Well, I've been in Europe for the past two months, hence the title. I've bummed around Switzerland, I've seen one bajillionth of France, and if it weren't for a scheduling conflict, I might have seen Vienna this weekend. Manuel Bevand consoles me by telling me that Vienna is the most beautiful city in Europe. That doesn't help.

So because I am not in Vienna, I am fee/font>o because I am not in Vienna, I am feeling bitter. Misery loves company, so I whined at Manuel until he stayed home from Vienna, too. Now we are both bitter and miserable, trying to cure boredom in Lyon. I'm typing this on his computer. He's playing the piano. It's a nice day outside. But we are Magic players. We don't notice.

We spent this morning, in fact, talking about Extended. I am in the middle of Lyon, France. Outside the window is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. The trains are running by, people are walking around town without coats on, and the crocuses are blooming.

So of course I spent my morning talking about Magic.

I suppose it's some comfort to think that maybe I am in Vienna. And since I am like the hordes of other Americans who travel to foreign countries to play in Magic tournaments, I haven't bothered to go outside yet. Lo, is that a money draft being held in the basement?

Yes, that makes me feel better.

So I spent this morning talking about Extended. After the usual breakfast of baguette, I surfed the Dojo and whoa! They banned Memory Jar!

I've seen it said in a lot of places, but I'll say it again. When are the designers of this game going to figure out that some mechanics are just forever too powerful? It's pretty obvious. E obvious. Either the card-drawing cards are downright broken, or they're unplayable.

Now, if you have to cripple a card to the point that it becomes unplayable, what's the point of printing it? If you've got to ban it later, what's the point of printing it?

I'll ask now, nicely... pretty please stop printing cards that allow players to draw seven cards or X cards or just lots of cards. Cards like Time Spiral are too strong and cards like Pursuit of Knowledge are too limited and worthless. Perhaps it's time to stop messing with a mechanic that nobody understands.

It seems to me that the only decks that should be extensively using card-drawing effects are slow control decks. For their purposes, a Tome or a Browse or a Whispers of the Muse is perfect. One card at a time over a long period of time is fine. It's completely unabusable. Try building High Tide or Memory Jar decks with Browse. Hah!

Maybe let's just stick with cantrips? Brainstorm is a great card!

Speaking of Brainstorm, that's a card I really like in an Oath of Druids deck. Which reminds me of the somewhat spectacular PTQ I played in Lyon a few weeks ago.

This was a great PTQ. I don't know what kind of deal WotC France has with their TOs, but the whole affair was really well done. The entry . The entry fee was just 50 francs. There are 5.5 francs to one dollar. You can do the math and see how nice that is.

There wasn't a single computer problem the whole day. All the rounds started when they were supposed to. The tournament even started on time. The PTQ had two slots, 8 swiss rounds and 107 players!

And I played... Oath of Druids!

What a tournament! Cheap, efficient, and I get to play probably the only fun deck in the whole format of Extended. I was dying to play that deck in a tournament. Manuel and I had built it two months before PT Rome and had been unable to use it in a tournament since.

At PTQ Lyon, the timing was finally right. The whole metagame in France was full of Legion Land Loss, mono red, Necro Sliver, Jank, and High Tide. In this creature-full environment, my only natural enemies were: a well-built Jank deck and High Tide.

So I played 3 Arcane Labs standard. That gave me a game 1 win ratio of 85% versus High Tide in testing, assuming that my opponent was a good player. Most High Tide players are really bad. They know how to Stroke themselves while the combo is going but they get easily unhinged when their search spells get Disrupted. After that happens, they begin to play around the threat of Disrupt, giving me too much time to draw an Arcane Lab and someb and some counters.

As for Jank? I just prayed my opponents would be average. Average players (in my playtesting experience) would panic when the Oath hit the table. They wouldn't think clearly and they would lose, even if they had a way to win in their hands.

So, how did I do? I did just peachy for the first five rounds. I lost one game. One game to High Tide. Mana screw. But I won the match.

