Subject: PTQ Rome Report Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 13:48:07 -0700 From: Campee To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Greetings fellow magical card players, here is a report that will hopefully help to enlighten some of you as to how someone like me could qualifiy for the Pro Tour. It all starts out as I go to Mark Dash's house on Fri. night. We had been held up for over two days waiting for an answer from our fellow mage Derek Lundy on whether he would be driving to the tournament or not. After calling a meeting on the IRC, where many of us put off what we were doing (myself playing Capcom Vs. Marvel for money at the local video arcade), he was STILL unsure as to whether or not he would go, and proceeded to waste MORE of our time. Frustating indeed. So eventually after deliberating for two hours which would be more fun: playing the magical cards or sitting at home alone, he chose to stay home. So I get on the bus over to El Cerrito Del Norte Bart. The bus takes forever to get there, and eventually when it does, the skankiest goth girl ever sits across from me. She smelled sooo bad. Anyways, i get off Bart, give MarkDash a call to come get me, and when he picks up the phone I yell "WHERE IS FAHENKHEN HIGH SCHOOL?". Ryoga Hibiki says that in Ranma 1/2, he is always lost, that is sort of how I felt after not knowing how to operate the whole Bart system. So MarkDash comes over and we get some Jack In The Box and go to get Dan Clegg and Ben Rubin. Dan Clegg won't even let me see his new computer, but he gives me ice cream so all is well. At Ben Rubin's house, Ben comes out and is like "hey guys" or something and then his mom comes out and Mark is like "Hey Mrs. Rubin!" and Dan says "Her name isn't Mrs. Rubin you idiot! It's (insert something i can't pronounce/spell here)" Then Ben's mom says "Oh it's ok you can call me anything you want" and Mark says something dumb like "Woah hehe cool" lol. So, off we go to Match Play to meet Ed Grubaugh, Steve Aldrich, and Dave Lewis. We go to Steve's house and begin playtesting. The format for PT Rome is Te/St/Ex constructed. I have no cards and live far below the poverty line, so I've got "Campee sligh" built, aka "Ghetto Red". Here was that deck: 4 Shock 4 Kindle 4 Scalding Tongs 4 Sonic Burst 4 Fireslinger 4 Mogg Fanatic 4 Mogg Conscripts 4 Mogg Raider 4 Jackal Pup 4 Mogg Flunkies 20 Mountains Wow! This deck sure did suck! I won like ONE game all night against someone who got mana-screwed. This red deck was more control oriented that "balls to the wall" sligh similar to Longo Burn on the dojo. But, that deck sucks too. Sligh is SO awful in this format. You either do really good with it or really bad with it. Ed Grubaugh does not heed my warnings that his deck is garbage and decides to play it the next day. I decide to play another deck, but between the cards that we all have, we've got two tradewind awakenings, one counter phoenix, and one white weenie, not much left to work with. So I go on the dojo to find a deck to play (shame on me!) and copy card for card. I see Finkel's deck and figure that if he can go 15-0 with it, maybe I can go 4-2? I change the deck a little, well, mostly Ed does the changing, I sit there chatting it up on the IRC. Here is the deck list: 2 Scroll Rack 4 Wall of Blossoms 4 Hermit Druid 1 Spike Weaver 3 Spike Feeder 4 Survival of the Fittest 3 Tradewind Rider 1 Rootwater Hunter 1 Anarchist 1 Cloudchaser Eagle 1 Verdant Force 4 Living Death 3 Recurring Nightmare 1 Coffin Queen 1 Thrull Surgeon 1 Stronghold Assassin 2 Lobotomy 2 Mox Diamond 1 Volrath's Stronghold 1 Reflecting Pool 1 Skyshroud Forest 4 Pine Barrens 3 Rootwater Depths 1 Island 3 Swamp 7 Forest Sideboard: 1 Lobotomy 1 Thrull Surgeon 3 Oath Of Ghouls 1 Portcullis 3 Dread Of Night (Never used) 1 Scragnoth (MVP!) 2 Mana Leak 2 Capsize 1 Scrivener (didn't use ONCE) Differences: I could only find one reflecting pool, because people are mean and didn't feel like sharing, or just didn't have one. I played 2 scroll racks because I was told that was what Finkel did to his deck. I was told that this deck was very difficult to play, and I'm a real "whiz-bang" at magical cards, so I figured I wouldn't do too well. So, we get to match play the next morning and sign up. $25! $25 to play magical cards?!?!? Outrageous! I go and write down the stuff in my deck, and get to playing. Round 1: I play against a tradwind awakening deck, he gets stuck at 2 lands game 1, so i pound