Subject: Midwest regionals report; top 16 Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 16:02:11 -0500 From: Brian & Andrea Preston To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com This is my first tourney report, although I've been playing Magic seriously for awhile now. I had decided a couple months ago that if I had any chance at doing well at Regionals, I needed a team. Downstate Illinois isn't exactly a Magic mecca, but there are several small pockets of good players. So I contacted a few of them and asked if they were interested in forming a team, and they were. We're still working out the details, but we had our playtest group. Teammate Ped Bun had come up with an extremely fast WW deck weeks ago, and that was the core deck we tested for weeks. I drove over from Bloomington to Champaign/Urbana to meet up with him Friday night, and then we drove up to Chicago to meet up with a group from Peoria. We tested late into the night. We almost decided to play Sligh because a version Ped made to test against was crushing everything. I wanted to test against the new versions of the speed black decks, but we never got around to it. That would hurt later. At about 3am we finally decided to stick with the WW, even though we still weren't entirely comfortable with the mana ratios and creatures. It still had the potential for fantastic draws, but I knew many decks had that and consistency was more important. Sigh. Anyway, here's the deck I went with: 4 Soltari Priests 2 Soltari Monks 3 Soltari Champions 4 Freewind Falcons 2 Mistmoon Griffins 3 Warrior enKor 2 Crusade 2 Empyrial Armor 3 Disenchant 1 Wrath 2 Armageddon 3 Mana Leak 1 Firestorm 1 Terror 1 Earthquake 4 Tithe 3 Mox Diamonds 3 Undiscovered Paradise 2 Gemstone Mines 3 Wastelands 2 City of Brass 9 Plains 1 Volrath's Stronghold Sideboard: 1 Terror 1 Wrath 3 Sleights 1 Disenchant 2 Aura of Silence 2 Perish 1 Torture Chamber 3 Pyroblasts 1 Honorable Passage Ped's was almost the same, but instead of the Warrior enkors and Terrors he had Wall of Blossoms. Onto the report There were almost 400 people there, so we had to do 9 rounds of Swiss. A long day. Round 1, vs. an inexperienced kid playing G/W lots of life gain Game 1: I had a bad draw, should've mulliganed. He through out a River Boa, Spirit Linked it, cast Soltari Champion and Serra's Blessing, and started hitting me for 5 and gaining 3. Weird. Got me down to six before I could set up defenses. Got out both Armors, put one on a shadow and foolishly the other on a Warrior enKor. Got out both Crusades. He put out Shaman enKor and Warthog and attacked, taking me down to 3 and losing a couple creatures. I finally went on the offense and finally got him after multiple Gerrard's, Fogs, and Respites. Game 2 was much quicker and like it should've been: Falcon, Priest or Monk, Champion, game over real quick. 1-0, 2-0 Round 2, vs Charles Lebeau, one of the Peoria guys we playtested with the night before We weren't exactly teammates, but had played with & against each other in local tourneys and playtested the night before, so I offered him a draw, just to be amicable. Neither of us really knew what that would do to our rankings & standings, so after thinking about it a bit he decided to play. He was playing Counter-sliver. Both games were pretty similar, he didn't have good draws: lots of counters and not many slivers. I didn't have the best draws either, but I think I disenchanted 1 or 2 Allures and put down enough shadows & flyers to win. 2-0 match, 4-0 games Round 3, vs some guy who looked like he knew what he was doing. He said his teammate won Midwest Regionals last year & they drove up from Kentucky. He was playing a R/G/b quick deck. Game 1: He throws out a Fanatic and Pup quickly and I get nervous. I respond with 2 Falcons and a Warrior enKor (or Priest, I can't remember). It stalemates for awhile, he puts out a couple more critters and a Goblin Bombardment. I countered a River Boa. I think I started hitting him with a Priest. I drew the Firestorm and looked at the Pup and 3 other creatures. I disenchanted the bombardment. He though about it awhile and sacced the pup. Bummer. I firestormed everything away and he conceded. Game 2: A good draw and Wastelands win me this one. His first 2 lands were Gemstone and R/G pain land (can't remember name). I think I threw out some combination of Priest, Monk, Falcon, and eventually a Champion after wasting both the Gemsone and pain land. I attacked for a few turns, he got out a Fanatic and Granger Guildmage, which totally wrecks our deck, but he didn't have the mana to use it for a couple turns. I had the 1 Honorable Passage in hand. I declared an attack, in response he pings the Champion and throws the Fanatic at it. I passage the fanatic and that's game. 3-0 matches, 6-0 games Round 4, vs Ryan Love, another guy from Peoria we playtested against. Crappy pairings! I offered him a draw also, and he declined also. Ryan is a fantastic deck builder, usually control decks, frequently builds unusual decks that perform very well. He's built a couple decks aroun Necro/Zur's weirding in the past couple years. They're hard to figure out & play against because of their originality. I don't really remember the details of the games, except forcing an Armageddon through backed up by a Mana Leak and 2 Pyroblasts late in game 2 when it looked like he definitely had control. I ended up sweeping. 