Subject: Stupidly Long - GP Austen Report - Or "Beer and Loafing In Aus, Texas" Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 17:22:46 GMT From: fox@scio.SPAMBLOCK.demon.co.uk (Fox) To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com GP Austin Report - 49th Place or "Beer and Loafing In Aus, Texas" As some of you will be aware GP Austen was on a couple of weeks ago (OK, more like months now but I've been busy) and seeing as how I was in the States I thought it would be a fine idea to pop along and take on all those Yankee woosamaflips at their own game. All the talk on the newsgroup as to why the Merkins are so much better than the Brits just didn't add up in my book and, having been successfully mana-screwed, duff carded or merely disqualified from all the PTQ finals I'd managed to qualify for I'd never had the chance to see for myself. So I'd rung up Wizards a few weeks before to suggest that I might go and take a gander at the proceedings. The response was a mixture between stark disbelief and total awe from Mr Matt. Mind you, he had just got back from his leaving do piss-up so it may have just been a drunken stupor instead. Either way, I made the necessary arrangement, bought a slew of plane tickets from the friendly travel centre in Wizards, Renton (Heathrow- Chicago-Austen-Dallas-Nashville-Chicago-Seattle-Chicago-Heathrow) and set off to become the first Brit to fly out to an American GP for the hell of it. To mark the occasion those noble fellows from Team Gnome decided to lower their standards considerably and let me wear a team shirt. Poxy-Foxy-Proxy-Gnome to battle! Against all probability I successfully navigated the four thousand miles from my doorstep to the Chariot Inn in Austen, Texas without finding myself, at any time, in downtown Hong Kong. What I did find was that the non-pressurised baggage cabin had blown the top off my can of Cherry Black boot polish and had smeared the stuff all over the place. And so it was that I first learned the true power of The Gnome Factor as the top three sheets of the score pad had intercepted the largest globs of polish and had carefully wrapped them up in neat little throw away bags. Cunning! I dropped my stuff off, wandered down to the main room, enlisted in a Winner-Takes-All US draft and got my butt kicked so hard it took me until the next day to find it again. So much for that. Spent a bit of time with Mike Gupta (sp?) insulting Carl 'Pickle' Crook behind his back before jet lag set in and I crashed. Day 1 -=-=- Decklists ahoy! Welcome to Team Gnome's version of CounterPhoenix... 4 Shard Phoenix R 4 Intuition U 4 Counterspell U 4 Forbid U 2 Power Sink U 2 Dismiss U 3 Capsize U 1 Whispers of the Muse U 4 Kindle R 3 Shock R 1 Scroll Rack Art 2 Mana Leak U 8 Island Lnd 9 Mountain Lnd 4 Thalakos Lowlands Lnd 4 Reflecting Pool Lnd 1 Wasteland Lnd Sideboard 2 Grindstone Art 3 Circle of Protection: Red W 3 Thalakos Drifters U 3 Disenchant W 3 Legacy's Allure U 1 Wasteland Lnd Actually, the version I played may have been very slightly different but not much. It's a bog standard CP deck with one interesting addition. Thalakos Lowlands. These serve a double purpose. Firstly they allow sideboarding of disenchants and/or COP:Red which is always amusing. Secondly, they confuse the bejeezus out of your opponent who is expecting to see some weird and wonderful 'Tech' whenever one hits the table. Once or twice an opponent of mine has Wastelanded a Lowland first game in preference to the Reflecting Pool sitting next to it. That sounds pretty strong to me. On to the reporty bit. It was beautiful day. Well, actually it was hot, sticky and not my cup of tea but that was OK because air conditioning is a god send. Never need to bother with these new fangled devices in the UK y'know. I made sure I was signed in and waited for the first draw. Actually, that's not entirely true. A couple of other things did happen while I was waiting. For a start I met the charming Ms Rogalski, Public Relations Manager for Wizards. She had noticed the resplendent Gold and Black of the Team Gnome rugby top and wandered over to ask if I'd be interested in grinning into a camera when the local station turned up. Something about their covering long distance travellers to the event or something. I dare say I would have had my slot on telly too had I not said that her job required her to be a 'whore to the camera lens'. I was joking of course. No, really! Anyway, she mentioned the fact that I couldn't be a real Gnome because I didn't have a beer in my hand. Oh come on! It was only 9am! What kind of animal do you think I am? I waited until 9:15 and insisted that the receptionist opened up the bar. Those extra fifteen minutes are the difference between anarchy and civilisation don't you know. The