Subject: Cdn Nationals Report AND A Really Long Rant At WotC
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 20:55:20 PDT
From: "Matthew Vienneau" <mattv99@hotmail.com>
To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com

NOTE:  For those that are tempted to just skip this entire article
because it has too many words and none of them are "flagpole" or "187",
read the first 3 paragraphs at least.  If there's nothing in there that
interests you, then continue on your merry way.  Those who do read will
be provided with valuable insight and no doubt be shocked and
scandalized (well, maybe not...)

NOTE II:  To make it even easier, I'm going to include one sentence
summaries of any major point I make in the preceding paragraphs.  I have
a tendency to wander while writing, so I figure this will help out those
that just like to skim.  If you like, just read the points, and if
you're interested, read the paragraphs.  It's all about user-friendly!
Hmm, I got caught up in the ending, and have no summaries there.  So for
the first three chapters, there's summaries as that is the most boring
part.  For the interesting parts, jump right to chapter 6.

NOTE III:  There are absolutely no deck-lists at all here - who cares
about standard decks from this past weekend when they're never going to
be used again?

NOTE IV:  Notes do not count as paragraphs.

NOTE V:  Rumours that a recent 17 page tournament report on the UK
nationals has challenged me to write an even longer nationals report is
entirely unfounded.  I've already written a 22 page PT report, and THAT
is the record I'm trying to beat.  But who knows!  Who else has CHAPTERS
in their tournament reports?

NOTE VI:  I didn't get to proofread this as It's 11:46PM and I have to
go home from work, so please forgive anything which resembles direct
slander or libelous claims, they're a result of bad proofreading.

Chapters:

1. Introduction
2. PT LA and NY
3. The Cheating Incident
4. Quest For The Nationals
5. Exodus Is Released
6. The Canadian Nationals
        I - The Open
        II - Draft Portion
        III - Standard Portion
7. Conclusion

INTRODUCTION
------------

As with any proper essay, the introduction should brief the read on what
is to follow.  I plan to discuss a variety of things against the
backdrop of the past 6 months of my Magic life and specifically the 1998
Canadian Nationals.  I have become increasingly concerned about WotC
competency and direction and quite frankly, it's ruining my enjoyment of
the game.  I'm going to write about the MANY, MANY instances in the past
6 months of bad judging and bad organizing that I have experienced.  I
am then going to place much of the blame on Wizards of the Coast.
Normally I defend WotC wholeheartedly, but now I'm starting to wonder.
I will also blame TOs and judges.

And for those of you who don't care about that sort of thing, this
essay/rant will also include highlights/excruciating details from the
Canadian National Championships held this past weekend, as well as a
couple brief comments on recent regionals and even the last two
pro-tours.  For those that were lucky enough (and had the time to spare)
to read my 22 page rant about how pathetically awful PT Mainz was (if
you haven't, I urge you to rush out and read a copy - it's hilarious!) -
this literary piece will follow a similar tone.  I would have ranted
about PT LA and PT NY earlier, but I was on vacation for a week and a
half after LA and I was sick for two weeks after NY.  I'm sure my public
has been missing me (ha!).

I apologize for how dated some of this material is.  I missed the chance
to post most of it at the time, but the resentment/anger has been
building up and I got to let it out.  After posting the Mainz report I
felt great, so I'm hoping this will do the same.

If at any time you get bored, skip a paragraph or two and keep reading -
things will pick up!

PT LA and PT NY - getting it off my chest
-----------------------------------------

Going into PT LA I had been to every pro-tour since Columbus.  I had
gotten 4 extra invitations from the new PT Point system just as I had
acknowledged that there was no way I would get to PT Chicago.  I had
done poorly in Chicago (two weeks practice and no teammates!), and I did
pretty bad in Mainz too.  But I had practiced quite a bit for LA and was
hoping to at least do decently.  I was wrong.  I managed to make the 2nd
day in 86th place with the new "top 96" rule and then I spent 10+ hours
the second day and ended up 87th.  Yikes.

PT LA was very excellently run.  I have almost no negative memories.
The computer system ran fine, it cut to the top 96 for the first time
(as I had requested in my previous PT report) and the judges were
seemingly competent.  The side tournaments were run fairly well and the
location was excellent.  For those that may think I only bitch (the
entire staff of WotC being among them), here's a positive comment!  Run
every PT like LA, and you won't have any complaints.  There was a fight
in the Juniors, but that just adds to the color and atmosphere of the
pro-tour!

*MY POINT:  I'm not always a bitter complainer AND WotC can get a
pro-tour right after 13 attempts.  I'm not that good at Tempest-only
constructed play.

So then I went to NY.  I had to do well in New York or I was off the
pro-tour.  In fact, I probably had to do REALLY well - maybe even make
second day!.  As everyone before me has said, the hotel was crappy and
expensive.   The tournament site was alright, if a little small, but at
least both were actually in New York and not in some obscure
suburb/adjoining village like NY II.

There were a variety of incidents involving Bachman(sp?) and
Chinook(sp?).  My thoughts on those are - from all appearances Bachmann
is an immature shit.  We have one of our own up here in Canada and no
one likes him either (except other 17 year olds).  I've heard he can
actually be reasonable if you get him alone and he's obviously a decent
magic player, but boy is he an asshole.  As for John, I remember playing
him in Paris and thinking "What a nice guy, he's so unlike so many of
the other players" as he beat me down with ProsBloom.  Did he cheat?
Well, we all spent countless hours shuffling decks properly, what are
the probabilities that when shuffling idly we shuffle "incorrectly".  I
can't play bridge, poker or hearts anymore without giving a deck a good
thorough shuffling and I never, even when idly shuffling while talking
or doing something else, shuffle incorrectly.
But I'm not John.  I want to believe him, and I feel his opponent does
believe him.  But in this "cheater-sensitized" environment, you can't be
thinking too straight to shuffle like that at a pro-tour at a feature
table, no matter how much you may have shuffled before.

I win my first round and then lose the next two to the Helm and to a
bullwhip.  But here is where it gets more interesting.

THE CHEATING INCIDENT - A different one
---------------------------------------

My fourth round opponent CHEATS.  I catch him cheating.  He acknowledges
that he has cheated.  The cheating has influenced the outcome of the
game and the match.  Well, you're thinking, he probably gets a game
loss, or a match loss, or a disqualification.....

HA!  This is what happened.  I lost the first game.  The second game
begins with him "serving up a mad beatdown" with perfect mana and a
creature every turn.  On turn 7 of the second game, I notice that my
opponent has the same number of cards in play as I do despite him having
played first and neither of us calling a mulligan.  I bring this to his
attention, and we search our graveyards and so on to see if there are
any card drawing effects.  There isn't.  Apparently my opponent
accidentally drew a card when he went first.

I call a judge.  I explain the situation.  The judge calls Jeff Donais
over.  I explain the situation.  My opponent AGREES that this is the
situation.  He admits that he has accidentally drawn an extra card and
is willing to be penalized however he should be.  I assume that he'll
lose the game we are currently playing as there is no way he should be
allowed to win a game where he had an extra card for the first 7 turns.

Nope.

** HE GETS A WARNING!! **  You can't imagine how insane I think this is.
Jeff decides that my opponent will not draw on his *8th* turn and that
this will somehow make up for the fact he had an extra card for the
first 7!  What the hell?  I attempt to disagree and am told that that is
his ruling and if I wish I can talk to him about it after the match.  Of
course it will be too late after the match but who the hell do you
appeal to when the head judge of the pro-tour makes a poor ruling?
(Andrew Finch?)  I assumed that Jeff had made a correct ruling, but I
couldn't comprehend how the rules could be that unfair.

