Subject: PTQ-Rome report (Helsinki, FInland 20.09.) Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 11:02:26 -0700 (PDT) From: Erno Ekebom To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Hi Frank, This is a report of the PT-Rome qualifier tournament held sunday the 20th of september in Helsinki, Finland. Most of The best Finnish players were present and the competition was really tough with almost all the players playing control, with the exception of a few who chose to play white weenie or sligh, voluntarily or not. :) Personally, I chose to play Living death because it was the deck I had tested most with, and because I felt it could beat any deck when correctly played. I was hoping to play sligh and dreading to play TradeAwakening Which I feel is possibly the strongest deck in the format right now. A total of 49 players competed for the invitations and fully paid travel expences for the best two. Here’s a rough breakdown of the decks played in the tournament: 9 Counterphoenix 9 Sligh 7 TradeAwakening 7 Living death 5 HumilityPrayer 4 White Weenie 1-2 Suicide black + Some other decks, including at least one Monoblue control. As you will notice, I end up playing against TradeAwakening thrice, Countephoenix twice, Monoblue control twice, HumilityPrayer twice, and Living death once. I thus played ten out of ten mathces against control... At least one of my opponents decks, Kimmo Hovi’s FinkleDeath, didn’t have countermagic...until after sideboarding. On to the actual match descriptions: Round 1: Olavi Kuosmanen playing TradeAwakening. Olavi is a regular at Safehaven, the local card store, where most of the good Finnish magic players hang out, and we know each other well. Game 1: I slowly take control of the game with the help of a scroll rack and finish with a living death. Game 2: Much like the first game but with oath of ghouls and thrulls instead of the scroll rack. Living death seals the game again. 1/0/0, 2/0/0 Round 2: Harri Turunen playing CounterPhoenix without fanatics. Harri is another Safehaven regular. He borrowed me most of the cards I was missing from my deck. Game 1: I get a slow start but so does Harri. He is manascrewed and fails to lay a land for a few turns. Eventually he gets 5 islands on the board but I continue beating him with a hermit druid and a spike feeder. He draws his first mountain when at 6 life and during my attack shocks the feeder. The druid smacks him for 3 and Harri concedes next turn because he has no way to deal with the druid. Game 2: My sideboard hits him hard as I get a fast oath of ghouls + thrull churgeon recursion going on. I get a survival through his countermagic and he concedes when I play living death. 2/0/0, 4/0/0 Round 3: Tomi 'Jelly' Walamies playing his monoblue HaiTech control. Tomi is definetly one of the best Finnish players. (He placed 11th in the worlds this year and his type2 rating is currently 1991.) Game 1: I don’t find enough early threats and he slowly takes control with an active tradewind rider and a capsize. I concede soon after he starts whispering with buyback. Game 2: His deck has one serious weakness and that is scragnoth. I get a survival on the board and find one. His life total goes like this: 20, 17, 14, 11, 8, 5, 2... He had torture chambers in his sideboard against scragnoth but he didn’t draw one. Game 3: I have no exact recollections of the last game but I know it involved thrull churgeons and scragnoth beatdown. I think he conceded when I cast living death. 3/0/0, 6/1/0 Round 4: Arho 'Toke' Toikka playing TradeAwakening. It’s not bad having to play four control decks in a row, but having to play four guys I know, and have played a lot with, is a pain. Toke is yet another Safehaven regular and a really good player.(Top eight in the European Championships this year.) Game 1: He doesn’t mulligan with a hand of two islands and runs into mana problems, so I take control and win the game. Game 2: He boards in two portculli and drops one with a tradewind and two walls of blossoms on his side and a single wall on my side. I lose. My sideboard is a big gamble, as I have no way to deal with a portcullis. I wish you had played with the interdicts instead of the portculli, Toke. ;) Game 3: I get an okay start but have some mana problems. I thrull away an awakening but he draws a new one and is able to lock me with a capsize. 3/1/0, 7/3/0 Round 5: Matti Leppänen playing TradeAwakening with reclaims. Matti is my first non-Helsinki region opponent. We have played before but don’t know each other too well. Game 1: His first five lands are four forests and an island. He plays an early spike feeder followed by a weaver but I take control with a tradewind and totally lock him by bouncing his lands to his hand with the tradewind and thrulling them away every turn with the help of my coffing queen. Game 2: He drops a few early creatures followed by a portcullis. I fail to living death the following turn and lose horribly. Game 3: A long duel in which I eventually take control. He doesn’t draw portcullis and I finish the game with a massive living death. 4/1/0, 9/4/0 Round 6: Mikko Snygg playing HumilityPrayer. Mikko is another good player. He is the national champion of Finland and placed 10th in the worlds this year. He should be very familiar with his deck because he always seems to be playing prison in constructed. Game 1: I eliminate a few counters with my early thrulls.He is able to drop a humility with two blue untapped. I take the gamble, lay my eigth land (to prevent mana leak) and cast a living death. He doesn’t have a counterspell and I have a cloudchaser and a dozen other good creatures in my graveyard. I win. Game 2: He starts with two plains and I’m almost able to tradewind lock him on turn five but he topdecks some islands and makes a dramatic comeback. Tommi Hovi who was watching the start of our game five minutes ago can’t believe I haven’t won the game by the time he comes back. I don’t want to dissapoint Tope, so I seal the game with a living death. 