Subject: 11/2 PTQ Mainz qualifier in Utah: most Bizarre Magic story!
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 1997 11:48:32 -0800 (PST)
From: "Andrew J. Cleary" <cleary@ares.llnl.gov>
To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com

Hi, this is my report from the 11/2 qualifier in Utah... Let me
preface by saying that no, it's not a report from the winner, though
very very close... and the way in which I did *not* win is perhaps one
of the most bizarre Magic stories ever!

An intro is in order: my name is Andy Cleary. I'm 34 and have been
playing Magic for about 2 years (this could be my opening line at my
first Magic Anonymous meeting...) I play at KK's Comics in Pleasanton,
CA, about 30 minutes outside SF. My sealed rating regularly hovers
around 1700, so while I win more than I lose, I am hardly a giant in
the game. Like Magic's creator Garfield, I am a PHD in mathematics
(actually applied math but who cares), but due to work and other
commitments, I only play Magic once a week at our local BD tourneys,
and in fact I haven't played a type 2 match in over a year. I have
also had difficulty getting to PTQ's even though they are held
regularly in the bay area, so this was to be my first ever PTQ...

So, I had to be in Salt Lake City this past week for a work
conference. I had looked up tourneys in the area before I left, and it
so happened that there was a pro-tour qualifier in town on the
Saturday. The conference ran through Saturday, and I figured I would
just blow off the Saturday (the conference kind of blew anyways) and
go play. It was a sealed-deck event, so it wouldn't take any
preparation or bringing of cards, which was handy because there was no
way that I was going to be able to tell my girlfriend that I was going
to play: I've been on travel for work so much that we have really had
a hard time, and suggesting playing Magic for a day instead of coming
home would have gone over like a turd in the punchbowl. It had to be a
relative secret...

When I was making the flight reservations, I had to decide whether I
would fly home late Saturday night or wait until Sunday. Since the
conference ended around 5 and there were several flights leaving
afterwards, I didn't think I could put the flight off to Sunday, so I
did some quick calculations and decided that most likely, unless I got
very near the finals, leaving on a 10pm flight (from an airport only a
short distance away from the tourney) would be fine. So I booked that
and arranged to have my girlfriend pick me up at the airport on my way
back... Considering this was my first-ever PTQ, I thought it was worth
the risk. Of course, in the back of my mind I was thinking "well this
is kind of a stupid gamble because the only real point of playing is
for the miracle that I can win and I may be assuring that winning is
impossible." [Right now, you should be looking up the meaning of
"foreshadowing" in literature...]

I get to the tourney site, a hotel literally a stone's throw from the
headquarters of one of my top-10 most despised institutions, the
Mormon church. There are 38 people, most of whom are very familiar
with each other from local play... The organizer (Karl Batdorff
(sp?)) was an incredibly nice man who really made me feel welcome, and
he explained to me that at other local tourneys they would get 100
people but the fact that the PT is in Germany, and that the format
wasn't very popular, had really reduced interest. With so few, I had
renewed hope, not so much that I would win (but I think that brings
the odds into a reasonable realm) but that the tourney would end by
10. Unfortunately, he decided on 6 rounds of swiss, so it was only a
savings of one round, and they played 70 minute rounds (way too long I
think).

I had heard beforehand that there were some good players in SLC, and
indeed one had already qualified for this particular PT (Aaron
Muranaka). Meanwhile, the guy I sat across from during registration
kept moaning when people walked in, saying "he's been in the Pro Tour"
and "all the good players are here." I'm not the greatest with names
and I don't really recognize anybody, so I don't know whether to be
intimidated or not, but since I have played world number ones before
(Bob Kline was #1 in T2 when I played in Knoxville; Brian Loynachan
was #1 in sealed before he moved to Nebraska from Pleasanton a few
months ago), I'm not that scared.

