C&J's Tournament Report for 7/8/04 GAT +TNT Rules!

[TheLegendOfMagic]

Greetings all, as always the competition at C&J's in Newark, Ca. was very tough as this week there were 2 U/R Fish, TNT, Stompy and Budget U/G madness. In attendance were Brent, Christiaan,Ken and myself.  So despite being a 15 person tourney, the level of competitors were very tough. This week I piloted an old GAT build.

My Decklist:

Spells:
4 counterspells
4 force of wills
4 dazes
2 misdirections
4 brainstorms
4 accumulated knowledge
3 cunning wish
1 gush
1 ancestral recall
1 timewalk
1 mystical tutor
1 demonic tutor
1 yawgmoths will

Win conditions:
4 quirion dryad
2 psychatog

Mana sources:
4 underground seas
4 tropical islands
5 islands
4 polluted deltas
1 mox jet
1 mox emerald
1 mox pearl
1 mox sapphire
1 mox ruby
1 black lotus

Sideboard:
1 blue elemental blast
1 vampiric tutor
1 naturalize
2 smothers
1 pernicious deed
3 back to basics
3 ground seals
1 berserk
1 stifle
1 coffin purge

Round 1 GAT vs. Budget madness U/G

Game 1: I lose the dice roll, so I play second, first 2 turns were quiet, until turn three my opponent drops a aquamoeba and pitchs two roar of the wurms, then he flashes one back, as I do not a counter but a psychatog. He wastes my black I believe, I cant drop Psychatog, he hits me with the roar token and aquamoeba, then after combat he flashes back the second roar of the wurm. This is happening around turn 5-6 I believe, Im now at 12 or so life, I top deck a underground sea drop psychatog. Next turn he swings with everything I block 1 roar token removing so crap out of my graveyard to kill one, he swithes the power and toughness of aquamoeba by pithing deep analysis. I top deck yawgmoths will, and I go nuts and go on to win with a berserk'd psychatog.

Game 2: -1 daze -2 misdirections ,+1 pernicious deed +2 smothers
He plays first, nothing interesting happens for first few turns, then once again he drops a aquamoeba and saids go. I drop a Quirion Dryad, he attempts to force of will, I daze and dryad resolves. Next turn he drops wonder and roar of the wurm to give his men flying however, he is stuck at 3 lands and is unable to flash back th roar. I believe I brainstorm into craziness and EoT. I slowly grow my Dryad ans we are trading hits back and forth. He plays a wild mongrel with one card in hand. And EoT I cunning wish for berserk, he does not have the circular logic , and I go on to win with a berserked Dryad.
2-0

Round 2 GAT vs. Rogue affinity deck

Game 1: I lose the dice roll, he plays first takes a mulligan, then after he's declared his hand as being okay, I look in my hand and decide to mulligan as well, since my hand had 6 lands and a FoW, wierd considering my deck is mana light. He plays land saids go, I drop mox and tropical island lay down a dryad and the game goes down hill for him after that since each spell he plays I counter while beefing up my dryad in the process.

Game 2: -1 mystical tutor -2 misdirections, +1 pernicious deed +1 vampiric tutor +1 naturalize.  He plays first drops an artifact land, lotus petal and mana crypt, and attempts to play an early ravager , which I FoW. I draw my card for the turn and look in my had as I do a dryad but no green source so I lay a land and pass the turn(note this is turn 5-6). He plays a land drops frogmite and saids go. I draw my card and still no green source, so I play a land and pass the turn. He then swings with the frogmite and plays another one and drops a deciple of the vault and passes the turn. I draw the card for my turn and I finally get a tropical island and play a dryad and pass the turn. He drops a memory jar and cracks it, since I couldnt FoW it. I draw my jar hand I draw into double daze, force of will , and AK. I counter his ravager and daze his skullclamp. BtW his mana crypt has done 12 damage to him by now, I attack the dryad and berserk for the win. The lack of green mana almost cost me this game.
2-0

