From: majakobs@news.abo.fi (Markus Jakobsson INF) Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy Subject: Report: 30 Aug Stockholm PTQ - Scrub! Date: 3 Sep 1997 10:36:04 GMT Well, this is a report of a scrub going to his first torney ever. One of my friends works with one of the guys in the club of 'serious' Magic players in my town, and when that guy mentioned some of them would be going to the Stockholm PTQ as a warm up for the Copenhagen torney later this fall, we figured it might be fun to come along and play some 'real' Magic for once. None of us two had ever played any 'format' like type 2 or MiViLite before, but I at least had the benefit of having followed this newsgroup for quite a while, so I sort of knew what could be expected in a MiViLite torney. To skip the pre-torney 'How I prepared' shit, jump to when you see something like /#¤/#&¤/#(¤&/¤&/#(/. Anyway... We hooked up with the others about a week or so before the torney to start playtesting things. I was thinking of either running your basic red cheese thing, for obvious reasons: Easy to build (xcept for hammers), easy to play for a scrub like me, and the very real chance of getting a couple of freebie games from manascrew (which I as a scrub would sorely need ;)), or a B/w thing since it looked as if there would be 3 abayances for me to borrow at the time, with the regular Ophidians, Man-o-wars and Waterspouts and Honorable Passages etc for white. My blue deck would have had Mystic Veils. I sure sign of my scrubdom I suppose :). I just figured that with all the anti creature (in my case Waterspout) shit, like Man-o-War, Nekrataal, Dark Banishing, Thunderbolt, Fireblast etc etc, I really felt I wanted more than just counterspell protection for the Djinn once I actually got it on the table. Plus, Mystic Veil is nice against Sandsipoise if you can delay it for long enough to drop a veiled creature. Well, well. just my scrubby metagaming, hehe. I lean more towards the B/w as the week goes by. On wednesday the guy I knew before this week decides he doesn't want to go anyway, and I'm doubting if I want to be the lone scrub going, but decide that I'll go anyway and at least try to win one single game and do some card trading. Anyway... On the morning of the torney it seems as if I won't get to borrow the abayances after all so I chuck my B/w deck and decide to go with the red cheese I threw together the night before. Straight out of the Generic Torney Report. As we sit on the ship from Finland to Sweden, I put together some sort of sideboard with a little help from the others. We get to the torney hall and I get my DCI number (how do I find out my ranking btw?:)) and fill in the deck list. We find out there'll be 5 rounds of swiss and we sit down and wait. The hall is crowded and there is no air conditioning and the windows can't be opened, so it's hot as a sauna in there, but as we are from Finland, that should only be to our benefit against the swedes ;). Besides, my cheesy burn deck LIKES HEAT!;) Speaking of the cheesy burn deck, here it is. 4 Suq'ata Lancer Sideboard: 4 Talruum Minotaur 4 Sirocco (useless to me in this torney) 4 Viashino Sandstalkers 2 Builder's Bane 2 Wildfire Emissary 2 Serrated Biskellion 2 Keeper of Kookus 2 Reign of Chaos 2 Stone Rain 4 Incinerate 2 Final Fortune 4 Kaervek's Torch 1 Cursed Totem (For the damn Necratog, could only 4 Thunderbolt get a hold of one) 4 Fireblast 4 Rock Slide 2 Mindstone Real original deck, huh? 22 Mountains Yes, red burn without hammers. The only hammers we could get a hold of were beeing used by another guy, but hey as the Generic Torney Report demands, I have to point out another card that rocked in it's place, and those were my 4 main deck Rock Slides ;) The others with me were Pihl (playing the Red With Hammers), Olin (playing an Armour/Falcon thing - Hey, I did not have the heart to tell him that deck is generally regarded as weak here. He was using the abayances), Victor (playing B/U Ertai/Tog that crushed me everytime in testing whichever deck I used), Jelle (playing some R/B thing I never really had a look at - which I don't regret (see later;)), and Dennis (playing Sandsipoise, the perhaps not as effective but quite cool-points-earning Taniwha varient. This one took everyone by surprise though, seemed like noone in Stockholm had ever even heard of the Sandsipoise. Noone understood they were in a lock until he explained it to them). Anyway... On with the real report. (/%&(/%/)(/&)(%/&)(%/()%/&)(%/&)/&)(%/&/%&()%/&)(%/%&(/)%/%(/&()%/&(%/ First of all, sorry to all of my opponents for not remembering their names. I was just too nervous throughout the whole thing to take notes and names and such (and thus this is mostly from memory, so there might be a few errors here and there). Round 1 - Against a G/W Weenie/Armour thing. A nice guy with glasses who played a deck full of weenies suitable to slap the empyrial armour on. Thankfully for me, the first time I ever saw an armour was when he layed down his hand after I won the last game. It is