Well, I lose the game and match when my opponent casts time-warp and
gets the extra turn to beat me right before I defeat him.  I am now 1-3
and A) Am no longer able to qualify for the 2nd day and B) no longer on
the pro-tour.

You can imagine how thrilled I am.

So after the match, I immediately discuss the situation with Andrew
Finch (being the tournament manager) and Jeff Donais.  They argue that
it is the correct ruling.  I actually get the book of floor rules, and
manage (I feel) to prove them wrong.  An unintentional infraction that
has significantly influenced the outcome of a game is a double-warning
which is an automatic game loss.  And even if the rules disagreed, it
just doesn't make sense.  The whole concept of the play/draw rule was
based on the premise that drawing really, really helped the player who
went first.

I suggest this reasoning and Andrew and Jeff seem to agree, perhaps only
to placate me.  Jeff suggests I email him after the PT with what I think
should be done to improve the rules while Andrew says that he'll  bring
it up at the next meeting of the rules managers.  Well, that doesn't
help me get back on the PT now does it?  Of course, I'm not sure I
deserved it as I then went 1-2 in the second draft, but it's a lot
different drafting at the 1-3 table, where you have no chance, and the
2-2 table, where you're fighting for the second day.  No one really card
at the 1-3 table.  (I was also, I discovered, very, very sick - but I
just thought it was ususal pro-tour weariness).

*MY POINT:  Black/Blue has few ways in tempest/stronghold to deal with
artifacts.  Jeff Donais is too lenient - bring back Charlie!

This brings me to the warning system.  The warning system in Magic is a
colossal joke.  I couldn't give a shit if my opponent gets a warning.
It doesn't help me at all unless I play him a lot and can continue
giving him warnings.  But even then the judges aren't likely to know he
has warnings, and nothing is going to happen.  Even if a guy gets his 3,
6, or 50 warnings required for the DCI to actually do anything, it
doesn't help ME, the guy he got cheated each of the times he got a
warning.

Has ANYONE ever been banned from tournament play for having too many
warnings?  Who knows!  The warning system has no apparent bite as there
are no announcements about who is banned and why they were banned.

As I said to Andrew and Jeff at the time, my advice to all players now
is to draw extra cards whenever you can as it is only a warning offence.
Think of it this way - you're in Grand Prix Indianapolis and you need to
win the last 5 rounds to make thousands of dollars.  That extra card
could make all the difference!  If you have unwary opponents, you could
got all five rounds before getting caught.  But even if you DO get
caught - it's only a warning!  Heck, only do it when you lose the first
game or expect it to be a tight match.  Increase your reward/risk
ratios.  It's a one time thing though, so only use it when you really
need to!

*MY POINT:  Warnings are a joke.  No one ever seems to get three in a
tournament, or if they do they never get ejected.  No one ever gets
banned for having too many.  And if you have a lenient judge, you can
cheat, get a warning, and keep the advantage - What A Deal!

Enough about NY.

QUEST FOR THE CANADIAN TITLE - for historical purposes only
-----------------------------------------------------------

(also called "The Qualifier For Worlds")

So after NY I stop playing Magic for a month or two.  My enjoyment of
the game is at an all time low.  However, as has been mentioned by many,
the lure of Magic keeps drawing us back in.  I eventually began getting
excited about Nationals.

Regional information was much easier to get this year in Canada.  Last
year there no information, this year there was some.  In a real fit of
idiocy, last year they ran one of the regionals on the same day as the
pro-tour, but luckily this year they managed to work around that.

I attend the Central Ontario regionals and go 5-2.  The tournament is
much like any qualifier and run by the same person (who runs EVERYTHING
in Toronto/Ontario).  After 15-20 qualifiers, he actually can do it
correctly most of the time.  For once my pre-registration actually was
recorded!

So now I have to go the Southern Ontario regionals.  Why are all the
regionals on different days when all the US regionals are on the same
day?  Logistics apparently.  WotC claims factors beyond their control
(this becomes a central theme later).  But I don't mind, as it gives me
another chance.

Again I lost two rounds and drop out at 3-2.  It happens.  I am still
hoping to qualify through rating, and decide not to got the Quebec
Regionals (hmm, it seems awfully unfair to have 3 chances compared to
the American's 1, but so far so good...).

At one point Mike Donais makes a ruling in my favour which I am now
convinced was incorrect.  My opponent is at one and I have a forsaken
wastes in play.  He had just played a disk, it untaps, and during his
upkeep he blows the disk.  In response I activate the upkeep effect of
the forsaken wastes and deal a point of damage.  He calls Mike and Mike
agrees that what I have done is perfectly legal.

But I don't think it is.  The active player controls the order of
"during upkeep" effects.  The active player is allowed to blow the disk
before dealing with the forsaken wastes effect, I am almost positive.
I have had this confirmed by a level III judge, but maybe he's wrong?
He also made a ruling on come into play effects resulting from Living
Death that disagrees with what I've been told by others.  He (this is
second-hand) apparently told new judges that come into play effects
happen as a batch, not a series, and thus resolve in reverse order to
which they are declared (Last in, first out).  Does anyone else know
which is correct?

*MY POINT:  None really, just boring background information.  Apparently
I'm not the best at metagaming the Standard environment and apparently
the regionals were run fairly well.  Mike Donais may not always be
right, but then again, maybe he is and level III judges are not always
right.  However he did agree that Jeff's ruling seemed a little odd, so
he obviously has some sort of good sense.

<clip>

(I originally had a huge rant on the ranking system, but I decided to
split this thing up a bit and put that in a separate (though still
highly readable) rant.  Look for it at a magic web site near you!)

(A quick summary - I miss the nationals on ranking, appeal the ranking,
and get into the nationals on ranking).

EXODUS PRE-RELEASE - (tourney report within a tourney report)
------------------------------------------------------------

While I'm waiting to find out if I've made it to the Nationals, Exodus
is released.  Wheeeee.

Now I don't know how pre-releases are run in other cities, but all the
pre-releases in Toronto are run the same way - BADLY.

The Mirage pre-release had 500 people crammed into a room built for 250
with 10 people to a table, the Visions pre-release had such miniscule
prizes (3 packs if you only lose one match!) that the players protested
and actually got the prizes changed (I'm sure the WotC employee sent to
check out the tournament was not a factor....).  The Weatherlight
pre-release is held the same weekend as the pro-tour (a WotC marketing
decision I presume, but for those of us on the PT, it was kind of
annoying).  And the Tempest pre-release has an $80 team-even that ends
up being single-elim with a bunch of crazy (and incredibly stupid) rules
that no one understands.  This is announced AFTER you've made your way
into the middle of nowhere to play and have paid your money like a fool.

Well, after all that I somehow held back from going to the Stronghold
pre-release which was held at an even MORE remote location.  Instead I
was regaled with tales from friends about how hundreds of people tried
to cram into a very tiny place (and those are just the people who found
it) and how it would take 5-10 minutes just to shove your way through
the crowd to your seat.

However, with WotC included Exodus in the Canadian Nationals, it was up
to me and all the other players I draft with to attend the Exodus
pre-release and get as many packs as possible so we could start drafting
early.  So I think about attending.

Then I discover that the organizer is holding it at the SAME place, AND
there will NOT be deck-lists or deck-checks and that their are two
pre-releases, one saturday, one sunday.

