Subject: T/ST/EX Draft Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 16:24:51 -0400 From: Chad Ellis To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com For those of you who have waded through some of my longer tourney reports, get a life, um, I mean, this one should be relatively short. No massive match analysis, no tribute to Dave Weiss (even though he is, of course, one of the funniest, best looking and otherwise coolest Magic players in the cosmos), and (with the exception of this opening paragraph) no mention of Grindstone. I played at Gray Matter’s latest $1,000 tournament, entering the sealed deck section which was Texodus. After getting an amazing set of cards and agonizing over which colors to play (and whether to go with control or beatdown) I probably built a sub-optimal deck and then played it sub-optimally. The only thing I’ll mention about the main tournament was an amazingly cool sideboard move made against my by Chris Manning against me. In game one, he saw that I had a Carnophage and some Tim power. In game two, I had a tricky question playing first, do I keep a hand with only one land and a Lotus Petal? Well, ordinarily, no…and I wasn’t too happy about it here…but how often in sealed deck can you pretend you’re playing Suicide Black? Me: Swamp, Carnophage Chris: Nice. My turn? Me: Not yet. Lotus Petal, sac for black, Carnophage. Chris: Wow. Me: Go ahead. Chris: Land, done. Me: Ouch ouch, land, take 4. Go ahead. Chris: Sure. Land, School of Piranha. Me: D’oh! Chris had swapped out one of his weak guys for the Piranhas, so he could get some early blocking, allowing his shadow guys to come through. (He also took out a Soltari Footsoldier for a Thalakos Sentry, getting that shadow slot out of Tim range.) A good move, IMHO, and it really worked for him here. He went on to qualify for final 8. One more funny moment…in my Exodus pre-release tournaments I mentioned that Joseph Kambourakis (who won the Saturday tournament) had told me his life philosophy which I described as a kind of optimistic nihilism. Joseph read the report and took the time to tell me that (although he had to look up nihilism) he thought I’d got it exactly right. Gotta love that guy…but maybe from a distance. ;-) So, after scrubbing out of the main tournament, I signed up for a side draft tournament. Normally the first one of these doesn’t have the strongest players (only those who get knocked out early in the main tournament), but this field was decent, with a couple of other Your Move Gamers and, as favorite, Dave Humphries. Now I know a lot of people like sitting next to weak drafters, and there’s something to be said for it, but I rather like having a strong player to my left. This lets me signal to him or her what I’m drafting (and what s/he isn’t going to get) in the first pack, increasing my chances of getting good picks in the return pack. A strong player is usually more interested in picking good cards for themselves so they will do little counter-drafting and will avoid a color that they know they’re not going to see in the third pack. Scrubs sometimes pass really good stuff, but they also sometimes take stuff they can’t use or refuse to give up on their favorite color even though you let them have nothing in it in the first pack. So, sitting next to Dave isn’t a bad thing…except that they put him on my right, which mean that he was feeding me. Oh well. This was my first Texhold draft, so I was going on limited direct experience, but it seemed to me that White and Blue were good colors to draft. Blue in particular gets looked down on by many drafters in T/ST, but is pretty solid in my opinion if backed up by decent Shadow. Cheap blockers (like Horned Turtle) can help control the main board, and Blue has some very nice fliers. U/W looks even better with Exodus, since we get some amazing cards to play with -- evasion (Soltari Visionary, Wayward Soul, Mirozel), the devastating Kor Chant and life-gainers. U/W may not really be better than some other colors, but it often seems to get under-drafted, meaning I might get more than my fair share of the good cards. My Tempest pack had one of those game-ending cards…Dregs of Sorrow. I have seen quite a few Limited matches completely decided by even a two-point Dregs, gaining board and card advantage in one big swoop. It also had another strong Black card (I think it was one of the Dauthi), decent Red, no White, decent Green…and just one worthwhile Blue card: Legacy’s Allure. Those of you who know me will not be surprised that I took the Allure. Aside from being in a Blue mood, I just love to be able to signal to my left that a certain color just ain’t coming. Looking at this pack, the person to my left had to figure that Black was all his but that Blue and White were looking pretty grim. The next pack I snagged a Soltari Lancer and I was ready to go! My only regrets about Tempest were no Capsize (OK, that’s greedy, but it IS a common, and I have sometimes seen them as late picks) and no countermagic. (I really do like having a few counters in U/W, since I can often set up a strong board position with evasion creatures and just want to make sure nothing BAD happens.) In Stronghold I saw (and took) just one Mana Leak, and I didn’t see any Forbids, but I did end up with as nice an evasion/control deck as you can get without Counters or Capsize (or Tradewinds, but I think I knew I wasn’t going to get one of those when I opened my first pack). For evasion I had three Soltari Visonaries, a Lancer and a Mistfolk, as well as a Cloudchaser Eagle (no, Virginia, we’re not afraid of enchantments), a Wayward Soul, a Mirozel, a Frog and I think something else. For control I had Mind Games, the Allure, Change of Heart, Time Ebb and Mana Leak, and to stall the main board I had a bunch of decent blockers, like Horned Turtle, which I could back up with two pairs of underwear. Round 1 vs. Eric, playing life-gain tech Eric had built a very single-minded deck. He had three Soul Wardens, Contemplation, Venerable Monk, and probably some other life-gaining stuff. His idea, as far as I could see, was to hold off death by gaining a ton of life and using his Shaman-en-Kor to enforce a creature stalemate until he could take control with Fanning the Flames or another potential game-winner. I’m a big fan of life-gaining in the right sort of deck. In a control deck it can help you