Round 3 GAT vs. R/U Fish

Game 1: I win the dice roll, I play a island and a mox pearl and pass the turn. My opponent opens up with a gorilla shaman, I really dont care about the shaman as my plan is to see if I can bait a FoW or Daze by Floating a mana into my pool and dazing his Shaman with my own daze. My plan works as he Fow's my daze allowing me to cast mystical tutor for Ancestral Recall. I felt that the pearl would compensate me for an early loss of tempo by dazing. This is were this match goes downhill for me , after an Ancestral Recall, I continue to draw mana sources while in the mean time my opponents continues to drop man-lands and drawing cards from a curiousitied shaman. I eventuall resolve and Dryad but at this point my opponent is drawing 5-cards a turn since he resolved all 4 curiosities. So this is looking rather gloomy for me. My plast gambit was to cunning wish for Vampiric tutor and get yawgmoths will since I have moxen in the graveyard with ancestral and mystical tutor. I do all that and I blindly cast a yawgmoths will with not cards in hand while my opponents has 7 cards in hand!!!! A miracle happend despite drawing like 20 cards from his library he does not have a FoW!!!! I go on to go insane and timewalk with berserk for the win. After the match we both realized that despite him being at 18 and I could beserk for exactly 18 points he had a grim lavamancer that he could of blocked with, which he didnt notice until he conceded, I feel like the luckiest guy of earth lol!!!

Game 2: -1 mystical tutor -4 counterspells, +1 pernicious deed +3 back to basics +1 vampiric tutor. This last game hes no chance despite playing second I draw into more card drawing which eventually lead to a dryad hitting the board , while he has no threats and quickly concedes as I show him my hand which at the end contained 3 cunning wishes, 2 FoW, 1Daze and a AK for 4.
2-0

Round 4 GAT vs. TnT(Ken)

Game 1: I win the dice roll and play first, I keep and hand with psychatog and counter magic however my hand does not contain any black mana so I would have to rely on drawing a black mana source. Ken drops a juggernaut around turn 3-4 I allow the juggernaut to resolve simply by the fact that all I need is a black mana to stablize, however the black mana did not come until it was too late, Ken drops 2 more threats(one being masticore) as I only have 2 psychatogs and a yawgmoths will in hand. Me being at 4 life not helpping the situation I quickly got ran over. On a side note: Ken topdecks the woodedfoothills that allowed for him to have hasted creatures from anger, this allowed him to get the other juggernaut through, he has only one card left at that point as he had a masticore eating his hand up. I believe that if I had one more turn I could have stablized with my yawgmoths will, Ken Disaggrees, but drawing 6 cards and time walk thanks to brainstorms and ancestral deffinately leaves the door open for speculation.

Game 2: -1 mystical -2 misdirections, +1 vampiric  +1 pernicious deed, +1 naturalize. I play first and have to mulligan. I draw into 2 AK's, 1 Brainstorm, 2 islands and a mox sapphire. I play saphhire and land and pass the turn, Ken lays a land passes the turn. I drop my second Island pass, EoT Ken naturalizes my sapphire. He than mainphase drops a stripmine and kills one of my Islands. However I was hiding an underground sea with the Idea of setting up a very crippling yawgmoths will against ken. Ken drops a survival of the fittest which I allow, even though I have FoW in hand. 2 Turns later I set up a yawgmoths will which netted me a dryad with time walk and tons of cantrips which made dryad huge, I go on to win this game.

Game 3: Time is called so we drew.
1-1-1

So final standings for GAT tonight was 3-0-1 in a four round swiss tourney, which I feel is a strong showing from GAT, Ken also finished with a 3-0-1 record, so we tied, but he got the prize for the tourney because of tie breaks.

I havent played GAT in awhile , but occasionally I have found that in C&J's metagame, most of the time people are not expecting to face a GAT deck. I think GAT can be improved to suit any metagame with correct alterations. My current thought is to remove the 4 counterspells and adding Syrum Visions, I havent tried it but have heard other people doing that, so I might try that next week at C&J's. So far these past 4 weeks I have tested GAT, Dragon ,Keeper and Control slaver. I will continue to test other decks and post their results.

[Smmenen]

So when is C&J's going to start attemting to GROW t1 by doing proxies?

[carl]

So when is C&J's going to start attemting to GROW t1 by doing proxies?

Hopefully never, so their tournies will remain sanctioned, so this adds numbers to type I tournies WotC can see.

Anyway, how can you enjoy playing with fake cards?

[Smmenen]

And maybe the tournament scene will continue to dwindle until there are no more tournaments.  Then you won't have any DCI results anyway.  

I have multiple extra power so that isn't an issue for myself.

[VGB]

Anyway, how can you enjoy playing with fake cards?

