Date: Sun, 08 Nov 1998 15:52:18 -0900
From: ejkmcsm@arctic.net (Elizebeth Moeller)
To: webmaster@classicdojo.org
Subject: Alaska States Report

I'm going to cover a lot in this tourney report of the 1998 Alaska State Championships.  Hopefully someone in a position to do something will read this and take it seriously. I have the feeling that a lot more commentaries like this are coming, and few of them are going to be as polite.  I have a feeling that I'm not the only hardcore Magic player out there who's feeling kind of bummed out on Magic right now.  Rather than hoot, holler and level accusations, I'm just going to tell you how my week went, starting on Halloween, and let you draw your own conclusions.  At the end, I'm going to offer my level best suggestions about how to avoid my fate to those who don't want to drop a few hundred bucks on singles.

Rather that leave everyone in suspense, let me say that I finished second in the Alaska State Championships.  Let me also congratulate my friend and fellow Eagle Riverite, Brian Eddy, the reigning 1998 Alaska State Champion.  Nothing in this article is intended as a knock on Brian; he's a good guy and won fair and square.  Guess what Brian was playing.  That's right, it had 4 Wheels of Fortune, 4 Timetwisters, 4 Braingeysers, 4 of a certain broken rare land, all in all a couple hundred bucks in cards.  I heard that it didn't win in Kentucky because no one played it.  Guess what I wasn't playing.  Anyway, on with my past week.

Halloween:  I play in a warmup Type 2 tourney one week before States.  These are rather humorous up here because no one plays their best deck.  I win the tourney with my second best deck, a Recurring Nightmare/Survival/Peregrine/Drain Life thing I call Darkwing Duck.  Brian is playing Suicide Black.  I beat him in Swiss, and I beat him in the finals.

Sunday:  After I finish reading the latest Robert Jordan book (not very good, if you ask me--advance the plot already!), I sit down to pick my deck for States and build a sideboard.  By this time, the Academy is blurping its way around the Net.  It looks broken, it smells broken.  I think I'll play it.  I get out my rare binder.  I'm a lawyer, and I drop too much money on cards each year as it is.  Even so, I find the MoMs and Windfalls with no problem, but I find only 1 Academy, 1 Spiral, and no Strokes.  Oh oh.

I turn to the Internet.  After much time reviewing the singles for sale, I come to the following conclusion:  Building this deck is going to cost me about $200, if I can get the cards at all.  Everyone is now trying to get these rares, 12 of which are brand new in a standalone expansion set.  To get 4 Spirals, 4 Strokes, and 4 Academies, you are probably talking about opening a case of cards at least.

I come to another "startling" conclusion:  If I don't build this deck, I am going to probably get plastered at States.  The only viable alternative seems to be some insane speed weenie deck with early disruption.  There have been a lot of posts about how to foil the Academy.  While a lot of things might work, my experience over the past week has taught me that only blinding speed plus early disruption, or mucho, mucho counterspells, stand much of a chance.  Green and White have NOTHING truly effective.  POK and Abundance are good, but they will get capsized before the kill, face it.  And they may never even get out.  Only 4 things really stand much of a chance, short of another Academy deck: 1) Meltdown, 2) Duress (or maybe a ritualed out first turn Pit), 3) Wasteland, 4) Crazy amounts of counterspells.

I don't want to play any of this crap.  I don't see Sligh making it to the finals to take on the Academy decks (Net reports are causing me to rethink this stance a week later, a bit), and the Academy decks are blue, so they are heavily sideboarded against Sligh anyway.  Anyway, this is not a winning matchup, IMO.  So what to do, what to do.  The Academy decks don't usually sideboard against Black.  Maybe that'll help.

Sunday evening I pitch up my hands and resolve to attempt to borrow the cards over the next week to put the Academy deck together.  Nothing looks good as an alternative.

I know from trading patterns observed recently that Brian Eddy has already put the thing together.  Rumors are circulating that others are working on it too.

Monday:  A busy day at work.  I work late, come home exhausted, and fall asleep.
Tuesday:  See Monday
Wednesday:  See Monday, but at noon I suddenly remember that the tourney is this week.  I email the local Magic god/head judge and ask him if I can borrow certain cards. He has lent them out already.  Grrr....
Thursday:  See Monday
Friday:  I go by the big weekly Magic gathering and make a token effort at getting cards.  No dice.  I resolve to show up and judge.  It is no fun going to a tourney when you are a competitive player who knows that they are going to be punked out by the new uberdeck, and you can't get the 12 rares needed to make it.

