Subject: Tournament Report: PTQ Rome in Dallas Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 17:11:45 -0500 From: "Lance Aiji Tokuda" To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com This is a tournament report for the PTQ Rome in Dallas this past weekend. Brian Schneider woke up Lan at 1:30AM the week earlier to tell him about counter-phoenix for the PTQ in Houston. Adrian Sayers ended up qualifying with that deck (congratulations Adrian!) while Lan ended up throwing the deck against the wall shouting something obscene :) My biggest problem with counter-phoenix was its weak game versus sligh (the deck went 0-3 versus sligh in the Houston PTQ and did not test favorably). I dumped the dismisses and stayed up all night testing a 9 card sideboard versus sligh until it looked like I would have match advantage. We then tested against living death but it looked bad versus Finkel's death sideboarded. I tried to convince Pierre to work on Living Death but he hates the card so we ended up refining counter-phoneix. Friday night, Pierre calls me to say we should play living death. Unfortunately he is joking. We playtest phoenix on phoenix all night long and become two of the top players in the world in this head-to-head matchup (IMHO). Two hours later we are off to the tournament. Round 1 versus Shawn Reimund playing Living Death I maintain complete control both games and win. 1-0 Round 2 versus Jeff Clark playing Sligh Jeff is playing a version of Sligh that beats other slighs -- bottle gnomes and rathi's starting. This version is weak versus me but strong versus the rest of the field. Game 1 I get low on life before gaining control with phoenix. Game 2 I get mana screwed after my 11 card sideboard (up from 9) and removal of 4 lands. Game 3 I get a decent land draw and am never in any real danger. Jeff dies to his own jinxed idol off a poor creature draw. 2-0 Round 3 versus Ryan Fischbeck playing Death First game I am lobotomied third turn with no blue mana, lots of counters and 1 SHARD PHOENIX. I conceed. Game 2 I am thull surgeoned and lobotomied again and again but it is a long game and I end up with 4 shard phoenixes attacking him. Game 3 I am lobotomied third turn with 2 intuitions, burn, and 1 SHARD PHOENIX. I lose that one. 2-1 Round 4 versus Jeff Zandi playing Sligh I don't think that Jeff has ever seen me play a deck without counterspells. Game 1 I am low on life before gaining control and winning game 1. Game 2, Jeff stone rains most of my red sources so I end up intuitioning all of them out of my deck. One more strip on a reflecting pool and I would have lost. 3-1 Round 5 versus Andy Van Zandt playing Counter-phoenix Did I tell you how good I am at this matchup? Well not only do I have player advantage, I have deck advantage too since his deck does not start intuitions. Unfortunately, I don't draw my intuitions and he draws more phoenixes than me. I almost recover later and I lose the turn before I would have killed him to fanning-the-flames-counter-counter. Game 2 I win and we don't have time for game 3 (draw). Pierre plays Andy too but wins. 4-1-1 Round 6 versus Vincent Johnson playing Death Vincent asks if I will conceed the third game to him if we are about to get timed out. I decline his offer. Game 1 he gets a slow draw and I am forbidding with buyback all the way. Game 2 is long -- I lose control at the end and die to living death. Game 3 is for a chance at the top 8. We have only 10 minutes left and I have to win. He gets early hermit druid and wall of blossoms. I play portcullis. He beats me down to 1 life before I kill the druid and play phoenix. There are only a few minutes left and I am running out of time. My turns go like this: untap/draw/attack-for-two/go (about 3 seconds per turn) I ask for a three turn extension. Time is called and he is at 6 life. The head judge checks the rules on 3-turn extensions and my request is GRANTED!!! I beat him down with phoenix. 5-1-1 Round 7 versus Rob Lawing playing White Weenie What happens when you are playing counter-phoenix and your opponent plays a second turn soltari priest? You die! Game 2, I sideboard my creature that makes shard phoenix blue and kill him with it. Same for game 3 (Rob was mana stalled too). 6-1-1 I am the seventh seed entering the round of 8. Pierre also makes top 8. Teammate Chris Herdeman is the unlucky 9th seed. Quarterfinals versus Bill Payne playing Death I win a long controlling first game versus Bill. Game 2, I am mana stalled early and he is fully developed but has underdrawn creatures. I think about conceeding to have time for game 3 but he does not play much so I keep playing too. Bill makes a play error casting a living death which ended up sacrificing his spikes for no gain and allows me to clear the board with phoenixes. For 3 turns, I am at the point where he must play a business card or I will take over the game with forbid-phoenix but he keeps the pressure up and I die to living death. We are short on time for game 3. Game 3 he beats me down to 1 life with two hermit druids before I kindle one, get portcullis in play and bounce the other druid to play the phonenix. I attack to bring him down to 18. Time is called and we wait to see if we can get a three turn extension. Yes AGAIN!!! Turn 1 I bounce wall of blossoms, attack, and lay a second phoenix. He is at 16. End of his turn, I bounce the portcullis and play a third phoenix followed by portcullis and hit him for 4. He is at 12. Last turn, I attack for 6, intuition for kindles, and kindle him for 5. We are both at 1 which means an automatic game extension. He conceeds. This was the best match of the day for me. Pierre wins his semi-finals match and withdraws because he does not plan to go to Rome. Congratulations Pierre! He would have won the mirror match because he always draws more land than me. Jeff Clark who I played earlier also made the finals. His anti-sligh sligh went 4-0 versus other sligh decks. Since this was a two spot qualifier, we split prizes and I got to be the paper champion. Thus I am happy to proclaim that I finally qualified for the PRO-TOUR!!! Lance Tokuda unicron@cs.utexas.edu P.S. My brother is getting married on November 14th so I just realized that I can't go :( Props: Tim Weissman for putting on another great 2-seater tournament. Sorry for the poor turnouts. Jeff Clark for his successful metagaming. Lan Ho for his hi-tech connections. Bill Macey for all his encouragement, especially after the double mulligan loss in the semi-finals of PTQ New Orleans last year. Chris Herdeman and Burt Jones for countless hours testing those stupid decks we would never play against our control decks. Adrian Sayers for his expert play advice -- Adrian is one of the best constructed players in the world. Watch for him in Rome. Pierre Tsai for his illogical hatred of living death, for the super-secret hi-tech changes to counter-phoenix which I did not post, for withdrawing in the semi-finals and giving me lots of DCI points, and for making magic fun. Slops: My brother for getting married on the wrong day.