Subject: SECRET FORCE tourney report Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 11:30:15 -0700 From: "Dave Kuykendall" To: This is a variant "Secret Force" deck that Jamie Wakefield unleashed on the public a few days ago. I had a little prior knowledge of it and played it in a tournament in San Diego. Quite a few people showed up including some unexpected players from up north. Looked like the best turn out in a while for us. Several "name" players were present such as Alan Comer and Adam Vierya (sp?). As far as i could tell pretty much no "newbies" in this crowd. Here is the deck as i played it... 4 Verdant Forces 1 Rootbreaker Worm 3 Spike Feeders 3 River Boa 4 Elves 3 Queer Elves 4 Wall of Blossoms 2 Barishi (all I heard was, "he does what?") 3 Sex Monkeys 4 Natural Orders 2 Lure of Prey ("let me read that...oh great...") 1 Overrun 1 Giant Growth 1 Emerald Charm 3 Creeping Molds 3 Quicksands 3 Wastelands 18 Forests sideboard was... 2 Hall of Gemstone 2 City of Solitude (couldn't find any more gemstones) 2 Tranquil Groves 1 Tranquility 3 Lifeforce 2 Katabatic Winds 1 Needle Storm 1 Reality Anchor (silly, I know) 1 more Sex Monkey I'd change the side a lot if (well, when) I play this again. Ive never done a tourney report and probably wouldnt do this one but Jamie insists so here goes. On to the games... First round was against Justin Baker. We have played several times at Costa with our games always being close. He is a very deliberate, thoughtful player and seems to agonize over every move. Not overly slow just very careful. Anyhow first game he starts and drops a 5th edition city of brass, damn they look crappy. I spit an elf out. He plays a forest and looks at his hand, and looks at his hand, and looks at his hand and then says "done". "Great", I think, "playing bloom, he'll drain me by the time I cast a force". I put out a wall and draw an order on the extra card, hit him for a point and am done. His turn he plays an island, plays a mana bird and his own wall. Whew. 5cg or some such but not bloom. My turn I tap 3 lands, the elf and natural order my wall. He looks at the card, looks at his hand, looks at his tapped lands and watches as the wall morphs into a verdant FORCE. So next turn I chop his life down by a third (7) and things look good. Then he goes and plays that god-damn-evil-card-that-should-have-never-been-printed and I dont mean cursed scroll (the FORCE doesn't care about a puny scroll). No, he plays a damn tradewind rider (TWRs as i call em). So he wins game one. I play it out till he gets two tradewinds before going on to game two. So in go two winds and the needlestorm. I took out a monkey and two creeping molds. Game two was all about a timely needlestorm. He had the tradewind thing going and i had to keep recasting my creatures each turn. Thankfully i caught him tapped out (TWRs and land) and was able to get the needlestorm off. Game three we start with only ten minutes left. Now this is a single elimination tournament and if you run out of time they go with whoever has the most life wins. If tied in life then you play out three more turns, if still tied then you roll a die to see who wins. To make this short we were both at 20 when time ran out so it came down to a die roll (which kinda sucks), which I won by rolling a 20. I think I had a good chance since I had the needlestorm in my hand and a winds coming up in two draws. The TWRs were the only real threat to me in his deck. Though the one Maro he had could have been bad i suppose. Wow. I thought green was bad. But here I am 1-0. Round two is against Becky Hiebert (hope i got that right?). Ive seen her a lot at Costa but never actually played against her. I know she is a decent player though. Ive seen her in several top 8s in PTQs and she went 7-1 at the exodus prerelease. We start and she wins the roll. She puts down a swamp. Ugh. Swamp = perish in the side. I toss out an elf and am done. She plays a mountain and plays a dauthi horror. Ugh. Black with shadows. I HOPE this isn't speed black with red splashed. Anyhow we each play creatures for a while. I play a boa, she plays a knight. I play a wall, she plays an erg raider. So I can basically stop every creature she has except that damn horror which keeps pecking away. I really want to draw a quicksand right about now. So this goes on for a while. The horror keeps pecking away and I keep playing little stuff like queer elves and walls. I get down to about 12 when I draw a lure of prey. Hmmm. And I happen to be holding a force too. So I say I'm done and she draws and plays an abyssal gatekeeper and attacks and is done. At the end of her turn I say, "in your discard I play lure of prey...". "What does that do?", she asks. "Not much", I reply. She takes it, reads it and says, "ok, so what do you play?". I drop the FORCE and say, "I think he'll do." I must say the expression on one's face when you play something that fat as an instant in there turn is priceless. So she ends throwing things in front of the FORCE (you just gotta put it in caps ya know?) while the damn horror keeps pecking away. Finally I draw a quicksand and put an end to that. And soon after that she runs out of creatures to stall the FORCE. Game two wasn't really a game as she only drew one land and I had a turn three FORCE. Her whole hand cost only two mana but she never got the second land. I asked her how much land she played and she said eighteen. Eighteen seems risky to me but I didn't comment. If she HAD draw another land she could have played her whole hand out. We played a third game for fun and her deck really came out to play for this one. It was really all about tombstone stairwell/goblin bombardment with a little blue splashed for mana leak and intuition. The FORCE and his smaller cousin the rootbreaker still came through for me though. Wow. I'm 