I'd much rather play with a fake card than one worth $500.

The hoarder/collector in me would scream in agony.

As for on topic:

Vanilla counterspells?  'splain yourself.

And isn't B2B dead already?  I'd rather run Wastelands.

[sa17dk]

I'm surprised to see that you didnt play against a single Hulk deck (as well as Draw 7 or Belcher despite the low amount of people that came). Did you know Hulk wasnt going to show up so that you ran the AK's?

[Fishhead]

I'm surprised to see that you didnt play against a single Hulk deck....

Hulk is sorta out of fashion at C&Js right now; we all Hulk'ed ourselves into boredom with the deck several months back.  People break it out for the "serious" tourneys still, but it doesn't get as much play week to week as it's strength would recommend.  

OTOH, I expect that there were likely a Draw7 and either a Hulk or a Dragon; but the pairings meant that Brian didn't have to face them.  Belcher is also out of fashion right now.  

As for on topic:

Yes, please keep this on topic.  Arguements about proxies should go in the newbie forum.  

[Zhalfirin]

Actually, I have heard rumors that Jeff (the store owner) is considering running major tournaments ocassionally that would be unsanctioned and allow proxies.  Also, there is an upcoming library tournament at Who's On First that is unsanctioned and allows proxies, so there are some events in the SF bay area that will help grow the type 1 scene.

[TracerBullet]

Hold a big one up there, preferably with proxies, and I'll do my best to get my boys up there.

Unfortunately for that cause, most all the Saturdays between now and the end of time are already taken up by one thing or another, be it ComiCon, GenCon, or the next one I'm planning for either the 7th or the 14th of August.

[TheLegendOfMagic]

In hind sight, I see now that perhaps I should have ran 4 serum visions over the 4 counterspells, but I wanted to have 4 more solid counters as I planned my metagame to play against welder based decks ,dragon and draw 7.dec.

My sideboard shows this, as seen for my over indulgence in putting 3 ground seals in the board. Well in response to why I ran AK in GAT rather than some of the other alternate maindeck choices, one being running 4 nights whispers instead of AK. I feel that having 4 more pitchable FoW cards and not having to lose life every time I want to draw cards more than warriants the AK'S over the nights whispers. Also, in this metagame there are many aggro/budget cheese decks, some of which may include sligh, so the lose of life can sometime be relavant.

A reminder: 4 AK's= 10 cards (despite the first AK being a cycle card)
4 Nights Whispers=8 cards (with losing 8 life)

If anyone wonders why I ran 4 countspells over 4 manadrains, its pretty much self explanatory, since in this perticular GAT build I dont have much spells to filter the mana aside from yagmoths will and cunning wish, so counterspells are better in the build I played.

[raziel]

TheLegend - Nice to see you post a report, especially one with a decklist.

In General - In regards to proxies and building the scene: Sanctioned play encourages players to pick up the cards. Nothing does that more than playing against people who have the cards. On the other hand, proxy events are a good way for people to win the cards so they can come and play with us. The single thing that brings people into C&J is posting reports here. There are far more lurkers reading these boards than most people realize. When I see a new person at C&J, I ask them how they found out about us. Most times it's because of something they read here on the boards. If the new store "Who's on First" does well it will be because of the support we all give it here on the boards. So if you're in the bay area keep posting, and if you can bring people back to posting on these boards you'll see results. I now return you to your thread.

[TrixR4Kidz]

It was a nice report, but the metagame seemed rather scrubby if I do say so, Vanilla counterspells and 4 daze, it just seems like an Odd build to win first place... No offense or anything, but congrats on the win

Anyway, how can you enjoy playing with fake cards?

Fake cards do the same thing as the real cards....Except there is no risk in damaging them, also it opens up the meta a bit, make things more challenging and lets people use stuff they can't afford.  Not everyone has that kinda money laying around to buy a set of the P9, There wouldn't be much of type 1 if it weren't for proxies, proxies make and break tourny's

[KiL0]

Date: 8 July 2004

Location:
C&J Collectables
5454 Central Ave. Suite C
Newark, CA  94560
(510) 796-5790

Participants: 15

Small turnout; disappointing. I noted four Fish decks piloted, Legend. Sorry, no TnT decklist. I took apart the deck after the tourney to due other playtesting...

Round 1: Ernest (RAVfinity)

First turn, Trinisphere. Followed by waste effects...  

