Chicago Pro Tour Report

by Daniel Brickwell

The Preperation:

I could not really prepare for Chicago, as I had a part of my Ph.D thesis
due the thursday after Chicago, and I could not postpone it's deadline one
more time. Infact I probably should not have gone to Chicago at all. All I
basically did was test Necro, Burn and CounterPost. I thought that there
would be a lot of CounterPost, but that it would not end up on Top, because
it is really a vulnerable strategy if you are prepared for it. (I did get
some flak for this opinion butt. (I did get
some flak for this opinion but I think that Chicago proved me right. I
think that the field was easily 30 Percent CounterPost and it did not make
the Top 8). I tested Mono-black Necro, because building a multi-color Necro
would have taken much more testing time than I had .... I was kind of
hoping that I could copy a good metagame deck from the other german players
there, but they mostly played Janoshes Wolrds Deck which I thought was
outdated. (It was, but the Tongo version rocked, and the old version was
still a solid deck which mostly went 4:3, except for Andre Konstanzer who
finished 12th and Peer Kroeger who finished around place 300...)
My 5-Color Burn deck which I got from Peter from Belgium was really fast
and it beat my Necro like 2/3 rds of the time, but as I tested more and
more decks against it. I saw that it would be easy to hose and more
importantly that it would lose to Gerrads Wisdom CounterPost, which would
be a big part of the field. The Abeyance Ruling finally cinched it as it
also had problems with Stompy-like decks which would no longer be hindered
by Abeyance. I did try out Firestorms in the 5CR against Stompy in the last
tests, now  if I had only seen the Firestorm Necro combo.... Ahh well.
Because of my Ph.D I left on the last possible day for Chicago and had a
hellisch week of jet lag ahead of my which ended last wednesday... But I
did leave with a new Sponsor Contract for my Team from the store High Way
to Hell i High Way
to Hell in Berlin (Zossenerstr. 36 Berlin  Web:
http://www.high-way-to-hell.com). Btw Team Isttari will from now on be
called Team High Way to Hell! Money talks...

After hearing my new sponsors name it was clear that I just had to play
mono-black necro. I don't urge anyone to play this though and personally
like Randy's deck a lot more.... so I won't even quote it here...

The Action

Round 1:

My opponent is playing U/W counterpost with Disrupts and Gerrads Wisdom.

Game 1: I draw a Mind Warp two Dark Rituals, a Drain Life and Land. My
opponent starts with Thawing
Glacier. When he has 2 Lands out (a plains and an island). I put out my
third swamp. I am thinking, can he counter? An Arcane Denial would not be
bad, a Force of Will is Ok too, but what if he has an Disrupt? Dark Ritual,
Dark Ritual and Mindwarp for two, instead of three, just on the off chance
of a Disrupt? Later on he will just counter normally. Waiting for a
CounterPost to tap out, is like waiting for a week-day bus on the weekend.
No way. So I Mind Warp for three and ofcourse he has an Disrupt!! That's
game....

I am quite depressed. This is my fifth Pro Tour (after PT 1 (New York), PT
3 (Columbus), PT Paris, World Championships 1997), except in PT 1 I have
lost every first round and in New York I got a first round draw because of
Earthquake. But know I am behind 0:1 against Counter Post, probably the
deck I have the best chance of beating.. the best chance of beating.. Arghh...

Game 2: I draw nothing but a Hymn. He mulligans once but gets a Glacier
Round two. I wait with the Hymn until I have 2 Black and a Mishra, as I
figure that he has probably sideboarded in Disrupts. I Hymn. He disrupts, I
pay with the mishra. He Disrupts for a second time!!!! That brings him out
of the mulligan draw back quite nicely, thank you.. I draw nothing for a
few rounds except mana. Then a Drain Life. Then a Consult. Then an Infernal
Darkness. I figure that I should start drawing Counters and play the
Infernal Darkness. Imagine my surprise when he doesn't counter it! Next
Round I drain for a lot. No Force Of Will, Consult for Drain, Drain for a
lot again ... and win!
Whew!

Game 3: I finally draw some Disruption and win this game very shortly
before time is called...

I finally win my first round in a Pro Tour!!! God,  am I happy.... it's
ridiculous! :) :) :)

1:0 matches 2:1 games

Round 2: Christian Dreher from Berlin playing U/W CounterPost with Gerrads
Wisdom and Browse

Yup, you have read right, in a 324 people field I meet the only other
player form my home town in Round 2!!!
Also, I meet my second Counter Post in a row.

