11/06 Star City "Power 9" Tournament; Chicago, IL

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

Looks like Kowal and Smmenen both took decks that have a great chance at t8ing in a control-(Titan)heavy environment. I would be surprised to not see them T8.
As for the rest of meandeck, I'm a bit surprised that the american meandeck members still favor Titan over Slaver. Are there still that many Null Rods on the other side of the ocean? Or is it because of 5-proxie?

[Phantom Tape Worm]

Post Round 4 standings:

JACO with Oath is still in

Daionic with 5/3 is still in

Kowal with TPS is out

smmenen with doomsday is undefeated

Hi-val with titan is out

CHA1N5 with titan is still in

Bushman with titan is on the ropes

Windfall with control slaver is out

Dante with welder mud is out

Reb with Parfait is still in

[thecapn]

Hi_Val, CHA1N5, and Joe Bushman are actually playing a version of Gothenburg Slaver similar to the deck described in Toad's A Slaver for You, not MeanDeck Titan.

Right now CHA1N5 is 3-1, Joe might be 3-1, and Smmenen is 4-0 with the Doomsday Device.

Apparently Oath is everywhere - Joe Bushman has played it 3 times already.  Steve estimates over 20 out of 142.

[Phantom Tape Worm]

End of round 5:

smmenen is still in and undefeated

CHA1N5 is still in at x-1

samite healer is still in at x-1

diaonic is out

Reb is out

bushman is out

JACO is unkown

[hulk3rules]

What is Jeff Anand playing?

[Jacob Orlove]

What is Jeff Anand playing?

As of Thursday, 5/3.

[The Atog Lord]

He's running Control Slaver with Maindeck Engineered Explosives.

[Phantom Tape Worm]

End of round 6 report, right now this is hearsay from kowal who hasn't slept or eaten in 3 days but it :

smmenen is in top 8

CHA1N5 is in top 8

samite healer may be in top 8




kowal is also reporting that the field is like 45% oath

[thecapn]

Smmenen is top 8, currently at 6-0-1

There's also ST4K$,the Man Show, and a Tog in top 8.

CHA1N5 actually lost a close match and is out of top 8.

[Phantom Tape Worm]

Top 8 standings are up:

1st place, smmenen with doomsday
2nd place, chris janjigian  with ????
3rd place, jim gassney with ???
4th place, philip schmidt with ???
5th place, brian fisher with workshop aggro
6th place, rollin chang with ???
7th place, joshua roughley with ???
8th place, clarence lee u/w fish


more to come...

[The Atog Lord]

Samite took Control Slaver to Tenth, with a solid 6-2 record.

[BigChuck]

Anyone know if those other t8ers are TMD people? If so, whom?

[thecapn]

Top 4:

7/10 vs Smmenen with the Doomsday Device: 7/10 Wins due to errors on Steve's part.

5/3 vs Roland Chang with $T4KS - in progress...

[JACO]

Just got back from the tourney; it was a blast. I was in contention for quite some time until I lost to the BLUE WHITE FISH DECK THAT MADE TOP 8 (Clarence Li). Damnit.


Also, in the $500 cash 5pm tournament, Nick Trudeau (nickvos on TMD) went undefeated at 6-0 with D.O.A., aka BHWC Oath, taking home the l00tz0rz. ALL OF YOUR MONIES ARE BELONG TO US.

[Dante]

Top 4:

7/10 vs Smmenen with the Doomsday Device: 7/10 Wins due to errors on Steve's part.

5/3 vs Roland Chang with $T4KS - in progress...

Bryan Fischer did beat Steve to move on to top 4.  5/3 beat Roland.

5/3 wins vs 7/10 in the finals.

[SliverKing]

5/3 wins vs 7/10 in the finals.

That makes my malformed ShortBus heart smile

der...der...der
big dumb guys
der...der...der

[Dante]

since Kowal was running on -42 hours of sleep, he wasn't coherent for Top 8 coverage, so I filled in.

I've got coverage of Clarence vs Smmemen in the quarterfinals,  then both semi-final matches and the finals as well.  I'll be emailing it to SCG in the next day or two....

The running Top8 count of the number of times Stephen said "Savage" or some derivation was around 47.

