Subject: King Fish Tournament report Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 18:39:33 -0500 From: Al Sousa To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com -------------------------------------------------------------------- This week I decided to go to Key West to have a good time. Turns out Sunday went to the crap house as it was 80% rain. I did go parasailing though and it was fun. Sunday I made it back to Miami to compete in the local tournament. I played my Merfolk deck, although I had a bad feeling this week. When I got there I noticed the more experienced players felt more confident about there capacity to "deal with me" then usual, by their grins and comments... hmmmm. I played anyways. Round 1: vs U/W Stasis deck Game 1 I gave him the usual beating down to 4 life. He managed to get a howling mine out turn 2, as he always does vs me, and after a desperate struggle to stop the beating I emptied his capacity to stop me. I counted on odds of winning. The odds were not against me as he topped deck the one card he needed and won, calculated out at about a 5 in 45 chace with howling mine made it a 22% chance of him saving his but, UGH! Game 2 I saw 1 island 3 U merfolk, 3 UU spells, Id keep it. It was a perfect hand and with 4 turns to draw land number 2 I would do well. I saw one land for 10 turns and lost. Again he had the mine but didnt play it due to my screw. Match 0-1, game 0-2 Round 2: vs B weenie deck Game 1 saw the winter orb win the game as I stole of man-o-war his creatures back to his hand. Game 2 repeat. Match 1-1, game 2-2 Round 3: vs 5CG deck I played him before but all the games were close, I won the matches. Game 1 I used the winter orb effectively against him with the tradewind combo out. I won eventually. Game 2 saw the insight win the game as I drew more cards then my opponent. Bouncing things back in his hand and making him recast it to give me cards worked very well. My winter orbs went out the second game despite what happened the first. Match 2-1, game 4-2 Round 4: vs Big Blue deck Weenie merfolk horde with plopping a winter orb. I countered his propaganda, I win. Game 2 was more control weenie hordes. At one point he had an air elemental out to block my weenies, no lord. I had a legacy out building up as he lost time. I eventually won. Match 3-1, game 6-2 Round 5: vs 5CG deck He over pounds me first game, his draw was much faster. Second game was the typical ton-o-merfolk and lord combo, I win. Third game was more control of his creatures with legacy and I win. Match 4-1, game 8-3 Round 6: vs Stasis deck, again quarter finals... He won both games by drawing the cards he needed both games. I did win the second game by a tradewind winter orb lock on him. The third game he barly pulled it out of his ass on my upkeep with a dienchant on my steal enchantment on his propaganda and "vision charming" my lands to plains. I couldnt counter and on my turn I pulled another steal enchantment. He locked me with the stasis and it was game....Later after the game a player in the store told me that during his games with me he table shuffled his deck while looking at his cards and placing them where he wanted in the piles.... and never rifled shuffled. I beat him twice before and this time he had auras, disenchants, and vision charms against me, Id say about 9 in total. Im not sure if he did do this but I will be more careful watching him next time. Match 4-2, game 9-5 I noticed that my lack of a good amount of counter spells was a pain against non-creature decks. Usually non-blue decks have removal vs my delay counter. I needed something to defeat these creatureless deck with less difficulty so I did the unthinkable, tainted my deck.... I added white and disenchants. I also did a little work on the side board altering a few cards here and there. Added more defense vs creatureless decks and changed my powersinks to dissapates because I noticed I usually used 3 to 4 mana to power sink anyways and at times I could not prevent a key spell, as in the last game. Total record for this deck with me is... 29-5-3, 4 tournaments won, one major tournament in the finals one minor tournament finals, no losses Al Sousa, drug@gate.net Original Concept: Rene Hildago For those of you whom Ive emailed me about this deck drop a line and Ill discuss the changes...