Subject: Denver UZ Pre Release Report: Sketchwick Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 16:44:05 -0600 From: sketchwick@juno.com (Brian T Fenwick) To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Since this is the first tournament report I've ever written with the intention of archiving it somewhere like the Dojo where anyone can access it, I'd like to start by talking a little bit about what kind of a player I am. My name is Brian Fenwick, sometimes known (especially in the Magic world) as Sketchwick. This little nickname came from my friend, David Bartholow saying I was the Master of Sketch. At the time cards and plays that were questionable were commonly called "sketchy" or just plain "sketch." Dave was actually complementing me as he thought I had a certain talent for making bad cards work well. The highlight of my career as the Master of Sketch had to have been Pro Tour Dallas, where I showed that you could take an extremely sketchy card like Binding Agony and put it with a good card like Fire Covenant to make a really effective deck. Some people know me as "that guy who played Binding Agony/Fire Covenant in Dallas. It makes me smile, because I probably killed them with it. Anyway, I don't know if it's this affection for sketch I seem to have, or my general intelligence or what, but I'm a mid level competitor at Magic. At least that's how I see it. The vast majority of Magic players are low level. People just don't know what they are doing. I've been to three pro tours and been at Origins to at least watch nationals (limited formats excite me much more than constructed) enough to know about high level players, and that I'm not one of them. I started thinking about all this because my friend, Dan MacMillian asked me if I thought he was a 1700 player or 1800. I didn't think of it that way. Dan and Justin Schroeder and I went to the Urza's Saga pre-release this weekend. I think we are much more competitive than the average player. Probably top 10 percent. But we aren't high level. I think Justin's been to four Pro Tours now, but none of us had ever won anything. Lifetime winnings: $0. Which isn't to say I didn't win $300 two months ago in Lincoln (taking second at a pro tour qualifier) but I've never won on the pro tour (best finish, you guessed it: Dallas, 72nd place [Damn Loconto and Lauer and Damn the .65 percent {yes, less than one percent} chance that I drew no source of black mana against a white weenie deck when I could consult for more land and eventually drop a wildfire...]) which brings me to the pre-release. I didn't want to go. The Denver Magic scene pisses me off more and more ever time I go down. Pro tour qualifiers are $35 and the prize support is always half decent to downright pathetic. I guess I've kept going because I was used to it..the bad prize support. Back when WotC gave prize support the people running the Denver quals skimmed from what they got from WotC, then threatened to ban you forever if you complained (just ask Justin). But when the price went up to $35 things just got to ridiculous. So I wanted to go to Lincoln, where the judging may be just as bad, but at least the prize support is great. I think Dave Bartholow has the best perspective on what Magic in Fort Collins is like. Going to school in New York he's close enough to his Dead Guy teammates to know what high level Magic is really like, but he's been here, he knows. I think in the mid west you have to go to Albuquerque to get excellent judging, Mad Hatter is the best we have to offer (well, there is Joe Petersen of Fort Collins, but he'd rather play than judge...). If I could convince Hatter to move to Lincoln...damn that'd be awesome. Anyway, I wanted to go to Lincoln. But Bartholow is back home. Dave is the only friend I have who is motivated to road trip all the time. That's how I won that $300 I was talking about. I was on the road with Dave for three weeks, we got my ass back here (Fort Collins) in time to work as scheduled a couple days (I wait tables at IHOP on the graveyard shift) and then we drove BACK out to Lincoln (actually all the back to Omaha to stay with the MacMillians) for the Chicago qualifier. I took second, Dave tied for third. Point is I'd have to do the 16 hours of driving by myself this time, and it's hard for me to switch from a grave schedule to the early morning tourney schedule. So Friday night I played networked games until 5 am. Maybe that's another reason I'm not high level. Look at the Dead Guys again. What's the lifetime earnings of Dave Price and Chris Pikula Combined? Now how about Tony Tsai and myself? Yeah, but who win a team game of Starcraft? Tsai and I or the money winners? How about Netrunner? I could go on... So Dan calls me shortly after I get home (he wasn't playing networked games with me...I should have never won those cards and money from him playing Starcraft...) and says we should go to Denver...he and Justin stayed up all night. So it sounds like fun, a great big sleep deprived ferrality fest. So we go. I make Dan drive to give my contacts a rest out of my eyes and Justin made the mistake of sleeping a little. Bad move...no sleep is so much better than a little. Once you sleep a little that's all you want. Dan and I eat at a Denver Perkins at 7 am while Justin sleeps in the car. (I had to twist more than my waitress' arm to let me have mushrooms instead of green onions on my omelette without her charging me). We find out the Tourney is in the WAY south part of Denver so we actually miss the first "wave" of players and have to wait for wave two to start. What with the new land situation in the 75 card decks I think two colors is probably the way to go. I hate color problems. But I could be wrong, cycling may make it easier for you to play more colors... My big mistake was misreading Armor of Urza (I thought it was like a Force Field for all damage sources) and not seeing ALL the drawbacks of Energy Field. Energy Field just seemed so retarded to me in sealed. And it was very good. The Confiscate was probably better though... So I built this crazy blue/white control deck. Opal Acrolith and 2 Pegasus are my only creatures with power greater than 1. I killed people with Serra's Embrace a lot. I lost my first match to another mid level player as the last card in his hand was the disenchant