next people to accost me were a couple of very tall Floridians. Very tall. Snow on top, that sort of thing. Dave Piasecki and Steve Kissinger (yes, he is related apparently) at my service. Turned out Steve had been introduced to the delights of solid partying by Dipso-Gnome whilst at PT New York and it was felt that the favour had to be returned. More on these guys later. Please assume that every single last one of my opponents made some sort of comment about me either 'having an accent' (which I don't. It's the Yanks who have the accent) or commenting that they don't see many Australians at these events. Ho hum. Round 1 Matt Matthaei Yeah, that's right. No byes for scrub boy. Due to circumstances well within my control I'd successfully pissed away two hundred ranking points in the preceding four months so was looking at a very long fight to the top. Still, at least I was starting on table 1. I sat down to play Matt, shook his hand and asked how long he'd been playing. First tournament apparently. Maybe second. I smiled and got ready to play. The first indication that something was wrong was when the gentleman next to me commented that his opponent hadn't turned up. This in itself wouldn't have been too bad. The fact that his opponent was the Turbo Smurf, Mr Brian Hacker sort of gave away the fact that a redraw was imminent. Ho hum. Round 1, Take 2 Vincent Johnson - Counter Blue Thing Game 1 - I started off well and then discovered that playtesting a deck prior to competing is a good idea. For instance, many people can pick up an easy deck and play it passably from the off. CounterPhoenix is not too difficult to play if you have a good understanding of the mechanics of counter-heavy decks but such knowledge doesn't prepare you for one small but vital fact. When you haven't seen a Phoenix in the game yet it's a good idea to Intuition for them and not for Islands with the intention of thinning your deck out to get to the birdies faster. D'OH!!! I deserved to die. My opponent was happy enough to oblige. Game 2 - Mr Phoenix decided he'd pop out to say hello. Ensue peckdown. Game 3 - Actually, there are one or two occasions when intuitioning for cards other than Phoenixes is allowed and those occasions are when you are being savaged by a Hammerhead Shark with a Curiosity harpooned to its back. In this case Intuitioning for Kindles is believed to be strong. This belief is quickly dispelled once the believer notices the complete lack of Mountains on your side of the table. And you thought 'Jaws' was scary! Match Results - 0-1-0 Game Results - 1-2-0 Round 2 Mr Bye Oh my god. You know you're scrubbing out in a big bad way when you get a bye in a GP on a ranking less than 1700. It was close but I eventually won. Match Results - 1-1-0 Game Results - 1-2-0 Round 3 OK, to be honest I didn't make very good notes regarding the matches I played. For instance, the gentleman I played this match will have to remain anonymous as the only thing I have written down is "Capsize:Lobotomy". This coincidentally was exactly what happened to my poor little Phoenix once he had hit the table. No, the Capsize wasn't with buy back so no, I didn't sack him. Yes I should have though there was a reason for him to be capsising on his turn. No I didn't have any counters left. Yes I was INCREDIBLY pissed off. And yes, I got annihilated both games. Match Results - 1-2-0 Game Results - 1-4-0 Stunning. I'd been in Austin for less than twenty four hours, had played three games of Magic and had lost every single one. There were four rounds left on day one. To have even a remote chance of getting through to day two I had to win all four of my next matches. Yeah, right! Round 4 Frank Dooblethrop - White Weenie OK, his name wasn't really Frank Dooblethrop but it could have been, OK? An interesting concept for a WW deck, this one. Interesting because of the main deck Cataclysms and the complete lack of prot red creatures. Erm. Whatever. Both games ended with something particularly rude like Shock-Shock-Kindle-Kindle. Well, I wasn't complaining. Match Results - 2-2-0 Game Results - 3-4-0 Lunchtime. Ellen Wossername (going out with Monsieur Hacker. Spanish girl. You know the one) and myself wandered over to the local eatery and quickly established that ordering burgers and then pushing the damned things into our faces was not compatible with having the time to get back to play in the next round. American portions are a tad large, aren't they. Still, doggy bags (or boxes, as it turned out) are wonderful things. Round 5 Russel Law - Sligh Russel had come in from Browser Games and I promised I'd say so in any write up I did. This is my only excuse for mentioning this earth shattering fact. I hope you're satisfied. Game 1 - Sligh is fast. Sligh is evil. Sligh doesn't like