From: "Sean McKeown" To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Subject: Tourney Report, Chicago PTQ New York 0906 Date: Sun, 07 Sep 1997 12:10:10 PDT Here is my tourney report for the recent New York Chicago PTQ, held at Neutral Ground on Saturday, Spetember 6th. As per usual, I decided to go with a monored deck, this time leaving out the Trick Sideboard.. it did me well, but not well enough. The first 'mistake' of the day was not eating breakfast...the seconds was having RatBurgers from McDonald's for lunch...the third was not eating dinner. Other than that, though, I didn't make any major blunders. I've forgotten the names of all of my opponents except for one, who I knew already :) My decklist was as follows: 4x Talruum Minotaur 4x Suq'Ata Lancer 3x Viashino Sandstalker 2x Wildfire Emmisary 2x Dwarven Miner 2x Orcish Settlers 4x Hammer of Bogardan 4x Incinerate 4x Fireblast 3x Thunderbolt 3x Kaervek's Torch 2x Mind Stone 4x Quicksand 4x Rock Tar Pit 15x Mountains SB: 2x Reign of Chaos 2x Bubble Matrix (Why?? I forget ;) 2x Cursed Totem (Nice) 3x Aether Flash 2x Orcish Settler (Crucial!) 1x Wildfire Emmisary (also nice) 1x Final Fortune (never drew it, woulda loved it sometimes.) 2x Touchstone (Sandsipoise, and to tap Matrices...rather than Builder's Bane) Match One: vs. G/B Speed He's playing what is basically a B/G fattie deck, with the horrors, Wurms, rogues etc... lacked a strong midgame, and the card disadvantages he put himself at usually bought him the match. He was using 4 Dark Rituals and a Cadaverous Bloom or 2 to ensure he could get a Spirit of the Night out 'early'... Game one: He has a decent offensive force going, but I burn him to death once he hit the 'danger zone' of 12 Life. Torch, Fireblast, Fireblast, die. Game two: I get mana-gimped...very light, severely limiting what I have to work with. He uses 2 Dark Rits to get out the Spirit, which pegs me to 7 before I can Incinerate and T-Bolt it. I have to sacrifice my only 2 Mountans to a Fireblast to kill something nasty, and I end up very dead when I don't draw more. Game three: Burn mode. Bye-bye. Match record 1-0, game record 2-1 Match two: Vs. Burn/Anti-Burn deck. It's Burn, with White added for Passages and Reflect Damages in mainboard. Game one: We trade Burn, and I use my creatures to nice effect. I am at 2, he at 6, when I have a Talruum out. I Torch for one, play the Stalker, and attack. He passages the Stalker, so I'm dead. He's at 2 from the Talruum, I Fireblast to get a draw. He Reflects the damage to me; he didn't like that plan. Game two: I've sided in the extra Settlers to eat his Plains, an Emmisary for a Stalker (usual move vs. Burn, harder to kill the Emmisary) and the Final Fortune of course. I don't see any of them, and he sees a lot of heat. It's a race to the bottom; he won it. Oh, well....beat at my own game ;) Match record 1-1, game record 2-3 Match three: vs. Ertog with 5color SB Funny guy, this one....he kept asking wether I minded or not if he cheated. Wether I minded if he discarded his Rukh Eggs. Wether he could both play AND draw... tried to keep me on edge. Didn't work ;) Game one: I burn the right creatures at the right time, killing Ertai as soon as I see him and burning the 2 biggest of his 3 creatures after he does a nice little song of blood for 4. No Tog, so I live. Then I burn him with some Torches, Hammer recursion, and I Stalk him repeatedly. I win. Game two: I know he knows what's in my sideboard, 3 or 4 Flashes. I also know he's going to put in something to deal with it (it turned out to be 3 Serenities). So I get all funkified, and all I SB in are the Fortune and Emmisary (nice blocker, pumpable attacker...). It's a similar re-hash to the first game; I Hammer Ertai ASAP (I got 2 of his 'Togs in the GY that way :) and I kill the early 'Tog he lays, only able to pump its toughness to 4. I laugh after he uses a Serenity, and I sac both of my Stones for an additional card. He hits the bottom soon afterwards. Playing mind-games turned out to be an effective strategy... Match record 2-1, game record 4-3 Match 4: vs. Ertai/Stairwell (no Songs) This player got at least to the Semifinals; I don't remember wether he got a Pro Tour slot or not. We didn't exactly have normal, fair games.... Game one: He's mana-light, I'm mana light as well but not as bad since I draw some more Lands. He does fairly well for himself, having an offense thanks to his inexpensive creatures. I kill the creatures, and lay some land-munchers (a Miner, when he had 2 Basics and 2 nonbasics as his lands). He immediately gets defensive, with Man o' War action, but he's fresh out of Nekretaals (used 2 already) and I eliminate his lands after he manages to play a Stairwell that he can pay the upkeep on exactly once as long as my Miner sticks around. I take 10 from the Stairwell, putting me at 10, then wipe out his lands and pull some more creatures and heat on him. I win. He keeps whispering, those fucking Miners... Game two, and game three: Identical games. He serves me up a masterful one-land draw twice in a row, killing me with little to no contest. Oh well... this was the only match that