There is also a limit of 250 people for each pre-release.

Well, I dither over deciding whether to play and end up not
pre-registering.  But I hear that there are only 40 spots left for the
first pre-release, and I don't want to have to make it there 1.5 hours
early just to maybe get a spot, so I decide I'll show up later and play
in side tournaments.

NOTE:  Any $ figure is in CAD (Canadian Funds) if not marked USD

So I show up and immediately discover that I have to pay $5 just to
THINK about entering side tournaments.  You're allowed to walk around
and spend money at the dealer and food tables, but if you want to play,
you have to pay $5.  You THEN have to pay $15 to play in an all-Exodus
booster draft.  Hmmm, $20 to play in a draft.  It sounds like I'm in
Germany!  Luckily the prizes more than make up for it!  If you win a
draft you get *FIVE WHOLE PACKS*.  Wow!  For $20 I can get 3 packs with
the chance to win 5 more (2 stronghold, 3 exodus).

Let's see, if I buy them by the box (as I do), I can get 8 packs at
$2.50 each, which is $20!  But then I wouldn't have the joy of playing
in a single-elim 3 round tournament.

I protest to the organizer (motto:  If people stop showing up, raise the
prices to make up for it) and we compare it to the WotC tournaments on
the pro-tour.  $12USD to draft ($16CAD) but the prizes are 5 or 6 packs
for the winner and one less for second place.  This is almost comparable
except all the WotC product is foreign and goes at a much higher price.
And none of it compares to a draft where you just buy 3 packs a the
store for $10 and play for nothing, or use 3 packs of your own ($7.50)
and play for nothing.

The organizer suggests that the more drafts I play in, the lower the
average cost is.  So I should pay him LOTS of money to make up for the
money I already spent.  I see.

So he suggests I help judge and be allowed to only spend $15 on side
tournaments (the $5 fee is waived).  I've judged before, I don't mind
doing it, but it's not my favourite thing, and I don't prefer it over
playing.  I'm also not an actual judge as I feel the entire judging
program to be an incredible rip-off.  I've been screwed for $10USD once,
I won't do it again.

So I point out to the organizer that he's now suggesting I spend $10USD
to take a test and then work for a couple hours in order to avoid
spending $5CAD.  And if actually pass the test, I get hooked for another
$25 from WotC (which the organizer claimed to be unaware of).

What a great set of options!  But the organizer is not willing to let me
in for free, so I choke it down and pay the $5.  Of course, 50% of the
rest of the people I draft with have no idea what I'm talking about when
I complain about the $5 as the people organizing the side-tournaments
only checked every so often.  I was just lucky I guess.

Now, having learned from Ole Rade in Germany, I bring a friend to draft
with me, and as the judges here have learned from the judges in Germany,
the seating order of the draft is not randomized.  Hmm, I sit beside my
friend for two drafts, I win two drafts (and have to play my friend in
both of them as he too does well).  How odd.

Of course, it didn't help that many of the other drafters had drafted
for a) rarity and b) pretty pictures (another Mainz trait).  And many
had never drafted before (the pair that drafted three cards a pack are
particularily memorable....).

I partipated in four side-tournament drafts over the weekend and as is
usual for every side-tournament, the judges are not highly skilled and
the rules enforcement is laughable.  I would guess that almost everyone
there was playing honestly, but it would be incredibly easy to cheat
however you wished.  All you had to do was talk to the people in the
pre-release and trade good exodus cards they weren't using (why not -
they don't have decklists, no one would dare bring a cursed scroll (or,
rumour has it, two) when you're using Tempest starters!).  Or use the GP
Atlanta method of drafting two cards and returning a previous card
(without the risk of getting caught by different languages).

It was actually worse here than elsewhere as the judges were purely
volunteers and it didn't appear that many of them were even magic
players (beyond maybe the most basic level).  Of course, these were the
same people used for the Canadian Nationals...

(Not that I don't appreciate volunteers and judges!  I do, but it's very
frustrating when a "judge" rules that creature removed from game makes a
quick stop in the graveyard first....)

I decided not to go to the Sunday pre-release as I didn't want to have
to show up really early and I didn't want to have to worry that other
people were trading Exodus cards from the previous days tournament.  I
also found out what the prizes were.  For coming in 6th at a 250 person
tournament, you get *12* packs (not all exodus).  So for $30, if you
place 6th you get 12 whole packs.  Compare that to a qualifier where you
not only get 12 packs (at least), you also get an invitation to the
pro-tour which many value VERY highly.  It just doesn't seem to work.

I'm guessing that organizers set the prize packages, not WotC, but who
knows, we suckers keep coming...

So on the second day the tournament is attended by 80+ people.
Apparently too many people thought they wouldn't get in if they didn't
pre-register and too many people couldn't find the place and too many
people hated the previous pre-releases and too many people thought the
prizes were too pathetic....I'm sure the organizer would raise the price
to enter the next one, just to make up for the lost patrons...

Of course, you have to pay ANOTHER $5 to play in side tournaments in the
second day.  But, being brilliant and sneaky, I kept my "Hello My Name
Is" sticker that signifies you paid from the previous day without
sticking it to my shirt, so I manage to get in for free (I'm a criminal,
I admit it, but I feel more like Robin Hood than Al Capone).

The one redeeming feature of the entire pre-release, which actually made
me feel pretty good, was that there was an invitation only FREE draft
for a BOX of exodus for the players that won the most side-tournaments.
Of course, it too was badly organized as it wasn't advertised heavily
and the time of the tournament kept changing so people who were invited
had to drop out of side-tournaments they were still in which hadn't
ended in time.  As I had won two tournaments (and lost two, apparently
I'm mediocre in all things magic), I got invited.

I came in second but had split the prize, so I ended up with 18 extra
packs, and that felt VERY good.  The irony is that for coming in SECOND
in an 8 person tournament, I got 50% more than coming in SIXTH in a 250
person tournament.  You can tell that this organizer is right on the
ball.

But what can you do?  WotC doesn't seem to have a policy for dealing
with this, and they don't seem to care.  And I'm not sure if they should
or not.

At the Quebec Regional in 1997, the organizer apparently sold off the
box of Italian Legends that was supposed to be used as prizes.  For
years there's rumours that the organizers in toronto skim prizes off the
top for qualifiers as there's no way that WotC could dump all their ice
age and renaissance packs on Toronto as prizes.  Side tournaments NEVER
get the attention they deserve, even at the pro-tour.  What can be done?

But of course, why should anything be done when everyone keeps on
showing up?

CANADIAN NATIONALS - the ultimate Canadian tournament (ha!)
-----------------------------------------------------------

PART I - THE OPEN

In the 1997 Nationals, there were two sections, 4 rounds of sealed deck
and 4 rounds of type II.  What there was SUPPOSED to be was 4 rounds of
booster draft and 4 rounds of type II.  When WotC heard this they got a
little upset (which I thought meant they actually cared) and so this
year Chris Galvin, WotC tournament head/coordinater (?) got to come
visit and make sure things were run correctly.  Well, he may have had
some other official purpose, but that's what I was hoping would happen.
I figured, with a high-level (in the tournament sense) WotC employee on
hand, the Nationals could be run error-free.

HA!

