My cell phone alarm clock went off at 10:00 in the AM, and I reached into my pants pocket and fumbled for the red button to turn it off. It usually vibrates and beeps one time before going into full out beeping mode, and today was no exception. I'm not normally an early riser, and when I do get up early, it usually takes me forever to get going, but the morning of a Magic tournament gets me out of bed faster than anything else. Twenty minutes later, I'm showered and ready to go, only I have to wait another fourty minutes for my friend Ryan Mochal to show up at my dorm building to pick me up. Those fourty minutes pass, and we're on the road to Indianapolis.
When we get there, we check up on a few friends who are playing in the 2HG PTQ, and then I go talk to a judge about something real quick (the legality of a blacked out Auriok Salvager when all you see is name, casting cost, and the Salvager himself in the artwork) Then we get some McDonalds, register at the McDonalds, and then sneaky ninjalike play different decks right before the tourney starts.
Here's what I registered:
Golden Grahams
Lands: 19
1 Bayou
1 Scrubland
1 Savannah
1 Underground Sea
2 Windswept Heath
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Polluted Delta
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
2 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Badlands
2 Swamp
1 Plains
1 Forest
Creatures: 5
3 Gamekeeper
2 Auriok Salvagers
Spells: 36
4 Living Wish
4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
4 Tainted Pact
2 Innocent Blood
1 AEther Spellbomb
3 Pernicious Deed
1 Chromatic Star
3 Sylvan Library
4 Dark Ritual
1 Engineered Explosives
Sideboard 15
SB: 1 Gamekeeper
SB: 1 Auriok Salvagers
SB: 1 Phyrexian Tower
SB: 1 Orzhov Guildmage
SB: 1 Gorilla Shaman
SB: 2 Harmonic Sliver
SB: 3 Massacre
SB: 1 City of Brass
SB: 1 Xantid Swarm
SB: 3 Infest
I looked around as I was playing Affinity and bragging about how it was going to break the meta, and saw a small number of people. Well, this would be nice. I enjoy a bowl of cereal while waiting for the tourney to start (I was really hungry), and my Golden heroes make sure my stomach is good to go. Finally the judge pulls us together and rambles off the usual "don't trust your opponent for a ruling" speech that we've all heard before, but it's in the end, still relevant. I look to my right and see Ken (KenderLeech on the Source) sitting next to me. Well, at least I wouldn't be surrounded by strangers, and would have one friendly face around. I shake hands with my first round opponent and we're off.
Round 1: John T Linch (Goblins/w)
During shuffling he flips over a few cards and I see Piledrivers. Hoo boy. Aggro is a fun matchup. Someone wins the die roll, and we get going.
Game 1 is the usual beatings from my side. I duress and see Plateu x2, Vial x2 and a Waste my notes say, and I just do the usual combo thing when he's got me down to 10. Deed might have gone some of the way, I can't remember.
Game 2, I keep an awful hand because of the 3 infest effects and I draw no gas. So, I'm playing bad wrath control, and after 2 or 3 for 1ing him a few times, his little green men get tired of the bugs and massacres and kick my ass.
Game 3 was all about the comeback though, and he keeps a hand with little pressure. I show him the error of his ways by winning the game and the match.
1-0 (Ken wins his, Ryan draws)
I go chitchat with the judge after this round and after sharing stories around the judge looks at Ken and I and goes "When is the round over?" I blink a few times and go "uh.. seven minutes?" (I didn't look at the clock, I just kind of winged it). The judge laughs and replies with something akin to "No, I mean in general. When in a Magic Tourney is the round over" I say something about when the round timer is up, and he shakes his head. "It's over when I say it's over" was the answer he gave, which after he explained it made a lot of sense. I'm finding that as long as the judge isn't an ass, it's amusing to talk to them between rounds. Not only does it cement you as a friendly face with the judge, you also learn amusing things like that.
Round 2: Christopher Denly (U/w Landstill)
Great. I already did the metagame list between round 1 and 2, so I know what he's playing. I beat U/b Landstill in the SCG online tourney, this couldn't be too much different. Just replace Ghastly Demise with Swords to Plowshares and you've got a switch. Ken's to my right again playing Aluren, and Ryan is somewhere in the lower tables to my left.
Game 1: Game 1 is vicious for me because he's got all the answers, and when I play my ace in the hole for this matchup (Sylvan Library) he calmly disenchants it EOT. Man lands get in there, and I lose.
Game 2: I duress turn 2, he forces. I shudder. Next turn he drops Scepter/Chant, and I have a turn. I don't draw into the Deed, and he has the lock. I think about it for 2 turns of land go and then shake his hand.
1-1 (Ken loses, Ryan loses)
Round 3: Kayvan Koie [KKoie on TMD] (HanniFish)
I don't remember much about this match, I just remember little men coming across the table and bitch slapping me like I was dressed in a tube top and a miniskirt and I owed them money. Ken was to my left this time, and Mochal was still sitting in the low tables.
1-2 (Ken loses, Ryan loses)
Round 4: Ken [KenderLeech on the Source] (Three-Deuce/b for Confidant)
This is the matchup neither one of us wanted to see, because we knew what would happen from the get go. He had 15 sideboard cards for me, and I had Deed for him. In short, this is a horrible game 1 for him.
