Subject: belnat liege qualifers (T2 scrubpox) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 23:12:39 +0100 From: Eric Hanuise Hello all, it's been a while :) I went today to the last of the qualifiers for the belgian nationals. I had not set up my mind to do a tourney report beforehand, but the course of events eventually motivated me to do so. i've a long ant twisted story to tell, so relax, fetch a drink, and go on reading :) So friday evening, I plug in my computer and modem and head to the dojo (http://www.thedojo.com) to see if any new major decktypes have appeared since last two weeks. at about 21:00 I decide I have plenty of time on my hands so I go pay a visit to emory's journal archive to see if there's anything new (this is a must-see : a guy that publishes a diary of his life, day-by-day, on the web. http://www.hellyeah.com/days/) I gest sucked into reading it, then discover www.justin.org, another journaling site, and suddenly realize it's about 4 AM now ... I do a quick change to my deck, removing two dauthi horror to insert two abyssal gatekeepers and exchanging the tranquil domains by tranquilities. (Played in a type II with the deck last week, and have had some problkem with empyrial armored white weenies. And the gatekeeper i've read about in the schneider pox reports and wanna give a try.) The go to bed, take a three hours nap and wake up at around 7:30. I drive to liege, and arrive there at about 9 AM. The tournament is located in the palais des congres, a huge city exposition hall. I expect to find the intrafin team, who was put in charge of organising the event by WotC belgium onsite. There's a collector's fair and expo, and the tournament is located in the exhibition. I see none of them so I ask around and am directed towards a guy; He explains me that he's a shopkeeper in charleroi, and that he's the organiser for the tournament. He also explains ma I have to wait because visitors are not allowed before 10:00. (event was advertised as doors 09:00, play 10:00...) Then comes Sheldon Menery. he's an american fellow, military, level 2 judge, and experimented about tournaments. Along with him come jeroen and pierre girodroux, as assistant judges. Sheldon speaks english, and english so I help him get in touch with the organisator and do the translation. It then quickly becomes apparent that we have a problem on our hands ... The so called organisator has never organised a magic tournament before. He wanted to do one during the exhibition, and when he called intrafin to get it DC sanctionned (seems they do it instead of WotC belgian office now, i'll try to get more info on that one) they told him it was great since they intended to do a nationals qualifier in liege at that time. The guy told me he explained them he didn't know shit about tourney organising, and was told 'no problem, we take it all in charge'. Sheldon of course was expecting to come there to judge, not to actually organise the event. Things get worse when we realize they have no scoresheets available. it's now 09:50 and there are about 50 players waiting in the entry hall :) I offer to help and go upstairs see the tournament scene with shel and the judges. there are booths for the exhibitions all over the place and the tables for the tournament are lined up against a wall, they're very small and very few also so we'll need to sit four players on each. The exhibit coordinator is called, and explains us he pays on a per-table basis, so more tables will not be possible, and there's no other place to put the players available either. Of course there's people passing by and much noise, it will feel like playing in a shopping mall... Yeck! Anyway, I get a sheet of paper and pen and quickly draw a sample scoresheet then have it photocopied. As shel puts it 'if we have scoresheets and players, we can run the damn thing.' Players begin to come in as shel and the judges switch to crash recovery mode to make sure everything will be OK. The event of course begins late, around 11:15. It'll be 7 rounds of 1 hours, straight swiss. Now before I go further with the report itself, some notes about the organiser... The guy was, as I said a total scrub at tournament organising. First thing, and that baffles me, how could intrafin have him organise it, while they _knew_ he'd never had organised a tournament before ??? He told 'em he needed help, so what ? Then, the guy is a scrub, but not your basic scrub : He was aware that the situation was potentially problematic (euphemism to say he was in deep shit ;), and he was willing to help and learn as much as he could of the tournament running process for the future. Kudo's to him for that. I took a long time between rounds to explain him the basics (such as what is a decklist, why it's needed, what's a scoresheet, what's swiss draw pairings, and the like.), and we thaught him to fill in the event report sheet so he could help during the day. Moreover, he was expecting an assistant organisator to come from intrafin, and told me if he had known he would have enrolled some experimented tournament organisers he know to do it. So the bottomline is : it's be unfair to say that event organiser sucks, because he's aware of his shortcomings and willing to adress them. I definitely will go to his newt events to see how it all evolve. And kudos too to sheldon who was parachuted in the thing and never complained about all those unneeded problems he'd just ran into. He handled it proficiently, and I'm quite expecting to read his judge's report on the event. Now for the tournament :-) I left shel and the judges sort it out and switch to the player's side. Good news is the organiser lets me in for free to thank for the help :) Sheldon announces the top 24 from the previous qualifiers instead of the top 16 are already qualified and this event will have the top 24 qualifying as well. Slots will go down if qualified people place in the top 24. We're 56 and i expect 5-7 qualified players to be in the top 24, so it need be top 31 to be in. that means 12/21 will do it, and some 10's too. I was playing scrubpox, the result of several mutations of my deck. the first version was a red/black affair with shadow critters and blood lusts/blood frenzies for fast unblockable damage. It lacked board control and mutated in a necropotence deck with heavy discard, shadow critters, 4 disks and diabolic edicts, and some control, then eventually mutated in this pox affair. And it'll mutate again in the future, of course :) Scrubpox -------- 