Subject: Stronghold Pre-release report - Atlanta Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 17:03:47 -0500 From: "Wilson, Jeff" To: "'The Dojo'" Tourney Report - Atlanta Stronghold PreRelease - 2/21/98 Howdy. There were about 600+ in attendance at this monstrosity. Consequently, the organizers broke the attendees up into groups of 100 or so, each with a unique color tourney card. I was in the Red group. Apparently, you were assigned to a group in the order of your arrival; thus, the purple group started first, followed by green, then red, etc. I may have the other colors wrong - all I know is that red was in the middle, and we didn't actually start playing until around 1:00 (3 hours after the stated 10:00 start time). Despite the delays, I do need to give kudos to Stacy Doust, who managed to take care of our special problem - we (my wife, our friends Willie and Mary Jo, and myself) had pre-registered at the last PTQ; however, we were not on the pre-reg list - Stacy and Chris remembered us registering at the PTQ, and got us in the tourney, thus saving hours of waiting in line to register. The deck I registered was not very good at all - the best things it had were 2 Spirit en-Kor's, a Capsize, and a Legacy's Allure. No DD, not much critter control, no enchant/ artifact destruction. I hoped like heck I would not get it back. Thankfully, I didn't. Instead of taking up all of the decks upon registrations, they just made the people move, then distributed the tourney cards. When I got my deck, I was fairly pleased; although there was nothing earthshaking like Rolling Thunder, Disturbed Burial, Puppet Strings, or Cursed Scroll, there were quite a few good commons and uncommons. Blue was fairly weak; two Legacy's Allure were it's strong point, but I had 0 counters, no capsize; I had 3 Hammerhead Sharks, but nothing to give my opponents Islands. Blue was out. Green on the other hand was very tempting - I had a Vineyard, and 4-5 GG critters (Kraiklin, Enraged Armodon, Trained, etc.) plus a few smaller critters; I was tempted to play heavy green, hoping maybe to give some Vineyard burn to my opps. Then I woke up :-) I ended up playing the following: Black: Coercion (good card, pulled dangerous stuff more than once) Marsh Lurker Rats of Rath (anti-Capsize/Helm - never used 'cept for chump purposes) Pit Imp Foul Imp Dauthi Trapper (won one game for me, scare card) Corrupting Licid (solid in Sealed) Brush with Death (#2 MVP for the day; If I got the mana to cast it, I won) Serpent Warrior (Not great, usually sideboarded out) Total: 9 White: Smite (Excellent - revenge of the Chump Blocker) 2x Skyshroud Falcon (so-so , but Flying's always nice) Youthful Knight (Elivsh Archers - pretty good in Sealed) Soltari Trooper Serene Offering (Only enchantment defense) Conviction (Very nice; makes weenie shadows/flyers much better) Clergy en-Vec (Samite healer is nice) Advance Scout (good sealed choice) Total: 9 Red: Mob Justice (great combo with the next card) Goblin Bombardment (MVP - with all the small critters, no opponent wanted to see it) Shock (only DD, aside from Mob Justice; Canyon Wildcat killer :-) ) Fireslinger (always nice) Enraging Licid (I block your Spined Wurm ...) Renegade Warlord (BIG creature - well, in this deck ..) Seething Anger (Buyback offense, not used much, usually sideboarded out) Total: 7 25 spells Land: 7 X Swamp 6 X Plains 5 X Mountain 18 Land 43 total (I know, it's too big) Brain Farts (i.e. - cards that should have been main deck that were always sided in): Lancers en-Kor (3/3 trampling damage redirector) Soltari Foot Soldier (Shadow, shadow, shadow) Card I did not have the Cojones to play: Pursuit of Knowledge (Skip 3 draws, sac to draw 7 cards). I would not want this card if I were in any sort of losing position - or even in a stalemate. Not a bad mix of cards - I would have loved a disenchant or shatter, as I had NOTHING to deal with artifacts, which ultimately hurt. They announce that each group will play 7 rounds of Swiss, with the top 32 overall advancing to a new round of sealed for prizes. Short synopses of each round follow (I'm writing this three days later, from very cryptic notes, so some details are missing): Round One - 0-0 Joel Williams - UB Joel was about 14-15, a nice kid. He had some decent black creatures (Coffin Queen, Gravedigger), but too many creature enchantments, and not near enough mana (15 out of 50 cards). I sweep him pretty fast; the only damage I took in either game was from summoning my own Serpent Warrior. Round Two - 1-0 (2-0 games) Chris Rivel - WBG Another nice opponent (I didn't play a single butthead all day - very refreshing). I don't remember much about his deck except that he had two of the Stronghold "gain 2 life when entering play" white critters. In Game 1, my Brush with Death makes it's first appearance, breaking a creature