We get decks to register (the format is sealed, 1 5th starter and 2
visions boosters). The one I have to register has a fairly average
starter, with an incinerate as the feature, and it reminds me of how
little I ever find in 5th to play with. My visions packs kick ass, and
a blue-gree-red deck with 4 power flyers and an incinerate and
fireblast looks pretty good. Only a few people get their decks back,
and I am disappointed to not be one. Meanwhile, one of the local
legends had been talking about how good the deck he registered was,
and he got it back, so everyone started thinking he would win. It's
amazing to me how unreliable the "common knowledge" in Magic is... I
don't think he even got close to final 8, though I apologize if that
is not true.

I also apologize profusely for not remembering any names... I am
really bad with them in general and being my first PTQ, I really
didn't think I would need them for a report afterwards.

I get my deck and I groan... I've got two power artifacts, Jaye. Tome
and Snake Basket, but while I have acceptable other cards, they are
completely scattered throughout the colors, including lots of 2-color
mana spells. I am faced with my too-usual choice: build the best 2 or
3 color (really, only 3 color is viable in selaed with 5 extra lands)
deck I can with scrub cards included, or pray to the mana gods and
risk 4 colors... I go with my usual choice, and that is to play the
best cards. In this case, I reason, I can play 18 lands, which is 1-2
more than I used to play, to help avoid screw *and* to pump up
the Book and the Basket. Plus, I am leaning more and more to the
opinion that 18 lands is optimal in sealed. You almost never get mana
screwed while at 16 or 17 you quite often do; I think it is one of my
secrets to relative success. I can hardly remember a game in which I
played out all of my cards, whereas I can remember a lot more games
where I have had a handful of cards to play and no mana to play
them. I would rather do the first than the latter...

The other annoying thing was that we had to reset our decks before
each match, so that any mistakes I made in my original deck would be
with me all day. Usually at my shop we have free swapping and my deck
evolves with an evening.

Here is my deck

Snake Basket
J. Tome

5 Plains

Jamuraan Lion
gossamer Chains
Longbow Archer
greater realm of preservation (also CoP red, CoP black, and CoP Blue
in my sideboard)
Free wind Falcon
Death Speakers
Teferi's Honor Guard

5 Mountain

Fireblast
Stone Giant
Rock slide
Brothers of Fire
Dwarven Vigilantes

5 Swamp

Tar Pit Warrior (often sided out; sucks against Undos)
Infernal Harvest
Coercion
Carrion Ants

3 Island

Homarid Warrior
Impulse
Cloud Elemental
Remove Soul
Sea Serpent

Note that *3* of my colors had spells requiring 2 colored mana... this
is a strategical disaster, but I couldn't see any way around it. With
18 land and the Book, I hoped that I would just draw myself enough
land...

I had no confidence in my deck, and indeed I got waxed in my first
match 2-0 by a young kid. We had a great first game, in which he got a
Skull Catapault and a Brood of Cockroaches down in 4 turns (great
combo, though he claimed he didn't recognize it when he built his
deck). I made the mistake of Coercion'ing *with* his Skull Catapault
in hand and taking out a Bull Elephant instead so I have no one to
blame, *and* I make another mistake or two like throwing down Tar Pit
with his Catapault out (though I guess I didn't have a
choice). Nonetheless, we get each other very close. He has creature
advantage with big green, but I've had some puffy beatdown going on as
well. I get him to 3, but have to chump block with everything I have
as I am on 3 and he still has the Catapault. He flings two at me, so I
need to pull some sort of damage, in fact any sort of removal will do
it because puffy will hit for 2 and he still has his Brood of
Cockroaches out and I could kill it for 1. I draw: land. But wait, my
Book is out... I draw again: nothing! Damn it... Down I go. The next
game I start slow and within a few turns he has 4-5 creatures out. I
concede... I went and called the airline to check on earlier
flights. I wasn't going anywhere with this deck and figured I'd
probably be leaving early.

The one thing I do realize is that against any player with blue, I
would probably be much better changing my deck alot, and in fact I
started to hope I would play blue. Against blue, I would swap out *all
of my red*. Frankly, it was really hard to play because 3 of the
spells needed RR and I wished I hadn't put it in. Instead, I would
beef up my blue with blue spoilers:

The Sea Serpent becomes a monster instead of a wall;
I add 3 islands to support Dandan (a blue killer), Seasinger (a game
turner against blue), Wall of Air (solid but not supportable with 3
islands), and Vanishing, and sometimes Boomerang (if they play
enchantments). I also bring in a swamp and that usually makes me feel
justified to bring in Drain Life (you can usually count on a 2 pt
Drain if you have 6 swamps and that's worth it), taking out the Tar
PIt (hate Man O Wars).

