Subject: Tournament Report for TN Champs and a meta-game analysis: Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 00:50:06 EST From: Rusifur@aol.com To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Tournament Report for TN Champs and a meta-game analysis: Friday afternoon: Two members of the team (Dead@40), and 3 friends take off for Knoxville. It's a drive and two thirds. I'll spare you the usual road stories, excepting that we discussed one of the kid's deck and everyone's sideboard. Our Cast: Myself playing Tolarian Blue (my design) Steve Morris (Doctor Cat and fellow team member) playing Tolarian (also mine) Brian Davis playing Counter-Chicken (not mine) Troy Goode (2pGoode) playing Wurm-a-geddon (my design) Robert Larrabie (the new guy) playing Buggy-Sligh Mr. Larrabie was convinced at the last possible moment, by an amazing amount of peer pressure, to instead play a SRB deck that Mr. Morris and I built. A deck listing: Memphis Blues Sideboard 4 Stroke of Genius 4 Chill (This was a severe mistake, I blame this decision 4 Time Spiral for Mr. Morris and I not making final eight) 4 Windfall 3 Hydroblast 3 Mind over Matter 4 Pyroblast 3 Intuition 2 Disenchant 3 Scroll Rack 2 Turnabout (I cannot say enough about how good this card 4 Mana Vault is against control, its truly amazing.) 4 Lotus Petal 3 Mox Diamond 4 Voltaic Key 1 Capsize (Screw Rescind, we tested between the two FOREVER cycling is useful 1/8 games, 3 Powersink Buyback is useful 1/5 games) 4 Academy 4 Wasteland 4 Island 4 Adakar Waste 4 City of Brass Dead@40 SRB.tek Sideboard 4 Jackal Pup (A mistake, see below.) 4 Pyroblast 4 Goblin Lackey (What Chill?) 3 Meltdown 4 Goblin Patrol 3 Nev Disk 4 Mogg Fanatic 3 Bottle Gnome 4 Mogg Flunkies 2 Scald 4 Ball Lighting 4 Cursed Scroll 4 Shock 4 Incinerate 4 Kindle 18 Mountain 2 Shivan Gorge (Control, what control?) Big, Green, ELBOW-DROPPN'!!! Sideboard (as Played) (As should have been) 4 Birds of Paradise 4 Crumble 3 Sphere of Resistance 4 Llanowar Elves 4 Root Maze 4 Root Maze 4 Priest of Titania 2 Tit Song 2 Crumble 3 Elvish Archers 3 Lifeforce 2 Lifeforce 1 Scavenger Folk 2 Dunno… 4 Absolute Law 2 Elvish Lyrist 3 Cradle Guard 3 Argothian Wurm (Better than Erhnam, no, REALLY) 1 Citanul Centaurs 4 Winter's Grasp 3 Armageddon 2 Survival of the Fattest 2 Sylvan Library 1 Abundance 2 Mox Diamond 4 Brushland 4 Gaea's Cradle 4 Wasteland 7 Forest This was THE DECK! It's a truly frightening creature… Heavy Disruption, Heavy Beatings, Great sideboard options… I think it'll be the deck to beat after the Tolarian Errata. It may be the best deck I've ever built entirely on my own. Not only is it really good and really consistent, it's a lot of fun to play. 2pGoode got to say things like (2nd turn) Sinkhole your Academy and (3rd turn) Elf, Cradle, Juzam. I believe he got off two or three 5th turn geddon-wurm plays in the tournament. Aside from which, a third turn wurm give you opponent two choices: Loose (let the wurm come into play) or Loose (go down to one land in play). Report: I forgot to take notes, so I'll apologize for a lack of names. 1st round: 0-0-0 Game 1: I lay an Island and a Mana Vault. My opponent lays a Brushland, taps it for green, goes down to 19, and plays a Wild Dog. (I was at 20) Won that one. 2nd round: 1-0-0 Played against a sligh deck with Raging Goblins. Sigh…. I managed to loose this one. Third game my opponent was under double Chill by the 4th turn. He proceeded to play mountain after mountain and beat my ass. Couldn't draw a damned thing. It was then that I realized that I had been right the night before and we should have switched the Chills to COP: Red. I'm a big hater of COP: Red, I think it's way too slow, but its right for this deck. You have too much free mana to not be able to support it. Got kinda depressed (During this round, 2pGoode was playing a guy we used to know who was running Counter-Chicken. He got off a 4th turn geddon and a 5th turn geddon-wurm.) 3rd round: 1-1-0 Gabriel Hickey Mr. Hickey had just been spanked by 2p. I was relishing the though of him loosing to two of my decks in one day. Petty, but funny... 1st game he countered EVERYTHING, everything except the 4th Time Spiral. I killed him that turn. 2nd game he flat out-beat me. 3rd game I hit him with an end of 4th turn Turnabout with a Pyroblast to back it up. Killed him the next turn. 4th round: 2-1-0 Played against another Tolarian deck. It had some questionable calls in it, but was played very well. My opponent won the die roll and therefor the match. Game 1: He went first and killed me on his second turn. Game 2: I went first and killed him 2nd turn. Game 3: He went first and killed me 2nd turn. Damned dice… I was pretty much out at this point but stayed in to try and salvage some points. 5th round: 2-2-0 Played against a nice guy running a mono-green deck that couldn't draw anything against me. Game 1: He laid some random green creatures. Killed him 4th turn. Game 2: He laid some random green creatures and a Cradle Guard. Killed him 4th turn. 6th round: 3-2-0 Played against an apparent tradewind-prison deck. Smashed him at blinding speed. Deck was broken as usual. 7th round: 4-2-0 My opponent failed to show up. A Bye with points, pretty cool… Observations on the day, based mostly on the performance of my SRB and Elbow decks. 1. Fattie-Geddon is back with a vengeance. It beats so many decks just out of hand that you can dedicate seven or eight sideboard cards to Tolarian. Argothian Wurm preceded with LD is unbelievable. 2. Goblin Lackey is amazing. I'm seriously considering replacing the Jackal Pups with Goblin Raiders, to better abuse the thing. It also beats the pants off of control and Chill. 3. Shivan Gorge is one of the best anti-control cards WotC has printed. It creams Draw-Go and Counter-Chicken. Now, some of you are wondering why the incredible Elbow didn't make top eight. If I had sent him with the revised sideboard he would have. His only non-"Incredible Sligh Draw"ä loss was to a Suicide Black deck that attacked with a triple-Unholy Strengthed Dauthi Slayer on the third turn in the first game. Then attacked with a double-Unholy Strengthed Dauthi Horror on the 3rd turn in the second game. In general, I'm pretty pissed at the metagame. Every single team who tested Tolarian Blue and didn't play COP:Red should be smacked in the head (little rhyme for ya). I'm also shocked at how many of them didn't run Pyroblasts in their board. I can only say that if I hadn't let a team member talk me out of it, we both would have made top eight. Oh well. The Tolarian board should have been: 4 COP: Red 4 Pyroblast 4 Hydroblast 1 Disenchant 2 Turnabout Well, we're getting ready for Urza's sealed qualifiers and thinking about extended. Of course, that will be after the Tolarian fix, and Urza's Legacy so can't get too far ahead of ourselves… Feel free to mail comments or questions. J Michael Graham Vendor Relations Zocchi Distributing Level II Judge Team Dead@40 Keeper of Urza's Pez Dispenser