Date: Sun, 20 Jul 1997 12:07:27 -0800 From: ejkmcsm@arctic.net (Elizebeth Moeller) Subject: PTQ Tourney Report--Anchorage Anchorage Chicago PTQ Report, from Jeff Moeller (www.cce2.com/~jmoeller/magic.html). Following is a Chicago PTQ Report from Anchorage, AK. I had a very good but ultimately disappointing day, going 7-1 and finishing 2nd in the tourney. Unfortunately, Anchorage only gets 1 qualifying spot, so I'm hosed in the end. I felt like I easily could have (and maybe should have) won, but lost fair and square. The phrase "beatdown" will not appear in this report. Oh well, on with the report. First my deck, aka "Fire Sale" Land: 18x Mountain; 2x Undiscovered Paradise; 3x Gemstone Mine. Creatures: 2x Orcish Settler; 4x Goblin Elite; 4x Suqata Lancers; 4x Viashino Sandstalker; 4x Talruum Minotaur; 1x Volcanic Dragon. Burn: 4x Incinerate; 4x Thunderbolt; 4x Fireblast; 3x Kaervek's Torch; 2x Hammer of Bogardan; "Let the Games Begin": 1x Illicit Auction. Sideboard: 3x Afterlife; 3x Honorable Passage; 3x Disenchant; 2x Sirocco; 3x Sand Golem; 1x Builder's Bane. My tourney report begins on the Friday evening before the tourney. The big weekly gathering of the top local players is Friday evenings at a store in East Anchorage. Usually I don't go the day before a tourney, but I needed to do some trading, so I went. As of Friday at 8, I have to decks put together: the one above, with Mountain Valleys, a couple of forests, and green enchantment removal in the sideboard to deal with Falcon/Armor, and a b/u/r utility deck with Guildmages/Nekrataals/ManoWars etc., etc. with Coercions and Bone Dancers as a neat combo. I am leaning toward the b/u/r which I have played a lot in the past few weeks. It performed well against everything except the MVLite Sligh decks. The MVLite Sligh decks performed well against everything except Falcon/Armor and were a crapshoot against other Sligh decks. Anyway, at the Friday night gettogether, I find out that the Canadians are in town (this is a team of good players from Whitehorse, YT). This info tells me that burn decks will be out in force among the top 8 tomorrow. I go home I try to come up with a sideboard for the Sligh deck that gives me some defense against both Falcon/Armor and other Sligh decks. I fall asleep instead. 4AM the morning of the tourney: I wake up and start frantically searching for cards. After taking out the green splash and finding the white cards, I have only 59 cards in the deck. It playtests pretty well through about 10 goldfish games. I can't make up my mind on how many multilands to put in. I don't see myself sideboarding in more than 3 white cards at any one time, so I go with 5. I should have gone with 6-7. I also totally space on using Serenity instead of Disenchant to wipe out all enchantments/artifacts. I spend a half an hour looking for my one Illicit Auction until I remember that it's in the sideboard of my Type 2 Sligh deck remnants (the deck was torn apart to build this one). Totally wound up and feeling much impending doom, I go to my office for a while. Maybe I'll get to use the Auction today. General comments on the field: Big Blue Flyers were nowhere to be found. Of all things, WHITE was everywhere, and with one notable exception not Falcon/Armor. The good players who usually play blue played w/?. I played w/? in six out of 8 rounds. There were a fair amount of b/r and b/u/r "good stuff" decks; some monogreen; some g/r; some monored; and some rogue decks, including 1 Sands/Equipoise/Chimeric Sphere deck and one Bloom/Drain. Round 1: vs. one of the Patrick-Riley brothers. This is the "I don't play Magic much" older brother of one of the juniors. I don't expect a hard match. WRONG. These guys are connected somehow to Rob Weimer (5th-6th in the state) and it's obvious early on that he's lent this guy a deck. It's a u/w weenie with Revered Unicorns, Man-O-Wars, Ballistas, Gerrard's Wisdom's, Counterspells, Phantom Warriors, Vodalian Illusionists, etc. Typical Weimer deck: Gain life, gain life, gain life, and win eventually with a horde of weenies backed by Counterspells. He almost gets me in game one; I get lucky and draw a Fireblast just in the nick of time. Game two is a lopsided 5 turn burn win. (1-0; 2-0). Round 2: vs Travis Renk. Travis has qualified for the Pro-Tours as a junior and has just started playing Masters. I usually beat Travis and don't expect too hard of a match. WRONG. Travis is playing a b/w reaninmator deck, and a good one, with 4 Necrosavants, Mistmoons, Nekrataals, Cockroaches, Peacekeepers, and