From: yhlee@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Young H Lee) Subject: tourney in philly report Date: 24 Nov 1996 22:28:26 GMT hello everyone. I posted a prison deck a few days ago and asked for advice on how to improve it. Well, I didnt like your suggestions so it didnt change much :P. The tourney i attended was the grey matter $1000 tourney. All in all, it was fun but there was one problem which I will address later.. 1st round : Sligh deck game 1: he bolts and bolts and blows me up. I get 2 icies out, he shatters one, I arcane it..with the rest of his mana, he brings out a gorilla shaman and bolts me. Next turn, I put out winter orb, he's tapped out but does like 8 points of damage with his creatures. Next turn wrath..i tap all his mana and he is locked..a few turns later comes a miser's cage.. he dies to it. game 2: same deal. he brings out a wildfire emissary and does a lot of damage with it. He pillages my plains so i only have 1 plains, 1 rock and 2 islands :(. I never get that plains and the emissary with bolts kills me. game 3: this was the best draw i could have gotten. 3 mana, 2 icies, 1 winter orb, 1 black vice. turn 1. I drop a plains. he drops a mountain. I draw a fellwar, drop island, fellwar. he drops a mountain and orcs. next turn icy. next turn icy + land tax. then winter orb + another icy :P he concedes 2 turns later when he asks how many counterspells I have and the answer is 2 round 2: I go up against a white weenie deck (which a LOT of people were playing). He gets out a first turn savannah lion and brings out a bunch of knights. I dont have a wrath in hand so i dont drop any plains. He brings out like 4-5 knights in all. then, i drop a plains and wrath (I had a fellwar out). He says doh.. he's at 2-3 cards and doesnt recover. I get the outpost going and counter his geddon. game 2: I make the biggest sideboarding error and put in karmas. what was i thinking..His crusades help my outpost and my outpost beats up on his weenies. round 3: he's someone from my school and he play's a disrupting sceptre (im not sure this is the right name..it's the one that makes you discard a card). game 1: first turn hippie. I dont draw any plains and i have 2 swords in hand. Hippie makes me lose both swords. he drops a sceptre turn 3 and i have 2 islands, an icy and a wrath.at any rate..he drops me to 0 cards and kills me with a sengir game 2: I side in 4x karmas. he basically does the same thing again, but i swords his hippie and blow up his sceptre. he gets out 2 racks on me and hymm+stupors me. 1 round I even took 6 damage because of this.. I eventually stabilize myself at 4 cards and basically stop everything he does.. Finally, i get the winter orb + icy out but he does primitive justice on my orb+icy when i have 2 mana out..2 plains I had tapped an island by mistake to tap the land he had untapped. that basically cost me the game because I had a freaken arcane in hand.. also, i looked at my library and it looked thin..maximum of 15 cards left.. I draw land tax and tax.. I look at the bottom of my library. Karma, karma, swords, karma, serrated arrows, karma. I laugh and mix my cards and proceed to lose in 2 turns to a sengir i cant kill. didnt draw a single karma..he was at like 12 and had like 12 swamps out P: discouraged, i still decide to continue the tournament. round 4: I play a good buddy of mine. he is playing a R/G/W ernhamgeddon + stormbind deck. A really good deck, but my deck does well against this type of deck..we had even playtested the night before for hours game 1: He brings out a couple ernhams and insects which get swords or wrathed away. He doesnt draw a single disenchant (of four) and I lock him up with 2 icies and a winter orb + miser's cage. game 2: long game..It is pretty much like the first. At around turn 40 I am out of arcanes and recall for 3 of them. He pyroblasts it and I realize that i tapped out all my mana with a hydroblast in hand. Again, another bonehead mistake on my part..Game is pretty much a standstill and I regret having sided out my feldon's cane :P Then, I draw an outpost and start hitting him for 1 or 2. he then gets out an insect and ernham. I am at 36 and he bolts the tokens i make in responce to the attacks of the insect and ernham. He runs out of bolts. I check his graveyard and realize he has 2 stormbinds in there.. I balance down to 1 land (almost balanced away my outpost) and kill him with 1 card left in my library. round 5: I play against yet another white weenie deck. and not only is the deck weenie. I find out the player is too. game 1: turn 1 :lions, turn 2 pump knight, turn 3 white knight + lion me : doh, ouch+doh. doh, ouch. after turn 4, i've taken 14 damage..i wrath but he has like 2 more knights in hand. game 2: he sideboards suspiciously. also, we were supposed to write our sideboards on the back of our sheets but i realize that he was using the back of the sheet to count our life total. I ask the judge if this is legal and he says that at some point they stopped asking people to write sideboards. At any rate, after 2 or 3 divine offerings (a common sideboard card of white weenie..LAUGH) on my icies. I die to his knights. He then yells at me for being a jerk and pissing him off. I say nothing, it doesnt merit a response.. Nobody playing white weenie does :) so, I end the day at a disappointing 3-2..At least I went over .500 and proved that guy wrong who had posted a response to my deck "i feel sorry for you man, but this is the worst deck I have ever seen :)" so I participate in a free type II for 12 packs of mirage.. I win a bunch of games and go down again to white weenie oh well. anyway, here is my deck.. it does not do as well as it did before due to seeds of innocence and other artifact destruction. and after ice age goes out, this deck will be dead :) anyway, here it is: white : 4x armageddon 4x swords 4x disenchant 3x wrath of god 1x land tax 1x balance artifacts : 2x fellwar stone 1x marble diamond 1x sky diamond 1x zuran orb 1x serrated arrows 4x icy 2x winter orb 2x miser's cage 1x ivory tower 1x black vice blue : 1x recall 4x arcane denial lands : 4x Adarkar wastes 2x ruins of trokair 3x mishras 1x strip mine 1x outpost 8x plains 4x island all in all. i could have made the round of 16 if i had made less mistakes and been able to get a little better draws (like a karma because i always had a disenchant in hand..[for dystopia]).. At any rate, I did better than most people thought I would do so I guess I am happy with my lackluster performance :) oh..and the sideboard : 1x winter orb 4x hydroblast 1x outpost 1x arrows 4x karma 2x sleight of mind 2x hurkyl's recall im not claiming that this deck will win big tourneys, but it is so much fun to play and frustrate your opponent. At any rate, I had fun locking people down and watching them ripping their hair out as I proceeded to tap what they untapped and tapped whatever lands they brought out. It was fun. well, cya all later -- Ogden's Law: The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up. Young's Law: If it were not for bad luck, I would have no luck at all. Jone's Law: The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.