Subject: State Championships Tourney Report Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 07:56:28 PST From: "Sean McKeown" To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com ============ From: Sean McKeown To: Frank Kusumoto Subject: New York State Championships (Bad Mojo Strikes Again!) Well, to make the long story short, I finished fricking ninth because I unintentionally drew with a fricking eleven year old playing Academy much too fricking slowly, making MY fricking tiebreakers the worst so that of the seven 5-1-1's I had the worst 'breakers and *I* got the illustrious notoriety of being the best player NOT to make the top eight. And I had THE deck.. I beseech all Dojoites to take my deck and play with it, because it's the gun I hoped it would be. But I'm getting ahead of myself... The story starts on the first, as many would assume it might. Neutral Ground NY was having a first-chance New T2 tourney on November First, and I went with my U/G Tradewind-Capsize-Cradle deck of general brokenness. I ended up 2-3, losing last round to Mitch Okun with his deck that has since been dubbed by Brian at NGround 'Okun's Cradle'. Anyone who read his report knows exactly how well his deck hosed me... and a week ago, I was playing the same turbo-Tradewind deck against my friend Pete, playing turbo-Elf Plaguebearer garbage... and after a dozen games, my deck was 4-8 against it. So I spent the last week coming up with a new deck, which was mostly unsucessful thanks to the fact that I was getting 2-4 hours sleep a night, staying up laaaate with Michelle to study for our Organic Chemistry midterm on Friday. So I basically brought a deck to States that we dubbed "This Is Why I Have A Really Bad Type Two Rating.dec", sketched out below: 4x Tradewind 4x Booty Gnomes 4x Wall of Shark 2x Mindless Automaton 4x Horseshoe Crap 3x Hermetic Study 3x Sunder 4x Counter 4x Forbid 2x Leak 3x Mox D. 4x Wastelands 19x Islands Total, utter garbage. Anyone who takes that deck to States or ANYwhere else deserves to suck up the bad rating they will get because of it. Luckily, in my Conversations of the West recitation midday Friday I decided to randomly work up a White Weenie deck, using pro-Red and Black to beat Sligh, Suicide, and Phoenix, and using the White and Red spells at my disposal to smack around The Academy in the best way possible. I did NOT change this deck to a single card at States; this is exactly my rough draft, and this is exactly the deck that lost one match all day, to Academy as played by Elaine Ferarra (sp??) after beating on a Sligh, Suicide, Phoenix, and three other Academies. Like I said, here is *MY* Gun deck... guess I have to come up with a cute name so that when Frank puts the deck on the November Decks to Beat it doesn't come up with something lame :) From the team that brought you the Stupid Green Deck... Team Pooh's Gun! 4x White Knight 4x Soltari Priest 2x Soltari Monk 4x Warrior en-Kor 3x Paladin en-Vec 4x Tradewind Riders 4x Disenchant 4x Incinerate 2x Earthquake 3x Armageddon 4x Mox Diamond 4x City of Brass 1x Reflecting Pool 2x Adarkar Wastes 3x Wastelands 2x Mountains 10x Plains Sideboard: 4x Pyroblast 3x Meltdown 4x Pariah! 3x Sleight of Mind 1x Earthquake I decided to play this deck around 1:30 Saturday morning, while having a wonderful late-night chat with Mary. She wanted me to play Red... but she was willing to live with the compromise of using White in my Red deck so long as I won for her. Guess what, my dear...?!?! Oh, and further proof this is MY deck, not Seth's: the random insertion of an amazing 4cc non-white critter that isn't named "Derelor". Here's how The Gun worked in the rounds... Round One: Academy Player #1 Game one, he starts his combo rolling at one life after Turnabouting me during my Upkeep for my Lands, so I couldn't pop the nice Quake or Geddon I was going to use for the kill. So, obviously I didn't leave the mana untapped so I could Spiral into a key Disenchant, but I had a small hand, so his Windfalls were bad, and a poor draw off the Windfall and nothing good underneath the Scroll Rack meant I won game one as he was "at dead" from his Time Spirals and repeated use of the Ancient Tombs off of one life. Stormtroopers popping out fast made that happen... I sideboard out the Quakes and Incins, plus a Warrior, for the Melts and Pyros. After a quick realization that one 2/2 is the same as another, I realized I should have taken out the less mana-efficient Paladin