Subject: [Tournament] GP Birmingham (30th) Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 18:10:25 +0200 From: "Patrick Mello" To: "Frank Kusumoto" Grand Prix Birmingham Tourney Report The Rath Season: Throughout the qualifier season our team got 3 people flying to Rome in November. Funny - they qualified with absolutely different decks ;-) Marco q'd with our most tested deck: the monoblue - while Michael took his WW to go all the way to the finals. This was in Berlin when the metagame was still pretty much based on the decks played at worlds this year. Björn and me also played the blue deck there and finished 4-2 / 3-2-1. (see report from Berlin for details). The second qualifier was in Solingen on September 12th. We expected the field to consist of death and control with fewer weenie decks. At first we wanted to go with a white weenie with 4 Helm of Possession standard. Then again we changed our minds... Marco came up with a death version capable of beating other death decks consistently - with heavy anti- control cards. In the end I played death while Björn decided to give the blue deck another try (although he now played lobotomy and helm main deck). Christian changed his mind at the tourney and dropped death in favor of the ww. Gunnar had his own deck - as usual! He wanted to play Humility. So we ended up with 4 different decks in Solingen. Hmm... we are a team right? Anyway. We finished pretty good: Christian and Gunnar made the quarterfinals while me and Björn were only one win away of the top8. Doesn't matter what deck you play it seems?! The last qualifier we went to was Braunschweig on October 10th. I still liked the death deck alot but decided to not play it because in play- testing it just lost most games against the CMU Phoenix deck. The decks we played in Braunschweig were: "One Conscript Sligh" (Björn), WW (Christian), TradeWake (Gunnar) and Phoenix (me). Björn and Gunnar made top8 while Christian and me finished 2-4 / 3-3. It was unbelievable: Christian started out 5-0 in Solingen and went 2-4 in Braunschweig with more or less the same deck! Despite my bad finish I still like the Phoenix version I played. I added 3 Thalakos Drifters to the mainboard and dropped Mogg, Rack and Lake from Randy Buehler's version. And I had Hammerheads in the sb. The Drifters were because WW got more and more popular. Still the day had a good end: Björn q'd as well as David Merten who is also playing regularly in our shop in Hamburg. So Hamburg took once again both slots! The days before Birmingham: Still after 3 qualifiers I was crazy enough to play in my 4th and decided to go to england together with Marco. He's already qualified and just wanted to get some training for Rome and hopefully push his rating up to 2000... So we had to build a strong deck to beat the field we expected. I was a little tired of the rock-paper-scissors thing but there are almost no rogue decks to play in rath. Anyway - I liked the Counter Sliver deck I saw in the semi- finals in Braunschweig (it should've won the match but was screwed) played by Ramin Pursaleh. That deck seemed to be able to beat the control decks as well as most weenies though sligh is a problem before sideboarding. I built a version: 4 Crystalline Sliver 4 Muscle Sliver 4 Winged Sliver 4 Victual Sliver 4 Counterspell 4 Mana Leak 3 Power Sink 2 Forbid 4 Disenchant 4 Mox Diamond 4 Vec Townships 4 Thalakos Lowlands 4 Reflecting Pool 4 Skyshroud Forest 5 Island 2 Plains We tweaked the deck a lot, trying cards like Overrun, Allure, Cannibalize and Lobotomies. But regardless of our changes the deck was inconsistent. It sometimes had dreamstarts like 1st turn Crystalline, second turn Muscle or Winged but with only 16 creatures you often just couldn't put enough pressure on the opponent's deck. Surprisingly the mana configuration is the smallest problem - I even added 4 Rootwater Dephts for the black stuff and still the mana developed smoothly. It was Thursday evening when I decided not to play Sliver at Birmigham... although I liked the idea of playing an unexpected rogue deck a lot! Friday: It's 4 in the morning and I'm still online scanning the information about the Grand Prix in Austin, Texas. Blue makes top8 in force - to noone's surprise I think. The stories about Finkel and Buehler's mistakes are funny... it's good news to hear that they are not super-human-beings after all ;-). Well I guess I should sleep for some hours! I meet Marco Friday morning and we drive to the airport. He already changed his mind about the sliver deck and decided earlier than me that it's not good enough - he wants to play Awakening. It's common knowledge that Awakening (in a good version) is one of the best decks right now. We decide to do some brain- storming in the evening when we've met friends Kai Budde and Dirk Baberowski from Cologne. Hopefully the four of us will be able to build something solid. Our flight went from Hamburg to Brussels then to Birmingham. The stewardess told Marco that he is a "security problem" - she seemed really worried about the seat sagging under his weight (160 kg! That's double me ;-) - but we made it to Brussels anyway... they scanned my bag at the local security and discovered a plate of metal - suspicious! The officer told me to open the bag - then he spreaded the contents on the table, very cool. The large red box he liked best.. he wanted to know what's in there - hmm let's see hundreds of red sleeved cards and a little abacus. He seemed dissapointed regarding it. The funny part is that they checked my bag on both flights while Marco didn't get checked - both of us with duelist counters. The flight to Birmingham was uneventful except for Marco's decision to test if our jeans are really coffee-proof. They are not. Definitely not. We already joked about our luggage circling around in Buenos Aires but they actually managed to get it from Hamburg to Brussels to Birmingham. It all went a little bit too smoothly... we had agreed with Kai and Dirk to meet at the Ibis Hotel at half past seven - we were to book the rooms already. But the women at the reception told us that they were "fully booked" for the weekend. So we got a problem. As we had no option we took our stuff searching the city for a cheap hotel in city centre. Not an easy task it seemed - anyway in the third hotel they had free rooms! The guy at the reception was rather friendly as he had a german girlfriend from Soest - I knew the place so he was even friendlier after we chatted a bit. Half an hour later he showed us a room with 4 beds for a good price, breakfast inclusive! We were really happy about it. Now we just had to meet the cologne crew and on we go! They showed up really late - they had missed their plane and took another flight somewhat later... but they showed up! Dirk had an injured foot so he had to walk on crutches - nothing can stop him from playing magic it seems. The brainstorming was quite successful. We layed the Awakening deck out discussing certain cards, adding cards to while dropping others. We expected blue in general. Phoenix, Monoblue, and other Awakenings. We didn't care about weenie decks so we took out the chills, oaths and stuff you regularly have in an Awakening SB. The meta- game choice we made was adding Scragnoths to the mainboard as well as Hammerheads. We ran more counterspells than most blue decks so we had the advantage in counterduels. Friday Night Awakening: 4 Tradewind Rider 4 Wall of Blossoms 3 Spike Weaver 2 Hammerhead Shark 2 Scragnoth 4 Counterspell 4 Forbid 2 Mana Leak 1 Dismiss 4 Whispers of the Muse 3 Capsize 3 Awakening 3 Skyshroud Forest 4 Reflecting Pool 6 Forest 11 Island Sideboard: 3 Grindstone 3 Torture Chamber 2 Hammerhead Shark 2 Scragnoth 2 Ertai's Meddling 1 Awakening 1 Capsize 1 Spike Weaver Our tactic against other Awakening / Blue decks was to side out Tradewinds (and Wall of Blossoms) to make Dominating Licids and Allures useless. 4 Scragnoths would then take care of the opponent. Sometimes you may win through sheer Scraggy beatdown - but most games should be decided by grinding the opponent away. Against Phoenix 4 Sharks, 4 Scrags, 4 Weavers should be too much for him to handle. The Torture Chambers took the slot of the Chill / Propaganda / Oath stuff. But they are also very nice against the blue crap decks with all their 1/1 stuff (Manta Riders, Licids, Manakin). Against death the full set of capsize / awakening would do. Saturday morning: Blume's wakeup tech kicks in !!! He has an alarm clock that has a little volksmusik band inside. We lay laughing on the floor rolling when we heard that sound... ;-) So we are all in a good mood when we go downstairs to take our breakfast. Ooh Oh. Sorry - but the english just didn't invent breakfast... but the orange juice was alright. The tournament site: Birmingham NEC Our cab driver is not cap-able of getting us were we want so Dirk has to hobble quite a distance. This NEC thing is really big and there aren't any signs that say were the GP is in. We find it finally. On site we meet Gregor Wollny and Andre Konstanczer as well as Iwan Tan. The brainstorming was a good thing but we didn't have 16 Scragnoths, 12 Grindstones and 12 Torture Chambers so we spread out quickly to go and trade these cards... we actually make it but have to buy the last few from the local