The resulting post-sideboarded deck is very strong and it leads me to
2 strong wins against decks with blue, with the heavy mana providing
access to succifiently good creatures, removal, and especially stall
tactics with Chains, Cops, and Pro-red and black creatures to get me
into the mid and late game and then the book, the Basket, or the
Carrion Ants breaking it open for me. My first game victory, which I
badly needed at that point to turn the momentum, came when my opponent
optionally mulliganed to 3 cards in hand, drawing no land in any of
the previous draws... the card advantage obviously killed him.

My fourth match is against an intense guy in his 30s, obviously a
good player and one keen on making the final 8. We play a greuling
3-game match. He is playing blue-red-white, while I am
blue-black-white, and it turns out we have a remarkable amount of the
same cards: he has a Book, a Brothers, a Fireblast, Dandan, Seasinger,
Cloud Elemental, the CoP: Red (he didn't pick up that I sideboarded
out Red and this cost him a card in the last game that mattered a
lot), Impulse, and 1 or 2 others. It was pretty remarkable. What he
did *not* have was Snake Basket, and this was the difference. In the
last two games (after he mauled me in the first), we brawled until I
Basketed for 12 and 14 respectively... he had sided in a tremor in the
last game but couldn't draw it in the 30 cards he had drawn. Bummer,
but I'll take it...

That takes 65 minutes and we go straight to the next round. Now I'm
thinking, how the hell did I get to 3-1, with a very legit shot at
making the final 8? I'm on the first table now. I'm playing another
junior, a really nice kid who tells me he doesn't usually get this far
and he's pretty pleased. The one thing I note is that he does *not*
have blue (red, black, maybe another), and so I'm going to have to win
this without the use of my big blue. He's got a deck full of red and
black 2/2 and 3/3 creature types, which can obviously beat decks that
aren't prepared for them. On the other hand, like many of the players
I saw here and in contrast to players at my own shop, he plays with
very few tricks (a Rock Slide being the main exception, but that's not
much good against Gossamer Chains or Freewind Falcon/Repentant
Blacksmith/CoP: Red/Greater Realm). A bunch of 2/2s and 3/3s aren't
much good against 3/4s and 5/5s (the Serpent is an incredible wall),
because as *soon* as I get *one* of them down, he has no way to get
creatures through without losing one each time. He tries once or twice
but the damage is just not worth the card disadvantage. Eventually I
get Puffy flying at him or a big Basket or a monster Carrion Ants (the
18 land turned out to be a godsend for these 3 cards) and he goes down
2-0, still in close games.

He also makes some mistakes, not huge ones but things like exchanging
creatures in combat when it is to my advantage (I think), putting out
a Knight of Valor when I have a Dwarven Vigilantes for example... my
eyes light with glee knowing he must block with the Knights, and
exchange them, or I will use their ability to kill them... either way,
I get rid of one of the toughest creatures for a pretty crappy one.
That sort of thing.

All of the sudden I'm 4-1 and sitting pretty. I intentionally draw
with another 4-1 and we are both in.

At this point, I'm becoming more and more aware that I've got a shot
at the invite, but time is looking bad. Then he adds a dinner break,
and we have the final 8 starting at 7:10. We are to do a Booster Draft
starting then, and my flight leaves at 9:55. I should leave minimum
45-50 minutes before then (had to turn in rental car), leaving 2 hours
to draft *and play 3 rounds*. It can't be done unless everything goes
fast...

It doesn't. We get started late as people chat and eat. The draft
moves reasonably smoothly, but it's about 8 when we sit to play.

