Subject: Tournament Report: MS State Championship Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1998 16:22:03 -0800 (PST) From: Michael Moss To: The Dojo Hello yall, I (Michael Moss) won the Mississippi State Championships (I hate having to read the whole report to figure out how someone did). Testing: I tested for about a week before the tournament. Me and friends made hatred, WW, bridge, necro, and green/red weenie decks. Most of these sucked. So the night before we tested WW with scrolls, green stompyish with scrolls, and mono-blue tradewind. None of these stood out so I made a sligh deck. The sligh won about 50% of the games and kicked the tradwinds all over the place after sideboarding. It basically turned into a Cursed Scrollympics (no the tradewind deck didn't have scrolls, but it would have if it was possible). So after much convincing and looking at the choices i gave up my love affair with blue and gave into the fire. This is the deck I played: Creatures: 4 Mogg Fanatic 4 Jackal Pup 3 Golbin Patrol 4 Ironclaw Orc 4 Ball Lightning 1 Rathi Dragon Spells: 4 Shock 4 Incinerate 4 Kindle 2 Sonic Burst Artifacts: 4 Cursed Scroll 4 URZA'S BAUBLE (Sceadeau(Shadow(Chateau)) Tech) Land: 18 Mountains Sideboard: 4 Pyroblasts 2 Scald 3 Meltdown 2 Bottle Gnomes 2 Torture Chamber 2 Portcullis Theory behind the tweaks: The Urza's Baubles were the key to entering the Cursed Scrollympics first. A ton of games are decided on who gets an active scroll first. Also the baubles let me run only 18 land. Speaking of land, No WASTELANDS?!?! No, I wanted to always be able to play Ball Lightning 3rd turn if I could and Wastelands messes this up. Besides Sligh can beat the decks that wastelands work against on its own. Oh yeah, Sonic Bursts just suck. I usually played them 2nd turn on a random Bottle Gnome or a pesky Scavenger Folk. On to the tournament. 33 people showed up which is what i expected for Mississippi. Round 1 White Weenie Random Stuff Duel 1: Beat him by burning his creatures and rushing him with mine. I won. Duel 2: He played turn 2 Absolute Law, turn 3 warmth, turn 4 crusade, turn 5 Paladin. I lost easily. Duel 3: I got the jumped and burned his Knight of Dawns. I won. His deck wasn't focused. If WW is tweaked well it can beat sligh easily. Match: 1-0 Duel: 2-1 Round 2 Random Recur Duel 1: I burned his creature one by one so he couldn't ever use recurring nightmare. I won. Duel 2: I burned his creature one by one so he couldn't ever use recurring nightmare. I won. I just put out wimpy creatures and burned each of his. Match: 2-0 Duel: 4-1 Round 3 Sligh - with an experienced player holding it Duel 1: He got the active scroll going so i lost. It didn't help that i drew my crappy Rathi Dragon. Duel 2: I got mana funked. I lost. When Sligh plays Sligh the person who goes first wins and the person he gets stuck at 1 land loses. Match: 2-1 Duel: 4-3 Round 4 Necro Control Duel 1: He uses necro and i win. Duel 2: He uses necro and i win. He tried to gain 5 life from draining a jackal pup for 5. I say "look at the card". The loss of continual life gainers like Zuran Orb and Ivory Tower have made necro hard to play (i know that happened a million years ago but i loved necro and have been in mourning). Match: 3-1 Duel: 6-3 Round 5 The Academy of Stroking Cool! I get to play the "Deck of Brokeness". The most hyped up deck since bloom. Oh no! Duel 1: He must have drawn a ridiculously terrible hand because i started extremely slow for sligh and took forever to kill him. Duel 2: I board in 4 Pyroblasts and 3 meltdown. I pyroblast a windfall when he has Zero cards in hand. I win. In fairness to the dude i played he had a very good version of the Stoke deck. 3 times he went off by stroking himself on turn 1 during the tournament. That is wicked. Sligh can just beat up the Stroke even without sideboarding. With sideboarding it can devastate the Stroking Genius. Match: 4-1 Duels: 8-3 Top 4 Seed 1: Sligh (the dude who beat me) Seed 2: Recurring Combo Seed 3: Sligh (me) Seed 4: The Genius who strokes Semifinals: I play against Recurring Combo. Duel 1: I burned his creature one by one so he couldn't ever use recurring nightmare. I won. Duel 2: I burned his creature one by one so he couldn't ever use recurring nightmare. I won. I just put out wimpy creatures and burned each of his. Finals: Sligh on Sligh I won the coin toss!!! Aw yeah babay. Duel 1: I got the active scroll first and beat him. Duel 2: He got the active scroll first and beat me. Duel 3: I mulliganed to 6 and then got the active scroll first and beat him. He was manascrewed also. So stupid lame brain dead sligh won. Strangley he had almost the same deck as me. He had 3 fireslingers, 2 Sonic Burst, and 4 Wastelands where I had 4 Urza's Baubles, 4 Kindles, and 1 Rathi. The academy deck is broken but is beatable. The environment would really be interesting if it wasnt for the stroking academy deck. Changes I would make: Take out the fat Rathi for maindeck Scrap or Shattering Pulse. Take Portcullis out of sideboard because it is useless. If I played again I would play WW or Sligh. Sligh is fast even without the broken Fireblast. Rant: Why are the State Championships not related to the Nationals in any way? Wouldn't it make sense to have them qualify you for Nationals? -Michael Moss- "I stroke myself for awhile until I can go off. Then I stroke you till you give in to me." == ..||------------||.. ..||Michael Moss||.. ..||------------||.. _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com