Subject: rome report Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 19:17:10 +0200 From: "Tommi Hovi" To: PT Rome Tournament Report I wasn't going to write a report about Rome, but some people wanted me do do it, so here it is (it's not good at all, so I advise you to skip this report!!) About the deck: 2 weeks before Rome I didn't think academy decks would be good in extended. But after Jarnis (a total-scrub ;)) went 9-0 in a 30-player tournament in Helsinki with a bad version of the deck, I figured it must be really good. I read J. Gordon's report from TheDojo, and built my own version for extended. It wasn't very good, it had cards like mystical tutors, impulses and jeweled amulets. But after playing against some t2 decks in Turku and discussing the deck on #mtgbore (efnet) I found out those cards weren't good. After playing the deck for a week, I built a t2 version for a local tournament. It seemed to be a pretty good version, but I couldn't test it in the tournament, because 3 players was not enough for a tournament. So I swapped 3 cards for 3 abeyances and changed the islands for dual lands. Draw & Co. (that's what I wrote on my deck list): 4 Volcanic Island 4 Tundra 3 City of Brass 4 Ancient Tomb <--- Amazing, lots of players didn't use these 4 Tolarian Academy -19 Lands I didn't think people would play with blood moons, and people don't want to wasteland non-academy lands against draw&co, so I figured I might as well play with no basic lands. 4 Mana Vault 4 Mox Diamond 4 Lotus Petal <--- not very good, usually I sideboarded couple of these out 3 Voltaic Key <--- key card. Lots of good players told me not to use these, but I didn't listen to them. 2 Scroll Rack <--- some people said 3 is better, because then you can intuition for them. I never wanted to intuition for them, and I don't like the card that much in general so I chose to play with just 2 -17 Artifacts 4 Stroke of Genius <--- good even in opening hand, if you draw tombs/vaults/keys 4 Time Spiral 4 Windfall -12 Card drawing 3 Intuition <---- demonic tutor is pretty good 3 MoM <--- 3 is enough, you don't want to draw any in your opening hand, but you want to be able to intuition for one. 3 Abeyance 3 Power Sink <--- you can't afford to RFG a blue card for FoW, and I didn't think I had enough mana for counterspell, and the ability to tap your opponent's lands is good. -12 Random SB: 4 Wasteland <-- I thought these would be good against sligh, but they were much better against the WW decks I played against (and of course against other academy decks) 4 Chill 4 Gorilla Shaman <-- really good in mirror matchup, because you HAVE to play your artifacts, even if you're not going for the kill 2 REB 1 Arcane Denial <-- against random decks I didn't play with impulses, because I thought intuition was much more superior. If I had to choose the deck again, I don't know if I would make any changes. The tournament: 1st Round against Mark Kikta (USA) playing high tide I beat him pretty easily 2-0. I thought he just had a bad version of the academy deck (maybe he couldn't afford to buy the academys?), but later I found out he was playing high tide (i didn't know about the deck before Rome). The high tide deck doesn't have any fast mana, so he doesn't have the mana to counter all my threats. 1-0 (2-0) 2nd Round against Raphael Colombia Garcia (= Haphael on irc) (BRA) playing sligh 1st and 3rd game I got like 3rd turn kills. 2nd game was pretty close, but he had a pyro, when I was going to kill him. Sligh is probably the worst match up, because it's too much about luck. If you can get 1st turn chill you win, if he draws couple of pyroblasts he wins. 2-0 (4-1) 3rd Round against Nathan Heiss (USA) playing recur deck with some weird cards 1st game I win, because he doesn't have enough disruption in main deck. 2nd game I am going for the kill, but after spiral and racking I didn't have any card drawers. And during his next turn he got the whale recursion, so I conceeded. 