Game 1: I could razzle dazzle you with tales of beating down, but in short I deed at the right moment (he had 2x Watchwolf and pump spells in hand) and win the game by doing the combo thing. He makes me go through the motions though, and I give him a hard time about it (jokingly of course).
Game 2: This game is less pretty and it starts with him casting hide/seek and getting my Pyrite Spellbomb. I shrug it off and kill a Gamekeeper, milling away the rest of my Living Wishes.
*Beeping noise* WE INTERRUPT THIS TOURNAMENT REPORT TO BRING YOU AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM OUR FRIENDS IN THE MYSTERY MACHINE.
Ruh-Rohs!!
*end-transmission*
Salvager hits the table, and I wince. There's about 15 cards in my library, and I have to go into beatdown mode. I start drawing cards anyways and draw into a Gamekeeper with 7 cards left in my library and cast it. I flush the rest of the mana out through Salvager (target Engineered Explosives a healthy amount of times to not die) and start swinging away. He Extirpates away my Deed taking another card out of my deck as I'm swinging away, and this game is getting close. My deck gets down to 3 cards, and Ken's sitting at 4 life. I'd cast a second Gamekeeper the turn before (so I had 6 power of 2/x beaters on the board) He has a Bayou in play (as his Chrome Mox got hit with a Deed) and he enters his draw step. I yell "Slam it!", making homage to the $8,000 Lightning Helix from PT Honalulu in the Ruel/Jones matchup. He does, and gets a Windswept Heath. I shrug at his misfortune, and he shakes his head and says he's not done. He fetches out a Plateau, going down to 3, and taps it. Well, he's going down like a man. He casts a Lightning Bolt and says the two words that make me shudder. "Targeting me." I blink and see my victory via beats go down the drain. I respond by cracking 4x Lions Eye Diamond and regrowing all the trinkets in my graveyard. I know I have no other responses, and call a judge over. I tell the judge I need a time extension for a bathroom break. He looks puzzled and we explain the gamestate. He tells me that the after you put my question into the Babblefish from English to DCI rules that I was asking for a DQ for stalling. I retract my question, and sigh as I pass priority back to him with the lightning bolt on the stack.
A picture of the madness.
2-2 (Ken loses (clearly) Ryan loses)
I enter into the top 8 at 6th place, and am ready to lose, because I'm playing against U/w Landstill again.
Top 8: Christopher Denly (Again)
I congratulate Mister Denly on his victory, and he shakes it off, telling me it's not over until it's over.
Game 1: He wins pretty quickly, even though I cast a sylvan library and was utilizing it a bit, I just didn't have the tools to win through his hate.
Game 2: I fear the Scepter Chant and still have no SB for him. Library resolved at some point and he lands Standstall. I shrug and start making land drops and crafting a sexy sexy hand while he just plays draw go. I cast Tainted Pact at the end of his turn before discard and make sure he goes down to 7 cards. A combination of duress and therapy clear the path and after a few turns I Duress to clear the way, and after seeing nothing relevant I tell him to put his hand back. He blinks and asks if I want to write anything down, and I give the stellar reply of "Nah. I'd rather just win." I combo out and have to explain how it works. After a few loops of the combo, he gets it and we go to game 3.
Game 3: Is quite similar to game 2, in the sense that Sylvan Library is the must counter that he doesn't counter. I have quite a few lands in play and end up casting 2 Salvagers before trying to go off just so one StoP doesn't ruin my day.
3-2
This game took forever and my opponent is ready to go, I ask the judge if I can have a few minutes. He points me to my opponent and makes me ask him. My opponent nods, seeing the toll that the U/w landstill matchup has put on me, and graciously allows me to run to the bathroom. I grab a cup of water and wind down real quick, I sit down across from my top eight opponent and see the familiar face of John T Lynch from round 1. Yay. Aggro.
Top 4: John T Lynch (Goblins/W)
I won't bore you with details, except for the fact that he mulled to 5 game 1, and still ended up with Triple Port by the end of the game. I was at my best, floating mana through to my draw step for deed activations and everything, but he swarmed me to death. Game 2 was similar, except he had 4 port and 2 wasteland instead of just 3 and 2. I set myself up to win with a fetchland into white source, swamp in hand, dark ritual into Salvager hand, but he cast Pillar the turn before I would have won. I was pretty annoyed at this, but John was a good opponent and sometimes it happens. Goblins really is that good.
On an aside, I hate magic players. There was a guy sitting next to me for the entirity of the quarter-final matchup and he was not only badmouthing my friends, he was making cracks about other games and just babbling on and on and on. I was tempted to write an article on the subject, because I was seriously disenchanted about Magic tournaments after that night. It wasn't the loss, it was the guy being rude and disrespectful.
In the end, I feel that I'm going to tinker a bit with the maindeck a bit, although how I don't know. The meta was bad for my deck, and I did as best as I could. I saw a lot of Force of Wills and Swords to Plowshares in my day.
Props:
Chocolate Covered Altoids
Sylvan Library
Golden Grahams (the cereal)
Ryan and Ken for keeping me amused through the tourney.
Zombie Jesus and Baby Cuthulu
12 players making it easy to get into top eight
John for being a nice opponent and letting me rest when he could have taken advantage of my mentally exhausted state.
Slops:
That guy to my right who made me want to quit playing Magic almost
12 players, showing how little legacy matters to Indianapolis.
7 Rishidan Port