Fast Mana. It's a combo deck where if he gets the combo in play the Necrosavant cannot be gotten rid of. I win game one fairly straightforwardly, but he holds me off for a while with creatures that won't stay dead. I start to figure his deck out, but my sideboard is of no help. Game 2 I get off to a fast start, but he Rituals out a Necrosavant, promptly followed by the rest of his combo. I get snuffed by a Necrosavant on its third trip back. Game 3 is even worse. We brawl for a while, and I decide to hold my burn in hand. The game goes for about 15 turns, at which point I am staring at a Necrosavant and an Archangel that has crawled out of the grave. Mercifully I draw a bolt and burn over the top for the win. (2-0; 4-1). Lunch break. The other members of Team Dinosaur (my team of 30 and over top Alaska players) are having tough days. Round 3: vs. Paul Brinke? I have no idea who this is. It turns out that Paul is a Pro Tour participant who usually can be found in Northern Ohio. He just happens to be up here on a vacation; he found out about the qualifier and had a friend back in Ohio FedEx him a Falcon/Armor deck. Lucky me. Paul turned out to be a really nice guy. Game 1, He puts an early armor on a Benevolent Unicorn, forcing me to block and Fireblast it with 3 lands on the table (trust me, I had nothing else to deal with it). Mercifully, he did not have another Armor, so the creature buildup begins. I am thrown totally on the defensive, but both of us manage to stay at around 15 life. Finally I draw a bolt, and then a blast, and then some land, and then (YES!) the dreaded Auction. On today's auction block is a Foriysian Brigade that is the only big creature on the board; his other two weenies are tapped and I have a Goblin Elite and a Lancer ready. Paul wins(?) the Auction at 8 Life; putting him at 7; next turn I burn him. Paul promises not to dis the Auction any more when he gets back home. Sideboard time. Game 2: I draw one Mountain; discard 7 times, and die to a horde of Unicorns around turn 8. Paul doesn't like to win this way. Let's try this again. Game 3: I sideboarded in my Disenchants. Once again though I am caught with no Incinerates on turn 3 (and not because I wasn't waiting) and have to Fireblast an Armored Duskrider with 3 lands on the table. This time though I had a hand full of land, and then drew a Gemstone. He had another Armor shortly, but this time I had a Disenchant (YAY!) Eventually I drew enough burn to win, but I bolted myself 3 times thanks to Honorable Passage first. (3-0; 6-2). Round 4 vs. Gerald Budzinski. The best of the Whitehorse, YT, CA players=2E He's playing Sligh/burn too, which I expected. This match takes about 8 minutes. I win the race in games 1 and 3. He wins the race in game two. He had me set up with a Bosium strip/Fireblast play in Game 1, but I torched a Lancer to get in the graveyard and disrupt it. I got a compliment for that play in an otherwise "who gets their burn first" match. I didn't get a chance to use the Honorable Passages. (4-0; 8-3). Round 5: vs. David Derrickson. One of the top 10 Alaska players. He gets mana screwed in game one and concedes the turn before he would have lost anyway. Game two is a 7-8 turn burn kill. It looks like he is playing a b/w weenie deck with creature stealing (Jabari's Influence/Debt of Loyalty), but it never gets going. (5-0; 10-3). Everyone else has at least a draw, so I'm the top seed going into the final 8. Other qualifiers include Travis Renk (my round 2 opponent, b/w reanimator); Paul Brinke (my round 3 opponent, monowhite Falcon/Armor); Gerald Budzinski (my round 4 opponent, monored Sligh); and David Derrickson (my round 5 opponent, b/w creature theft). Each of these guys only has one loss, I think, to me. The others are John Pratt (mono-green); Billy Ponzo (r/g speed weenie) and Mikael James (b/u/r utility). Quarterfinals: vs. Travis Renk. I know from earlier that I need to kill Travis with direct. The match takes about 5 minutes. Game 1 he is mana screwed and its a 5 turn affair. Game 2 he does a little better but I had the best draw I'd seen all day and win in about 5 turns. We end up playing about 10 games just for fun. Meanwhile Gerald (Sligh) has won over John Pratt (monogreen) on a DQ; Paul (Falcon/Armor) has beaten David in a long match; and Billy (r/g) won over Mikael (b/u/r utility). Semifinals: vs. Billy Ponzo. This match takes about 5 minutes. I have more burn than he does. Game one is a 5 turn kill; he gets out one Centaur and I just keep coming with Sandstalkers