Subject: T2 tourney report... G/B "Jawa Beatdown" Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 23:07:14 +0000 From: Allan John Van Zander To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com I learned something this weekend... I tend to play magic a lot better when I'm wearing socks. Maybe I'm just more relaxed, make fewer mistakes... or maybe it's just the fact that my current deck lets me shuffle a lot and play with toys... but enough, you're probably all scared enough already... ... so saturday night I make the trek to the norwich comic connection to play in a silly little ghetto Type 2 tourney with my jawa beatdown deck (which I believe deserves consideration for august's decks to beat)... I've been playtesting it all week at the Colchester, CT comic connection with the owner, Ed Gauthier, and I felt pretty confident that I could do fairly well. I get there a bit early and paw around the half-price crap rare bin, and take advantage of a few mistakes by the store to get an italian nether void for six bucks and a fork for four... then I trade some crap, play around with a super do-nothing blue deck against George Deep, resident contender, eat a number 2 (from McDonald's, you sick freaks), find a cataclysm to finish off the W/G oath deck that I built for Ed to play, meet some people, inhale some smoke, and sit down to play... well, here's my deck: The Jawa Beatdown deck has evolved greatly from the earliest living death concoctions I developed, which people decided to call "14" for lack of a more interesting name... soon I woke up to the power of using the right creatures (VERDANT FORCE!!!!!!!), started thinking instead of just tossing in the biggest fatties, got rid of the whole buried alive-combo thing, and learned how to be patient with the deck... stronghold gave me spike feeders, GOD (wall of blossoms), sliver queen (another cool fattie), and volrath's broken house... around this time I had started playing other decks with more frequency, but clearly wasn't having as much fun... pox decks are cool, but they don't do too much for your rankings when everyone plays stupid burn... so I decided to go back to my trademark deck for good... then, the trained monkeys at wizards accidentally screwed up and made green playable. Survival of the fittest is awesome, and recurring nightmare is great too... the living death deck slowly came together for me in it's newest incarnation... then, unlike most connosieurs of living death (I HATE TRADEWINDS...), I realized that most of my creatures were Green... so I dropped in a few natural orders, reinstated my firestorms to kill fast weenie crap (I HATE HATRED...), carefully chose my creature base, developed my top-secret tech sideboard after weeks of testing the metagame at comic connection stores (50% blue, 47% not-worth-worrying about, 3% chris savaria and his damned second-turn kill hatred), I felt ready to throw this into the fray: 4 birds of paradise (must have a foreign one for good luck) 4 GOD 4 Spike Feeders (for some reason, people started calling my deck peaches when I played this... it's so much better) 2 Hermit Druid (ahh, synergy...) 3 Verdant Daddy (I gotta meet this wakefield guy) 2 Sex monkey 1 Loogie 1 Reina de los fragmentados (amazing how many times I can actually cast this fourth turn) 1 Mindless Automaton (thanks Ed) 1 fallen angel 1 spirit of the night (oath of what?) 2 nekatraal 1 cloudchaser 3 living death (the best card in T2... forget impulse) 3 survival of the fattest 2 recurring nightmare 2 firestorm 2 natural order (3rd-turn force for me...) 1 volrath's house 3 city of brass 3 mine de gemmes 2 reflecting pool 2 karplusan forest 7 forest (portal, if possible) 3 swamp (the same) I forgot my benthic behemoth, but I'll live... also, a box of jawas, ewoks, gammorean guards, others... as the deck gets more exposure, the box grows... anyone who cares to contribute to my jawa beatdown, feel free... Board of the day: 4 pyroblast (I HATE BLUE) 2 Oath of Ghouls (1B: target blue player scoops) 1 city of solitude 2 phyrexian furnace 1 pandemonium (only for JJ... he keeps telling me his version of the deck with this card wrecks mine, but I don't see it being the case) 1 firestorm (all i've got) 3 emerald charm 1 ravenous baboons (tech...) Now that you've all suffered through another caffienated rant, here's the tournament: Round 1: Shawn Schultz, Black weenie/scroll/brooch/bridge with carrion ants. the first game is pretty quick, as shawn gets overrun by a posse of jawas and a gammorean (now THAT's a saproling)... he sides in perish and starts of with a carrion ant, bridge, and null brooch... but my removal is all