Subject: syracuse ptq - cowley brother #2 Date: Tue, 23 Sep 1997 23:36:47 -0400 (EDT) From: Hugerfax@aol.com To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com dojo dwellers- this saturday my brother steve cowley, myself, his friend ted from UB, and todd stephens all head east to syracuse. as usual the following magic standards are upheld: a- if it is not a pro tour, the tourney site must be cramped and smelly and held in a hockey rink b- at least 90% of the competitors have not bathed, still have food stuck in mouth from 3 previous trips to burger king, and in general look like something straight out of mad max: beyond thunderdome c- if, when you are driving around looking for the qualifier spot, and you see a building with all of its windows intact, you must not be in the right place ok so we get there, and we are hungry, and of course some old lady tells us that the nearest place for food is 15 minutes away. by car. whatever. lots of people here, maybe 100 in the main tourney? not bad for cuse. register decks. you know i just love this, tell me if this sounds familiar: as you register the deck the pimply kid to your right starts saying "oh my god this deck has so and so and holy crap can you believe it a fireball wow" then the dork to your left starts yelling "oh my god 2 green creatures wow hey look 3 chimeras what a combo". i'm just curious, is there some unwritten rule that says you must scream out just how amazing your deck is? hrmm... well anyways my deck was ok but the deck i got back sucked. oh sure it had some good cards but it didn't hum like a good sealed deck should. my brother was sitting next to me and showed me what he thought was a pretty good deck: nevy disk, fireball, fallen angel, breeding pit, but as we noticed and then found out later it was kind of slow, it really needed to hit 5 mana to start casting the big stuff. but as he says, "i hear nevy disk is pretty good in sealed". so here is my deck as good as i can remember: the good stuff: 2 man o war 1 undo 1 prodigal poker 1 ray of command blah: 1 force spike 1 power sink 1 portent 1 enervate 1 elven cache (THE card in my deck, sadly, must have cache-undo 4 times or so) 1 giant caterpillar 1 panther warrior 1 giant spider 1 hive 1 rod of ruin 1 jalum tome 1 clay statue 1 scryb sprite (boarded out for that amazing shrieking drake every time, good god i didn't just say that did i?) 1 keysu drake 1 killer bees 1 terror 1 wand of denial 1 emerald charm trust me this is all i could play. in white i had disenchant,white knight,knight of valor, and 2 infantry veteran but just not quite fast enough. i couldn't splash 3 colors because if i did i would have had to gone beatdown mode (a la early knights, veteran, follow with man o war) but i would have been relying too much on getting the right color and cards early and i would have no staying power. man o war and undo are great but i would really need a quicker deck: askari, lancer, etc man o war with giant spider coming through just is not that powerful don't remember my opp name etc, just some random thoughts round 1 - the guy plays brainwash, soul barrier on me; relic wards his updrafted 6/1 shapeshifter; his early parapet stops my prodigal from killing his creatures - all this, i beat him and i am at 2 life. oh, and i didn't get mana screwed. in fact i had a good draw. oh another thing, his phyrexian walker, with parapet out, blocks all but 1 of my creatures. i win with elven cache undo and panther warrior. 2nd game the guy gets mana screwed and i win. i am not happy about my deck at all. round 2- i play todd stephens. first game he kills me with a warthog. i only play 2 swamps in the deck. 2nd game i am coming back: man o war and undo on bull elephants is awesome. the problem is- he had bull elephants. even worse, i keep putting out mana so i can create hive tokens and ping him with my rod of ruin, he returns mana to his hand with elephant and quiron ranger then armageddon. i die quick. i hear the hive is pretty good with no mana. ps the hive sucked in my deck, and quite frankly it is so damn slow, i'd much rather take my chances with a bottle of suleiman. i am 1-1, if ever i would think to drop well now would be a good time. round 3- beat some scrub, he has a ton of good cards but is playing ALL of them. by the way did i mention man o war on a bull elephant is good? 2-1 round 4- can't remember my match. but as i head to hand in my card i meet up with my brother and he is pissed. turns out he just played one of the most annoying guys ever. my brother is like ef hutton, he rarely gets pissed but when he does, people listen. turns out both games the guy goes 1st turn flood, 2nd turn river boa. 2nd game my bro never sees black mana. 5 black cards in his hand when the kid attacks for the last 2 with the boa, in a high pitched nasaly voice goes "i'll islandwalk my way to victory" - yeah whatever. 