him. Second game I lobotomy away his tradewind riders, and then all he is left with in hand are spike weavers. I start survivaling away all my creatures, waiting for him to drop his weaver and tap out, he does, and I cast death. In come all the big guys and he loses. His draw was none to stellar this game either... Round 2: I play against a bizarre red/white/blue deck. This deck plays with wall of diffusion and a bunch of lightning bolts and counter spells. Every time I cast a spell, blue mage across the table counters it. But, he eventually runs out and I cast living death. Second game he gets the good old Stalking Stone + Stalking Stone + Wasteland draw. I run him over with my grey ogres and hill giants. Round 3: I play against a sligh deck played by Wayne, dunno his last name. I drop some walls first game and then begin blocking all day. I drop more walls and he blows them up. He has a ton of creatures out, then I cast living death. All my spike feeders and walls and tradewinds come back that I had been discarding to survival. He loses in a second. Towards the end of the game, rather than forfeiting (which by new DCI floor rules you are not allowed to do, how retarded is that by the way?), he begins taking mana-burn. The next game, I get stuck at 2 land....he wins, what a shock. He had out portcullis, but I couldn't play anything so no big deal. Third game I get stuck at 3 land...mana screwed AGAIN! He wins this one, with a spell shock out and a bunch of creatures...one more land and I coulda brought Verdant force into play, but I was stuck with my three land being forced to play spike feeders and blowing them up when blocking. With one more land I could have survivaled a verdant into the graveyard and then brought him out with recurring nightmare. He got lucky.... Midway through the second game I got accused of cheating by some new judge there, he said that i had too many land in play, I had the right amount and the stupid judge still said I may have been cheating because he wasn't sure if I had played a land every turn. He said someone watching told him. Whatever. Round 4: I play against a tradewind awakening deck. He has a bad draw, almost no counters, and I just start attacking. He loses. In go the Oath Of Ghouls for his counterspells, and the lobotomies and extra thrull surgeon. I play an oath of ghouls...he lets it slide...I guess he doesn't have a counterspell. I play a thrull surgeon next turn, wow...this is going to be sick, recurring coercion...but he mana leaks it. He had a counter for the surgeon but not the oath, strange. Next upkeep he comes on back into my hand and he begins working on my opponent's hand. You don't need tradewind rider...I start dropping creatures, and he plays awakening. Uh oh! I play 3 tradewinds thanks to my survival of the fittest and bounce every single permanent he has and then make him discard them all through recurring surgeon. Third game verdant force comes out turn 4 and that's game. Pretty quick. This kid had an Akuma necklace, that was sorta cool. Round 5: Counter phoenix. I hear this deck loses to living death a lot, but don't know, this being my first time playing living death. I lobotomy him after baiting all his counterspells out of his hands with spike feeders and spike weavers and tradewinds. Out go the phoenixes. Now he has a deck that can sit there and counterspell a lot and not do much else. Then I living death and bring them all back.He dies. Game two: See game 1, though this time add a verdant force. Round 6: The tournament is only 6 rounds, so I figure I can draw into the top 8 at 4-1-1. I'm playing against the guy that beat Corey Strock in the last round of the PTQ LA with his all black necro deck with racks (tech!). He is playing some weird red/green land destruction deck w/ vineyards that I had seen around earlier that I thought was really bad (it had flowstone flood too). I ask him to draw and he doesn't want to, he is 3-2, and has been paired down. Blah. Ok, shouldn't be too bad, though I have a history of choking in the last round before the top 8. He goes first and plays vineyard. I laugh, he just gave me the biggest advantage ever. I play a first turn spike feeder. He plays a wall and is done. I play a tradewind. He then plays a spike weaver. I play my own spike weaver and bounce his weaver. He then kills my land with a stone rain. Oh man, that hurt. I go and play another tradewind and start attacking. He plays an erratic portal, which actually gets annoying after a