Games: 2-0-0, Matches: 1-0-0

Round 2: Jon (Sneak Attack)

It was a nice report, but the metagame seemed rather scrubby if I do say so...

Games: 4-0-0, Matches: 2-0-0

Round 3: Christiaan, TMD Zhalfirin (U/r Fish)

Trinisphere slows his tempo. He can't answer all my threats with "free" counters anymore...

Games: 6-0-0, Matches: 3-0-0

Round 4: Brian, TMD TheLegendOfMagic (GAT)

We should have had more than enough time to finish... We started the final round late five minutes because you were playing a side game for fun. In game 2, you took five minutes with Demonic Tutor; "remembering" that the card you wanted was in your hand the whole time. Proceed to take a twenty minute Yag Will...
  Admit the slow roll  

Game 3: Time is called so we drew.

Read: I play first and resolve Goblin Welder, Juggernaut, and Trinisphere. Brian thinking, "Thank God, time was called."

Games: 7-1-1, Matches: 3-0-1

...seems like an Odd build to win first place... No offense or anything, but congrats on the win.

Final Standings:
1. KiLO
2. TheLegendOfMagic
3. Zhalfirin
4. Daniel[/quote]

[Methuselahn]

Great report.  I still wonder about counterspell over mana drain, despite your reasoning.  If you don't have drains, then I could easily understand.

And maybe the tournament scene will continue to dwindle until there are no more tournaments.  Then you won't have any DCI results anyway.  

Wait, what?  Type 1 is in a state of decline?!!?!?!  Maybe you haven't seen the prices of power and pretty much all T1 cards on the rise price-wise recently.

[raziel]

We started the final round late five minutes because you were playing a side game for fun. In game 2, you took five minutes with Demonic Tutor; "remembering" that the card you wanted was in your hand the whole time.  

If one is not seated for their match within 5 minutes, isn't that a game loss?

[TrixR4Kidz]

Wait, what? Type 1 is in a state of decline?!!?!?! Maybe you haven't seen the prices of power and pretty much all T1 cards on the rise price-wise recently.

He's just saying if there are no proxies, then noone is going to come, therefore the number of people will dwindle, which it then wouldn't matter if it was DCI or not.... he's not saying type 1 in general is on a decline...

[Methuselahn]

Wait, what? Type 1 is in a state of decline?!!?!?! Maybe you haven't seen the prices of power and pretty much all T1 cards on the rise price-wise recently.

He's just saying if there are no proxies, then noone is going to come, therefore the number of people will dwindle, which it then wouldn't matter if it was DCI or not.... he's not saying type 1 in general is on a decline...

That's hogwash, my own meta is a testament to it.

[Moxlotus]

Wait, what? Type 1 is in a state of decline?!!?!?! Maybe you haven't seen the prices of power and pretty much all T1 cards on the rise price-wise recently.

He's just saying if there are no proxies, then noone is going to come, therefore the number of people will dwindle, which it then wouldn't matter if it was DCI or not.... he's not saying type 1 in general is on a decline...

That's hogwash, my own meta is a testament to it.

And my meta supports that.  If there were no proxies then about half of the people wouldn't show up leaving about 10-11 people per tourney.

[Sean Ryan]

@ Legendofmagic,

Perhaps we could get this post back on topic.  I would like to hear the reasoning behind some of your choices in the your GAT build.  I have been working on tunning GAT since post 5th Dawn developing the aggressive build that runs 6 tutors & Fastbond with no cantrips, check out the GAT thread for more info.

1) Counter Base - Was Counterspell over Mana Drain a neccesssity?  Tell me how useful Daze has proven, as it is usually dead in the mid/late game, and even deader against Workshop decks.  I have been testing various configurations of counters with Mana Drain, Misdirection, and Duress as 2-3 ofs.  At one point I also ran 14 counters but it become quickly apparent that was exessive.  At the moment I am using a 12 counter base of:
4 FOW
3 Mana Drain
3 Misdirection
2 Duress (1 more SB)

More experienced GAT players have been advocating a full compliment of Duresses, something I will be looking into.  I want to be able to run both Misdirection and Duress.  

2) Draw - Most of us on TMD have come to the conclusion that Night Whispers is strictly better than AK in GAT, what was the logic behind this choice.   How do you feel about maindecking Fact or Fiction to add some more robust draw?