[Windfall]

LOL Possesed Portal and Forcefield maindeck??!?!?!  Hahahahaa... that's pretty funny.  Rumors sure to fly around.

Forcefield actually was in my SB, though Portal was merely a joke between me and Clown of Tresserhorn.  We stayed up till about 8am talking about how it's clearly the best card in the game and the joke kept going all through the tourney.

As far as my deck goes, my friend and I both played the same build, and he went 6-2 with it.  I, on the other hand, had no gods of Magic on my side.  We were convinced that our build was solid because in testing we won almost 100% of our games.  After 5 hours of testing at the hotel vs a lot of decks, I was convinced that our build was okay.  But not when the following happens....

Round 1 game 1 was pretty close, and I simply wasn't fast enough to stop the mad combo.  Game 2 I had Arcane Lab out, but drew land and moxen for 9 straight draws and got beat down by ESG =(

Round 2 game 1 I had to mull to 6 because I had no mana and was on the play.  My opponent plays Duress on turn 1, then 2 more Duresses on turn 2.  So, I pretty much had to play against Oath with a 2 card hand, which is not very good.  Game 2 was similar.

I guess we can't win them all, so I watched the better games for the remainder of the day.

Congratulations to all who made T8; I bet it was a blast.  And, of course, mad props to the man who took first, which as of now hasn't been posted.

[Methuselahn]

I'm still trying to figure out why Steve tried to go off game one in the quartes.  Didn't he read his own article.  The play error that amazes me even more is game two.  On the play, if you drop Sea, Ancestral and get a lotus with 3 Energy Flux in hand, why wouldn't you play one?  Especially with FOW backup.     I don't know how you can do so well and still manage to screw that up.  Congrats on taking the sapphire though!

btw, Monotone (Chris Byrnes) took 9th by a fraction of a percentage playing mono brown hyper-mud running Staff of Domination, Time Vault, Lodestone Myr, Staxs components, and 3 Well of Knowledge.

[Sagath]

I'm still trying to figure out why Steve tried to go off game one in the quartes.  Didn't he read his own article.  The play error that amazes me even more is game two.  On the play, if you drop Sea, Ancestral and get a lotus with 3 Energy Flux in hand, why wouldn't you play one?  Especially with FOW backup.  

Quite likely it was just a simple error after playing magic for an odd eightish hours. We all do it.

I say GJ Steve, you release tech befor a major event, show up to said major event with said tech, and still kick the crap outta people.

Who needs Secret Tech. Public Tech owns!

[CrazyCarl]

I'm still trying to figure out why Steve tried to go off game one in the quartes.  Didn't he read his own article.  The play error that amazes me even more is game two.  On the play, if you drop Sea, Ancestral and get a lotus with 3 Energy Flux in hand, why wouldn't you play one?  Especially with FOW backup.     I don't know how you can do so well and still manage to screw that up.  Congrats on taking the sapphire though!

btw, Monotone (Chris Byrnes) took 9th by a fraction of a percentage playing mono brown hyper-mud running Staff of Domination, Time Vault, Lodestone Myr, Staxs components, and 3 Well of Knowledge.

Playing highly competitive Magic while playing a fairly complex comdo deck for that long takes a lot out of someone, even if they do have a meeeeeeeeeeeeean deck.  A good example of this involves a certain Atog and a certain Judgment common in the finals of the last Waterbury.

[Methuselahn]

The decision didn't look that complicated from where I was standing, and that was right behind him at the time.

[Smmenen]

no - what carl is saying is that the fatigue of playing the deck can get to you.  Which is what happened to me.  The scenario I was in was relatively simple.  I'll write a report.

[CrazyCarl]

The decision didn't look that complicated from where I was standing, and that was right behind him at the time.

The problem is that when you're watching a game and not playing, things will obviously look different to you.  There are all of the in-game factors that might keep someone from noticing it (fatigue, stress, anxiety, their opponent playing footsie, etc).

[The Atog Lord]

Carl, you and I both made some mistakes in the finals of Waterbury. We had been playing magic for around twelve hours. It was still one of the most epic matches of my life.

I can't imagine anyone getting through a huge event like this without making a single mistake. It's too long, too stressful to play perfectly. (At least, I can't).

