Subject: PTQ-LA Utrecht, Netherlands, Europe Date: Wed, 07 Jan 1998 08:04:10 EST From: davebax@epo.e-mail.com To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Hi all, I qualified for PTLA with a mono-green deck "Pizza Stompy". (the name comes from the fact that it is 75% based on the "italian" deck of Dario Parazzoli that qualified last month which in turn was based on "stompy"). Signature card: Tracker. The tournament, organized by PS-GAMES, started promptly at 11:00 and completed 7 rounds in 8 hours (head judge: Fritz level:III). There was a good mix of decks in the 64 field, the word beforehand was that mono green had no chance because of perish,pyro,etc etc which is why I decide to try, assuming many players would not even bother to significantly prepare sideboards v green, against weenie perhaps. I took a 61 deck but stupidly added a tranquilty 5 mins before deck registration deadline because I was dreaming of all sorts of enchantment tricks and of course I could not find anything to take out. 14 forest 4 mishra 1 havenwood battlegound (more often in the way than useful, throwout) 3 llanowar elves 3 fyndhorn elves 4 quiron ranger 4 river boa 3 spectral bears 1 nurturing licid 1 land leechs 3 elvish archers 3 uktabi orangutan 2 tracker 2 yavimaya ants 1 elvish spirit guide (1 is just perfect, suprise mishra activation!) 2 jolraels centaur 1 rootwalla 3 giant growth 2 armor of thorns 1 elvish fury (not too good BUT forces the swords if used with buyback) 1 bounty of the hunt 1 hurricane 1 tranquility (not useful, throw it out) 1 cursed scroll sideboard: 2 blossoming wreath 1 respite (great v's ball lightning will up to 2) 2 heartwood treefolk 1 kaysa 2 scragnoth 2 primal order (great, won me 2 games and got me through round of 8) 1 creeping mold 2 whirling dervish 2 emerald charm (never brought them in, never met flyers or pebbles) general: should reduce to 60 cards by throwing out havenwood/tranquilit : don't worry tpp much about propoganda or perish or flyers : consider apes-of-wrath instead of (what?) : consider chancing no-flyers & replace charms with a better (better=mass) removal of enchantments. ok, 7 round swiss, went: wwllwww 6 players with 5-2 to fill 3 slots in the final 8, my wins in rounds 1&2 presumably helped me get to 7th. round1, 2-0 v sligh ... no problems, nothing of interest round2, 2-0 v buried alive/tempest style combo, I win both games a turn before his combo comes. round3, 0-2 v Uwr counter-post + wildfires +pyroclasm. He pyro'd me then got his tokens going faster than I could tracker them away. He kept back 1-3 wildfire until ready, then brought me down. round4, 0-2 v white weenie + emperial armour, my deck did not get going, his got fast starts both games. round5, 2-1 v white weenie shadow (+red support), all close games, I only have tracker v's shadow, they did not come. The Primal Orders did the trick tho. round6, 2-0 v giant r/g creatures, stompy is too fast for him. round7, 2-1 v traditional necro. Just a race I suppose. I used the tranquility on the necro towards the end of one game (I know not supposed to do that but I had a clear advantage and did not want him finishing me off with (another) drain/lake). last-8, 2-1 v Rg stormbind/cursed scroll, I played bad, he played worse. (worse in as much as he lost). last-4, 2-1 v Red sligh, normal result tho' he could have won if he had played better (he lost one game because he did not bother to kill my elf after I was stuck on turn 3 with one elf and one forest.... most players would have killed the elf turn 1or2) final!, 2-0 v the Uwr deck I played in round3. He drew too much land in first game (none of them posts). Second game, after I had sb'd in all my bugs and sb'd out non bugs, his deck performe correctly: ie he drew land, he drew counters/bolts, the odd wildfire and a nevdisk and a post BUT he always had to react to my playing a bug nearly every turn (he was now facing 42+ bugs) he eventually ran out of pyro's, counters, swords and his life slowly fell down to 3. At this time I think he had a FOW, bolt, Nevdisk in hand and a post on the table BUT only enough mana to do a couple of things, he lost next turn to two mishras and an archer. The bad news, I counted 14 serious mistakes that i made, 12 of them in the last-8 & last-4 which I hope to put down to nerves (I was completely relaxed in the final, however, can't explain why since I had lost 0-2 to the same opponent in the swiss BUT decided before we started that he just should not be able to handle so many bugs. I am not going to list the errors I made because some of them are just too pathetic for even me to believe. Two mistakes were on one play, which were interesting and instructive: semi-final v sligh, he had out several 1/1 1/2 2/2 weenies that I wanted to kill (one of them was fireseeker), since I had a quiron ranger out, I wanted double uses of my tracker on his turn and mine (so I could kill 4 creatures between his start of discard phase and my announcing attack). To do this, I needed to first boost the tracker with giant growth at the start of his discard phase (those who know tracker know why, those that do not go find out) otherwise the fireseeker is going to clobber tracker in response to any target tracker chooses. The play actually went.... me... at start of your discard I giant growth tracker him.. I respond by fireblasting tracker me... I respond to fireblast by a 2nd giant growth on tracker him.. I respond by fireslinging tracker, I take one damage also. me... (I record his 1 damage) I respond by using tracker ability etc judge: no you don't, tracker is now in graveyard. 2 major errors by me: since the effects work lifo gg,fireblast,gg,slinger resolves as follows... tracker is a 2/2 creature slinger makes tracker (effectively) 2/1 gg(#2) makes tracker (effectively) 5/4 fireblast makes tracker (effectively) 5/0 tracker now dead, in graveyard gg(#1) fizzles (target no longer there) my mistakes were: 1: I should not have played the 2nd gg 2: I should not have recorded the opponents 1 damage to himself, since the 1 damage was not a cost but an effect of the spell ... I had implied that I had no further effects, so could not use the trackers remaining 2-power to kill something. I cannot genuinely recall how I made the mis-count, I believe looking back that I didn't even bother counting, just assumed 2*gg would save. Cheers, Dave Bax.