Subject: Stronghold Tournament Report (Kind of)
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 17:54:00 EST
From: BlackKnght@aol.com
To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com

DISCLAIMER: This isn't as much a Magic playing report as it is just what went
on this weekend in Austin. If you don't like non-serious reports or long ones
then this probably isn't for you.

THE DRIVE UP: Me, Leland Simmons, and T.J. Hooper pile into the car and head
for Austin on Friday night. Nothing really spectacular here, except I manage
not to get lost in Austin and find the little Magic hangout named Never Never
Land with relative ease. We meet up with about 6 of the AustiKnights there and
talk Tempest Constructed and MirVLite. There's also a pool table to pass the
time, and I crush 3 of my teammates in a row. Tim wants to play me next but I
say I have to drop out to protect my pool ranking. Burn Boy is there too, so
the evening is a bit more enjoyable through shouts of "Burn Boy sucks!," and
hitting him in the head with pool sticks and what not. We go get a bite to eat
at DQ Country and I tell Adrian I'll probably get a Strawberry Sundae and some
other stuff. Out of nowhere Random Dude in line goes "No way get a Oreo Cookie
Blizzard yeah!" and I'm like "Yeah, I don't know you why are you talking to
me!" He also makes some comments on how they're screwing everyone over with
those 4-piece chicken baskets. Those bastards. Midnight rolls around and the
guy closes up shop. NOBODY on the Knights has a place for us to stay so we
have to drive to the tournament location to get a room. It's in a place called
Lago Vista, about an hour or two away from Austin with NO places to eat
anywhere close by, so we stop by the 24-hour Albertsons to pick up some Bread,
Peanut Butter, Jelly, 24-packs, and Lunchables. We finally get there at like 2
in the morning and nobody's at the place to check in. There's some box on the
wall that says "Phone inside call us and stuff if you need assistance," so of
course I open up the thang and there's NO FOOKING PHONE. Luckily some Mexican
lady had a phone there and called the people, and we finally got an over-
expensive room with hard-ass beds and all. It had a TV with Comedy Central on
it though so it kinda made up for it. I settle in for an enjoyable 4 hours
sleep.

THE PRERELEASE: I walk outside the morning of the tournament to see a HUGE
line winding out of this VERY VERY small building in the middle of the resort
complex. I stare at the miniscule building and think to myself "we're not
going to be PLAYING in there...are we?" We step in line and wait for about an
hour to get registered. It turns out we WILL be playing in there, and there
are also 470 people that don't seem to correctly fit into this building. The
thing I hate most about pre-releases is that no matter WHERE you are, every
scrub in existence comes out of the woodwork to get the packs. All I can hear
in the line while I'm waiting to get registered is how fooking broken Mox
Diamond is and how this one kid is telling everyone in the entire room that he
owns a Wrath of God. I'm about to scream when I finally get to the front and
register. Now it's time to go back to the hotel....what the! The only way out
of the room is through the same line we came in! Tables take up 90% of the
room, so there is a grand total of ONE aisle leading from the front of the
room to the exit. We push and shove our way through the line, and luckily I
get behind some fat dude and ride that wake all the way to the exit. I meet up
with the rest of the Knights outside and tell them to come to my room when
they're done. We sit around for about two hours and playtest Tempest Only. I
head back to the place and get my deck and packs. I open up Tempest and
see...CURSED SCROLL. Of course I won't get my deck back though, and it was
also a bad idea for them to pick up decks and re-distribute them. For one
thing, we have 470 people. For another thing, the decks do NOT fit back into
the boxes because we got 3 packs of Stronghold (in my opinion too much for
sealed because you get 2 color possibilities without the land to power it, AND
dudes get like 3 of one kick ass common and for some odd reason end up
winning, but all the scrubs liked it). And for another thing, Hatter had no
bags for us to put the decks in. Who cares if someone cheats it's a pre-
release anyway plus they'd probably still lose. At this time I noticed that
ANY line to do anything in the room automatically takes 2 hours to get through
and always goes OUTSIDE the door (into the rain...), so I figured out the
solution: fooking cut in line. It's much easier and there's so many people the
don't notice/care anyway. We go back to my room for another hour. David
Williams comes in laughing and I'm like "what's so funny?" David: "I pulled my
pants down and was going to take a shit on Bill Macey's car, and some lady in
a van honked at me and shook her finger at me." I busted out laughing, David
is funny. Lan D. Ho also came up with some new way to say -er stuff. Lan:
"Instead of saying like dinner you say I'm gonna go eat DinnYAR." Me: "Lan D.
Ho, you crazy guy" Lan: "You're a good kid, Bryan."
 I end up not getting my deck back. I build red/green/black from the cards I
get back but I really really want to go 2 colors. I scrap what I built and
build black/red. Here's the deck, I'm sure you know what the cards do by now
since the list is everywhere:

