From: Robert Blackman Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.misc Subject: Chicago PTQ Report/Las Vegas, 8/3/97 Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 13:04:58 -0700 Yesterday at this time I was in Las Vegas at the Debbie Reynolds Hotel (and not casino) playing in the Chicago PTQ there and I thought I'd put a report up to let all of the stay-at-homes know some of what happened. First things first, thanks to Dan Gray for giving me a ride out there and to Frank Gilson for giving me the ideas behind the deck I ran. Without further ado... Dan Gray, Andrea Kunst, Greg Dube and I piled into Dan's car Saturday at noon to take a run through the desert heat to L.V. What the heck were we thinking? By the time we got to Baker, it was already 113 F out, and the back seat wasn't much cooler. But we made it though the heat into the Mecca of Capitalism, where we hooked up with Andrea's sister, Christa Miller, and her sig-o, Matt Stenger. After some discussion about where we would drink and gamble later, we proceeded to playtest up in the room. Dan and I played a bit, and I completely tore apart his W/G with my 'tog deck, and he decided to play a different deck. Andrea was playing modified burn and pretty much left me all black and crispy. Christa was playing the Blue Beatdown, and proceeded to smash me three games in a row. I thought about it, changed my sideboard a little, and promptly got bored. Everyone was sitting around playtesting: Greg was working on his B/U beatdown, other people from Phoenix's own Team ACP showed up and started beating on each other (Ray's Bloodrock deck was humiliating to lose to) but I longed to get back down to the casino floor and at least pretend that I could gamble on a grad student budget. I was waiting for Matt and Dan, both of whom had showed interest in proper Vegas activities, but I got tired of waiting and headed down. When I hit the floor, the first person I saw was Truc Bui. He was giving the hotel the gangsta treatment at the craps tables with Igor Frayman and Broido. Truc and Igor were just at the ATM that night--I watched Truc play the table for many, many C-notes while I sipped my G and T's... but even Truc gets tired of winning, I guess, so we hooked up with Daddy Yoo and Chris Wong and the legendary Mario Robaina and headed over to the Hard Rock to hang out with a younger set. The Hard Rock was the Waterloo of our crowd, though. After watching the Dickheads and friends pull down the money at the Stratosphere, I had to watch them hand their hard earned ducats to the croups at the Hard Rock. Nothing worked for anyone, and I'll tell you, though, if you want to throw away your money while a particularly beatiful crowd of young women ignore you, the Hard Rock is your place. We decided to go back to the scene of former glory and hit the Strat again. Broido had vanished (women again. what the heck was I doing watching people gamble, anyway?) so all six of us piled into Daddy Yoo's luxury vehicle and headed out. Part way, the plan changed to Nudie Bar so I hopped out at the Strat to get some sleep before the tournament. I know now that a true gangsta nixes the sleep for the women, but heck, I judge PTQs, so I'm new at this. At 6:30 AM the alarm goes off and I wake up in a room full of responsible adults. I do my best to pretend I got plenty of sleep while we talk about the metagame and all that. After brekkie, we head over to the Debbie Reynolds, which is a hotel that lost it's gambling license and I'll tell you, it's a nice, quiet place to hang out. Sort of like the spookier parts of the Shining, though. So at the Tournament, most of the So Cal set shows up: Gabe Higa, Preston Poulter, Larry McBride, the whole of Team Dickhead (Super Z came late as otherwise he would have been arrested on the casino floor), Alan Comer, Mike Dove, Nick Krestoff and everyone else I have to judge and play with every week. On the up side, the Phoenix and Utah posses were there, though I felt sorry for the locals who had set it up and brought in all the talent from a 500-mile radius. Anyway, here's the deck I had decided to play: Deck Sideboard 2 Ertai's Familiar 3 Dark Banishing 4 Ophidian 3 Knights of the Mist 4 Shadow Gangstamage 1 Odylic Wraith 2 Barrow Ghoul 1 Abyssal Gatekeeper 3 Circling Vultures 1 Benthic Djinn 4 Man o' War 3 Ebony Charm 2 Bone Dancer 1 Reign of Terror 1 Abyssal Gatekeeper 2 Forsaken Wastes 4 Nekrataal 2 Necratog 4 Skulking Ghost 1 Kaervek's Torch 2 Necromancy 1 Buried Alive 1 Tombstone Stairwell 9 Swamp 5 Islands 1 Mountain 4 Bad River 2 Rocky Tar Pit 2 Undiscovered Paradise On to the matches... I didn't really plan to play the entire tournament, as we had to get back in time for _some_ sleep before work the next day, so I only played six rounds before dropping. Round 1 v. Christa Miller What a lame matchup. Not only are we friends, but when we playtested, Christa kicked my butt. Game 1: I made a mistake early, forgetting to put my 'taal back on top of my deck and getting it killed, and fell quickly to the Waterspout Beating. Game 2: Save me, Sideboard! I put in all three banishings and the Djinn. After some sparring, I got the Djinn down, and that was game. Game 3: Christa and I fought valiantly, but the Banishings made the difference, as she couldn't cast and protect a 'spout in the same turn. Matches: 1-0 Games: 2-1 Round 2 v. Chris Wong. Chris was also playing a 'tog deck, though his was more orthodox, with Fallen Askari, etc. Game 1: We sparred back and forth for advantage until I drew land and he drew critters. It's like getting timewalked 3 times :) Game 2: Opening hand? 6 Black spells and an Island. Second land came next turn, and it was a Paradise. 