3rd game I get an auto-win hand. 1st turn I play academy, 2 lotus petals, mana vault, mox (didn't have a land tho) and spiral. After the spiral I played couple of artifacts and windfall. I couldn't finish him that turn, so I let him play his 1st turn. He wastelanded my academy, but I had another one in my hand. So during my turn I play the academy, then play scroll rack, MoM. I have spiral in my hand, so I should win the game this turn. I was thinking that I should untap with the MoM before casting the spiral. I had a volcanic island in my hand, and I only had 1 land in play during turn 2, so I chose to play it (I would have better chances to draw a card drawer from the spiral+rack). Of course my opponent noticed this, and told me I already played a land. I had totally forgotten that I played the academy this turn =( There was a judge watching the game, and he said it's just a notice (because it was an accident) and went to confirm with the head judge. After a while Dan Gray comes over and says it's a game loss. I didn't complain about it, because I think it's the right decision. In level 5 event you should remember if you have played a land or not. So, I lost a match that I was going to win 100% because of my stupid mistake =( I was a little upset about this, but I deserved it, so it's fine. 2-1 (5-3) 4th Round against Jamie Parke (USA) playing high tide He had just lost his last round because he miscounted his deck, and stroked himself for 28 and he only had 27 cards in his deck. So both of us had just lost a match we should've won. He seemed to be really upset about his loss. I don't know if it affected his playing. I beat him easily 2-0. Again, my mana vaults/academies gave me mana advantage and he couldn't counter all my threats. 3-1 (7-3) 5th Round against Jacob Stirler (USA) playing goblin deck He won the die roll, and played 1st turn cadet. I mulligan once and my 2nd hand was lands and 2 mana vaults+ voltaic key. I kept it because if I top deck card drawer I have really good chances. I played land, vault, vault, key, untap the vault. His turn 2, he attacks for 2 and plays 2nd cadet and goblin balloon brigade. I top deck an academy and play it, if I can draw a card drawer next turn, I should win the game. But I never got turn 3... his turn 3, he attacks for 5 (bringing me down to 13). After the combat he grenades me, he waits if I counter, and when I pick up my pen and am about to change my life, he forks the grenade. In casual play this would be an illegal play, because he's the active player and he has to fork it before i choose to counter it or not. But because he didn't ask if I want to counter it or not, I couldn't call judge and complain. He would've told that he was just thinking about forking even tho he just wanted to see if I have a counter or not. So, if you play against sligh in extended/t1/t1.5 you should always ask if he wants to interrupt (fork) his own spell before you try to counter it. After the 2 grenades I go to 3, and he fireblasts me to death. Turn 3 kill =(.. 2nd game is even more insane. My first hand was 3 moxes + city, no other mana. I mulligan to 6 cards. Then down to 5, down to 4, and down to 3. I wasn't searching for a chill. None of my hands just had more than 1 mana. My 3 card hand was volcanic, intuition and some other blue spell (spiral I think). I was dead in about 6 turns. The match was so fast, that we had to wait for the paper where you report your match. So we sat there waiting for about 10 mins. 3-2 (7-5) 6th Round against Dirk Roth (GER) playing sligh deck I don't remember much about these games. I beat him 2-1 in a close match. It was really stupid, the guy with better draw would win the game. I even lost the 1st game, but came back. 4-2 (9-6) 7th Round against Claudio Sikorsky (ITA) playing 4 color control deck I didn't want to draw, because I knew my tiebreakers were pretty good, and i would probably make day 2 with 4-3 record. And anyway, draw is almost like a loss (the only difference is that you don't feel as bad if you ID than you would feel after a loss). On to the match: Control decks are pretty easy to beat with academy. It's all about abeyancing during his discard phase and then stroking yourself using tombs/academy/vaults/keys. 1st game was easy. 2nd game he gots tormod's crypt in play and I have to play more careful not to let him win by using it. He didn't have enough counters and eventually I win the game without casting spiral (his crypt pretty much prevented me from doing that). 