flying peckers (if you'll excuse the phrase) which Earthquake for two every turn. Sligh tends to die in these sort of circumstances. Game 2 - I'll tell you another thing Sligh doesn't like. Sligh doesn't like it when you shock his goblin in response to him casting his Jinxed Idol and then counter every single creature he tries to put down afterwards. It was an amusing way to win the game but win the game I did. Gotta love that Jinxed Idol suck-down. Match Results - 3-2-0 Game Results - 5-4-0 Round 6 Eric Silva - Reaping the Weenie Game 1 - This one was simple. Anything that looked like a prot-red threat got countered. Anything that didn't look like a prot red threat got zorted with a red spell. All the time I was smacking poor Eric around with a Phoenix or two while he was Oathing and Reaping and Reaping and Oathing like a maniac. In the end I got fed up and managed to kill him when he was down to three cards in his library. No poxy opponent is going to deck themselves without my say so, OK? Game 2 - Well this was evil. Due to an early introduction to the joys of having the living sasquatch beaten out of me with white weenies I quickly plummeted down to four life. Just then the Phoenixes stopped doing whatever they were doing around the back of the bike sheds and decided to come out to say hello. The game locked up quite nicely with him unable to get a creature through due to me either killing them or Legacying them away. At one point I fell asleep and let a Monk hit the table for no reason other than it seemed like a good idea at the time. It took until the next turn when the little sod hit me, taking me down to two life, until I realised that perhaps I didn't want that to happen. Intuition, Thalakos Drifter. Come get some! Eric then died to two Phoenixes and his own Paladin. Now that had to hurt! At the end of the match, Eric gave me a deck listing. It was quite an interesting deck so I said I would post it up. Whatcha's Weenie Whacker 4 Oath of Leiges 4 Reaping the Rewards 4 Cataclysm 4 Disenchant 3 Helm of Possession 4 Warrior En-Kor 3 Mox Diamond 2 Wasteland 2 City of Traitors 2 Shamen En-Kor 3 Soltari Visionary 4 Paladin En-Vec 4 Soltari Priest Match Results - 4-2-0 Game Results - 7-4-0 There was something wrong here. If I could win the next game I would be through to the next day. That wasn't it. How about it was too hot and I was sweating like an hippo in a duffle coat? Nah, that wasn't it either. Oh, I remember! Barman! Make mine a pint of Large! I hadn't realised it before but once one dons the Team Gnome shirt one's playing ability becomes a proportional function of how much alcohol you've drunk. Scary but true. I worked this out half way through the aforementioned pint and so ordered another on the spot. Round 7 Bolling Cannon - Living Death I didn't make any notes about this one but I do remember Bolling being a tad unhappy at his luck at drawing against a Counter Phoenix deck. I wasn't certain I could beat him though. I was wrong. Two straight games later and, against all expectations (most of all my own) I'd qualified for the next day. Match Results - 5-2-0 Game Results - 9-4-0 There then followed beer. Lots of beer. Gratuitous amounts, even. The aforementioned Dave and Steve and a whole host of other peeps whose names have been lost in an alcohol haze descended upon the hotel bar and drank all and everything which was drinkable within that humble establishment. We discovered an interesting German beer brewed in Texas (well, it had a German name) and I was introduced to the delights of something called a chocolate cookie which was one part milk and a lot of other parts completely lethal. I seem to remember some giggling while I tried to explain what I really meant when I said I was desperate for a fag. Oh, and the karaoke machine was amusing but I was dragged out of the place shortly after my rendition of "Shakin' Up Baby". Luckily for us there was a restaurant-bar up the street. A small posse headed out in search of lard and it was at this point that one of our number who shall remain nameless (because I honestly can't remember if it was Dave or Steve but I'll say it was Steve for the hell of it) discovered the storm drains in the side of the road. These cunning devices are cleverly disguised as gaping holes in the ground and have a nasty habit of sucking your leg into oblivion up to your hip. It took three of us to prize the poor man out of the floor but at least he was left with a bleeding gash down the side of his leg so it wasn't a complete loss. At the bar we had fun with pumpkins. I also introduced my peers to the delights of Boddingtons Export. Unfortunately, seeing as this noble brew is made in Manchester, England (my home town BTW) its journey had allowed it to become one with the barrel. In