Subject: PTQ WA Report: semi finalist Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 05:35:08 -0800 From: Peter Grauer To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Vancouver sent it's usual entourage down to Seattle to house the locals today. I've been preparing for this one for weeks, and I had a metagame deck I felt would do well. I predicted hordes of black/white weenies, plenty of burn, and the odd prison deck. I knew my deck would house all the above, I was only really worried about vineyard. 4 Force of Will 4 Counterspell 4 Impulse 3 Meditate 3 Ghostship (Horrible, the deck won in spite of these. FOW used them the more) 4 Tithe 3 Disenchant 2 Wrath of God 2 Swords to Plowshares 2 Gerrard's Wisdom 3 Lightning Bolt 2 Fireball 2 Wildfire 1 Earthquake 3 Wasteland 12 Duals 3 Islands 1 Plains 2 Flood Plain You gotta watch it played. Looks like crap. More on the deck later. First names only, sorry dudes. Round One: Charles playing mono white urza land artifact thing Game One: He gets out the early orinthopter/dancing scimitar beatdown. Beats me down to 16, I Meditate/Gerrard back up to 28, wrath, play a wildfire, and apply. Game Two: Things are amazingly bad with me drawing little more than tithes. He's Helm of Obediencing me for 5 a turn. I've got a dust to dust in my hand, but he's played none of the 5 diamonds I saw the first game, so I'm watching my virtually creatureless deck vanish. Of course, he decides to tap 4 of his 5 lands and play a jester's cap. Dust to Dust followed by wildfire beatdown commences. Games 2-0 Matches 1-0 Round Two: Brendan playing white weenie/lancer/bolt Game One: He's totally mana screwed. He manages a few late hits, but wildfire/fireball do him in in 8 turns. Game 2: He's mana screwed again. He has a plains and a Wasteland. He stalls, so I tap out to play a turn 5 ghostship. He top decks the mountain, drops blood moon. Very bad. No red cards in hand. Forces of will are in the sideboard for blasts. Ghostship takes him down to 16, before it's plowed. He stays mana screwed (I know you are playing tax guys, but do you need the 2-4 mountains in white weenie?). I'm playing dual land after dual land, and have a plains in play. No disenchant. Just as he drops a land tax, I top deck an island. Play the island. He untaps. Taxes. Plays lion, lion, lancer. I meditate. Lightning bolt the lancer. He hits for 4 the next turn, and plays something else. I disenchant the blood moon... untap, Gerrard for 14 up to 20, play a land, and wrath. He brings out another 2/2 something and applies for a while while I stall with gerrard in hand. At 12 life, I meditate. He bolts me and hits me down to 7. Untap, Gerrard for 12. Bolt the dude. Wildfire beats ensues, backed by fullscale counter hand. Phew. Survided blood moon. Games: 4-0 Matches: 2-0 Round Three: Joel playing White AND Black weenie Game One: This deck is just strange. Turn one: scrubland, lion. Turn 2: Hymn. Turn 3: Black Knight, Lion. Of course I quake next turn. I get beat down by his next creature to 4 life. I've decided he's probably not playing DD, so I meditate. He attacks, bringing me down to 2. I untap, Gerrard for 14. Beatdown ensues again, now with a little pro red falcon dude adding his one per. From 16, he gets me down to 5. I meditate. Bolt the 2/2. He untaps, hits me with the little falcon. I untap, Gerrard for 18. Eventually, a 13 point fireball does him in. Game Two: More of the same. He beats me down to 2 again. I meditate/gerrard up to 16. Beatdown again down to 4. Gerrard up to 20. I'm just stalling for time with 2 fireballs in hand. He gets as close as 10, but quake for 4 and fireball for 12 win it for me. Games: 6-0 Matches: 3-0 Round Four: Corey playing vineyard deck with Cursed scroll, stormbind, a HELL OF A LOT of X, and weatherlight dudes that let you tutor for more for 1G. Game one: Late vineyard powers double gerrards. I am able to ignore his scrolls. Fireballs for 10 and 10 finish him off. Game Two: This is the play of the year. Has to be. Wildfire beats are taking place. He incinerates the wildfire. He then stormbinds the wildfire, pitching pyroblast. Cool I think. I decide to Meditate right then and there. I've got a counterspell and he's only got 2 cards. He pyroblasts the meditate. I counter. He blasts the counter. Wow. 3 cards, 3 pyroblasts. I get wrecked by earnham with no cards in hand and a stormbind over there. He does 48 points to me this game Game Three: Those nutty 2/3 weatherlight dudes show up, all four of them. I split a fireball at 3 of them, but the fourth beats me down. Boil/blast/blast/boil finishes me. Apparently he boarded 8 cards against blue. Great metagame. Ah well, I'm just bitter. He does 42 Points to me this time. Games: 7-2 Matches 3-1 Round Five: Aaron playing 5CG Game One: I see bird of paradise followed by 2 grangers. Ummmm, Wrath. Earnham is plowed. A late winter orb can't save him. Wildfire beats. Game Two. He opens fetch land... then mishra, bird. Wheels turn. He would have played the bird first turn had he had green mana. He moved the mishra from library to table without meeting hand. Wasteland the dual, bolt the bird. He never pulls land #2 as I go into Wildfireball mode. Games: 9-2 Matches: 4-1 Round Six: Lainer playing White Weenie/R Game One: Priest almost goes all the way as I see no plows. I race him with ghostship, bolting his other offerings. Fireball for 11 wins damage race. Game Two: Can't remember what happened, but I didn't take a point. That's rare for my deck, so chalk it up to mana screw I guess. 