15 swamp 2 gemstone mine 1 reflecting pool 1 city of brass 4 quicksands 1 wastelands 3 mindstones (so cool to rebuild a hand after pox, or to replace a disk when used) 3 coercion 3 stupor 3 pox 3 drain life 4 disks 2 serrated biskelion 2 cadaverous knight (blocks centaurs, regenerates, I like him.) 4 dauthi marauder (for the kill. all other creatures are mainly board-control intended) 2 dauthi horror 2 abyssal gatekeeper (was a try. will have 4 next time, and no horrors) 4 diabolic edict 2 tranquility (proved useful against propaganda and empyrial, which are both hot here) -- 61 Sideboard : ----------- 3 cursed totem (tradewind decks, slivers decks, and it can slow down some red decks) 2 tranquility 3 crypt rats (board control) 4 perish (green is also quite hot here) 3 gloom (slow down WW and gerrard's wisdom based decks.) Round 1 : Raf de Backer , blue beatdown Game 1 i see counters, air elemental, then empty his hand, coercion twice, pox twice and we trade critters and board control until he eventually gets a rainbow efreet I can't deal with. Game 2 he sides nothing, I get three totems in and two crypt rats (more critters, and totems for that damn efreet. He however starts very well, counters all my tentatives to lay a critter (with a near-to empty hand, bringing a new meaning to 'topdecking skills') and eventually serves efreet beatdown with me hands tied in my back ... Grrr i hate it :( LL - 0/3 points Round 2 : Levi Leben , buried alive/living dead combo. I knew i'd regret my jester caps not being in the side when facing combo decks ... Game 1 he gets the combo rolling soon and kills me with a spirit of the night and three volcanic dragons. Game 2 I disrupt him early, emptying his hand and poxing like crazy. I the finish him with a marauder he can't deal with. Game 3 is a copy of game 1 LWL - 0/6 points Round 3 : Stephane Callebaut playing srb (stupid red blast. don't believe anything you're told about strategy and red decks, they're all stupid red blasts ;-))) Game 1 and 2 he goes shock incinerate ball lightning (where are my quicksands and edicts ???) and fireblast you twice are you dead now or do I have to play that second fireblast ? I hate stupid red blast. And yes I get moody when lacking sleep ;) LL - 0/9 points Round 4 : to add insult to injury, I get a bye... I go out fetch some food and think of Jean louis getting a bye last week, and can't help a smile 8-) (or was that a grin ? ;-) Bye 3/12 points Round 5 : Philippe Bernard playing red/green. We've played each other last week in a tournament with about the same decks, and he won. So I decide i'll win this game. Philippe is a very nice guy to play with, so it's a cool and relax game we have here (a welcome change, especially after the stress of the morning :) Game 1 : I empty his hand completely but draw no critters. He draws and plays a cursed scroll, then draws only lands for 12 turns. He kills me and the critters I play, slowly but efficiently. I draw only shit of course and die a horrible death. Game 2 : he plays bird, then river boa then a centaur. I perish. He plays bird, then centaur, I perish again. Empty his hand (2 stupor, coercion) with a third perish handy just in case and the serve marauder beatdown. It's sad to say, but I feel better now ... Game 3 : very funny one : he opens with bird, I edict. Then two ghazban ogres which I perish, then another ghazban ogre. he gets me down to 16, then i drain life for 4 and get control of the ghazban. I then get him to 10 with his own ghazban which he eventually quicksands :) He now has only a wildebeests in hand, and I lay dauthi horror, cadaverous knight, and abyssal gatekeeper so he quickly dies. I wanted a revenge on his deck, coz last time I was manadead first game, and saw no perishes or edicts the second one :) We chat about it for a while then proceed to next round. LWW - 6/15 points Round 6 : Jurgen Herfs , necro/steel golem/snakebasket the two games are pretty much the same : a long struggle for board control (during the first games he thinks I'm playing necro too until he sees a pox :) then he gains it and kills with snakebasket. I have considered siding in perishes, but opted instead for the rats (more beasties.) I proved right as he only had one snakebasket in the deck. Lucky bastard ! ;) LL - 6/18 points Round 7 : Bart Ermans , Sliverqueen and its minions Game 1 he mulligans down to 4, and can't help the huge card disadvantage (which I enforce with an early stupor, sorry it's just luck ...) Game 2 edict twice early, then pox and play a marauder. He's got two gemstones, two city of brass and is waiting for a fifth land. I'm at 4 and he's at 6. I coercion, and ... out goes the sliverqueen. He then draws a third gemstone and looks at me with all the pain in the world in his eyes... So I set end to his suffering with the marauder :) WW - 9/21 points. Of course, I do not qualify for the nationals. Well I'll play quake 2 and total annihilation with my friends that weekend :) A couple problems arose during the judging : - Joseph petrarca playing turbosvi (check www.thedojo.com to know what this is, the report is long enough without explaining this. suffice to say it's a blue recursion deck based on dream halls.) was not allowed the 'active player ends his turn' because ending his turn means about 30-50 minutes of him playing alone. See sheldon's judge's report for more on that, I didn't follow the issue from close enough to tell what happened - Damien mellaert, finishing in the top 3 with 16/21 was DQ'ed because of an illegal deck list. Once again, see sheldon's report for more on that one. Well that's it, the event ends at about 19:30 with the prize distribution being downstairs because the exhibition staff wants us to leave the hall. Curiously, I was expecting that one :) Kudos go to sheldon, jeroen and pierre for running the event smoothly (most players didn't notice how close to a wreck we were) kudo's for the organiser for not being your basic scrub (see above) Boo's to Intrafin for not taking things in charge professionnaly. Boo's to liege's palais des expositions for the coke at $2 a glass and the hot dogs at $3 a piece and boo's to me for not qualifying :) ------------------------------------------------------------ Eric Hanuise - Living proof you don't need a DCI rating of 1800+ to become famous on the Magic scene ;-))) Magic in Belgium : http://www.hebel.net/~ehanuise/mtgbel Touchy! : http://www.hebel.net/~ehanuise/touchy ------------------------------------------------------------