2 FOUL Imp
2 Death Stroke
2 Shock
2 Flowstone Blade (my god this is great creature removal, kills those DAMN
en-Kors)
Flowstone HellionWheels (Bryan's Gold Seal of Approval, for sealed only not
T2)
Wall of Diffusion
Mogg Flunkies
Rabid Rats
Lab Rats
Deadshot
Lowland Giant
Clot Sliver
Dark Banishing
Dauthi Horror
Dauthi Marauder
Dauthi Slayer
Shard Phoenix
Coiled Tinviper
Aftershock
Disturbed Burial
Cannibalize
Canyon Wildcat
8 Swamp
6 Mountain

14 land, yeeha. Normally I stick by my standard of 17 land at least in every
sealed deck but I want 2 colors dammit plus ALL of this stuff costs like one
of two mana. As I say my comment about 17 land I hear some guy behind me go
"What, WHY would anyone play with more that 13 land??" I turn around...
"AAAAA, you're that same Random Dude from Dairy Queen!!!" Anyway, did I forget
to mention there are 10 rounds of Swiss? Great. Some time during the Swiss
rounds I notice Burn Boy isn't even here today. Chris Herdeman's brother comes
up to me and he's like "Burn Boy was gonna tell you off yesterday but he
didn't" Me: "Good thing I woulda punched him in the nose, man he sucks that
would have been great" Herdeman's Brother: "He says he's not going to be here
today because he has to go to court" Me: "why?" Herdeman's Brother: "He threw
a basketball at some pregnant lady and she like lost her baby. She's suing
him" Me: "Ha ha ha either Burn Boy is a lier and full of shit or he's really
that fucked up!" During the day Adrian Sayer, Chris Herdeman, and Lan D. Ho
played a money draft against David Williams, Bryan Sammon, and some other
Guildmage (of the slimmer variety). Lan went 0-3 because everyone had anti-
green crap, Adrian went 3-0 with his 4 creature deck, and Chris went 1-2 I
think. We were in my room and the winners were like "Pay up bitches" Adrian
Sayers: "Whatever I called Gimp Rule Lan has to pay for us all" Lan got
sooooooo fooking mad. Lan: "Fuck you Adrian and your fucking Gimp Rule!" That
was the first time in a while I've ever seen Lan actually mad. When Lan's mad
it really screws up a trip because he's so cool. Adrian just had to be the
funny man and say Gimp Rule though. Well to make a long drawn out report of
how my deck crushed everyone short, I went 8-1-1 and the finals started at 6
in the morning. Now normally at 6 in the morning you would think splitting the
extra packs between the top 8 players and getting some sleep for the NY PTQ
the next day would be a good thing, but David Williams and like 3 other guys
were like "no way, we're playing for the insignificat ammount of packs and the
small ammount of ranking points!" I was like "Screw all of you, I'm taking my
box and going to sleep, " and walked out. It turns out 3 other people took the
same strategy, so there were only 4 people playing in the top 8. I got a kick-
ass 2.5 hours of sleep.

