Subject: UT Regionals (GunsaPox v2.1) Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 00:43:48 -0600 (MDT) From: Lord Daroki the Itchogunsa To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Well, this is more of a story about why you don't stick your neck out in a huge tournament like regionals. I had four decktypes which I was thinking of playing for regionals and I picked the worst possible one. At first I was playtesting a Sligh and a Cursed Stompy. I liked the Cursed Stompy for a while but it was just not strong enough and the Sligh was just stupid. No brains required, just hit opponent with Balls and Blasts. Then again Cursed Stompy doesn't require a PhD either. I had been working on a Crypt/Box deck but never got it up to Tournament worthy and it absolutely could NOT handle Sligh which would dismantle it without any chance of even sideboarding effectively against it. And that left Pox. I broke the Poxes out, checked out the new tech for it, playtested it a few times and didn't like it, but I threw the Gypsy varient together and tested it out a bit. Didn't like it. The combo with Volrath's Stronghold was weak as a Wasteland would ALWAYS hit it just when you were able to get rolling. And you could never get the 6 mana necessary to start cycling Gnomes either. I took out the Strongholds and added swamps which I thought was pretty strong since I wasn't hurting for black mana much all day. But in retrospect, then I made mistakes. Taking out the Strongholds I went CREATURELESS. Although it added offense to the deck it also decreased some of the effectiveness. The Gatekeepers should have stayed and I should have known that. I used them in the Extended Pox and it worked great and when I was getting hit with an onslaught of red creatures, most of the time it was two for one. But the worst mistake was taking out the Bottle Gnomes. I should have at least replaced them with Drains or Spins; something for lifegain. This lack destroyed this deck in Regionals. GunsaPox v2.1 is set to deal with control, specifically Tradewind Rider decks. Between the Poxes, Terrors, and Edicts there shouldn't be enough support for a Tradewind to start bouncing things. Unfortunately I didn't see very many mages who weren't standing on mountains with a whole hell of a lot of direct damage. Here's the Decklist if you're interested, version 2.2 might be needed, something which relies a bit less on damage and more on control, as Pox is a control deck and I tried to focus more on the "offense" than the "control" in offensive control. GunsaPox v2.1 Lands : 19 Swamps 4 Wastelands (I wouldn't change much as far as the lands, the Wastelands usually had a target, although against mono-red it was usually other Wastelands. Fine trade when a Pox is about to fly though either to get rid of important lands or as lands to throw away to the Pox.) Artifacts : 2 Mox Diamond (I should have had four, and I would have pulled two swamps for them if I visited Jack Stanton and the MOA earlier. *sigh* Props to the MOA for the offer though!) 4 Cursed Scroll (Like Gypsy, this deck doesn't rely on them, but you better have them handy anyway. I'd keep it at four.) 3 Scalding Tongs (A definate difference from Gypsy. These don't damage as much as Cages, but they're SO much more reliable. Go to four.) 3 Pauper's Cages (I'm iffy on the cages. There's so much 3 casting cost stuff in this deck but they do hellish damage and change people's playing style. The amount of these, if any need to be tested.) 3 Ensnaring Bridges (Great card. The Ensnaring Bridge in Pox is a moat. Four might be good but the problem is that with four you have the chance of multiples which hurt.) Black : 4 Pox (If it's a Pox deck, you have to run Pox right?) 3 Megrim (They go OUT. Megrim is great in theory, horrible in practice.) 3 Terror \ 3 Diabolic Edict > It's all about creature removal. 4 Funeral Charms / 3 Bottomless Pits (Kills counter decks dead.) 2 Dark Rituals (Switch out for Mox Diamonds if you want to keep your lands.) Sideboard : 3 Cursed Totems (Tough choice on keeping these in the sideboards, might replace them with Touchstones except I only saw a Winter Orb once.) 3 Phyrexian Furnaces (Not bad, even useful against burn since some were carrying Hammers.) 3 Dread of Night (They worked fine, but I'm still undecided about these or Gloom.) 3 Forsaken Wastes (Kept these in for Gerards/DiscoGnome, never saw them though.) 