2-0. Isn't green supposed to be bad? Round three is against Brian Seldon. He is an excellent player and helped Alan playtest the Godzilla deck. He wins the roll and announces he will draw. Wonderful, he is playing Godzilla. First game he has pretty much the perfect game. Discard a sliver queen, ritual, necromancy. Then ritual, hidden horror ditch a shivan. Next turn animate the shivan. Geez. Ok game one is a lost cause. I side in my anti-enchantment stuff. Game two he starts much slower and I get a FORCE out turn three. He hangs on and eventually summons his own force, but his is a 6/7 due to animate dead. After he does that on my turn I natural order a saporling (grin) and bring out my second FORCE. He does cast living death when he is at one but i fortunately have a river boa in hand and he has an island beckoning to it on his side. The game ends shortly after. Game three went much the same way but with more fatties on the board for both of us. At game's end I had three FORCES and a rootbreaker to his sliver queen, hidden horror and his force. Dont see too many games with four forces on the table ya know. He did manage to kill all three forces with a firestorm. One red mana kills three 7/7s(and a bunch of saporlings too)? Need to ban that card :) The leftover saporlings manage to deal the remaining damage to him. Tranquility was a big help that game. Too bad tranquil grove never showed up for me. 3-0 playing green? The world must be coming to an end. Round four is Vs Jeremy, otherwise known as fish boy (just kidding Jeremy). I have always seen him play merfolk decks and he was playing them before they were well known. His decks are always good and some games you swear he has 40 man-o-wars, 40 mana leaks and about 200 merfolk in that 60 card deck. Game one I had a good and bad draw. Good cause I had two river boa, bad because a lone wasteland was my land. Well I kept it and didn't draw a land. Seeing I didn't have any colored land he portents me on his next turn (who says impulse is the best card in magic?). He makes a face looking at the next three cards and shows them to me and tells me to shuffle. It was two forests and a river boa. So I shuffle and when he is done I draw a forest. Gosh I'm lucky at times. I play the boa. Next turn I draw a forest, play the other boa. Next turn I draw the third boa! I shuffled, really i did. Even with a few man-o-wars bouncing my boas around I still win the damage race with the help of a few quicksands and walls. Game two was pretty ugly. This game he cast nine man-o-wars, eight mana leaks and about 20 merfolk. Or it seemed like it. The force doesn't like jellyfish much. Merfolk beat me down with a vengeance this time. Game three he starts with merfolk but I get out blockers so nothing much happens for a while. Now and then he would attack with something and I'd kill it with a quicksand or mutual block it. Then I get a hall of gemstone. He has a nearly full hand and lots of mana so I dont think I would ever tap him out so I figured I'd try the "this card doesn't do much" trick. I drop the gemstone and he reads it and asks, "So each turn we pick a color and we can only use that color?". I reply, "Yup, doesn't do a whole lot to you.". So he let it through. The game went for a few more turns then I natural ordered a wall. He mana leaked it. Well he tried but he couldn't find any blue mana. (snicker) "Guess the card does do something afterall.", he says. So I hit him for 7, then 7 more. Chopping him down by thirds. He can chump block for a while but not for long as soon I'd just be able to overwhelm him through numbers. Then he draws and lets out a huge sigh of relief as he plays a man-o-war. Dammit. I do get out another force but it is too late as he gets a flying 2/2 merfolk that finishes me off. You would think the FORCE would be able to just reach up and swat down those little manta riders? So 3-1. Well, I am playing green afterall. So I play for 3rd against Adam Propokin (?). He is a decent player if a little annoying, He is always shuffling his hand around, counting his library, counting yours, etc... He doesn't stall really just keeps looking at everything over and over. My graveyard is the same as last turn, why are you looking at it again? Who knows. Anyhow to cut this short this was a bad match up for him. His deck was a worb-geddon-propaganda-pendril mists with howling mine to run you out of cards deck. He had a ton of non-basics so my wastelands hurt him. He had a lot of diamonds plus the mines and the worbs so the monkeys hurt him and the propagandas and mists were eaten away by mold. He also cast gerrad's boredom a few times but that only bought a few extra turns Vs the FORCE. I took the match in three. So I got third which I pretty good considering the field I think. The guy who won was playing red burn with a little black splashed. Too bad I couldn't play him. Takes a lot of burn to kill a FORCE and if you do another is not too far behind. I'm not sure what I would change main deck. It seems pretty good right now. I would like to run more land but I'm not sure what to take out. The charm maybe. The side I would change a lot. Probably run four needlestorms for the tradewinds. Choke would go a long way Vs merfolk decks. Man-o-war and tradewind is really all the problem cards I saw Vs this decks (besides most of black of course). I thought dense foliage made creatures immune to effects as well as spells but doesn't. So I dont see a good solution to those damn jellyfish. Once exodus is legal cartographer would be a good addition to the side as he could get back wastelands/quicksands for double use. Tranquil grove is also a very very good card right now. I will probably use three of them over tranquility. Thanks to Jamie again for the deck idea. Must say it was one of the funniest decks ive yet to play. Dave Kuykendall