Subject: GP Boston Report Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 12:41:56 EDT From: Majesk@aol.com To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Brian Kibler's Grand Prix Boston Report or How Even Home Court Advantage, Tie Dye, and Couradroy can let you down or Why I'm too nice to win at cutthroat Magic If I'd have won GP Boston, it would have made the best story. Not only would I have won my second Grand Prix, but I would have won the Grand Prix in my 'hometown' (well…where I go to school), I'd be undefeated in block format constructed Grand Prixes, AND it would make a nice touch for my 18th birthday the next day. As it stands, I ended up 7 and 4 before I dropped out (sorry to ruin the suspense) with what I feel was an extremely strong deck, and apparently statistics agree with me… Let me give you all a little background. Why? It's more interesting that way. I haven't played Magic since Origins, other than going to Hammer's Comics twice to draft because I was exceptionally bored. Prior to Nationals I hadn't played since LA, and prior to LA since Chicago, more or less. I've been really out of the tournament scene lately, due to commitments with school and other activities I'm heavily involved in. I am, however, a regular on the IRC efnet channel #mtgpro, where I find myself able to test out and discuss a lot of ideas for whatever format is significant at the time. Interestingly enough, my match against Alex Shvartzman at GP Toronto last year (my first match after my byes) was the first time I'd played the illusionist deck against a live opponent! As much as people might demean internet testing, it's worked for me. In any case, I'd tested rath cycle A LOT prior to worlds, and come to the conclusion then that the Living Death/Recurring nightmare deck that Ben Farkas, Brian Schneider, Lan D Ho and I all worked on extensively was the optimal choice for that tournament. It was virtually identical to the Deadguy Death deck, but Farkas had poor matchups and draws at worlds and didn't too particularly well. After worlds, everyone had the top decks and I started testing again, dropping the death deck because A) it was too predictable B) I didn't want to play the portcullis game, and C) I didn't have almost any Rath cycle cards, and our living death deck is approximately half rares. I started testing monored, and in most cases it was winning at least 50% game 1 against EVERY deck…with some sideboard tech like that which Mike Bregoli ended up making top 8 with, I felt it was a very powerful decktype, but wasn't my style, really. I don't like a deck that will just lose if your opponent plays survival of the fittest and finds 4 walls and then spike feeders and just waits to death or recur verdant force. I talked with all kinds of people about what they thought the best decks were, and the conclusions were the same; Living Death, TradeAwake, and Monored. Then I started talking to Jamie Parke of Team Sped, and he mentioned that he was working on a CounterPhoenix deck based on Erik Lauer's worlds design. I'd never seen the deck, or heard of it in fact, but I know the Speds have been high on phoenix based control since the card was printed, and I was somewhat leery. Then I started testing Mike Long style burn against Farkas playing the Phoenix deck. And he won. Over, and over, and over. I think the game win % in testing of Phoenix vs Sligh when playing first hovered close to 80% or more. When drawing, it was closer to 50%, but any deck that beat sligh THAT consistantly game 1 was a sure possibility. I stopped by Hammer's comics twice the week before the GP, once to draft (which I won, beating Hammer in the finals with my double-rootwalla, double-mage il-vec green-red beatdown machine) and talk tech, and once to actually test. Like always, Hammer assumed I wasn't showing them my real 'tech' when I was talking about monored and phoenix, which annoyed me since he and Tom were discussing things with each other when I couldn't hear. In any case, I leave there with nothing certain, and get online to try to finalize my deck choice. I'm more and more convinced of Phoenix, to the point that when I show up at the grand prix around 3 the next day I'm covertly trading for Shards and the accompanying cards. I play in 2 drafts - one with Team Sped, Gary Wise, and Pikula, in which my lack of sleep over the prior 2 days causes me to NOT EVEN NOTICE puppet strings in my second pack (needless to say, I'm kold real quick), and the second of which I draft a good R/W deck, beat SELFDMECH when he has double propaganda in play before I play my third land, and then beat Erik Lauer in a match where I attempt to not block a crashing boars, try to block with craven giant, and try to use a summoning sick fireslinger. Like I said…I was tired. I apologize to Erik profusely when he says I'm trying to cheat, and give myself a warning, saying that if I make another illegal play for the rest of the match that I'm ejected. I don't, and go on to split with Gary