instead.. oh well. He plays a turn-one Island, and I go Mox, Mox, Plains, Paladin. Uno! His Windfalls will be permanently bad now :) Oh, and the one card was of course an Armageddon. His second turn, he drew a Vault, so he plops a few Artifacts and the Academy, and Windfalls my Geddon away but I draw four new cards. My second turn, I play a Priest and a land, leaving a Mox untapped for the Pyroblast I drew :) if he goes off this turn. He Windfalls, I Pyro, and he manipulates his library with the Rack. I untap, play a City and yet another Stormtrooper, and say "Go". His turn, he untaps the Vault, as he realizes that he's going to need it to go off ;) and it's mine again. I hit for six, and leave all my mana untapped. He dies next turn if he doesn't kill me, and I am content with that, as I had a Chant in hand and could draw the rest off the Spiral and such. So of course he tries to go off, and after the first Spiral it's all about me hosing him at just the right time. He dies. Game Record: 2-0 Match Record: 1-0-0 Round Two: That Fricking Eleven Year Old (Academy Player #2) Game one is tedious, and I decide to race him and Disenchant at the best opportunity as his combo is just starting off. He did some horrid plays, like Stroking early on for just one or two, but what do you really expect from an eleven year old?? Personally, I sat down and looked at my bye, as I had played him with my Tradewind Jank two weeks before and delivered a spanking even off of a manascrew to end all manascrews :) So the evil force of Stormtroopers loses game one, and I do my soon-to-be-standard SB switch: 4x Incin, 2x Quake, 1x Paladin ==> 4x Pyro, 3x Meltdown. Ironically, I played against Academy four times and never once actually cast the Meltdown... how good would that have been as an Instant, so we could hit them where it hurts by Spiraling into it AND using it?? Game two, I don't Chant his Key, even though it's his only Artifact and he has the Academy out. I neglected to think of the possibility of him playing a Vault or a Tombs the next turn and using that to Spiral, which he did (Tombs, not Vault) and I end up using Chant and Pyro after the Spiral, and Wastelanding the Academy before it untaps again.. he already played a Land, so no more Academy this turn. He Meditates a bit, I think, and I use the backlogged turns to rip into him with all my might. I didn't need them all :) Game three, I get the first-turn Mox, Creature going and start the Trooper assaut. Play a t2 Wastelands and another Stormtrooper, and charge. I TD a City, play yet another 2cc Stormtrooper, and he is still feebled by the Wastelands, so he doesn't go off, killing the Wastes with his instead. I play a Land, attack, and have 2x Plains, a CoB, and a Mox for when he starts his kombo... somewhere in there he played a Meditate and I Pyro'd it, which is how I was able to set up so nicely without holding back in case he started rolling.. I had a timewalk in which to drop the third creature, and to get that fourth land. He starts his cycle at eight life, using a Tombs to go for the Spiral, putting him into the next turn kill. I get Toby "My God I'm Such A Scrub" Wachter, my minion, to cut my deck at his insistence. I Spiral into a random assortment of Lands plus a Pyro and Chant, hose his Mind Over Matter (I think??) and Pyroing his Stroke or Spiral. This game was vague, I'll fill it in when I get my notes.. but then they call Active Player on his turn, when he has one card in hand and I show him my Pyroblast plus untapped Mox, and I have two timewalks I don't need at all backed up thanks to his Meditates. I am starting a crusade against any parent moronic enough to allow his eleven-year-old child to play Academy in a tournament; this kid's father was watching the last game, and while I had no serious problems with the kid himself (besides the obvious slow-assed-play complaint, since he basically didn't know what he was doing... I was tempted to take the deck from him second game and kill mySELF with it...) but I have a serious problem with his father, for building him a deck that was out of his league to play with. >>Insert Dojo Decks Complaint Here<< Game Record: 3-1-1 Match Record: 1-0-1 (I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids and their fricking dog too!!) Round Three: Academy Player #3 Seeing as I drew last round, I felt I was now cursed to Academy-land. I told this unthreatening Asian kid, point-blank, "If you're playing Academy, I'll