true that a deck like this is too weak if it relies only on the armour to win. Game 1: I am sooooo nervous. I sit an fumble my cards all over the table while shuffling, and I'm almost trembling when I draw my opening hand. No lands. Great start. I show him my hand and he comments 'Hmm, burn, burn, burn' and smiles. No surprises up my sleeve now :) I reshuffle and draw again, and it looks better. I go first and lay down a mountain. He drops a forest and plays a Quirion ranger. I drop a mountain. He attacks with ranger and drop a River Boa. I incinerate him, and it's my turn. I drop a mountain and play a lancer and attack for 2. He attacks for 3 (hmm I'll lose this way) and pacifies my lancer. I drop another lancer but don't attack. He drops another boa etc etc. This goes one for a while until the board looks: Him, with a tapped river boa and an untapped ranger, me with a pacified lancer. I have a sandstalker and an incinerate in hand. Picture this: I want my sandstalker to hit HIM. In a fit of temporary insanity brought on by scrubdom and nervousness, I incinerate his ranger! Great move!! Of course, he uses the ranger to untap his boa before it dies and I sit there staring at scrubdom materialized in the form of his untapped boa. Next turn he drops a scalebane's elite which bashes me a few times, and when I finally draw enough burn to kill it, he's got other weenies to finish me off and the burn in my hand will only bring him down to 2. 0-1 Great start :) I side in the biskellions for his boas and the Reign of Chaoses. Game 2: Things go better for me as I see no boas and no freewinds this game. I have to fireblast the Scalebane's Elite, and I feel I have to torch his Zebra Unicorn (!) before he slaps armour on it. I incinerate a 3/3 Maro before THAT sees an armor and my talruums and sandstalkers bring him down to single fireblast range. Wow!!! I have just won my first torney duel!!! I feel much better now, at least I won't go home with 5 x 0-2!:) 1 - 1 Game 3: The cruel mana gods turn away from my opponent, who only sees two plains the whole game. I go 2nd turn Incinerate (he's at 17), 3rd turn lancer (15), 4th turn Talruum (10), 5th turn Talruum, one is passaged (the only Honorable Passage I see all day thankfully. I feared them very much!)(5) two Fireblasts (0). Yeah!! Match for me!!! I feel good that I managed to recover from that godawful first nervous scrubby mistakes game, albeit thanks to Opponent Manascrew. I breathe a sigh of relief and tells him this was my first torney match and he congratulates me and helps me fill in the score card, hehe :) He was a valiant manascrew loser and we wish each other good luck. Record: Match: 1-0 (!!!!!!! :)) Game: 2 - 1 Pihl also wins first match, as does Victor and Dennis. Olin never sees an armour and is crushed, and Jelle loses and takes the first step down the dark path that will lead him to 0-5, hehe:) Round 2: Against a B/U/r Ertai/Tog/Song kind of thing. Another very nice guy who tries to chat with me, but I'm still to nervous to keep up a decent conversation :) Hope he did not think I was a dweeb for not chatting as happily as he was. Game 1: I get only two lands and after incinerating him once, I have to start discarding for a few turns. He says: 'Ah, discard, how generous!', but not in a mean way. I did say he was a nice guy;). He introduces me to some Fallen Askari and Circling Vulture friends of his before he drops an Ertai's Familiar. I go 'Ah-ha!', figuring the Tog can't be far behind and when he says done, decide to Thunderbolt the Familiar. It's just, of course, that the Familiar does not fly! I scrubbed out again, but when I feebly ask if I may bolt the vultures instead, he chuckles and says ok. Nice guy as I said (plus, no harm for him having the vultures in the graveyard when the Tog arrives I suppose:)) He songs of blood once, but draw no creatures *phew* when he does the next time after having Nekrataaled and Man-o-warred away my few blockers, I'm crushed. 0-1 I just have no idea how to stop this deck with monored. I side in Reigns, Biskellions, Siroccos, but not the Cursed Totem. I forgot about it until the middle of the next game! Duh! Game 2: Well this game went sort of the same. Early Askaris and some Nekrataals and Man-o-Wars for my creatures. I Sirocco him once when he is tapped out, more to see what's in his hand than in hope of removing any counters, as I haven't seen once single one. Once he attacks and THEN casts song of blood. I say: 'Ehm? A sorcery during combat?', but let him back up and play it before the attack since he was nice and let me redirect my bolt earlier. Not that it made any difference since I had no blockers. The end comes when Mr Necratog rides into town and I don't block it with my lone lancer since I figured he didn't have that many creatures to feed it. Thing was I counted the creatures in his graveyard before I rockslided two Nekrataals and two Askaris his last turn. Another extremely scrubby mistake that cost me this game. Well... It cost me the game one or two turns