From: David Goodnuff Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.misc Subject: PTQ Lubbock, TX (8/3 - long) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 18:26:25 -0400 Local T2 report and Chicago PTQ report - Lubbock, TX 8/4/97 We ended up having 6 of us wanting to go out to the PTQ in Lubbock this past weekend. The Texas state champs were on Saturday and we would have liked to go to that but George Baxter's flight didn't get in until Sat so we had to miss that. The weekend started out with three of us: myself, Cary Darwin, and Bryan Sammon (Red) playing the local sanctioned t2 at Game Chest in Dallas. It was pretty small, only 27 people. 5 rounds of swiss with a cut to an elim of 4. Red is playing our version of buried alive with incinerates added, Cary is playing my copy of Dave Price's nationals sligh deck (card for card copy that is) and I'm playing a janky 'good stuff' type of deck that I threw together that morning (it turns out its very similar to Bigos's deck from nationals I'm told...black good stuff with manowars and incinerates thrown in). 1st round I play vs counterpost and a player who just doesn't have a clue how to play it. The first game takes forever and he is constantly making mistakes and taking things back. He wins the first game by tutoring for a greater realm (standard?) and we sideboard, in goes the slew of anti-counterpost sideboard stuff. I win the second game very quickly and we're running out of time in the third when I tap a swamp and an undiscovered to cast a winter orb, he counters of course (I knew he had the counter as he had tutored for it, I also knew that he had a thaw in his hand as well and that was it. I basically wanted to summon the dissipate so I could torch him to death.) Next turn I realize my mistake as the judge calls time and I miscounted and am 1 mana short of torching him to death because I tapped the undiscovered...ugh draw. Throughout the 2nd and 3rd game I was very strict about the rules. He played so sloppily the first game it was embarrassing. I probably did go overboard in being anal about the rules but I can guarantee one thing, he is a better player after it *chuckle*. I enforced such things as blocking a flanker with a rainbow, the rainbow dies and you cannot phase out. Nekrataal is a triggered effect, you cannot phase out in response to triggered effects. If you declare blocking then fast effects you can't go back and declare more blockers. If you thaw then tutor in response the tutored card gets shuffled in, etc. (see what I mean by sloppy?) 2nd round I play his daughter who is playing b/r land destruction. I finish her off pretty quickly in the first game with knights and a spite. In between games her father (who is sitting next to us) starts giving her advice on how to play me, I ask him to refrain from giving advice during a sanctioned match and he glares at me. Somehow I managed to refrain from laughing in his face. The 2nd game doesn't take much longer than the first. I'm slowed down a bit by pyroclasm's but still pull out the win. Black-red LD is pretty useless against black-red weenies-burn when I only need 2ish mana to get rolling. 3rd round I play vs a white weenie deck. 1st game the incinerates save me from his knights while my knights pound him down. 2nd game my sideboarded knights of the mist and incinerates do the same. Both games were over pretty quickly. 4th round I play another white weenie deck this time with a touch of blue (presumably for the sideboarded sleights). One game he sleights my knight and says "white, no black" puts the sleight in the graveyard and then tries to change his mind again to blue but I don't let him as its already in the grave. This turns out to be key as I later sleight it back to prot.white and finish him off with that knight. The 3rd game I win by beating him down to 1 very quickly and he gets out a cop:red. He has an outpost and some other lands, he casts armageddon and I ask if he has any fast effects in response (as he is the active player). He taps out to create a dude and I am able to incinerate him for the last damage. 