uncounterable creatures, and once I kill the brooch I bring out some fat... he perishes, I living death, he scoops. Now for game 3... oh yeah guess I should mention the tourney is six rounds swiss, play all 3 games, 3 points per game, 2 points for winning 2 of 3, 0 points for unfinished games...weird... I don't really remember game 3, just that it took about 2 minutes for me to realize that a spirit of the night is never a bad thing to have in the deck... i sweep... George sweeps, chris sweeps, ed sweeps with my oath deck... come to think of it, everyone who won sweeps... hmmm... 1-0 matches, 3-0 games, 11 points Round 2: George Deep, Counter-burn with interesting stuff... George tends to always be at the top of tournaments here in norwich, and I make the observation that george likes blue. He plays an interesting variety of sage owls, wildfires, and cool stuff like that, and I believe he deserts something I don't want him to have and beats me down in game one... he counters all my futile living deaths too... no worries though... I side in 9 cards and feel pretty darn confident... I don't remember too much in terms of detail for game 2, but I get recurring nightmare out and hurt him badly with it... game 3 is over pretty quickly too... george uses unorthodox cards to great effect, and is never a dull opponent, but my deck was so prepared for bleu cheese mages... 2-0 matches, 5-1 duals, 19 points. Round 3: Joe Manseau, Big Blue (I HATE WATERSPOUTS) If you've ever seen me play, you know that I truly enjoy the game, especially when I'm playing a deck I love... I talk a lot, joke around with my opponent and spectators... that's what this game is all about... fun. Joe seems pretty nervous, and he's got a bad case of the shakes when he plays... I don't seem to be helping at all... game one I draw ZEEEERO creatures, lots of spells that get countered, and I watch Joe tap a waterspout 5 times to beat me up... yee-haa. I board in my standard 7-9 cards against him, and feel pretty confident. Game 2 I get an early hermit druid and have a pretty decent land... he's low on cards in hand, and I figure if I draw a counter on a living death, I can get a threat off next turn. I activate my hermit, and count 31 cards before I get a basic land. there are now seven cards left in my library, and doing a bit of math I realize there's only 3 non-lands left... I simply run out of options. I tell Joe that I'm very upset with him for winning, ask if he wants to concede the third game, and generally try to keep the crowd amused, as we are one of the last matches still playing... he taps out turn 2 for a mind stone... I apologize to Joe, say "nice game," and drop my city of solitude... he says he's still going to kick my ass, and I laugh and proceed to a point in the game where the board looks like this. Joe: one card in hand, ertai on the board. Me: hand full, fallen angel, verdant force, 20-21-ish lhurgoyf, hermit druid, several more creatures on the board... also recurring nightmare with nekrataal in graveyard... it is joe's turn, and he has just cast ertai during his main phase. So You won, right? uh, no... judge Tim walks up and says time... active player gets to finish turn... I plead to be awarded the duel win, as there's no possible way for me to lose with joe tapped out and out of options... he's not stopping 40 points of damage next turn... but Tim says no... then I find out you get no points for a draw... that sucked bad, and would later come back to haunt me... (2-1 matches, 5-3 duels, 19 points) Round 4: John Papp, G/U/W Oath of Druids. What the hell were they thinking when they made this card? that's all I want to know... not only is it broken, it's designed to go in a deck with impulse and blessings... now how broken is that? Anyway, I've been playtesting almost exclusively against an oath deck all week, so I know what I'm doing, and Jamie Wakefield is right... fatties can overcome all. The oath deck is awesome against weenies, but not verdant forces... I get recursion of selective 187 types to keep his enchantments at bay and work him out of counters, then slowly am able to get damage past his recursion before I living death for the victory... before I talk about game 2, I must apologize to John... I was really tired and quite talkative, and I would imagine quite annoying... I kept asking him unnecessary rules-lawyer questions which are probably perfectly lefal and acceptable, but just pointless if you're trying to have fun... but oh well, the games were still really good. Game 2 I continue my revenge for John beating Ed with my other deck... this one is much quicker as I furnace a few key