Subject: [TOURNAMENT] WA Regionals report (Winner) Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 19:16:26 -0700 From: scruff@nwnexus.com To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Washingon Regionals report Steven Stadnicki, 16 May 1998 Finally, after the last few weeks of practicing at the small Game Center tournaments, the big day arrives. Despite some terrible outings in its last couple of tournaments (3-2, and then 0-2 the night before, before I dropped), I decided to take my Sliver deck, since I didn't have anything else even remotely put together. (This turned out to be the Right Move.) My friend (and fellow (newly-formed) Team Fox member) Morgan Schweers ran the '2-Pints'-like Kor/Maniac White Weenie he'd been tuning for the last few weeks, and Fox #3 Nate Barnes ran a rather hastily-assembled (and largely sub-optimal) Suicide Black deck. A friend of Nate's from out of town, Mickey Phoenix, also went to the tournament, running a Stompy-esque Mono-G thing he and Nate put together the night before. My final deck configuration came out like this: El Nino Sliver (Sliver'geddon, Stadnicki Sliver, Fox Sliver, call it what you want...) -------------- 4 Crystalline Sliver 4 Muscle Sliver 3 Victual Sliver 3 Winged Sliver 2 Hibernation Sliver 4 Tradewind Rider 4 Wall of Blossoms 2 Uktabi Orangutan 2 Legacy's Allure 3 Armageddon 4 Mana Leak 3 Mox Diamond 4 Reflecting Pool 4 Gemstone Mine 1 City of Brass 1 Undiscovered Paradise 2 Adarkar Wastes 1 Thalakos Lowland 2 Island 2 Brushlands 1 Vec Townships 2 Forest 2 Quicksand 1 Volrath's Stronghold SB: 4 Pyroblast, 3 Hydroblast, 3 Disenchant, 2 Honorable Passage, 2 Perish, 1 Phyrexian Furnace There are a few differences between this deck and the one I ran at the May 8th tournament; I took a cue from the standard Counter-Sliver and dropped 3 Metallics and the Queen to get 2 Hibernations in, then added a 4th Wall of Blossoms and a 4th Mana Leak. The sideboard is also different; the (useless, mostly) Cities of Solitude came out for Passages, and the Lobotomies came out for Perish (after a couple of crushings by fat beatdown decks in its last couple of outings). I would have been better-served by the Lobotomies, since I never faced a green deck all day, but ran into several decks the 'botomies would have hurt. All the same, I think I was happier having the Perish in; almost anything I would bring in Lobotomy against, I handle well enough with the various other bits (Pyroblast, 'geddon, Dis, etc). More analysis of the deck and the field after the report. The tournament came out to about 200 people, and so they ran 8 rounds of Swiss. Round 1 -- Anthony, Fish (Shadow Over Innsmouth version) His deck didn't have a bad core, with Unstables and Cursed Scrolls; but his creature base wasn't as strong, leaning too heavily towards the merfolk theme at the expense of better creatures (e.g., Rootwater Hunters and Vodalian Illusionists). This was a pretty easy match for me; my creatures came out bigger than his, even with the Lord, and siding in Pyroblasts just sealed it for me. I won in two relatively easy games. 1-0 match record, 2-0 games Round 2 -- Brian, 5C White Weenie Brian is a Game Center regular; he was apparently playing a deck developed by several Seattle-area players; Josh Lytle, himself, and folks I can't recall offhand, a Forgotten WW variant with Memory Lapse, MoW, Armor, a bit of burn, and good stuff. First game, I see a second-turn Priest, armored up with an Undiscovered on the third turn. That'd be game, there. Side in the Disenchants (for Uktabis, I think), and let's try this again. I manage to roll him in the last two games with some fierce draws; he managed to Perish _twice_ in one game, but I drew all 4 of my Muscles and had two on the table even after the second Perish. His deck just couldn't deal with that kind of fat, esp. when his bolts couldn't target it. 2-0, 4-1 Round 3 -- Jason Dawson, Bloom Another Game Center semi-regular, and another excellent player. Jason was one of a relatively small number of people I saw playing Bloom, and did very well with it, taking it to the top 8 (more on that later). I beat him in one of the games, I believe by Pyroblasting a Meditate, but he goes off easily in the other two, my 'geddons never showing for me. 2-1, 5-3 Round 4 -- Chris, Prop-Orb Yet another person who plays fairly often at the Game Center. Unfortunately, I think he made a bad choice for the environment. Prop-Orb can deal with real weenie rush decks pretty well, but it has real problems with the more versatile creature/board-control decks out there (5CG and all its ilk), especially after bringing Pyros from the board. In the first game I took a couple of hits from a Steel Golem before the 'tang found it, and then just ran him over before he could set up anything else. He got the Prop and Orb out on me in the second game, but I had a Diamond out and could afford to pay the mana to attack once each turn. He dropped a Pendrell Mists on the table, which I let go; end of his turn, I blast the Propaganda, untap, pay 3 mana for the creatures I have on the table, and come across for the final 7 points of damage. 