other words it tasted like a pint of aluminium. The figeetas with galapeenoes were tasty though. Oh, and I'm probably not supposed to mention the two lovely young ladies who were brought back to the hotel but who escaped shortly after I went to bed. They were probably scared off by the pumpkins anyway. DAY 2 -=-=- Yeeeuuurrrgghhhhh!!!! My god! That last pint of Boddingtons was a tad rough. I woke up feeling like death cooled down and could have sold my spittle to the military for weapons research. I had a shower, dragged on some clothes and staggered down to find the event. Turned out I was an hour early for some god unknown reason so I found a comfy sofa in the bar (!) and grabbed some more kip. The round went up, someone woke me and I set off to play. Round 8 Jeff Glaze - Mono Blue Creature Thing Game 1 - Interesting game this. Jeff had been on the piss up with us the night before and, as such, felt just as delicate as I did. As a result the first game took fifty minutes. In the end I managed to get buyback forbid working with the Phoenixes and eventually pecked him to death about twelve turns later. Game 2 - Early Hammerhead on his side. Now that just isn't nice! Luckily I managed to top deck a second kindle and so killed the brute just as time was called. Jeff looked happy until I told him that it didn't matter that nobody had won two games, I still won the match. As it turned out he'd got confused and thought that we'd end up drawing with the match result as it was. If he'd have realised sooner he would have conceeded the first game. What can I say? The previous evening was _HEAVY_! Match Results - 6-2-0 Game Results - 10-4-1 Round 9 Johnathan Pechon - White Weenie I was feeling pretty good by this stage. Nah, who am I trying to kid? I felt like I'd been turned inside out and then smacked around with a rug beater for half an hour. But at least I was feeling more confident of my chances. Johnathan was feeling ill as well so we shook hands and agreed to screw the level 5 rules enforcement and play a fun game of Magic. Game 1 - Johnathan's deck was damned good. In fact it got through to the final 8, maybe even final 4. My complete failure to draw any counters of note led to a quick smack down form his weenies. Game 2 - I had to mulligan down to 5 but then result! I started the game and played my second turn legacy's allure, feeling confident. I felt less confident when an allay came sailing over the table from out of the blue (or the white, as it were) and put paid to that idea. I drew nothing but lard for the next five turns and was taken to pieces by various holy men. No more Mr Passive Resistance for them, I suppose. Match Results - 6-3-0 Game Results - 10-6-1 Ho well. So much for top eight. About this time Dave informed me that, because I was an Uber-Scrub, I'd actually qualified for the under 1700 prize pot. Now I thought this was only open for those with rating levels sub-1700 but apparently it was open for all those who were _currently_ below this level. Cool! Maybe I could get some cash out of this one way or the other. Round 10 Mr Shenanigan Smegzone III - Trade Awakening Game 1 - He got a better start. I died. Game 2 - I got a better start. He died. Game 3 - I mulliganed to 5 cards and got grindstoned and creature stormed at the same time. Now that is just plain rude! Match Results - 6-4-0 Game Results - 10-8-1 Ho well, so much for top sixteen. Round 11 Mr Oojimyflip Fandango - Living Death Game 1 - This was short and brutal. I didn't get enough counters and his Stronghold meant that the 14/14 Revenant which eventually hit the table didn't do me too many favours. They had to scrape me off the wall with a spatula. Game 2 - Same thing again, really only this time I had to mulligan first. Arse! More beatdown. More game losses. More unimpressed than when I started. Match Results - 6-5-0 Game Results - 10-10-1 Round 11 Ray Roberts - Phantom Deck Actually, it turned out that Ray had dropped but hadn't been removed from the 'puter. Ho well, another day, another bye. Match Results - 7-5-0 Game Results - 10-12-1 Final Round Dequan Watson - Counter "God Damned Piece O' Crap" Sliver Well, this was it. Final game of the tournament and, more to the point, my last shot at the money. The quest was simple. Win this and grab 1-200 bucks. Lose this and be crowned Uber-Gruppen-Scrub for all eternity. Dequan was another 'no byes' player. This was going to be interesting. Game 1 - He got down three slivers and then a Coat of Arms before I could really get my act together. After that I didn't really get a lot of say in the matter. I seem to remember Dequan half-heartedly trying to Jedi Mind Trick me at the start of the game too but he hadn't taken into account that, for this to work, your opponent must have a functioning mind first. Game 2 - I lay an island. He laid an island, a mox diamond and then a Crystalline Sliver and the little sod took me from twenty to zero in ten turns. ARRRGHHHH!!!! McNish! I am going to kill you when I next see you! It was a very good deck, actually so I asked for a listing... 