4-0 matches, 8-0 games Round 5, I think his name was Jacob, he was playing Counter-sliver. I was his only match loss of the day and he ended up making the final 8. We chatted a bit when I found out he was from a town (Hales Corners) neighboring my hometown of Greenfield, both south suburbs of Milwaukee. Nice guy. Game 1: can't remember but I lost. Game 2: can't remember but I won. Game 3: I Definitely remember this one, because it was a god draw. 2 Wastelands, Mox, Tithe, a land or 2, a critter or 2. He went first: a non-basic land Me: Mox, Tithe, Waste the land Him : another non-basic land Me : Waste that one, too Him: nothing, go Me: Falcon or Monk/Priest Him: nothing, go Me : Falcon or Monk/Priest Him: maybe a city of brass this turn, maybe next Me: Champion, game over. That draw was a godsend. Congrats to him for making final 8. 5-0 matches, 10-1 games This was encouraging, but I knew it would only get tougher. Round 6 vs Mark Slapac, black necro speed weenie Game 1: He went first. I had another amazing draw, I drew another mox on my first draw, did something like mox, tithe, mox, land, Soltari Monk. Had another tithe in hand I think. That start won it, but it was still a quick game. I mana leaked the first Necro but he had another and dropped a couple critters. I thought about disenchanting the second, but at that point it was a damage race and I decided to let him help me lower his life. Game 2: He had a great draw, land, double dark rit, 2 Dauthi Slayers, next turn Bad moon, attack for 6. I think I Firestormed both of them and him, but that was the only decent card I drew, he got more critters out, I earthquaked 1 away, he dropped a Black Knight and finisheded me. Game 3: Took longer, but same result as game 2. This one at least was a little more interesting, I sleighted & disenchanted a couple of Bad moons and actually got creatures this time including a Monk, but the Dauthi Horrors did me in. 5-1 matches, 11-3 games Round 7, don't remember his name but it was a REALLY weird white weenie with like 30 creatures, including Benalish Missionary, Venerable monk, Orim, etc.. I still don't know if this guy was a genius or total scrub that got really lucky pairings, because any one of the many speed black decks would've wrecked him (and they finally did in the final 8, I think it was Herbie, a team ACD junior). He also made top 8, which still bugs me. Game 1 : horrible draws, I tithed twice and still drew more plains. He totally runs me over. Game 2: A little better draw, but here was the big mistake I've been slapping myself for ever since. I had 2 Plains and 2 worthless wastelands on the board, we each had a falcon and I think I had maybe another falcon and a griffin on the board. I had a Diamond, the Stronghold as my only land in hand, and a Mana leak. I didn't want to discard the Stronghold because I knew he had more creatures. But I also knew an armor was coming on his Falcon. So I didn't lay the mox and sure enough, armor on his falcon and that was pretty much game. Matches 5-2, games 11-5 That was a quick drop from 4th to 33rd place. I thought about dropping because I knew I couldn't make top 8, but then remembered they had good prizes for top 16 so I stayed in. Round 8, can't remember his name but he was a real nice kid playing something like Draw-Go, lots of counters, disks, quicksands, Steel Golems. Games 1 & 2: don't remember much but we split them. I do remember making early mistakes, seeing a Reflecting Pool early and wasting it, assuming it was Donais 5cu variant. It wasn't, and I needed those wastelands for the quicksands. Game 3: This was interesting, and where the Griffins saved the day. I got out an early, maybe first turn Priest or Monk. He played an early Allure. I played Crusade for more damage and to hold onto the creature for another turn. I played the 2nd crusade and quickly did 12 damage. I also got out a Falcon and Griffin, big threats with the 2 crusades. He got the Disk. He eventually stole a creature, then eventually disked. I brought back the Falcon with the Griffin because he had a quicksand out. I attacked, bringing him down to 1. I attacked again, he capsizes the falcon. I had another Monk in hand, he had a Golem out and my life was getting low. He still had the quicksand. It was pretty much over, but I cast the monk first, and he COUNTERED IT!!! I then cast the Falcon and won next turn. I asked him afterwards about it, he said he just screwed up, or feared a wasteland on the quicksand, or something. Either way, it was a gift for me and kept me in the running for a box of foreign boosters. Matches 6-2, games 13-6 Final round 9, vs Ray DeGuzman of team ACD. Crap. For over a year now, I had been traveling up to Chicago for bigger tournaments, beating almost everyone else before running into one of them and losing. I've lost to a bunch of them: Andy Nishioka, Chris Czuba more than once, Ben Kellerstrauss, Derek Rank more than once, etc. They're all nice guys and excellent players. I'd never played Ray before, though. I knew he was playing Counter-burn with the Phoenix, a deck which had knocked out my teammate Ped earlier, so I was doubly concerned. Game 1: I got out quick pro-red guys, 2 falcons and a priest I think. He got a couple disks but I countered the first and disenchanted the second. That was it. Maybe I wasted a quicksand also. I had a good draw. Game 2: Similar to game 1, I got quick pro-red critters out. The turning point was when I waited a turn to have enough mana to cast a crusade and Armor on the same turn, and he didn't have enough mana to counter both. I cast the Crusade first, it got countered, and I got the Armor on the Falcon. A turn or 2 later I did the same thing to get a Geddon off. That was game. It was a decent matchup for me with all my pro-red, and I had really good draws. I was pretty excited cuz I was probably in the top 16 and had finally beaten one of the ACD guys. Matches 7-2, games 15-6 I ended up 14th.