Saturday, ridiculously early:  I get up, eat a doughnut, drink some coffee, and pickup JT Tucker.  JT is playing monoblue.  He knows what an Academy deck is but doesn't have the rares either.  At least he has a bunch of counterspells.  I figure I'll just volunteer to judge. To hell with it. We drive 45 minutes south to the south end of Anchorage and the tourney site.

Saturday, 1/2 hour before tourney.  People are showing up.  I don't feel like playing and getting slaughtered.  My buddies shame me into it.  I dig out a black speed weenie, through some borrowed Glooms, Wall of Souls, Duress and wastelands from my extended deck into the side, and sign up.  I call the deck "Captain Planet", and it looks something like this:

16x Swamps, 4x City of Traitors, 4x Dark Ritual (24)
8x 1cc zombies, 4x Dauthi Slayer, 4x Black Knight, 2x 2cc Skirge, 2x Paralyze, 4x Flesh Reaver (more on him later), 4x Priest of Gix (aka Dark Rituals #s 5-8), 4x Unholy Strength, 4x Smokestack (36, 60 cards)
Sideboard:  Duress, Wasteland, Gloom, Paralyze, Wall of Souls, in whatever proportion you think is best.  I strongly suggest 4 of each of the first two, or run a couple of Wastelands standard.  Or maybe run 4 Duress and Wasteland standard, change the mana and put something else in the sideboard.
By the way, Smokestack is very, very strong in any deck that gets its permanents out fast.  Every game that I got a Smokestack out, I won.  Every game I lost, no Smokestack.
Flesh Reaver is not so good against red (duh), but very good against blue control.  He got countered a lot yesterday.  And who plays red anymore (short of say, Randy Buehler, who I have never seen in Alaska).

So how did I do?  I dropped two matches (both against other top 8 finishers) and in the 4 games I lost, no Smokestacks showed up.  Won all of my other matches 2-0 and just made it into the finals as the #8 seed.  Both matches were lost to Tradewind decks that got set up before I could get out a smokestack (in all 4 games they were both at about 1-5 life left).  In the quarters vs. the #1 seed (who beat me in the first round of Swiss) I won 2-1, both thanks to getting out the Smokestack before he got his Tradewind/Weaver stuff too set up. Against control, just let it clear the board, save a little land, and then recommence the weenie rush.

In the semis against the #4 seed (who beat me in the last round of Swiss), same story, Smokestack snuck out before Tradewind lock fully established.

So now here I am in the finals with my stupid Smokestack Black deck, aka Captain Planet.  Guess who I get to play?  Yup, Academy boy.

Had a chance to play the Academy yet in a serious tourney?  Allow me to recap the finals of the 1998 Alaska State Championships, crazy black speed vs. Uberdeck 98 (blue, by the way, which should be meat for 3-5 creatures by turn 2, right??)

Game 1:  I win the roll.  Swamp, Ritual, Zombie, Zombie, Unholy Strength.  Go.
Him:  Vomit forth 3 or so artifacts, Academy.
Me:  Swamp (no more creatures, unfortunately), zombie beatdown for 6
Him:  Land, a flurry of Time Spirals, Brainstorms, more artifacts, Stroke himself for about 10, MoM, Scroll Rack for 7, what ho, he's missing another Stroke or Spiral!
Me:  Draw, zombie beatdown for 6.
Him:  Draw the Brainstorm he left on top of his library, Rack for 8 or 9.  Gets to see one new card, hey, its a Time Spiral!  Spiral, yadda, yadda, yadda I get stroked for 100+  Yes, it's turn 3.  Maybe it was turn 4.  It sure wasn't any more than that, I can't remember for sure if the zombies hit him twice or three times.  Um, blue is supposed to be slower than black.

Game 2.  Side out Stacks and Paralyze, side in Wasteland and Duress.
My opening hand:  2 Swamps.  1 Dark Ritual.  1 Zombie, 1 Flesh Reaver, 1 Unholy Strength, 1 Slayer.  No sideboard cards.  Decision time.  With this hand, he is dead on turn 4, even if draw nothing else.  If I see a sideboard card, even better.
Me:  Swamp, Ritual, zombie, reaver.
Oh did I mention that he had to mulligan down to 5?
Him:  Draw, artifact or two, island, go.
Me:  Unholy Strength, Planeteers for 8.  No sideboard cards.
Him: Draw, another island, Brainstorm, go.
Me:  Draw, still no disruption.  A zombie gets twiddled (irrelevant), Flesh Reaver for 4.  One more attack will do it.
Him:  Draw, artifact, Spiral, Windfall, artifacts, Academy, MOM, blah, blah, blah, Stroke me for over 150.  Um, blue is supposed to be slower than black.

sigh.  I don't remember ever losing to Brian in a tourney before.  This time at least I knew that it was coming.