that wrecked Energy Field. I swap in red, take out the blue (he had too much denial plus the disenchant and it turned out he had TWO!) For red but I don't get red mana until way late...I lose. Second match I beat a woman who is low level. Third match I actually get the judges to make two rulings! The second was not surprising but the first was amazing. See, in Denver they usually don't rule on anything unless something happens. For instance in this match my opponent cast an enchantment on my creature to make it bigger so he could use his Intrepid Hero (this might not be right, I couldn't remember the name of the card and I'm looking at a list now: I mean the 1/1 creature that taps to destroy a creature with power 4 or greater) to kill it...I wanted to ask the judge if the creatures ability checked how big the creature was on resolution of the effect. I couldn't tell by the wording on the card if the effect would fizzle or not. So as per the stupid way they do things in Denver they refuse to say anything until it happens. So before the enchantment even resolves I'm asking the judge about this and the say they can't say anything until something they can rule on happens. So I practically scream, "I hate Denver" and hang my head in my hands. Fortunately the guy who was half running the thing was there and he likes me: he says, "why, because we won't do something illegal?" And I go off on him, "No! It's perfectly legal for a player to ask the judge a question about the rules. I'm not asking for advice, the judge hasn't even seen my hand, I simply want to know if this creatures ability will fizzle if the creature it legally targeted becomes smaller by the time the effect resolves." Actually, I don't think I was even that pathetically elegant but he got the point I was trying to make and said, "Sure, we can do that, Judges?" And the judge told me it would fizzle so after he taps the creature I disenchant the enchantment. I think he was trying to kill my Acrolith so the other option was to turn it into an enchantment, but I think it had Launch on it or Cloak of Mist (did I mention I had a stupid blue/white control deck?) So if I COULD make the effect fizzle I wanted to. Anyway I concede the first game because I'm worrying about time and he gained 20 life with white card that gives you 2 life for each creature in play. Second game I sideboard in the 2 Annuls that should be in in the first place and I beat him with the pegasus/dumb creature that Serra embraced flying beatdown. Last game I totally blow. I Confiscate a creature of his when it has 3 power due to Shiv's Embrace...only he can pump it...and he has intrepid hero in play. But that isn't the worst part. The worst part is I have Energy Field in play and I cast it when he had no cards in his hand and he looked at me after he read it like I was a horrible bastard that just gamed him with one card. So the greatest part is that he tries to screw himself up by killing his creature before I get it!!! Only he can't! And I don't let him because those are the rules and I don't think you should let your opponent cheat when it's in your favor. So I explained to him after I realized how bad I screwed up that he can't pump the creature and kill it in response to my spell. So he pumps it, THEN I take control of his 4+ power bad ass, then he kills it, I lose my energy field, and go on to lose. I think I could have won that match, so chalk up a loss due to bad play. Then I played a "little kid" who was almost as low a level player as the woman I beat round two. Fifth round my opponent forgets to pay for 2 echo creatures which helps me win quite a bit. Sixth round my opponent forgets echo one game and the last game he puts out the 6/6 red creature (scoria wurm?) That does 4 damage to all other creatures when I have a Disciple of Law in play...he thought since it didn't target the creature it would kill it. Interesting note on cycling...the game I lost to him I didn't get to 6 mana to confiscate that wurm. I played a Rune Green that I didn't need instead of cycling it...I looked, would have got a land had I cycled earlier. I think cycling makes for a lot of hard choices...but some people think I just play slow. The last match is interesting to me because I put out Energy Field and had one card, a land, in my hand. I think I could have played the land. Anyway he casts Duress on me and I discard my card and lose the field. I end up winning the match anyway...but pf course it dawns on me later you can't Duress a land out of my hand. Then I tell the story to Dan and he says that the kid was talking about how I screwed up and discarded a land and he STILL lost...how frustrating! So this kid let me cheat to gain an advantage. What I'm wondering is how many pro players do this. I have some ideas. If I had to guess I would say that Dave Price would correct my error and I'd put the land back in my hand...and that Mike long would let me discard it. But what about other big name players? Joe Petersen was asking me what I thought it took to become a pro tour player. The conversation seemed to have an implied, "We are all SMART enough to do it...but how much time, travel, and money will it take to get in the loop?" That's the dream, for me at least. I'd be happy to take 32nd place in every pro tour ever. But am I really trying that hard? Obviously not. Bartholow says I get unexcited about things easily, and it's true to a large extent. Nationals discouraged me when I saw how lax they were with penalizing cheating. I got really discouraged in Nebraska when they ruled my deck didn't work. Lot's of things make me unexcited. Then again maybe Dave Price will go to Africa and Jon Finkel will succumb to the peer pressure of other people's girlfriends and go back to college and he won't have time for this silly little game and Chris Pikula will be so upset that he doesn't get an even an e-mail of congratulations when he does well in a tourney that he will drop out of the scene and maybe someone in the DCI will snap and they ban all the cheaters and then...THEN we'll see mid level players like me get in the loop. Thanks for listening. Brian T. Fenwick II a.k.a. Sketchwick PS Sorry for any misspelled names...but right now I'm unexcited about finding their correct spellings... ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]