From           sheckman@ix.netcom.com(Sam Heckman)
Date           21 Oct 1996 08:44:04 GMT
     _________________________________________________________________
             TOURNAMENT REPORT - THE CREW - ST. LOUIS PT QUALIFIER
   

St. Louis Pro Tour Qualifier
10/19/96

Background:

Friday afternoon I receive a call from teammate Max Szlagor.  He tells
me that Adam Maysonet E-mailed him a red deck that worked really well.
The red deck was undefeated against the 2 decks we playtested with the
most, R/W Haups and Browse.  The deck also seemed to have enough damage
to handle most black decks, or B/W decks. I was going to play my Browse
deck, but decide at the last minute to go with the strait red.  I made
the mistake of throwing away a month of playtesting in 5 minutes.

The Trip:

Out of the 7 people in The Crew, 5 of us make the Trip.  Mark Shumaker,
Kai Martin, Ron Serio, Brandon Rutter, and Myself.  Max Szlagor stayed
home because he was already qualified, and Adam Jansen wasn't able to
go due to his grades at school.  We leave Roselle (suburb of Chicago)
at around 6, we have a room near The Gathering Ground where the
qualifier is to be run.  At 8:00am we get up after getting about 4
hours sleep.  We headed to the Gathering Ground.  We drive right past
it at first, it looked like an abandoned Pizza Hut, if it wasn't for
the fact that we knew the street address we never would have found it.
When we get in we were both impressed and disappointed. I was impressed
by the facilities.  The Gathering Ground can seat about 256 players was
a clean well lit place to play.  (This may just be so impressive to me
because I have played tournaments in some weird spots)  The strange
thing is that they allow smoking in the building.  This isn't something
that I had heard of before.  I was glad to find out that smoking wasn't
allowed during tournament play.

The Games:
Round 1: vs. Craig Covert
         playing Black-White.  Withering Wisps/Cop Black/Knight Deck

Game 1: Incinerates and Lava Burst killed his blockers while Goblin
        Mutant served up a beatdown. I won.

Game 2: I sideboarded out 2 stone rains and Orcish Librarians for 4
        Anarchies.  He had a bad land draw, and to make matters worse I
        drew 3 Pillages.  He cast 2 spells all game, a knight that I
        killed and a Cop Black.  My Chaos Harlequin and Goblin Mutant
        killed him quickly.

I was the first to finish this round.  The judge told me my match took
only 4 minutes.

Round 2: vs. John Parks
         playing Blue-White-Red.  Outpost/Critters with light
countermagic.

Game 1:  John STP'd the first 2 creatures I played, a Harlequin and a
         Storm Shaman (Yanni).  I was doing fine until I emptied my
         hand an cast a Balduvian Hordes.  John politely informed my
         the Hordes was buried.  I freaked out, I had never played with
         the hordes before today.  I felt like a total newbie.  The
         words of Mark Justice "Don't throw out playtesting the night
         before the tournament" rang in my ears.  If I would have
         played with the card before, I never would have made that
         mistake.  Now that I had no cards in my hand, and nothing
         in play my opponent busted out a Storm Shaman and a Harlequin.
         He did 20 points to me in short order.  I lost.

Game 2:  I sideboarded in 3 Anarchy and 3 Pyroblasts.  I drew 1 land in
         my first 9 or so cards.  He got a Storm Shaman and protected
         it with countermagic. Every spell I cast that game was
         countered.  I had a Pyroblast in my hand, but never the Mana
         to cast a spell and back it up with the Pyroblast.  The Storm
         Shaman finished me quickly since I had no offense or defense
       at all.  I lost.

After talking with my opponent after the match I found out that quite a
few people had a deck like mine at the qualifier.  A strait red deck
won a Qualifier in Iowa, so everyone had to playtested against it.  I
used this deck hoping for suprise factor, only to find out that a lot
of players were using Hydroblast and Cop:Red standard to combat the
exact deck I was playing. I did a lot of research into new decks, but I
hadn't heard of the deck in Iowa.  At this point I wasn't very
confident in my deck's ability to beat the better competition.
Especially if I kept making Newbie mistakes.
I don't feel too bad, John ended up getting 3rd place.

Round 3: vs. Steven Mushek
         playing B/R Land destruction.

