Subject: US prerelease, UT 2nd place. Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 17:53:47 -0600 From: "Juel Iwaasa" To: Urza Saga Prerelease Report E Center, Salt Lake City 8 rounds of swiss- no finals. Got up early and showered. (this is key- important tech. clean is actually better at tourneys) Dragged kids and wife out of beds to drive me to Ben's, a friend I invited who hasn't played magic since just after the end of Arabians. Couldn't find him a ride with the local crew that is going up, so we take his car and go together. His friend Chris (hasn't played since legends) comes too. He actually invited his cousin as well, but when stopped to pick him up, he comes to the door without a shirt on and.... Stop at grocery store to pick up food and use atm. Arrive at E center just in time to... wait. People just keep showing up and registering. They end up setting up at least 4 or 5 more tables and we hear numbers like 215+ people are here. We'll lose our lunch break because of this, but who cares? This kind of turnout is cool. The tourney is being run by Bill Graham, who does all the big sanction events in Idaho, Nevada and Utah. Exodus Prerelease was my first sanctioned tourney and I went to the Chicago PTQ they ran as well. Front up, I want give props to Bill and his crew/judges for how they run the events. Their attitude is that these tourneys can be fun. Any behavior that detracts from everyone having a decent time (cheating, swearing, drinking, fighting etc.) gets you warned and then booted from the premises. At they same time they are relaxed people who aren't about to come down hard for the sake of intimidation. One other thing- at Exodus I was lucky enough to take 2nd, and 8th at the pro tour. So my prizes were pretty good. But these guys ran prizes down to 16th place. So the players that go all day, miss the side events, then loose their 2nd match in the last 2 rounds still have something to show for it. Bill doesn't have to do this. They actually weren't going to run 9-16 prizes at Urza's. But they changed their minds at the last minute and gave out packs to the guys that didn't quite make the top 8. Made 8 more guys somewhat happy n spending their day there. I think the way Bill and his crew have been running the tourneys is big factor in why so many people came to Urza Prerelease. Okay, enough brown nosing. But it's just important to point out, I think, since lately you can find lots of "these tourneys are poor" or the organizers are (pick your favorite gripe) "cheap/dishonest/generally not nice unless you are a close buddy" etc, but very few good reports. So WotC should take note and keep these guys in the business. (Blah blah blah blah..... yawn... jeez, he's goes on almost as long as Jamie W.) ;) When we finally get to open the packs up, I have a couple guys I know from the local shops within a couple seats of me. I keep hearing stuff like, "wow, that's unbelievable!" and "holy broken" from them. I start to really think attending the side tourneys will be fun as I look through my stuff. Black was chaff in my packs. Red had some okay creatures (shivan raptor, retromancer, Viashino runner, spelunkers) and a few good to decent enchantments (fiery mantle, reflexes and bravado) but it has raze, lay waste and rain of salt instead of removal and no fat critters. But white had 2 disenchants, which I figured had to be big (almost like removal) in this format. It also had the monk realist, disciple of grace x2 and order, a silent attendant, pegasus charger, intrepid hero (almost like removal) and path of peace (slow removal), healing salve plus a bunch of runes and an absolute law. Green has the only thing that even looks like playable bigger that weenie creatures (treetop warriors, gorilla warrior, pouncing jaguar, bull hippo and argothian swine. It also had an argothian elder that I wasn't keen on originally, a symbiosis (sort of removal if played right), hidden ancients, hidden stag and hidden spider. Additionally there was a fertile ground, 2 fortitudes, spreading algae and an elvish herder. Blue was anull, power taint, curfew, cloak of mists, sandbar merfolk, horseshoe crab, rewind, coral merfolk, veiled apparition, spire owl, confiscate and great whale. I had a worn power stone, dragon blood and citanul flute. You'll notice that I had none of the good echo creatures or catastrophe/avatar/neat white sleeper enchantment creatures. I figured the only thing I had going with these cards was quite a bit of break through and evasion creatures, given the set. Also, since I have been on the serving and receiving end of fevered convulsions, I figured that dragon blood was a evil card that would work well with the break through and evasion. I really figured that this deck would do okay in the first 4 rounds and