Subject: Tourney Report for GA State Championships Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 03:09:38 -0500 From: "Joseph H. Leake" To: Frank, Here's my report for the Georgia State Championships. I'm writing this over a week after the tourney, so I may be sketchy on the details of the matches... but I kept a notebook this time so I have NAMES! (A Magic first.) Anyways, the obligatory background story... The night before, I went over to Eric Ewald's place to playtest with Eric, Sol Malka, David Hsu, and Chris Donahoe. I had planned on playing a Survival/Recurring deck with what seems to be the omnipresent Great Whale / Priest of Gix combo. It was ok, but it just died to any deck featuring Winter Orb... oh yeah... and it sucked against academy. So when Sol Malka spouts off this card list for a deck that should house academy AND do well against the rest of the field... I'm more than happy to be the guinea pig. I borrow most of the cards for the deck from Eric, Sol, and David. After some brief playtesting against Eric's "The Cure" deck and Donahoe's academy... Donahoe decides to forget about academy and build the deck for himself. Here's the listing: BIG PAPA PUMP -------------------------- 4 Elvish Lyrist 4 Scavenger Folk 4 Llanowar Elves 4 Albino Troll (Big Papa Pump!!!) 4 Fireslinger 4 Spike Feeder 2 Lhurgoyf 3 Cursed Scroll 3 Symbiosis 2 Hurricane 4 Incinerate 4 Wasteland 4 Karplusan Forest 3 City of Brass 2 Mountain 7 Forest 1 Gaea's Cradle 1 Thran Quarry SIDEBOARD 4 Winter Orb 4 Pyroblast 4 Wall of Blossoms 3 Spike Weaver -------------------------- This deck was simply amazing versus the field. Sol originally intended for it to support Root Maze in the sideboard, but after playtesting we found we really didn't need it, it seemed to beat academy consistantly enough siding in only Pyros and possibly the worbs. So, like most Magic players the night before major tourney... I get no sleep. Sol and Chris stay up with me and playtest. Eric and David grab a little shuteye... big mistake. Ok, on to the tourney. We get there just a little while before it starts... late of course. We hear through the grapevine that there are a lot of academy decks, sligh, and suicide blacks... all good matchups for our deck. They start the pairings... ROUND 1 vs. James Schofield Game One: He starts out with the standard ritual/shadow.zombie. I've seen this one before. I drop early elves, an Albino Troll, and get a scroll rolling to wipe out his team while sending mine over every turn. Quick game. After this game he says, "I was one turn away from casting Hatred!" Thanks for the tip, now I know I must keep my life total above his at all times. In with the Weavers. Game Two: He gets a relatively fast start, but I start to recover with a couple feeders... then he drops the bomb. Perish. Ouch. I didn't think anyone would be siding that one. I scoop. Game Three: I get the insanely fast start that includes a fireslinger, troll and a scroll. I attack with mana elves to ensure my life total is always above his. He duresses me early and takes an incinerate over a scroll... lucky break for me. I wipe out his shadow dudes and apply with my ground troops, then end the game with a timely hurricane. Games: 2-1 Matches: 1-0 Chris and Sol win their first matches, Eric and David lose their first matches. ROUND 2 vs. Travis Shelton Game One: He plays forests, swamps, survival... starts dumping Peregrine Drakes into the grave. This is apparently the deck David Hsu played round one. I know I have to kill him before he hits me with an infinite Drain Life. I get a fast start, and make sure he can't keep any creatures in play long enough to Recur the drakes. I finish him off with a Hurricane. In with the Worbs and Pyros. Game Two: I do a lot of early damage with creatures but he manages to get me to a creature standstill while he's at 5 life. I have a scroll on the table and no cards in hand. 5 lands on the table... Topdeck- Incinerate. Some good. He tells me he would have gone off the next turn. Lucky break I guess. Games: 4-1 Matches: 2-0 ROUND 3 vs. Jerry Winklestein This is my first matchup with another Neutral Ground Atlanta player. I know Jerry's probably playing academy because... it's Jerry and Counterpost isn't legal anymore. All joking aside, Jerry is a good player and I'm a little worried about how the deck will really do against academy. Game One: I drop the turn 1 Lyrist. Phew. With her on the board I can drop a little offense with relative safety. He drops an Academy which I waste. I drop a Llanowar Elf to prevent being Power Sunk... then I drop an Albino and serve before he can go off. In with Pyros, Worbs. Game Two: Again, turn 1 Lyrist and Turn 2 Llanowar. I drop more creatures and begin to serve. He gets another bad draw. I have 3 cards in hand and he tried to Windfall. I Pyro it to force him to continue playing with a crap hand. He finally drops a MoMa and in response to using it, I let the lyrist munch it. He responds by discarding to untap a Mana Vault, then taps it, then discards to untap then taps it... JUDGE! The judge tells him that once you untap the vault, you have begun resolving the stack, so you can't do it again. In the end it really didn't matter as he just didn't have the card-drawing to go off. A 9-point attack finishes the match. Games: 6-1 Matches: 3-0 ROUND 4 vs. Ramon Burnley Ramon is another Neutral Ground player, so this won't be easy. He's playing a groovy Tradewind deck with Survivals and Recurring Nightmares. This is by far the best match of the day. Every move was very calculated on both sides. Very enjoyable. Game One: I get a pretty good creature start. Multiple Lyrists and Scavenger Folk eat multiple Sylvan Libraries, Survivals, and Scroll racks. Really odd. I slowly ping away with elves before dropping Big Papa Pump and