5th round I am able to draw in to the top 4 as my tiebreakers are very good. In the top 4 Cary, Red and I are 3 of the top 4 so its a good showing for team Dallas. We decide to split the money 3 ways before we see the pairings so there are no hard feelings. I get paired vs Cary. Cary didn't get best draws vs me and I was able to win in three games. At one point I had a pump knight sleighted to prot.red just holding back on defense which made his lava hounds and ball lightnings pretty useless. Red beats the other guy (who is playing u-r) and we split the prize money. PTQ: From there we drive to Lubbock for the PTQ...not a fun drive I might add. We were going to meet George Baxter, Charles Wolfe, and Regan Reece there at Hatter's tourney center where the tourney was. This was a 7ish hour drive so passing it off with just a sentence or two doesn't seem quite right y'know? Well I'm leaving out the stop we had a subway for dinner where we were afraid of the guys behind the counter and Cary spent the whole meal complaining about how they weren't sandwhich artists like their shirts said. I'm also leaving out the 7 hours of trash talking we went through and the 80's music I subjected them too. Well we get there about 1 am and hear that Brian Hubble has won the state champs, congrats Brian! Red and Cary play some booster draft while I catch a nap in the car waiting for the other guys to show up. They get in about 3:30am and we grab a hotel for the night. The next day George and Charles are playing their u/w decks, Cary plays a slightly different u/w, I play a mono-blue with white sideboard, Red and Regan (who don't care about qualifying mind you) play mono-black and mono-red decks of George's respectively. 1st round George gets the bye and I play vs mono-red. For some reason he used 5 direct damage spells trying to kill my vodalian illusionist, I just kept phasing him out *shrug*. I won in 2 straight. He didn't burn me to death and couldn't kill me with creatures as both games I got out the phasing floodgate/wrath of god combo. Charles had to play vs Pierre (a team austin player who is quite good) they were both playing u/w and the 1st game lasted until time with charles pulling out the win. (1-0) 2nd round I play vs a b/u fattie/GETOUTOFTHEWAY! deck built by David Williams (a good arlington guildmages player here). 1st game he gets out an aku djinn and beats me down pretty far before I start phasing it out with my illusionist...meanwhile my illusionist and waterspout grow very large :) I won that one (heh heh). 2nd game he got an even quicker start and just crushed me with what seemed like 18 gallowbraids...ugh. 3rd game I draw 5 spells and 15 land (yes I counted them)...oh gee this is fun. (1-1 great start...) 3rd round I play vs a 4 color tolarian serpent/gaea's blessing deck. 1st game takes a long time, he savage twistered I think about 8-10 times during that game before finally decking me. In goes my anti-red sideboard stuff. 2nd game I drop a hazerider and protect it vs the pacifisms (which were the only non-red removal I think) and get an easy win. 3rd game he gets the 1 land start discarding draw but I don't think it mattered as again I got an early drake with counters to protect it vs his minimal non-red removal. I hate mana screw...I even hate winning from it. (2-1) 4th round I play vs green with a touch of red. Both games I get out the phasing floodgate early and am never in any danger. After the match he says that upon seeing my deck he knew he couldn't beat me but just wanted to see how long he could drag it out. (3-1) 5th round I play vs another arlington guildmages player Jeff Zandy (sp?) playing u/w. I won one game pretty easily (the first?). Then he got a great draw 2nd game and narrowly won with the multiple manowar/memory lapse/abeyance thang. Then 3rd game once again I draw 3 times as much land as non-land...4 spells, 12 land. I dropped out at this point as I was just too disgusted to continue. Well George and Charles both made top 8 and had to play each other 1st round. Oh fun, card for card identical u-w decks... Well to make a long story short George ended up winning in 3 games. Next he played Sam Nam (another of the excellent austin players) for the slot...also playing u/w. Two rather long drawn out games followed with George winning and qualifying for Chicago! In the 2nd game of that match both players were exhausted (it ended at 1:30am) and making numerous mistakes. Sam was at 1 at one point, George had 2 1/1 flying afterlife tokens, Sam had a waterspout and taps down to 1 island untapped to cast a serrated biskelion. George didn't attack... oops. Another point later in that game, George tries to manowar one of Sam's blockers for the win but Sam desertions the manowar and returns George's other manowar to his hand! George then screwed up and manowar'd one of Sam's creatures rather than his manowar that Sam had! The rest of the top 8 was (I believe): u/w (George) beats u/w (Charles) u/w (Pierre from Austin) beats u/w (Jeff Zandy) u/w (Sam Nam) beats mono-red (?) b/r (? an Austin guy?) beats b/r (?) George beats Sam for the slot the b/r beats Pierre for the slot and the b/r beat George for the win I'm sorry I don't recall the name of the other guy who qualified but he was another Austin guy. Congrats to him and to George! David Goodnuff goodnuff@ix.netcom.com Nuff on irc #mtg