3 Perish (Green? Anyone playing Green? Not against me because I'm prepared!) Kevin Ouellette's report basically showed what the Regionals looked like, the top four shows three sligh, Kevin's great 6-pack, 3 5cTradewind, and 1 5cCool. If this deck got paired up with a steady diet of Tradewind/Cool decks, I think it could have been the spoiler. But I get fed a steady diet of Sligh/Burn instead which against Pox is pure death. I apologize now about not keeping track of names or fine details, but this was a DEMORALIZING tournament. It wasn't only the matchups, but the mistakes. I switched the deck into v2.1 just the night before and without enough playtesting of the deck in this form I made huge mistakes early. I didn't stop until the day was done. Match 1 (Mono-Red Celerity/Burn) Duel 1 : Can we say BAD MATCHUP. I knew you could. Balls, Lightning Elementals, Mogg Fanatics, it's all bad for the poor little Pox deck. Someone get the Zippo AWAY from my deck please! Duel 2 : Welcome to mistake #1 of the day. I drop an early Scalding Tongs but still thrown for a loop about the matchup I'm forgetting to make my opponent take damage. For this I get a WARNING and my opponent starts at 22-25 life. I'm down to six and have a bridge out, no cards in hand, and have my opponent down to 3. The Tongs are burning away slowly but surely and he has two Fanatics on the table. Realizing I have no lifegain, I see myself down at 4 life, but the Tongs are going to kill him faster. He then drops a Lightning Elemental. This is fine, I have an Ensnaring Bridge out and he can't attack with it. If I can get my hands on a Cage I'm fine. Then he Flings it at me. Moggs get sacrificed, I die. I killed myself by not paying attention and giving the opponent life from the Tongs. Let's make matters worse, we play a third duel for fun and the deck ROLLS. D 0-2 : M 0-1 Match 2 : (YARD a.k.a. Yet Another Red Deck) Admitted, I'm a wiseass before the match, hopefully my opponent knows in jest. Bill Guerin (from the PTQ Meinz report) comments on me being 0-1 and I say that I will bounce back. "Damnit, I'm the Itchogunsa, the One Man Army [In case you wondered what Itchogunsa meant, there's the translation.], of course I'm going to come back from that." Ok... so I would, just not this tournament. :) Duel 1 : Can't remember much this long after the tournament, but I did end up winning. Duel 2 : I get burnt to a toasty crisp. Duel 3 : I had a chance to draw this. Here's the situation. I'm in my main phase. I have a Pox, a Dark Ritual, a Funeral Charm in hand. I have three swamps and a Wasteland on the table. I also have a Cursed Scroll on the table. My opponent is at 4, I'm at 7. I KNOW he has a fireblast in hand. I Pox, if he's smart I die. The correct move : Being up 1-0, you cast the Pox with a Dark Ritual, you then tap the rest of the lands after life is lost to deal two more damage with the cursed scroll, calling Funeral Charm since it's the only card left in your hand. He will fireblast you at this time as well if he's smart, but might Fireblast you IN RESPONSE to the Pox which wins the match. People have done this all day as well. The move I made? "Done." He draws an incinerate, 3 + 4 = death. Completely evil. D 1-4 : M 0-2 Match 3 : (5cTradewind) The good news? My deck should DESTROY Tradewind with the adjustments. The bad news? I'm playing against a Mind Games regular who got to see the Gypsy varient card for card and even playtested the deck a bit with me. Once he understood the way the deck worked he did extremely well against it. Pox is a deck that relies on surprise as well, not surprise so much as people knowing what's in it, since it's posted on the Dojo and played for fun at times, but more the fact that it's a difficult deck to play against if you never have before, and it's not common enough to be a deck to playtest against a lot. Duel 1 : Deralor? That wasn't expected although it was I found very common in the end. I can't get the Bridge down in time to stop a black beastie and a River Boa from crushing me. Duel 2 : I get beat up by a Tradewind. No.. he never gets the bounce going on me. I just can't get my hand down below 1 card and he sides the Rider over for 1 point every round. He gets close to bouncing but I Perish. I just can't drop my hand and stop the bleeding and the Tradewind ends up killing me the hard way. Whatever works though, a win is a win, and vice versa. D 1-6 : M 0-3 So why would I continue on? Wounded pride dictates it. The fact that I spent $18 demands it. I refuse to go home without winning against someone. Of course, this means that I get paired up against Michael Callahan's girlfriend Julie. If the cup's half empty one of us is going 0-4 in the next 70 minutes. If the cup's half full, one of us is going to win a match finally. Round 4 (WW with Mogg Maniacs) Bad matchup for Pox, between the Edicts, the Charms, the Poxes, the Terrors, there's NOTHING that's going to stay alive against this deck. In short, I'm hitting Maniacs with Funeral Charms before they're going to get armored, Tongs and Cages are doing sick amounts of damage, and I'm getting Mox Diamonds in the opening hand. I suggest moving the Moxes to four since you NEED and empty hand with this deck, it's just too important for it's proper function to be able to drop the hand completely. The second duel had her mulliganing then mana screwed. A Wasteland and a Pox made sure of it. We played a third for fun, and it was a LONG intense battle. Two cages on the ground, she's down to three cards with a Pit on the table. She can't do anything, I can't draw discard to make her take cage damage. I finally get a Tongs or Megrim on the table (*cheers from the crowd*), she then Tithes getting two cards in hand, Disenchants the offending damage source (*gasps and applause exploding from the crowd of zero*) but I eventually get another Tong which drains her. We played a fourth game as well and she was pretty much in