Game 1: I draw a Knight, a Choking Sand, a Drain Life, a Necro, an Ishan
Shade, a Serrated Biskelion and one Swamp. I decide to keep it. Ofcourse I
don't draw a Second swamp or a Dark Ritual. Instead I discard two times.
Atleast Christian doesn't have a Glacst Christian doesn't have a Glacier. Then he Political Trickeries my
swamp and gives me a plains. Ouch! Memories reappear from round 11 of the
World Championships, where I lost to a CounterPost with no lands in play
after discarding like 14 times. My lonely Mountain was also Political
Trickeried in that game, past a Pyroblast! That was probably my worst magic
experience ever!) But I top deck a Mishra. Then another Mishra, enabling me
two play my Serrated Biskelion. Next Round I draw.... a Mishra!!! Attack
for 6, Attack for 6. He plays a Serrated Arrow, Disenchants one Mishra,
etc. He stops my Mishra onslought at 3 Life. But now I start drawing
Swamps, and it's very tight game for a while, but a Gerrads Wisdom for 6
pulls out a close win at two life for him.

Game 2: We trade off disriuption and knights against cards, life and
counters, finally both our resources are depleted. I have a Dark Ritual and
a Drain left. He ist at 9 Life I could Drain for 5 with 5 lands and the
Dark Ritual but that would empty my hand. I don't think that he has a
Counter in hand, but he can draw one any moment. So I decide hastily to
Drain for three as I need another business card anyway to win, and need to
get damage in. Ofcourse next round I draw my Lake of the Dead...Arghhh!
(Christian later informs me that he did not have a counter at that time...)
A little bit later I draw another Drain. Now I could Drain him to death on
the other hand he probably has a coune probably has a counter now with the Dark Ritual I could
drain him to death after casting a Hymn first, but I don't have a Hymn...
should I wait for a Hymn or a Consultation? On the Other hand, He is just
going to draw more counters. I decide to go for it. He counters with the
Force of Will he just drew... I draw my next card. It's a Hymn!!! I go on
to lose that game.

1:1 matches 2:3 games

I feel a little depressed now, as I could have won the second game if I had
trusted my deck or even the first one if I had not been so mana short... I
decide to change something to change my luck. (Being on the Pro Tour can
get you superstitious in no time.) Sofar I have played my two matches on my
World Championship mat, but I decide to leave it in the bag for once just
to change my Karma as I have had 4 bad draws in 6 games.

Round 3. Kyle Bigos, US National Finalist playing W/r/u Gun, I think
similar to what Rade was playing...

As German National Finalist Kyle and I have played against each other
before, in the Team Sealed in the World Championships on Day 4. I think
that Kyle considers me a scrub, as I was playing a crappy U/W deck at that
time (which I didn't construct btw.) which could only win through
Armageddon. In that match I made several small mistakes, the worst one
being probably that I almost conceded the match, the top decked my Cop red
against his 8 red creatures he had out and then proceded to cop nine during
his next cop nine during
his next attack, because I had miscounted them. He let me take mana burn,
but this ofcourse did not prevent me from getting a draw, against his
practically mono-red deck in the last two minutes. :)

Game 1: He starts with Tundra Savanah Lion. I start with Swamp Dark Ritual
Choking Sand. He forgets to adjust his life total and I have to remind
him... now we are on constructed turf! He forgets to put down a second land
for two rounds, I have another Choking Sand waiting for that one though and
I proceed to punish him.

Game 2:  Again he is mana shy and my LD does not help. He has another first
round Savanah Lion, but my LD keeps him from reaching three mana. Then
after the Lions untimely death I attack with a Knight and two Mishras. He
disenchants a mishra with a City of Brass and a Tundra and calculates my
creature damage  to be four, which is correct, but forgets to take the City
of Brass damage! Again I have to remind him...  I hate to say this, but
from some one who is rated near 2000, I think this looks intentional and
not unintentional. Perhaps his thinking me a scrub led him to believe he
could steal 3 damage past me, perhaps not...

2:1 matches 4:3 games

Hmmh, that worked pretty well not using the mat....

Round 4: Italian Player, old style U/W Counterpost with Disks

Game 1: Choking Sand, Hymn Choking Sand, Attack with Mishras. Dead.

Game 2: See Game 1 only that he mulligans, and I destroy his 1st rons, and I destroy his 1st round
Glacier.

3:1 matches 6:3 games

We are the first one finished of all the 300+ players there, so we move
over to the free play area and do two more games.

Game 3: See Game 1 only that I kill with a Knight which he has to Disk, (he
has no Serrated Arrows), to die to Hymn Drain.

Game 4: This one goes for the long haul as he gets a Cop Black out, but I
keep attacking with Mishras and finally a Steel Golem, later I cast an
Order anyway to Block Outpost Tokens and proceed to attack with it to test
the waters... He is at three life, prevents the Order and then wants to
Block the Steel Golem. I tell him not to try that in the Pro Tour and let
him win ;).

