Subject: Report (PTQ): I get stomped with Baron Harkonnen in Kansas (fwd) Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 22:07:18 -0600 (CST) From: Rick Poehling To: The Dojo master WARNING!!! This report will not contain any great decklists, but I will try to make it entertaining. If you want a deck to copy, find another one now! Greetings! I know how to write these things, so let's get started with the background. I had been sure I was going to play Pox almost all the way for any qualifier I went to. I dropped a line to Andy Wolf, and he had me convinced on all that was holy that Pox was the way to go. I even accquired some Trikes, I was so ready. Then the Corrupter weighed in with the Baron Harkonnen. I had no choice. I followed the deck through all of his tourney reports, and knew that I must play it. Then, he finally won the PTQ, kindly allowing us to see the deck. I didn't care if it was a net deck, it was the Baron! And so it went. But, here is an idea of why I liked the deck so much: 1. The deck ruins Jank. Totally. I swear, I could hear those damn priests praying in the library as the Fat Baron Moti smacked them around. 2. The Corrupter's engine. Everyone saw the glacier/sylvan, but the Corrupter has turned it into an art form. This deck is unreal for getting a card when it needed it. 3. The Baron. 'Nuff said. I had a tough time with this qualifier season; namely, I couldn't go to any of them. I just kept missing them, due to school, work, or other commitments. I had the same problems with Chicago and Mainz; I hadn't been to a qualifier since I qualified for New York! Finally, I got in touch with Cory Jensen, who was making the drive from Nebraska to Wichita, Kansas for the PTQ. I quickly invited myself along for the ride, and off we went on Friday night. The players that went, and what they played, were: Cory Jensen: Prison Warren Connell: Jank Kevin Williams: Jank Jason Atuk: Stompy Rick Poehling (me): Baron Harkonnen After sneaking ourselves into a hotel room that we only paid a rate of two people for, we got the pieces of the decks together. The Pox deck I had got crushed so badly I think I may have flushed it down the toilet. And so, it was the Baron. Me and Cory assembled the pieces and I was looking for sideboard cards while everyone else went to sleep. THe sideboard that me and Cory came up with was: 2 Tranquil Domain 1 Hail Storm 3 Blue Elemental Blast 3 Pincher Beetles 2 Serrated Arrows 2 Dissipate 2 Disrupt Explain, please: Domains for Pebbles. Hail Storm for Jank. BEB for sligh, pebbles. Serrated Arrows for any weenies. Dissipate for hammers. Disrupt for Hymns, Tithe. The Pincher Beetles? Well, they were there for time's sake, as we expected that I may have to win some of the later games quickly, so I could side in some creatures. Okay, here we go! Get to the tourney, where space is at a premium. We have the scrub parrot of doom, which is given to whoever scrubs out first- he must carry it at the next tourney he goes to. Ugly damn thing. Jason has it today, but not for long..... Round 1: Jeff Zandi, of the Texas Guildmages- White Weenie, with Red. Jeff didn't really play jank, he had more traditional white weenie, with some red for burn and War Beasts for fat. Cool guy, see more on the Guildmages in general at the end of the report. Game 1: As the judge announces the cursed scroll being fixed, I hear the collective whooshing of about 109 people at the 110 person qualifier. Since I had no scrolls, I regarded this as an unfortunate development. Jeff goes first and drops plains, and I respond with a forest. Soon, we are having the traditional WW/control matchup, as Priests begin to apply beatdown. I hail storm away 3 creatures, and establish some control of the board, but I don't consolidate correctly. I had the Baron on the table, and he kept resisting the life of farming. I should have begun a race with him, but I kept him back on defense. Eventually, I run out of good reasons to not have him farm, and he is now a commoner. I have two wall of roots out, he has war beast. I am at six, and he drops a Firestorm, which I never saw coming. War beast applies, and the Baron shrugs. Game 2: When you are playing against white weenie, and you open a hand to 2 lands, a glacier, and 3(!) Serrated Arrows, I believe that the correct procedere is to dance on the table. However, when the glacier is wasted, and you don't see a single other land while creatures that all could have been killed by arrows beat you up, I believe that the correct procedere is to smash some sort of fragile object in a violent way. Matches: 0-1, Games: 0-2 Cory wins 2-0 Jason wins 2-0 Kevin wins 2-0 Warren loses 1-2 The Parrot of doom moves closer..... Round 2: Jason Rohr, no team -Rainbow(?) Game 1: I get the greatest draw this deck can get. I have glacier/sylvan running by turn three, and he never has a chance. I contol magic his cloudchaser, and beat him from 20 to 6 with it, and then the Baron comes out to play..... Game 2: I get an even greater draw than the first game due to a mulligan. TWO glaciers and a mana-producer