Subject: Illinois State Championship report Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 12:17:35 EST From: BaronMikey@aol.com To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Frank, I decided to write a report entailing my team's history at the Illinois State Championships that took place November 29, 1998, the last state tournament I believe. We had an attendance of 139 players, the largest of all the states if i'm also not mistaken. Barrat Moi was our head judge, level three, and he was staffed by the guys at flying circus. It seems tradition in dojo reports to stay how the day started out, so I think i'll do the same. My team decided to meet at the comic shop at 7 am where I judge in Homewood Illinois, so we could consolidate cars and make sure all our decks were ready. Everyone of us was ready for a tournament that contained a high amount of academy decks, and sligh, and it ended up that we predicted the percentages correctly. My friend Josh at the last second decided to play in states, but he didn't have a deck. A friend online was telling me about the Ponza red thing that I guess won Wisconsin, and When i told him he just thought the deck was so left field that he decided to play it. I think that 13 players from our comic shop were playing in it, and many of my team members. Of my team we had: Me, Mike Kuta, playing 22 Land tech red (with a false sligh curve, call it sligh if you want) placing 10th 6-2 John Poskin Jr. playing the same deck placing 13th 6-2 Mike Hogan, playing winter orb tech academy placing 3rd or 4th (we didn't stick around to find out exactly 7-1 1-1finals John Poskin Sr playing white weenie placing 20somethingth 5-3 Mike Waite playing 5cg second generation placing 30somethingth 4-3 Matt Weinberg playing draw go style 31st 5-3 Ken Kocinski playing black weenie 45th 3-5 Ryan "kid Coisson plaing 4 color White (I dunno he did sorta bad) Josh Hill playing ponza red getting 30th 5-3 and the non-team members that went with us: Chris Veeneman, playing my 22 land red deck placing 27th 6-2 Chris Smith, playing draw go placing 26th 6-2 So as a team we didn't do too bad, and we as a whole defeated academy most of the time, including Ken which beat them first and second rounds via contamination, I guess the academy players didn't know how or just didn't have enough time to play around it, which was what i hoped. This is a team report, but I figured that i'd include a list of my red deck, since three people played it, and I missed the finals by one bad draw in the long-run against a counter-chicken deck I played fourth round Here it is, Kuta/Ninth Power Red: 4 Mogg Fanatic 4 Goblin Lackey 4 Goblin Patrol 4 Jackal Pup (16 one CC creatures) 4 Mogg Flunkies (16 goblins) 4 Ball lightning 2 Lightning Dragon 4 Incinerate 4 Shock 4 Cursed Scroll (24 total one cc spells, makes little sense, but worked fantastically) 4 Wasteland 18 Mountain Sideboard: 4 Pyroblast 4 Bottle Gnomes 3 Nevinyraal's Disk (it was a great gamble, totally paid off) 2 Vug Lizard (great Sligh on Sligh tech) 2 Meltdown (Yes only two, I had a theory that it was unnecessary in our states, and I think I was right, wish it was shattering pulse) How my rounds basically went: Round one: I played against some guy playing what I believe was an anti-sligh/academy deck playing argothian enchantress/worship and titania's song. I think Aaron Souders help design the deck, I know he was playing it also at least. Game one he plays a worship, and an enchantress, tradewind, guilded drake, and basically reveals his deck to me even though he had the worship lock set and I lose the first game. Disks come in and i stomp him every efficiently the next two games Round two: I play against a very strange deck that ends up doing the academy maneuver in the end, however it uses earthcraft, worship, fog banks to hold off oncoming sligh until it is ready to go off. It didn't work however, because he wasn't using untargetables, and i sweep. He tried using absolute law, but that just doesn't work against a deck that can get a quick scrol lock if it really wants to. Round three: Yay, academy, my first real challenge. I get to go first, and get a great draw to beat the thing, a lackey and two mogg flunkies, so lackey go, second turn attack lackey, free flunky cast another flunky, get watelands, beat him turn 4. He beats me game two after I cat 5 pyroblasts and use 4 wastelands, I try to meltdown, he sinks hydros and goes off. long game thanks to the mighty time spiral, but he held me off using a good sideboard to fight red. Game three, decent draw, but I get two pyroblast and a good creature selection, and he dies turn 8. Round four: I play counter chicken, all i have to do is keep milking his hand, and i'll win. First game i get him in about 8 turns. Second game takes close to half the round, and it comes down to him finally achieving a forbid lock, i got too slow a start, I decided to side in just two bottle gnomes to increase my chicken defense, bad play because I parised and then drew both in that hand and decided to take it. Game three is intense, I get him down to two and it is a matter of me drawing any burn, because I forced him to lose the forbid lock and I he just drew another mountain to regain chicken recursion. what do I draw but mountain, moutain, wasteland, mountain, and he beats me down with a couple chickens. oh well, it happens. I will still say that counterchicken only works versus stupid players, it doesn't have enough counters to hld of a smart set of maneuvers. Round five: Anti academy necro, he was undefeated and I get to play up for some reason. Red... Necro... burn... I sweep in about 7 minutes. Cool deck, but he should have expected a large content of sligh here. Round six: Another guilded drake tradewind deck, very interesting also, but I sweep and I never really saw exactly how his deck finished me, but I think it involved an automaton. Round seven: pure black beatdown, I beat him the first game, and I think it's going to be easy. Game two, he goes first, does the super double ritual badmoon thing, and no matter how hard I try I can't burn out all the shadow he had, and I couldn't produce enough damage to kill him first. Bad moons are really cool verus red you know..... especally my low burn yield red... game three, I have to paris down to six, and he pretty much does the same thing to me. Round eight: Academy. He's convinced that one of us could make the finals, but I already ran the numbers and knew unless the 6-0-1 players played it out, we were finished regardless. i was right though. We play, first game, he goes off fast, but i win next two games, due to timely pyros and wastelands, and topdecking a mogg fanatic. So I finish tenth at 6-2, and I never played another sligh. My teammates did though with their red, and they never lost. So we came in and did what we wanted, beat academy and sligh The top 8 looked like this, I dunno the exactness of rank, I just knew my teammate Mike hogan was the top seat with his academy; Mike Hogan, academy Tim McCarthy, playing Brandon Rutters Vug Sligh I dunno name, playing sligh I dunno name, playing academy The guy I beat third round, playing academy the guy I lost to playing counterchicken the guy I lost to playing that badmoon black deck I dunno name, playing another sligh, (I may be wrong on this one) But that's about how it ended. I know that the Final two were Sligh versus Academy and we didn't stick around to see the results. So basically Chicago being last, we were corrupted with the most good decks, and people figured out that Academy and Sligh were the best to fight. And Congratulations to: Mike Hogan for placing 3-4th, I knew he would do it too, pretty soon this guy is going to be a force in Chicago, if he isn't already Andy Nishioka for running up to Barat Moi ever three seconds to try to get Mike Hogan called on every play he made in the eighth round, afterall the best way to win this game is through being a rules asshole, too bad Mike still won, and because of him, Andy didn't make it to the finals. Ha Ha =) To Dave Petersen for qualifying for Los Angeles the day before. He has my and my team's full support. Afterall, he has kicked most of our asses in draft all along. Good luck Dave Later Dojo people, Mike Kuta BaronMikey@Aol.com team captain of The Ninth Power Level 1 DCI judge T.O. New Fiction House tournaments, Homewood IL