Subject: GP Boston - Tales from Scrubville.
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 17:28:38 -0400
From: shulerj@washpost.com
To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com, thecorrupter@yahoo.com

Just a little note or two on the Prix, I don't know if it could really be
considered a report or not.

If you like the stories, keep reading. If you want pure reporting &
strategy, well... you can
take what is offered way down below. :)

So it's the Thursday before the Prix, and Joel Priest & I are wanting to
go, but lacking in deck
tech. We debate it for a little while, then just get plane tickets anyway.

Plane tickets.

Wow.

I bought *plane tickets* to go to a Magic tournament. I've *never* bought
plane tickets for
something so frivolous. I guess that I'm a little more involved in this
whole thing than I had
orginally thought.

I think plane tickets may be pushing it. That's what I was thinking during
the weekend, anyway.
Didn't stop me from getting tickets for the Chicago PT, though. Joel & I
will definately be there,
as those tickets are non-refundable.

So, then. Joel, Joel's friend Kirsten, and I  ended up hopping on the plane
Friday night, a
puke-brown monstrosity from Southwest that was straight out of the
seventies. We couldn't
stop ourselves from singing "Come and knock on our door...."

Please, someone get that reference. I know that most of the players seem to
be younger
than I, but I know there are some my age and (gasp!) older.

We get to Providence (that's where you land when you get the cheap seats)
without
hassle, are picked up by Kirsten's friend Minh, and we stop by a bar with a
live band,
which hit capacity right after Minh walked through the door. Having failed
to gain
entry there, we kept on trucking to Andover and found the hotel, after
making a pit stop
at a gas station in which I had the best chocolate milk I've ever had. WOW
was that
good. Massachucetts might not have much going for it, but those cows were
apparently
working overtime.

After we hit the hotel, Kirsten & Minh take off, agreeing to meet up with
us later on Sunday
night. Joel & I decide to discuss what we will play on Saturday. Joel is
set on Sligh, and is
trying to convince me to run Sligh as well. I'm iffy on it, and want to
build a meta-deck that will
be good against the archetypes. Joel points out that it's 2am in the
morning, and that my
only real option is Sligh, since I won't be able to playtest any new
concept in time. I bristle,
but agree, and set the alarm early so that I can wake up and build a Sligh
deck.

Saturday morning.

I wake up with about 15 minutes until the Prix starts. We rush through
morning stuff, check
ourselves out, and hustle on over to the Prix. I walk in, and sign up. I'm
forgetting something,
though. What is it? "2 Minutes to hand in deck reg forms!" Glen shouts.

Oh.

That's it.

I forgot to bring a deck.

I start to get a little frantic, but Kevin McLaughlin appears out of
nowhere and hands me a deck.

"Play with this Sligh deck, John. I've also got an Oath deck for you, but
it will lose to anything
with Porticullis, which everything is running. This Sligh deck is
configured such that it will trounce
other Sligh decks, because it has the mighty Jackalope Herd in it." Kevin
says.

"Ok, Kevin, whatever you say, let's register this bad boy," I say.

We register it, and hand it in.

Then, I look at it.

And wince.

It's better than having *no* deck, I guess. But there's a reason that Kevin
wasn't running it. It's essentially
a Sligh deck, but it has things like 3 Jackalope Herds, Aftershocks, only 2
Fireslingers, only 2 Maniacal
Rages, et cetra.

Glen is glad to see me, as usual. Brian David Marshall owes me a shirt, and
tells me that he forgot to bring
it. How convenient. Tony... Tony and I always get along. :)

Oh, by the way:

Glen & Gray Matter ran a great tournament. Wow, was it good. It was so
great. It was spectaculor. It was
phenomenal. I'd go again and again to Gray Matter tournaments. I'd go even
if it was my wedding day. I'd
go in rain or shine. I'd go if it was my last bit of money, and I was out
of food. That's how amazing Gray
Matter tournaments are.

No one asked me to say that, or anything like that.

:)

Seriously, though, the Gray Matter crew *did* run a very good tournament,
amazingly close to being
on-time, as well. Nat Fairbanks apparently did a great job as head judge, I
heard no complaints, and
a decent amount of praise. Side tournaments were abundant and consistent
for all those people who
decided to do silly things like playing mono-green (coughWakefieldcough) in
the main event, as well.

