Subject: PTQ-New York City
Date: Sun, 18 Oct 1998 01:22:59 -0400
From: Justin Polin <jap59@columbia.edu>
To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com

Dear Frank,

Please accept this tourney report(Top 8).

Thanks,
Justin "Deck-Check" Polin

This report is about the PT Rome qualifier at Neutral Ground in New York
City on October 17. What started out as a field of 59 eventually
narrowed down to one person who received $500 and the invite to Rome.
Also in this report is my opinion of the whole HAMMER VS. YOUR MOVE
controversy, which I have some definite views on. So there will be
CONTROVERSY in this report! HAHAHAHAHA!!!

Pre-Tourney Adventures:

Going into the week of the qualifier, I was thinking of going with Mike
Pustilnik's
TradeAwakening deck(as he advised ;) ), but on Tuesday night I talked to
my teammate from 36 Cheeseburgers, Brian Lynch, and he informed me of
his Finals performance where he lost to Hammer at the Boston PTQ on
October 10th.  I in the end listened and follwed his advice, as I
usually do. Friday night I did a bunch of playtesting with the deck I
was to use at the PTQ, which I call "Lynching Phoenix," after its
creator, fellow
teammate Brian Lynch. I primarily tested against Pat Johnson's Living
Death, which
had made several top 8's in the NY/NJ area. I grew more comfortable with
the deck,
and was getting pretty good results, so I went back to Columbia at 2:30
AM feeling
confident in my chances to make top 8 and hopefully even better. I end
up hanging out
with a few friends on my floor until 5 AM, then I get to sleep. I wake
up, see the clock,
and it's 9:45! SHIT!!! Since the qualifier starts at 10, I'm pretty
screwed. I run as fast
as I can to the subway, only to find that the subway going downtown is
not running.
SHIT #2!!!! I sprint back to find the nearest taxi, and I say "26th and
7th, as fast as
you fucking can." He gets me there in 20 minutes. By this time it is
10:20, and pairings
are about to be put up. I rush over to pick up a deck sheet and
hurriedly fill it out. Here
is the deck that I played:

"Lynching Phoenix"- Deck of the Month, perhaps? ;)
2 Scroll Racks
3 Capsizes
4 Forbids
4 Counterspells
4 Mana Leaks
2 Dismisses
4 Intuitions
4 Shocks
1 Mogg Fanatic
4 Shard Phoenix
13 Island
9 Mountain
4 Reflecting Pools
2 Wastelands

SB
2 Furnace of Rath(TECH!!!)
2 Bottle Gnomes
2 Hammerhead Sharks(DA BOMB!!!)
2 Treasure Trove(These aren't good... 2 more sharks would be better)
3 Mogg Fanatics
3 Thalakos Drifters
1 Portcullis(Couldn't get the third furnace of rath)

Brian's chief innovation with this deck was the unique SB vs. Living
Death, which I
didn't see all day long. No death decks made Top 8, which I found
amazing. But
anyway, furnaces are unbelievable because shards can kill Ho Bag Scrag,
Hammerheads, Drifters, and other pain in the ass creatures that hurt
Counter Phoenix.
The metagame was very different from what I expected, though. A new deck
arrived, a
mono blue thing that is extremely metagamed against living death,
tradeawake, and
counter-phoenix. IT IS SOOOOO GOOD! David Williams made his way back to
the
Pro Tour with it. But anyway, enough with the preliminaries, here's the
actual tourney.

Round 1: Jason Ballard- Sligh

Game 1:  In a series I definitely have the edge over sligh, but the
first game can be
rough if I don't get the phoenix out quickly. In this case I managed to
withstand the
earkly beatdown and get recurrring phoenix by turn 9 as I eased my way
to victory.

Game 2: This game is even easier, with the aid of hammerheads, and I
have control the
entire game.

Matches: 1-0; Games 2-0

Round 2: Dean Christisen- Suicide Black w/ U for chills and lobotomies

Game 1: He mulligans down to 5 and proceeds to draw almost all land.
Shard Phoenix
clears the boards of the minimal threat that exists and I win fairly
quickly.

