Subject: Northeast Regionals Report (NYC) (fwd) Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 12:50:59 -0400 (EDT) From: Scott Greenleaf To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Seven of us headed to Neutral Ground Saturday hoping that one or two would slip through to a US Nationals invite. The seven of us (a team which, as of this writing, still has no name) are Al Newman, Carl LiBassi, Chris Donovan, Erik Rodriguez, Greg Bole, Sergio Costanza, and myself. We went into the Northeast Regionals with some confidence that we had made some wise meta-game choices. We expected the field to have a lot of Donias 5cU, a lot of 5cG with tradewinds, some red weenie/burn, and some white weenie, among other things. As last Saturday approached, our respect for and desire to beat 5cU increased. Carl, Chris and Sergio designed a clever, deadly Necro-Firestorm black weenie deck with lots of land destruction. Al's analysis of the Dojo's "Decks To Beat" was further confirmation that land destruction was a strong means of disruption. With about a week of preparation left before Regionals, Carl's friend Mark Balabon communicated to Carl a very fast, very hard-to-stop black weenie deck with scrolls. The deck that the seven of us played on Saturday was very similar to Mark's deck. Thank you Mark! Six of us played almost identical decks, and Al played a beefier version. Al listed his decklist in his report, with the name Ritual Madness. The rest of us had smaller creatures (Ritual Madness Junior?): 4 Sarcomancy 4 Black Knight 4 Pump Knight 4 Dauthi Slayer 4 Dauthi Horror 4 Erg Raiders 3 Unholy Strength 3 Cursed Scroll 3 Choking Sands 4 Dark Ritual 2 Terror 1 Kaervek's Spite ("Come forth, burly protector,...") 3 Wasteland 17 Swamp Sideboard: 2 Nev's Disk 2 Perish 3 Wall of Souls 2 Bottomless Pit 2 Forsaken Wastes 2 Spinning Darkness 1 Terror Let me briefly run down my matchups: Round 1: Alec Hsu playing Merfolk Unfortunately for Alec, he didn't see much more than Merfolk Traders in each of our games. The second game saw him play first turn Svul. Temple, with me following with Swamp, Ritual, Ritual, Sarcomancy, Unholy, Choking Sands. 1-0 2-0 Round 2: Chris Proper playing WW Chris beat me down the first game with a flickering-warded, empirial armored nomad en-cor and a warrior en-cor. I learned a valuable lesson...I let him take something back that I really shouldn't have, and I won't again. The next game I terrored away his army and beat him down. He actually said "Terror? Nobody plays with terror." Does anyone else see the irony here? He's playing with flickering ward and acts surprised to see terror. Third game was all about my bottomless pit turning his empirial armor into a giant strength and outracing him. 2-0 4-1 Round 3: Al playing Ritual Madness My only advantage over all is that his deck is more mana intensive. If he gets out his beefy creatures, it's very bad for me. He gets enough land both games to serve up severe beatdown. 2-1 4-3 Round 4: ???? playing Golum-Necro This match was pretty uneventful. Golum-Necro has a very tough time with black weenies, especially shadow creatures. 3-1 6-3 Round 5: Udo Reinhart playing Burn. First game I just got burned out fast. Second game, the Wall of Souls was enough to let me win. Third game was very frustrating...I had to take Ball Lightning hits two turns in a row, never seeing a terror, spin or wall of souls. 3-2 7-5 At this point I knew I was out of the running, but I wanted to keep playing for the competition. And if I helped Al's tiebreakers in the process, even better. At this point, Al was 5-0, and Chris, Greg, and Erik were all 4-1. Carl and Sergio had dropped out early after bad matchups and sub-par draws. I was very excited at our team's prospects for Nationals invites. Round 6: Eric Gong playing Donias 5cU First Game: Swamp, Ritual, Ritual, Slayer, Horror, Unholy (followed by another Unholy on turn 2). Second Game: This game lasted longer, but had the same result. 4-2 9-5 Round 7: Jason Gong playing Red/Green He beat me the first game with a Nettletooth Djinn. The next game I slowed down his assault with Walls of Souls. The final game I got a killer draw. I perished away three creatures on my third turn, choking sands his only source of red mana the next turn, and after some beatdown I Kaervek's Spited for the win and the exclamation point on a pretty good day individually for me. I hadn't ever played in a constructed tournament this size before (about 160 players), and hadn't been to a large (>30) constructed tournament since a Feb '97 gray matter tourney, so I was pleased. My 5-2 record and tiebreakers were good for 14th overall. Three of my teammates finished ahead with Chris at 10th (5-1-1), Erik at 8th (6-1), and Al at 6th (6-1). Greg had dropped after going 4-2, but I noticed that that was still good enough for 34th place. I've never felt more proud to be part of this team than I did on Saturday. We worked hard to prepare for Regionals, and have some really nice results to show for our efforts. First, let me say that Neutral Ground did an outstanding job with this tournament...it ran seamlessly. I have to say that I am so happy for Erik and Al. Erik is an excellent player; Al expressed to me that he thought Erik stands out among us in that he always knows the best play to make in any given situation. I agree. On our team, Al, Carl, Chris and Greg have each played in either a Pro Tournament or a US Nationals. Soon Erik will as well. (Serge, does this mean you and I have some work to do?) As for Al, his results speak for themselves. Top 8 in two consecutive Northeast Regionals is in impressive accomplishment. So, now the attention switches to analyzing Exodus and preparing Al and Erik for nationals. And, then there is the matter of the team name... Scott Greenleaf Questions, comments, and team names welcome.