Subject: "The Blue" - tournament report from Croatia 19/4 Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1998 00:19:16 +0200 From: Andrea Santin To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Howdy Netfolks! Here's a toyrnament report from the first sanctioned tournamen ever held in Opatja,Croatia. I am Italian, but since the site of the tournament is only 1h and a half distant by car, me and my teammates decided to go there and teach our "cousins" how to play ( just kidding, of course ). I decided to play my tried and true blue deck, since I expected that everybody would have been prepared for the Cursed Sligh I played in the last 3/4 sanctioned tournaments I attended. Boy was I wrong. Anyway, here's the decklist. 4 Ophidians - the reason to play blue 3 Man'o'War 2 Wall of Tears 3 Tradewind Rider 2 Suq'Ata Firewalker 2 Waterspout Djinn 2 Legacy Allure 3 Sapphire Medallion 1 Capsize 2 Whisper of the Muse 3 Impulse 4 Counterspell 1 Force Spike 3 Dismiss 2 Dissipate 1 Disenchant 2 Quicksand 1 Adarkar Wastes 1 City of Brass 2 Undiscovered Paradise 1 Gemstone Mine 2 Reflecting Pool 13 Island SB: 2 Disenchant 3 Hydroblast - I expected no sligh but red as a splash color 2 Chill 2 Perish 1 Knight of the Mist 2 Nevinyrral's Disk 1 Suq'Ata Firewalker 2 Pyroblast My teammate, Marco Makuz, decided to play Donais' 4cBlue, with a different sideboard. Anyway, on to the report. Round 1 I played against a very friendly guy playing B/U. In the first game, when he had out a firewalker and I had an OphiBastard applying beatdown, he topdecked a Bottomless Pit followed by a Death Pits of Rath (what's that!), while I was stuck with six lands and no counters in my hand. Anyway, I recovered with some Whisper action followed by a disenchant, a legacy's allure and some tradewind action. Game 2 wasn't even close cause he was badly colorscrewed. 1-0-0 Round 2 Oliver something, playing Black Weenies backed up by Bad Moons. In game 1,he had a very good start but my slowdown ( wall, jellyfish, allure) allowed me to go through the early game unscathed and to establish massive late game control. Game 2 was decided by an insane draw by his part: when I casted my first critter, a Firewalker, he had 2 knight and a bone dancer backed up by 2 bad moons. I was able to get rid of the three pesky weenies but got beaten down by a 4/3 Feral Shadow. In game 3 my deck did what he was supposed to do, and my Ophidians came to play. Very cool guy, he was a real pleasure to play with. 2-0-0 In the meanwhile Marco, ranked 1580 something in T2 beats Danjel Pajur, ranked 1930 in Standard. Pretty Good Job, Marco! Round 3 Marco. We decide to ID, and I knew that, had we played, he would have probably won. 2-0-1 Round 4 A guy playing G/r Weenie-Orb-Growth-Burn. The deck resambled a bit Paul Gallager's deck, but was different ( i'd say worse, but that's another story ). Game 1 was all mine as I casted back to back wall and firewalker, countered his orb and proceded to abuse him with my friend Ophie.Highlight of the match: him firestorming for 4 my wall, his granger and both me and him. I force spiked ( 5 for 1 card advantage... not bad ). Game 2 was decided by a Choke backed up by a Pyroblast, with me drawing nothing but basic islands. I had a Perish waiting in my hand, too, but was never able to cast it. Game 3 he had to paris and was mana-screwed for the rest of the game. 3-0-1 Round 5 I played against a Stompy-esque deck with a twist. Game 1: I had an opening hand consisting of Island, 2x whisper, Imuplse, Allure, Wall and Counterspell. I was drawing first and kept it, since I can do the math. Of course my second land came the turn after he natural ordered out a verdant force. Game. Game 2: I had 2 islands on the draw, never saw a third out and when I was forced to tap out for a wall out came a Choke. He did his Natural Order trick once again and Ovverrun me with little tokens. Game Well, shit just appens, but I was so annoyed by losing to a brand new 1600 player that I kept whining all the tournament long. 3-1-1 Round 6 Alen Magdic playing w/u ? Alen was playing a weird w/u deck sporting golem, wraths, counters, propas ( but no orbs! ) wall of essence, cops standard ( w/g/r ) and gaea's. Both games were pretty fast, since I threw down a Phid, protected it, cleared a path for him and went on to win the game. He had a decent ranking, which saved my day. 4-1-1 So I finished 4th, while Marco went on to win the tournament going undefeated, crushing all the whinings about Dojo decks. The tournament was sanctioned as a swiss draw and so there was no final 8. We walked away with 5 decks and 12 boosters combined, that isn't that bad, even if I almost didn't made DCI points due to my stupid loss with the 1600 guy ( i'm 1807 ). My mistake was propably metagaming for the italian metagame, where Sligh and Scrolls are still big, as well as Tradewinds; in fact, I didn't played a single Sligh or a single g5c the whole day, while every single opponent I faced had heavy anti-blue waiting in their SB, and had very lttle anti-red. And now, ladies and gentlemen in real Hacker fashion, Props and Slops! Props : To Marco, for winning it all and improving his ranking ( IDing against him will be less painful for me, too) To Danjel Pajur, for metagaming perfecly - Gypsy Pox WAS the way to go. To Danjel Pajur, for helping Marco to boost his ranking. To the MakuzMobil, by far better than the Bat-Mobile. To Oliver, for being both cool and friendly. To Filip, good player and cool guy. Slops : My round 5 opponent, which was a little bit TOO happy for defeating a manscrewed opponent. The tournament organizor, unable to decide the format of the tournament 'til round 5 Thanks for reading if you made it this far. Feel free to mail me for comments, flames and whatnot at: countzero_97@iol.it. Later All....