3rd land? Well, the game didn't last long enought for me to draw it, as Chris developed the game like this: Turn 2, Familiar, turn 3 Familiar, turn 4 'tog, turn 5 'tog, etc. Matches: 1-1 Games: 2-3 Round 3 So back to the losing bracket... where I meet Larry McBride, playing G/W with Crusaders and Scalebanes... it looks designed to beat my kind of deck. Gulp. Game 1: With the help of a massive land pocket on Larry's side and some absurd 'taal tech on my side, I eke out a win. Game 2: In comes my top-secret tech... the Reign of Jank. I reckoned that I would see several Scalebane decks, the the Reign was the only way I saw to kill them. Larry and I fought back and forth, I was at 10 with 2 'taals and an Ophidibook: he was at 20 with a Boa and a Centaur on the table. I drew the 5th land and dropped some jank on him. I was at 6, I hit him for 4 and drew a card. He got a scalebane out soon enought, but I killed him with card advantage as my book-snakes booked out more snakes and skulking ghosts. Larry said after the game that he couldn't design a deck to handle the Reign, as no one played it. I agreed. I got the idea for it when I saw someone at table 50 at the last LA PTQ play it, but he thought that the opponent took the damage.... Larry decided to keep playing just to spite everyone, which I thought was a good idea. Matches: 2-1 Games: 4-3 Round 4 v. Kyle Boyd. This round taught me two very important lessons, one of which involves pairing and the other deck-cutting. Game 1: Kyle dropped a plains, I dropped a guildmage. He drops a swamp and my heart jumps into my throat. What the hell is he playing? I have visions of some Righteous War deck kicking my ass and all of my friends laughing at me. I drop an Ertai's Familiar. A few turns later, he drops an Equipoise. I know I've won at this point: I'll never let the Familiar phase out. This is the lesson about pairing. If I hadn't had the Familiars standard, he would have killed me. I hit him with everything I had, and finally killed him 1 turn before the lock went off. Thanks, Ertai! Game 2: I sideboard out Man o' Wars for Forsaken Wastes. He wants to go first. I look at my hand and smile: Land, ghost, and a waste: a good draw. He says "Go ahead." I ask him if he dropped a land. He says no. Apparently I cut his deck so all he drew was a Lotus Vale. I played against the goldfish until he conceded once I had the waste out. I was pretty happy to have beaten the Sands of Time/Equipoise deck. The Wastes is the way to go, but manascrew is even stronger. Matches: 3-1 Games: 6-3 Round 5 v. Thomas Keller, Team ACP. Did I mention the Dead Pool? Matt had put together a list of people, includin PCL, Dickhead, ACP and others, and we got points for beating them I was tied for first, having got points for Christa and Larry. If I beat Thomas, I was a shoo-in. He was playing a B/U waterspout beatdown deck. Game 1: In a very, very long game, I suffered Waterspout death. Game 2: In an even longer game, I got the engine running. I would put my man o' war back on my deck with my gangstamage, drop it, hit him with an ophidibook, and draw a card. He was stuck trying to recast critters to stop the lil' book, while I plinked him with a different gangsta and looked for a ghost or whatnot. His 'spouts died to the Vulture/Mage combo and I eventually beat him down, though I was pretty bloody, too. Pesky guildmage did more than 10 points to me. Game 3: We had nine minutes. We stalled it out. He was manascrewed in the end, but it didn't make any difference. In essence we agreed on a draw without discussing it. Matches: 3-1-1 Games: 7-4 Round 6 v. Les Douglas. If you haven't noticed, in 6 rounds, I played 4 people I know well from the scene, and only 1 person from the Vegas area. Les is a partner in the store that runs the tournies I help judge. He's playing an eclectic burn/abeyance/lapse deck. Game 1: He gets a good draw. I'm mana-short. I die to the pesky Lancer. Game 2: I get a good draw. He's mana-short. I do about 8 or 10 with a ghost. I win. Game 3 is the big match. Whoever wins has a good chance of making the top 8. He goes first and tells me I'm going to hate him. By the end of the game, I almost do. He manages to cast a lapse on turn 2, abeyances on turns 3, 4, 5, and 6, and a lapse on turn 7. He casts 4 Abeyances, 4 Lapses, 3 Impulses, and 2 Man o' Wars. Between that and the Hammer, I die a slow, painful death. Imagine that your opponent has 6 timewalks.... It was frustrating, but it was also cool. More fun than playing against prosp-bloom, that's for sure, and until he Man o' Warred my 'tog around turn 12, I thought I'd be able to turn it around. Did I mention that he drew 2 Phryrexian Furnaces? Where was my sideboard? Oh well. I deserve it: two weeks ago when Les was playing a Bosium/Abeyance/Counter deck, I played my Abeyance/Lapse/Peacetalks/passage deck against him, and I bet he was just as annoyed. Matches: 3-2-1 Games: 8-6 Not so bad for a judge :) The ride back was uneventful, though Dan's driving inspired me to start quoting scenes from the attack on the Death Star... Stay on Target, stay on target.... I left after round 6, so I have no idea who won. Preston, Broido, and Wong were all set to go to top 8, though, and Wong looked strong to win. Also, I don't know who won the dead pool.... I hope you enjoyed my report, and thanks for reading it. Now I know more about the other side of the judge/player thing. Next time I give you a warning for stalling, you'd better realize that I know _exactly_ what I'm talking about. Bob Blackman rhblackm@uci.edu