last long enough to establish control. In an evasion beat-down deck it can give you the extra turn or two you need to finish your opponent off. Eric was working on the first theme, but his deck was just way too short of control measures. Fanning the Flames can be very strong in the late game, but it is pretty much useless against a Mirozel or Wayward Soul, since they will remove themselves as targets and the Fan is gone. Furthermore, Eric’s creature defense focused almost entirely on the ground war I saw almost no shadow or flying which mean that he was unlikely to live long enough to establish control. Both of our matches followed a similar path. Eric got out two or three Soul Wardens and a bunch of small ground creatures. I got out three or four evasion creatures and something like a Turtle and a Frog which could hold off his army. In game 2, he gained a total of 31 life (including five from a Venerable Monk with two Wardens and Contemplation in play). I didn’t gain any, but took only six points of damage. Round 2 vs. Josh, playing G/B with Stronghold Walls This was a very good match-up for me, since Josh had considerable investment in holding off a ground-based assault (and then eventually winning it with cards like Plated Rootwalla-walla) but was light on evasion. Moreover, in both games he had to deal with a very unhappy match-up of my Legacy’s Allure and his Wall of Souls. It’s really no fun having a big Green army and knowing that your own Wall of Souls is waiting to finish you off. Josh put up as good an effort as he could, but while his deck may not have been worse than mine, it was definitely going to lose almost every time we played. The cruel moment in game two came when he was clearly looking for a top-deck to save himself (he had been forced to Reclaim his Spike Feeder to buy time while I whittled away at him) and I Time Ebbed Vhati, with him about to die next turn. Finals vs. Dave Humphries, playing R/B with a super-secret sideboard Dave is a nice guy in addition to being a very strong player, so it’s always good to have him around. We joked a bit, with him saying, “So, I was feeding you,” and me replying, “Yeah, so if I beat you that means I’m a much better player, since I won with what you turned down.” We also realized that despite being at a lot of the same tournaments we’d either never played or it had been before either of us knew who the other was. Dave suggests splitting the prize 75/25 or something like that, I agree, and we start. Game 1 Dave gets a bit mana-screwed, not playing a land on turn 3 but getting one on turn 4, and I make a beginner’s mistake. Wanting to kill him off before he can recover, I cast a third creature, instead of putting Conviction on one of my existing guys. I was afraid he would Banish it, but doing so would have gotten it out of direct damage range, and I could have pulled back the Conviction anyway. Dave then top-decks his fourth land and I don’t think he minded not being able to buy back his Evincar’s Justice. Sigh. I dropped another couple of creatures, and put on the underwear, but he started bringing out some pretty fat creatures and beat me down with 6 life left. The reason I say this was a beginner’s mistake is that I saw every card Dave turned down, so I knew he’d let an early Banishing go but that if he’d seen an Evincar’s or Spontaneous Combustion he’d kept them. Then there’s all the DD he got to look at in Stronghold and Exodus. To my mind that’s a pretty good reason to hold a creature and put on some clothing. In Game 2 I got to see why I never saw any counter-magic. Dave’s second pick had apparently been a Capsize (darn, that’s why I didn’t get one of those, either) and even after he went for Black he’d drafted a bunch of counterspells knowing that a B/R deck would be too vulnerable to sideboarded enchantments. He also made sure to draft some colorless sources of damage, like a Phyrexian Hulk and Volrath’s Stronghold, so CoPs or Light of Day wouldn’t shut him down. I think I’m a solid drafter, but we can all learn from players like Dave who manage to draft a very strong deck while shoring up its potential weaknesses. Oh, and yes, that means that his Evincar’s Justice was at the earliest a third turn pick. I guess being fed by scrubs has it’s good points…or maybe it was just a god pack? The Blue sideboard didn’t do much for or against him, although my Sea Monster (sideboarded to defend against his fat) may have made him a bit nervous. I got a bit of control going, with some shadow damage and a main board stall, but I started drawing nothing but land after he Fugued my sideboarded Bandage. I really wish he’d waited until I drew the other one before Thundering my Monster for six…then Evincar’s, followed by a Fatty Assault with Fling making sure that the blocked Hulk got to do a bit of smashing too. It turned out that there was a second prize of 3 packs (first was 6, but don’t think that’s stingy, ‘cause the draft only cost $9 to enter, so they’re basically giving us just over 4 packs per person for $9), and Dave suggested that since we were going to split first he’d make it 5-4 instead of 6-3. Told you he was nice. Props Your Move Games for providing I think five of the final eight and dominating the side tournament. (I left before the finish.) Gray Matter the last time I came to one of these I gave them a hard time because the head judge (who, I must admit, is an excellent judge) was really rude. He didn’t come this time, which may have explained the improvement, but I think the tournament went about as well as you can hope for if Rob isn’t running it. Maybe someone took my advice and sent them some flowers. Rob, for reminding us that if he’s not running one of these he’s going to be in the final eight. Plus, when I graduated HBS he gave me free admission to my next tournament. Plus, he’s just cool. Chris for giving me a ride home and I think making final 8. Slops I hate slops. As Buckaroo Banzai said, “Don’t be mean. We don’t have to be mean. Because, remember, no matter where you go…there you are.” OK, slops to whoever is responsible for the Buckaroo Banzai sequel not being made. How’s that? Chad Ellis, chellis@hbs.edu Candidate for elevation from “Strong among the Weak” to “Weak among the Strong” Final 8 at last two PTQs, crushed in round one of both final 8s. Beat Darwin Kastle with a Static Orb…has never beaten him any other way.