stalemate. I finish with 21 life. Game 2, I think, was a damage race, with a Youthful Knight with Conviction holding off most of his creatures. I believe Corrupting Licid on a Renegade Warlord finished this one off. Round Three - 2-0 (4-0 games) Sol Malka WRb #2 sealed player in Georgia, and an extremely nice guy. Took me to the cleaners in about 20 minutes (well, I did manage to get him down to 8 the first game, 10 the second). He had a lot of solid sealed cards - Disturbed Burial, Evin- cars Justice, Puppet Strings (I think). A Canyon Wildcat did much of the damage, as I couldn't find Shock or Fireslinger to deal with it. Oh, all the 2-0's in our group got deck checked; we had to wait about 30 minutes for this. Sol and I looked through each other's decks afterwards - he gave me some solid advice about how my deck should have been constructed :-) . I saw that he was right, but it was way too late to change - I couldn't get the 2-3 extra mountains I would need. Round Four - 2-1 (4-2 games) Clay Cushman - WRB?? I don't remember much about this match, except that I swept Clay, and I did it with Brush with Death - taking him from 20 to 0 in ten turns in the second game. My scoresheet shows me going from 12 to 14 to 12 to 14 to 12 etc., ending at 12, I think all he could get through was a Dauthi Horror. Round Five - 3-1 (6-2 games) Brian Montgomery ?? I don't remember Brian's deck at all - my scoresheet shows that in Game 1, he was hitting me early with something, and then around turn 10 I got the Brush going , and that eventually won the game for me. Game 2 I get early shadow beatdown, followed by Mob Justice/Goblin Bombardment. Round Six - 4-1 (8-2 games) Bill Foxworthy RG and I believe w I don't ask if he's related to Jeff Foxworthy, as he looks nothing like him. He's got loads of fat R/G critters though - Spined Wurm, Lowland Giant, Shard Phoenix(!), a couple of the new Basilisks. He slaps me around in Game 1 - I did all of 1 pt. of damage to him. I side in Perish for the remainder of the games. Game 2, he gets me down to 6, then I Perish, taking control from there. Good old Mob Justice/Geeba Bombardment finishes it off. Game 3 , Bill is mana screwed, taking a Paris mulligan but getting only 1 land afterwards. Not good for his fat creature deck - I win with my 2 shadow creatures (after I Coercion away his Soltari Priest). My next opponent and I try to find out if 5-1-1 has a shot at the top 32 - the news comes back - 5-1-1 has a VERY slim chance to get in the prize round, so we play. Round Seven - 5-1 (10-3 games) Jonathan Greenspan UB Game 1 starts out with us trading 1-2 pts. of damage for a few turns - I'm waiting for a third swamp so I can start Brushing. He then plays Ensnaring Bridge, my intro- duction to this nifty Stronghold card. Of course, he only has 1 card in his hand, and he has a Dream Prowler out. So now I pretty much have to draw my swamp, as I cannot get rid of the Bridge, and thus can't attack him. If Seething Anger were an instant, he'd be dead! Oh well, I get my swamp, and Brush him once - he doesn't like that one bit, so he plops down the little Fish that can turn lands to Islands. He then starts turning a swamp into an Island during my upkeep, preventing me from playing the Brush. This game goes on for about 40 minutes, until he finally swarms me with 3 Hammerhead sharks and a couple of shadow creatures. I got my Bombardment out, but needed 1 more creature to kill him. He takes the long Game 1. Game 2 I get the Skyshroud Falcons out, and start pinging him - he gets a Puppet Strings! Man, I needed some artifact control. He holds off my flyers with the puppet strings (his 0/4 Blue Wall and Dream Prowler hold off my small ground creatures) and starts hitting me with a Dauthi Marauder. I prevent 1 per turn with the Clergy, but he slowly wears me down. Once again, I'm madly searching for swamps to power the Brush - but I keep drawing Plains - draw all of them, in fact. Meanwhile, he's got Distrubed Burial going on anything that I kill, and he eventually gets 3 Hammerheads on the table to go with a couple of shadow creatures. The judge stops by during my turn and says "Finish the current turn" I'm at 8, he's at 9, and I have NO way to kill him. I shake his hand, and wish him luck in the finals. Then I walk away and whine a bit about my lack of cool artifacts :-) It's about 11:30 PM at this point, and I'm famished and tired. Willie saves the day by bringing me a Wendy's burger - he has come back to play in the midnight tourney. I wish him well, then head home. 5-2 is not so bad - (time for some If I'ds: If I'd only drawn 3 swamps and 1 plains instead of vice-versa in the first game, I think I'd have won. If I'd gotten one more creature to sack to the GB, I would have won. If I'd played the fat Green/Vineyard variant ..) Until next time .. PS - I have no idea who won prizes ...