Subject: Ohio State Championships - Lackey Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 21:39:08 -0500 From: "Nicholas A. Doughty" To: With no deck to play on the night before States, I go to the Soldiery to see what's good and what I can play. Being too lazy to actually gather cards to construct a deck, Ed Porter graciously lends me the Means' amazing Lackey deck. Deck: 20 or so goblins 19 land, 3 of which being wastes 4 Goblin Kings, 4 Slingers 3 Scrolls 2 Meltdown, 1 Pyro 8 Burn and some random crap in the SB. I borrow some cards for sideboard from the cool Hobbytown gang and go to register, optimistically thinking that I'll go 0-2 in normal scrub fashion and drop to play in some drafts. I hadn't played in two months and didn't think my chances were all that high. First round pairings -bye. Yay, I get to eat...a minute later Mike Guptil approaches me and gives me the disappointing news of having to play a late entrance dude. Ah well. 1st round -> Super nice military guy with academy. He mentions that the games will be fast and gives me a wink. Hmm...wonder what he's playing. Game 1: he goes first and for the next three turns lays rack and some random artifacts. During those turns, I go 1st turn lackey, 2nd turn attack, drop flunkies, play raider, and a fanatic which he sinks. Anyways, turn 3 Goblin king is a big beating and he fails to go off. Game 2: I draw a meltdown and pyro, lackey, flunky, some mountains, waste. He goes first turn petal, petal (no land), sacs both petals, casts mana vault, casts meditate, mana vault, mox diamond...then nothing. I then meltdown on my meditate turn and it's game over. Matches 1-0, Games 2-0 2nd round-> a kid with a seemingly permanent super intense look on his face playing suicide black. Game 1: he wins the roll, rituals out and erg raiders. I play mogg raider. He plays another raider and casts unholy strength. I play flunky. He plays carnophage and serves up a big beating. 3rd turn - Goblin King...amazing. Next turn he plays a swamp and attacks with everything(?). I block the carnophage and 2/3 erg raider with King and Flunkies and sac the mogg to my king. Next turn double shock on the 4/3 raider and it's game. Game 2: he rits out a Priest of Gix and plays foul imp and I play lackey. He armors the imp and attacks. I play fanatic and a scroll. Then he plays armor on the priest, which dies promptly, and later mutters about what a bad play that was. I win after incinerating the imp and gaining control with scroll. Matches 2-0, Games 4-0 3rd round -> Rob Rhoton, playing green white with huge creatures and armageddeon. Game 1: I beat him with a bunch of goblins and scroll. He draws nothing big. Game 2: I have Scalding tongs in my SB...I put my SB together at last minute, so it was pretty much a random decision. I win this one with double scroll, double tong action, with a little help from his targetless toture chamber. After the game, he repeatedly said how disgusted he was with his play, as he had hopes of making top 8...I didn't know what to say and felt really bad for him. Matches 3-0, Games 6-0 4th round -> guy with suicide black Game 1: rits out sarcomancy and bad moon, then plays a carnophage and another bad moon. I lose miserably after he plays a second scroll, the first of which I had destroyed with meltdown. Game 2: I play lackey and drop turn two flunkies and win. Game 3: I mulligan and draw two wastelands and I'm afraid to mulligan again...I drew a scroll so I think I'm okay if I draw just one mountain - no such luck, I die to his one land draw, 1st turn carnophage. Perhaps I should have mulliganed to 5. Matches 3-1, Games 7-2 5th round -> guy with Ahab. Game 1: I get him down to 3 and I'm too tired to realize that he's going to go off the next turn....dead. Game 2: I get the god draw again and serve up some goblin king beats. Before this game he said that he played against Opalka's lackey mono-red a lot and it's the only one that he can't beat consistently...maybe that was because he was playing opalka, maybe it was the amazing lackey. Anyways, upon my casting of the King, he gets this dejected look on his face, says "Shit, Did you SB those?" I told him that they were standard -- he was sad. Game 3: I get the lackey draw, he plays turn two survival. he manages to recur out a whale, a feeder and wall of blossoms but no combo due to my double wasteland - I have a goblin king, TWO flunkies, and raider out. Next turn I make the godly top deck of another King and that's the end of the game. Matches 4-1, Games 9-3 6th round-> guy with quasi-suicide black deck with underground rivers and cities for mana leak and tradewind. whatever. Aside from the 5th round dude, I am too lucky with my match-ups. Game 1: He plays turns one sarcomancy, turn two carnophage. I draw lackey and flunkies and get rid of both his creatures by turn 3. I burn him out because he takes huge damage from two tokenless sarcomancy enchantments. Game 2: He plays underground river, carnophage. I play lackey. He refuses to drop a land the next turn and plays carnophage. My turn, waste, game. Matches 5-1, Games 11-3 7th round-> Chris Pait, land destruction deck that supposedly wrecks academy. Game 1: he destroys a bunch of my land but I end up winning with goblin king beatdown. Game 2: I draw land like a madman and win with three conscripts, a fanatic, a scroll and two shocks. Matches 6-1, Games 13-3 I am 3rd seed going in...I realize that I've got to play the sneak-attack deck in the quarter finals. I'm thinking I'm just going to win because it's combo-ish, there's less deck manip and, well, I'm just going to be faster. During the game I learn that he plays Oath and it was then that I changed my mind about my chances. Top 8 - Me Vs. Larry Kucynski (Sneak Attack Oath) Adam(suicide) vs. Mike Flores(draw-go) Dave Weitz(academy) vs suicide black suicide black vs. Karl Horn(academy) Quarterfinals -> Larry Kuczynski - Sneak attack/Oath Game 1 - He goes first, plays a land. I play conscripts. He then plays Oath Of Druids...wow, I had no idea that he played with Oath...I'm dead. Anyways, he oaths a Craw Giant which I block, I oath, burn his Giant and try to burn/scroll him to death with 5 cards in my hand. I have two kings in my hand, which is good against oath and mountains. I play them and he oaths out a crater hellion...some good...needless to say I lost to sneak attack right after. What an ass...he not only lays down two Argothian Wurms, but a Lord of the Pit AND Serra Avatar...he also made sure that I knew that the Avatar was 14/14. During this play, I overhear Kenny Hsiung (an amazing type 1 player from Hobbytown USA of Cincinnati, OH) sing the "Beat" song. It's sung to the tune of the instrumental portion of queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" with the one word lyric: "Beat". Game 2- I draw a mountain, waste, lackey, flunky, scroll, another goblin and something else. I sat there thinking, "I'm not going to win by burning him, so I mise well just try to outrace him, am I right?" I pussy out and go turn one scroll and later he lays down the beats (being sure to let me know that the Avatars were 20/20). I don't know what I was thinking. Mike Flores comes up to me after the match and says I should of played lackey. I talked to Jess and he said he wasn't sure, but maybe it's better to wait until his turn to see if he plays oath, if not, rush. Ah well. He actually would've beaten me anyway, as I didn't draw anymore land and the creature that he would have oathed was a crater hellion. What a bad match up for me. Apparently this guy never played an Academy deck or anything blue all day. Such is life. I'm not really complaining, as I've had great match ups (save one) all day. Other matches: Karl, Adam, Dave all win. Semis: Karl Horn (Academy) vs. Dave Weitz (Academy) (1-2) Larry Kucynski vs. Adam Hughes (2-0) State Champion - Dave Weitz I finished 7th...much better than 0-2 drop and I got some product to boot. Not too bad. On the whole, this tournament was great. Hopefully this sort of event will revitalize Magic around here. Turn out was way better than expected and the tournament was run amazingly well. Even with seven 70 minute rounds, the finals were finished at around 9pm. Nick Doughty doughty.19@osu.edu