elements away and get off another timely living death when he has no time to wrath... we run out of time in game 3, but to john's credit I think he would have won that game... his deck was truly interesting as oaths go... 3-1 matches, 7-3 games, 27 points Round 5: Tom Kaufmann, Big Blue with dominating licid, tradewind, firewalkers, etc... Tom is a really cool guy, and this is just one of those matches that you remember for a really long time afterwards... game one he legacy's one of my walls to stop a feeder, then taps out for a tradewind after he's already let me get a druid going... living death prompts only a four-word response... "cool f$#&ing deck, man"... I side in the anti-blue stuff, and game 2 is a classic... I seriously think that this game was as close to perfect as I have ever played... Tom has two of my walls under his control, and 2 firewalkers ready to eat me alive... I get a recurring nightmare out and begin putting on a clinic on exactly when and where to use it... using a single nekrataal and a few meaningless creatures to kill a tradewind, 2 pingers, and a wall... tom facilitates this all with one mistake... he taps a furnace to remove the bottom card of my graveyard, forgetting that artifacts turn off when tapped, allowing me to get 4 uses out of the nekrataal and recurring nightmare. I recurse various assorted 187's at the appropriate time until I finally kill his stupid licid, then nekrataal ertai twice in one turn to kill him... Tom drops a legacy's allure and a silver wyvern, and my pyroblast-hogging hand manages to force through city of solitude... I'm getting down low in life, he's regaining control, but now survival and a druid fill up my graveyard and I cast living death... he's got 2 pingers and a flyer, 2 turns to live, and I'm at 5... he pings me twice, bringing me to 3... I topdeck a useless orangutan, drop it for my last bird, get it through, and have a chump blocker for the tradewind... he's got no man-o-war, so he dies with me at one life... this game took almost the entire round, and though neither one of us can be accused of stalling, we agreed to play faster for the last ten minutes so somebody would at least get some points and be closer to contention. Tom was quite impressed with the deck, and I offered to let him play it in side tourneys in boston next week if he doesn't make top 8... (4-1 matches, 9-3 duels, 35 points) Round 6: Jim Steadman, R/B beatdown Jim and I have been jawing for several hours, just taunting one another in a friendly manner... as I sit down I tell him that he's the most feminine man in the joint, and I'm attracted to him... this sets off another barrage of one-liners, a battle of wits for which I, as usual, come unarmed... after a bunch of great, tight battles all night, the final round is unfortunately anticlimactic... first game I have 2 verdant forces on turn 4. second game he perishes, I furnace some stuff, druid to recover, living death, game. Game 3 I demonstrate the power of a fully armed and operational mindless automaton. What a cool card, and when Lhurgoyf hits the table, the word "combo" isn't enough to describe the beatings... Jim was cool, but there were just too many Jawas in my deck. (5-1 matches, 12-3 duels, 46 points) George manages to take 2 of 3 off of Joe Manseau, leaving joe at 49 points, and me with the realization that I should be tied for first if not for that questionable judging decision against Joe... but I don't really care, I get a third of a box of exodus for second, pull some choice rares, and today I went 4-0 in a sanctioned tourney with the same deck to win more cool stuff... plus I finally got a chaos orb. Well, to all of you who've made it all the way through this, thanks for reading, add blue to your oath decks, and look for me in boston next week (I'll be the one in the orange, looking for Wakefield.) Oh yeah, props to everyone who plays this game for fun, and slops to the guy who told me to my face today that i'm pathetic for playing living death as it requires no skill... he's got a lot of talent to play those xeroxed decks he's got, mind you, but it matters not a bit to him that I've developed this deck on my own from the beginning... there's a lot of decision-making and complexity here... it's probably as hard to play right as bloom is. Well, if you've got comments, suggestions for the deck, or questions about its synergy, feel free to email me... oh yeah, I accept cheritable donations of jawas as well. Mike Van Zander mvz to the world avzander@snet.net mz001g@uhura.cc.rochester.edu Dark Prince of the Fatties Waiting for Orange as the sixth color Living Death Guru etc, etc, etc...