Subject: How I almost beat Randy Buehler Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 16:16:27 +0100 From: "Graciosa Delgado" To: How I almost beat Randy Buehler By: Jorge Martins Hi everyone! Having read lots of reports, I finally have something to write about, so I decided to do this. In case you haven’t heard, on the 12th-13th of September the first ever Grand Prix in Portugal was held, the Grand Prix Lisbon. Of course that here in Portugal everybody was going, since we were starved for something like this for a long time. Anyway, the first step was to check the Internet for reports and such. Since I don’t have NET, I had once again to rely on my big brother. Being a guy who enjoys playing beatdown decks, I focused my search on that and two things immediately came out: First: David Price betrayed his and mine favourite colour, going over to black! Aargh!! Second: Mike Long had done very well with a sligh. So, I immediately constructed Long’s Sligh and Price’s hatred. After a week or so of playtesting and tweaking with the decks, I realised that Sligh annihilated, was terrible against my brother’s WW and was fifty-fifty against most other decks. At this point ( a week before the tournament ) there was a sort of preparation tournament at my local club, Alternativa Ilimitada, so I decided to take the sligh, since I enjoyed playing it more, and see what happened. What happened was that after rolling over three blue decks, ignoring both Chills and Propagandas, it went on to win over two other sligh decks and win the tournament without a loss. Okay, that was it, I was going with it to the Grand Prix. D-Day finally arrived to find me, my brother, our friend Carlos and a couple of other guys going with the Alternativa Ilimitada Team to the Grand Prix. After a nerve shattering four-hour wait, the Grand Prix finally starts, and the first of the six rounds that will qualify 64 guys to the next day is here. Round 1: Milton Pina A very weird black deck with ensnaring bridges and grindstones. I win 2-1 after having bad luck on one of the games. 1-0 Round 2: Pedro Ramalho This guy is a team member of Chaos Team - one of the best in Portugal - and is playing a hatred deck, so I gleefully proceed to thrash him. Boy, what a untap mountain do to these guys ! 2-0 Round 3: João Malveiro Another team member, a team that comes from the same club as the other one, and is playing a Living Death-Recurring Nightmare deck. Sligh being sligh, I roll over him the first game, but he responds in the second one by whipping me badly with his Verdant Force. Third game, I get him to two life, in spite of his recurring spike feeder and he’s tapped out. My play, all I need is to draw some burn or a Goblin Bombardment and I win this thing. I draw........ a mountain, how nice! Next turn he casts a Living death for the win. 1-2 2-1 Round 4: ?????? I don’t remember his name, but he was one of the slighs I won on the Alternativa tournament, so I’m pretty confident. I have more creatures and his bottle gnomes don’t make an appearance, so I win 2-0. 3-1 In this round, the crowds are all over the first tables, since after having three byes, all the stars are playing, mainly the two Americans, Randy Buehler and Brian Hacker, both using their own decks, Counter-Phoenix and Humility-Prayer. I go over to my friends to see how things are going. My brother is 4-0 and looking good, a fellow sligh is like me, 3-1, Carlos also is 3-1 with his Sliver deck and Miguel Marcelino, one of the Alternativa Team guys, using a version of Randy Buehler’s deck, is also 3-1, but all the other guys got their ass kicked. Round 5: Ramon Zerez ??? Finally, a foreigner! This Spanish was a great guy, and was using a Red-Green deck he built using fatties. First game, I win easily. Second game: He’s at 4 life, I’m at seven. He has a 3-3 creature on the table and lots of mana, against my two canyon wildcats and a mogg fanatic. He then casts a Flame Wave!!!!!!!! When I recovered my senses, it was to find out that I had lost the game. Game three: My creatures swarmed his fatties for the win. 2-1 4-1 After this round, the only guys left of the original group with any chance are me and my brother, who lost to a Living Death-Recurring Nightmare deck. Round 6: ?????? A fellow sligh. He’s using seismic assaults and kindles, I’m using more creatures. I win 2-0 5-1 I go over to my brother, to see him win his matchup against a similar WW and we look at each other in ecstasy, we made it! We’re through to the second day! Not bad for a couple of guys who just wanted to play against the best and see what it was like. DAY TWO The place was almost deserted after the six hundred guys of the previous day became sixty-four. Me and my brother chat a little with Bruno Cardoso, the guy who had won against my brother in the previous day and went on to became the best Portuguese on day one, ranking 6th place, against my brother’s 33rd and my own 35th place. Round 7: ?????? Another Portuguese, this one playing a tradewind-awakening deck. First game he can’t handle my speed, so I win. Second game, I’m not fast enough and he sets his combo, so I concede. Third game, he taps out to play a Tradewind Rider and I cast a spellshock and fried his tradewind. After that he never recovered, so I win. 2-1 6-1 Round 8: Alexandre Quadrio Another guy from Chaos Team, playing Counter-Phoenix. First game he manages to put two Shard Phoenix down by turn six, his game. Game two I put down a Jinxed Idol and give it to him. After a few rounds of Idol-dancing, I get stuck with it somehow, but I’m not concerned, since after sideboarding, I have 28 creatures. Well, I managed to take 18 points of damage from my own idol, with the other guy at two life he whole time. I didn’t draw one creature! The referee’s commendation on a superbly played round of magic did little to lift my spirits. 