then die to the "good decks." My original deck config looked like this 1cc pouncing jaguar elvish herder 2cc coral merfolk spire owl disciple of law disciple of grace monk realist cloak of mists symbiosis disenchant x2 veiled apparition 3cc treetop rangers gorilla warrior horseshoe crab silent attendant pegasus charger intrepid hero power stone dragon blood 4cc argothian swine bull hippo path of peace 6cc confiscate 7cc great whale I chose blue over red for 3 reasons. Blue had confiscate. Red didn't. And red had slower creatures (whale excepted) and was wholly without the neat direct damage/sweeper removal that would make me risk having my butt mountain walked all over. I chose not to play rewind because I figured that in this format is was mostly a very expensive counterspell. I would be countering on their turn, and rarely using the untap land thing. Might have been wrong here. But it just seemed unwieldy to play the rewind. I might should have played citanul flute too. Probably find out in the weeks to come they are both great in limited. I also saw a lot of 2 color decks. Some looked pretty good. I didn't believe I had the spells to go 2 color, especially in creatures. I still think that taking the cream of 3 colors is better than using suboptimal cards to fill out 23 spells. If you have the cards for a great 2 color deck, great. The extra land makes this possible now. But most of the time I'll risk the odd color screw for better cards. So I went and playtested with a few friends before things got going. If you counted I have too many spells, but I left them in to see what was working and what could get pulled. Stuff I learned: Worn power stone is jank. Pulled it and put in the Argothian Elder. Way better in solving color requirements for confiscate and the whale. It can attack and block too. Horseshoe crab is okay, but unless you get the tim enchantmentor firebreathing, it's only okay. Took it out. Hidden spider combos well with the treetop rangers. Makes the other guy delay playing flyers until he draws a spell to deal with a 3/5 spider. You get free attacks with other stuff in the meantime Veiled Apparition is another great deterrent. You opponent becomes very hesitant to cast a spell if they can't deal with a 3/3 flyer. Hidden ancient is also not so bad. It is also a great deterrent to your opponent casting enchantments unless he can deal with a 5/5 dude. I never had problems breaking through with a creature. The cloak of mists, while probably a good card was superfluous in my deck. Elvish herder is just a 1/1 guy and trample isn't that cool (for the same reason that 1/1 merfolk I didn't play wasn't that cool). It eventually got yanked for a healing salve that would have saved my life in my first round. Hidden stag got put in for a bit, but it seemed a useless card mid to late game. Your opponent didn't need to lay more land so it's a dead card. Dragon Blood is AWESOME. Revised deck: 1cc pouncing jaguar hidden spider (healing salve- swapped for herder after game 2 or round 1) 2cc coral merfolk spire owl disciple of law disciple of grace monk realist symbiosis disenchant x2 veiled apparition 3cc treetop rangers gorilla warrior silent attendant pegasus charger intrepid hero dragon blood 4cc argothian swine bull hippo argothian elder path of peace 6cc confiscate 7cc great whale 5 forests 1 slippery karst 5 plains 5 islands 1 remote isle =40 cards round 1 I sit down and find my opponent is the husband of the woman I beat in round 8 (and out of the top 8) in Exodus Prerelease. He and his wife actually trounced my bro in law and I in 1992 at a team tourney. We had only played for about 4 months and deserved that fleecing then. But as we both look at each other, I apologize for beating his wife and he jokes that he's gonna have to beat me down, and asks if I want the padded or unpadded part of the chair contacting the back of my head. It's actually nice to play someone you know a bit and can joke with. Round one. game 1 I beat him down with a small creatures for a bit and then the Bull Hippo swims to his island bearing many dragon blood counters. He actually didn't find an island until late, which was bad for his mostly blue hand. game 2 he sides out a color (red in for green out?) and gets a good start. I start a bit slow and get beat down, but eventually get the hippo and swine happening. He gets a path o peace off on me and takes control again. It is close, but he top decks something cool (can't remember what) and kills me. This is when I realize that healing salve would have won another round of life and the game. game 3 dragon blood is just good on hippo's, swine, rangers and pegasus. He starts to come back and it looks like a reverse of last game with me 1 round ahead in the race. He draws and drops that pay