Subject: Here's a little account on my New Jersey States experience
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 12:05:38 -0500
From: Joe Cain, Joe@ECSCOM.COM
To: "'webmaster@classicdojo.org'" 

Well I guess that I’ll get to what everyone wants to hear….

How my day went at the New Jersey State Championships

Here’s the deck as best as I can remember it (as I no longer have it). I have to give a lot of thanks to Zvi Mowshowitz and Barry Young for their help in constructing the deck and fine tuning it even more.

Twiddle Academy

4 Tolarian Academies
3 Ancient Tombs
2 Wasteland
9 Islands
1 City of Brass

3 Mox Diamonds
4 Lotus Petals
4 Mana Vaults
2 Scroll racks
2 Voltaic Keys
1 Library of Leng (combo’s with windfall, anti-duress/persecute and also make end of your turns affects like capsize happen during your main phase so you can respond)

2 Power sinks (just to keep people honest)
4 Twiddle
4 Stroke of Genius
4 Windfall
4 Timespiral
2 Intuition
3 Mind over Matter
1 Capsize

s/b:
3 Lobotomy
2 Powersinks
1 Library of Leng
4 Chill
2 Turnabout
3 Pyroblast

Some names will not appear as to protect the innocent

Round 1: David Eisenstein w/u/r/g
I’ve seen David before playing sealed and he seems good at that but admitted to not being that good at constructed.

1^st game- I paris the first hand as it had stuff but no speed. My second hand is just as slow and I decide to ride it out. He starts off with an island I think “Great a mirror matchup already” but it turns out that he was just playing some sinks and leaks. I wait about 5 turns and go off on the sixth with no problems

2^nd game- I get a good hand and with a little resistance from him (pyrobalst) I go off turn 4

1-0 2-0

Round 2- Living Death ( Peregrine tricks )
I saw the guy playing the round before and knew that he had main deck Abundance

1^st game- He plays survival 2^nd turn I then go off on my 3^rd

2^nd game- He melt downs once slowing me down, I lobotomy his abudnece one turn before he could cast it. I seem to stall and he starts doing some Peregrine stuff but I sink him and then go off about the 7^th or 8^th turn using just mana vaults as I had to go off that turn and he had wasted my academy

2-0 4-0

Round 3- Phil playing Academy

1^st game- He windfalls early taking with it 3 of my timespirails I get moma out and start to try to take control of his mana then he timesprials to get cards I thank him and go off next turn.

2^nd game- All his as he goes first and gets a good jump and takes me down quick

3^rd game- I get 4^th turn double lobotomy and take out his timesprials and his momas and he really has no way to win. In the long run though I can draw no card drawing and it goes down to time

2-0-1 5-1-1

Round 4- WW

1^st game- He gets out a soul warden I go off 2^nd turn go sold warden

2^nd game- He gets out a priest and visionary and due to his damage and mine I go down to 1 and go off about turn 4. He has two untapped mox diamonds and keeps going damn every time we spiral I ask him afterwards why and he shows me his s/b’ed rebounds ( hahahaha )

3-0-1 7-1-1

Round 5- Sligh

1^st game - I go off way too fast 3^rd turn and he could only ping me with a fanatic

2^nd game - I get a fast draw again but he plays meltdown and it takes me a turn to recover. Meanwhile he has played 3 pups and has me dead on the board. I draw the spiral and again get the goods

4-0-1 9-1-1

Round 6- Counter Phoenix

By far the most difficult opponent so far today. I know that I can draw in safely but my opponent cannot as there are only 2 people with better records than me

1^st game- is a long long game as he always keeps extra mana open to counter whatever I have then gets a disk out and then just beats me down with the bird

2^nd game- is another long game with him looking in control. I take myself down to 1 with ancient tomb and city damage he gets out a disk. I play moma and discard a card to tap the disk, he blows it and I am left with just 3 mana in my pool from a mana vault. I play Timespiral and after about 5 min finish it up.

3^rd game- Knowing that we don’t have a lot of time left we both paris to get the perfect hands. I go first and play land and petal, he goes and plays island. I then play diamond and lobo him. I remove his phoenixes and see that he has no other way to win but we run out of time way too quick as I had to waste to much stuff to pull off the lobotomy.

4-0-2 10-2-2

In the final 8 there is
2 sligh
2 Counter Phoenix
2 Academy
1 Mono green elf
1 mono black (I think)

Quarter-Finals:

Academy(me) against sligh
Sligh against another academy
Counter Phoenix against Mono green
Counter Phoenix against mono black
(All the decks on the left won)

Round 1- 13 year old playing sligh

1^st game- I get going on the 3^rd turn just after taking 10 from him on his turn

2^nd game- I side in chills and he just gets all of his Pyroblasts up front

3^rd game - An amazing game as I go 1^st turn chill 2^nd turn chill start to run a little 3^rd turn but stall find a chill and play a 3^rd chill before he even has 3 land. Two turns later I start to go and he says that he will concede if I write something good on my chills. The judge allows this, so I do and he gives up.

Semi-Finals:

Counter Phoenix against academy(me)
Sligh against Counter Phoenix
(All the decks on the left won)

Round 2- Not the Counter Phoenix deck I faced round six but another

1^st game- I forget to paris on a slow hand and get beat bad

2^nd game- We both paris down to 5 and I still get nothing but have to go with it and just draw land for the next 34890435909784635 turns. Guess what, I lose.

In the end it was sligh beating CP and just as I went to go see who won is when I turned around and saw that someone had stolen my deck within 20 seconds.

Academy is powerful esp. in the hand of someone who knows how to use it so watch out for it

Joe Cain