The first indication that things weren't going to be perfect came weeks
and weeks earlier.  The Canadian Nationals were held AT THE SAME TIME AS
THE INDIANAPOLIS GRAND PRIX!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, not only is that annoying to those who enjoy a grand prix, it's
REALLY annoying to those that want to earn a couple pro-tour points, and
it's even MORE annoying to those who want to earn some pro-tour points
so they can qualify for worlds.  In particular, Eric Tam and Gab Tsang
were willing to go to Zurich for pro-tour points, but were denied the
chance to go to Indianapolis to get them and perhaps qualify for worlds.

Then we discover that Nationals are being held as part of the Canadian
Comic Book Convention.  This seems great as they are at the premiere
convention centre of the city and it will had fame and prestige to
magic.

HA!

First, the comic convention added nothing as it was held in separate
rooms except for the anime section, so for the whole tournament we had
very loud anime movies in the background and hundreds of people yelling
because the Sailor Moon voices were there leading a pep rally.  There's
nothing like the sound of screaming people (it's a popular sound in
anime) or really, really bad music (like nintendo, for hours, with
singing) while you're trying to figure out how your opponents 3 spikes
are going to influence your game.  But, if you get hungry, you can
always spend $1.50 on a can of pop or muffin, or $5 for a ham sandwich.
Conveniently there were no really close cheap restaurants (the
convention centre is in the theatre district, there is no cheap
anything....).  It felt like we were in Rye, or Dallas...  (or anywhere
in Europe...)

Second, the convention centre CLOSES at 9pm Friday and 6pm Saturday.
How many of you (if there is still anyone reading) actually have been to
a major tournament that ended by 6 or 9pm?  Very few I would guess!

So WotC and the TO decide that solution is to keep the Nationals very
short!  The first Open will be held Friday at 10 in the morning (miss a
day of work to play magic!), and it ended at about 9:30.  The second
open will be held at a different location at 7 (more on that later - it
was a disaster).  The nationals will have 4 rounds of draft on the first
day and 4 rounds of standard and the top 8 on the second day.

Now, in the 1997 Nationals, there were only 8 rounds, what's the
problem?  In the 1997 Nationsl, there were only *64* people.  The plan
for this year is *104*!!  With 8 rounds you have to 6-1-1 to make it to
the top 8 where you play 3 more rounds of swiss.  This is not easy to
do, and while it is common for a qualifier, lucky people often win
qualifiers, the nationals is supposed to be about skill overcoming luck.
Worlds isn't 21 rounds for nothing!

And to make it worse, from all over the world come reports that other
countries have 10 or 12 round nationals with TWO drafts and 6 rounds of
standard.  So it looks like Canada is the only country in the world that
gets handicapped by 8 rounds of swiss to determine our team.

So the first day is the day of the open.  Luckily I didn't have to
partipate as I made it in on my ranking appeal.  My out-of-town friend
had to get up hours ahead of me and play magic while I get well-rested
for the nationals.  In the early afternoon, I decide to go down to the
tournament site to see what's going on, find out how my friend is doing,
talk to the guys from out of town, and to scout the decks that people
are using.

Of course, it costs $10 just to walk into the room.

I guess at $5, not enough people were signing up, so now it's $10 just
to WALK INTO THE ROOM.  There's nothing else that any of us care about
at the convention, and you can't get to most of it anyways, but it's
still $10 just to be there.  The TO of course blames it on the
Convention centre.  But why the hell are we at this damn convention
centre?  I play in a side-tournament just for the chance to say I spent
$25 to play in an 8 person draft.  I lose.  The prizes, however, have
been changed to 8 packs.  Maybe my complaining/helpful advice paid off?
The people who played in the open also had to pay the $10.  It was
worked into the $30 they paid to play in the Open.  But if you played in
BOTH opens, you got the bargain price of $60.  That's right, you paid
the $10 to enter the room A SECOND TIME.  And to make it even WORSE, it
wasn't even held in the room, as you'll see below.

My friend manages to make the top 16 with a countersliver deck.  This
gets him into the Nationals.  Some other friends are not so lucky, they
have to play in the second Open.

Of course, the second Open was scheduled to start at around 8, but the
first open had just begun the last round at that point, so everyone who
got knocked out in the final round had to rush over to the second
tournament site (which was at a hotel about 10-15 blocks away - a 20-30
minute walk) and hope it was starting late or was delayed.  It would
really be stupid to have all the people who ALMOST made the first open
to be the only people who weren't allowed in the second.

But of course, the second open was late.  It was REALLY late.
Apparently (this is all second-hand) it started around 11PM.  But
something was wrong with the hotel room (it was too small I believe), so
the 54 people went to a THIRD site and started playing there.  And then
they had to leave THAT site at 4 in the morning, so they moved back to
the original site now that fewer people were playing.  Then the computer
crashes after the fifth round at 6:30 in the morning.  They decide to
cancel the 6th round of the tournament and tell everyone to go home and
get that well-deserved hour of rest before they have to come back and
sign-in to the nationals between 8:30 and 9:30.  And remember, these
players paid an extra $10 for the nice location...

So the next morning, my friend and I show up for Nationals and find a
LOT of VERY tired people waiting around to see if they get in.  Why are
they waiting?  Well, that's part of the unique nature of the Canadian
Nationals.  In 1997, they wanted 64 people to be playing, so 68 were
invited.  So they ended up with 68 invitations, and if people didn't
show up, they took people who had played in the open, in descending
order.  So 18 people didn't show up, so players 9-26 were invited from
the open (the top 8 were guaranteed).

This year, they decided to do the same with 104 people.  Except there
aren't 104 good players in Canada.  It would be like having the US
Nationals open to 1040 players.  The top 250 ranked Americans, the top
60 or 80 at each regional.  And even if there WERE 104 good players in
Canada, they're not all willing to travel across the country to play at
a badly run tournament.  Unlike in Luxembourg, where I'm pretty sure
everyone can get to the Nationals pretty easily, Canada is a big
country, it's expensive to cross.  So lots of people were probably not
going to show up to the tournament.  And the TOs and WotC decided that
their invitations should pass down to those from the 2nd qualifier.

So, out of the 54 people in the second qualifier, at least half of them
made it in.  And since it was a 5 round tournament, you only had to go
2-2-1 to make it into the nationals, as opposed to the first open where
you had to 5-2 with decent tie-breakers.  This seems incredibly fair.
And the best part is that now we have a whole bunch of extremely tired
people in the tournament.

Luckily it's only 4 rounds a day....

So on the Friday, Pete Radonjic(sp?) and I approach Chris Galvin and
suggest (as I had previously to Chris in email) that perhaps 8 rounds
was a true test of who the most skilled Canadians were in a field of
104.   We suggested that either a) people who didn't show up didn't pass
down the invitation or b) more rounds be added.  In particular we wanted
to have two drafts so people who just happened to be unlucky in one
draft didn't totally screw themselves.  We also suggested this to the
head judge and the TO.  They agreed that they would have a meeting to
discuss it.  They did, and decided to do nothing.

This was a theme to the weekend, a problem would come up, someone would
point it out, the TO, head judge, and Chris would agree it was a
problem, and then do nothing about it.  The worst part of it all was
that most of them KNEW it would be a problem, and yet continued on.
This stuns me.  They KNEW they couldn't fit enough rounds in, and yet
continued on heedlessly as an "experiment".  I DARE WotC to "experiment"
like that with the US Nationals or the PT, see how people like it...

Canadians are rumoured to be nice and all, but I'm pretty sure it's a
WotC plot to weaken us.  After winning the team event and having a
Canadian PT Player of the Year, it was too much and WotC had to take us
down.