earlier than it would have otherwise, as the outcome was pretty certain. Record: Match: 1-1 Game: 2-3 Pihl also loses second match, as does Olin and Jelle. Victor unfortunately ends up facing Dennis, and they play instead of drawing this early and Victor's B/U Tog defeats Dennis 'One land opening hand and that was Lotus Vale'-draws. Round 3 against R/B Lancers, Sandstalkers, Burn.. My opponent is a young kid that seems a bit shy and doesn't say anything. I'm not one to take that as a sign of him being a scrub too tough, and I'm possibly even more nervous now, since I don't really feel like losing to a kid half my age ;) Never really did see what the blue was for in this deck. I saw islands, but I can't remember him casting one blue spell... Possibly a Cloud Elemental, but I can just be imagining that... Game 1: Worst manascrew of the day for me. One land opening hand, and the only one I see before it is Stone Rained on his third turn. Next turn I draw another one, and THAT one gets stone rained. All this while lancers and sandstalkers grind me into the ground. 0-1 I side in the Reigns since I did see an Island, and the Stone Rains, more for wanting to get back at him than any other reason, heh. Not a very good reason, but...:) Game 2: Don't really remember this one. I think I just got the advantage gradually, and when he had to double quicksand my Talruum, I managed to outburn him. 1-1 I still have a shot. From somwhere to my right I hear Dennis go: 'Yes, that's exactly how it works, the lands I phase out won't come back since you have no untap phase with the Sands of Time in play' :) Game 3: I burn him, he burns me, I send lancers at him, he sends them at me. Game winning move is when he is at 11, I am at 8, and I know he's holding a Sandstalker, I draw my 6th mountain, allowing me to Sandstalker him down to 7 while looking at the rockslide for his sandstalker and the 3 untapped mana I need for it. I also have a fireblast. He thinks he's won and wants to show off a bit and taps his 3 remaining (after fireblasts and quicksanding) mountains, sacs two of them, and throws down the fireblast and the sandstalker on the table in one swift motion. As he leans back, thinking he's won, I wipe the smile off his face by tapping 3 mountains and showing him the rockslide for his stalker. He goes: 'Uhm.. Well... I still fireblast you for 4.. I suppose..' My turn I draw another stalker, and I send the Viashino brothers over to his territory to beat it into him that the mountainsides in my lands are very unstable. 4 main deck slides worth of unstable to be exact :) Record: Match: 2-1 (!!:)) Game: 4-4 I mention as we fill out the score sheets as this was my first torney, and he says this is his first one as well. Pihl also wins and is 2-1. As is Victor who wins. Dennis loses once again, and Olin gets his first win... Against Jelle (0-3), hehehe. Round 4 against Olle Sahlin with my deck! Olle's name is the only one I remember, and I'm a bit in awe of meeting him since he's the one publishing the swedish Magic magazine Centurion, and also one of the team that made the roleplaying games that formed my nerdy 7th to 9th grade roleplaying existance. He is a very nice guy though, and everytime I burn him he goes 'Ouch!' almost making me feel ashamed :) He does have more goblin weenies in his deck than I do, and he also has Mana Web. We chat a little before starting and he says he also has had problems with B/U, and I think 'Phew, at least he's not playing it then' Game 1: I get a first turn keeper, he lays mountain. I incinerate ('Ouch!') him and he Incinerates me. I lancer, he lancer, I Talruum, he Sandstalkers. He chuckles as I say: 'Hmm, I seem to recognize your deck from somewhere'. His Mana Web keep me from putting my Keepers in front of his stalkers (I am a bit slow a few times in saying how many lands I tap for mana and how many are just tapped, and he asks me to be more clear, though not in a 'you cheat!' kind of way, but a nice one), but when I get enough mana on the table, I use the two torches I had in my opening hand ('Ouch!') two straight turns to get him before he gets me. 1-0 I side in Final Fortunes and Stone Rains for the quicksands I saw first game, and Builder's Bane for the Mana Web. Game 2: Pretty much the same. He drops the mana web again but I for some reason forget to Bulder's Bane it for two turns. Things go down to me being at 8 and him being at 13 with him tapped out and none of us with any blockers. I have 6 mountains, a Sandstalker, a Torch and Final Fortune in hand. He has 3 cards in hand, I know one is a Sandstalker, I know I'm dead on his next turn if any of the other two are fireblast or torch. I decide to go for it and sandstalker him down to 9. I cast final fortune and know I need to draw burn. I draw fireblast =). I sandstalker, torch him for 2 ('Ouch!') and then almost apologize as I Fireblast for the win ('Ouch!'). Record: Match 3-1 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) Game: 6-4 The games were so quick we play once more for fun but