3) Side Board - I'll choke it up to netagame but, Back to Basics in GAT?

4) I consider the Red splash a must, how bout you?

5) Right now GATs has difficulty with most Workshop decks and to a lesser extent with combo.   If these matches are improved GAT would make a serious bid for top tier.  How would you modify both the
MD & SB to make those matches better?

Well, I hope that helps spur some discussion about  more than just the inexcusable status of T1 on the West Coast.  Personally, I'm moving to the Bay Area in 9 months and I hope some of you have gotten a monthly
T1 tournement with proxies going by that time, otherwise I will have to become a TO and do it myself.  Put up power and they will come!  Although, I do respect the weekly thing they have at C & Js it just needs to be supplemented by a monthly proxy tourney.

Thanks
Sean

[Fishhead]

it just needs to be supplemented by a monthly proxy tourney.

There is a monthly proxy tournament at Eudemonia, but I don't think it's gathered all that much support.  

The single thing that brings people into C&J is posting reports here.

I agree 100%.  Due to a variety of reasons, C&Js has posted few reports over the last 6-9 months.  During that time, I can think of 4 fully powered players who moved out of the area or stopped playing.  These players have not been replaced; and a similar effect has happened across the board - where peak summer turnout neared 50 people last year I'm seeing a lot more 16 person tournies this year.

So, to summarize: Proxies, eh.  Reports, good!

[TheLegendOfMagic]

Well, Im sure there are a variety of builds for GAT, especially now with 5th dawn being introduced.
First, Counterspell vs. Manadrain: In general manadrain is better, however the GAT build I played lacked in filterable heavy colorless based spells. This made counterspell the better choice, if I am attempting to add more solid counter magic.  I chose to play a version that had a very tight mana base and cheap cantrips to support my dryad. This is perhaps why I chose not to play serum visions as because despite being a very good cantrip and drawspell, the fact that it is a sorcery that required mana mainphase makes a big difference at the metagame at C&J's, since often times tier 1 decks such as Dragon, or Draw7.dec can be part of the environment. So my strategy was all cheap instant speed draw/cantrips and 12 counter-magic spells, part of my plan and reasoning is that, I want to do if possible all my cantripping and drawing at the EoT of my opponent, while leaving mana open during their main phase to threaten to counterspell.  Another sidenote, after deck testing a while back, I found that manadrain often makes you mana burn once to often, which also lead to my choice of counterspell.

Second, Duress vs. Daze, Duress is a very good card to use to disrupt combo or control, however I feel that daze has a higher potential in my build because, with the 5 moxen to accelerate to high probabilities of a first turn dryad, Daze can be used as trick counterspell that your opponent may not support when tapping out prematurely thus often times allowing me to daze a crucial spell while also growing my dryad, check out my game versus fish in this thread for more highlights of daze. Daze is also far supperior to duress when you have 3 back to basics in the board to help against man-lands and maze of iths, even control decks have a problem with back 2 basic, with dazes main this allows you to free up your underground seas and tropical islands. Daze can be very effective against workshop based decks, since you can daze there 2 drops and they cannot use there 3rd artifact mana floating from mishra's workshop to pay it, since because the mana produced from workshop isnt a generic mana.

Third, Fastbond: with the restriction of gush, fastbond seem pretty useless as a maindeck choice. Fastbond in my oppinion remain a combo peice in a combo deck.

Fourth, Proxies being allowed:Currently Eudemonia in Berkeley, Ca. runs weekly unlimited proxies tournament which I support, however the attendance has been quite low. If anyone wishes to support proxy tournements come out to Eudemonia, for more info visit Eudemonia.net

BtW, Kilo:underfloor rules established by the DCI, under there quota for what is slow rolling or stalling for time, It does not apply to my case, as in the case of the 10 minute yawgmoths will, Ive asked a level 3 judge and level 2 they both agree with me that its within reason. As for the 2 minute demonic tutor(not 5) it was an honest mistake since I was searching for yawg will, but I forgot it was in my hand. Slow rolling has to be with malice intent of drawing with no relavant plays in hand. And extra time was given for our match since I told the TO ahead of time about the game I played for fun that took 5 minutes.  About the 3rd game we palyed for fun to see "what if" there was more time to play, yea you could have perhaps won, "maybe". Then again amatuers can always beat a Grandmaster chessplayer, in skittle games, if you anyone is unfamiliar with "skittles", it just means a irrelevant game for fun, which was essentially game 3 for Kilo and I. BtW, tiebreaks are to determine prize disbursement, at higher level tourneys, there are no tiebreaks for first place, since there has to be a diffinative winner by points or concession.  Kudo's for Kilo for winning though (through tiebreaks)

[UnstableCornbread]

You were slow playing. Your twenty minute YawgWin turn consisted of playing a creature, drawing three cards, and time walking. Lot of thought that took eh? However in hindsight Kil0 should have conceded at that point and went on to game three and smash your face in.