We drafted 2 5th and 1 Visions. Curiously, my confidence is welling
now, I've won 4 straight matches, I've watched some of the better
players and seen mistakes, and most of all, I play booster 3 times a
month with some of the best players and these guys almost never play
booster. These guys know to draft the power cards, they're not
dummies, but it seems they have a disdain or misunderstanding about
some of the trickier cards and I see alot of them in this draft. Also,
a lot of people stay religiously away from anything with 2 colored
mana in the CC, and while that is definitely a reasoanble thing to do,
it can be overdone. Frankly, a 6 CC creature doesn't really matter
whether you have 1 colored or two: you're not going to play until late
anyways and you will probably have the colors before the total cost
anyways. Anyways, I usually try to draft blue when playing with
Visions, so I draft a Flood first up. Unfortunately, I don't see much
other blue in the first pack. Instead, I get a bunch of useful but
marginal white cards, like a couple of Cops(Blue, Black, and Green!),
an Icatian Scout (much overlooked but very useful), Death Speakers,
Grapeshot Catapault (hey, he's 2/3 in what was looking pretty weenie
and he hits flyers); and a couple of tricks that I would use but they
don't seem to use like Enervate and Sacred Boon. I also pick up two
Mesa Falcons, so at least I have some Flying Defense. The next pack
begins and I see something like 4 big green creatures: Craw Wurm,
Johtull Wurm, War Mammoth, Durkwood Boars. Now I'm feeling better,
knowing I have some beef... if I can pick up some more useful weenies
going into Visions, this could be ok... low and behold I get a Samite
Healer with 4 cards to go (I have extolled his virtues before and I
still swear by them), and then an Aysen Bureaucrats with 3 to
go... are you kidding me?! Either I was drafting with knobs or else
no one else was playing white... his usefulness is unbelievable.

Things come together with the Visions pack. I get a Puffy early, and
take him with the thought of possibly playing blue. I'm looking for
more beef and some more white and green tricky weenies, and I get
them: Infantry Veteran, Freewind Falcon, Bull Elephant (I was already
going *heavy* green so BE was ok), Warthog, Giant Caterpillar, and 2
Quirion Rangers... the rangers really surprised me, I really wanted at
least one but had to pass up one on the 3rd take and usually at my
shop you won't see one much past then. Instead, I see another one 4th
or 5th, and then the first one or one like it comes back to me with only
3-4 cards left. Again, I am flabbergasted, as this is one of the most
versatile cards in Visions and only G. I also get a Feral Instinct
late, another card whose virtues I extol. I ended up playing 9 of my
15 Visions cards...

So the deck was close to a good friend of mine's (Doug Hyatt, app
1800) formula: I had tons of 1 and 2 CC creatures (9 I think) that are
very useful both early as creatures and later because of abilities. I
backed that up with some big beef (7 big creatures in green), and then
added some control (Enervate, Flood, and the various creature
abilities). I was missing direct damage so had to rely on creatures,
and had few spells, but some awesome creature abilities that would
double as removal.

The deck:

7 Forest

Durkwood Boars
Feral Instinct
Warthog
Giant Caterpillar
2 Quirion Rangers
Bull elephant
Johtull Wurm
War Mammoth
Craw Wurm

5 Plains

Pearled Unicorn
Death Speakers
Icatian Scout
Samite Healer
Sacred Boon
Freewind Falcon
Infantry Veteran
2 Mesa Falcon
Aysen Bureaucrats

5 Island

Flood
Enervate
Cloud Elemental

Grapeshot Catapault

Useful sidebaord cards: Cop black, blue, green; Emerald Charm; Wind
Shear; Tranquility; Flight; Shanodin Dryads.