The rounds themselves were nothing special:

Round 1- Mr. Bye is *so* bad.

Rounds 2-5:

In no particular order:

I lose to a Sligh deck
I beat a Sligh deck
I beat a R/B Slighish deck (Pups, Sarcos, Carnos, Flunkies, Assrt Burn)
I beat a Bottomless pit deck (Pit, Stalking stones, Stronghold, assrt.
removal)
I beat a U/B Recur deck (Counters, Recur, Looters, Verdant, Lobotomy)

In round 6, I play against Patrick Casey, who is with Sligh. He is the best
player I've had to face so far. We
go three games, but Jackalope Herd wrecks him, getting a 4 for 1 card
advantage one time. The game
that he did win, game 2, I had to apocolypse to stop a Rathi beating, and
this is what This Guy does (I'm
at 4, he has 2 cards in hand, I apocolypse, it is now his turn.):

Me: Apocolypse
Patrick: draw, land, go
Me: draw a RAGING goblin, use my powers to turn the next card on the
library into a mountain
Patrick: draw, land, Sonic Burst you.

Who *IS* this guy?

Round 7: I draw into day 2 with Michelle Bush.

I then attempt to drop, as even with a 5-1-1 record, I know my deck is
superjanky, and will never make the
final 8, nor will it make me any money. They won't let me drop, though. I
have to at least play the first
round of the next day.

--------

The next day:

I play the first round against Sligh, somehow lose (I have 3 Jackalopes & 2
Rathis main deck, I don't
quite know how I was losing to Sligh, but it may have had something to do
with me not wanting to play), and
drop. Whoopdedoo.

At this point, I entered a team tournament with Alan Webster and Kev, a
random Vermont fellow. We got jack,
did poorly, (well, I did, at least, but I had the g/b deck that got stopped
cold by a single wall of razors.), and
dropped. I then did a variety of booster drafts, none of which I should
have finished less than first in, but sometimes
things are messed up, even when your first 4 drafts are 2 wind drakes and
two time ebbs, then you get a 5th
pick Bounty Hunter.

But things happen.

Sorry that nothing is more detailed, I *did* have some sort of notes taken,
but as per the tournament rule,
I lost them all by now. The only thing that I have are a few scraps with
life totals on them, and no other indicators
as to what happened or why. I'll try to keep better track such that I can
write a proper report next time.

Saturday night involved a trip to Boston with Kirsten and a bunch of her
friends, alcohol, and sleeping in
an apartment that had more cat hair than actual air. But it was fun.

-------

Random strategy thoughts:

Hatred was extremely strong at Worlds, and very obviously absent at the
Prix. Nate Clark was the only
person I remember seeing in day 2 with it, though I know there were others.
And Nate had his head
beaten in by Kevin McLaughlin, who dropped Light of day on him and somehow
managed to sustain
himself through the beatings of a lone Bottle Gnome.

Sligh was *all* over the place. Sligh is as Sligh does, and it's important
to remember that no matter
what else in the format is good, Sligh will *always* be good, so long as it
had bolts and weenies. Notable
is that only one sligh deck made final 8, as the Slighs which stampeeded
into day 2 quickly found out
how tough it is to beat both Recur & Tradewakening decks.

Tradewakening & Recur are both very susceptible to attacks on their mana
bases. Hermit is the only
real way out of the attack, and you can kill him easily. Disruption of mana
supply via Wasteland & LD
might provide enough of a delay for the Sligh deck or the Hatred deck to
win this usually lopsided
matchup. Well, lopsided in that the good players with good versions of
T'wake and Recur will
generally have an advantage over Sligh.

CPheonix is still new, but it ruins Sligh & Hatred. It also has the ability
to just wreck the control decks,
because of the sheer amount of land & recursion via the Pheonix for feeding
the Forbid. Mana
disruption would help here as well,as this deck is hungry to get up to 6-8
mana immediately.

----

I've more to say, but not about the Prix. That will be in a general letter
later.

John "Nice Guy" Shuler
of the Cabal Rogue