control of it when we realize that we better register our match. Oh yeah, there's that too. D 3-6 : M 1-3 Match 5 : (W/u Orb/Contemplation/???) Didn't see much of the deck, but at least it was original. Duel 1 : He gets the contemplations on the table and that's not good for me. However while he's busy casting spells and gaining life, I'm dropping Pits and Megrims on the table. OUCH! OUCH! OUCH! He's more afraid of the Cursed Scroll and disenchants it, but it's the Megrims and Pits that finish him, a Bridge stopping him from attacking. Duel 2 : He's mana screwed for blue and only draws an Adarkar Wastes to supply it. I conviently grab a Wasteland and stop that. He's trying to scroll me but I'm too lucky to fall for that. The Magic Gods decided I suffered enough I guess. D 5-6 : M 2-3 Match 6 : (YARD! Yet Another Red Deck!) Unfortunately he stopped playing around Fallen Empires and picked the game back up again after Tempest. "What's Fireblast?" *offers thanks to the Magic gods* Duel 1 : Balls and Pups and where the hell are my Funeral Charms? Oh my! Duel 2 : Cages and Tongs and Bridges, oh my! Duel 3 : I have a Bottomless Pit on the Ground with a Cage and Tongs dealing damage both ways. He's at 12, I'm at 19. It's ALL good as I'm prepared to kick back and let the engine finish him off. Then someone walks by, hits the table and says, "Oops, excuse me." Meanwhile I'm whitefaced, my deck, sideboard, and cards in the playing field strewn across the ground. I *know* I can rebuild, and I want to, hell I'm going to win, he doesn't have the burn to do 19 in four turns. Unfortunately for me we have to replay the game. I try to regain any bit of focus that I have left after 10 hours and having a table slam into my chest. Duel 4 : My deck goes absolutely ape, Swamp, Discard Swamp, Mox Diamond, Tap out, Tongs. Swamp, Pox. He's down to 6 cards anyway and the early Pox is devestating. Tongs and Cages are destroying him while he's not using his scroll correctly (a.k.a. during his upkeep when he had one card, he kept waiting to draw first then trying to make me guess 50/50.) D 7-7 : M 3-3 I should have quit while I was ahead, but no, I was EVEN not ahead. Match 7 : (yArd?! yet ANOTHER red deck?!) Duel 1 : Daroki meet Lava Hounds and Ball Lightning, Lava Hounds and Ball Lightning kill Daroki. Ouch. Duel 2 : Again I'm forgetting to make him take Tongs damage, since we're past upkeep he won't take it (as he shouldn't) and I'm even more frusterated by my sloppy play. Lava Hounds make me lose life points faster than I'm losing concentration. D 7-9 : M 3-4 And with that, I think I'll have myself a beer. I drop out of the tournament hit State Street, grab a 125 going South and enter a favorite haunt. A large glass of Hefeweisen later, I don't feel so badly about Regionals, it was just a bad choice in what deck to play. A bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale after that, and it's all *good*. When friends I haven't seen for a while pop into the place, everything's great and the night ends close to where the day began, at Anchor's Aweigh with all of us wondering : "You mean we all quit smoking?" Philosophy addendum : No, life's not bad at all. However it's time to take a break from the game I think. I need to take time and re-evaluate why I play and what I want out of the game. If I want to make it to the Pro Tour, I need to make a tremendous adjustment to how I approach the game. Trying to look at myself objectively I want to play against the best competition so that I become better and Regionals was a good opportunity to do that. To what end do I want to get better, is it to compete at the local store? DCI tournaments in Utah? Pro Tour Qualifiers? I'll give myself time to figure it out, and when I do, more tournament reports should come flowing in again. Until then props to those I was hanging with in Utah which included Brad Cole, Michael Callahan, Jack Stanton and all the other Minions of Atog in attendance. I wasn't there during the whole "bitch" incident and I'm glad for it. I don't know about Brad's stalling thing but this is a big time tournament and tempers flare, I heard Jack's talk with Karl as well and I'll stay safely neutral on the whole issue as I didn't see the match and won't decide anything on hearsay. Must hand props to the Plaza as well. They didn't shut off the Jazz game although there were a ton of people cheering their annihilation of the Lakers in a loud and almost rowdy fashion. (Come on, it was a 35 point blowout and they were running FAR too much trash talk for the throng not to be in hysterics.) After a horrible day of receiving beatdown Celebrity Deathmatch was amusing to watch as well. Slops to myself for not being prepared to the tournament and not holding my head high while getting crushed. I'm not happy with the fact that I wasn't putting things behind me and moving on, but I think with Regionals being the "biggest" status of tournament I had played in I just wanted to do well. I don't think I did much well and although I wouldn't classify myself as being "unsportsmanlike" or just a flat out bastard, I don't think I was very friendly either. :( - Lord Daroki the Itchogunsa -