[Methuselahn]

I realize that people make errors.  Lord knows, I've made my share.  I was wondering if Steve had decided to hold his Lotus to go off next turn.  If I remember right, there was a ritual and maybe enough gas to go off, thus gambling on the fact that his opponent wouldn't drop a ton of jewelry, trini, with fow backup, which he did.

[Kowal]

I threatened to post this, but a bunch of people wanted me to anyway, so here it is.  The lack of sleep QnD report.

Thursday night, I opt not to sleep in favor of doing my laundry and catching my plane.  I arrive in O'Hare friday morning, goof off on raye's IRC, and then I find out I had to stay awake all night to make sure he didn't sleep through his alarm.

Having not slept for a couple days, I bumble my way in to the giant Pastimes hall, and fill out my deckreg with this list.

Tendrils Pwns Scrubs

omg this is blue
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Timetwister
1 Windfall
1 Time Spiral
1 Frantic Search
1 Mind's Desire
1 Tinker
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Cunning Wish
1 Rebuild
1 Chain of Vapor

omg this is black
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Tendrils of Agony

omg this is brown
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Chrome Mox
1 Memory Jar

lands
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Flooded Strand (I have four foil strands.  I don't have four foil deltas.  STFU)
1 Polluted Delta
4 Underground Sea
2 Island
2 Swamp

Round One:  Drain Titan
Game one I duress him like seven times before his second turn, and he's stalled with a strip mine for land and no cards in hand while I have free reign to go nuts.
Game two he drains a desire copy in to a Sundering Titan, but I have yawgmoth's will and end up resolving a second desire for about three times what the first was for.
1-0, 2-0

Round Two:  Belcher
Game one, I have FoW and Duress.
Game two, I have FoW and Duress.
2-0, 4-0

Round Three:  5/3
Game one, I get trinisphere/crucible locked pretty early.
Game two, I resolve bargain.
Game three, I make a play mistake that costs me the match, as lack of sleep catches up to me.  Instead of Rebuilding end of turn, I ended up waiting until his next turn's combat step, to prevent my death from juggernauts.  This allowed him to play trinisphere again, locking me out.  Had I been thinking, I could have DT'd for another Rebuild, dropped some moxes, and sat on timetwister for the win eot.
2-1, 5-2

Round Four:  Oath
Game one, I go off for like fifteen minutes, only to wish for brain freeze and realize he runs Gaea's Blessing.  At this point I was thinking </life>.
Game two, I tendrils him out turn two.
Game three, he go back and forth for a long time, but eventually he resolves a second intuition, and the game ends.
2-2, 6-4, DROP


I figure I can rock the side event on my second wind.  JESUS ROXX0RZ starts handing me dollars so I can pound various energy drinks and coffee products.

Round One:  Oath
I get bloody stomped.  Dude owns my face, and I scoop a little early game two in order to trade for his korean Gaea's Blessing (to go in my Rebecca Guay binder)
0-1, 0-2

Round Two:  Keeper
I have extremely little difficulty going off, and get some fairly strong hands.
1-1, 2-2

Round Three:  FCG
My opponent (and the one after this) were extremely pleasent during the games, despite the obviously poor matchup.
Anyway, games one and two I resolve big desires or something like that.
2-1, 4-2

Round Four:  FCG
I actually lose a game to my own sucking.  Game three I almost (and probably should have) lost, but I'm a lucksack even when I'm so exhausted I can't see my hands in front of my face.
3-1, 6-3

Round Five:  Oath
I mis-utilize Chain of Vapor as my second wind comes to a halt.  He has no problem reclaiming the advantage while Jaco watches.  Jac0wned.
3-2, 7-5, DROP


So yeah.  Sleep before playing TPS.  It's healthy, I promise.

EDIT:  Props to all my opponents, SCG, the top eight, and all the TMDers that came to Chicago.  It was hella fun, even if I was dying due to lack of sleep.  You guys made it worth coming.  

[Roxas]

I played Parfait and went 3-3.  Nothing special, or really worth writing a report about (unless you guys really want me to.)

However, I would like to REALLY thank Kowal for pimping my Mobilization, and some stranger who I don't even know for pimping my Land Taxes.  Thanks guys ^_^


EDIT:

Land Taxen

 

Oops.