Game 2: He plays first turn carnophage, then second turn blue land,
culling, lobotomy.
Guess who's in my hand? That's right, the mighty phoenix. I quickly
concede.

Game 3: This game is a lot like game 1. He just didn't seem to draw many
creatures at
all during this series.

Matches: 2-0; Games 4-1

Round 3: Paul "The Berserker" Ferker- Counter Phoenix

This sucks. This is what I least wanted to see, a mirror matchup with a
consistent top
64 player on the Pro Tour. My biggest question going into the match was,
"How the
hell is this guy not qualified already?" Anyway,

Game 1: I have no counters in my hand at the beginning of the game, so
when he
intuitions on turn 3 I am forced to let it go through and intuition in
response. We both
drew sufficient amounts of land, but I was able to get teh early edge,
and I pushed it,
playing very aggressively, which I think is a smart play. Using shocks
and capsizes I
kept his shards out of the way and imposed beatdown. I got him all the
way down to 1
but then he regained control and I could tell that I was going to have
to burn him out to
win this game. After this I intuitioned for a shock with 6 cards in my
hand. I shocked
him when he was tapped out, and scroll racked for 6, hoping to find the
last shock. I
later intuition again to get a look at some new cards, but I don't find
the shock, but I do
have two counterspells to back it up if I do find it the next turn.
Unfortunately, I only
have 1 blue and 1 red untapped so I can't stop his Seismic Assault. He
kills me with 4
land and phoenixes the turn before I would have gotten the shock to kill
him. Life
sucls. I think it was the correct play to play offensively, as I did,
but I'm not 100%
sure. I think I played a little risky toward the end, but he had total
board control and I
was never going to be able to mount an offensive.

Game 2: He gets the first intuition off, and I never get 3 red mana.
Since I can't recur
shards and he can, I lose. :(

Matches: 2-1; Games 4-3

Round 4: Marc Fievet- Counter Phoenix

DAMN! Another mirror matchup.... what a pain in the ass. But I am more
confident
going into this one, because I can outplay my opponent here, unlike in
Ferker's case.

Game 1: I am initially put in the defensive position, but I eventually
get 4 phoenizes
out, and he has 3. I manage to capsize and shock and counterspell enough
times to keep
his phoenixes off the board and kill him with my beatdown after a long
30 minute
game.

Game 2: I once again fail to draw the 3 red mana which is critical for
the deck to
function. I lose frustratingly to more shards.

Game 3: Once again I am on the defensive early, but I stabilize things
to the point
where it looks like the match will be a draw. I see enough lands to
recur a phoenix and
play it every turn, and when I can do that, I usually win :) With 5
minutes left, I
administer the UBER BEATDOWN with 3 shards.

Matches: 3-1; Games 6-4

Round 5: Dan Olmo- Good Mono-Blue Deck(later I found out that Brian
Schneider
made this deck and let the guy borrow it)

Game 1: I'm a little mana screwed and that doesn't bode well when I need
to get two
shards out to kill his maindeck hammerheads, thalakos drifters, and
other goodies. He
beats me down really hard and I can't get him below 20.

Game 2: He's really manascrewed and I basically face no opposition as my
shards
cruise to victory.

Game 3: Early on we have hammerhead duals, but later I get shards out
and he makes a
key play mistake by not capsize-locking me when he could have, so 3
shards once
again go all the way as time almost ran out.

Matches: 4-1; Games 8-5

Round 6: Mark Paschover- Good Mono-Blue Deck(I think)

We intentionally draw because we have the best tiebreaks out of all the
12 point
players. At the end of the round we found that our calculations were
barely right: I was
seed #8 and he was seed #7. But we both got in, which is what matters.
Now on to the
Final 8.