My first round opponent was playing elves and Coat of Arms. He didn't think many nice things about my Oath of Druids. He tried to kill my Oath a couple times but I didn't let him. His elves were vicious. They did a lot of early damage. Elves don't like Triskelion.

My second round opponent made top 8. He was playing mono red, Lackey Sligh. He played turn 1 Lackey, turn 2 goblin, goblin. I played turn 2 Oath of Druids both games. A small crowd developed during the second game. They chanted "Triskie! Triskie!" every time I began to Oath. The Archangel made them laugh. The Spike Feeder disappointed them. It's just not big and fat. I was trying to be sportsmanlike but I had to giggle.

At this point I'll mention that the head judge, Cyril Grillon, made a special exception for me. I can't speak French very well. Most of my opponents did not speak English very well. Manuel Bevand was aland was allowed to be my translator, but he was not allowed to judge my matches. Thankfully, I only needed him for one rules dispute. So if I mention Manuel later in this narrative, it's not because he was hanging around trying to get me free wins. The only free wins in the whole tournament weren't Manuel's fault. But that's later.

My third round opponent was playing Jank. It seemed a lot like Olle's deck, but he didn't know what to expect from me game 1 so I won the first game purely off the surprise factor and Disrupting a Tithe and a Cataclysm. Nobody was playing Disenchant in their main decks because decks like Lackey decks and Sliver decks and High Tide just don't have anything to Disenchant. The second game he played turn 1 Mishra, turn 2 Mishra and I almost took fatal damage from them scrambling to find some way to deal with them. I cast a Triskelion on turn 9 or so, and then my opponent gave me a nice present. He attacked with a Mishra, I blocked with Triskelion, and he pumped his Mishra with his other Mishra, and... his Mishra died. He forgot that Triskelion with 3 counters is a 4/4, not a 3/3. Then he got frustrated and did me the favor of doing the same thing again a few turns later. That frustrated him even more so he cast a few creatures and I cast the Oath I was holding and that was the end of that.

In the fourth round I began to encounter High Tide, whichhich was naturally filtering up to the better tables. I countered some early search cards, played 5 land, tossed out an Arcane Lab game 1 and won the counter war. My opponent looked a little shaken that he had to deal with that in the first game, and scooped up all his cards and we went to the next game. He boarded in his Rescinds, which I was always able to counter, and that was the match. In the previous three rounds, I had been questioning our addition of the Labs in the main deck. Now I felt like it had been a good idea.

In the fifth round I lost the first game in the match. I had the lab, I had the counters, I had the force of will... I had 2 land for too long. I scooped when he Stroked himself for most of his deck, no point in waiting for the obvious. I'm not the kind of player who might wait to see if he makes a mistake to try to get a free win. I heard some guy from Paris rules lawyered to get a win when his High Tide opponent picked up all his cards after successfully killing him. He said it was a concession. I said that was bullshit. But that happened later, and not at this pleasant PTQ. I won the second game and it came down to the third game. I lost a critical counter war over the Lab in game 3 but it left us both with only one card in hand. I suspected he probably kept a Time Spiral and I was right. Before the game progressed to my opponent's turn, several judges who were w watching intervened to make a ruling. My opponent had Arcane Denialed my Lab. Several other counterspells had been put onto the stack and they needed to determine if the Arcane Denial resolved. I didn't understand much of the dispute so I just sat there until Manuel translated the ruling. I got to draw two cards if I chose because my opponent did not declare if he was countering the Lab again or my Counterspell. I chose to draw the two cards, of course. My opponent casts High Tide, casts Time Spiral and I counter it with the Mana Leak I drew off the Arcane Denial with my one Tropical Island that was still untapped which produced UU because of High Tide. Then he had no more cards in hand and he lost.

That taught me a lesson. Arcane Denial in High Tide decks is stupid. He lost the game because I got to draw two free cards.

So I went to the next round and choked versus Counter Sliver, I didn't mulligan once when I should have and I didn't draw into an Oath in two games until it was far too late. However I had a lot of fun in game 2 when I Oathed up the big Mother of All Slivers, Sliver Queen, which was in my sideboard just because of France's fondness for sliver decks. The guys at the table next to us began laughing hysterically. My opponent scooped.