I remember someone from WOTC saying a couple of years ago that a card should be banned when the competitive metagame boils down to one deck type featuring it and efforts to foil it.  IMHO, we have arrived.  I don't want to play Type 2 in an environment that consists of 1) people who have built the Academy and 2) those who are too busy/lazy/unfocused/broke and/or contrarian to put it together.  And I don't consider myself a cheap, lazy or scrubby player.  Admittedly I put no time into preparing for this tourney.  None.  But among the reasons why were one disturbing one:  I did not see how I could win without the deck absent sheer ungodly luck.  Sligh, perhaps the only deck with a reasonable shot, is easily sideboarded against by the Academy and loses to too many other things with disturbing frequency.  Turn 4 Worship really sucks when you're playing Sligh.  Maybe I'll see what's going on in Type 2 after January 1.

This is not the Black Summer, it is the Blue cold Winter of our discontent.  Ban the Tolarian Academy now.  It's even worse in Extended; there you get to play with that most famous of wacky combo deck cards, the dreaded Shield Sphere.  Oh yeah, and Force of Will.  By the way, the deck should be called Wesley Crusher.  Why?  1) It's all about the (starfleet) Academy; 2) It's incredibly annoying; 3) you wish it would just go away because it's ruining an otherwise good show and 4) it works at warp speed.  Oh yeah, and it "crushes" you.

Kudos again to Brian Eddy and the rest of the Alaska Top 8 for 98:
Jeff Moeller, monoblack Captain Planet (runner-up)
Russell Slaten, b/w/u Tradewinds (semis)
Mikael James, ww with bolts (semis)
Rex Plunkett, 4color Tradewind with Mishra's Helix
Danyel James, 4CR
Rob Weimer, Survival/Recurring/Drake tech.
JT Tucker, monoblue (off the schneid at last, great job, JT)!

Now for the good news, such as it is, and some suggestions on what to do if you have a tourney coming up and don't or can't play the Academy.
1) I saw the Academy lose a match yesterday.  Yes, you read that right.  And not against another Academy deck either.  Mikael James joins the select few who have beaten down Wesley Crusher with a stock Type 2 deck in a tourney.  Mike was playing white weenie with about 10 bolts.  Apparently Brian got some bad (read it'll take me 5-6 turns to deck you instead of 3 or 4) draws, Mike got some awesome draws,  and Mike just barely managed to gun him down 2 out of 3.  Mike went down 2-0 in the playoff rematch though to Wesley.  Crazy speed does have a ghost of a chance.  But how good do you, as a competitive player, feel about having a ghost of a chance, if you get great draws and they get crap?  I feel terrible.
2) Don't waste your time trying to find ways to make white and/or green beat the Academy.  They just won't do it consistently (where are my Seeds of Innocence?  Oh yeah, not Type 2 anymore)  Instead, either play counterspells (lots of them, and early cheap ones like Force Spike and Mana Leak), or think about these 3 cards:  Duress, Wasteland, and Meltdown.  Duress and Wasteland are probably the best of these.  Straight blue has a hard time sideboarding against a 1cc black spell, and the threat of Wasteland slows the deck down.  This is what you have to do to beat it:  disrupt it and slow it down early, and then apply relentless pressure.  Endgame strategies involving permanents are doomed to failure; your permanent will just get Capsized; your rebound will get countered.  Duress and Wasteland are not per se useless against other decks, too.  There is usually something good that you can get rid of with Duress, and Wasteland is if nothing else mana.  A ritualed out Bottomless Pit has a similar disruptive effect.
3)  Meltdown is good as a pure sideboard card.  It is rather specialized though.  Apart from the flood of cheap artifacts common to Wesley, the chief uses of it will be against Mox Diamonds and Scrolls.  Still, this isn't a bad thing.  I can't see maindecking them though.
4)  If you are playing blue, you might think about the Arcane Lab.  This really wrecks their day, since they cannot recurse until the lab goes away.  However, this is just an extension of the fact that vs. other blue is one of the Academy's hardest matchups.  The sideboards that have evolved recognize this however and have effective answers, like Pyroblast and counterspells of their own.  In addition, it prevents you from doing a hell of a lot either, until you dare to play something and get it powersunk.  Then they Blast or Capsize your lab and go off on you.

Until next time, just remember, "The power is yours!"  Complain loud enough and maybe, just maybe, something will be done.