1 Chris Carlisle- White Weenie
2 Aaron Benanov- Sligh
3 Dave Williams- Mono-Blue
4 Paul Ferker- Counter Phoenix
5 Casey Warmbrand- Counter Phoenix
6 Adam Fullen- Weird 5C thing that I can't even begin to explain
7 Mark Paschover- Mono-Blue
8 Justin Polin- Counter Phoenix

FINAL: Chris Carlisle- White Weenie

Normally white weenie is considered a bad matchup for counter phoenix,
but I firmly
believe that I can outplay him for the victory. However, I never get the
chance, because
the cries of deck checks resonate and all in the top 8 have their decks
examined. After
about 10 minutes of waiting, Brian David-Marshall comes up to me and
says, "Justin, I
have to talk to you." I was thinking, "Oh shit!" because I knew this was
really bad.
And it was. It seems that in my haste to fill out a deck sheet in the
morning I forgot to
put my 4 reflecting pools on the sheet, therefore only having a deck of
56 cards. That,
boys and girls, is an illegal deck, and I get a match loss for it. My
hopes for Rome then
go down the drain.I was obviously quite disappointed, and both Brian and
Head Judge
Tony Parodi came over to console me about it, but it really was all my
own fault, and
the match loss was an appropriate penalty. The problem I do have with
this, though, is
that I lose 30 or so points for making this stupid mistake. I think that
the DCI should
not take points away for match losses due to rules infractions. I am
going to e-mail
Jason Carl about this, so if anyone wants to join my crusade, write to
me or Jason
Carl(btw, Brian David-Marshall andTony Parodi completely agree with me
about this)

So there it was. Now, as I promised before, I will provide my insights
into the
Hammer & Your Move situation. I am not going to defend Hammer, because I
have
also heard from reliable sources that he has stretched the rules on
numerous occasions,
but he also makes some accurate and correct(although perhaps a little
paranoid)
comments about Your Move tournaments. I, for the record, do not believe
that Rob
Dougherty or most of the other members of the Your Move staff are guilty
of
pair-rigging and bias. But I do believe there is a strong possibilty
that their Level 3
Judge John could do this. He is widely known to have a short temper, and
it is
certainly not beyond the realm of reason to hear that he would do such a
thing. Here are
some examples:
1) In the NE Regionals this year, never did a Team Your Move player hit
another Your
Move player during the swiss rounds, and consequently, 4 of them made
top 8.
2) Brian Lynch as well as Hammer Regnier(and perhaps others) have
consistently been
given far more difficult pairings than is usually the case.
3) The whole refusal to show the standings at a PTQ to Hammer. That is a
clear
example of John's malice at work.

These 3 examples, along with the inefficiency and often inadequate
judging, all
combine to create a worrisome picture about Your Move Games
administration of
tourneys. This needs to be looked at. I mean, now I'm in NYC, and I see
Gray Matter
events always being run fairly and without controversy. When is the last
time a Your
Move event was without controversy? Plus, Gray Matter's judging is fair
and accurate,
headed by Tony Parodi along with others who have treated every question
and request
I've made with due respect and consideration.This little speech will
probably make
some waves in the New England magic scene, but it is time that these
things are said. Flame me or praise me as you wish.
THERE ARE MANY OTHER PLAYERS WHO KNOW ABOUT YOUR MOVE'S
PROBLEMS, BUT THEY ARE AFRAID OF RETRIBUTION! Now I am outside the
scope of Your Move, and I can speak freely about the truth. I hope
others can also do
so.

Onto Props and slops for the day:
Props:
Alex Shvartsman- for being cool and helping me out a lot
Brian Lynch- for making the deck that got me to final 8
James Bradley and Paul Hardy- the cards make the deck
Tony Rodriguez and Max Alicea- for scraping all the points out of side
drafts
Zvi Mowshowitz- for being Zvi
Adam Fullen- for making top 8 with the weirdest Rath cycle deck I've
ever seen
Dave Williams- Great job with a solid new deck

Slops:
Me- for waking up late
Me- for screwing up my decklist

Until next time,
Justin "Deck-Check" Polin
Team 36 Cheeseburgers
Starving Columbia University Student