THE NEXT DAY: As for the NY PTQ the next day, let's just say that 2.5 hours of
sleep + bad deck = Bryan loses. There were 74 people because all the scrubs
had gone home, or most of them. David Williams and Paul Gallegher and Bryan
Sammon got to the top 8 though + a few others, but I had to leave at that
point. In the Swiss David Willaims had 3 ROLLING THUNDERS in his deck. It was
totally crazy I felt so bad for his opponents.  Earlier in the day me and Bill
Macey got together for some revenge on David Williams and Bryan Sammon. We
played all Tempest 2 on 2 money draft. I got like EVERY single blue card there
was and played blue/white while Bill got super fast red/black. My deck was
INSANE like 3 Rootwater Hunters, Counterspell, 2 Power Sinks, Fighting Drake,
CURSED SCROLL, Escaped Shapshifter, Staunch Defenders, Capsize, Master Decoy,
Sky Spirit, Bottle Gnomes, 2 Gaseous Form, etc. Basically we won, we'll be
ready to do some Team Drafting in LA too. David Williams made some comment
during the day on how he was the 8th Level Boss. David: 8th level Boss
raaaaar! (slams table with fists).

THE DRIVE HOME: We wanted to stop and eat but we wait to get into Austin
before that. I see like Taco Bell, Mickey D's, Burger King, Subway, etc but
Leland and TJ want to eat at a sit-down place. We stop at the Black Eyed Pea.
Now you have to remember that this place is about an HOUR away from where the
tournament was and in a part of Austin where there were restaurants ALL OVER
the place. Who walks in the door, like 6 people from fooking Houston! Crazy
coincedences are pretty cool. Leland got dry-ass chicken and wouldn't complain
about it, and then he wanted to tip the waitress 5 bucks. Bah, anyway we start
to head back to Houston and I let Leland drive. We stop to get gas and Leland
pulls up to the wrong side of the car because he doesn't know where the gas
tank is. He turns it around and we fill er' up. Leland goes up to pay and the
dude's like "Is that your car?" Leland: "No.." Dude: "Yeah, I thought that
when you pulled up to the wrong side" Leland: "Ha ha, it kinda looks like it's
stolen or something huh?" Me: "Err..heh heh yeah good one Leland." Dude looks
at Leland REALLY funny. We head towards Houston and Leland gets pulled over.
Cop flashes the flashlight all over my Mustang before coming up to the window.
He gets Leland's info and heads back to police car. He then comes back and
asks Leland to step out of the car. Me and T.J. are thinking Drunk Test but
Leland runs back to the card a few seconds later, grins at me, and starts up
the car. I'm like "what, no ticket?" Leland: "No, I just got a warning for
speeding, he thought our car was stolen" Me: "that fooking guy at the gas
station!" The cop also gave Leland a SUPER funny look when he saw the Student
Parking sticker on my car and saw Leland, MR. 23 years old driving. Cop musta
been thinking we has gonna bust some car theives. Everything ends up cool
though, and now the Props and Slops.

Props:
The word Fooking, word of the weekend
Lan D. Ho and David Williams, they took up most of my laugh section this
weekend
14 Land decks that never get mana screwed
Hatter for hooking me up with that free box of Stronghold
David Williams for getting 3 Rolling Thunders
Black Eyed Pea, best meal I had all week.
My school, for giving me Monday off on Pre-release weekend.
That cop that pulled us over, for letting Leland off for going 85 in a 60.

Slops:
Burn Boy. Throwing basketballs at pregnant women actually ISN'T cool dude,
plus you're a scrub.
Hatter, for holding a 470 person tournament in the world's smallest room. I
know you couldn't find another place Hatter but when you know what's happened
at previous prereleases and that you're going to get this one months in
advance you should plan ahead.
Stronghold. This set is NOT spectacular and only gets Bryan's Seal of Approval
for like 2 cards. Mox Diamond is NOT one of them. They tried to make Lotus
Petal better and it still sucks.
That dude that talked to me at Dariy Queen, then popped up again at the pre-
release.
The Lago Vista Resort. Not only are the rooms WAY too much but you can't even
get extra towels because they don't believe in "Room Service"
That guy at the gas station, for calling the cops when some dude doesn't
remember what side his tank is on.
Everyone in the Pre-Release top 8 that wouldn't split the extra insignificant
ammount of packs.

The End,

Bryan Hubble
AustiKnights