he goes all the way. I adopted the same strategy I used in round 2 of saving my Slingers and Incinerates in case he decides to drop a creature and a Recur on the same turn. In with Worbs and Pyros. Game Two: I get a little more aggressive this game, dropping more creatures and taking quite a bit of damage from Slingers and pain lands. I keep him from getting an active Tradewind, and just outrace him. I did make a mistake this game by letting him Scroll Rack for a few turns when I had a Scavenger Folk out... I just forgot to use him. Games: 8-1 Matches: 4-0 ROUND 5 vs. David Arnold Again, a Neutral Ground player. David is playing an excellent Necro deck that he used to beat Chris Donahoe (playing the exact same deck I'm playing) the previous round. Yawgmoth's Will, rituals, drains, disks, corrupts, and Dancin' Gnomes! Game One: I get him down to 4 before he establishes control with a disk and dancing gnomes. I get drained/corrupted into oblivion. In with the Worbs! I hear they're good against buyback. Game Two: I keep a 1 land hand just because the other 6 cards are all creatures. 2 Albino Trolls, a Llanowar and a few other elves. I drop a Llanowar turn one. He duresses me and sees nothing but creatures. His life goes 20-16-14-6-0. I came out like a friggin freight train. Great draw. Game Three: Closest game of the day. I drop an early worb, he taps out to play a disk. I topdeck another worb. He refuses to blow the disk, so I drop a Scavenger Folk to force the issue. He disks, I regenerate Big Papa and lay another Worb. He can't recover. Great game. Games: 10-2 Matches: 5-0 Now I can double-draw into the Top 8. Woo hoo! ROUND 6 vs. Bart Edwards We get deck checked before the round... a first for both of us. Eric Ewald decides to be funny so he goes and sits by the deck-checker and keeps shaking his head like something's wrong. We're sweating bullets. We both pass. PHEW! We're both 5-0. We ID. He gives me a celebratory can of Sprite. Bart is cool. Matches: 5-0-1 ROUND 7 vs. William Murdock I offer the ID again to ensure my spot in the top 8. Unfortunately he's 5-1-0. I'm the lucky person who got to play down this match. He's not sure if he wants to draw, so I just start shuffling while I wait. He sees that all the other 5-1's are playing, so he takes the draw. Matches: 5-0-2 Chris, Eric and I go to Ruby Tuesday during this round to grab a little food. We get to catch some of the FSU/Florida game. Solid beatdown, which makes me happy... because UF sucks. Chris turns down a shot of JD offered by the waitress... in retrospect I wish he'd taken it. :) On to the top 8! Top 8 consists of 2 Slighs, 2 Academies, 2 BIG PAPA PUMP, 1 Tradewind, and 1 Cradle-Ball. The previous night Sol predicted that one of us would make top 8... and here we are Chris, Sol and I all made it. Rather than figure out the rankings, they do random pairings. The 2 Academies get paired up, so I'm happy. TOP 8 vs. Ricky Jones Ricky is playing Sligh. He's a real nice guy and the match is enjoyable. Game One: I get a solid draw with Big Papa and spike feeders. He comes out pretty fast too, but Feeders win me the race. I end the game at 8 life. Out with 4 Lyrists and in with 4 Walls of Blossoms (oh yeah, that's why I sided em) Game Two: Again, great draw. Walls, Big Papa, and Feeders. Walls get burned early, but Big Papa is just so hard to deal with. Feeders hit the board, get burned. I end the game at 14 life. I just got the ideal draws for this matchup. On to the top 4... this is exciting! Chris beats the Cradle-Ball deck and Sol beat the other Sligh. 3 of us in the top 4!!! TOP 4 vs. Sol Malka I don't really look forward to this one since Sol designed the deck I'm playing. Sol is by far one of the best players in Atlanta so I'm more than a little worried. He's playing another one of his original creations. It's a Tradewind/Geddon deck with Bottle Gnomes and Survival of the Fittest. Other notables in his deck were Morphling, Gilded Drake and Gravedigger. Some good. Game One: I have to mulligan for only the second time of the day. I get a good hand and go with it. I get a few creatures and a 3/4 Lhurgoyf out. He's low on life so he drops a Morphling and chumps/pumps it rather than trying to race me with it. He just doesn't topdeck anything of use and goes down to the creature rush. In with the Pyros and I think the Worbs. Game Two: I have to mulligan AGAIN. I get a draw with 2 pyros... so of course I keep it. I pyro *2* Tradewinds... but that's not enough. He drops a 3rd. My scavenger folk eat his gnomes to keep him from using that Tradewind. I have Big Papa out, backed up by multiple slingers to prevent blocking. He doesn't draw anything really of consequence and I win this one. FINALS vs. Chris Donahoe Big Papa vs. Big Papa in the finals... how crazy is that? Chris and I plead with Dave Doust to let us draw and be co-state champs. Dave says no. Dang. In this mirror match we might as well flip a coin. We play it out and Chris just mauls me. That's cool with me, I was just thrilled to have made it this far. I never thought I'd make it to the State finals! That about does it, I collected my not-so-great-prize (like 20 packs, for all that). We went to OK Cafe to celebrate, yum. Blueberry shakes are ba-roken. The End. Props: SOL MALKA: You da man. Your deck was the perfect metagame choice. 3 of your decks comprised the top 4. Amazing. Chris Donahoe: Congrats man, you earned it! Aren't you glad you didn't play Academy? Aren't you pissed you built it? :) Eric Ewald and David Hsu: Thanks for the loaned cards and playtesting. You guys rule. Georgia Tech: Way to beat them Dawgs!!!!!!!!!!! Slops: WOTC: Quit dumbing down the game. That's it. Email me with any questions/comments/corrections. gte585e@prism.gatech.edu "Big Papa Pump is yo hook-up! Holler if ya hear me!!!!" -Joey Leake