I'd say that was worth the whole tournament. She sliced, she diced, she flew, she h she had +2/+2, she could make little untargetable baby slivers that I could sacrifice for damage or life. She ruled.

Anyway, I was noticing something by this time. I was tired. Actually what I was noticing was that I was getting dizzy and light-headed. I needed to take some time to eat something, but not right now, the next round is starting...

So I got paired in the seventh round versus Jank. Good Jank. This guy went 8-0 in the swiss. So you can guess he steamrolled me. My draws were junk but even great draws wouldn't have saved me. He had a lot of countermagic, more than the usual Jank deck, and tons of Mishras, maybe forty. It was my biggest nightmare, and I was making mistakes. I didn't feel too bad about losing, but he really rolled me. No chance.

Unfortunately, the rounds at this tournament were only 55 minutes and I was playing the slowest deck in the whole tournament. I came out of that match with my head spinning but I still didn't have time to sit down and eat anything. That's the problem with these PTQs. They never give dinner breaks anymore.

I told Manuel at that point that I wanted to quit. I could still make top 8 with a 6-2 record because I had the highest tiebreaker. Most of my opponents had played their way to the top tables. But I really really really didn't feel good. I didn' I didn't like the way my head wanted to go one way and my legs wanted to go another. Manuel conferred with Cyril and they agreed that if I made top 8 they'd give me a dinner break before I continued playing. That sounded fair to me and I didn't want to disappoint anyone so I decided to play.

My last opponent was playing High Tide, which should have made me happy but I was really having a hard time concentrating. He won the first game when I mana stalled and we went to our sideboards. I got to my sideboard and then I started blacking out. The room went all swimmy and dark and I was having trouble breathing. That always happens to me when I get stuck in a scary stress situation. Anyway, I wasn't much fit to keep playing so I formally conceded to my opponent, shook his hand, and Manuel half-carried me out of the room and sat me outside where the air was fresh and cool. I was crying like an idiot from the stress. I felt really dumb for scaring all these nice people.

My opponent, Lionel Benezech, was very nice to me and offered to wait until I felt better to play the match. I told him just to go on and do well, I didn't feel like playing Magic any more that night.

Somebody ordered me a pizza and an hour later I began to feel much better.

Too late.

But my memories of this PTQ are still are still all good ones. It was a fun PTQ. Maybe if I spoke French I would have noticed my opponents being miserable bastards to me, so maybe that's the reason for my perception, but I doubt it.

I noticed during the tournament that Magic kinda bores me nowadays. Even when I was winning, it wasn't as intense for me as the bad feelings I get when I lose. Most of my fun in Magic came from casting big fat creatures for free.

God, I've become Timmy the Power Gamer!

I think I like Extended a lot because it lets me play with an Oath of Druids deck. A good Oath of Druids deck draws all the poisons out of a format infested with too many combo decks and too many speed kill decks. It's a nice, flexible, non-broken utility deck with a neat trick that makes me smile. It's the feeling of holding the original game of Magic in my hands while everyone else is playing some evil rip-off.

It's the feeling of outsmarting players who are too smug and secure in their knowledge that speed kills and winning is all that matters.

Fini.

"Oath of Whatever" v3.0  by M. Bevand and C. Nicoloff

valign="top"> Spells 4 Oath of Druids 4 Force of Will 4 Counterspell 4 Brainstorm 4 Disrupt 3 Arcane Lab 3 Impulse 2 Gaea's Blessing 2 Scroll Rack 2 Enlightened Tutor

1 Triskelion 1 Archangel 1 Spike Feeder Lands 3 Mishra's Factory 2 Wasteland 4 Flood Plains 4 Tundra 4 Tropical Island

3 Savannah 5 Island Sideboard 4 Mana Leak 3 Karma 3 Disenchant 2 Null Rod 2 COP: Red 1 Arcane Lab