1- try to keep your mouth shut when you win 2- if you must say something say "sometimes my mom lets me out of the house" 3- try and remember what a swamp looks like, cause my brother forgot by the end of this match. ps i hear weakness is pretty good against a river boa. round 5- i play david bartholow, team deadguy member. well i figure my luck runs out here, dave is a very talented player who qualified along with every other member of team deadguy it seems in toronto. 1st game he gets mana screwed early and i draw both man o war and undo and STILL barely beat him. 1 more turn and he can beat me. 2nd game he draws swamps (hey steve borrow some of these) and boy does he draw swamps, like all of them. i force spike his 3rd turn python, power sink something else, and then when the mindstab thrull hits the table i ray of command it and attack for 2... just kidding, i gain 4 - 1 card advantage and dave can't come back. well i am 4-1 and my bro is 4-1. my deck will lose soon. by the way i think this round is when i sat next to steve. since he won the damn tourney i will clue in on how he made his way up. nevy disk sweeps the board the 2nd game, including 2 land that were creatures from quiron druid. game 1 was cool, steve draws about 11 land and 5 playable cards - lucky 1 was a fireball that kills 4 creatures (including the clay statue that probably would have killed him had the kid not tapped out to cast another creature). round 6- i win again. 2nd game i actually get my beef out, unfortunately my beef is giant spider and caterpillar. the kid plays ovinomancer and goes down to 1 land. all he has out is battering ram and mindsucker. my hand: man o war, panther warrior, undo, elven cache. heh. round 7- i play davey j, a rochester guy who i play maybe once a week. he wants to draw, but i lost in the 2nd round so i can't. i know my deck is going to die and sure enough, with the help of davey j's archangel and miraculous recovery wind spirit, i die. close games both of them, probably could have won if i had ever drawn my undo, but archangel is big. and yes i did the happy dance when he wasted his fireball on my tiny killer bee's early, but did i mention how archangel was big? oh yeah and 1 hive token doesn't block a wind spirit. went 5-2 with the deck, sometimes it could get good draws but overall i would not wish this pile of crap on anyone. final 8: gary wise, gary krakower, steve cowley, davey j, stewart kaminski(sp?),3 other guys i watch steve draft: in his first pack,it is so bad he has to take a flame spirit. then the pack he is passed is so bad he has to take FLARE. i almost left at that point as ted and todd are hungry. the next pack they open isn't much better, steve has to take a abbey gargoyle, which is ok but so mana intensive. visions comes around and makes his deck bearable. his first pick was rock slide, which normally is ok but just kicked ass over the next few rounds. the guy to his right defensive drafted a hulking cyclops first pick instead of taking either diamond kaleidoscope or magma mine. steve takes the kaledoscope. basically in the end steves deck was: wgr, with his best cards: abbey gargoyle, miraculous recovery (so amazing), rock slide, giant spider, kaleidoscope, and aysen beauracrat. plus 2 flares. 