and Minotaurs. Game 2, we start trading shots with Sandstalkers; I draw a bolt around turn 5 and that's it. On to the finals. Meanwhile, Gerald and Paul are involved in a LONG match that leaves me sitting for 55 minutes with my head down (its now about 6PM and I am REALLY tired). Paul finally wins 2-1 right around the time limit. Here we go again. Finals vs. Paul Brinke. Well, I lost 3 games to 1. Even though Paul was not running the ProRed Falcons, the creatures in his deck were hard for red to deal with without lots of burn, which I just didn't get (except in the nick of time in game 2). My early creatures (Goblin Elite; Orcish Settlers) were no match for his (Benevolent Unicorn; Longbow Archer). This the single biggest reason that I lost: he effectively slowed me down with high toughness/first striking weenies When I would get creatures mobilized, he tended to have a timely Honorable Passage, especially after game 1. Game 1: Drew a decent opening hand creature/mana wise, but only one burn. I had to use it early to mess up an potentially Armored Longbow Archer. We get into a standoff and trade creatures for a while while I search for burn. This does not favor me at all. Eventually he gets out an Ethereal Champion (a good, overlooked card) and pummels me with it. He has plenty of life to keep it alive and the burn doesn't come fast enough to kill him directly. I go get my Disenchants; he goes and gets his Honorable Passages. Game 2: We are both mana screwed. He discards the Champion (YAY!). I finally draw a second mountain and start playing some Elite Infantry. Right around this time he topdecks a Tithe and shows me that he did; so much for mana screw. His weenies make an appearance. God, I wish I had some good old fashioned Ironclaws right now, as Goblin Elite vs. Benevolent Unicorn=3Ddead Goblin. Of course he just sits there and builds his army, while I desperately try to draw burn. The tide is rolling his way, when suddenly I happen upon a burn pocket. Just in time too, because he just happened upon an Armor for some undeserving Unicorn. Down to one life, I draw the last bolt I needed and pull it out. Haven't seen a Sandstalker yet. I double-check to make sure that they're still in. Game 3: My opening hand looks like my Game 1 hand. The weenies are out in force on the other side of the table. I have some burn, but it's the wrong kind (TBolts) for his Groundpounders. Where are my Incinerates? This is a good long game where we both make a number of good plays, but ultimately he wins. I have the game won (I think) when a Gossamer Chains makes an appearance. DOH. I have to use what burn I get on armored creatures at a massive card disadvantage; I am staring at a Disenchant but can't draw the right land. Still no sign of Larry the Lizard. Game 4: In my opening hand are 5 lands, a Fireblast and the Auction. I start drawing creatures. He has a good opening hand, but (unknown to me) no Honorable Passages. I just keep drawing and laying Mountains (no Mines, no burn, no Paradises) and draw two Disenchants back to back. As the games drags on with me finding 0 burn and no Larrys, I do manage to throw out a couple of Lancers to block with. This is starting to look a lot like game 3. This time the Armor makes an appearance on a Foriysian Brigade around turn 12. Just then of course I start drawing burn. I get rid of several weenies with a Hammer and a Torch, including the Armored Brigade, but he still has creature superiority. I finally draw burn but too late; I'm one point shy of killing him, and it's too late. Larry has left the building. I play the Auction just for kicks before he kills me. He is afraid that the two cards I have in my hand are Fireblasts so he lets me win the auction early. They're two Disenchants; I'm eaten by plain old Duskriders. Anyway, here's Paul's winning Armor deck. Even without the prored falcon, it gave red decks fits all day. I didn't sideboard against white weenie armies; guess that I should have. Land (20): 20x Plains. Creatures (23): 2x Longbow Archers; 4x Benevolent Unicorn; 4x Revered Unicorn; 4x Duskrider Falcon; 3x Benalish Knight; 2x Serrated Biskelion; 2x Ethereal Champion; 2x Foriysian Brigade. Other Stuff (17): 1x Honorable Passage; 2x Gossamer Chains; 1x Tithe; 4x Empyrial Armor; 3x Disenchant; 2x Mind Stone; 1x Snake Basket; 2x Pacifism; 1x Magma Mine. Sideboard: 2x Honorable Passage; 1x Magma Mine; 1x Snake Basket; 3x Shadowbane; 2x Mangara's Blessing; 1x Disenchant; 1x Tithe; 3x Afterlife; 1x Divine Offering. A good trip, but no trip. JSM.