Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy From: c s i v i l s @ h o t m a i l . c o m (Craig Sivils (csivils@hotmail.com)) Subject: Texas T2 Championship report Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 16:56:06 GMT Drove from Houston to Lubbock without AC, the tournament center didn't have AC and I felt like a walking corpse quite a bit of the time. I chalked it up to not being used to the heat until I got home and found out the rest of my family had the 24 hour flu while I was gone (Wife didn't tell me while I was there, I called several times). In spite of all that, I had a good time and Hatter runs a cool tournament. I was running my newest evolution of stasis, Abeyance Stasis. I had really high hopes for it because I think it is one of the most solid decks in t2 right now. It was also a deck that no one expected. That is usually a good combination. (Deck listing/analysis after the report). Roy rode up from Houston with me and in playtesting the night before gave me some good advise on the deck/sideboarding and after I showed him abeyance stasis could beat my mono-red blast deck most of the time (before sideboarding) he decided to run it too. The next day at the tournament, the turnout was not huge, but the field made up of a lot tough competitors. Hatter has indicated that they will really be cracking down on anything that even looks like it might have been mana weaving. This is hard on me because I have some trouble with my fingers that makes shuffeling really hard. Match 1: vs Curtis playing red/white. I'm trying to stay calm as I actually am stupid enough to do my first and only riffle shuffle of the day on my deck. I make a bit of a mess, and quickly try to pick it up. I hand over hand shuffle some and we start. My opening draw is a lone gemstone mine :(, at least I have a force spike. On turn 3, I use the force spike to stop a stone rain. Turn 4, I draw a force spike to stop his turn 4 disk. Turn 5, I draw a force spike to spike his turn 5 ivory gargoyle (this was some of the best fun I've had loosing in quite a while). I draw an island and he plays a wildflower emmisary. Next turn I display some incredible topdecking skills and draw a hydroblast! Really impressive, that's supposed to be in my sideboard. I conceede the game on the spot and call hatter over to receive my warning. Next two games I get to demonstrate what abeyance stasis can do with some mana, and win both straight up. Red/White is a combo that would have given the old SQStasis trouble post sideboard, good thing this wasn't SQStasis. Match 2: Kent playing white/blue control Kent is a junior who eventually takes 2nd in state. He's a fairly solid player but he was running really crazy overpriced creatures. Game 1, Kent lets me know halfway through the game he's never seen SQStasis in any form...... I provide a rude introduction. Game 2, I once again have mana trouble arggh (maybe I can buy a shuffling machine), kent lands an Archangel on the board before I have the ability to defend myself. Game 3, I get the beautiful draw of no elements of the stasis lock (I'm serious, it's one of the strongest draws for the deck). I counter everything, then slap down the entire lock along with a misers cage. Match 3: Lance (AustinKnight) playing G/W marogeddon. Lance knows SQStasis very well, and his teammate Brian saw me playing it the previous thursday (taking first at empire) meaning Lance might even know Abeyancestasis as well. Game 1, there really isn't anything he can do as my deck provides complete control over every aspect of the game. Counter early threats, then I abeyance Lance a couple turns in a row, counter everything the next turn and then lock with enough mana to protect the lock forever. Game 2, I once again have early mana trouble, in a desperate attempt to get out of mana trouble I play two early howling's and Lance of course has the ways to deal with them. Maro counsels me on the virtues of getting proper mana. Game 3, Very slow start for both decks and we are both playing very careful. I play no non-land permenants so Lance can't use any extra disenchants/artifact destruction to bait counters. Eventually Lance makes his move with an abeyance. He's quite suprised when I let it resolve, to the point where he has to think on what to do next. He playes a city of solitude and is done. On my turn, I tap two islands to boomerang the city, drop a squandered, a howling and a stasis all in one turn. On my next turn, I pay for the stasis and then Lance tries to disenchant either the squandered or the stasis (forget which). I have one card in hand and I have to pay for a force of will. There is now a question if I'd paid the stasis upkeep. We count the graveyard mana to make sure. I was very sure I had because I had put my "idiot counter" (tm) on my library that turn to remind me to pay it (and paid it at the same time). The graveyard count came up that I had paid it. Unfortunatly the force left me with very little mana, I didn't draw a land. Then over the next 6 turns (drawing 2 cards a turn) I drew 2 lands (one was a valley). I lost the stasis. At this point Lance has won, but there's 20 minutes left in the round. I put up a struggle involving playing all kinds of futile things just to keep staying alive one more turn, but full well know that I'd conceede before I'd run time out. Lance has always treated me right and I had my