Subject: PTQ Rome- Des Moines Report Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 17:50:35 -0500 From: Nate Ponce To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Ptq Rome Report- Des Moines It has been quite a while since I wrote a report so bear with me. This is the Tourney report from Nate Ponce, Team JLA for September 12th in Des Moines, Iowa. I finished a disappointing 3-2-1 playing Dog Death, deck list below. Since des Moines is only about 1-1/2 hours away from Iowa City, we were able to leave Saturday Morning and get back the same day. Those present were... Nate Ponce: Playing Dog Death Tim Lyons: Playing White Weenie Bruce Scott: Playing Counter Chicken Mike Swailes: Playing Mono Red Land Destruction Sam Rapson: Playing Red Black Speed Land Destruction Dan Brooks: Playing Humility/Orim Round 1 I once again get paired against Cristian Krugler. This is like the third time we meet first round. He is playing sleigh. I could be wrong, but I believe that I won the first game. I don't remember the details. 0-0, 1-0 Second game is seemingly a toss up until he plays the bane of my deck, portculis. I made the mistake of not being up on the latest rulings of this with interaction with death. I had believed that the controller of living death would choose the order of the creatures coming into play, as it had been ruled for All Hallows Eve, but the ruling on death is that the creatures come into play simultaneously. I find this strange since nothing comes into play simultaneously in magic, but oh well. I cast living death under portcullis, he gets 2 creatures to my none, I lose. 0-0, 1-1 Third game was my first real decision, and I believe that I messed it up. I was getting beat down by two maniacal goblins, so i intuition at the end of his turn on third turn. I go for spike feeders, two in graveyard, one in hand. Turn four I cast the peach. I block, sac, gain one life. I believe he lays a mogg Fanatic. I topdeck a weever and cast it, just to see it shock, mogg. He attacks again. Turn five a cast random chump blocker, coffin queen I believe. He attacks again, I block, take three. He casts another goblin. Turn six is the kicker. I have 5 land down but only 1 swamp. I have intuition in my hand, but no living death. I top deck the last peach. My choice is, lay the rootwater depths in my hand, cast feeder, and intuition at the end of his turn for living death, which would bring back all 4 feeders and a weever, or lay feeder and chump block hermit, and wait a turn to intuition. I was afraid of wasteland on my depths, that would leave me unable to cast death so I chose option 2. He shocks my feeder at the end of my turn, netting me 4 life and one less chump blocker. On his turn, he kills the hermit and attacks for six, followed by sonic burst. My loss. 0-1, 1-2 Second round I play against a ganda, peace of mind brooch deck. The details would be more boring than the match itself so I won't bore you. He only had 1 brooch out and a static orb. I force through a death about 50 minutes later and shortly thereafter win as every creature was in my graveyard. 0-1, 2-2 No time to finish game 2. He doesn't understand the match win rules as he is used to his local rules where every game win awards three points and every tie awards one. He wants to report the match as 1-1-1 for he believes it will give up each 4 points! I wouldn't do this anyway, even if he was right, so I report correctly and get the win. 1-1, 2-2-1 Third round I play against sleigh. I win first game. 1-1, 3-2-1 Second game, fearing the bane of my deck. No potcullis, I win. 2-1, 4-2-1 Fourth Round I wish I knew I was going to write a report, I would have taken notes. I play against Mike Holland. He is playing some monoblue deck, nice to see a non-standard deck type. All I remember about game 1 is that I won. 2-1, 5-2-1 In game 2, I was wrecking him with thrull surgeon. He did have 2 gandas down and me a force of verdant. He also had a legacy that could steal the force in two turns. Puppet strings were making sure force did not attack. Cloud takes care of legacy and it it easy from there. Recur a Tradewind, bounce and lobotomize strings. 