In line with that thinking, the players of the nationals got FREE
SHIRTS!  For those of you who have attended a PT event this year, I want
you to recall the shirts that WotC forced the PT Player of the Year and
the World Champion to wear - that's right, the sickening yellow one that
made them stand out in EVERY crowd because they looked like big bird.
That's right, the yellow shirts which both swore never to wear again as
they were deemed cursed (neither did well at all while wearing them).
Well, now imagine a whole ROOM of people wearing ugly shirts.  Welcome
to the Canadian Nationals...

The back of the shirt has some logo like "are you good enough to handle
the challenge" or something like that.  Hmm, can I go 2-2-1 at 5:30 in
the morning...quite the challenge.  Of course now it was 6-1-1, which
was DEFINITELY a challenge.

PART II - DRAFT PORTION

So now we draft.  Of course, there's a problem with how that was done
too.  The pods were done by ranking, with 1, 14, 27, 40 or 1, 26, 27, 53
at the tables, I'm not sure which.  This made for some extremely unusual
tables, with some tables having 3-4 "name" (In Canada) players, while
other tables had no one universally recognized.  I would guess that the
1, 14, 27 method was used, as the earlier tables were much more packed
with better players.  This seems unfair, and the 1, 26, 27 method should
DEFINITELY have been used if it was not.

Of course, all this was FAR outweighed by the INSANELY STUPID method of
seating at each table.  This method was:  Player 1 sits to the right of
player 2 who sits to the right of player 3 who sits to the right of
player 4, and so on.  HOW STUPID ARE THESE PEOPLE??  Chris said it was
Andrew Finch's decision and he would bring it to Andrew's attention that
perhaps there was a flaw...

PERHAPS?

Hmm, let's see, I'm no drafting wizard, but it seems to me that the most
important person in the draft (other than yourself) is the person to
your right who is passing you 2/3 of your cards.  So if you're the top
ranked player, this is great, you get players 8, 7, 6 to your right.
But if you're the 3rd ranked player, you get 2, 1, 8.  And on your left
you get 3, 4, 5.  Boy do I want to be the 3rd ranked player with the 5
best players to either side of me.  Meanwhile, the 6th and 7th ranked
players have the easy players to their right and left.  That seems fair.
It seems to reward the number 1 player unduly.  The head judge and Chris
agree that it seems to be a valid point, but of course, they don't do
anything about it.

So we begin drafting... And, as mentioned earlier, we're using the
judges from the pre-release and the side-tournaments.  But they're
volunteers, not judges, and it's obvious that they've never run a draft
of this magnitude before.  It was VERY similar to Mainz in that while
they would (mostly) get the big things right, they would often get the
little things wrong.  At my table I suggested that it would be a really
good idea if the judge gave a 5 second warning when it was time to pass
the cards, but he had to be convinced on it.  And whether you drafted
then or a couple seconds later or earlier, it didn't seem to matter.
Overall, nothing horrible went wrong in the draft, I've probably just
been spoiled by the excellent judges in LA II.  At least it wasn't all
one mass draft like they've taken to doing on the pro-tour.  It's much
nicer to have your own judge, even if the judge at the next table is
talking so loudly you're almost following his draft instructions.  It
was unfair to some that certain judges were easier or harder than
others.

We draft our cards.  While waiting for the other tables to finish, the
judge allows us to go through our cards.  I suggest that perhaps we
should only have 2 minutes (as we did between each pack) to go through
our cards, but he assures me that we can look as long as we want.  It
wasn't until the head judge had bawled out a bunch of the other judges
that our judge decided that perhaps I was right and after just 2 more
minutes we would have to put down our cards.  Sigh...I seem cursed to
perpetually encounter judges who don't believe me - I'm sure the one
time they do I'll be wrong...

So then we spread out to build decks.  Our judge wants to put us all at
the same set of three tables.  I adamantly refuse to do so and he
quickly relents.  Other tables as many were forced to build decks near
their draft partners.

Security around the deck building is of course very lax.  A HUGE error,
in my mind, was that the cards were NOT MARKED.  That is, you could
bring your own cursed scroll and put it into your deck with no one the
wiser.  Does this seem incredibly stupid to anyone else?  Of course, to
"prevent" this, they made everyone put their bags at the front behind
the judges' table.  Well, I don't like leaving my stuff at the front
when I'm a judge, let alone when just anyone can wander back there pick
up a bag.  So I keep my bag for the whole day.

Wait a second, wouldn't that allow me to reach into my bag, get the 10
Standard decks I was testing and pick out the rares I need for my deck
(or the uncommons).  Why yes, it would.  (Un)fortunately, I use proxies
in all my standard deck except my main one, and it didn't share any
colors...:).  Of course, as many people mentioned, it would be even
easier to just carry the extra cards in your pocket.

Since you got to pick where you built decks (often a pro-tour flaw as
well), I sat near a friend.  As did many others.  About 10 minutes in
the head judge reminded volunteers (who didn't know any better) to keep
players from talking, particularly about what cards to use.  But most
people had already finished their discussions at that point.

You get three decksheets, which is a pain.  But to make it more
inconvenient, the designer (WotC?) decided to switch which column was
"used" and which was "total".  On the tempest sheet, you put the total
cards on the left, on the others, you put it on the right.  It's a minor
thing, but I would NOT have wanted to have to redo my decksheet because
I didn't read the column headings on each individual sheet.  Of course,
my table had lots of free time as most of us had made our decks right
after the draft during our "2 minutes".

Now, you're thinking, what else could go wrong in the simple process of
running a draft?  What else could I possibly complain about?

They ran out of land.

That's right, the Canadian Nationals, with a WotC representative, and
the TO didn't think to get a couple extra land for the tournament.  They
ended up proxying land with other land and opening starters to get
lands...  I know this happens at the pro-tour, but they bring THOUSANDS
of land and it generally happens near the end of the tournament.  Now
granted, they weren't using Ice Age lands (a surprise, actually), but
still, it's incredibly silly.  They also had a HUGE lineup for land (no
doubt due to them writing the proxies?) when they announce there's 5
minutes left.  Fortunately I had attended tournaments run by this TO
before, and I had brought my own land which was conveniently in the bag
I wasn't supposed to have.

Also in my bag was a box of brand-new sleeves that I got from ULTRA-PRO
for free during LA III.  They were part of a promotion for these new
"easier-to-shuffle" "specifically for magic" sleeves they were hawking.

I want you to remember ULTRA-PRO because these sleeves were BIG PIECES
OF SHIT.  I don't know what these guys are thinking, but they make the
sleeves CLEAR!  Why the hell does anyone want CLEAR sleeves when playing
magic?  They obviously have no clue what people are doing.  I want to
HIDE the backs of my sleeves, so there's no suspicion I'm doing anything
sneaky.  And THEN, to make it worse, they only give *75* sleeves in the
box!?!?  What the fuck?  Does that mean these sleeves are
indestructible?  What if I'm playing a 61 card deck (as I was in the
standard portion), what if a sleeve rips?  What if I throw these sleeves
at the next ultra-pro booth I see....  On the plus side, the box was
very, very nice, with an exciting velcro seal.  But I would really like
to trade this stupid box for 25 more sleeves, and then I want to paint
the bastards black.  This became a huge problem later on.

They also had an inane rule, after deckbuliding, that you couldn't talk
to others about your deck and you were NOT allowed to playtest your deck
against other decks.  I have no idea why.  You also couldn't leave the
room with your deck.  This I didn't understand as all our bags were IN
the room, if we wanted to cheat we just had to get our bags and do it in
the room.  But I understand the logic...