be forced to punch you after this round.. I've already faced it twice today." He says nothing, as in "whatever", and so I break his kombo first game. He has Cycling lands, for in case his combo stalls out. I believe Zvi would officially call him a "heathen infidel" for taking a perfectly good deck and giving it a perfectly good reason to lose. He stalled and lost to the Stormtrooper assault after I Wasted his Academy, and used MoMa to tap my attackers and give him longer to topdeck. Whatever. I take game two when I basically shouldn't have; going into his Spiral combo I have a lone City of Brass untapped. He has 2x Tidal Warrior that he sided in to combat the Wastelands he saw in the first game, and has not used once all game since "I didn't have any Wastelands". He doesn't think to use the Warrior to hit my City, and I then have two things I can do, instead of just my Tradewind-bounce. He tosses down some Artifacts, and I did indeed have the Pyro; his hand is a MoMa and either a Stroke or a Spiral. With two other cards in his hand, he casts MoMa. I bounce MoMa, as I have the Pyro still but he has mana and the second card. He discards the second card, a Power Sink, to the MoMa to untap the Academy, which is a five pointer, and he replays that MoMa with two colorless floating in his pool. Pyroblast target Mind over Matter, win target game. He couldn't even chumpblock with the Tidal Warriors, since he was at five and I came in with two Shadows, the Tradewind, and the Kiniggits. Game Record: 5-1-1 Match Record: 2-0-1 (that fricking eleven year old!!) Round Four: Pat Johnson (Counter-Phoenix) He gets the dice roll, and goes first. I don't Mulligan, because if I draw a second White source I am off at the races; I have a Plains and a Wasteland, plus a Disenchant. Knowing what Pat was playing since he borrowed Sb cards from me, I didn't feel so bad because I wasn't racing :) He has seven lands before I see my second White, and I play a Priest followed by a Warrior so that he has to Disk. He plays a Phoenix, then I draw the fourth to go with my Geddon. I have a Mox in play and a pair of Incinerates, but he just Intuitioned for three Phoenixes and had 8 mana available, so hesitation would be a bad thing. When I'm at 14, I draw a second land and Incin the birdie. He has since TD'd up to four lands, so he's not that bad, but then I start the Priest/Warrior/action that just sooo hoses the Phoenix decks, and his second Disk cleans up with him at eight. Paladin rears his ugly head, and an Incinerate plus an attack puts Pat at three when I have another Incin in hand. However, I have only a City to run it (my Mox got sCRAPpped on), and using it puts me into double-Incinerate range, as he'd been burning me. EoT he Incins me to four, and I wait for him to recurse his Phoenix so that he can't incinerate me back, only counter. I should have hit him during his Draw phase, but I didn't actually call it so I guess I don't get it, I just say "I Incinerate you" during his random main phase. He goes to zero and Quakes us out to a tie. SB in Pyros for 2 Quakes, 2 Incins and start game one again, this time with SB. Pat has neglected his SB, and doesn't have the customary 2-3 Thalakos Drifters to mess with my pro-Red creatures... he didn't expect White Weenie at all. So I clean up games two and three with less of a hassle, as I actually got to draw both Lands and some of my four main-deck Disenchants game two, and the same (minus Chants) game three. But g3 I got a first-turn Priest, second-turn Warrior, so I can't really complain. He loses to pro-Red beats as we both expected him to, especially after forcing him to a *draw* game one when he had such a great head start against me. I thank Pat for the great games, and he congratuates me on my choice of decks for the tournament. Just about everyone I knew said I'd chosen the right deck for the tournament, since I had played Academy three times already and not actually lost to it, and just beat up on what was probably the best control deck the field had to offer. (When it sides the Drifters, or Flymarid, that is...) Game Record: 7-1-2 Match Record: 3-0-1 Round Five: Young Son, of Flushing NY, playing "Black Sligh" (his bad black Suicide deck with Red for DD... crap, essentially, except that he's also essentially undefeated. He beat Marc Paschover's Chicken deck with a well-timed Winter Orb... Maybe Scrap isn't that bad.) Game one, I play a second-turn Priest off a Plains and City. He