dealer. All of us have at least 2 byes so we still have quite a lot of time to spare. Poor Iwan had to play the first rounds because they screwed up the database - a rating above 1880 and no byes - ridiculous IMO. That's bad organisation! Anyway - he plays and is 2-0 after the two rounds! Meanwhile we play a little US only draft with Kai, Dirk, Gregor, Andre, Michael, and two guys from Scandinavia I think (they were with Tommi Hovi) and me. I am sitting between Andre and Kai - not a good position I think! But the draft runs almost perfectly for me. I decide to focus on white with red/blue/green as secondary color before the draft begins and by the end of the first booster I have decent cards in white red and green. I drop the red when it dries out and now draft every good card in white and green. I end up with 2 "little Orims", green quality (Anaconda, Hippo, Albino Troll) and white utility (Realist, Disenchant, Humble) and some fast critters to round the deck up. I also have a couple of Runes to side - they are pretty good IMO. We play single elimination winner takes all. I win the first against Michael rather fast - just had the better creatures. Then I play against Kai. He kills me in the first duel when he plays his spoiler: (I passed it) Shivan hellkite. It's expensive but once you got it - it dominates the board. I side in two runes against red and win the second and third through quick pressure and brilliant halo's which make my fliers fat. In the last round I have to play the finnish guy. He kills me quickly in the first duel and it looked like he would win the second but then he made a small mistake and I take the game. The third one is pure beatdown by green fat supported by two "orims". Hey that's 24 rare cards - nice start for the day! The tourney: It is announced that we are going to play Level 5 rules enforcement - good for the K-factor.. but that leads to some pretty strange plays sometimes. We decide to write down life totals with pen and paper... What do you think about how they handle scouting right now? In my opinion - weird! Just weird. So we walked around during the first few rounds to gain an impression of the popular decks - and how they were played... ;-) At least the lax handling of scouting is good for some entertainment when you have nothing else to do but walk around watching future opponents. But if people act as teams and use this to full effect in the future - sideboarding will lose a lot of it's surprise effect.. everbody knows everything about the opponents deck. 1st round: Bye 1-0 3 points 2nd round: Bye 2-0 6 points 3rd round: Richard Bryce from Scotland playing Hatred When he lays a swamp and then says turn I think I'm playing against this secret black deck with gravepact and corpse dance. I'm confident. Actually he is playing Hatred and has just drawn a bad starting hand. I win this match 2-0 siding in the chambers, weaver, cap and awakening but it seems that I'm not yet fully awake: I tapped myself out to counter an edict during my turn - ending my turn without any defense for a possible Hatred - he had the hate but didn't draw a fifth land... better lucky ..... 3-0 9 points 4th round: John Larkin from Ireland playing U/b heavy-control John is playing with Sapphire Medallions and Lobotomies. His only creatures are Dominating Licids and Mindless Automatons - the rest is counterspells and buyback I guess. I lose a duel to the mighty Automaton (5/5 by now) but win the other two duels making good use of my sideboard. In the third duel John had two medallions on the board - you can guess how these affect a counter duel! He played Lobotomy for 2 mana - but being a lucky bastard I could outcounter him because he drew not enough counterspells to use the medallions to full effect. We chat a bit afterwards and John tells me that he's the Irish champion of '97 - nice guy. I wish him good luck for the rest of the tourney. Btw: this round is the beginning of the "blue road" (TM) that lasts till round 9. 4-0 12 points 5th round: Oliver Schneider from the UK playing Curious Mawcor We talk a bit before the round begins and Oliver tells me how a guy got a duel loss because he flipped over some cards of his opponents deck while shuffling it. He gives me the advise to just cut a deck if I don't want to get these kinds of warnings. I wonder if it is a good-hearted advise or just a try to trash-talk me. I know his name and guess that he's one of the top players in the UK so let's see what our deck will do to him. He is playing a deck similar to the one that won the Texas Grand Prix. The first duel doesn't look any good for me but somehow I'm able to seize control although he has a Legacy and a Silver Wyvern out. I have a Weaver so I can protect my Tradewind from his Legacy. A couple of turns later he attacks with his Wyvern and runs straight into my Tradewind with one counter - move another counter to the rider? The Wyvern dies. Maybe he wanted to bluff an Interdict. That would fit because he really did the meta-meta-game: In the second duel I grind him happily and he turns over a Steal Enchantment! Sorry - but I didn't copy the deck off the net and am playing without Treasure Trove... heheh. That made for a good story to tell the others after the match. 