on the second draw. Rinse, repeat. Matches: 1-1, Games: 2-2 Cory wins 2-0, 4-0 Jason wins 2-0, 4-0 Kevin wins 2-0, 4-0 Warren wins 2-0, 3-2 Round 3: Dan Mesimer, no team -Red/Green madness The last two games of this match were probably the most frustrating games of magic I have played in a long time. Game 1: I gain total control, and Dan concedes when I start recursion. As we are sideboarding, he asks if I like the Baron. Shit. Game 2: I once again beat back the early attack, but I misplay a blessing, and due to my less than amazing topdecking skills, and even with all of the basic in the deck gone, I cannot draw anything other than land, and fall to some fatty lovin. Next! Game 3: I establish control from the rush AGAIN! This is what made me more frustrated than anything else: My opponent told one of his friends to enter him in a side tournament, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GAME! That is how in control I was. Then he drops Apes fo Rath, and Armodon. I draw: land. For FIVE turns in a row, and once again die to some fatty loving. Sigh. I was really excited about this deck, and I thought it really had potential to win the damn thing when I saw the field after the first round. There was Jank EVERYWHERE! One thing, folks. This is not a deck that you can take to a tourney with no practice. You have to KNOW it inside and out. I didn't, and I payed the price for that. It was a lot of fun to play, though. I decide to drop and play in some side tourneys; now the real fun begins. 1st side: Grandmaster sealed- 1 starter of either Tempest or Mirage, random choice. This seemed like a weird format to me, but I just wanted to see some blood. It was 8 people, with 4 getting Mirage, and 4 getting Tempest. I got Tempest, and I was ready to beat-down. Then I open the starter and see that the Gods have chosen me to play in this side tourney for a reason. After my initial whoop of joy, I show the CURSED SCROLL to all around me. Time to have some fun. First round- Jason, with Mirage. Games 1 and 2- The Broken scroll applies a massive and overwhelming beatdown. I just bust out fast with weenies, hold off his later fatties, and kill with scroll. Next! Second round- Brad Game 1- By this time, my deck had mysteriously lost a color, as decks sometimes do in grandmaster- it went from B/W/U/R to B/W/R, yet this one was a little tougher, even with my deck a little tighter. I simply apply tougher beatdown. Game 2- This was the second most amazing sealed draw I ever had. Even if he would have had any kind of offense, the blitzkrieg was unreal- creatures every turn. Third round- Jason Game 1- Once again, my deck lost a color, turning into red/black beatdown. This time I get the most amazing draw I have ever had. Plain and simple. The draw ran like a sligh, and beatdown just as hard. One more game, and I will have my undefeated tourney! Game 2- Spinal Graft on Shadow creature. Endless scream on shadow creature. Me with no shadow creatures. He applies unreal beatdown. Game 3- Gotta win this one..... I mulligan. 6 cards- No land. Shit. I mulligan again, 5 cards. Nope. I mulligan down to four. That's my limit, and here we go, with him having the Ancestral advantage. Yet, a strange thing happens. I end up continually showing him my last card, over and over again, and his life total is reduced to zero, somehow. Wonder how that happened. After the game, Warren says to me "You know, Rick, I have never been for the banning of any card for sealed deck. After that, I am now." In the meantime, the talk amongst us was that Jason was stomping the field. Apparently, no one outside of Kevin and Warren had perish in their sideboards, and Jason hadn't lost a GAME. Through 4 rounds. Wow. In the meantime, Kevin had taken a liking to the Baron. A lot. Every round, he would grab me and say "Let's play the Baron." Of course, what he meant was, "Play my jank deck, and I'll play the Baron." And, of course, he proceeded to stomp me into the ground. Anyway, we continue to build Jason's confidence and they call for a booster draft. The rest of them are staying in to try to boost their extended ratings, and Jason is undefeated. I am ready to draft. The booster draft is of Tempest, Visions, and Fallen Empires(?). I get nothing of any spectacular note in the Tempest pack, but the Fallen Empires pack is where the fun begins. I had a heavy contingent of red, and had cut off some supply lines. This led to me recieving 2 Goblin Grenades, and my Mogg Fanatic smiled. Then comes the Visions pack, where I open a Snake Basket, and I smile. Then, later in the draft, a goblin recruiter makes it all the way around the table, so I pick him up too. There was a guy watching the draft behind me, and he was laughing his ass off, encouraging me to go for Goblin Grenade beatdown. Then, third to last pick: Keeper of Kookus. I was almost on the floor. I won't bore you with the details of the tourney. Suffice to say, I made the final four, and was beaten by a rolling thunder. Actually a better way of saying it was this: I had four creatures, an untapped snake