life now, make token creatures later thing (payed 5 life), but I top deck a disenchant so he never gets to use it. A few turns later he draws and recklessly attacks leaving himself open for the kill (but equalizing in that his next attack will kill me) Then he lays down that enchantment that makes every one of his creatures an Ali from Cairo. I pick the card up. Read it. Shake my head and tell the DM I'd like to roll a 20 sider and attempt to disbelieve this obvious illusion. Actually, I have "confiscate" in my hand and have been holding it in case something bad like this happens, but it's going draw out the game, and I'm worried that he'll draw into something else. This game is too close. I luck out, and topdeck disenchant. Suicide attack, which he let's through (maybe he thought it was a valiant bluff) and then disenchant after no blockers are declared. In line to report, he tells his wife that he got killed by a disenchant. They joke about getting a chair... 1-0 round 2 I get to play Joe Ellis. He is the guy that I have learned most of my draft and sealed tech from (by losing to him repeatedly) over the last 4 - 5 months. I have been in many final match ups with him and get great starts while he gets screwed- yet somehow I stall and he draws out of it. It's kind of a curse. Joe had put together an awesome red green nightmare of fatness and removal. I got to look at it after- wow. Game one he gets a great start and begins to learn me a new lesson in pain. I manage to get out the coral merfolk and the pegasus. But he's coming across the retromancer and the weapon smith. I topdeck symbiosis and kill his creatures but keep my pegasus (first strike). Then I get the dragon blood and Joe draws like, 9 land... Game 2 I get a decent draw and Joe never gets to play any of his mostly green hand until like turn 4 or 5 when he finally gets a forest. He never sees any of his red removal (and there was lots in his deck) and I have the rangers and the pegasus going. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. 2-0 round 3 I get to play my friend Ben. Ben actually has some sick cards in his deck including that verse token enchantment that sacs to kill no black creatures, and mishra's land tapping thingy. We joke about how since I'm his DM he's gonna lose, and he counters with how, since he so sensitive and takes offense easily I better not win or we'll have a grudge problem.... game 1 I beat him down quickly!!! game 2 we drag out for a while because, while he has creature advantage for a while, I get one of my 2 runes against black out and then we stall. I go crazy with disenchants and monk when he gets the hymn enchantment, and the mishra's helix out. I just seem to have answers for his threats. He puts the vampire +2/+2 enchantment on his tundra wolf wanna be so he can block my rangers. I attack with my rangers (3/3 with a blood counter) He blocks with the first striker vampire enchanted dude. I crank a token on the rangers, he gives the soldier +1/+1 an angel page and then I use my intrepid hero to end this vampiric silliness. Then Ben confiscates my rangers (can't use them to attack back because pegasus has counters) but then I confiscate it back. A fun involved game, but dragon blood every turn eventually gets sick. 3-0 round 4. Win this round 2-1. The guy got out huge skirges with the new green aspect of wolf enchantment. He had scary flying beat down, but I managed to confiscate an armored skirge in both games 1 and 3 and then beat him up with own stuff. "No confiscate" would have been "no win." 4-0 Round 5. This is where I think the deck will not make the cut. Good decks and good players for sure, from here on out. I get 2nd table and sit down with Richard Dearing. Game one I get a good start. He's playing all sorts of good black and red stuff but I get out the swine with the dragon blood and save a path of peace for something really good. He brings out the lightning dragon. I'm so glad I saved the path. I get the hippo out and am holding off his ground attackers while I trample with counters over his defenses.. He is flying over and hitting me too with an angel, but he is going to lose it blocking the hippo to stay alive next turn. He top decks the new nekratall dude and I can stop his next rush. Game 2 I'm a bit slow and he just pounds me. I never saw any enchantments on his side in game one so I sided out one disenchant. Turn 1 I lay an island, say go. He drops a plains and plays a sleeper soldier (becomes 2/2). I drop a plains, say go. He drops a mountain an plays an opal gargoyle. I drop an island and a dragon blood. He drops swamp and a skirge and says go. Now I gamble, cause I have nothing in my hand but land and a pegasus. If I drop the pegasus it can first strike and block for a turn, then get more counters