Subject: PTQ Kiel 11/02 report Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 01:36:39 +0100 From: Sven Grottke Last weekend, a pro-tour qualifier for Mainz was held onboard a passenger ferry on the Baltic Sea. Although I sucked big time, it was one of the funniest tournaments I ever played at, and definitely the most stylish one. There were about 80 players from all over Germany, and Team Highway to Hell made a strong showing with 6 team members ready to fight their way to the top. The tournament started at 7 p.m. on Saturday, just as the ship left Kiel and set sails for Goeteborg. I won't go into detail about the sealed part of the tournament. I finished with an amazing record of 3-1-2, and of course this meant I was out. But 3 team members managed to qualify for the draft. Final eight players were: Claudia Loroff \ Martin Luedecke all from Team Highway to Hell Martin Langfeld / Bjoern Falensky (good player from Hamburg (?)) Jan Wacker Gerrit Loeber Thomas ??? forgot the last name The draft format was Rochester draft, with 2 Boosters of 5E and 1 VI, and with several strong drafters on the table, it promised to be quite interesting. It was an unusual draft for the format, with green getting very weak creatures, and only 3 good blue fliers. However, there was a lot of black and red removal, including 3 Nekrataals, and 6 (yes, six) Rockslides. The resulting decks were as follows: Claudia played strong white and blue control, with some green fatties. She had drafted 2 D'Avenant Archers and a Flood among others, but lacked punch to finish off her opponents (a Giant Caterpillar just ain't enough. Claudia :) Martin (Luedecke) drafted a solid green, red and white creature deck, with solid ground creatures like Craw Wurm, and big flyers like an Archangel and a Viashivan Dragon. His direct creature removal was limited to an Incinerate, though, a fact that would haunt him later in the Semis. Martin (Langfeld) had drafted black, green and blue, with good black removal, several blue counters, and some green meat to round it off. Bjoern had probably the strongest deck on the table, with all the good blue fliers, strong support spells like Counterspell and Giant Growth, and some medium green ground creatures. Very good deck. Jan was one of the heavy red drafters, but it seemed he got some the weaker cards. He drafted a bit narrow-minded, too, and passed several strong off-colour cards. Gerrit had got one of the strangest draft decks I've ever seen. More on this later. Thomas had, for some unknown reason, decided that white weenie was a cool deck to go for, and drafted every crappy little white creature he could get his hands on. This involved taking a Tundra Wolve over a Giant Growth, and some similar things. Well, he got what he wanted. And lost. Miserably. The other guy had drafted almost mono-red, with Disintegrate, Flare, Sandstalker, Ball Lightning (!) and some other heavy-red stuff, plus some black removal. He also got 2 Rockslides. Quarterfinals: Bjoern beat Claudia. Gerrit beat Jan. Martin Langfeld lost to the guy whose name I forgot. Martin Luedecke beat Thomas, who finally realized that Tundra Wolves and Bay Falcons just can't stop an angry Archangel :) Semifinals: Bjoern beat The Other Guy (tm) Martin was paired against Gerrit. Their match was strange. Gerrit was placed between some of the best drafters during the Rochester, and so he came up with something one would consider a pile of crap for a limited event. But he had six cards in his deck that made the difference: Nekrataal, Time Elemental, Shimmering Efreet, and 3 Funeral March. Can you say combo ? His deck was nearly helpless unless he drew at least one of his combos. But he did. The first game was decided when he put a Funeral Charm on Martin's Suq'Ata Lancer, and had a Shimmering Efreet in play, Every other turn, the Lancer would phase out, and another of Martin's creatures would march straight to the graveyard. Nasty. But the second game was even worse. Gerrit mulliganed, and was able to bring out a Time Elemental on turn 3, followed by a fourth land on turn 4. From now on, Martin just didn't manage to get this fourth land on the table. His mountainjust kept bouncing. Here the big weakness of his deck became obvious: he just couldn't deal with the damn walking boomerang. After a few rounds, he managed to draw his lonely Incinerate, and the blue annoyance went down, finally. At least, he thought so. Until Gerrit played the Recall. Oops. Here we go again, "Take this mountain back to your hand, please.". The game was over at this point. Although Gerrit made some stupid mistakes, like forgetting to pay the upkeep for a Dance of Many, he just couldn't lose this game. Martin conceded short after a Nekrataal joined the game, followed by the Funeral March/ Shimmering Efreet Combo again. So congrats go to Bjoern and Gerrit for getting their invitations to Mainz. One final comment about the ship: It was big. Really, really, big. No, bigger than that. It was BIG! Honestly, it was bigger than a large appartment block. You only realize the meaning of this when standing at the deck and staring fifty feet down onto the sea. It absolutely rocked. I really hope there will be a tournament at a similar location, again. Sven Grottke Team Highway to Hell sfs on #mtgleague Email: sfs@cs.tu-berlin.de