Subject: [Report] My time at PT Chicago Date: Mon, 13 Oct 1997 11:09:22 PDT From: Chris Warren Well, this past weekend was PT Chicago (no surprise) so I'd planned to go down there and play some extended and maybe T2 or a little sealed. As I wrote Friday morning, overnight Thursday, I had my entire collection stolen from my car overnight. I was extremely upset and considered blowing off the PT altogether. My wife was very supportive however and offered to go down with me Friday to play in the mixed-doubles competition, even though she's played maybe 5 games in the last year and a half. The Chicago PT was being held at Navy Pier, which is a great recreation spot sticking right off of Downtown Chicago. They held the PT and all the side events in a single Festival Hall, and there was plenty of room. Besides the main and scheduled side events, if you wanted them to run something, just tell them, when 8 people signed up, you had a side tournament. There was a portal tent, some chess, L5R, and a couple dealer booths. We come in a little early, buy a life counter, borrow a die to keep track of life for my wife, and sign up for the mixed doubles. Each pair gets 2 5E starters and 4 5E boosters to make 2 decks with, guys play guys, women play women, and you add the aggregate scores. 6 teams play. My wife likes black, and the black is solid with a Necro! To take advantage of the necro, we give her B/W with 2 samite healers, an alabaster potion, and 2 disenchants. I see 2 floods, a couple of spell blasts and a Phantom Monster, and a Wind Spirit and go with blue. Green's solid with a couple Scrybs, a couple Elves, a couple Mammoths, and a spider. I add a Scimitar and THREE Grapeshot Catapults to go for air superiority. Red's pretty weak, with just a Disintegrate, so I take it and a Bird Maiden, since my wife doesn't want to go 3 colors. Odd note: we had FOUR Glasses of Urza. Can I see your hand? Round I: I'm bad with names. From Minneapolis/St Paul Neither game is very close, I fly over him, clearing blockers with grapeshots and holding the ground with Spiders, Mammoths, and Homarid Warriors. He makes a couple mistakes including casting a Sea Serpent with U from a fellwar. Suzanne loses 2-0 to a Shivan. ouch. 1-0/2-0(0-0-1,2-2) Round II: An older couple, I don't recall where from, nor much of the games except I won handily and suzanne wins 2-1 thanks to a Broken Visage and a lot of DP. 2-0/4-0(1-0-1,6-3) Round III: Bobby Ghaheri and Jessica (?), both IRC regulars (Bzzatch and Kyttyn). Bobby's playing U/R and smacks me hard. He had an Air Elemental, a Sibilant Spirit, and 2 X spells, and also nice groundpounders. I lose 2-1, Suzanne wins in 2 thanks to Broken Visaging a 8/9 Carrion Ants to take out a Craw Wurm. 2-1/5-2(1-0-2,9-5) good enough for second place. We get a whopping 3 boosters. Winners get 4. Fair enough. We meet some more folks from IRC then decide to join an 8-player single elim ALICE sealed deck tournament. I pull good support spells pretty much across the board but NO creatures. Green has a Deadly Insect and a Gorilla Pack, but zero elsewise, unless you count the Spirit Guide. RUB seems the least hideous with great support: Power Sink, Ray of Command, 2 Guerilla Tactics, Pyroclasm, Death Spark, Dark Banishing, and Withering Wisps, as well as an Icy. I count every creature in those colors plus my artifact creatures that are as good as a Pearled Unicorn or better and count 12. My big hitters are a Phantasmal Fiend and a Benthic Explorers. I add a couple really bad ones to fill it out. Suzanne playes RGw. I hit a PT player round one from Tampa, I think, and beat him twice in CLOSE games. Icy saves me until Wisps bring control down. Suzanne loses to the guy I play the next round 2-1. Game 2 (Semis), I hit another PT player who has decent fliers, including a Storm Elemental and an Ivory Gargoyle and lose in a non-pretty way, especially after my attempt to banish the storm elemental hits a force of will in game 2. We leave right away but miss the Ferris wheel by 5 minutes. Saturday, we take a day off from Magic. We go down to a riverboat casino in the evening for dinner, then to see the Village People in concert and learn the official way to make the M in the YMCA dance. Then we hit the boat for an hour and win about $200. Get home at 2:30 am and try to sleep. Sunday, Suzanne breaks out of work early so we can go together. The last official side tournament is 1:00, but we get to the hall about 1:05 to find out that not only have they closed the entry for the ALICE sealed at 1:00, but they're "out of product" and won't be running any sealed side tourneys. WHAT? And, apparently, they'd been running sealed all night long. Well, that bites. What to do now? We decide to watch the finals. I'll do a recap in another post. After that, we go over to the side tourneys and somehow they've got more goods, so after a break for the awards ceremony, we play in a Mi/Vi sealed tournament. I pull an AMAZING deck. Blue's so-so, but in red I get a Torch, Geyser, Incinerate, Fireblast, Keeper, Ekundu Cyclops, and Kyscu drake. Green gives a Jungle Wurm, Jungle Patrol, Mortal Wound, Simoon, Windreaper Falcon, Giant Caterpillar, Bull Elephant, and Stalking Tiger. I had a choice between black and white. White had the counter-torch griffin, duskrider falcon, disenchant, and wall of resistance, and black had crypt rats, wall of corpses, shadow guildmage, Dirtwater Wraith, and Restless Dead. I decide to go black largely for the Shadow GM. So, I have an excellent R/G/b deck. First round, I play a guy named James, I think? Maybe John. Fairly new player, fat deck (50+ cards). I have bigger groundpounders and control the air with DD. I kill his Boa both games even after he trickeries an Island over to me for another forest. I win 2-0. Sitting around chatting with my next opponent between rounds, I hear the weirdest thing I've ever heard. Two of his teammates (one a PT competitor) come by to chew the fat and they ask who he's playing, he nods and says "Chris." "Chris Warren, isn't it?" I nod. "Yeah, he made Blue Velvet." "Oh, yeah, I play that all the time." I nearly fall over. He keeps saying how he'll lose to me because of my god deck, and it pretty much happens that way as I dispatch him in round 2. Round 3 (the finals) I hit a wall. Game 1, I draw a couple of mountains and every forest in the deck but no swamps. Naturally, I've drawn all 5 of my black cards. I lose with a useless hand. Game 2, I draw 4 of my black cards in my opening hand. I can still play and we trade tit for tat. I FINALLY grab a swamp in a bad position, and take the Crypt Rats so I can block and ratbomb for 1 to kill 3 critters and clear the board. This takes me to 2 and my opponent to about 11. I have a Wall of Corpses in play. I drop 3 1/1s and start plinking. I get him down to 6. To 3, I'm still at 2. He draws a Giant Mantis. I have a Hearth Charm in hand. What would you do? There are about 8 solutions to win in 2 turns, but why give him the shot at a bolt or torch? he's playing RWG. I attack with all 3. he blocks 1, I hearth charm to make my attackers 2/1. He uses his other 5 mana to REFLECT DAMAGE my Restless Dead's damage back to me. ARRRRRRGH. I lose. Oh well. For second place, I pull 4 boosters: HL, WL, Korean 4E, and Spanish Mirage. All in all, a good time, and probably the last sanctioned play I'll see for a while. Thanks to everyone who sympathized and especially those at the tourneys who gave us unwanted commons and occasionally some uncommons and rares (I still can't believe I was saying things like "hey, does this disenchant belong to anyone?" and "hey, LAND!"). Over and out, may the mana flow well for you --Chris ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com