Subject: Edinburgh PTQ - 7 Nov 97 Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 16:29:22 +0000 From: Graham N T Thomson To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Edinburgh PTQ for Mainz - How not to go about winning a qualifier, by Graham Thomson. Friday 7th November Phone home at 6pm from the lap dancing bar to say I will be late and discover the boys have already arrived. Discuss tactics for the tournament and agree that Truc Bui’s sealed deck building ideas are on the money then hit the town. Saturday 8th November Up unreasonably early, slightly rough. The boys are introduced to the little ceramic chap at the bottom of the garden and touring team Gnome is reformed: MegloGnome: Robin McCandless Gnomeless: Mike Cooper DipsoGnome: Graham Thomson Turned up at the Cafe Royal for the main event and quickly realise we have a major English invasion. At one point I am sitting chatting to some of the English blokes and realise that out of the five of us at the table we have the UK #1, 2 and 3, we toast the London crew. Out of the 77 decks handed out I get a decent one to register. We are then informed that if you miss register a deck, you get a warning and that if you receive a miss registered deck you also get a warning! Settle down to the first pint of beer and get told multiple times about god deck #31. I don’t get deck #31 but I am not disappointed with what I get: Lead Belly Chimera Magma Mine Phyrexian Walker Tawnos’s Weaponry Time Bomb Wall of Spears Wooden Sphere Animate Dead Crypt Rats Fallen Askari Gloom Python Rag Man Terror Vampire Bats Wake of Vultures Weakness Wicked Reward Air Elemental Breezekeeper Dark Maze Enervate Knight of Mists Mystic Veil Prodigal Sorcerer Ray of Command Reef Pirates Time and Tide Updraft Vision Charm x 2 Wall of Air Bull Elephant Chub Toad Fog Fyndhorn Elder Giant Spider Kyscu Drake Regeneration River Boa Rowen Scavenger Folk Warthog Wind Shear Suleiman’s Legacy The Brute Dwarven Soldier Firebreathing Goblin War Drums Heat Wave Hearth Charm Hill Giant Jokulhaups Rock Slide x 2 Sabertooth Tiger Solfatara Wall of Fire Aysen Bureaucrats Cop Blue Cop Green Death Speakers Death Ward Gossamer Chains Parapet x 2 Resistance Fighter Sacred Boon Forest x 5 Island x 4 Mountains x 5 Plains x 5 Swamp x 4 As agreed with team Gnome I don’t check the deck I am given as it will only get me a warning if it is wrong (it doesn’t matter, I forget to write my name on the sheet and get a warning anyway) and this gives me extra time to build my deck. Using Truc Bui’s Starters, Bench and Cheerleaders approach to building a deck, I come up with the following (criticise if you will): Magma Mine Time Bomb Wall of Spears Animate Dead Crypt Rats Fallen Askari Terror Wake of Vultures Air Elemental Breezekeeper Dark Maze Knight of Mists Prodigal Sorcerer Ray of Command Bull Elephant Chub Toad Fyndhorn Elder Giant Spider Kyscu Drake River Boa Rowen Scavenger Folk Warthog Forest x 5 + 3 Island x 4 + 1 Swamp x 4 + 1 Time for my second pint. Round 1 v Graeme Sharpe Graeme is a local player and this is his second tournament. He quickly succumbs 2-0 to my stronger deck. 1-0-0 (2-0) Over my third pint I discover that the other two members of team Gnome had to play each other in round 1. Round 2 v Mike "Fox" Blaser Fox makes a couple of mistakes in the first duel and slows down. Eventually I beat him down and we start the second duel but never finish it, time is called. 2-0-0 (3-0) I go to the bar for my 4th pint and a pint for Fox. MegloGnome rags me about being a slow player. Round 3 v Andrew Terry Andrew is a fellow member of team Highlander and the 1995 UK Champion, this was not going to be easy. The first duel takes forever and I beat him down slowly. The second duel starts to go Andrew’s way, I have lost track of time, I am down to 1 life and time is called. I check with Andrew that I wasn’t stalling and he assures me that I wasn’t. 3-0-0 (4-0) MegloGnome starts offering advice on how to play faster and I take solace in pint #5. At this point I start hearing rumours about a player being given a formal warning for sexism! Round 4 v James Love James taught his younger brother Gordon how to play magic and Gordon was both Scotland’s first representative on the Pro Tour (Edinburgh PTQ for Paris winner) and the only person to take a match off me in my 40 match winning streak earlier this year! Most players believe James to be better than his brother so I wasn’t going to take this one easily. I was wrong, James didn’t get started and I took him down. 4-0-0 (6-0) I am waiting at the bar gently sipping pint #6 when MegloGnome finishes his match and I smile at his attempts to keep the "slow play" stream going. There are 4 of us on 4-0-0: Ben Sanders, Julia Ball, Warren Marsh and me. We discuss IDing the rest of the tournament but decide against it and I reassure Julia that the prat given a warning for sexism deserved it. Round 5 v Ben Sanders Ben, a former member of team Gnome (Hair Golem), is fresh back from the Chicago Pro Tour, came 6th at the UK nationals and is the #1 sealed deck player in Scotland. We have played many times, I am slightly up on constructed (I beat him in the constructed element of the UK nationals with a 17 point fireball and kept him out of the UK team, if only I had known) and Ben is significantly up on limited. Ben has an uncanny knack of shuffling the land out of my deck, so I spend 5 minutes shuffling my deck to death. Duel 1: I lose the toss, draw my cards and look in dismay at my single swamp. Ben starts strong but I top deck like a professional, draw 4 land out of 5 cards and beat him down with the big blue flyers. Duel 2: I draw 1 land again and Ben steals my lucky charms, by the time I draw any more lands I am dead. Duel 3: Ben makes a lunge for my lucky charms, I parry with my empty beer glass and my deck comes out like a train. 