5-0 15 points At this point they announce that the tourney site will close now and that the 6th round will be played tomorrow morning. This means that there will also be no side-events at all today! The WotC staff tells us that they can't do anything about it but IMO that is simply unacceptable. I've been to GP Amsterdam and hoped that they had a certain routine in running GP's by now but nothing changed! In Amsterdam the computer crashed and they had to do the tie-breakers by hand... I played 5-2 the first day and didn' t make top 64 but they couldn't tell me which place I finished in the end. Frustrating. And now they close the site at 21:00 ! That's ridiculous. But they know that the freaks will come anyway - so why change anything? Second day: 6th round: Canu Franck from France playing the french blue deck We are seated at table #1 in the last round of the first day - and I'm quite confident. Canu is not speaking english very well and my french is rusted for quite a time but we manage to communicate anyway. He says he had a rating above 2000 after the french nationals. So at least we're playing for some points. The matchup isn't easy for both of us and we're playing quite slow each being eager to go 6-0 in the first part of the tourney. In the end we split games 1 and two and had 5 minutes in the last duel. That's a draw. He has some good cards in the sb to handle my main threats: Helms. When protected by counterspells they are a real threat in this matchup. 5-1-0 16 points So I finish 11th place before the cut of the top 64. By now my chances of making the top16 by the end of the day are quite good and I feel well prepared for the environment with the deck. Except for Andre and Iwan everybody made top64. The others are are also quite happy with the deck we chose. Marco even beat two sligh decks - without any real anti-sligh cards in the sb (sharks are ok but not quite like a chill...). 7th round: Canu Franck again! We can't believe that they have paired us again and ask the judges if this is a mistake. It obviously isn't so we have to play again. I win the first duel because I can capitalize on Canu's mana-shortage playing Awakening and bouncing his lands. He wins the second duel and while sideboarding for the third one I decide to run a different tactic in the last duel. It seems that I can't kill him with Scragnoths because he has quite a good defense with Helms and Stalking Stones and stuff. My only chance is to win the buyback war and land-lock him with capsize - then grinding him to win the match. I side in the 4 Awakening and Capsize but my plan is not successfull because he drew lots of counters - anyway it's been worth the try I guess. 5-1-1 16 points 8th round: Oyvind Odegaard from Norway playing a Curiosity Blue He knows Thomas Refsdal - Gunnar's brother. He wins the dice roll and has a ridiculously good starting hand. He plays first turn Manta Riders - second and third turn curiosity, while I couldn't even counter the second curiosity. I waited some time to concede this duel but I never had a chance win it. I side in the chambers and the other stuff I think useful. The chambers should wreak havoc upon his deck. I win the second duel in the damage race: Scragnoth goes all the way while my life points are nibbled away by flying merfolk one by one. During the third he puts early pressure on me with a Shark on turn two. That one does ten points of damage till I draw Scragnoth. A Tradewind does another 4 points. I concede at 6 life when he lays down a 4th Stalking Stone and is able to attack me for 6 with a random bunch of critters. It's a pity - only drew a Chamber once during two duels and that one got countered. 