3-1, 7-3 Round 5 -- Anthony, Flagpole (?) I didn't see that much of his deck, but it _looked_ Flagpole-style, I saw Wall of Blossoms, and lots of basic Islands and Forests. Unfortunately, I barely remember this match, other than that I pretty much clubbed him in two straight; the second even though I sat on my library waiting for a Winged Sliver to show so I could fly over him, instead of Strongholding a Crystalline back onto my library so I could drop it and start beating down his walls (I had two Muscles on the table at the time). 4-1, 9-3 At this point the denial starts to kick in. This is a good deck, but surely it's not _that_ good; even if I lose the rest of my matches, I've at least broken eve and against good competition at that, I've had a solid day. This would just start intensifying after every match; 'whatever else happens from here, I can be happy with what I have so far.' It just kept getting stranger and stranger for me... Round 6 -- Cory, Necro (sort-of Bottle Necro) Cory is a relatively new player to T2, from what he says, but a very good one for his age (about 14-15ish?) and apparent experience. This is his second T2 tournament; the first was last Friday's, where I beat him in the finals. I'm playing the same deck I was then, and so is he, and the matchup goes pretty much the same way. He manages to disk and Stupor and keep me on the ropes through the second game, finally breaking through with a Drain; but Necro just can't cope if I can nail the Disks and 'geddon to keep the big Drains down, and it can't cope with untargettables very well (especially en masse), and that's what happened in both games 1 and 3. 5-1, 11-4 At this point, I started thinking 'whatever happens to me now, I go home with a winning record. This is good...' Round 7 -- Jeh, White Weenie (old school) This was pure beatdown WW, no rainbow tricks, no splashed good stuff; just tons of creatures, Crusades, Soltari Champion, etc. This was the tightest match I played all day; the 3 games were decided by a total of about 10 life points. In the second game I overextended and fell into a Wrath I wasn't expecting; I Quicksanded a couple of Priests and countered stuff, but still more Priests came to beat me down and he ran me over despite my sacrificing about 3 Slivers through the Victual ability. (It was pointed out to me after the match that I could have won the game by beating him down with my Tradewind while using the Victuals to stay alive, something I missed completely.) In the other two games, thankfully, I was _just_ fast enough, killing him each time the turn before I would have lost. 6-1, 13-5 And now, I started to get seriously nervous. I've never had to try and figure tiebreakers and such; I knew that the Bloom player I lost to was doing very well, and that several of my other opponents had done well since losing to me, so I figured my tiebreakers had to be good. I took a few minutes to step outside (all my rounds finished fairly quickly, one of the advantages of playing something with attacking power) and try and clear my head. The University district in Seattle was holding a street fair that day, and they were just starting to clear things out; wandering around the booths I saw one guy tossing some random but interesting-looking stuff into a bag, so I asked for a closer look; it turned out to be a very keen piece of mathematical origami, sort of a stellated rhomboid figure. Amazingly, he was kind enough to give it to me, and gave me some information on origami workshops in the area, and another fellow standing around _also_ gave me some information on (different) Origami workshops, and on a couple of books on tilings and such I'd been looking for for a long time. I wander back in as the round ends, and wait around to see standings. At this point I'm ranked 4th, near the top of the 18-pointers, and figure I probably _can_ draw in (a frightening prospect to consider). Unfortunately, I get paired down to someone at 16 points who has a shot at top-8 if he beats me, and have to play. I figured this was it; at least I'd be in the money, and I'd had a hell of a run... Round 8 -- Chris, 5CB w/ Bottomless Pit This is a _very_ good deck, one of the best original designs I'd seen all day. It was a classic 5cb, with Shadow Guildmages, MoW, some red burn, etc, supplemented by Acidic Slivers (very annoying to me in some ways) and the Bottomless Pit/Cursed Scroll/Scalding Tongs deck. Very annoying, very effective, and a good matchup for my deck. It has great synergy; everything in the deck is either a permanent or instant damge, so nothing is too terrible under the Pit; the MoWs work wonders with the Pit, amounting to true creature removal if both players are in topdeck mode; all in all, it just fits together amazingly. It all comes down to whether I can keep a Crystalline Sliver on the table, since it's bigger than his stuff (or flies over his stuff, depending on the particular form of amplification) and can't be picked off by his direct damage. He clubs me in game one, but I roll over him in the second game and manage to squeeze by in the third game despite his having 2 Scrolls on the table, when I Uktabi a Tongs and eventually 