5/1/0, 11/4/0 Round 7: Kimmo Hovi playing FinkleDeath. We ID as a draw will take us both into the top eight. 5/1/1, 11/4/0 The top 8 was as follows: 1. Arho Toikka - TradeAwakening 2. Kimmo Hovi - FinkleDeath 3. ??? Taipale - Sligh 4. Erno Ekebom (me) - Living death 5. Tomi Walamies - Monoblue control 6. Tommi vainikainen - Sligh 7. Mikko Snygg - HumilityPrayer 8. Arto Hiltunen - CounterPhoenix My quarterfinal match is against Tomi Walamies and the winner of our match will face the winner of the match between Arho Toikka and Arto Hiltunen. Oh well, at least I get a chance to play against sligh if I reach the final. :) Round 8: Tomi Walamies with his Blue control. Game 1: Tomi doesn’t draw many counters and I cast all my three living deaths early. This holds him back until I draw into one of my recurring nightmares and start drawing three extra cards a turn with a wall in both graveyard and play. He soon concedes. Game 2: This game is odd, as Tomi doesn’t really play anything but a silver wyvern. He serves a few times with the wyvern but my scragnoth and verdant force easily win the damage race. Congratulations for Tomi for doing so well with such an original deck. 6/1/1, 13/4/0 Round 9: Arto Hiltunen playing a very Buehlerish CounterPhoenix. Arto is a good player who has done pretty well on the pro tour and won our national championships last year. He is known both for his skills and his slow playing style. One time, I and a few other guys from Helsinki had to spend a night on the streets of Turku when we missed the last train because Arto was playing so slowly in the finals of a PTQ.I can’t get my revenge this time, though, because he’s going back to Turku by a car. :) Game 1: The first game is a 1.5 our thriller in which Arto mostly seems to control the ation. An early intuiton for phoenixes severly reduces the power of my living deaths. I also have slight mana problems but manage to stay in the game. At one point I was down to 2 life and he drew an intuition with two shocks already in the graveyard. Sometimes it pays to play with fanatics instead of kindles, sometimes it doesn’t. I survival a lot and living death for some spike life. He destroys most of my creatures with his phonixes though. The second death brings back all my flying creatures and he has to blow up three of his phoenixes to eliminate my verdant force. I finally take control with tradewinds and some random creatures. Game 2: The second game is much like the first one but his draw is not as good as in the previous game. He kills my early druid with a fanatic but I get some thrull action going. I get to choose between a portcullis, counterspell and the lands in his hand. I grab the portcullis, even though he has no creatures. He somewhat recovers from his slightly subpar draw and intuitions for the phoenixes again but I’m never actually close to losing this game. I get in some damage and living death to get a horde on the table. He again has to sacrifice his phoenixes to kill my big ground creatures. I return to the tour by beating him to death with my spiked tradewind rider. 7/1/1, 15/4/0 Round 10: Mikko Snygg playing HumilityPrayer. Mikko managed to first beat Kimmo’s FinkleDeath and then one of the sligh decks in the semifinal. We take an ID as both of us have full travel expenses paid anyway and its getting really late. Good thing that this protour is in Europe! I still don’t know how I managed to beat so many control decks with this deck but the sideboard and the three main deck thrulls sure helped. As I already mentioned the sideboard was a big gamble with no way of getting rid of portcullis. The board in general could’ve been a lot better because I really didn’t do much testing with it. The deck list + a few comments: 4 survival of the fittest 4 recurring nightmare 4 wall of blossoms 3 spike feeder 3 hermit druid 3 mox diamond 3 living death 3 thrull churgeon - could’ve been 4 as well 2 tradewind rider 2 rampant growth 1 coffin queen - was really useful in only one game 1 cloudchaser eagle 1 verdant force 1 shard phoenix -almost always sideboarded out 1 spike weaver 1 scroll rack 11 forest 6 swamp 2 pine barrens 1 plains 1 island 1 rootwater depths 1 volrath’s stronghold Sideboard: 3 oath of ghouls - great against control 2 portcullis - never played another Living deth deck 2 bottle gnomes - no sligh all day... 2 scragnoth - great 1 spike feeder - see bottle gnome... 1 anarchist - other Living death 1 cloudchaser eagle - Humility/Awakening 1 tradewind rider - other Living death/Awakening 1 thrull churgeon - great 1 dread of night - uhh... Props: - Harri, Eteläperä and Hiltunen for borrowing me the cards I needed. - The organisers for running a rather smooth tourney with so few judges. - Wizards for organizing Pro Tours also in Europe. - All the people I playtested with. - Jelly for borrowing me the voodoo pig after I won against him in the quarters. Slops: - Mäksä for losing to a sealed deck with his WW :) - All the sligh players for playing against Kimmo all day long instead of playing me - My mailserver for not working properly. ( I've never posted via Yahoo! and I can only hope that the formatting isn't too horrible to read.) See you all in Rome, Erno _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com