goes "Ritual, Black Knight, Knight of Stromgald". White Weenie doesn't like to hear this, so I just played a Wastelands an Earthquaked for two. Yes, Mary, I'm evil. Attack with the Priest, putting us both at 16. Play Paladins, en-Kors and the like to block his Turd Raiders forever, then play a Tradewind and Geddon for the victory, after having Wasted his off-colored mana.. some bad Suicide decks at Flushing play the Sonic Burst. He dies. Game two is just unfair. I SB out the three Geddons, two Disenchants and two Quakes for 3x Sleight of Mind and 4x Pariah. Guess who won. Not him. Game Record: 9-1-2 Match Record: 4-0-1 Round Six: Elaine Ferrara, Academy Player #4 She asks me whether she still "makes me sick", and I assume she's talking about my earlier threat to punch out the Academy players, then have them all dragged out into the street and shot. Turns out she's talking about a post I supposedly made to the Dojo that said she made me sick and called Heather something like "the fat bitch". And finished off with giving slops to all the females at the tournament. I finally convince her that I like Heather, and that I wouldn't say anything like that.. though why someone would want to rip on my net.rep is beyond me. I'm mostly nobody. Game one I get goldfished, I assumed I had another turn to play Stormtroopers before I should hold back for the Disenchants I would Spiral into, but I don't get the extra turn, and she does it without casting Time Spiral or Windfall to boot, so I was a fish no matter what I did. I promise her I'd actually put up a fight after sideboarding, so I throw in the standard anti-Academy sideboard trick for the fourth time today, and play some Stormtrooper action. I see no off colored mana, so my last-dtich hope was a turn-four Armageddon when her only mana-producing Artifact was a Vault, and I had either 4 or 6 points of beats a turn on the board. She agrees that that move would be bad for her health, and counters the Geddon. I say, "That's my trick for the day, sorry," as we both know I'm dead next turn. I even tapped my Wasteland for her ;) I get stroked for more than I can handle once she's done stroking herself. (That will never, ever, ever sound right. Stupid card designers.) I expected to lose the first game, but win at least one after due to overwhelming anti-Academy disruption. I show her my sideboarding tricks, and she just looks at me and understands why I have already stomped righteously upon three other Academy decks. If only that last land was a City of Brass, I wouldn't have Geddoned, and I could spiral into a Pyro and Disenchant, having the Wastelands open for business. But if I don't have the mana to run the Pyro, I'm not going to expect to have the Chant work at all, so I had to try to Geddon... that rinky-dink Wastelands wasn't going to buy me another turn. She is a bit shocked to see the Tradewinds, and find out that all four Chants, and the Wastelands, and the Tradewinds are maindeckers 8) For her credit, Elaine was kind enough to offer me the draw, although I couldn't accept it, having already drawn against that fricking eleven-year-old. Who knows what might have happened if I took it?? If I could guarantee that I would play the same guy I did play after drawing with Elaine, I would have, because that would have boosted me to the #3 seed in the eight after stomping his Sligh deck. Such is fate... would you draw with an Academy deck when you'd already beaten it 2-3/4 times that day, and face an unknown opponent that you have to beat? Game Record: 9-3-2 Match Record: 4-1-1 Round Seven: Sligh (sorry, dude, I missed your name...) After doing some math based on the number of people entering, and the current situation at the top table, I figure I might be able to win next round. Pat tells me that he's playing Sligh, which was obvious off his first-turn play and didn't change the fact that I wanted to go first. I heard it as, "You've got the Bye". Game one I stomp with a pair of Priests while holding his stuff off via Warriors and Paladins, and play a few nice delectable targets for his Fireslingers, like Soltari Monk, to get the card out of my hand and to hit him for the extra point. Priests go all the way, and I don't go below ten life. I SB out the Quakes and Geddons for a lone Sleight and the Pariahs, and Pariah up a Warrior while attacking with a Priest or two. He sided in the Gnomes so that he could actually block my Paladins.. how quaint. He uses the Gnomes