troubled me, because I have a mere 25 mana sources in my deck, so the probability of this happening twice in a row is unlikely at best. Coulda, shoulda, woulda won, because I put in the Flashes and could still burn him after they hit. He's got to teach me how he shuffles his opponents' deck next time I see him. Match record 2-2, game record 5-5 (eek! I'm batting .500!) At this point I know I'm out of it, but I play anyway....dont want to write a report that says, 'Oh, I scrubbed out at 2-2'. Match 5: vs. Yuan Wang, playing B/U Good Stuff I know this deck inside out, since I played him and beat him at the last NY PTQ. I like Yuan. But that doesn't mean I am going to go easy on him...besides, it still IS just a game, and it's not for the Top 8 this time (it was last time....) Game one: His Nekretaals etc. bust house, Man o' Wars etc. etc. ad nausiem. I roast and toast him, leaving his creatures alone... I win. Game two: Re-hash of game 1. I don't even sideboard. I end it with him in the Danger Zone of 12, Torch, Fireblast, Fireblast, good night, sweet prince... The rounds are 70 minutes; we have an hour left till the next round so we just play and shoot the wind for a good long time. Match record 3-2, game record 7-5 Match 6: vs. a Peacekeeper lock deck. The point of this deck was to gain card advantage (and slight time advantage) by a super-Cantrip/card-drawing effect, then play a Peacekeeper (Veiled, of course) and counter whatever seems important while keeping high on life with the Wisdom. Death comes by 20 points from a Magma Mine. Game one: I am slightly mana screwed, unable to really begin a beatdown until it's too late and his resources are too well-developed. He gets out the Keeper and Veil, I burn him and his life totals fluctuate rapidly, but the Wisdom keeps up. I take 20 from a Magma Mine, personally the MOST embarassing means of death I have ever suffered. No, I have never been killed by an Ornithopter, BTW. Game two: I see the weakness in his deck, and the answer in my sideboard....he needs White mana! Let's not give it to him! I take out the T-Bolts for the Emmisary and Orcish Settlers (yay!), and consider getting funkified by putting in AEther Flashes (not good when the opponent relies on a little 1/1 creature). I don't, and the opponent had sided in Bubble Matrices anyway. See? Mind games! I get an early attack force full of Celerity thanks to a decent draw of Land. I'm light on the heat, and the Settlers make an appearance to wipe the board clean of Plains after he taps out to play the Peacekeeper and Veil. OK...I can live with not attacking for one turn. I win shortly after depriving him of mana sources. Game three: Same as game 2, THANK YOU SETTLERS!!!! except I get a bit more heat and prevent him from being able to cast an early Wisdom (Thanks to you Miners, as well!!!!). Didn't take long after that, because I Stalk him a bit and burn for the rest. After the match, I accidentally piss him off by telling my friend that 'His deck sucked...'. I would like to note now, if my opponent is reading this... What I was going to say is, your deck sucks without the ability to cast white spells...it's not an insult, just an explanation to my friend as to how I managed to pull a win. Obviously the deck wasn't too bad if I played you in the 3-2 bracket... Match record 4-2, game record 9-6. Match seven (Final match): Vs. MonoBlack Beat-Down He showed me his sideboard afterwards, and he left some of the goodies there instead of the maindeck, most importantly Enfeeblement. Seems he was starting with Urborg Justice in his deck, along with just about everyone else who was sporting sizable amounts of Black... Game one: We trade blows with creatures, mine get 'Talled a bit, but then I pull some hammer recursion around turn 6 or so to clear the way. Justice snags the rest of my creatures, after a RatBomb, to clear the board. He plays a gallowbraid, I take 5 from it and he takes 3, then I pay the mana to Fireblast it during his upkeep. I follow it up with a switch into Burn mode, and a Stalker. Buh-bye. Game two: I actually managed to play headgames with him too. I sided in the Emmisary and (I think) the Orcs as well, because of his Drains and high CC creatures like Gallowbraid. He expected the Flash, and laid the Matrix to prevent it from ruining his day. That Matrix made him take pain from his Urborg Stalker; combined with the pings he took from his early Fledgeling Djinn, it's a fairly fast Torch-Fireblast-Fireblast kill. Match record 5-2, game record 11-6. I had no chance at the Top 8, after my fourth-round loss to double-Manascrew. Oh, well... sorry, I gave it my best shot. Shit happens sometimes. No trip to Chi-town for me. Sean McKeown Gandalf@BDominia.com "While I grew up I hid behind a smile, I was never allowed to be an average child, And now the years have forced me to be a man, I find I can't go along with this meaningless sham.... I want to find a new way... But I can't make it on my own... I want a partner in crime... So I don't feel so alone......." --White Town, "The Death of My Desire" by Jyoti Mishra ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com