5-2 (11-6) #29 after 7 rounds I was pretty happy about making day 2 after not doing well in Euro Champs, Worlds AND PT Chicago. Other finns that made it to day 2: Erno Ekebom #14 (6-1), Juha Helppi #30 (5-2) and Mikko Snygg #39 (4-2-1) (all 3 playing sligh). Snygg should've been 5-2, but he made the STUPIDEST mistake possible, he drew in round 7, even tho his tiebreakers were AMAZING, he would've made day 2 easily even with a loss. So it was like drawing in the middle of a tournament. He was playing sligh and he was afraid of recur decks. He saw a swamp from his opponent's deck, and his opponent's friend was playing recur, so he thought his opponent was playing recur as well.. After ID he found out that his opponent was playing necro! The finns who didn't make day 2 were my team mates Tomi "Jelly" Walamies (playing recur) and Arho "Toke" Toikka (playing almost same deck as me, main deck was like 2 card diff, but his SB was much worse. He also told that he didn't have enough experience with the deck, and probably lost couple of games because of that). So after the day, I had won 5 matches, 3 of them pretty easily and 2 not so easily, but not very hard either (it could've been different.. it was all about the number of chills vs pyroblasts). And my 2 losses, were not "normal" losses. I had this thought that I could do really well tomorrow, but i'm pessimistic so I didn't think it could be possible. I figured i'd be happy with 4-3 (= top 32). 2nd day 8th Round against Jon Samuel Finkel (USA) playing recur I would've wanted to play against any other guy. Rosewater made us play in the feature match table. 1st game he doesn't draw duresses and I win pretty easily. I knew he had lots of cards in his SB against academy, so I was a little worried about game 2. I sideboarded just the denial (lotus petal out). 2nd game he drew couple of abeyances (it's probably better than pyroblast, because you can play it in response to academy player's abeyance) and 1 REB, so he won that game. Game 3 was interesting. I got an ok hand, and I was happy with it. After like 10 turns, all my spirals were in my graveyard (i had intuition for them and he used pyro/thrull surgeon/duress to get rid of the 2 that were not in my grave after intuition) and 1 stroke. I managed to cast stroke for like 7, and drew a stroke, MoM and arcane denial. He managed to get surgeon to play with recur, and used it. In response I used scroll rack, and hide my MoM and stroke. So I would win during next turn (he was tapped out) by stroking me and then stroking him. But I drew the one stroke I still had in my deck!! Of course he knew what was going on, and took the stroke. So I just had 1 stroke and 0 spirals left. During my next turn I played the MoM. He did something during his next turn, only leaving 1 taiga untapped. During my turn, I count how much mana I can generate. I can generate 40 mana by using MoM on my academy and using all vaults/keys. I counted his deck: 39 cards. I also had a denial in my hand, but I had to use it for MoM if I wanted to kill him this turn. He had only 2 cards in hand (1 was recur). I thought about it for a while, and figured that if he has pyroblast, I lose the game, even if I don't try to kill him now. So I used all my mana and stroked him for 40. He didn't have a pyro. 6-2 (13-7) 9th Round against Alan Comer (USA) playing WW with 4 Englightened tutors and 1 nigh soil, 1 presence of the master, 1 karma, 1 pariah. 1st game I play 1st turn tomb, mana vault, key. he taps out to play a shadow creature. 2nd turn I play academy. again he taps out to play a creature. I stroke myself for 6 during his discard phase. during my turn i play some artifacts, 2nd academy and stroked myself for like 7, then it was pretty much over.. 2nd game I play 1st turn lotus petal, mox, mana vault. He tutors for a serenity and plays it !! (I thought he would just have auras/presence of the masters). The game is pretty much over, but I manage to cast spiral during my next turn. I played a land after the spiral and let him have the turn. My artifacts were gone and he played an aura. I played mox diamond during my next turn (tapping ancient tomb for the 2 mana). He responds by searching for his pen (to write down the 2 damage i got from the tomb) after he finds it, I forget to discard a land for the mox and I say go.... He plays presence of the master during his turn and I scoop. 3rd game I get an amazing hand again and win pretty easily. 