in short order, as the Priests come a-knockin' and I just refuse to die. Or even get bruised a little :) Game Record: 11-3-2 Match Record: 5-1-1 I just sigh, and think that after a bit of a shaky start I've gotten that fricking eleven-year-old behind me and I'm in the eight. Apparently the fricking eleven-year-old wasn't done with me, and he made my tiebreakers suck ass so I get to be the only 5-1-1 not to make the cut to the eight. NINTH. Grr. GRRRRRRRRRR!!!! How do you finish ninth when you've lost three games all day??? Everyone feels bad at the tough luck I had, since the top eight was filled with decks I should be able to beat handily, with the only serious challenges being the two Academy decks and maybe the 5cTradewind deck, since my deck is such a machine against everything else, and the Academy decks can still beat me despite my near-godlike anti-Academy prowess :) So, as I said before, o my brothers: I beseech SOMEone to go to States with Pooh's Gun, and kick the serious ass that that fricking eleven-year-old robbed me of. As the only 5-1-1 not to make the cut to the eight, I went home and sulked rather than stick around for the top eight. Well, I didn't sulk long, I went to a Vampire: the Masquerade LARP where they let me use my nifty Malkavian philosopher, and put stickers saying "Hello, My Name Is: Buffy The Vampire Slayer" on the back of the Brujah primogen :) So, the customary Props and Slops: Props: To all of my opponents, even the fricking eleven-year-old, for being good sports. Though I would have liked the kid better if, when I showed him that a) the damage he would take next turn WOULD kill him, and b) He had one card in hand after I had disrupted his cycle juuust enough, and a Pyroblast in hand, and an untapped Mox Diamond, that he conceded. Though when (maybe 15 seconds later) Glen called Active Player on our match, he honestly had no reason to. Besides the fact that the *first* question he asked me was whether I was in it for the prize, when he was in it for the experience... To Glen from Neutral Ground, for feeling just guilty enough about calling time on my match in the second round to let me swindle some prize out of him when I was told of my unfortunate position.. Thanks for the Chinese Cursed Scroll I got in those packs, BTW!! (We were joking back and forth about me selling him my loyalty and massive props in this tournament report for larger prize support for me, but he didn't go for it...) In case nobody has ever guessed, I like Gray Matter tourneys. If only they would let me reprogram the computer that calculates tiebreakers.. And of course to Brian David-Marshall from Neutral Ground, for lending me the Paladins I was short just minutes before the tourney started... also to Scott McCord, Toby Wachter, and Pete "James Iha" Vabulas for lending me all the other cards I was short, since I didn't own a solid third of my deck :) Also to Toby for being the "Type Two King" of our area, and scrubbing out after the third round while the "Type Two Scrub" went so close, yet so far... fricking eleven-year-old! To Hogan Long and Hashim Bello, for being much nicer this time around than I ever remembered them being. Hogan actually, like, *thanked* me for lending him the fourth Stroke he needed.. next thing you know, he won't be a Grumpy Old Man anymore. To the guy from Flushing whose name I can never remember, and to whom I still owe one Earthquake. If you're reading, email me so I can return it to you... And, of course, to my dearest Mary, for talking me out of playing that insidiously lame Blue pile of turd... and for understanding me not wanting to play Sligh. And just because. Do I need a reason for everything?? Slops: Just one, and a halfhearted one at that: to the father of the fricking eleven-year-old, who gave his son a Deep Blue deck that he *obviously* didn't know how to play. If Zvi was watching, Zvi would have throttled the kid senseless, not that it would have taken much :) I am starting a crusade against allowing eleven year olds to play Tolaria decks... anyone want to join?? ;) --Sean McKeown --Gandalf@BDominia.com Mennenite on mIRC --Team Pooh-- Card Bitch and General Lackey to Team LEGION "They press their lips against you And you love the lies they say And I tried so hard to reach you But you're falling anyway... And you know I see right through you When the world gets in your way..." --Goo Goo Dolls, "Acoustic #3" ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com