Newsgroups: uk.games.trading-cards.misc,mtg-strategy-l@oracle.wizards.com From: U Stroinski Subject: Swindon Mirage Prerelease - M:tPs = Moxibustion: the problem solved Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 15:35:18 GMT Wow! I have a new browser. Makes WWW twice as good ;-) The other reason to be happy ... Moxibustion: the problem is solved. MtG players are not one-dimensional, they are actually interested in a broad range of topics. I knew it. Nicholas D Kost proved it! How? 4 weeks ago I asked you about Moxibustion. What is Moxibustion and in case it's a sorcery: What is its casting cost? :-) The answer is: > moxibustion is a type of therapy used in Japanese homeopathic > medicine. Needles similar to acupuncture needles are inserted > into Chi channels to open or block the flow of chi in the body, > this is standard acupuncture. > Moxibustion attaches small pieces of incense to the needles and > ignites the pieces to allow the incense to relax the chi channels. > the needles supposedly get extremely hot and is only done for > short periods of time. If the person is extremely familiar with > moxibustion, then the burning pieces of incense are applied > directly to the skin(this of course can produce scarring, > if not done correctly) > moxibustion in a nutshell. [ some stuff about BaubleBind deleted ] > nick kost Well done Nick! ... and you lot ... at least you have learned something. To those of you who have already lost to a BaubleBind deck (ie most of UK <- has lost to either Dave Maher, Clint Oldridge, Gary Hooley, Sam Roads or Mark Jeffries). I have good news for you. You didn`t really loose! According to some %4#s on mtg-strategy-l there are no BaubleBind decks until they have seen it. I feel really better now, since I didn't loose to Mark at Swindon. His deck doesn't exist. Rumors: WotC wants to introduce a fixed tournament format for sanctioned events. 6 rounds swiss and 3 rounds ko. Now that is really bad news, since we all know that there is no really fair way to decide who is in the final 8 and who isn't. After each such tournament there are at least 2-3 players feeling cheated since they had to go home on a 5:1 score. Here in UK we can't actually do much about that problem and in USA players seem to be happy with it. The good news is that "our" tournament organizers do not depend on sanctioning. If WotC enforces this format, we will have lot's of unsanctioned tournaments running a full swiss format. IMHO swiss is the way to go (and if I have to convince each organizer personally :-) Swindon Mirage Prerelase Tournament The other highlight this month (after John Garrets TV event). Swindon. I like this tournament, I like the organizers ... and I like the players there. Since you have already read 100s of reports about various Mirage tournaments I make it short and tell you only the facts you don't know yet. First of all Swindon was a charity event. IE most of the entrance fee went to charity. WotC provided the cards. Actually WotC provided the cards for all prerelease tournaments. I wonder what the other organizers (especially Nottingham and Glasgow) did with all the money they earned. It's pretty sad that in the north of London people only organize tournaments if they have a guaranteed pounds 1000! win. Not in Swindon. We played for charity. Organization was ok (as usual). Traders (Iain MacDonald) and snacks available. When we received our cards, people started to open the Booster inspite being told not to do so. I have seen people trading cards BEFORE we were even allowed to open the Boosters. I got a Thirst as only creature defense, a Bee Sting as only direct damage, 2 white flying Walls as only flyers (I also played this 9 casting cost artifact dragon). My highlights were 2 Casting of the Bones, a Crash of the Rhinos, a Jungle Wurm, a Mirage Tim and a phasing Island walker. That was the tournament for me. Had to go 4 colors (no R) and was completly crushed in rounds 4-6. I ended up matches 3-3 games 6-12. In round 4 I played a R/B/w deck which could probably beat your average type II deck. The player ended up in the final 8. In round 5 I faced a Foratog/2 Dwarven Nomad deck with incinerates and other nice stuff. Match 6 was against the Cardiff player Mark Jeffries. His deck featured 2 Drain Lifes Dark Banishing and Spitting Earth. Needless to say. He wiped the floor with me :-( After that we played a couple of type II matches (at that point I had lost 9 games in a row and was really frustrated). He showed me his new R/G/B Stormbind deck and after I lost a couple of games he downgraded to his Pheldagriff deck. At least that I could beat (with a cheesy Geddon). Not my day ;-) Others had difficulties too. From the Cardiff crew only Sam Roads could qualify for the final 8. Jason Nicoll, Steve Lamb, Clint Oldridge and many other prominent players didn't make it. After all I would say I had my fun. Despite being steamrolled in rounds 4-6 I really enjoyed playing Mirage cards. The arts is superb. (The cards themselves are too weak though). If only ... I ask myself ... how much cheating is allowed? Sealed deck without a mandatory decklist is a laugh. I am only sorry for Jason, whose DCI rating will go down. See you in London. Uwe Stroinski uwst@maths.bath.ac.uk PS: Did I tell you ... my new Browser :-) :-)