5-1-2 16 points 9th round: Kim Brebach from Australia playing a Magmasaur-Oath of Druids deck I already chatted with Kim before and he knows what he's matched up against when he read the pairings. He's not happy because he just lost to Awakening the round before. He takes and mulligan before the first duel and keeps the next 6 cards. He chose to play when he won the die roll and I said "so you'll play" and pointed at him. He nodded and then drew a card. He immediately catched his mistake and put the card drawn back on top of his library but he had seen the card - so I called a judge over. The judge gives him a duel loss for his mistake. That's quite harsh - but this is supposed to be level 5 r.e. so that's the penalty. Kim is really a cool guy and so I tell him that I didn't meant that personally but after all it's a GP not a local tourney. The second duel I get him in a capsize-awakening lock when I'm on 4 life. He started out fast with Oath of Druids when I had a Wall.. he plays only creatures he can sacrifice so he got down in life pretty quick with combination of magmasaur, fanatics and acidic slivers. But he couldn't stop the capsize so I finally seized control. 6-1-2 19 points 10th round: Richard Edbury from the UK playing Awakening To make a long story short - I lost this mirrormatch 2-1. He admitted afterwards that he good really good draws which let him win the important counterduels we had. Anyway he was playing a bit sloppy - I told him 4 or 5 times to tap his lands 90 degree to make clear what's tapped and what's not! When he underpaid a Capsize with buyback (tapping only 5) I called a judge. He got a warning for misinterpretation. During the second duel he took one pain from a Sky Forest and said "I get 1 damage" while playing a spell but then he didn't write the damage down and said turn. Again I called a judge and he got a second warning earning him a duel loss. He won anyway but you know - better lucky than good. 6-1-3 19 points 11th round: Jos Schreurs from the Netherlands playing Awakening Jos didn't have any byes on day one but that couldn't stop him from making top 64 with 4-1-1. Good job. This match is about making top32 or not and we roll the dice to decide who goes first in this 250$ ante match. I win the first duel with Awakening cause I had more lands than Jos. He chose not to counter the Awakening but admitted that might have been a mistake. The second duel I have a great draw having 2 Grindstones and 2 Scragnoths on the board by turn 6. I am even able to kill him with Scragnoths capsizing a weaver on his turn then attacking for 6 on my turn. 7-1-3 22 points I'm 30th in the end - finishing "in the money" at least although my goal was to qualify for Rome. Anyway - I already have a ticket to Rome to support Team NMA there and have some fun surfing the side-events and the PTQ. So our deck's performance has been pretty good - everybody made top64 with it and Kai went all the way to the finals (see his report). There he lost to Torben Twiefel.. oops - Craig Jones. It's only natural that he lost to sligh IMO - if we had oaths or chills in the sideboard we propably would have finished worse as there were only 3 sligh decks in the top64 !! The way home The finals were finished at 4 in the morning or so... and we had to get our flight on monday morning at a quarter to 11. We woke up after 9:00 and had to arrange quite a lot of things before we could leave... pack the bags - get ready - pay the hotel - which leads to: find the closest bank to get some pounds because the hotel doesn't accept deutschmark - and take a cab to the airport. We were almost ready to leave but then we were stopped by a group of belgian players who wanted to know about the finals the day before... in the end we arrived at the airport fifteen minutes before the flight was to leave! To make a long story short: We did it. We ran through the airport in record time - Marco lost his purse at the security check while they wanted to see my fuckin' DCI counter - again! I got a seat in the business class while Marco had to take a seat in the rear of the plane. Hey - there's actually an advantage in coming too late, at least for me it was. Heheh. Back in Hamburg we had to contact Birmingham again because of Marco's purse - hopefully he got it back already... See you in Rome, Patrick Mello Team NMA - Hamburg, Germany. known as Grigger on IRC. Patrick_Mello@public.uni-hamburg.de ICQ# 17853287 Prop's go to: - Dirk, Kai and Marco for the good brainstorming on friday - Kai for fighting when 0-2 against Darwin Kastle... - To all my opponents for being good sports. (really!). - Kim Brebach from Australia - tour de monde ? Cool thing! - To Kentucky Fried Chicken for inventing the Monster Bucket!! - To the guy from Klein-Elbe who slayed everybody with his sligh. "charge - super goblin, charge!" Some Slop's: - To the guys from the Netherlands on Sunday night after the finals you know what I'm talking about! - To WotC / the TOs - for not being able to run a smooth and rewarding GP with enough sideevents and stuff.