4 Plows, 3 bolts, and 3 wraths take care of white weenie pretty well. I'm happy with my metagaming today. Games: 11-2 Matches: 5-1 Round Seven: Draw into top 8 Vancouver places 4 of the top 8. No big names, as the top pros went with their chicago style decks and lost the metagame battle. I'm seeded eighth, so I get the undefeated guy. Quarterfinals: Someone (sorry, was a little occupied) playing Ophidian white weenie. Game One: Story of the game: I meditate turn 3 with gerrard in hand. He's got a single blue untapped. Disrupt. Wow. That's.... cantrip time walk, and I lose a card. I never recover. I guess it was a bad play on my part. Arcanes I expect, but disrupt from white weenie... not usually. I gamble and lose. Game Two: I struggle, but gain control, dropping REAL LOW. I have NO countermagic and 2 meditates, plus land. He's done nothing for 2 turns. I'm not about to wait around for him to draw the two bolts he needs to win. I Meditate. It goes through. I exhale. Draw: Gerrard, Force, Counter, Counter. Wow. He plays nothing on his turn. I untap my lands and top deck a tithe. He does nothing. I meditate again (5 blue untapped). He plays a knight or something. I waste/tithe, bringing my hand size up to 11. Untap, draw up to 12, play gerrard for 22. He looks visibly shaken. I play all my lands, ready to go into fireball mode. He passages the second fireball, but I have the force. Close game. Game Three: It's all about the blasts. I've boarded out all my creatures for blue and red blasts after watching him shuffle and seeing both white and black bordered fireballs. I easily control his creatures with 4 plows, 3 bolts, 3 wraths, and disenchants for the factories. I attain 13 mana and begin burning him out. His pasages and blasts cannot compete with a control deck. Dies with 2 control magic and aura of silence in his hand. No permanents is pretty good vs aura. Semifinals: Tim playing Ehrmageddon with untargetables I really don't want to think about this one. Suffice to say he wins 2-1 in a greuling 120 minute match. It ends with him flashfiring away 9 of my lands (and 6 of his WTF) and me being one land short of being able to double fireball him. I had all the cards I needed, but after counting lands in graveyard and bolts already used, I realized I was gonna be a point short, even with all the land left in my deck. Bottom 3 cards are all force of wills. After the match I congratulate my opponent and pick up my cards. Someone remarks on how good my deck is or some shit like that. I explode, and my entire card collection hits the wall of the WOTC game center. Cards fly everywhere, and the room falls silent. My teammates are picking up my cards and there's a big dent in the wall. Anger management is not my strong suit. A two hour pressure-filled game between two good players can be enough to make anyone snap, but I want to apologize to the Game Center for my outburst, and thank them for being understanding. It wasn't directed at my opponent, It was simply disapointment and frustration taking over for a brief moment. The deck: The deck is really mediocre at best, but I think it has potential. It will be reworked extensively before it sees light again. Lack of offense cost me dearly. The deck DOES illustrate the incredible power of meditate, but the total absence of any control decks in the top third of the field had a lot to do with it. I only had the meditate countered twice all day, and both times resulted in a game loss. It's dangerous, but powerful. It's also the fastest card drawing spell in the game. No other apell can grant you 4 cards at instant speed. The drawback is managable with cheap, instant creature removal. Between rounds, Radjonic and I were making comparisons between this deck and his Chicago necrodeck. Both trade life for cards, but mine in the form of creature damage. Both decks rely on disruption. Both decks recover with massive life gaining. Both decks finish with a large direct damage spell. Perhaps the similarities end there, but one thing is for certian. Either deck can lose by making a single miscalculation. I often allowed my oppoenent to lower me to the point where he felt direct damage could finish me off, only to gerrard back up and gain card advantage over his bolts. In the finals, I goaded Tim into dumping his entire hand into a stormbind to drop me to 2 life. I then blasted the stormbind and recovered with a Meditate/Gerrard. That's incredible card advantage. His seven cards, plus extra life, plus an unopposed meditate. Unfortunately, sometimes you "necro" and draw nothing. This was the case, and I was unable to deal with his next card, the flashfires which did me in. So much for card advantage... Props: Terry Lau, Pete Radjonic, Jeff Fung, And Terry Tsang for lending cards for the deck. Brian Schnieder for his help with the original version. Ryan Fuller, Tsang, and Radjonic for tuning help. Brendan and Aaron for being cool in the face of manascrew. The assistant judge who understood my rage at the end. The two crazy basrards who flew in from Memphis for the day. Whoever designed tithe and impulse Slops: To the Mishra's guy (Who will remain nameless) who had top 8 all sewn up, but drew with the guy who edged out Tsang for top 8. Nice teamwork. Fuck you. Too bad you scrubed in the quarters, I was waiting. Myself, for blowing a 1-0 lead in the semifinals. The foreign Alliances packs I won, for giving me 2 whirling catapults, Omen of Fire, and Gustah's Sceptre. Bleah. Pete Grauer Vancouver, BC Canada