Yeah so, this report may or may not be mostly about me complaining that being a dick to (more of) my opponents would have earned me the tiebreakers to be in the top 16. Just kidding. I almost included a frown with the post title, but the tournament just kicked too much ass for frowns.
We drive in from Cape Cod the night before. I don't throw together a deck at the last minute like in reports that are fun to read, because I pretty much always play dragon. My sideboard, however, is an entirely different story. Before heading down to the tournament area, I hypothesize to my Cape Cod amigos that we'll be playing against a lot of monoblue, and probably some Control Slaver and Fish with Workshop Aggro at the lower tables. I think I even used the word hypothesize; major frowns to me. Anyway, this metagame assessment was obviously pretty far off. I ended up with an ugly 15 card combination of Xantids (I maindeck Duress. ye.), Titans, Deeds, Chalice, and bad cards to fill in for better ones. It might seem inconceivable to sideboard Xantids when you expect to play against Monoblue, but I have no way to finish this sentence.
We run down to McD's where I pay like 46 dollars for a breakfast sandwich and then head to the tournament area. It's looking pretty crowded, but I'm bad at estimating and I'm thoroughly surprised when Ray says over the mic that there are just shy of 190 players.
Round one I'm playing the mirror, but I don't know until game one is over because all he has to play (and all that I saw) was the Animate Dead that Animated my Dragon. Game two I don't side out Dragons. I obviously anticipate him to have sided them out and somehow think this will yield an advantage. In any case, I drop Dragon into the grave but not before I can animate it on the same turn, but he wins the counter fight, mainly because I had no counter whatsoever. I animate it again next turn, though, with Force backup- only to meet double BEB from his side.
match count- 0-1
Round two I'm playing the mirror again. This time I said something about Dragon to Chris who was next to me, and gauged my opponent's reaction. He either had a deck full of hate or was playing Dragon himself. Sure enough, I let him put Dragon and Laquatus into the Graveyard and use my Animate on turn 1. Game 2 he wins when I'm about to, by topdecking a savage 2 Animate spells off his Bazaar activation. Game 3 I come back with a mean face.
1-1
Round three shows me a deck I had actually expected in Fish, played by TMD's b4r0n. We play fun games. Game one I go off pretty fast. Game 2 I hardcast titan on like turn 3, and it resolves, but he has a Lavamancer out and plays a Sigil of Sleep. I'm slightly upset by this hilarious turn of events, so I go back to my instincts and Animate the Dragon. I then Intuition for Titans and a Verdant Force, and end the Dragon loop by targeting Verdant with Animate and playing out Titan. That's a win.
2-1
Round four throws a little FCG action my way. I don't really like to lose this matchup since it's so hard to do, but he finds a win one of the games by flat out racing me.
3-1
Round five I'm paired with Ultima playing Monoblue Belcher. I win game one pretty handily, but games 2 and 3 I just can't get past the wall that is monoblue. I don't like the way Ultima shuffles at all because he sees every card in his deck- and that's got to be against
some rule, so I shuffle his deck every time he presents it. He says something that would make me feel like a dick were I not already comfortable with the assessment that I really am quite a dick.
3-2
Round six I'm playing GAT. Turn one of the first game he tries to cheat and I call him on it, and that's that. I don't call a judge although I'm fairly certain in big sanctioned tournaments what he's done earns a match loss, and go on to win game one anyway. Game 2 he resolves Ground Seal, so I have no choice but to hardcast Verdant. So I do. He still breaks through with a Berserked Tog. I watch him as he forgets to put Berserk back in his sideboard. Game 3 I win pretty quickly.
4-2
Round seven I'm playing against a pretty mundane-looking Control Slaver build, piloted by a kid who just doesn't seem like he wants to be playing, who I later find out is themajickguy. I 2-0 him through BEB. This match features one of the two games I was glad to see Compulsion.
5-2
Before
round eight I'd just looked at standings and after re-evaluating them several times I'm really confident I'll be 16th seed if I 2-0 this match. I'm playing against Sam Antill with Dryad Hate, which makes me happy because he deserves the win and I won't be pissed if I lose. Game one went pretty quickly if I remember, but game 2 he bluffs really well when I now understand he has a hand full of nothing but caused me to animate Sliver Queen by making me think he's got something. I get him down to around 5 and he blasts Echoing Truth all over Sliver Queen's face, and I attack him for 2 more turns with Sliver tokens. When he's at one I am in a position to make the coolest move ever in hardcasting Dragon, but my friends see what I want to do and their looks tell me that they'll hate me forever if I somehow lose because I tried to play a Dragon from my hand. Hmph.
So I end at 6-2 with decent tiebreaks, and I don't realize I'm not in the top 16 until Ray reads off the pairings. To top it off, the person in 16th place's first name was also John, so I thought it was me for a second. Boo!
[Relevant]
I think Dragon ended up being a strong choice for the actual metagame, but unfortunately I had planned for an entirely different metagame. A solid build of Dragon really has no very bad matchups at all right now, which is a good thing. I was ready to play a build with some big changes like 3 Lim-Dul's Vault, fewer bad cards like Compulsion, and Xantids and Duress maindeck, but I wussed out. Although I'm a little discouraged by the results of this event, I'll still maintain that Dragon is a very strong competitor right now. Then again, I don't think I saw a single Crucible all day which had to have something to do with it. I did win through multiple rounds of Blood Moon and Back to Basics, though. [/Relevant]
I saw a lot of people I sort of recognized including Zherbus, Carl, and JP )who was cooler than I expected. Heh.), Mixing Mike, and lots more people. For everyone's reference, I was the kid in the red hat and the Kenya dig it T-shirt. When people asked if I had a TMD name and I told them, they seemed to like me less
Props:
Ray for another well run event
Everyone who played
Even more props to those who didn't play but helped Ray out
Me, for realizing this tournament was far too good for any slops section.
edited in TMD names.