I won't bother giving a decklist, even if I could remember.  Who cares
what people drafted?   I ended up with a red white deck based on the
soltari guerrila I picked first.  I passed a lightning blast so I knew
my left partner was playing red.  On my right was the top ranked player
at our table (I was number 2, of course), Gab Tsang, who had spent weeks
drafting and is certainly no slouch at it.  Other cards were kor chant,
the 2/2 en-kor flyer, and 2 2/2 white shadow.  A flowstone giant, a
flowstone salamander (big!), and a couple of enchantment enhancements.
2 craven giants helped fill out the mana curve, as did two 2/2 pingers.

My first round opponent is the guy to my left in the draft.  I beat him.
He was playing red/green.  The salamander is a pain, and the fliers with
enchantments are worse.  Kor-chant on the lightning blast is the worst.

My next opponent is Gab.  He's playing black/blue (I believe).  He has
two Shamus (the killer whale).  He gets a slow start, I win, I get a
slow start, he wins, I draw four land and stall with only one 5 casting
cost creature in the third game, he gets eight mana when he needs 5.  My
highly enchanted show, flying, etc, beat him down.

Third round I play Jordan Christensen.  I'm chatty and easy-going and it
costs me as I make a couple non-critical errors.  He actually helps fill
out my rules knowledge with the guerrillas as I wasn't as familiar as I
thought with the separate parts of the damage phase.  We split the first
two, and enter the third match.  I open with 5 land, a 1/1 falcon (with
enchantments it's good, and vs his flyers, it allows a kor chant) and
the guerrillas.  I keep.  I draw two land, play the falcon, he plays the
shadow assassin guy.  I draw 3 more land and hold 6 land and a guerrila
in my hand.  Around turn 6 or 7 I finally cast a second spell which he
counters and reanimates.  I get beaten down and am incredibly frustrated
at the randomness at magic.  I think I had a fair matchup against his
deck, as neither deck was broken.

4th round I play someone from Quebec.  He has trouble dealing with the
guerrillas who only now get to really show their strength.  He was
playing green/white which meant very little kill, or so I thought.  At
one point he kor chants my 2/2 en-kor on to the guerrillas, but I just
kor chant it right back on to his Bayou Dragonfly (with 2 spikes on it,
it became a big issue).  He gets a COP:Red down 2nd game, but I had
figured he would have lots of enchantments and sideboarded in the allay
(which I didn't have).  However, as I had just spoken to Jordan about
this exact situation, I used the guerrillas to kill all his creatures
off until I got the allay and finished him.

So I'm 3-1 going into the second day.  I was very close to 4-0, but I
had only planned on going 3-1 as I'm not confident in my drafting
skills.  I had practiced standard a lot, however, and was pretty
confident that I had a good chance of going 3-0-1.

One good thing about 4 rounds is that we finished at about 6:30.  I got
to go home, do last minute changes, and get to bed by 11:30.

Now something else goes wrong.  My friend from out of town points out
that the Sunday starts an hour earlier than the Saturday did (which was
an hour earlier than the Friday).  I'm glad he noticed as we re-set the
alarm clocks to 6:30 so we can get there on time.  We wake up and get
ready to go when I realize that the subway doesn't open on Sunday until
9am.  I panic, but then realize that my friend has his car, so we'll
just have to bit the $8 for parking as a cost of magic.  I love these
downtown locations.

Unfortunately, not everyone was lucky enough to notice the time shifts.
Several people did not make it to the tournament in time.  The most
notable was Mark Zadjner.  Mark is the David Bachmann of the North and
is loathed by most.  He also got himself disqualifed from BOTH Ontario
regionals he attended, when he was 3-0.  He managed to qualify for the
nationals on ranking, go 3-1, and then, despite *3* people calling him,
managed to sleep in and miss the second day of nationals.  Way To Go
Mark!

It was most disappointing to see people show up at 9:05, which gave them
lots of time if the tournament started to 10:00, only to discover that
they had already missed the beginning of the round.

Here, once again, the TO screws up.  The head judge/TO/Chris decide that
as the second days is a continuation of the first day, everyone is
automatically marked as present and paired for the matches.  So a lot of
people who went 0-4 and 1-3 didn't even bother showing up the second
day, but didn't realize they had to formally drop out.  This didn't
matter for those out of contention, but it DEFINITELY mattered for those
that went 3-1.  When they didn't show up, their opponent essentially got
a first round bye, but it HELPS their tie-breakers.  This was
ridiculous.  To make it even MORE ridiculous, those that showed up at
9:05 were NOT allowed to rush over and sit down at their assigned table
(their opponent still waiting for them) as they had not handed in a
decklist.

So, if you don't hand in a decklist, you're not allowed to play, but if
you don't show up at all, it is assumed that you are playing.  I don't
mind if they do one or the other (presumably the the former), but doing
both seemed ridiculous.  I understand that WotC wants to punish players
for not formally dropping out, but that's for a one day tournament.  It
should be VERY obvious who is dropping out in a two day, two format
tournament, when they don't have a decksheet and aren't present.  Very
foolish.

PART III - STANDARD PORTION

I decided to play with a Kastle deck, with small variations.  I added a
lobotomy, a disenchant and two monkeys and took out a living death, two
intuitions, and a wall of roots.  I felt 31 mana sources in a 61 card
deck was too much.  I took out two forests and put in a swamp and a
volrath's stronghold.  Essentially I felt there were a lot of disks and
cursed scrolls in the local environment which I wanted to be able to
deal with, as well as a lot of legacy's allure.  The stronghold is often
just good on itself, and as one of 3 non-green sources, I didn't feel it
would be a problem.  The swamp was the 4th non-green source, but I had
had trouble getting 2 black for living death and fallen angel.  This
meant I often had 2-3 livings deaths in hand, so I took one out.  The
intuitions were often very slow, and hard on the color.  On turn three I
often wanted to do something other than intuition, though they were
great late game and often helped me get a firestorm when necessary.  The
starting lobotomy was a trick I had learned about the hard way.  It was
very helpful against other living death decks, or tradewind decks, and
there are few decks that this deck fears that aren't hurt by lobotomy.

In the sideboard I left two lobotomies, 3 pyroblasts and three
man-o-wars, but added a cloudchaser, kept one tranquil domain, and added
a torture chamber, the 4th living death, a propaganda, and a wave of
terror.  The wave of terror was a last minute solution to stopping
pro-red 2/1 shadow guys and slivers, both of which were very predominant
in the open and a real problem for the deck.  I don't remember the 15th
card.

I had played in 4 tournaments in the two weeks preceding nationals, each
with a different net deck, and the Kastle deck went 6-0-1 while the
others went 1-2-1, 3-1-1 and 3-2.  The deck just doesn't seem to lose to
much, though white weenie gives it trouble, as does countersliver.  It's
a LOT of fun to play, and every card gives you different options.

First round I play Stuart Kovinsky.  Stu is a close friend of Gary
Krakower, who, with me, have an informal team-like network for these
events.  So of all the people there, I was one of the two that knew what
Stu was playing, and he was one of the two that knew what I was playing.
Sigh...

First game I get a 3rd turn Maro, 4th turn Geddon and finish him off.
The best thing about the Kastle deck is the ability to go marogeddon on
a good opening draw.  It was great!  Second game he plays a wall of
roots and a spike feeder, I sense the armageddon coming (he's playing
white/green armageddon with a couple other colors, using lots of
life-gain such as staunch defenders and gerrards, with blessings) and
lobotomy it out of his hand.  He caps my living deaths, but I don't mind
and beat him down now that my mana is free.  An interesting sideboard he
had was humility and millstone, a very scary lobotomy as I just didn't
expect those cards (though I did have a disenchant in hand).