basket, and total control, and he had nothing on the table but land. He draws, smiles, and thunders me out of the tourney. Meanwhile, the main tourney has gone on, and all of our team has dropped except for Jason, who is 5-0 and can draw in. Congrats to him,he played really well all day, and shame on anyone who has never heard of a card called Perish. We are waiting around, with Jason going in to the top 8 with a 5-1-1 record (his opponent was trying to get some of his team in to the final eight, and had to play the last round), and Cory decides to teach me the true power of Stompy. Never one to back down from a challenge, the Baron stands tall. This all changes as Cory shows me the true power of the Trained Armodon. Suffice to say, it was a slaughter. There were a lot of tricks in that Stompy deck that Jason had, and it certainly wasn't cookie-cutter Stompy by a long shot. Jason gets set up for the final eight, and has to play David Williams of the Guildmages first round, who was the one who beat him in Round 7. David had Red/Black, set up for Jank, and Jason just ran over him before the sideboard. After the sideboard, it's David's turn to apply, as he gets a huge amount of removal, and takes our every creature on the board. Game 3 should feel tense, but Jason got, and I mean this literally, the best draw I have ever seen on a stompy deck, and just crushed. It was on to the semis! We went over to watch the other games that were finishing, and here is when I saw the "Tom Guevin Nightmare," as I put it. On one table, there are two Frenetics in play, and on a coin flip, one survives an arrow token to kill the opponent. On the other table, there are no less than 3 Cursed Scrolls IN PLAY. And those scrolls spell out the game. On to the final four, where Jason has to play "Red", another player of the Texan persuasion; we're attracting them like flies. This round, however, would prove to be his undoing. Red was playing Jank, and Jason should have probably eaten it alive. I missed the first game, but wandered over in the second to see Jason cast Hail Storm. What follows was, to me, the funniest thing I have heard in awhile. Red: What's that do? Cory (sitting next to Jason): It kills everything in your deck. Unfortunately, Red was not to be outdone. After Jason drops several creatures in a row, Red casts Wrath of God (!). From Jank. It took Jason totally by surprise, and Red went on the offense. Jason still had a chance, but it was a tough one to see. Red had a factory on the table, and Jason has Bounty of the Hunt, Sex Monkey, and some other random card. If you read Red's report, you see that Jason monkeyed one of the scrolls to block. What he needed to do was, as soon as the factory was an attacker, pitch the bounty, with the monkey, and add the counters to the factory. In response, he could then scroll it. I doubt it really would have mattered much, as the wrath just destroyed him. After the match, we got our stuff together to leave, and they gave Jason his packs. We told him to open the IT Legends, and he pulls a Mana Drain. In further proof that this was his day, the second held a Moat. Merry Christmas. Okay, let's wind this up. Some Final Comments- -Cursed Scroll. I don't think that this card should be banned for type 2 or for extended. But, as this day proved to me, it should be banned for Tempest constructed. It was the power card of the day in an enviornment that contained far more cards than Tempest does. Also, even with all of those cards, the scroll was next to impossible to deal with. WOTC allowed Paris to become the Bloom tour; let's not let L.A. become the scroll tour. -The Texas Guildmages. I have never met anyone of team Austiknights, but I doubt that anyone could be as cool as these guys. They are without a doubt my favorite Texas team. Just really a bunch of nice, great guys who love to play this game, and who I loved playing against. Oh, Jeff, if you read this: Thanks for your help in figuring out whether or not those cards were fake or not. -Jason Atuk. He was representing. -Adrian Sullivan and the Baron. Without a doubt, the most fun that I have had playing a competitive deck in a long time. This is really a great deck from the Corrupter, and I hope he places high in LA, high enough to give him the respect he deserves for the deck constructor that he is. This is probably the longest report that I have ever written, so if you have any feedback at all, please write to me. Please? I never get any mail. Oh just write, damn you! Yours in the Force, Rick Poehling =============================================================== This message was sent to you by Rick Poehling. "A young Jedi... a pupil of mine, 'till he turned to evil. He betrayed, and murdered your father." -Obi-Wan Kenobi =============================================================== "Try any of that Tailhook crap with me, Scully, and I'll kick your ass." -Fox Mulder =============================================================== Visit my Web Page! www.creighton.edu/~kysersze ===============================================================