First match, the guy is playing green, blue, and I think black. I get
the draw the way I would diagram it: 3 lands, a hand full of weenies,
and I draw the beef right as I hit about 5-6 mana. First turn Infantry
Veteran, 2nd turn Q Ranger, 3rd turn Pearled Unicorn. He has gone
first and laid land, on his 4th turn he plays Giant Spider. Next turn,
I can't get anything through on attack, but I play another Q Ranger
and a Icatian Scout. He goes, does nothing. I attack with the Unicorn
my next turn. I can see him thinking about the options, but he doesn't
get the calculations right: I use the Veteran to pump him up, untap
the Veteran with the Ranger, pump him again, and give him first strike
witht he scout. My Unicorn becomes a 4/4 first striker and the Spider
dies. It's all about the Rangers working those abilities doubly. He
plays a Durkwood Boars and somehow removes my Veteran, but I draw my
Boars and we trade them. Then he pulls the bomb: Scaled Wurm. But I
pull my Craw Wurm, and backed with the Scout, Craw beats Scaled
everytime. I continue to play strong cards and overrun him. 1-0. He
looks kind of pissed, but I'm thinking to myself, that's the way this
game is played: you have to be ready for a fast assault and if you're
not, don't blame luck for your loss. My only sideboard card is the Cop
Green.

Second game goes much slower. I get out an early Freewind and start
hitting for a point a turn. He seems frustrated that he can't draw
something to deal with it, so I figure he must have some flyers I
haven't seen. The ground battle becomes pretty neutralized with both
of us having big creatures out and me unable to pull out my white
enablers faster than he pulls removal to get rid of them. I get in a
few points when I pull the Bureacrats to tap his Labyrinth Minotaur
(told you Bureucrats rocks) and hit him with the Unicorn once or twice
until he gets a bigger blocker, and meanwhile the falcon does
something like 12 points of damage (I guess he must have played red
and not black), and I finally draw Puffy and the two finish him off. I
offer my hand after the match and he refuses to shake "to a good
match", because to him it wasn't since he couldn't draw what he
wanted. Hey, it's a fucking game, be sportsmanlike about it... it is
true, however, that he had plenty to deal with flyers, including an
air elemental (oh thank god I didn't see that!), so I agreed that he
had gotten a little unlucky in that game. Nonetheless, I think I had
the answers for him. And I would always shake a hand that is offered
to me; the only time I wouldn't is if I'm just about ready to clean
someone's clock. To me it's an act of agression... It doesn't seem to
be that for him though, so I let it go. Everyone else has been really
really nice, friendlier than the big tourneys I have been to in the SF
area, so I figure I am just misunderstanding.

Now the time is really desperate. That only took 20 minutes, so I make
a few more calls trying to find a later flight... no one seems to fly
later than this, and try as I might I cannot see calling up my
girlfriend to tell her I won't be home until the next day. I come back
and tell Karl the organizer that it is looking bad for
me. Fortunately, the other quarterfinal is finished and we can start
the semi right then. OK, it's only 8:30...

He's playing black as his main color, and... I'm having trouble
remembering the other colors. He's a real nice guy as well, not
stressed at all at the situation, but he makes a couple of
mistakes. I start with the Veteran and a Mesa Falcon and hit him for a
couple of twos while he draws land. He plays Funeral March on my
Falcon and then Infernal Harvests it... for 1! I've got two mana
untapped and save the Falcon (and the Veteran indirectly). I then get
down the Healer and a Ranger, and am holding Sacred Boon, pluse I've
got 6 mana, 3 white... there is almost no way anything I have is going
to die at this point. I get some fat green down and protect my
creature advantage and that's all she wrote. I haven't seen too much
of his deck, but I'm feeling *very* confident. I search my sideboard
and put in the CoP Black (he had Derelor, for instance, and I wanted
some protection against it). I look for something to take out and
decide just to leave it all in, saying "ah, that's good enough." His
buddy is there and laugingly says "I think he just said he doesn't
have to sideboard against you." That wasn't exactly true, but it was
close enough to be funny.

I don't remember the second game all that much. All I could think
about was the time and whether I would be able to play in the final. I
beleive I played Puffy 3rd turn and that he basically led me to
victory. I also remember him blocking my Boars with his Derelor, only
to have me Sacred Boon it, saving the Boars and making them a 4/7
monstrosity in the process. This was the key play, and after that it
was over.

