Subject: Coastal Duel 13 Report Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 17:07:34 +0100 From: Paul Barclay Newsgroups: uk.games.trading-cards.misc First Stuart Gosden playing in a Type 2 tournament, and then me playing in one on the same weekend! Run for your lives. The end of the world is nigh. The Legends tournament list billed Coastal Duel 13 as "Paul's Death", for some reason. I was hoping that it wouldn't come true. Anyway, 57 players turned up, making for a good tournament. Strange that a tourney offering £80 in prizes gets 57 people, wheras a tourney offering three times that much (and a huge can of tuna) gets half as many. Maybe all those southerners are just too scared of losing ranking points to come out to play. Maybe people just don't see the true appeal of fish products. I was tossing up between a black/red graveyard manipulation deck, and the infamous bloom deck. After much umming and ahhing, I decide to go with Bloom. Decklist: Like you need to see _another_ Bloom decklist. The only alterations to any standard version were two main-deck Elephant Grass (which performed very well), and two Boils in the sideboard, which were exceptionally good. Onto: Round 1. vs. Michael Arnold, playing a White Weenie deck. Duel 1: He got a very slow start, and a turn 5 Abeyance protected kill was a formality for the Bloom deck. Duel 2 saw me facing an Empyrial Armoured Welkin Hawk and a Soltari Visionary. I drop a turn 5 Elephant Grass, and he taps out to attack me with both creatures on his turn 5. Mistake - the Bloom engine loves tapped out players. A quick Squandered-Balance-Bloom-Contract-Contract- Prosperity-Prosperity later, and he's dead. 1/0/0 (20 points) Round 2. vs. Pete Ward, who was playing a version of the Forbiddian deck, with lots of Legacy's Allures and Dominating Licids. Oh, and a stack of counterspells. Duel 1 produced the Blue player's nightmare - a turn 2 Squandered Resources. An Elephant Grass holds off his lone Ophidian for 3 turns (he's afraid to tap mana to attack, because he's a bit low on land due to Wastelanding two of mine). eventually, I have to let it go, but topdeck another one. I cast it straight away - he Forbids it, I drop my fifth land, play an Abeyance. He Counterspells, after realising that this now taps him out. With my remaining two mana, I play the Squandered Resources, do a Natural Balance, play the Bloom, and get the kill. Duel 2 saw the anti-blue sideboard come in (3 Pyroblasts, 2 Boil, 1 Abeyance and 1 City of Solitude). Not a lot happens for the first 6/7 turns, except for him Wastelanding a City of Brass, and me discarding a Cadaverous Bloom and two Natural Balances (because I had to establish control before killing him, and I didn't have the Squandered on the table). Eventually, he gets to 6 land, and Capsizes a Forest in my discard phase. The Boil in response gave him a bit of a shock. Two turns later, I go for the kill (with Abeyance protection, of course). It all gets a bit tense, when I get down to the last 14 cards in my library without drawing a Bloom. I have the mana to do one Contract and one Impulse and cast the Bloom. I play the Contract, and am rewarded with... three multilands and an Infernal Contract. I play the Impulse... and get the Bloom on the first card (so much for the drama of it all:-). A swift Drain Life gives me a lot of relief (and a kill). 2/0/0 (20 points) Round 3. vs Phil Walsh, playing... Bloom. This is starting to not get funny - I seem to be constantly paired up with decks that Bloom doesn't particularly like. He offers me the draw, I think for a bit and then decide that I'd rather play it out. Duel 1 was a bit of a blur. He gets the turn 2 Squandered, I don't even see one all match. He Abeyances, I Abeyance in response, he Memory Lapses, I Power Sink, but I'm only able to do enough to force him to play another land before Balancing. Result: I get creamed. Duel 2 sees my turn 2 Squandered, but his turn 3 Pygmy Hippo - the ultimate nightmare for Bloom vs Bloom. He goes for his kill after attacking with the Hippo (a _big_ mistake). He Natural Balances, I sacrifice all my lands to the Squandered Resources and get 5 more. He casts a Meditate, I Meditate in response, getting a Power Sink and a Pyroblast, and then kick myself for forgetting to draw a red mana from my City of Brass. He casts a Contract, I Power Sink, and he Pyroblasts. He plays another Meditate, and looks a bit concerned - he's only got six mana left, and hasn't seen a Bloom. He does the one thing that could still win him the game - Lobotomy. My hand: Undiscovered Paradise, Cadaverous Bloom, Pyroblast, Natural Balance, Drain Life, two Prosperities, and an Infernal Contract. I announce to him that whatever he takes, he's dead in my next turn (he was on eight life after the Contract, and has a Plains in the graveyard and a tapped Swamp and forest in play). He takes the Pyroblast (the correct choice), and I kill him on my next turn anyway, by casting the Bloom and contracting/Prosperitying for an Abeyance, and doing a very small Drain. We start duel 3 with 5 minutes to go. It ends unfinished. 