Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 17:21:10 -0400 From: "Thomas F. Guevin" Subject: Nationals Report (long) There was a lot of talk about Necro domination, and that the majority of the field would be either Necro or anti-Necro decks. So the task at hand for the competitors was to either build a Necro deck that could beat other Necro decks and beat the anti-Necro decks, or build an anti-necro deck that was good enough to beat Necro, but could also beat other anti-necro decks. The Necro decks were there in force - armed with Dystopia, there was little the necro decks feared - other than another Necro deck. The anti-necro decks were there in force. Most were white/red and white/green with the controlling cards being armageddon, titania's song and mass creature removal (wrath, clasm, balance, etc). I saw Matt Place trading for Walls of Air right after I turned my deck list in. I was a little confused - Place is somewhat eccentric with magic, but nothing like this. I saw that he and a couple of other guys were writing up decks and finalizing them at the last minute. When I finalized realized they were playing Stasis decks, I was more than a bit surpised. But when they all started dominating the tournament, I began to respect the deck. The stasis deck is quite simple - get out a howling mine and then feed the stasis. Eventually kill your stasis, then get out a kismet and cast another stasis or recall the lost stasis. Stasis exploits the main weakness of necro - the unability to get rid of enchantments and artifacts without the disk. And considering that you need an untap phase to actually use the disk, if a stasis deck can get a permanent stasis, there is nothing a necro deck can do to get rid of it. The stasis decks' vulnerability is to early damage. Fast creatures and cheap direct damage (read bolts!) can knock the deck out before it can achieve the lock. The key is the howling mines and force of will. To beat the stasis deck you either need to get rid of the howling mines or cast so many key spells that they can't force of will everything. When I played Derek Rank in the final round I was able to beat the stasis deck with early damage and bolts. The key is to be all out agressive and to under- stand the lock, and how to avoid it. Either way I ended the day 4-2 with my strong anti-necro red/green deck that splashed in white and black. My two loses were to one necro deck that go unreal draws (ivory tower and dark ritual necro in the first two turns in both games I lossed) and a white/red control deck that combined exile and earthquake to kill me in the decisive game. Seeing on how I was out of the running for the championship, I watched some of the top players play and make their runs. The group that stood at 4-0 was a very strong bunch - two stasis decks, a song deck, multiple necros, and a couple of white/greens. At that point I predicted that one of three people who sat at 4-0 would win the tourney - Mark Justice, Mark Chalice, and George Baxter. I got the chance to talk to and watch these three play and will comment on why I thought they could win and what eventually happened. MARK JUSTICE Justice, the defending champ, had searched endlessly for a deck that could consistently beat Necro. He sacrificed time in preparing for PT3, and in the end couldn't find such a deck. He had prepared a pure white version of his PT1 deck, with armageddons and wraths instead of orbs and stormbind, but minutes before the tourney tossed the deck in the air in disgust, knowing it would loose to early hymms and creatures. So Justice decided to play Necro himself, and consulted with West Coast necro experts to make a deck. It was almost identically to Chalice's necro, but included cities of brass to support a balance, and had a cap in the sideboard - both changes would help Justice beat other Necro decks. And he did just that going 5-0-1 in the swiss portion. His tie came in perhaps the best match of the tourney, when he played Baxter's anti-necro artifact/ song deck. The third game came down to Baxter playing a Song, with Justice having an untapped disk out. Justice thought long and hard about whether to use the disk to kill Baxter's artifacts on the table, along with destroying several of his own cards. At that point it looked like either way Baxter would win the match - if Justice didn't Disk, Baxter would kill him with artifacts on the table and if Justice did Disk, than he would probably not have the offense to kill Baxter without running out of cards. In the end Justice did Disk, and would have run out of cards, had the match not been called on time. In the playoff, Justice was paired against Mike Long, playing the Mill-Stasis deck. Justice knew his deck had severe weaknesses against the Stasis deck and commented frequently how he wished he had disenchants. Before the match Justice discussed several strategies with PCL members, and in the end decided to play somewhat defensively to avoid getting locked down. He would be agressive with the strip mines, but try to hold as much untapped mana open to allow him to disk and/or drain life near the end of the game. In both games against Long, he had strong starts with hymms and specters early, but when long was able to recover and get a howling mine in play, Justice lost all aggressiveness and decided to play the slow stasis game. After conceding the first game, Justice sideboarded strongly going for consultations and the cap. In the second game, Justice put down a first round Hyppy, and long could only hold it off byt repeatedly boomeranging it. Justice twice used consultations, and to his