5-0-0 (8-1) I retire to the bar for pint #7 and find out that Julia "Tigger" Ball is the other unbeaten player, we agree to ID. Round 6 v Julia Ball We play for fun but not for long. 5-0-1 (8-1) We sit and chat in the bar (pint #8). Round 7 v Alasdair Young Alasdair is the last "bad boy" of Magic in Scotland. He was suspected of attempted bribery at the only other PTQ held north of the border and generally unpopular with the magic playing community for his antics. If beating him would help, I would do it, but both of us will make the last eight whatever the result so we play for fun. I am now starting to make serious mistakes and Alasdair beats me 3-0. 5-0-2 (8-1) Pint #9 goes down smoothly and is accompanied by Fox practising his Vulcan deathgrip on the hapless Julia. Yes Fox, the neck is an erogenous zone, but it is more fun if they are conscious. The final eight is announced. I am delighted to hear that all three members of team Gnome have made it, as has Julia (5 out of the last 8 players are English!). I sit down for the booster draft with pint #10 in hand and watch in disbelief as I pull a Disintegrate in my first booster and soon discover that nobody else appears to be collecting red! I decide that white will be my biggest headache and take out any white cards I believe will cause me problems. I ask for 17 mountains (loudly) and end up with the following "in yer face" deck: Goblin Swine Rider Orcish Conscripts Dwarven Soldier Ironclaw Orcs Brassclaw Orcs Dwarven Vigilantes x 2 Dwarven Warriors Raging Gorilla x 2 Sabertooth Tiger x 2 Suq’Ata Lancer Fire Drake Hurloon Minotaur Orcish Artillery Orcish Farmer Viashino Sanstalker Stone Giant Disintegrate Shatter Song of Blood Stone Rain + 17 Mountains Time for pint #11. Quarter Finals v Ben Jacobson Ben got through to the last eight with deck #31, he is a member of the same crew as Warren Marsh and he is playing white / green. The referee takes my score pad off me and keeps score. First duel, I draw eight cards by mistake, show the ref and get my second warning. Ben gets out a Greater Realm of Preservation and a Prismatic Ward, I manage to over run him. Duel 2, I am a mess, making mistakes worse than a scrub with a referee taking damage I do my opponent off my life total! I ask the referee how long to go, "5 seconds" he answers, I end my turn and Ben kills me - 1 each. I make it through on count back. I suddenly realise that despite my inability to play limited, I am in danger of qualifying for Mainz. The Scots have done better than the English in the quarter finals, all three are through (unfortunately that means that the other two members of team Gnome are out). Just time to grab pint #12. Semi Final v Alasdair Young Alasdair just failed to qualify for Paris at the last PTQ in Scotland and had a point to prove. I was determined that I wasn’t going to let the last bad boy of Magic in Scotland represent us in Germany. Duel 1 was close but he got me. Duel 2 started and was also closely contested, the turning point appeared to be when I laid Dwarven Vigilantes and lowering my voice instructed him to "bolt it", Alasdair duly incinerated them and I went on to win that duel with my Orcish Artillery. Last orders were called and one of the referees fetched me pint #13, it was unlucky but not for me, I swept Alasdair in the third game. Alasdair played like a gent, and took the title of most unlucky Magic player in Scotland with good grace. It was now 1:30am and despite enthusiasm by both Warren Marsh and myself, playing the final was impractical as we were being chucked out of the venue, so we agreed a draw. PROPS The most important thing that came out of this tournament was that the last bad boy of Magic in Scotland had reformed. There are still some numpties behaving like prats, but now none of the good players are - PEER PRESURE WORKS!!!! Julia "Tigger" Ball for her bounce. Fox for proving Leonard Nimoy wasn’t taking the piss. Scottish referees for being tough but fair and certainly not cowable by top name players. Frank Herbert. The courtesy of everyone I played. SLOPS Being a sexist prat - you know who you are. Referees who can’t count ;-). My thanks if you have managed to read all the way through to the end, my apologies for any errors in the report but my memory got a little fuzzy towards the end. I won’t write another report like this unless there is an overwhelming response to do so. See you in Germany. Graham Thomson