shot at this game. Eventually Maro gets me. There was quite a crowd for this match and I had many requests to see my deck after the swiss was over. Match 4, vs James of the guildmages, forgotten orb. Game 1, I get the lock easily which is good because I'm not focused (worked up over last round) and my deck beats James. Game 2, I get out countered!?! And loose the game. Game 3, I can't find the lock, draw too much mana and go down making several mistakes. Match 5 Jeff, playing red/green Rough matchup for Jeff as LD just doesn't match up well vs Abeyance Stasis. I end up sweeping him. The only thing I remember from this match was Jeff casting tsunami when I had a howling mineout. I looked at my land, 2 gemstones, 2 islands and a sheltered. I said, "sure". Next turn I drew one more land and played the rest of the lock. Match 6 vs Jason playing counterpost. Counterpost is supposed to be a rough matchup, but Roy had beat this one which meant it was quite possible (but it also meant that Jason knew my exact deck). Game 1 was a most excellent game, Jason did some damage, I got the lock. Jason saved up and broke out of the lock and disked everything away (this really sucked for me, I had 1 mine, 1 stasis and 1 Squandered left in my deck with none in hand). I dug in and played really scrappy and eventually re-locked Jason. Jason had 3 more cards in his library than I did, I expected a fight over my feldons cane, but Jason let it through! The turn before he would draw his last 3 cards, Jason dropped a plains, giving him 6 untapped lands with two of them being outposts. I was at 2, with no way to get rid of enough lands to get into valley range. Well, there's always a chance that Jason didn't notice.... Er, nevermind. Game 2 I get overrun after siding my boomerangs out. Roy told me this was a huge mistake since the boomerang can really help stall the outpost. So I finish 3-3, which is nowhere near what I wanted to. But I think the deck could have matched up against anything there that day. My biggest lesson I learned was that I'm a good enough deck designer. Brian Hubble and Senor Stompie that took first was very close to my mono-green bolt deck (a deck I made for fun for one of the Empire tournaments), Ted Dickerson took second with a tweaked version of my mono-red test deck I brought with me (my hammers did better than I did!!) And after about round 3, my opponents all told me that they were hoping not to have to play my deck. I think my biggest weakness now is my playing skills. Abeyance Stasis addresses two of the weaknesses that SQStasis had. 1) It was a combo deck which had to hit the combo quickly and 2) Using tutors to find the lock quickly gave up card advantage putting SQStasis at a disadvantage vs control decks. By replacing the tutors and lockdown accessories (kismet/equipoise/etc) with more counters/abeyance, AbStasis can survive a long time before having to play the lock, it plays very different from SQStasis and thus I felt it deserved a new name. The version of AbStasis that I ran had 15 counters and 4 abeyance allowing it to out counter almost any control deck. In addition, the use of 11 cantrips (should have been 12) lets me fly through the library to pick up the combo while I work to stay in control. The concept of taking the tutors out of a combo deck seems completely illogical, but it helped to make sure I could go toe to toe with a control deck. Replacing the tutors with control cards also helped avoid the auto-loose opening hand syndrome where you draw a bunch of useless early game cards. The other almost illogical move I made was to take the actual complete lockdown cards out as well to make room for more counters. I'm sure that this was a huge improvement to the deck. I don't need the absolute lockdown cards in game 1 since the heavy counters is more than enough to control the game. In game 2/3 the kismet/equipoise are nice vs decks that can sideboard in a lot against me. Knowing what to side in/out better would have helped my performance greatly. I had many many people tell me to run impulse over portent. Impulse is a great card, probabbly quite a bit better than portent. But it's 2 mana. Portent is one, portent can help mana screw, portent is cheap enough you can cast it under a stasis to look for something (like more land if you are short on mana but still have 2-3 left), portent is also gives me a sligh type mana curve where I can use the odd blue mana on turns one and three. The night before the tourney, I had cut down to 3 portents in the deck, I really think I need to make room for the 4th again. It did impact the decks consistancy not to have the extra portent. The other card I'm thinking about cutting down on is force of will. They are the first countermagic I discard and I really don't like drawing too many of them. I might have beat Lance if I had not had to blow 5 mana to pay for a FOW under a stasis. I may need to test one or two powersinks. Powersinks would also help to get a cleaner tap out before you apply lockdown. Abeyance Stasis 4 Gemstone mine (WOTC's gift to stasis) 3 Undiscovered Paradise 3 City of Brass 11 Islands 2 Sheltered Valley 4 Abeyance 3 Portent 4 Arcane Denial 4 Counterspell 4 Force of Will 3 Force Spike 3 Squandered Resources 4 Howling Mine 4 Stasis 3 Boomerang 1 Feldons Cane 1 Vampiric Tutor Sideboard 1 Misers Cage 4 Pyro's 2 Hydro's 2 Equipoise 2 Disenchants 4 Cop Red