Game 1:  I got early Land destruction and killed him with a Mutant.  I
         won.

Game 2:  I got him to no land, and I had extra LD in my hand.
         Harlequins and Storm Shamans killed him fast.  I won.

It didn't seem that he had a good mana ratio, but of course I drew a
lot of Land Destruction in the games I played against him.

Round 4: vs. Rob Liska
         playing Olle Rade deck, but with Lurgoyfs

Game 1:  We killed each others creature with Direct Damage, but he
         broke the stalemate with a large Lurgoyf.  I died quickly.

Game 2:  He got an Icy, stormbind, Lurgoyf and a Canoneers on the
         Table. Needless to say any creature I played died, or was
         tapped.  The  Lurgoyf was a 7/8 when it finally killed me. I
       lost.

Rob is someone who I'd seen from playing in Chicago.  He was interested
in my deck, even after he tore it apart.  Rob made it to the final 8
elimination.

Round 5: vs. Douglas Braning
         playing Red/Green. Rampage deck

Game 1:  He had mana problems, he sac'd 2 tinder walls to play a
         Gorilla Berserkers.  I incinerated them and killed him quickly
         with my large creatures.  I won.

Game 2:  He played an early Varchilds War Riders.  I got down a Storm
         Shaman to block it.  He kept giving me survivor tokens, but
         none of his attacks with the Riders got through.  He died
    after giving me about 14 1/1 tokens. I won.

I had good draws both games, and the fact that my opponent gave me more
creatures to work with really killed him.

Round 6: vs. Shawn Nelson
         playing straight Red.  Land Destruction Creature.

Game 1: I drew 3 thawing Glaciers as my only lands for the first 7
        turns.  He got out a Rogue Skycaptain and killed me quickly
    with it.

Game 2: I had an awesome creature draw.  I slowed him down with LD, and
        killed his creatures to let mine get through.  I won.

Game 3: I got a Horde and a Harlequin out late in the game.  I attacked
        and used the Harlequin's ability.  He was at 9, and I did
        exactly that much damage.  I told him firmly he was dead.  To
        my suprise when the game ended he showed me his hand.  2
        Pyrokinesis.  He could have easily killed the Harlequin and
        lived.  I used "The Force" very well that game.

Because I didn't sweep that round I dropped at 6-2.  There was still 2
rounds of Swiss, but I knew my tiebreaker wouldn't be good enough.  I
went to watch my teammates play.  During the 7th round the lamest thing
I'd ever seen at a tournament happened.  During the first game my
teammate Ron Serio was playing in he was winning.  Suddenly his
opponent called the Judge over to inspect Ron's cards to se if they
were marked.  If you've never seen Ron's decks let me tell you this.
Ron has never used sleeves, he plays a lot and shuffles hard.  He had 3
cards that he used in a deck before this: A Stormbind, a Mountain, and
a Karpulsan Forest.  Because he plays R/G often these cards in
particular were really well played.  The judged ruled them to be marked
and Disqualified Ron whose record was 6-0-1.  This was the worst call I
have ever seen.  People came up to Ron all night asking him what
happened.  Not one person in the building said that the right call was
made. Nobody who looked at his deck could pick out the suspect cards.
It was total bullshit.  After the rounds of Swiss Brandon Rutter made
top 8.  In the quarterfinals he rolled his opponent.  His opponent
threw a fit, threw the table in the air slightly, scattering his cards
around and left after saying Brandon was playing a "d*ckhead deck."  In
the semifinals someone called the judge to have Brandon's deck checked
for marked cards for the second time in the tournament.  (yes, that's
right our team was checked *3* times for marked cards)  Brandon beat
this guy in the Swiss, so he just wanted Brandon DQ'd, because he knew
he would have lost.  The Judge made Brandon Proxie 7 cards, 5 of which
were land.  Brandon beat this loser 2 strait.  Brandon then went on to
beat a very polite player in the Finals, winning the travel money, and
a slot for Dallas.  The tournament went till 4:45am, and it was the
worst run tournament I had ever been to.  I had never seen so many
players try this much crap to get opponents DQ'd.  Luckily all the
people I played against were very kind and good sports.  I can't say
the same for the people who tried to bend the rules to get their
opponent's DQ'd.

Sam Heckman

*Team Member - The Crew*