It is all good though, do whatever it takes to try and win..

[rozetta]

Sorry to be off-topic, but I feel this proxy issue still requires attention.

There wouldn't be much of type 1 if it weren't for proxies, proxies make and break tourny's

Over here in Europe, there are [practically] no proxy tournaments and yet we have multiple large (50+ players) tournaments every month. Duelmen normally sees around 100 participants. Tournaments in Spain and Italy can see 200 participants. I think this is a good enough arguement supporting the fact that fake card tournaments don't make or break type 1 tourneys and that there's plenty of type 1 being played regardless. I think a lot of people would agree that Magic is as much about having the actual cards as it is about playing - that's why we all got into it in the first place.

[TheLegendOfMagic]

Actually game took alot of time, I was watching the clock during me and Kilo's first game, the first game took 25 minutes as neither of us were winning immediately, since I found ways to delay the inevitable, I eventually got squashed game 1, Game 1 Estimated game duration was about 23-25minutes of actually play. Game 2 I mulliganed down to 6 and was holding for dear life for most of the game, after being disrupted by waste effects and naturalize of my mox, with an active survival on the board, so when  the time came to calculate and set up a yawgmoths wills, these where my decisions: I had the option of playing the following cards from the yard; Lotus, 2 Brainstorms , Ancestral recall, 1 mox Sapphire , 1 mystical , 1 naturalize , Force of will, Gush, 2 Ak's and a polluted delta. My mana is tight ,as I can only have I beleive 6-8 mana avaliable to cats all the spells I want this turn, with no dryad or tog in play or the yard, so I took about 10 minutes to calculate and draw into a dryad that turn to go on to win, while also sacraficing 3 cards I would have gotten of the AK's by deciding to use the mana to naturalize the survival  and mystical for time walk, which in response Kilo pitched a creature to put platinum angel in his hand, so I had to do essentially 4 things that turn in order win but the cards I needed were not yet in my hand until I ancestraled and gushed, for example I had to draw a counter for the Angel,I needed a threat(the longer the game drags on with survival the worse it becomes for me), Destroy survival and timewalk. So I took about ten minutes of so, and note this was late game already many turns have passed before this, so we ended up running out of time. I do admit this match up is not great for GAT, facign TnT, tying the match by conceded game2 and going to game 3 would probably have been the correct move by Kilo, since the yawgmoths will would either gain me control of the game by the elimination of survival while refilling my hand, hence at that point the game was resignable. Game would probably been in his favor.

[KiL0]

Skittles?

You offered and wanted to draw before the match started, remember? At least this way, you had to earn your draw.

Until next week's tourney, the balance of the universe is still safe!

[illuzion]

I agree 100%.  Due to a variety of reasons, C&Js has posted few reports over the last 6-9 months.  During that time, I can think of 4 fully powered players who moved out of the area or stopped playing.  These players have not been replaced; and a similar effect has happened across the board - where peak summer turnout neared 50 people last year I'm seeing a lot more 16 person tournies this year.

So, to summarize: Proxies, eh.  Reports, good!

I doubt there are that many with power who just stop playing.  More likely they moved like me... and speaking of which, for anyone looking for cheap living with a good mtg scene on the west coast, I doubt it gets much better than Spokane.  I bought my house up here for 1/10th the cost (compared to Mountain View homes) and the best local store (out of like, 4 or 5 here) has some pretty good turnouts.  They used to get 30+ for Type 1 on a regular basis, until they decided to run Type 2 at the same time (2 tourneys at once has hurt our player pool for now).  We've only got about 4 players with full power, but this is quite an increase compared to when I got here last year (zero power players... me being the first).  I sometimes miss the competition at C&Js, but winning sure is nice.

My sentiments are with rozetta on proxies.  And I don't think this is so much a U.S. thing as much as it is an east coast phenomenon.