'geddon with creature advantage so he can't Scroll me any more. 7-1, 15-6 Wow. I made top 8. I'M GOING TO NATIONALS!! Understand, this is orders of magnitude bigger than anything I've done in all the time I've been playing Magic (since about a week into Beta). I 'won' a Tempest prerelease, I've done well in some of the Game Center weeklies (and won a couple, including the 30-person tournament last Friday), but never anything remotely like this before. I've played some of my best Magic and used up my luck for the next couple of years to get this far, I can go home happy now, anything else is pure gravy, yadda yadda. We'll get back to this later. Nate and Mickey are 3-5 (a very disappointing day for Nate; I feel guilty for having suggested his deck, but that's the sort of thing that can happen when you don't get enough time to practice with and tune a deck) and 5-3 (a fantastic result for a first tournament), respectively, and they since their ride (Bethmo) basically wants to head out, they decide to leave, wishing me luck. Morgan also ends up 5-3, but sticks around to see what happens. In fact, I make it into the finals seeded first somehow. The final 8 consist of: Steve Stadnicki (me) -- Fox Sliver Alex Mitchell -- Sligh (mono-R, at least; I didn't see it) Chris Endres -- Sligh Ben Yim -- Black/Blue? Another deck I never saw. Andy Elovich -- Counterburn Justin Rider -- Counter-sliver (McNish style, I think) Steve McAdams -- WorbSliver (see his report for the details) Jason Dawson -- Bloom Quarterfinals -- Jason Dawson, Bloom A reprise of the matchup back in round 3. He goes off on me the first game on a nearly perfect Bloom draw, even though my own draw was fairly good. I get pressure on him in the second game and he tries to go off, but he doesn't go for White mana with his Balance (as I recall), and he hasn't Abeyed me yet. He taps and sacs stuff and tries to get a Bloom(? -- memory is very vague here) on the table, saying 'Mana Leak wins it'. I have the Leak, and it does. In the third game I get some solid early pressure on him, getting 5 damage on the table quickly. He gets to 6 lands and tries to Abey. I Leak it and he spends the three (I guess he really needed the card), leaving him with one land untapped. I untap, 'geddon, and that's the match there. Andy Elovich (Counterburn) def. Ben Yim (B/u thing) Chris Endres (Sligh) def. Justin Rider (Counter-sliver) Steve McAdams (WorbSliver) def. Alex Mitchell (Sligh) Semifinals -- Andy Elovich, Counterburn I get the fast Sliver beatdown on him in the first game, doing 6 a turn until he gets run over. I then make a _huge_ sideboarding error; I figure that I shouldn't be too concerned with the red in his deck (after all, I can make my Slivers untargettable, right?), and so side in all my Pyroblasts and none of my Hydros. A second-turn Dwarven Miner shows up to show me the error of my ways, eating about a half-dozen lands. I have an early Diamond out so I can cast a fair number of weenies, and take him down quite a ways, but I can't cope with the massive Miner advantage, and end up getting run over. With a better understanding in hand, I bring in a handful of Hydroblasts, and we go on to game 3. Towards the end of game three, I make a terrible mistake. With a Adarkar Wastes, Thalakos Lowlands, Reflecting Pool, and a Quicksands on the table, I tap out to cast a Crystalline Sliver, then a Winged Sliver, with him right around 2 life. He somehow manages to deal with the creatures (I don't recall offhand, sadly; my memory is terrible sometimes), and next turn I drop a Tradewind on the board, the lone creature. He taps out for a Disk and says go. I untap and start to play, when the judge suddenly chimes in. He points out that I needed 3 colored mana to cast the two Slivers I had on the table, and since I had a colorless land on the table, my Lowlands shouldn't have untapped last turn. After thinking about it a bit, I realize he's right, but we can't back up to that point in the game, too much has happened. After some consultation, he decides to give me a warning for misrepresenting a card (my Lowlands), my opponent a caution for not noticing, and decides to continue the game as it is. I had another land in hand, so I could have cast the Tradewind anyway, but the incident still tarnished my self-image substantially, since I had spent most of the tournament telling my opponents 'this doesn't untap this turn'. At any rate, when the game resumed I 'geddoned; he was able to topdeck a land to blow the disk with and stop my Tradewind with one life left, but I got another creature out first and beat him over the head with it, after winning a counter-war over a blocker. I take some consolation from knowing that the Tradewind would have come out anyway, and the 'geddon would have been cast anyway, but still feel more than a little uncomfortable with this victory. Chris Endres (Sligh) def. Steve McAdams (WorbSliver) And now I really _am_ at the top... not only going to Nationals, but getting the trip paid for. I find out that Chris and I are (literally) playing for a few packs and offer to split the prize and go home (as it was midnight by this point), but