while. Anyways, he eventually dies because his deck is bad. Game two he sides out his vineyards, which makes his deck worse, due to the fact that they gave my deck such a huge advantage. He is playing turbo slow now. This game was soooo long. He kept killing lands...but I would just hermit druid some more into play. He uses his erratic portal to prevent me from casting things as I am stuck at 4 land. We keep at this for about 20 turns and then I living death. But right after that....time is called. Since I won the first game, I win the match. That was sorta lame. I had the game all locked up anyway. Top 8: First round I play against Peter Constantinidis The first game, I lobotomy away all his forbids. No more combo for you. Then he dies, heh. Second game is looong. I sideboard in scragnoth and surgeon/lobotomy. I draw scragnoth, which I had sort of forgotten about, and I go Oh man! You're dead! He had a legacy's allure with like 9 counters on it and an ertai w/o summoning sickness, so i had resolved myself to the fact that I had lost this game. Then scragnoth starts coming in for 5 (with the help of a spikefeeder that was in play from earlier). I've got the game all locked up now, he can't kill it unless he draws a TON of direct damage. So..I play a Stronghold Assassin (STUPID FSDL:KJJF:DLSKF) He could just legacy's allure it and kill my scragnoth with (I didn't get a lot of sleep the night before...ugh) but he COUNTERS it! Everyone laughs at how stupid we both are...especially me for playing it. He stops once the mana leak is in the graveyard and is like "Wow, that was REALLY stupid of me..." He could have had assassin + recurring phoenix, impossible to beat. So I win that game, and the match. Final four: I play against ANOTHER tradewind awakening deck. First game I surgeon away his capsize and then start attacking with spikes and tradewinds. He loses eventually because his phoenix can't take care of everything. Game 2 he gets mana-screwed, and I start going to work with my tradewinds to keep him like that. Then thrull surgeon comes out and along with coffine queen, he comes back every turn. Bounce land, look in hand, lose it. Repeat x 20. He loses. Finals: I am playing against an oath of druids deck that I hear is good and uses benthic behomeths. He wins the first game by getting out his fatty and then cataclysm'ing. I think that there is no way I could possibly beat his deck, my deck is all about playing creatures. In goes scragnoth and lobotomy and thrull surgeon. We sit there, both playing lands, doing nothing much. I start playing spike feeders and blowing them up. I play a 2nd turn survival of the fittest which he does not counter...I am sitting there drawing FIVE forests...and so at the end of his turn I stop and think of what I can do...everything I cast is going to get countered, then it dawns on me that I brought scragnoth in, and I go for him. Next turn he comes out and goes all the way. My opponent claims to have been mana-screwed. Third game we both start out slow. he doesn't have the oath this time, and I manage to get out a tradewind, wall, and spike feeder through the help of them all being countered for their initial appearance and then casting living death. He cataclysms, which sets me back...but he has like no hand left, so I start building up. I keep my mox diamond and land against him, and start the tradewind 1 damage a turn beatdown, which I kept from cataclysm. He just sits there drawing cards forever, not doing much. He lobotomies me eventually, and makes me lose recurring nightmare, when I have a cloudchase eagle in hand. Well, how is he going to kill me now? I drop an eagle and blow his oath up, if he even draws one, so I've got this game won. I attack, and then next turn, he plays his oath. I drop my eagle on top of it and then start attacking more. He loses eventually. So, I win. I'm still not sure if I'm going to Rome, it depends on how much money I can win in Chicago money drafting (chances are bleak) Props: Mark Dash for the ride Steve Aldrich for letting us stay at his house Ben Rubin for his cards to borrow Ed Grubaugh for making my deck Peter for screwing up Scragnoth! (These should be played main deck now) Ranma 1/2 Greatest cartoon ever! Slops: Derek Lundy for being indecisive The freak sitting next to me here in the computer lab The broken controller on the street fighter vs. marvel game at match play Brian Weismann for being so critical (I want to draft against you some time and wreck you)