7-2 (15-8) 10th Round against Ben Farkas (USA) playing high tide He accidentally had one of his main deck cards on top of his sideboard and only had 59 cards in his deck. After I called the judge, we found out it was a match loss and double warning. Both of us thought it would just be a game loss. He argued about it (of course, because the missing card was FoW and all of us knew it was an accident), but finally he gave up. 8-2 (17-8) 11th Round against Martinez Adolfo (ESP) playing recur 1st game I win easily. Recur doesn't have much to say in game 1, unless he can draw couple of duress/orangutan/surgeon. Game 2 he plays arcane lab, and I know I can't win anymore.. But I continue playing to see what else he has in his deck. He plays lab #2 later. During one of his turns, he plays BoP. During his discard phase I cast something (intuition probably) and he is about to pyro it (even taps a taiga) but then remembers the labs. He wasn't bluffing because he pyroed my next spell during my turn. Game 3 i start with tomb + double mana vault. He plays a land. I don't draw a 2nd land, so I can't play anything. He plays 2nd land and thinks for a moment, then plays surgeon. I top deck an academy, play spiral and get all the stuff I need to kill him. 9-2 (19-9) 12th Round against Randy Buehler (USA) playing CMU academy This was a feature match (of course). 1st game he gets academy in play and after a while, he has gotten too big advantage, and I scoop, because I know he's not the fastest player around and I want to make sure we have enough time for game 3. Game 2 I play 1st turn tundra + mana vault (leaving volcanic+gorilla shaman and something else to my hand), he plays academy and mox diamond. I draw a scroll rack, and play it ,using the mana vault, hoping that he would counter it. He does, and I play the volcanic, gorilla shaman and eat his mox with the remaining mana. He can't do much about the shaman and I win several turns later. Game 3 he mulligans twice and doesn't get a good hand. He plays a wasteland and mana vault. He didn't play any more lands for couple of turns. Finally I am going for the kill. He still doesn't have anything else in play (and his wasteland was tapped). I have all the cards I need in play. After spiral+ rack I don't draw any card drawers tho.. but I already had MoM and lots of lands+artifacts in play, so i should be fine. I play a shaman and eat his mana vault. I had several sinks/abeyances in the cards I got from spiral, so I was sure he could not kill me. After letting him play couple of turns, I finally found a stroke with the rack. He was tapped out and had academy and 2 other lands in play. I have a wasteland in play, and an academy in my hand. But... I was so excited about finding the stroke with the rack and making top 8, that i forgot to waste his academy (i knew what the situation was, I just forgot to do it =( ). I play my own academy, tap it for mana, and then try to untap it with MoM. This is illegal, because he has an academy in play and my academy should be in the graveyard before I can use MoM. The judge who was watching the game goes to talk with the head judge. I was pretty sure it would be a game loss (I think Randy thought the same). I was just laughing how stupid I can be... After a while, the HJ comes over and starts telling that this is a level 5 event where we should play carefully.. blah blah.. I interrupt him, and ask if it's a game loss or not. He says no, and explains that it's just a misrepresenting a card (MoM). I'm lucky I hadn't done that before, then it would've been a harder penalty. Randy complains for a while, but gives up when the head judge doesn't change his mind. The time is running out, and there's only couple of minutes left in the round (counting the extra time we got), so I use the MoM on my vault and stroke myself for alot. I hear 1 minute warning from the table judge. After I pick up the cards I drew, I found a stroke, then quickly use the vault to get enough mana and stroke him for like 50. 10-2 (21-10) After I check the standings, I found out that the top 4 can draw now, and play against each others again during the next round and draw again. The other top 4 players found it out as well (it was obvious, #1-4 had 30+ points and #5 had 27 points). So I ID with olle in round 13 and with Lauer in round 14. 10-2-2 (21-10 games, not counting the ones from IDs) So, i'm 3rd seed after the swiss. The other finns that made day 2: Erno Ekebom #11 (10-4). This is his 2nd top 16, and he has one top 64 from Dallas. And he has only been to 2 PTs and 1 worlds. Juha Helppi #31 (9-5), this is his 2nd top 32, he has one top 64 as well.. He has been to about 5 PTs/worlds. Mikko Snygg #64 !!! (7-6-1). This is his 1st PT. He was 10th at worlds 98, but he didn't go to Chicago. 