Wise in the finals, giving him about a 60-40 or better split because I REALLY need to go work on the deck and sideboard. We get back to the sped room where Farkas, Parke, and I talk SB tech for a while, till David Williams shows up and we start talking about changing the main deck. We test some and we decide to go with the 4 Kindle configuration, and Jamie and Farkas decide to play 2 Dismiss in the main rather than the 27 land, 4 phoenix configuration that I'm playing with. I don't agree with the decision, because Phoenix is your best card and you ALWAYS want to draw it, especially in multiples, but you can't win them all. We talk SB tech until I have to leave around midnight, and we have agreed upon a lot of tech when I finally go home to be kold. I go on IRC for a few before crashing, and when Brian Schneider mentions to me that the phoenix deck has an effective way to defeat WW, I do a double take. I'd been pretty terrified of 3 cards in my phoenix testing; Oath of Ghouls, Volrath's Stronghold, and Soltari Priest. If my opponent plays first, or even draws first with a mox diamond, and lays priest before I have counter mana, it can be VERY bad for the home team. Brian said there was a card that was good against that, and better than whim of volrath, which was the only tech we had so far. I literally went almost card for card through the lists on my computer: Red, Blue, Artifacts - Rath cycle block. I found Helm of Possession, Mogg Infestation, and a few more cards that prompted some interesting discussions about the cards between Brian and I, but it wasn't until I was discussing the deck with Mike Turian of CMU that I heard about the 1/3 flyer tech. Fylamarid is amazing. I promised Brian I wouldn't give away the super-secret tech and went to sleep. I go back too early the next morning and talk final deck and Sbing with the Speds, and we decide not to use the super-tech I'd thought of the night before against sligh and other phoenix decks, and leave Hammerhead Sharks out of our sideboard, which I think was a mistake. We take off to Bruegger's bagels after turning in our deck sheets and scarf down some amazing cinnimon sugar tech (oh man! hot out of the oven too…), and get back to chill for a while before the 3 byes are up. Now for those of you who are looking for a play by play…tough. This is a story. It's not a strategic breakdown of my matches with a decklist and notes on how to play. I can tell you this - Phoenix is a deck that should beat most every deck game 1, except for a very well played living death deck. In game 2, depending on sideboarding, you can have a massive deck disadvantage against both Sligh and Living Death, due to cards like Jinxed Idol, Spellshock, and OATH OF GHOULS. Those are bad for you. Anyhow, first round (4th round) I play against DeadSped aka Dennis Speigal, who I had helped the night before and the morning of design his sideboard. Lovely. Game 1 and 2 he draws every lobotomy in his deck, along with a few more really annoying threat spells, and I get fairly poor land draws both games and lose. In game 2 I sacced 2 shard phoenixes and he buried his tradewind rider, but I told him to return it to play. The tradewind ended up kicking my ass. L Well that's…I'm 0-1 in played matches, and decide to go 3-0 from now on. Next round I play against another living death deck - this one the Your Move Games/Darwin Kastle version, which I personally think is far weaker than the deadguy deck, due to a lack of recurring nightmares and strong SB cards like oath of ghouls. I win game 1 with phoenix/forbid, and game 2 is all about interdicting his thrull surgeons just because I can. When you're playing against phoenix with living death, they've been shard/forbidding every thurn, and you cast thrull surgeon, and your opponent says 'OK', my advice is to use it as a beatdown 1/1 rather than spend the mana and give them a free card. J Next round I play the mirror matchup vs Bachmann, which is really dumb because he just doesn't draw lands either game (I think he was playing 26, actually), and I drop turn 1 grindstone game 2 and mill him out. He trys to drop silver wyvern bombs on my head, but it never quite resolves. 5 mana is some high. Next match we're all talking about whether drawing or playing is the right idea, and we decide that since only top 16 gets money, that we all came to play. I play against one of Jamie Wakefield's vermont crew - on of the myers twins - and he's playing WW. That's bad for me, especially because he's playing Shaman En-Kor, which makes shard into an expensive shock. Game 1 he plays turn 1 plains…mox diamond…GO! Oh man…I take control, he cataclysms once, I play more land (27 lets you do that) and I ignore everything he plays until I'm at 3 life and then get phoenix/forbid lock with capsize backup. Game 2 is much the same, except now I have bottle gnomes as blockers as well. I end up as 18th at 6-1, which means 4-1-1 on Sunday for top 8, which is entirely within my reach. I hang with the speds and