4 Crystalline SLivers 4 Muscle Slivers 4 Winged Slivers 4 Victual Slivers 4 Tradewind Riders Sideboard 3 Wall Of Blossom ========= 3 Propaganda 4 Mox Diamond 4 Chill 4 Counterspell 3 Portcullis 2 Mana Leak 2 Disenchant 2 Forbid 2 Capsize 1 Coat Of Arms 2 Forbid 7 Island 2 Scragnoth 4 Reflecting Pool 2 Thalakos Lowland 4 Forest 2 Plains 2 Vec Townships Match Results - 7-6-0 Game Results - 10-14-1 So that was it. I'd finished 49th overall with probably the worst set of results ever received by anyone who made it through to the second day of a GP. I'd successfully lost more games than I'd won and, discounting the byes, had lost more than fifty percent of my matches. Absolutely pathetic. Laugh? I almost died. The evening was spent in the company of beer. Well, one has to try. I also tried my hand at Urza's Rare Draft. This is the same as a normal draft except you don't give a damn about winning and instead concentrate on grabbing as much rarage as you can. I ended up with seven of the little sods including Argothian Wurm, Pariah and Sneak Attack. Result! That was about it from Austen but it wasn't it as far as my American trip was concerned. Two weeks later I was in Seattle and so, naturally, the game centre had to be visited. The fact that I was carrying the new T2 version of my patented DreadShifter deck had nothing to do with it... 4 Volrath's Shapeshifter U 4 Phyrexian Dreadnought Art 1 Capsize U 4 Counterspell U 4 Mana Leak U 3 Force Spike U 2 Disrupt U 2 Dissipate U 2 Interdict U 2 Intuition U 2 Legacy's Allure U 2 Portent U 2 Propaganda U 4 Vampiric Tutor B 2 Lobotomy Gld 7 Island Lnd 2 Swamp Lnd 4 Underground River Lnd 2 Bad River Lnd 2 Wasteland Lnd 3 Volrath's Stronghold Lnd Sideboard ========= 1 Lobotomy Gld 2 Chill U 2 Mana Web Art 2 Null Rod Art 2 Perish B 3 Gloom B 3 Hydroblast U The main differences between this deck and the one I ripped up the field with at the English Regionals were the inclusion of Interdict in the main deck and Mana Web in the sideboard. Both these cards were included for the simple reason that the Oath decks hated them. The only problem was that as soon as I'd put the deck together again all the T2 tournaments in my area stopped as everyone started running Rath Cycle Constructed tourneys in preparation for the PTQ Romes. As such the Games Centre was my last chance to play the deck in a sanctioned environment. As it turned out the reports I'd heard about the 'Centre were wrong. It sucked in there. Sure, the people were great and it was a decent environment to play but sanctioned events just weren't happening there. Seven people turned up for the regular Friday night T2 so the game didn't even start. In the end I played in the Battletech pods for most of the evening and had to make do with a couple of multiplayer games. Interesting fact here. If you are in a multiplayer game everyone will tend to smeg the people with threats on the table. Generally speaking, a 0/1 creature is not classified as a threat. As a result I won both games by waiting until everyone had killed each other, creating my DreadShifter and then sending the little sod over to pulverise the last remaining opponents. They say that mindless violence is a good way of relieving stress. Well, OK, they don't really say that but they should do because it worked a treat on me. That's about it really. I won't bore you with the details of my little excursion to Wizards HQ in Renton because it was Friday afternoon and nobody was there anyway. I definitely didn't see any of the artwork or pre-designs for the Sixth Edition boxes either. Absolutely not. No way sir! Because that just wouldn't be on, would it. But I wonder if Serra is making a comeback... I should really sign off now but I'd first like to say two things. First off, everyone in the scene who I met while I was in the States were great. Big thumbs up all round. Secondly, to all the Brit players. Everything you've heard about the Yanks being great players. It's all hooey! They're just as good and just as bad as we are. The difference is merely that they have more players and so have a greater number of people in the highest percentile of the playing ability curve but from what I've seen I think the British scene is stronger. And if you want to know why, the reason is simple. The Beer Effect is real and, lets face it lads, Boddingtons beats Budweiser every single time. Fox -- /\_/\ F "Mental note :- Don't make threats with a mortar \O O/ O launcher trained on you." \o/ X Praetorius - 'The Mask'