WotC wants to have a single NW Regionals champion, so we go ahead and play it out... Finals -- Chris Endres, Sligh Chris's deck was a true Sligh deck; beatdown, but also board control in the form of Goblin Vandals, etc. The Vandals are a solid card, but I question their worth in the current environment, compared to (e.g.) the Digging Team. He gets a classic Sligh draw in the first game and just completely runs over my average draw, with burn for the creatures I put out (no Crystalline showing) and enough for me too. We go to the sideboards, and he makes (IMHO) the key strategic mistake: after playing against the other two Sliver decks in the top 8, Chris assumed that mine was much the same; in particular, he assumed I was bringing in Chill or (presumably) Warmth from my side, and so sided out his Jackal Pups(!) for Tranquil Domain(!!). Instead, I brought in Passages against him; the Domains he packed were completely useless, I believe I'd even sided out the Legacy's Allures. I draw my 7 in game 2 to see a Passage and Crystalline Sliver happily reassuring me. Expecting the worst, I drop the Sliver second turn, then sit back and wait on my third turn. A Ball Lightning comes around to play: 'Please promise you won't do anything mean to my Ball Lightning?' 'Okay, I promise not to do anything mean to your Ball Lightning. Now, the damage that it deals, on the other hand...' between Passaging the Ball and an Incinerate, and flying over his defenses, I take him pretty handily in the second game. We go on to the third, and he never sees the Ball he wants so badly; I get a Wall of Blossoms out early, and my big Slivers thumb their noses at his Ironclaws as they blow by the Orcs. I drill him down to about 8-10 life (with myself around 12), and get him to two cards in hand, and then go for it. He double-Fireblasts me in response to my 'geddon, but it's not enough damage, and he can't stay alive long enough to topdeck a Mountain _and_ a Shock. And so, at least for today, I get to think of myself as the best Magic player in the Northwest. It was just an amazing day; I still don't completely believe it, I half-expect to wake up and find out this was all a dream. I guess it's time to start getting serious about practicing, not to mention start getting more serious about draft, fleshing out my very amateurish Limited skills. It all goes to show what a solid deck, a day of playing your best, and the right breaks will do... Based on what I saw of the field, there really wasn't any metagame to speak of; the top 8 had at least 5 completely different deck archetypes, and there were at least three or four more that could have made top 8 if things had turned out any differently. There were a few prevalent decks; a lot of White Weenie showed up, and there were a surprising number of Sliver decks, especially floating around the top tables. Overall, beatdown (of the mostly-small variety) seemed the order of the day; there were a handful of Draw-Go and U5C decks out there, but they all seemed to run into enough trouble to keep them down. I didn't see any bigger beatdown decks, of the type that won the Wednesday T2 and seemed to be playing strong on Friday (G/R Maro, Endangered Armadon, Wildfires, sometimes even Shivans, etc); they're fairly strong against a lot of the field, but tend to just get crushed by decent control, which may have limited their viability. Among the more exotic sightings: Zvi (I didn't see it personally, but apparently it wasn't doing very well) and Sandsipoise (also somewhere in the middle tables). Either aggro-control or control-beatdown seems to be the order of the day in this environment, though. If I were to play this deck again I would probably drop the Legacy's Allures; they can come in handy, but just didn't do it for me all day. Good choices for a replacement might be Wall of Roots, Counterspells, Propaganda, or even Firestorm if you care to go for that kind of thing. As far as the SB goes, it felt about right; the Perish/Lobotomy question is very dependent on metagame, but everything else (even the unused Furnace) is well worth the slots. Cheers and Jeers (hey, it's no stupider than Props and Slops): Cheers to --Armageddon, for winning me all three of my top-8 matches after spending a lot of the day hiding on me. --My opponents, for being cool all day long, especially Chris in the finals. I think we were both a little punch-drunk at that point, and giddy with adrenaline, but it was still my best match of the day. --Dalmuti's, for their food. The pizza was solid, the fries were very good, and their barbecue sauce is excellent (coming from someone who likes his mild). --Mickey, for finishing 5-3 in his first tournament, with a mono-G deck. --The guys out on the street, for great conversation and my really cool origami thing. Jeers to --Me, for making the egregious mistake in game 3 of the semi-finals. --Dalmuti's, for their service. Not too bad, the people are generally friendly, but the food just comes too slow, especially when you're between rounds in a tournament and need to be able to eat and go within half an hour. See you all in Columbus... Steven Stadnicki scruff@halcyon.com