Subject: NE Regionals Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 18:11:04 -0400 From: Jeff Remillard To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Hi Frank, here is another report on the New England Regionals on 05/16/98 This was my first Regional Tournament that I have ever been to. This place was really nice since we were at Golf Club. But there was one problem with the location of the place, there were no signs on how to get there or anything. It took us about a hour and a half to get there from Western mass. Once we got there the parking was decent and the room which it was going to be held was nice a large but we had exceeded the fire limit for that room so we had to relocate the tournament outside near the pool where we had taken up the whole building inside and we had to actually place people outside on tables, which wasn't bad since it was nice and sunny and almost no wind. My friends and I all knew what we were going to play for a few weeks at this point and we had pretty much fine tuned our decks pretty much as much as we could with what we had for cards. I went with a pretty basic version of sligh. I waited for the first pairings to go up and I went to my seat. My first match I played against was a 5CG. I though to myself well this shouldn't be too hard. Well I was wrong, the first game i got creature screwed and i couldn't do much about anything. Game 2 was just about the same I got screwed that game. Round 2 came along and I was sat outside in the nice cool air. I ended up playing a kid who was playing some kind of Black/Red deck with drudge skeletons and Shivans. The first game went by quick with Squ'ata lancers, and Mogg Flunkies. He wasn't able to get anything but a drudge skeleton which died to a Incinerate. Game 2 was fairly similar except this time he was able to cast 2 of his shivans, but he desided to attack with one after he casted the other and had no land to really do much damage to me with the first one to really make much of a difference. The turn after that I ended up attacking with 2 Squ'ata lancers 2 sandstalkers and like 1 mogg flunkie with 2 fireblasts in my hand to make sure i finished it off. Round 3 was one similar to the first round. I played against a green deck, with basicly the same idea as the 5CG that I played against earlier. The first game took a little while since I got a lot of creatures out but he finished me off with a Lygoryph (or how ever its spelt). The second game went almost identicle to the first with me losing 2 straight. My record at this point was 1-2 for matches and 3-4 in games. Round 4, I ended up playing someone with a control deck. The first match I ended up getting about all my small creatures countered and thereafter he couldn't really keep up with everything and I defeated him in about 15 mins. The second match ran a little shorter because he only had all of 2 counterspells and I had about 5 spells and 2 land in my hand, and the match ended with a almost flawless win for me. Round 5, I played against a Tradewind deck. The match was fairly even up until I pulled a cursed scroll. He had no defence about it and I only had one card in my hand the whole time after casting it, the match was won with a fireblast with the normal casting cost. Match 2, took less time since I got out a creature every round, and i made sure to keep 1 mountain untapped for a Pyroblast just incase he tried anything. Round 6, I played against a green/white deck quite similar to the previous green decks I played against. This had to of been the best match I played, not only was this person enjoyable to talk to and everything but the game was a standstill for quite a while, the only way I won was from 2 cursed scrolls in play so i could ping off his creatures off one by one. The second match had to be the most incredible of the day (at least for me). Every other turn I was able to cast a creature. But on his second turn he was able to cast a COP:Red on me. I was thinking to myself at this point that i was screwed. Well after I had gotten out about 2 mogg flunkies he Armageddon'ed with a bird of paradise, and a wall of blossoms, he then played a land and told me to go. A few turns later i was able to pull some more land. He was able to play some pain lands which cost him the game basicly. But after about 6 or 7 more turns I had 3 Flunkies, 1 fanatic, 2 fireslingers, and 2 sandstalkers, and he had all of a sex monkey, and like 4 land untapped, he was able to prevent all but 3 damage. Which put him at 10, i then fanatic'ed, fireslinged, then dual fireblasted him. He was shocked. The match lasted a while and everyone around us was amazed. Afterwords he asked me to autograph a Jackal pup for him. Round 7, I played against another Sligh deck for the first time of the night. Both of our decks were similar, except he had chaos charms which he pinged off my pups with. But I was able to overcome some of the stuff he had to defeat him. Match 2 ended up a total win for him since i pulled nothing but land except for one fanatic. The 3rd match ended up well in my favor, he was mana hosed and he wasn't able to overcome the forces of fireslingers and lancers. By this point I was doing really well considering this was my first regional tournament and the last match was located at table 14. I was thinking to myself that I might still have a chance in this to make top 8. They annonced that they had to be out of the building by midnight so they were going to inform the people who were still in contention for top 8. I ended up only 4 tables away from being there. I desided to play last round just for the hell of it. Round 8, I played against a counter/burn deck. The first match was a slaugher to me, i wasn't able to do anything since he counterspelled most everything I cast and he just burned me with small burn spells. Match 2 ran almost identicle, except i was able to get him down to 1 life and then the bottle gnomes came out and saved him, since i couldn't kill them off then do 7 more damage to him. I ended the tournament with a 5-3 record, and i went 11-7 for matches. This is the deck that I played 4x Fireslinger 4x Jackal pup 4x Mogg Fanatic 4x Mogg Flunkie 4x Squ'ata Lancer 4x Viashino sandstalker 4x Incinerate 4x Fireblast 2x Goblin Vandal 2x Kaervek's Torch 1x Hammer of Bogardan 1x Goblin bombardment 1x Pallimud 1x Orcish Artillery 4x Cursed scroll 15x Mountain 1x Undiscovered paradise 4x Mogg Hollows Side: 4x Pyroblasts 4x Tranquility 4x Shock 2x disks 1x Vandal