wait to go to friendlies to get some eats, but they end up vanishing and Donnie Gallitz, Andrew Cuneo, and Derek Rank draft me as their navigator to get them to food, and we end up running into the rest of the guys at the Friendly Forest, where I think we scared off a good number of people with our generally loud antics. Team Sped = Amazing. :D We go back to the hotel, where I want to practice the Phoenix/Tradewind matchup, but everyone else wants to draft. I decide I'd best be kold, and call up my dad to go back to his place in North Andover for the night. I get a few good hours of sleep till I have to be back at 8 am, and I get my first match with Mike Lucerello. Sigh. Mike wins the roll and plays first, which gives me about a 25-30% worse chance of winning, as he is playing sligh. I get a poor removal draw and he gets infinate creatures, so I lose game 1. In game 2, I have a good draw but didn't have enough early creature kill, so I have to tap out turn 5 for shard. The only card he could have in his deck that would simply win the game right there was Rathi Dragon, and sure enough he plays the ONE card in his hand and a fat rathi is in play. I try to chump and draw into capsize or intuition for capsize, but it never comes. My next matchup is HappyJohn, playing TradeAwake. Basically he sits down with the attitude that he's going to lose, which is pretty accurate; without a hell of a sideboard or really good draws, most trade/awakening decks should be demolished by counterphoenix. He wins game 1 after a very risky play with awakening that payed off, and then I win games 2 and 3 after Sbing up to 15 counters and 29 lands. I didn't have any blue mana early in game 1 and he didn't have any in game 2, so game 3 was our only real game, and I pulled it out. The next match I play Mike Bregoli. I'm feeling really confident after he plays no turn 1 creature, and his turn 2 drop is fireslinger. I keep him from ever attacking with his flunkies and take the game. Unfortunately, he takes the next 2 with a good beatdown draw and playing first in game 2 and, yet again, the fat Rathi in game 3 when it was the only card in his hand. Sigh. After the match I'm cleaning up my stuff to go report - mike has already walked off - and I notice some cards on the floor. A fireslinger and mogg flunkies! I go find mike and ask him to check his deck…58 cards, 3 slingers and 3 flunkies. He looks pissed at himself and seems resigned to getting a match loss for an illegal deck…but I hand him the cards and wish him luck. As you all probably know, Mike goes on to make top 8. Sigh. My next match is the most depressing of all. I play first, my opponent lays turn 1 swamp…THE BYE! Phoenix just doesn't lose to hatred…they have no real finishers so there is no reason I can't tap out for phoenix and just wrath them repeatedly. But…my opponent rituals out 5 power in creatures on his first turn. I draw none of my shocks OR kindles. I draw no 5th mana source. I die with Phoenix Rage in my hand to a horde of 2 toughness creatures. Game 2….I draw 5 blue spells, a phoenix, and a mountain. I mulligan into 5 spells and a reflecting pool. I mulligan. He rituals out 5 power in creatures on turn 1. Sigh. One of those days. I drop out, as I'm out of the range for making any money. I watch the final 8 and decide Finkel is broken in the format of Magical Cards, then take off again for Friendlies w/ Fink, Lucerello, and Farkas, where one of the locals recognizes Finkel from a mag and makes a big scene about him being the best magic player in the world, asking if he gets girls because of it and all other sorts of random junk. Oddly enough, as we're leaving I run into Noah, who happens to go to my school and be the wrestling team captain - last year I got a lot of flak from the guys on my team when I was the #1 Rated T2 player in the world…they all looked it up on the internet and everything. Anyhow, I'm pretty much all done with this. I've procrastinated off and on and it's been over a week since I started writing, and since I'm back in school now I mise well just call it quits, eh? In any case, the obligatory props and slops…. PROPS: Jon Finkel - You're Broken Brueggar's Bagels - Cinnamon Sugar Bagels are pretty tech to begin with - fresh out of the oven they're a beating and a third Mike Bregoli - one of the best boston area players no one has ever heard of Mark LePine - Sudden Impact you…lay Onslaught. Attack with Mogg Maniac. Ben Farkas - Phoenix tech and general coolness Team Sped - Testing and Toids - Tings and Tongs! Everyone who went to Dunks on Sunday night SLOPS: Ramada Rolling Green - Kicking us out was really uncalled for. I'd like to suggest a course in basic logic, followed up by a business skills seminar Those people at the wedding - It's 11 PM on a Sunday, and you're drunk off your ass. You really don't need directions to another bar - especially if you're driving. That's about it for now…I won't be playing Magical Cards for a while, but I'll keep in touch. J Brian Kibler