0-2 6-2 Round 9: Hervé Drevillon Hervé is playing an oath of druids deck and smiles as soon as he sees my mountain. My turn to smile, however, came soon after when he fails to put down his second land. Manascrew! It’s beatdown time!!! Second game: I have a spellshock in play, a flunkies standing there all alone and I’m at 7. He’s at 8 and has no creatures and no oath. I draw my second spellshock and cast it. He does nothing, so it’s my turn again. I draw a jinxed Idol. I think for a bit and decide to cast it, sacrificing my flunkies to give it to him. He then proceeds to capsize it. I look at the life sheet. I’m at 1, He’s at 4. I count both libraries, he has more cards, so I concede – Dawn Capsize! Game three: He puts down 2 Oath of Druids when I have a Goblin Bombardment in play. I then proceed to sacrifice all my creatures to the bombardment, and using both oaths, I get some more to give him 2 points for turn, while denying his own use of the oaths because of his walls. That, a spellshock, and some burn finished him off. 2-1 7-2 Round 10: António Vinagre António, or Tózé for his friends, is, in my opinion, besides being one of Portugal’s finest, the best person I know using Living Death. I had watched him play his Living Death-Recurring Nightmare deck, and besides a few mistakes against the Cyrille De Foucaud, which ended a draw, he played flawlessly, and was still undefeated. So when I looked at the pairings and saw his name next to mine, I was very unhappy. I have to thank my brother on this one, because in spite of him having horrible day, and feeling lousy, supported me and lifted my spirits – ‘...In every tournaments, one Sligh make Top 8, Why not yours?’ . Since Tózé is a friend, we spent a little time talking about things and then proceeded to play. First game: After 2 mulligans, I’m still landless, but decide to play, since my entire hand costs 1 mana. I concede 4 turns later, still with no lands. Game 2: I had the perfect hand, I made the perfect start, everything went great, including my topdecking a goblin bombardment for the 5th turn kill. Again a perfect hand, great start, very good response from the other side of the table, good game on both sides. My turn, he’s tapped out but has a Verdant Force and a couple of blockers in play. If I draw a goblin bombardment, I kill him this turn. I draw...... a goblin bombardment!!!! I k ill him, he shows me his hand. A spike feeder and a constant mists are there looking at me predicting my doom on the next turn. I give a small prayer of thanks for my luck. 2-1 8-2 Round 11: Antoine Ruel Antoine is a little shaken, since after going 8-0 in the first 8 rounds, lost 2 rounds in a row and now needs to win this final round. He’s playing a sligh similar to mine. Game one: We’re both at 8, he draws 3 lands in a row against my three creatures. I win. Game 2: My torture chamber and 2 fireslingers make an appearance, completely controlling the game. 2-0 9-2 I don’t believe it, I have great chances to make the final eight. I go over to the judges, and they tell me that only two people with 27 points will make it. I’m in a pile of nerves. Tózé comes over to me to tell me that he had won and was sure that that would be enough for me to make it. The referees announce that they will say the names of the final eight before posting the rankings and there it was: 8th place – Jorge Martins !!!!!! When the P.R. people get the Top eight all together, I realise just where I am: With me were Randy Buehler, Brian Hacker, Laurent Pagorek, Jean-Louis D’ Hondt, Alexis Dumay, Bruno Cardoso and Helder Coelho, a team member of Chaos Team. The only guy I knew was Bruno, the guy my brother and me had been talking earlier, and, like myself, was an outsider. Anyway, Buehler asks who was the guy that finished eight, and after I tell him, he says I get to play him! Great!!! QuarterFinal: Randy Buehler Game one: He doesn’t get a blue mana source! I can’t believe my luck. BEATDOWN!!! Game two: I start fast but the Shard Phoenix makes an appearance. I manage to squeeze a few more points in but come up short, leaving him at 3 life. Game three: I start turn 1 Jackal Pup, turn 2 Mogg Flunkies, turn three Mogg Fanatic + Jinxed Idol. It was going perfectly, and I should have won, if I wasn’t such a scrub. In the middle of the game targeting a shock at his shard phoenix instead of him, in what was, without a doubt, the stupidest play in the Grand Prix. Still, for three rounds in a row I had him at 2 life and tapped out, all I needed was some burn, but all I drew instead was lands, so I lost, once again to my own Jinxed Idol. So, all in all, it came down to 3 reasons, why I lost with Randy Buehler: 1- The guy at the other end of the table was ‘Mr’. Randy Buehler, who played flawlessly. 2- I made a huge mistake, which cost me dearly. 3- I kept drawing lands at a crucial time of the game, when if I had drawn some burn, I would have won. At the end of the Game, my brother ask him what he thought about, and is answer was ‘... In game 1 I was unlucky, so I think I deserve be lucky in Game 3. With a turn 2 Flunkies, he should have win, but he make mistakes and I didn’t!...’ Still, I’m qualified for Pro Tour Rome, which is something so much beyond my wildest dreams that it’s still too big to think about it. Finally, since everybody puts props and slops in their reports. I’ll do the same. Props: - To my big brother, for everything. - To his wife, for putting up with us and driving us up there and then back again. - To my parents, for understanding – to sentimental? Well, We Portuguese are like that. - To the guys from Faculdade de Ciências, for the support. Thanks guys. RED RULES!!! - To Carlos - in your hands, those slivers do some amazing things. - To Tózé, again I won against him mainly by luck, and in response he was the guy who put me in the top eight by wining his match. Keep playing with “your” kids. - To Bruno, who went on to win the Grand Prix, and all his friends from Porto, as great a bunch of guys as one could find, always in a good mood, and ready for a joke. - To Miguel Marcelino, for the support and enthusiasm on Day 2. - To Antoine Ruel, for getting over his disappointment, and coming over to teach me a few things about the game, when he saw I’d made it to the top eight. Thanks. Slops: It’s a Grand Prix, and it’s in Portugal! There can’t be any slops.