From: sprmario@netcom.com (Mario Robaina)
Subject: PT2...Simply Incredible!
Date: Tue, 7 May 1996 18:59:09 GMT

Well folks, I've just about recovered from the weekend, so I thought I'd 
give a quick summary of the weeks events...

Thursday

I arrived a the Queen Mary with Henry Stern and Scott Burke (two PCL 
teammates), and wandered around playing a few ante matches til the VIP 
Cocktail Party started at 5pm.  Good food, conversation and refreshments 
till the BBQ got started a couple of hours later.  I didn't even have a 
chance to eat having been yanked into a team sealed deck match against 
Leon Lindback and Neil from Sweden.  I got to bed relatively early at 
around 12am.

Friday

Got up early for the draft which started late.  Although the contestants 
were supposed to be split up by region I got stuck with two good LA 
players (Bo Bell and Mike Dove).  I eventually drafted a W/B/R deck that 
was somewhat disappointing, primarily because the fellow on my left went 
R/W and the fellow on my right went B/R.  First round I got paired up 
with Chris Pikula, a top 25 Type II player, who proceeded to pull out the 
team announcement post from his pocket.  We had a close first match, 
which I won 2-1.  I ended up hanging out with Chris quite a bit.  I 
guess I made a good impression 'cause I heard from a friend of his that 
he really wanted to dislike me and my PCL colleagues.  From there on out 
it was a bad tourny on my part.  People just seemed to get the right 
draws against me at the right times and I finished rather poorly out of 
the Top 64 :(.  At the end of the first day Mark Justice was at the top 
of the leader board, with Brian Wiessman and Mark Chalice at 2 and 3.

Five of my PCL teammates had made the cut and went to bed relatively 
early.  I had a great night of ante matches winning 5 Mana Drains, 1 
Crypt, many duals, and $.

Sat

I entered the Japanese sealed deck and dropped after a couple of matches 
because it was stupid to lose 3 sanctioned matches when I new I had no 
chance.  I then entered in the Type II, losing to the eventual winner in 
the 4th round.  I watched carefully as several of my teammates hung 
around the top 8 spots.  Preston, Frank, Henry, and Justice all were in 
contention.  Chalice had a bad draft and was consistently in the bottom 
half of the field.  In the final round Preston took 2 of 3 to propel him 
into the top 8.  Unfortunately, Henry and Justice had to ply in that 
round and the 2-1 split knocked them both out of contention.

An interesting note about Sat.  The top player was Tom Guevin from Mass. 
who had the most ludicrous deck I've ever seen in a draft.  He had 2 
Fireballs, 1 Disintegrate, 2 Drain Lifes, 1 Mind Twist, 2 Floods, and 2 
Giant Oysters.  How did he get all those?  Well it turns out that the guy 
on his right picked a Serra over a Fireball and on the second pack the guy 
on his left picked a Serra over the Mind Twist.  

After the final 8 were announced there was a really neat tourny held with 
10 contestants.  The 10 people involved all wrote chapters for a soon to 
be published advanced strategy guide for Type I. They were Scott Burke, 
Mark Challice, Matt Hyra, Henry Stern, Mark Justice, Jack Stanton, Brian 
Wiesman, Adam Maysonet, Mike Dove, and yours truly.  The tournament was a 
sealed deck tourny with the Beta Starters.  A large crowd gathered as we 
cracked open the decks to see wonders awaited inside.  Henry had a great 
deck that contained a Timetwister and a Chaos Orb, Matt's deck had a Mox 
Sapphire and mine contained a Time Vault.  

After the four rounds of swiss Justice was looking very sharp at 11-1, 
Chalice was 8-4, Jack was 7-5 and I squeeked in at 6-6 (I was swept by 
Justice in the final round. In two games he had his Power Sink to stop 
the Fireball that was about to kill him).

I had to play Justice again  in the semis and lost the first game pretty 
badly.  I felt he had a better deck so I pulled a coupl of lands for 
spells in the hopes of getting a little lucky to pull of the win.  It 
worked.  I came out fast, with some small creatures and dealt a lot of 
damage.  Mark was having trouble drawing creatures, and I held my Sengir 
until he used his control Magic on my Clay Statue.  The game was mine.  
Game 3 went about the same as game 2 except he hadn't draw his second 
Island.  I cast the Sengir early and finished him off quick.  I had 
somehow upset the juggernaught of our group.  Unfortunately I lost to 
Chalice in the finals.  I still walked away with an Alpha Time Vault, 
Tundra, Balance and $40 for second.  

Sunday

I'm going to skip right to the finals... Sean "Hammer" Regnier vs Tom Guevin

Both players are from the Northeast.  Hammer is playing a U/W control 
deck with 1 of each counter, 1 Control Magic, 1 Animate Dead, 4 Gaseous 
Forms, a couple of walls, and 2 Floods.  Tom is playing a R/G/W Critter 
deck with an Armageddon to finish most people off.

Game 1

Tom is considered the favorite by most, but Hammer is the underdog, so he 
has the fans behind him.  Tom gets out to the early lead and manages to 
finish of Hammer with an Anaba Shaman/Tim. Tom never got the Armageddon 
so that little trick is still a mystery to Hammer.

Game 2 

This was the turning point of the match.  Tom once again gets out to the 
early lead, until a Flood kicks in.  He is then caught in a stall drawin 
nothing but land till his Shivan pops up.  Tom had been saving land in 
his hand and was short land to play the Shivan.  He plays a land and 
casts the Shivan not waiting till the next turn when he could REB a 
counter.  The Shivan is power sunk by Hammer and the next turn it is 
animated.  Hammer kills Tom with the Animated Shivan and you can tell 
that Tom is visibly shaken.  He had be extremely confident in game one, 
but now he knew he could be beat.

Game 3

This game lasted well over an hour (I think almost 2).  Tom didn't want 
to make any mistakes so he played extremely conservatively and lost by 
running out of cards.  At one point near the end Hammer needed to draw 
his Swords to kill the Shivan.  With only 3 cards left in his library he 
had a good shot at it and when he did draw it the game was his. 

Game 4

Once again Tom let Hammer control the tempo of the game.  Once again Tom 
tried to cast his Shivan before he could REB the counter and it was 
animated.  Tom then tried to kill the Shivan by Immolating it and Bolting 
it.  He made a crucial mistake by doing it in that order, because Hammer 
had a healing salve to negate the Salve.  With a 6/3 Shivan, Hammer won 
the game quickly.

All in all it was a great weekend.

Later,

Mario.