from the blood and stall until I can find something. But I know he's got removal all over the place. I drop the pegasus. He puts the -1/-1 enchantment on it and then hits me for 7. I draw a land. He drops another mountain and plays an angel. I draw path of peace and figure I take the skirge. Next turn he top decks his lightning dragon. I draw...Spire owl. Next 4 draws are 2 lands and 2 ground creatures. I think about if I can chump block my way out of 4 draws. Do the math, then shake his hand. 4-1 btw, john goes 7-0-1 and takes 1st place. He was excited because he's never had a sealed deck that good. Nice guy. That was a fast loss, so I think and ponder how I could have done better. It occurs to me that if I was playing the red, the land destruction could double as creature kill against the "likely to be more prevalent in the top decks" echo creatures. I toy with my red. It seems to sub in for the blue nicely. Side note: we were totally allowed to modify our decks as the tourney went on. Scouting was not a big problem at this tourney either. You just ask spectators to go away. I try the red out (without the landkill) against a couple friends and then I find John and play him with the red. We only get one game in before the next round but I win handily. He doesn't get the good draw and I get the first striker raptor with the ""returnal"" firebreathing and go to town. I think that the deck is more aggressive, and go to my next round. (oh yeah, this is the first time all day that I have time to pee. 13 hours without bathroom breaks--eeeeeeeekkkk!!!) round 6 . 4-1 means do or no top eight. I squeak game one using hippo and pegasus break through and dragon blood, Game 2 my opponent drops goblin rush on me. I am unable to mount an offensive because I color screwed for casting creatures. Then he drops the 3/4 echo mountain walker. I finally get my land and start dropping things. I lose by a turn after he burns out my silent attendant . For some reason I sideboarded out my healing salve (maybe for another pro black creature- can't remember. But I put it back in a vow not to take it out again. Game 3 I have better mana development and beat him down. 5-1 Round 7. He wins the die roll. Goes forest, jaguar. Next turn he goes forest, jaguar number 2. Next turn he goes island, spire owl. Lines up his next few draws to drop big echo snake and untargetable 3/4 blue flyer. I lose pretty quickly after that. Now this is where the mental cave starts to happen. I can console myself that I really didn't get the "great" cards etc. But then I think about it and decide that I really need to make a good mental effort here. I think about his huge snake and also the 3/4 flyer. My red has nothing against these things. Blue could confiscate it and the merfolk is a quick blocker that can kill a jaguar. I side out red for blue and begin. game 2. I get a fast start and start to apply my own jaguar/merfolk beatdown. He gets out the 1/1 cycling merfolk. Next turn he drops venomous fangs, and hermanic study??? (the tim enchantment) and fortitude. I realize I have a round before something really sick happens- the ultimate royal assassin. I have a healing salve so I can prevent his tim for one round. I top deck a disenchant and attack. He blocks one, taps to tim the other. I prevent the damage and disenchant the fangs. He regenerates the tim. I drop dragons blood and let him go. In the end he gets to ping one of my creatures, but I get the hippo out and start cranking counters on it. He runs out of life, while I hold the confiscate, for something bad. game 3. I draw 2 plains but my only white spell is a disenchant. (have sided in the anull because he's been playing veiled sleepers.) I'm scared because I'm going to take the 2 land draw, but I can just imagine never drawing the right color and dying quickly without any creatures on the board He gets a decent start and lays a jaguar. I get luck and topdeck a forest and lay my own cat. He pays for his doesn't cast anything with his one land and then attacks. I block and trade. Then I draw an island and lay the veiled apparition. He stalls on this. Guess he didn't have a way to deal with the flyer it would become. Then I draw the spire owl, see that dragon blood and the intrepid hero are coming up. He plays a spell and I get to attack for a while, but eventually the apparition dies to something. We get into a long game, but with the blood and the intrepid hero I control the board. He drops the veiled serpent(4/4 guy) , I cast something to make it a creature and then tap my hero. I think at one point I attacked with 2 things. He blocked one expecting to take damage and have a free kill on my other guy. I symbiosised my blocked guy (saved my guy, killed his blocker and his next biggest guy so I could kill it with the intrepid hero. I break the board when I tap 6 land, untap 2 land with the elder, tap them the land again and play the whale. Untap everything and cast confiscate on his best blocker. 