2nd round I play Kyle Christensen, brother of Jordan.  I vow revenge and
take him on.  He's playing trade-blossom, which I had tested and while I
enjoyed playing it, it didn't win as much as I wanted.  I had tested
against it and beaten it, and that happened again first game.  Second
game I get off a turn four lobotomy and take his tradewinds...good game.
I then lobotomy his firestorms...good game, and then, just to be sure, I
lobotomy his man-o-wars.  He still almost wins as he draws the one Maro
in the deck and begins beating me down.  I chump block with 3 wall of
blossoms, with two wall of roots remaining, but then draw the living
death and he's out of counters.  He had countered all the other
solutions, but for some reason had reduced the number of counters in the
deck to 6 (keepin the disrupt?).  It wasn't good for him to disrupt a
spell, mana leak it, and then mana leak it again.

Round three I'm playing Pete Radonjich(sp?), mentioned earlier.  Now,
I've known Pete for a couple years, but don't seem him often as he's
from the West Coast.  I often taunt the west-coasters for their
inability to play anything but necro (in 1996 nations, Dallas, Chicago,
you name it).  They also ALWAYS beat me, as I can't beat Necro in any
format.  I've lost to the necro-drain life combo in DRAFT.  It's a
nemesis.  I'd sensed, however, that Pete wasn't my biggest fan,
apparently he is of the opinion I'm a bit of a bitter person.  (I have
no idea what gives him that idea).  He also hangs out with Tam a lot, so
that probably warps his perception of things...

Pete starts off by telling how he hopes I have to mulligan a lot and how
he's really looking forward to beating me down as I desperately search
for land.  He's really enjoying the thought of it.  Now, I'm not against
trash talking, and don't really mind, but I have to admit, not even my
worst enemies have ever openly admitted that they hope I'm manascrewed.
I mean, we all sort of hope our opponent is manascrewed, but most of us
are classy enough to pretend that we feel sorry for our opponents when
they're mulligan down to 5.  I've had opponents INCREDIBLY pissed at me,
and I've been pissed at opponents, but never do I say that.

But pete showed he had no restraints when it came to class.  He lets me
shuffle my deck for a couple of minutes, and then says that he wants to
check whether the backs are marked as the sleeves are clear.  He goes
through the deck and finds 7 cards he can readily identify.  He's
totally correct.  I could pick them out too.  I used to play without
sleeves, and these are all the Maros, birds of paradise, and
undiscovereds I used to use, as well as some cards I borrowed right
before the tournament that weren't in the best shape (my thanks to Steve
Wolfman and Jurgen Hahn for loaning me cards, despite the tattered
condition of one of them, they were much appreciated).  We call over a
judge, it's Chris, he refuses to make a ruling and instead passes it on
to the head judge.  He comes over, and talks to us, Pete says he isn't
really aiming to get me penalized, he just wants the marked cards
proxied.  I'm annoyed at Pete at the time, but he's perfectly within his
rights, and I would probably do the same - I hold no grudge for having
them proxied.  In fact, I did the same thing back (as any
self-respecting player would).

Now Pete doesn't play in sleeves at all.  But most of his cards are
pretty worn.  I could pick out a bunch of cards with noticeable markings
on one side or another, and if Pete was a top-level cheater, he may have
had some system, but I couldn't see the cards, so I have no idea.
However he DID have 11 or so easily recognizable pre-Mirage cards.  And,
surprisingly, they were all land.  Now Pete claims their Korean, and I'm
sure he had other basic land in his deck (it was mono-blue, I guess the
two-colour deck is too complex...and blue is close enough to black that
it doesn't feel too uncomfortable...).  So they had to proxy his land as
well, and I can only hope he was playing fairly.

But of course, they manage to screw up proxying cards too.  Chris says
that he's supposed to write on my rares that they're being proxied.  I
say "not bloody likely" and point out that if you've paid for a
tournament, the cards are yours and can't be written on (I learned this
at PT NY when my opponent ripped my best card (a rare) by accident and
Andrew explained why the judge could then put a big X through the card).
But for some reason (and I can't entirely figure out why), they had to
have the proxied cards marked in some way.  So first, they make the
proxies, using mountains, as earlier they had been making proxies using
the actual lands that were in the deck (a bunch o' genius).  But when
they wrote the proxy, using a mid-size pen, they put most of the words
in the mountain picture, which is fairly dark.  So I had 4 proxies with
the word "paradise" at the end, and during the match I ended up getting
them confused (I'm an idiot, I admit, but still, it's not something I'm
used to dealing with).  It would have been nice for them to write the
proxy so I could read it.  So, to mark the seven cards I remove from the
deck, they decide to put plains in the back of each sleeve with the
actual card and I'm supposed to keep the card face down beside me when I
play and then when I cast the proxy, replace it with the sleeve with the
double card.  It's annoying, but whatever...

Except, it causes more problems.  The first one being I only have 75
sleeves.  So they tell me to desleeve my sideboard.  Well, it's a minor
point, but I make sure I have my sideboard sleeved as I don't want to
give anything away while sideboarding (like how much I'm sideboarding)
and I also don't want the hassle of sleeving and de-sleeving cards
during my 5 minutes during one of the most important tournaments of my
life.  AND, as I discovered, when I cast a Maro, and bring in the proxy,
when they man-o-war it, it goes back to my hand with the plains facing
my opponent, so he can be reminded each turn that I have it.  I didn't
even realize that until after it had happened, and eventually I just
gave up caring.  I guess it's my own idiocy that I didn't just get the
proxy and put it into my hand until I re-cast the Maro, but it was a
stressful time.

So, finally we should start the match.  Of course, we had been
deck-checked this round, so we had already been starting late.  The
deck-checking process was also not done optimally.  At least it was
done, which is more than I can say about Andon tournaments (motto:
cheat, and cheat often, we'll never catch you), though Andon does use
deck-lists, so I guess they're all even.  It's too much to ask for a TO
that can actually run a tournament correctly....

So, these deck checks are done one table per round, as soon as the round
is announced.  This is great, it catches people as they are beginning to
play as opposed to after the round is over or anything.  It was also a
surprise which table got picked.  However the one time they caught a guy
who had "forgotten to de-sideboard" they didn't do anything.  Granted,
he was going to draw the round, so it made sense, but I'm curious as to
whether they actually would have done anything to anyone?  I hope so.
The problem was that there was 6 per table (the place was roomy, that
was nice), but only 4 judges doing deck checks.  So it took about 15
minutes to do it.  Either 6 judges, or 4 deckchecks would have cut the
time in half.

But that was alright, as they had just spent 20 minutes making up
proxies and discussing what to do in my match with Pete.  So we ask for
more time and almost don't get it (!), but when we explain the full
situation and that we haven't played a single game 35 minutes into the
round, we are awarded 35 extra minutes.  I thank Pete for his keen eye
which got us this long delay.