Round 5: After 3 Counterposts in 4 Matches I finally get a Red/Green
Stormbind, River Boa, Jolreal Centaur Deck...

Game 1: I Choke 2 of his Lands, Hymn Two lands, and Mind warp 2 Lands and
he still has 3 Lands out when he dies....

Game 2: This time he forgets to put down a third land for my 3rd round
Sengir... He could double bolt it but not with 2 Mana and he certainly
won't kill my 2 Mishras at the same time....

4:1 matches 8:3 games

I am thinking ,This not using the mat, really works!" And then tell myself
to not get any more superstitious than magic has already made me.

I talk to Christian Dreher and he is also at 4:1, a lot of the germans are
at 3:2 and still have a chance, Andre Konstanzer is the best with 4:0:1 I
believe. Jan Thomast with 4:0:1 I
believe. Jan Thomas Brandenburg is out with 1:3 as he has played against 2
Italians in a row... Why? You ask? Well apparently everybody in Italy is
afraid of Squandered Stasis, while in Germany nobody really plays it, so
Jan decided to surprise everyone by playing Squandered Stasis only to run
into 2 (!) Italians in a row with 4 Pillage 4 Disenchant 6 Red Blasts and 2
Emerald Charm between sideboard and Deck.... (No wonder they lost against
other decks they could not sideboard against other decks!)
Dirk Roth also dropped out due to two mana screws in a row. Peer Kroeger is
out, because he abandoned his Fish Deck with the 4 Political Trickery
standard, to play a outpost-vulnerable version of Janoshes Worlds Deck and
meet three Counter Post in the first three rounds... ouch!) Marcel Baran is
also out with 0:3. The big news is that Paul McCabe is out with 0:3 and he
will end up at place 324  and therefore last (!!!) at the end of the
tourney (next to last is Nicolei Weibull, which places two Worlds Top 8
players at the end of the field!). Jeff Donais is still hanging in there
after going 0:3 in the first three rounds which was not quite so an
surprise ;).

Dirk Roth tells me a strange story that he watched someone play against
Jakub Slemr. Jakub's opponent has a Blood Moon out and Jakub can not cast
any of his Kinghts as he has only multilands in play, meanwhile his
opponent is Glaciering out his deck.... Yes, you heard right he , you heard right he is
GLACIERING under Blood Moon. (Meanwhile I read John Robertsons Report an I
think it was him even though he did not recognize Jakub and mistook him for
a swede, Here's the quote from his report:

>Round 5 vs. Jakkub (?) from Finland (1-3)
>
>I didn't really get his name down correctly, so I could be wrong here, but
>I'll call my
>opponent Jakkub.  This round was almost a mirror image of my match with
>Patrik from Sweden.
>So long as I drew a Blood Moon, I was on the road to victory.  Jakkub's
>deck was very fast
>though, and I lost one game just due to complete weenie swarming.   I
>thought his deck was
>basically a gun deck, but it turns out he played with Sleight of Mind as
>well, which was
>devastating against some decks, including fellow Canadian Paul McCabe's
>deck.  It turns out,
>I was the third Canadian Jakkub had played, as he had played Eric Tam as
>well.  Jakkub was a
>very nice fellow though, keeping a good sense of humour when I was doing
>very evil things to
>him under a Blood Moon.

Evil things indeed!!!)

Round 6: Against a young player from ,The Crew"

He is playing R/W Burn with Suq-ata Lancers and Ball Lightnings, Land Tax,
Tithe and Armageddon.
The first thing he tells me when I sit down that he hopes I am playing
black, he just loves to play against black..(perhaps my High Way to Hell
sweat-shirt was a dead give away...) I have heard this sentence about 50
times from varioentence about 50
times from various red players in my close to two years or so of playing
Necro and most of them didn't like playing against Black anymore, after I
was through with them.... so i just  :)

Game 1: It basically comes down to the fact, that I didn't have a Contagion
for his Ball Lightning, as he kills me one round to fast before I can kill
him.

Now comes my big mistake. I sideboard totally wrong, taking out my Necros
and I don't even put in my Infernal Darknesses... It must have been the jet
lag catching up with me. Now that I think back I think that I was playing
at 90 Percent the whole day anyway now it goes down  even more...

Game 2: I draw all my Knights he draws all his Bolts so I have to kill him
with a lonely Mishra, which takes a long time... (If I had had an Infernal
Darkness in this game it would have been over early infact one of my 2
Consultations or my 4 Drain Lives and my 1 Soul Burn after Sideboarding
would have been nice in this game!!!

When he is at 2 with two cards in hand and I  am at 6 he Earthquakes for
two and Fireblasts me in response for the draw... Grrrr!!

