elimination and they lose first round. The format was a round-robin. With some weirdness. We didn't play matches per se, instead each round we'd play two games and gain points based on the game record. One point for a loss, two points for a draw and three points for a win. The rounds were about 40 minutes, and when time was called, the active player finished their turn, then if they went first in that game the other person finished their last turn. If the game wasn't decided by the end of the final turn, then life total was used to determine the win. If a person dropped out of the tournament, then anyone who was assigned to play them got two wins for the round. Each player also had a "bye" round, depending on when they were matched up against player #36.

Oi. Stupid format. But it wasn't a sanctioned tournament, nor were any of the judges very strong with running tournaments.

Anyway, I'm not going to provide round by round detail. There was a total of 35 rounds (18 on day one, 17 on day two). I'll share some of the highlights that I remember.

First off, I played Emerald Alice, Rogue's dryad deck. I played it almost card for card, except a few minor changes:

-1 island, +1 library of alexandria
-4 land grant, +4 flooded strand

We were allowed to use different sideboards the second day, so I did. Here's the two sideboards, day 1 and 2.

day 1
3 naturalize
3 back to basics
1 powder keg
4 oath of druids
2 gaea's blessing
1 spike feeder
1 spike weaver

day 2
-1 naturalize, -1 b2b, -1 keg, +3 nevinyrral's disks

The field was full of scrub-like players. Their powers of playing with jank were extreme, far more than mine. I saw such cards as Battering Ram, Temporal Adept, Rod of Ruin, Silvos, Rogue Elemental, Kamahl, Fist of Krosa and other cards that are good in sealed and draft, but never make it to real decks.

I did manage to lose a total of eight games, and got two draws. The draws were against my roommate, who was playing an almost all green enchantress deck, with stroke of genius, kaervech's torch and rolling thunder for kill. Since taking intentional draw would result in two losses for each player, we played it out, but he was able to kill us both with a rolling thunder.

The first game I lost was the first one of the day. I hadn't even tested my deck except against my roommate's enchantress. I kept a one land, two brainstorm and one impulse hand, thinking I would draw into some land after digging. No such luck, I lost in 9 turns with only one land.

A few rounds later, I lost a second game to a green fatty deck. Fatties being 6/6 and larger, with casting costs to match. No sir, no Roar of the Wurm here. It was all about gigantic elementals and crap. I lost because I didn't counter his elf that adds green for each forest he controls, and he was able to keep a stream of gigantic creatures coming. Oath couldn't even save me .

I lost one game to another fast-mana creature / giant fatty deck, but Oath prevailed in game 2 and he took Morphling to the dome for 5 turns.

In the first to last round, I won the second game due to higher life total, as I was able to Oath out a Spike Feeder and use the tokens to get 1 life higher than my opponent. Karma bit me in the ass the next round, as I lost due to time / life total... Spike WEAVER came off the Oath instead of the Feeder.

So at the end of the first day, I had 96 points, with 4 losses and 2 draws, out of 36 games. It was grueling. I went home and slept for 9 hours. Oi. My roommate had to leave with about 4 rounds left in the day to go to a Christmas party. He had two game losses. Now here's the really amusing part. The conversations between rounds often had the topic of "Well whats the best deck?" And almost everyone said it was his. I found this incredibly amusing, since he can't beat Alice. He only has two counterspells (memory lapse and power sink), Alice has 14. People didn't think my deck was the "best" for some reason... though I was known as "The Power 9 Guy" since I had Lotus, 2 Moxes, Ancestral and Walk, and cast almost all of them every single game (thx dig!)

The second day was this past Saturday, the 28th. The saving grace for this day was I knew people would drop out early. There were just too many rounds, and too many people that wouldn't even be close to finishing reasonably, though the shop changed the placement from top 10 to top 16. And on to the losses!

First round I played against a guy with a monoblack control deck. He was playing lots of creature removal, 8 land destruction (rancid earth, sinkhole), some nantuko shades and that was about it. No hymns, no mind twist, no yawgmoth's will (that I saw). I lost the first game because he resolved a mind sludge for my hand - I gushed, impulsed and brainstormed and I couldn't get a counter of any type. But I had lots of werebears and land. Oi.

I went on a 19 game winning streak, starting with the second game of that match - I had a misdirection for his sludge this time and plenty of draw to make a dryad swing for 8 a couple times. I didn't lose again for 9 rounds, yay me. Though, there was a couple decent decks that could have wrecked me if their owners knew how to play them. One was monowhite rebels, and the other was white weenie with counter-backup (mana leak, arcane denial, force of will). Oath owned them both.

I lost to a black/white pile of no-focus, two in a row. This kid was a complete fool. My roommate played him first round, and when he presented, my roommate picked up his deck and started shuffling, per standard tournament practice. The kid bitched a fit about it and the judge for this day, a good friend or brother of his, ruled against my roommate, saying that he could only shuffle once. Oi. Idiots. Well, this little prick did the same thing to me when he presented, so I table shuffled his deck. I wound up parising down to 5 cards, and got rolled by white knights, black knights and serra angels. Oi. The second game was more of the same and I just couldn't draw answers. Near the end of the game, I was at like 6 life and he had a Serra Angel on the board. I impulse on his turn and he says "I abeyance in response." "Uh, okay. I still impulse." "Oh..." (pause, while I finish impulsing) "I said during your upkeep I abeyance." "No, you didn't, you said in response." "I meant during your turn though." I said, "If you're going to be a dick about me shuffling your cards, then I'm going to be a dick about you casting Abeyance at the wrong time." I lost anyway, since I couldn't get any answer to the angel. His deck was so bad. Lots of double casting cost creatures (black/white knights, sengir/serra, etc), and only four scrublands for dual color. Grr. Guess thats Karma again, for wanting to shuffle his deck. Blah.

Oh well, all said and done, I ended the day with a total of 192 points and second place had 184. My roommate ended up at 7th, despite taking losses for 4 rounds the previous week. I picked a box of onslaught out of the available prizes and he got six packs of judgment. The box had three fetchlands, mobilization, future sight, exalted angel and some other decent rares, so it wasn't a total loss. I don't know if a box of onslaught is worth 24 hours of playing in a crappy tournament format with judges that dont know the rules... but it's all good. I had fun anyway . Stomping little kids with a creature that starts out the size of their llanowar elf, and grows to the size of their krosan collossus is really amusing.