3-1, 6-2-1 Fifth round I play against a man I always recognize but can't seem to remember his name. He is a good player, play with the Wallachs in Chicago land and my be a member of team portal. I just don't know. He is playing humility/orim. I get a great draw game 1 and he gets intuitions. I win. 3-1, 7-2-1 Game two takes all but ten minutes left as he slowly grinds me. I pull a successful lobotomy early on and see 2 counterspell, 1 Dismiss, 1 reclaim, and I believe a mana leak. Since I saw him intuition for counterspells and everything else during game 1, I assume that his true drawing engine is intuition, reclaim, so I pull the reclaim only to find just 1 more in the deck. I guess all he had was intuitions. I was in humility lock from early in the game, a problem I could have remedied had I draw 1 source of green before turn 30. I am really serious about that, It took nearly thirty turn before I drew my first green source. I just needed to put a chaser in the graveyard. 3-1, 7-3-1 We both know game three win not get finished so we shuffle and board and get about four turns in. 3-1-1, 7-3-2 Sixth round I play against John DeMaris playing counter-chicken. John is a great guy who took some time off from magic. I believe that had he been playing the whole time, he would be a pro tour regular. Game one sees John with no blue mana. Counter-chicken doesn't work so well if there is no counter. I win easy, 3-1-1, 8-3-2. Game two was going well until he played the bane of my deck. I pretty much lose to an attacking chicken as it was bigger than my attacking coffin queen. 3-1-1, 8-4-2. Game three started real well in my favor as he lays three reflecting pools in a row. My lobotomy didn't get to pull anything critical and he eventually drew blue. I on the other hand drew land after land, 17 land, 16 spells to be exact. I still had hope until he cast.... THE BANE OF MY DECK so I try my baneoff, capsize. It gets countered as I knew that it would and I lose to double attacking chickens this time. I finish 3-2-1, 8-5-2. I keep my fingers crossed for mr. DeMaris but his tiebreakers were not quite good enough. As far as I could tell from the Valleroy story, I felt that he was ruled against fairly harshly. I saw him storm out of the tourney and did some small investigating. Don't take this as fact as it was just what I heard, but what he did was take all the land out of his deck, set it on top of his deck and shuffle three times. The judge considered this setting up his deck, even though he didn't look at the cards as he shuffled. I would guess that since he only shuffled three times, the judge made the ruling that the deck was not adequately randomized but a disqualification in the top eight is very harsh. If I was his opponent, I would have just shuffled his deck myself and been on with it. Here is what I played. I tried to adjust to what I believed the meta-game was going to be in Des Moines. I made the deck weaker against sleigh, as you can see by the absence of wall. I was expecting heavy control, and lots of awakening as that is what the local Des Moines hero, Mike Reinking won with in Lincoln. I was right for the most part but there was a lot more sleigh than I expected and I didn't get paired against awakening. I also wanted to beat the other death deck, which I also didn't play against. Dog Death: 4 peaches 3 stronghold assassins 3 coffin queen 4 tradewind rider 1 cloudchaser eagle 1 fat force 1 spike weever 4 hermit druid 1 thrull surgeon 4 survival of the fittest 4 recurring nightmare 4 living death 3 intuition 6 forest 6 swamp 3 reflecting pool 1 pine barrens 2 skyshroud forest 1 island 4 rootwater depths s.b. 1 crapsize ( anti portcullis, anti awakening) 4 lobotomy (anti death, anti control) 3 cloudchaser eagle ( anti humility, anti awakening) 1 stronghold taskmaster ( anti suise black) 3 dread of night ( anti ww) 3 constant mist ( anti suise black, anti weenie, anti sleigh, anti awakening) I pretty much didn't get paired the way I was planning, but that is the breaks. This is pretty much a tradewind lock deck as opposed to most death decks. I still think it could do well against most the decks I did not play. props: My team, JLA for being the team Verdant Force for being fat Mayhem for the great tourney and the great people that surround the store. DeMaris for the invitation to his home for a night of gaming. Sorry I had to go. slops: to the BANE OF MY DECK and the "simultaneous" ruling of living death later, Nate Ponce Team JLA