Game 3: I know he plays Passages, so I know I have to Warp before I go for
the big double Drain. So I do just that. Warp his. hand, Drain him for 10
next round. He draws and plays a Geddon! (Ouch I run into Armageddon! Me!
Ow!.... ) Later in the game I have ritualed out a Serrated Biskelion which
has brought him to 5 Life. He has out an Moun5 Life. He has out an Mountain and puts out a Mishra...
Jet Lagged as I am I wait for him to block before Contagioning it, because
I forget that it has summoning sickness and so can't strengthen itself
(which he also forgets and does!),  but that doesn't matter as he draws the
Disenchant next round, for the Biskelion, so that I would have only reduced
him to three. When I finally draw another Mishra,  he Geddons again and
.... decks me!! Noooo!  I have never been decked by a Red Deck with Necro
before. I was neither ever so stupid to sideboard out all my necros
either...)
On the other hand he never got to use his Land Taxes against me, proving to
me that it is useless without Zuran Orb in Extended and I did learn that
you do get Life froma Soul Burn which is Passaged. (It's worded differently
than the Drain Life!)

4:2 matches 8:5:1 games...

Round 7: I get my first feature match of my career against Kyle Rose (who
made the top 8 so guess who won?) who is playing a Gun deck.

Game 1: He gets out 2 Ernhams and a Suq ata Lancer, I lake out an Ishan
fearing Geddon. He Geddons and Attacks I block an Ernham he puts down a
Plateua and Bolts the Ishan... Game....

Now I again sideboard wrongly thinking he is playing Ernhamgeddon with red,
though  I should know he is playing gun! Stupid jet lag, I can't wait for
the german Pro Tour, (even though I still have to qualify!)

Game 2: It doesn't matter though I Necro for about 7 lands in thcro for about 7 lands in this game and
get bolted and White Knighted to death. I even catch a warning because I
mistakenly draw a card under Necro (Kyle notices it before I even really
look at it. He was certainly the best player I met all day and deserved his
slot in the Top 8!), because I forgot to put my Necro on the Top of my
Libary as I usually do...) I almost concede before getting the warning
because I know my hand, but I play it out and die...

So this leaves me at 4:3 8:7:1 games, I get together with the other Germans
and we realize that we have 9 people with 4:3, most of them losing the last
round... So we all head to Mc Donalds to feed our shame... 14-16 Germans
there and only 1 makes the Top 64 (Andre Konstanzer does finish 12th which
strengthens my opinion that he is probably the best german player right now
(though Oliver Krebs did not attend so I can't really prove it...)

I end up in place 80 which is in the Top quarter of the field, not bad for
a solid deck on a jet lag day. Perhaps next time I should try a tested and
good deck on three days of rest or so...
The really sad thing was that I played some really good magic in the PTQ on
the next day so that I have the feeling that I could have gone even better
if I had the luck to win one of the last two matches even against my bad
sideboarding....)

Ohh well, See you in Mainz (I will attend even if I don't qualify... but
wish me luck anyway.)

Props to:

Andre Kon.)

Props to:

Andre Konstanzer,  the best german player and he is even better in
Limited...
High-Way-To-Hell my no sponsor (shameless plug ;)
Jakub Slemr who is a really nice guy and awesome player, notwithstanding
the Blood Moon episode...
Manuel Bevand and Alex Svartsman who founded The Legion which you will
probably hear about soon!
Olle Rade, he is THE MAN! 4 Top 8 appearences!

Slops to:

Italians, who nightly dream of beating Squandered Stasis...
Whover Glaciers under a Blood Moon he put out himself!

WHOEVER GAVE US ANOTHER PRO TOUR YEAR WITHOUT A STANDARD PRO TOUR!!!!!

Come on, it's ridiculous. Mainz is a Tempest Draft and then we are supposed
to play Tempest Constructed?! Probably even without Stronghold?! Who
dreamed up that marketing ploy? What about the misnamed format of
STANDARD?! Nationals are not enough for me, especially as the Standard
environment has gone through a huge change since Dallas, which was last
year btw...

I urge everyone to let DCI@wizards.com know that Los Angeles should be
Standard not a 300 card constructed environment. Wizards has a history of
listening to it's customers lets atleast try and get this farce changed...

Friendly Greetings

Daniel

PS: Congratulations to Randy Buehler for his win. Necro lives. Again! I am
also sorry I laughed at the end of the fourth game of the finals, but I was
late for my plane, I expected to miss the last and deciding 5th game and
suddenly Randy ping 5th game and
suddenly Randy pulls the game out of nowwhere by him doing everything right
and his opponent everything wrong. I just had to laugh.