So here I am in my first ever PTQ and I have cruised into the finals
and feel very confident about my deck. The other two are playing, but
it seems to be a battle. I don't see either of their decks, but I
think that neither of these players are the top players I have been
warned about (I don't know that for sure), and I've got to think I've
got at least a 50-50 shot at the Dream result: $250 and an invite to
the Pro Tour, all in my first ever PTQ! But it's 9:00 already, and
they're only in their second game! I call other airlines, I recheck my
flight, etc.: nothing! I am backed against a wall and really starting
to freak out... How could I have been so stupid as to book a Saturday
flight?! What was I thinking? How can I be smart enough to make it
through to the final but not even smart enough to *play* in the
final? I try and try to figure something out, but to no avail. I am
fucked; I am going to have to give up what is almost certainly going
to be my only legitimate shot *ever* of going to a Pro Tour without
even a whimper. As a last resort, I interrupt the other semifinal and
tell them my situation, wondering if either player would *not* take
the invite if offered. I offer to give them the money but take the
invite if they don't want to go. Unfortunately, one says he would go,
and the other says he probably would after talking to his wife.. well,
I guess I can understand that sentiment at this point can't I?!
Meanwhile, the guy who I beat in the semis keeps trying to get me to
retroactively concede to him so he can play in the finals, but while I
understand his plight, I also think that that is not fair to the other
semifinalists, and as well, I don't want to give up my victory in case
somehow one of them changes their mind and I can somehow wangle an
invite... perhaps there will not be that many people going and WOTC
will extend an invite to a second-place finisher or something.

With a "curses, foiled again!" I grab my prizes: 22 packs of Visions
in some asiatic language (I don't know the difference between chinese
and Korean though I don't think it was Japanese), and a 5th Starter in
the same language...a ctually, I think it was 4th, since the date was
1996 on the bottom. Anyways, the prizes didn't really mean that much
to me at this point: I wanted to go to Pro Tour! Yes, it was in
Germany and it would have cost me alot, but I'm almost sure I would
have gone anyways... I probably would have had to take Kristin, blah
blah blah, so a tiny bit of me was relieved to be spared this
difficult choice, but basically I just couldn't believe my own
stupidity.

I had to run all over and drive like a maniac, but I made the flight
with about 5 minutes to spare. My only other solace was that if
nothing else, I probably had the most unusual pro tour story to tell
that I have ever heard, and since I lived it, I know it was real...

The organizer and the other players were very sympathetic, but
obviuosly there was nothing they could do and of course it wasn't
their fault. I can imagine them wondering "what the hell was that
whirlwind?" and wondering whether I was a strong but very weird
player, or just a scrub who got lucky... I'm not absolutely sure
myself. Certainly, I think I'm a reasonable player, but at my shop I
only come a little better than middle of the pack most of the time. On
the other hand, there are some fantastic players at my shop, and while
I really enjoyed the SLC people and they were not scrubs, I saw more
mistakes both in deck construction and in play than I ever see back
home. So perhaps I'm a good player in a land of very good players,
making me relatively strong in more normal places.

I've actually seen a report from the tourney but it wasn't from
someone in the final 8, so it doesn't mention my antics... I'm hoping
someone else writes in so I can find out who won!

And for the rest of my Magic career, *I* will be the one repeatedly
telling the story of how I almost made it, if it hadn't been for that
damn airplane, etc (imagine a gravelly old man's voice saying this
story day after day...). And of course, when i tell the story, it will
have been a foregone conclusion that I would have won the finals... I
suppose if there is any saving grace it might be that at least I
didn't go out on a loss... no, that doesn't help any. I would have
rather played and lost than to have not played at all.

Props: Karl the organizer for a very well run tourney; all of the nice
people at the tourney for making a stranger welcome; the players at
KK's who have taught me so much about Magic sealed deck, even though
it is usually while they are drubbing me.

Slops: to people who can't remember that Magic is a game, like the guy
who got all upset about the proxy lands, the guy who wanted to take
someone outside over a dispute, and they guy that wouldn't shake my
hand after a match, as well as the people at my own shop who take it
way too seriously; also, to anyone who does bushleague things like put
their cards off to the side so you won't remember that they're in
play... no, no one did this at this tourney, it's just a pet peeve.

Regards,
Andy Cleary