6-1 At this point I am convinced that it was a mistake to go to red. My blue just has better depth; and confiscate, though slow, is evil. Red is too dangerous to play unless you have all the toys. round 8 (time for everyone to get really nervous) We look at the standings. I am top in tie breakers for the 6-1 guys and am in 5th place. If I draw I'll "probably" make top 8. I get paired with Davin, a kick butt 16 year old. He is in 9th and can't afford to draw. We talk about splitting the box regardless of the outcome, but somehow we don't make an agreement and play it out. Game 1 I get the machine working. He is playing green blue black and starts with fast black flyers. He gets up a skirge (enchanted with something?) but I confiscate it and then get the hippo out and start cranking counters on it. He congregates twice!!! But I manage to get him down with the whale and hippo. Game 2 is very close. He sideboards out green for red!!! He gets creature advantage and then drops the veiled sentry and serpent. I am holding on the best I can but I need to draw to my way to confiscate or path of peace to stop his air assault. I decide to drop my useless green rune instead of cycling so that I can drop my hippo and stall. But I make a dumb mistake and throw both spells out together, putting the hippo on the table first. Enter 4/4 sentry. Turns out that I wasn't going draw anything useful for 6 turns, but I still feel like "I" lost that game. Game 3. more talk of splitting prizes... The judge says there's only 14 minutes. I know Davin's got at least 2 congregates and this could take time. Given the choice, I don't want to have to rely on tiebreakers to squeak into the top 8. We can't agree on a prize split and just play it out. I go first. I get fast beatdown but he congregates. My sideboard for this game works as I drop the hidden ancients on turn 2 and then a canopy spider later. He stalls while I develop. Finally decides he got to go for it, casts a 2/2 angel to help his fog bank (that activates my spider) and the opal dude that becomes a 4/4 protection from color when the opponent plays a creature. I disenchant the titan, and decide to confiscate/steal... the fog wall. Then start pounding him with treefolk and things. He keeps dropping creatures and casting congregate. This strategy worked last game because he could fly over and ding me, but he can't get thru the stolen wall or on the ground past my spiked swine. I finally make my 7th land and drop the whale. He actually lets me come across for 13 or so, then congregates back up to 16 or 17. He rushes me and knocks me down a bit, drops a veiled sentry and some more creatures. I draw the healing salve and attack with whale and tree. He let's them through again and then congregates back up. The next round draws but doesn't attack. He lays a land and I know he doesn't have anymore life gain or tricks, especially when he starts to chump block the next turn. All the other matches are done and everybody is either talking or watching us. Davin is getting nervous and his friends are bugging him. He's taking too long thinking about a way out. I wonder if he's considering stalling to a draw or if he's flustered (I'm playing my turns super fast) We are so surrounded that I finally ask/tell everyone they can't talk and they all have to get back more than 5 feet. I'm racing the clock and know there is only a minute or 2 left. Davin says go, and I draw, attack and get back down to 2. He draws and taps mana to play... the steam blast spell that does a pyroclasm to creatures (and players.) Then he realizes that it will kill him too. Doesn't matter as I'll run him down next turn with fat. We shake. About 10 seconds later the judge calls time. Turns out I come in 2nd again (and get a box-yay!!!), just behind the guy who beat me in the 4th round. Ben and Chris both say they had a good times and are set for February's Prerelease. I was pretty tired by then. We hit some fast food on the way home. I don't know if this report becomes a point of argument, but apart from the dragon blood and the confiscate, there are no truly "great" cards in the deck. And some would argue that they are only "good cards." I think the deck worked well because it had reasonable evasion, and some staying power with the dragon blood. It had 2 trick cards (confiscate and symbiosis) and 2 disenchants. Lacked in the removal department, but compensated a bit with trick cards. Anyway, maybe if you get a lucky break here and there, you can still do well in sealed without all the god cards. Dunno. Anyway, later all, -Juel. iwaasa@itsnet.com