2/0/1 (25 points) Round 4 vs. Jason Whitfield, playing a Hermit Druid/Shallow Grave/Haunting Misery deck. My problem in this maych was that I didn't identify the deck early enough. Duel 1, I get Forest, Undiscovered Paradise. I get a turn 2 Squandered, he gets a Turn 2 Hermit Druid (he was slightly manascrewed). I can go for it on turn 3, but decide against it, as it would have been a very risky kill. Mistake - he topdecks a Tempest damage land, plays a Mox Diamond, activates the Druid, dumping his entire deck into the graveyard, then Shallow Graving a Revenant. I deny the existence of the Revenant for just long enough to have a good look through his entire deck, but eventually it comes through for 22 damage. Duel 2: His turn 4 Lobotomy gets Power Sunk, thankfully. Again, I had a risky kill chance on turn 5, but I knew that he'd only sideboarded two cards, and what were the chances of him drawing _both_ Lobotomies? He seemed to be thinking the same thing in my discard phase, as he Vampiric Tutored, and I wished that I had a Vision Charm in my hand. The second Lobotomy found me completely counterless, and took the Bloom. To make it all worse, I was killed by two Sage Owls and a Bottle Gnome. 2/1/1 (25 points) Round 5 vs. Chris Blackwood, playing a Big Blue deck. At this point, we're both on 25 points, and only two 2-0 wins is going to be enough to get us into the top 8, so he offers that whoever wins, wins it 2-0. I decline, and try to explain that doing this is cheating, because someone else would be prevented from making top 8 if we did this. Duel 1: He does nothing at all for the first 10 turns. Because of this, neither do I (except the turn 2 Squandered - :-). Eventually, I get enough to try to make it, and decide to go for it as soon as he casts something. Next turn, down goes the Rainbow Efreet. So, I go for the combo. I Abeyance, he Dismisses, I Sink for 3 to tap him down to 1 mana, he Counters it, leaving him with only two land untapped. I cast the Natural Balance, leaving me with a hand of: Bloom, Drain Life, Infernal Contract, Power Sink, Squandered Resources. I drop the Bloom, leaving me with just a tapped Gemstone Mine. I can either play it safe, and go for a draw, or I can take a big risk and go for the win. I play it safe for the draw, by tossing the Drain Life and the Squanderd to play the contract. I get a Prosperity, get two Meditates and a Contract from that, then all I have is an Impulse. I Impulse for a Prosperity, Prosperity for the third and final Prosperity, by then find that I'm two mana short of getting the draw, and his Rainbow beats me down next turn. Duel 2 saw me with an awesome hand. A Boil in his turn gets countered, as does an Abeyance in my next one, as does a Squandered Resources, too. The City of Solitude hits the table, however. Game, with a 40 point Drain Life two turns later. Duel 3 starts with ten minutes left and goes nowhere. 2/1/2 (30 points) Round 6 vs. John Ingham, playing a Black/Green weenie. This was the first deck that I met that wasn't a real threat to a Bloom deck. Duel 1 was fast, with some beatdown served by him, followed by an Abeyance protected Drain Life on turn 5. Duel 2 was slower, but two Elephant Grasses totally shut down his Sarcomancies and Fallen Askari, whilst forcing him to tap out so that he could attack with his Jolrael's Centaur. He was dead on turn 6. 3/1/2 (40 points) I end up in tenth place, directly underneath Nicholas Moss-Allison. I'm still recovering from that experience. :-) All in all, a well run and fun tournament (you can't really beat a venue that's both licensed _and_ sells ice creams). P.S. Anyone want to buy a slightly used Bloom deck? Paul. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- -- -- Paul Barclay -- -- Magic: the Gathering List NetRep -- -- Churchill College, Cambridge, England CB30DS -- (Phone: 0958-980-180) --