From: sprmario@netcom.com (Mario Robaina) Subject: Impressions of Dallas Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 22:13:29 GMT Well folks... I just got back from Dallas and I'm exhausted. It was a long weekend and I just didn't do as well as I'd hoped. For the first time I didn't play the standard PCL deck. I wanted to play a winter orb deck and I really felt that U/W was the strongest combo... With lots of anti artifact cards like Seeds of Innocence, Primitive Justice, Disenchant, Divine Offering, etc floating around, I thought that between 4 and7 counters would be neccessary. I built the first version of my deck several weeks ago and did pretty well at costa mesa despite throwing the deck together 15 min before the tourny. By last weekend I had the deck tuned much better and it was beating the likely PCL deck (R/W/G creature/removal stuff) and I was pretty happy although I was worried about Necro and Black Weenies... I upped the number of Serrated arrows in the main deck and COP: Blacks in the sideboard. On the Wed before Dallas Jason Zila, who liked the feel of the deck and watched me make it the Sat before, won the Wed night tourny at the South Coast Game Assn. However the night before the Type II, Zila had changed his mind and thought he was playing a W/G deck with insects to kill. Literally, 20 to 30 min before the start of the tourny Jason reworked the deck to add in the some counters taking out the Green. I convinced him to add Outposts in the sideboard and we headed back down to the tourny. At the last min. Jason put one Outpost in the main deck to relace a Titania's Song as his second kill card (Vise was the first). In the end we went in with about a 5 card difference in our decks. Those 5 cards were worth $19,000 as Jason took second place and I finished 185. All day long poor match ups and luck plagued me. After winning the first match pretty easily, I faced one of the Japanese competitors who was playing black speed. He had 4 Knights of various sorts on the table by turn 4, one with an Unholy Strength on it and I saw no Arrows or Wraths... In game two I was up to 4 Arrows, 3 Wraths, and 3 COP: Black... I never saw a single one as a single Pump knight and a 10 pt Drain life (with two Lakes of the Dead) finished me off despite having out an Ivory Tower since turn 1. When I drew in round 3 despite having the clear advantage, my hopes for the final 8 were just about over. I played the next four rounds against various control decks all with more counters than me. I managed to only win one of the next four rounds before I withdrew. Needless to say I was extremely dissapointed... I think I built the right type of deck to win the tournament. It just goes to show you what a little back luck in pairings can do. Oh, well. My weekend was saved by the team grand master that Scott Johns and I won on Saturday night... Unfortunately it was the only fun I had all weekend long. Now i'm unqualified for LA and I hate sealed deck. I found out this weekend that the format for LA is 6 or 8 person Rochester draft. I think you might as well raffle off the PT winnings with that kind of a format. At least in the constructed tournaments you see a lot of familiar faced at the top of the field. You usually get 5 or 6 known players in the top 8. But when you have a sealed tourny you have 2 or 3 known players and 4 or so that you'll never hear from again. This may not be a particularly popular view but I think that the PTs are way too large, with a lot of people that really shouldn't be "Professionals". I'd much rather see entry based on consistent top 8 performance of several Qualifiers rather than just top 2 at a single PTQ. Despite the fact that I now have to requalify for the Pro Tour I'd like to see tougher criteria for entry. At some point I'd like to see the Pro Tour be a little more than just a marketing tool for WotC. Oh, well I gotta hop... Later, Mario Robaina. Pacific Coast Legends. Struggling to remain on the tour... BTW, Dave Price of Ithica, NY once again failed to make top 32 and will be endeavoring to requalify for the 4th straight time. I'm curious if anyone else knows of anyone besides Dave and I who have finished top 2 at Qualifers for Columbus, Atlanta, and Dallas? -- sprmario@netcom.com