3rd day I thought I had the worst matchups possible. I had rather play against anyone from the other bracket. My 1st opponent was Justin Gary, playing WW with some red.. 2nd opponent would be Olle Råde (WW with some red) or André Konstanczer (necro with some red). The other bracket was 4 mono blue decks (2 high tide, 1 CMU academy and 1 fish deck). I heard that the fish was 9-0 against academy, but I still thought I could beat it. And against CMU academy, I have 4 gorilla shamans, they have only 1.. and I don't think high tide has good chances against academy, because academy has so much faster mana. Quarterfinals against Justin Gary playing WW with red I don't remember the games well.. 1st game I kill him pretty easily. 2nd game I draw 2-3 wastelands and waste his flood plains/plateaus, and he can't generate any red mana. My hand is good, but I don't draw any card drawing, and he kills me with couple of mishras/priest. 3rd game was pretty long. At some point, he's tapped out, and I manage to play MoM (used voltaic key to convert colorless to blue, I had no mana vault or academy), then I used it to untap my wasteland. I wasted his tapped plateau, so he could not pyro my MoM. I let him take his turn, tap one of his plains during his upkeep, to prevent him from casting aura that turn (he only had 2 plains in play), and I was about to cast spiral next turn (using MoM to untap my ancient tomb). But he plays a wasteland and waste my tomb, after thinking for a while. So I can't cast the spiral next turn. During his next turn he plays an aura and destroys my MoM. I don't remember what happened then, but after a while, I have MoM and scroll rack in play. I start casting windfalls and using the rack to put extra windfalls on top, so I could cast another windfall after the 1st one. My plan was to get most of my artifacts into play. I had to do that, because my strokes were in the graveyard, and I wanted to make sure that I have as good chances as possible to draw a card drawer after the spiral that was still in my deck. After playing for like 10 minutes, I had 2 MoM and lots of artifacts in play and I cast the spiral. Of course I draw a card drawing (i had a scroll rack in play as well).. I had already won the game like 15 minutes ago, but I didn't want to cast spiral and then use rack and have no card drawers ... 4th game wastelands were in key role again. He was color/mana screwed and I had pretty good start, and won pretty easily. 11-2-2 (24-11) Semifinals against Olle Råde playing WW with red This was definitely a worse matchup than the last one, because Olle had more red producing lands, and he was playing with moxes. 1st game I get really good start. He kept a hand with 2 moxes, 1 lion, 1 pup, 1 tithe, but no lands (i was playing first).. he didn't draw a land, and I windfalled his hand away. I manage to get MoM+ academy + like 4 artifacts to play, but I didn't have any card drawers in my hand. He kept playing creatures and attacking with them, and at some point I start tapping them with MoM.. During the last possible turn (i was at 2 life and he had like 4 creatures) i top deck a scroll rack, use it for 2 (leaving academy in my hand, he had wastelanded my 1st academy), and I found an intuition. I used it to get a spiral and it was over.. Game 2 and 3 were both pretty similar, he didn't draw any pyros and I won them both, they were close tho.. 12-2-2 (27-11) Finals against Nicolas Labarre playing FISH! I offered to split with him, but he was 10-0 against academy, so he refused. But he didn't remember that he was 0-2 against finns (Erno and Snygg beat him).. He won only game 2, where he played 1st turn manta riders, 2nd turn wasteland + curiosity. The 3 games I won were not very hard. He didn't get enough early pressure, and I could play the way I play against control decks.. 1st game I used abeyance during his discard and then stroked myself for lots, and it was pretty much over. 3rd and 4th game i got mana advantage. He only drew FoW twice in the 4 games. But FoW is not as good against academy as most people think, because it's 2-1 card advantage for the academy player. 13-2-2 (30-12) I hope this gets me enough 1.x points, so that my composite will be over 1800 again =) Just a few props and slops, I didn't want to write too long a list: Props: Jon Gordon. Without this guy I probably would have played some other deck Slops: Mikko Snygg's round 7.. The ID was the stupidest thing ever..! The hotel we stayed at (not the one WotC recommended).. the showers were REALLY bad, and the breakfast sucked as well Italian taxidrivers ! -Tommi Hovi