1st rd he plays davey j. i go eat, we find a bar across the street and order some food and labatts blue. correct me if i am wrong but the best thing canada has done for the US: labatt's beer. 2 beers and a chicken sandwhich later and i am feeling much better. steve wins round 1, i hear drawing both your mountains in a straight black deck is kind of bad. 2nd round- steve plays "god deck" guy. guy was nice but not the best player, although his draft was ok. his deck in the original swiss portion was red-black type II deck: disintegrate,incinerate,pestilence,nekrataal,necromancy, savaant,askari,lancer,derelor,2 crypt rats, all he needed was drain life and necro. he had dragon mask too. game 1 this guy draws no red, he is playing red-green. steve draws all land, well all non-white land that is because at 11 land on the table he still can't cast the abbey gargoyle he has even though he runs 7 plains standard. both are manascrewed but god-deck guy has panther warriors with carapce on them. he attacks, steve rockslides, the guy cast giant growth, steve takes 9. as ted says "its like you got hit with a collosus for 1 turn". cool moment: guy attacks with super-panther, steve mirac recovery his orcish captain and starts to flip a coin. 2 flips and the panther is dead. well ok maybe not so cool, steve loses first flip. then dies next turn. steve later tells me he was thinking of blocking with a knight, recovery the captain, then next turn while the guy is all tapped out attacking with the captain and trying to win the flip enough times to do 12 points of damage - now that would be cool. 2nd game steve just runs him over, remember how i said this guy was not the greatest player? well at one point he blocks my brothers suq lancer with a grizzly bear and then tells my brother the lancer is dead. class, lets all sit down and talk about today's word: flanking. 3rd game is touchy, looks grim for my brother, god deck guy has lichenthrope and panther out, but steve pulls it out with rock slide and miraculous recovery. the guy plays out his last card in hand to hearth charm a grapeshot catapult, then attacks with his mtn goat and panther warrior. my brother has rock slide and 5 mana. had the guy kept hearth charm my bro would have been thinking :giant growth. instead, hearth charm played early on meaningless creature = happy dance. 3rd round- finals against gary krakower, who just beat gary wise. i saw that game, at one point in time wise had put 2 betrayels on krakowers orcish artillery and krakower was still plinking away, knowing he had to kill quickly! even worse, gary wise had 9 islands in his deck, flood on the table, was drawing about 3 cards a turn, and still ended the game with only 2 islands on the table and enough forest to cast about 10 rogue elephant. quick note: of all the people i have played, namely the "name" people, team deadguy and the canadiens: (wise, krakower robertson) are the nicest. so many times i read on the net about this person cheating and that person was a dick, well if all the people could be like these guys magic would be a better game. of course i still think the best thing from canada is their beer. so steve plays krakower in the finals and wins a tight first game thanks to having bigger creatures on his side and a abbey gargoyle. krakowers deck relied on speed as he only played 15 lands and an urza bauble (where are the spiders??!). steve plays 18 lands and has bigger creatures overall. rock slide wiped out 2 of gary creatures this game and a key disenchant on a lure late in the game gave steve the win. game 2, a stalemate. steve is using aysen beauracrat on garys fire drake. he is attacking with an abbey gargoyle. he is at 15 and will win in 2 turns. gary goes, first declares attack phase. steve taps down the drake with the beauracrat. gary then plays lure on a keeper of kookus. attack with everything. steve had sideboarded out the disenchant in the thought that gary would sb out the lure, so he had to block all on the keeper. all except his kaleidoscope token which he used for mana to power up a 6 pt rock slide, killing 2 of gary creatures. gary plays hearth charm - to give all attacking creatures +1/+1. if steve didn't have the rock slide gary would have done exactly 15 points of damage. he concedes afterwards. so steve wins another qualifier. i don't play magic all that much, maybe 1-2 times a week, but my brother plays even less and without being too biased i think he is the best player i have seen. he only plays in qualifiers and his record is amazing, final 8 every single time with 4 wins thrown in. of course whenever we get to a pt the lack of play comes through and we end up playing ante day 2. hopefully chicago will be different! anyone interested in talking extended contact us via email, bruce: hugerfax@aol.com ... steve at cowley@acsu.buffalo.edu thanks for listening, and someone PLEASE tell me why ed mccafrey has more touchdowns by about TWO THOUSAND than emmitt smith this year? -bruce cowley