he's manascrewed so we end the game and he brings out another, monogreen deck that he'd been wanting to play here, but didn't since it only did so-so when he tested it earlier. He had call of the wild and preffered selection, that 'Sac a creature to draw a card' artifact, and things like that. He used snakebasket tokens to draw cards instead of attacking (with me staring at the rockslides in my hand:)) and call of the wilded out Stampeeding Wildebeests time after time. Shame he didn't find any of the Aborroths:). After the beatdown we counted it to him drawing some 17 more cards more than I had:) Wow, I'm at 3-1 and there's actually a chance of me going top 8!:) Pihl lost and is 2-2, Victor won and is 2-2, Dennis and Olin lost to 1-3 and Jelle lost to 0-4, dropping out :) Round 5 against B/R Weenie/Nekrataal/Burn/Song (I think) I feel pretty good as I'm seated at the 3rd table for the final, deciding round. I hear the people at the two first tables draw, but 3-1-1 won't take me anywhere, and not my opponent either. Besides, I'm not here to go to Chicago, but to play and have fun. This guy was not as nice as the others I played. He just sat there staring without saying a word, except for demanding I do everything exactly by the book. Any hesitation on my part = I did not do anything in time etc. Some guys just take this little game more seriously than others I suppose. Game 1: I get manascrewed again, which is pretty sad for a deck that only really needs 4 mana to run properly. I get two lands and manage to burn him once or twice and get a keeper out, wow. When I get my third land, he already has 6, and his Fallen Askaris have never been happier as they run over to me undisturbed every turn to poke me. I finally get a Talruum down, but lo! He has a Nekrataal in hand! Who would have thought? The Askaris joined by their unfriendlier chum eventually do me in. I begin to shuffle my deck vigorously, but stop halfway looking at him fiddling with his deck... What's he doing? Oh... Sideboarding. I smack myself and go *duh*, as I realize I had forgotten about it, hehe. What do I side in against this thing...? Biskellions can at least take out Nekrataals, and I won't mind having them Man-o-warred so they go in... Stone Rains for the Quicksands I saw, oh well. I hear Dennis go: 'Of course I can do that. I have no creatures, so all your creatures are in excess of mine and that means I can phase out all of them' :) Game 2: Well I get a somewhat better start, rocksliding some Askaris and a Nekrataal (he doesn't seem to know what rockslide does as he _rips_ it out of my hand to read it before he buries his creatures). He Coercions me with me with Thunderbolt and Fireblast in hand, so I burn him even if I think I might regret losing the two mountains. I drop a biskellion and think for a while. His next turn he attacks with Askari and Nekrataal. I mumble 'Hmm if I block the Askari with the biskellion and ping the Nekrataal...' and motions the Biskellion towards the Askari. He goes: 'Your creature dies!' and gestures violently toward it. Me: 'Eh?'. Him: 'Your creature dies!'. Me: 'But can't I...'. Him: 'Summoning sickness! Your creature dies!'. Me: 'But I have...' Him: 'Your creature dies!'. He takes the biskellion and throws it into my graveyard while I'm trying to figure out what just happened. I'm thinking 'Fine, be that way', disappointed that I had to meet a guy like this, while he beats me down with weenies and burn. Not that I think I would have had much of a chance otherwise, as things were swinging heavily to his advantage, but I still lost my motivation after that. Guess I just wasn't mentally prepared enough, but hey I'm a scrub :) Record: Match: 3-2. Game: 6-6. Well, that was it. Pihl and Victor wins leaving us three at 3-2. Dennis and Olin lose once more leaving them at 1-4. I'm still very pleased at going 3-2 in my first torney though, and actually having the chance of going further before the last round. Strange things for me was only seeing one passage, not one counterspell and no Ophidians. Some of the others saw the Ophies though so I guess I was just lucky. It was great getting to trade cards with people and I got to go home with among other things the 2 Wrath of God I had been wanting for a very long time, but hadn't been able to find anyone to trade with for:) We are all tired and hungry so we decide not to stick around for the side torney starting at the same time as the final 8 playoffs, but go get something to eat so we will be able to go home on the next boat. We buy some boosters to play for with our torney decks on the way home, and although I have the pleasure of torching and TRIPPLE fireblasting Jelle for 17 on my 6th turn, I don't get anything better than a Summer Bloom. Well, all in all it was a fun day, even if I might not go to any torneys again in the near or distant future. Hope you enjoyed reading this thing as much as I've enjoyed reading all the other reports here:) And if anyone can tell me how I can find out my DCI ranking, I'd be grateful :)