Subject: Team Dickhead San Jose Qualifier Report From: "Brian Hacker" Date: 1997/03/27 Hello all, Once again a Team Dickhead report. This time we take you to luscious San Jose, home of Match Play, the site of the first, but certainly not last qualifier for New York city. The team, Jason Zila, John Yoo, Truc Bui, and myself cruised up with a couple of friends to the qualifier. To spice up the usual beatdown festivities, we added some new west coast flavor. ;) We created a "death pool" where there would be a point value assigned to each player should we be lucky enough to take them out of contention. A few examples: Dan Grey (happened to be playing in a qualifier) 3 pts. (Can't ever argue with taking out a judge) Scott Johns 3 pts. We'd love to make him sweat for N.Y. Unqualified P.C.L. (That's most of theam ;) but only Mario and Preston were there besides Scott) 2pts. Nick Crestoff and others 1 pt. Can't forget about our friends and others. Various other players were worth a point. Each of the members of our team ponied up a twenty and the person with the most points walked away with the money. We gave three points for knocking out one of our own team and double if you took someone out just before reaching the promised land. So, the tourny began and Truc looked in good shape after pulling off his three card combo, v. geyser, torch, fireblast against Dan Grey, one of only two non-team 3 pointers in the field. The tourny highlight for me was playing Jason Zila in the fourth round, where the third game had us deadlocked. I had an abyssal hunter that was tapping his creatures down and various other creatures that could beat him if they got through but unfortunately I knew Jason was playing with King Cheatah and 2 emerald charms (wheh!, something smells!) and would kill me if my attack didn't finish him. While we were deadlocked, he brought out a Melesse Spirit and I was at three with two forests in my hand. I took a deep breath, drew the pacifism, my one answer to the spirit and laughed as Jason errupted, knowing how lucky I am. The clincher however, was when the judge came over and told us we had 30 seconds left. Without the repercussion of Zila's next turn, I attacked with everything and won, as Jason was bluffing with land in hand. 3 pts. Hacker 3 pts. Bui. Preston and I drew in the sixth and Preston wanted to play a twenty dollar money game for practice. I obliged by taking his twenty dollars in two games.;) I ended up 5-0-3 and the third seed in the tourny. Unfortuantely my other cohorts all finished in the top 16 but not high enough to make the final eight. Oh well. I drafted my pattened white-blue beatdown deck, and had to play Preston Poulter in the first round of the quarters. I had 75% white creatures and Preston had two soul rends straight as he knew he was going to play me. I beat Preston in four close games (one mutual destruction via crypt rat) and then beat Kurt Burgner in two in the semis. So after beating so many big names, I knew that my teamates would be buying my dinner with my large 7 point total. I lost in the finals to Jamie Billig(?) and waltzed proudly to the front desk only to find that my efforts garnered me nothing more than a pat on the back and some lousy Asian packs. Second at a qualifier and no money for a prize. Shucks. We all decided to make a road trip out of it and took off to Vegas where Truc brought the roof down at Ceasar's, John showed us why he's the anchor man, and I found that at the Stratasphere you can even make money rolling box cars on the come out. We all walked out up a couple bills but if it hadn't been for the terminator we might have walked out with more. Pulling an 8 on a twelve...ugly! But all this is another story. So the masters of talking shit, being a #1 seed, and losing horribly in semis sign off for now. The team rejoins for the qualifier this weekend so we'll see who can garner the most points. We love you Scott! Chill till the next episode, Hacker "Motherfucker!"- Ceasar's pit boss in response to Truc's roll of hard eight after holding the dice for over thirty minutes.