Pete's playing mono-blue creatures and counterspells.  Using
firewalkers, man-o-war, ophidian and waterspout.  I had not seen this
sort of deck in the new environment, but had played beside it earlier.
Pete plays a legacy's allure and a mindstone as I cast Maro and then
Geddon.  I beat him down to 3 and don't play any land as I think I have
an undiscovered paradise in my hand.  It was a birds of paradise, and I
didn't cast it with the wall of roots in play that pete stole.  This
seriously hindered my ability to recover when he capsized the maro at 3
mana, the turn he was going to die.  I couldn't cast stuff earlier as I
had to keep the maro big enough to avoid the legacy's allure and do
enough damage to kill.  Pete's a little rattled, despite the smart talk
we're both trading back and forth, as he forgets to put the counter on.
But he's a stoic player and gives no indication that he forgot.

His skills come to the fore, however, as he recovers at three and kills
me with a waterspout.  His 3 mana advantage after the geddon carried him
all the way.

Second game, his dreams come true and I have to mulligan.  I play a
forest, birds and have four cards in my hand.  I look over at the 8 in
his hand and begin planning my 4th round.  Sure enough, he throws down a
waterspout, I draw lots of land but no spells, and he counters the stuff
I do have.  I almost recover but he UNDOs my two creatures.  I don't
know if it's briliiant metagaming or draft-style thinking, but it worked
like a charm for him and he whipped me real good.

Theoretically, I should be knocked out.  But as some of the 3-1's didn't
show up, and others lost, there's room for 1 6-2 to make it in.  I have
the best tiebreakers in the room due to pairing me up with Pete who was
5-0-1 when I was 5-1.  The top 8 going into the 8th round had points as
follows:

19
19
19
19
18
18
18
16
-
15 (me).

So, the 19s play and draw, two of the 18s draw, the 18 and the 16 play
and I play a 15 for a chance to make the top 8, right?

HA!

Due to the freakish pairings, which the head judge insisted was correct
and which the TO and Chris refused to countermand, the 19s played each
other and two 18s played each other, but the 18 and the 16 each played
15s.  There WAS a way to make it work such that all the top 8 played
within themselves, but the computer program wasn't programmed to do it,
and it didn't.  So if this had been a manually sorted tournament, things
would have been done more correctly.  That does not seem to me to be the
point of a computer, but the head judge insisted that WotC had no formal
policy on how to make pairings and in fact did the same thing on the
pro-tour.  I cannot deny or verify that, but it seems really stupid to
me, and I hope WotC publishes a policy on this issue (but I'm not
holding my breath).

So I'm playing the 16 pointer and Jordan Christensen is forced to play a
15 pointer.  He's not thrilled, but given a choice, I would rather play
the 15 pointer than the 16 pointer.  I saw the deck his opponent played
(Ryan Fuller, from out west, but much nicer than Pete) and felt much
more confident against it, than against my opponent, Nick Chen, and his
white weenie deck.

I had played Nick a couple weeks earlier and burned him a new hole with
a gloom in the second game.  I figured that by now he would be using
sleights as all other white weenie players were, and didn't bother
putting gloom in my sideboard for that reason (and the white spells in
my deck).  In the entire match I never a cursed scroll, armageddon, or
armor, so I have no idea which variant he was playing, or if he even had
them, but I had to sideboard like he had all three, which was very
frustrating.

First game, he mulligans.  I'm feeling good about this, though I'm
classy enough not to laugh in his face like I was from Western Canada.
He gemstones and tithes and he's back in the game.  He plays a 2/1
pro-red, a second 2/1 pro-red and then a third 2/1 pro-red.  I have 2
firestorms in my hand but absolutely no way outside of living death of
killing a pro-red shadow creature in the first game.  I'm extremely
frustrated.

Second game, he starts off fine, but I get a decent start as well and
throw out the torture chamber with a birds and wall of blossoms in play
to kill the 2/1 pro-red get he already has on the table.  I auras the
chamber after wrathing the creatures (the pro-red dies though) which
surprised me as I didn't expect he would keep much artifact or
enchantment removal as my deck starts none.  I intuition for man-o-wars
at one point just so he's hesitant to cast armor if he has it, but I
don't see one and eventually get off a living death and kill him before
the newly revitalized 2/1 pro-red can kill me.

Game three, he mulligans AGAIN.  This makes me feel a lot better.  I
start with 3 wall of blossoms, a bird, and two land in my hand.  He
plays a plains, I play a bird, he plays an en-kor with an undiscovered.
I can spike feeder or man-o-war.  I decide to risk the armor and get
some early press as the earlier games were often races and he's going to
have to return the undiscovered as well.  I man-o-war the en-kor.  He
tithes on his next turn, and I'm thinking "who-hoo, he's not casting a
creature" and then he firestorms my two creatures.

Not a problem, I throw out the spike feeder, he puts down a pro-red 2/1
(number 5, for those counting).  I start playing walls and start drawing
walls of roots and land.  He hits me for two and plays ANOTHER pro-red
2/1 shadow guy (#6).  He hits me for 4, I'm hitting him for 2.  I have 3
wall of blossoms in play, a spike feeder, 3 forests and a swamp.  He's
got 2 land, and en kor, and 2 2/1 pro-reds.  I'm holding 2 tradewinds, 2
walls of roots and 2 forests.  He hits me for 4, for 4, I draw living
death, for 4, I'm at 2.  He doesn't firestorm, I hold my breath and
draw, PRAYING for a multi-land.  Nothing.  He hits me for 4, I sac the
spike feeder.  He STILL doesn't firestorm.  I have one draw left, I HAVE
to draw black source to living death as the tradewinds are no longer
enough.  I draw....a spike feeder.  I play the spike feeder and get one
more turn.  He hits me for four.

This....is.....it.....

I pause, gather my thoughts, keep it dramatic for the huge crowd
watching (they all know the winner keeps going), and draw....the forest.

I lose.

I shake Nick's hand and leave.  It was devastating.  I did the EXACT
SAME THING last year.  I went 5-1 and then lost to Krakower and Tsang in
the last two rounds.  It sucked!

So I went home, it was three in the afternoon, so I watched movies and
had dinner at my mom's house.  Very disappointing.

CONCLUSION
----------

The past couple of months, for me, has been a bitter state of losing.  I
want people to understand that I would still be bitching like this, even
if I had won everything.  I'm that kind of guy.

The thing is, I want Magic to be a perfect state of competition because
that's why I like it.  Testing yourself mentally and creatively with
others in a one-on-one, fair environment.  I don't think Magic is going
that way.  And I'm concerned that WotC just doesn't care.  I used to
think it does, I used to believe and propogate the excuses.  But I don't
any more.

For months I keep facing the SAME problems and the SAME attitudes with
everyone in "power".  They knowingly make the same mistakes over and
over.  After PT Mainz I was told by various WotC staff members that
things would change, but I just don't see it happening.  Errors are made
the MATTER.  They influence who plays who, who gets invited, who makes
money and who doesn't.  These things are very important to many of the
players out there.

I'm sick of TOs who don't care, who are only there to make a dollar at
the expense of all else, who don't understand the problems and refuse to
change things.  I'm sick of judges who make incorrect rulings, extremely
sick of it.  And I'm sick of hearing excuses from WotC on why things are
going wrong.  I rarely hear a WotC member saying "I did it, it was my
fault, but it won't happen again".  It always seems to be happening
again, or if it isn't happening again, something else is.

I don't know if it's a corporate culture at WotC or if they don't care,
or if there's a secret cabal of employees who run things for their own
fiendesh ends (a rumour I can partially verify, by the way), but I
really wish someone would just put their foot down, take responsibility
for everything, and start fixing everything.  I'm not even talking about
the extremely difficult issues, just start with the simple ones.  It
just doesn't seem that hard.

Matthew Vienneau

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