dismay, consulted away his cap, to get his 4th strip mine. In the end he would concede the second game saying only "It's been great being your champ" to the crowd. All of Justice's effort in trying to build a deck to beat Necro didn't show up on Saturday, but he deserves much credit and respect for trying. But in the end ironically he would lose to such an anti-necro deck. MARK CHALICE The third ranked DCI player going in, and arguably the creator of the modern necrodeck, Chalice had a lot to prove at the Nationals. Deciding to play basically his standard necro deck, he added 4 Dystopia and 4 Contagion, and these worked wonders. For the first 4 rounds he annihilated his opponents. Chalice used Contagion masterfully in destroying an opposing Necrodeck. Playing extremely agressive, he would ritual out any early creature he could and just pound the opponent, using contagion to nullify any attacking creature on him. Needing to go 5-1 to get into the playoffs, Chalice had to win one of the final two matches. He had perhaps the worst pairing possibile, a while/green anti-necro deck with 4 dervish and a song standard, and a white/red removal deck with pyroclasm, strips and pillages. Against the white/green player, he had a strong start - ritual hippy on the first turn and ritual two hymms on the second turn. After that turn the only card in his opponents hand was ironically a whirling dervish. Chalice would go on to lose that match, and have to play the white/red deck to get in. In the first game, Chalice got the first turn hyppy, but had a poor mana start. Once his opponent killed the hyppy and the sole swamp, the first game went quickly. In the second game, Chalice again had a poor mana start, and lost that also. After being 4-0, he experienced arguably the worst luck I've seen in a while at a tourney, and dropped his last two matches 1-2, missing the playoff by two spots. In the end Chalice proved he deserves his number 3 ranking, and along the way schooled several people in how to play Necro. But like many other top players he finished 4-2, further suggesting the need for another round of swiss. Too many top players finished out of the top 16, because of a single game loss. GEORGE BAXTER I talked to Baxter the morning of the nationals and watched some of his pre-tourney preparations. He and his friend both showered their cards in baby powder to ensure good shuffling. It was good luck in Dallas and would prove to be good fortune in Ohio, as Baxter dominated Saturday with his white/green artifact/song deck. Baxter would jokingly say "my deck has 22 creatures" - refering to the 22 artifacts that could attack once the Song was in play. Baxter's deck was 'textbook'. He had serrated arrows against necros, along with winter orb. He used Icies to lock with the orb and to hold back creatures until the wrath, and he used aelipile and plowshares to kill hyppies and other fast creatures. Baxter played heavy anti-artifact in the main deck - with divine offering and disenchant to clear away disks and artifacts before the song hit the board. Baxter's play Saturday was superb - while being jovial and light hearted he made several calculating plays. When matched up against Mike Dove's stasis deck, Baxter put on a show, annihilating Dove, by locking him in both games - once with a Titania's Song (stopping the howling mines) and once with the Icy/Orb combo. But sunday would prove less fortunate for Baxter, as he made several key mistakes in the finals against Bentley - including the horrible mistake of not using his sylvan library. Baxter's effort was similar to mine in Long Beach - he had the deck to win the tourney, but just couldn't execute the final blow. In the end Dennis Bentley would win the championship with what I consider to be a rather weak red/black necro deck. The deck had many sound ideas, like 8 LD spells in the main deck (no Land Tax!) and lots of fast creatures, but he had so little life gaining that it's a wonder the necro and the damage lands didn't kill him before he killed his opponent! I'm also very suprised that he had no disks and only one shatter as things like serrated arrows and combos like Icy/pyroclasm would wreck him. The real key to his deck was Dystopia - you can argue that you don't need disks with dystopia - the only things that necro needs to disk are white knights, dervishes and COP's and Dystopia is more efficient than the disk in that aspect. My personal opinion is that Dystopia is too powerful and way out of control - the life loss is minimal compared to the destructive capability. I can't see it being restricted but I can see a possible end to the classical white/green creature days. I came away from the nationals with a couple conclusions - the days of armageddon versus necro are gone - Titania's Song and Stasis are now in the same league - being the key to strong competitive decks in the type two environment. It will be interesting the see how these decks play out in the new order of type II. Second, I can't wait for the world championship - finally we will have a tournament where the winner will be decided by results in several different tournaments. To win the worlds you will truly need to be a master of magic. I'll be there as will many of the top players from all over the world - if it comes close to PT2, PT3 or the nationals then already I know it will be an incredible event. Tom Guevin PT2 Finalist DCI #1 Ranked Sealed Deck Player P.S. I highly recommend that everyone who can get your hands on a copy of Mastyr magazine. It is Scrye's hot new mag and has some great articles bout higher level play strategies.