Subject: [Report] Origins: I know it's late, leave me alone Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 00:09:13 -0400 (EDT) From: "John M Shuler" Hi. It's been a wee while since I've bothered to write any kind of tournament report, but at the insistance of a few people, and in an effort to show Jamie "Jankfield" Wakefield just how good a time he missed at Origins this year, I thought I'd write up a little something. Actually, this is probably going to be a little bigger than a "little something." So I don't really know if I should call it a tournament report. I'll be reporting what happened to me, of course. At more than one tournament, even. But although I'll likely discuss some pretty decent strategy, I doubt I'll get into specific match examples, just because I neglected to take decent notes. I have these little pieces of paper with numbers on them, but that's about it. Actually, I *had* them. So let's get on with it. Go let the cat out, turn off the T.V., and get ready to sit down with a nice cold something, because here we go. First, because the organization won't be much better than "Fairly chronological", I'll sprinkle a little general commentary here and there, so if I jump tenses, be ready for it. Oh yeah. There has been some discussion about the relative strengths of Stronghold and Exodus. My opinion is that Exodus, as far as rares go, is significantly better than Stronghold. Keep in mind that my judgement is made on the basis of the level of tournament playable cards that are readily accessible (thus, the specific reference to rares). I just thought I'd throw this out there, and a quick examination of a rare list from each set, then an examination of the set sizes will probably have you agreeing with me. I mention this because for some reason, people always ask me what they should buy. Well, there's your answer. As for specifically good Exodus rares.. about the most I can say is "LOOK!" The amount of rares in Exodus that are not "hot", and *should* be, exceeds, I think, the amount of rares in Exodus that are currently considered "hot." But I guess that eventually people will figure things out. I'll just scarf up my stuff cheap now. :) An example of this is Oath of Druids, which was selling at $3-4 before Origins, and by Sunday night, was selling steadily at $11-14 depending on the dealer. That's after a high point on Friday when they were trading even with, or even more valued than Scrolls. Crazy. So on Monday night I decide to have a little fun with all of the Pro Tour players who take things just a leeetle bit too seriously, and get those silly playmats with all the signatures of people who used to be "famous." I went to the local supermarket and bought a bright yellow straw placemat for $.59 to be my playmat. Got Chris Yates to draw a Mogg Fanatic on the front, and I was in business. Signed by Finkel, Donais (with love!), Bad Player Flores, all of TDC, Adrian Sullivan (writes like a little kid), Erik Lauer, Lan D. Ho, Randy Buehler, the list goes on and on. As they would say at Game Parlor, "beatings." After crashing at Joel Priest's house the night before, Joel and I woke up bright and...well, in the late morning, hooked up with Justin Smith, who is from Maryland as is Joel, and headed off to a Wal Mart. Joel and I had both forgotten our Sunglasses, so I got some round & opaque "blind man" glasses, and Joel picked up some mirrored ones that made him the spitting image of James Hetfield. I was not amused that they were out of BlueBerry Icees. In fact, they only had this nasty albino White Cherry Icee, but since I had been waiting in the line for 10 minutes, I got it anyway. So fast-forward for 7 hours. We're now in the thriving metropolis of Colombus, Ohio, which has something like all of 3 buildings that have more than 10 floors, when we realize that not only is this a poor excuse for a city architecturally, but that it also has no decent food. I'm not THAT picky an eater, but day-old pizza slices in a bar that had a coin-operated pool table didn't keep me in the first establishment for very long. Shunning that poor excuse for pie, we got lucky and hunted down a place called Max & Erma's, which is essentially a place one step above Ruby Tuesday/Bennigans/Chilis/Chi Chis sort of things. Oh, and there was a picture of a tennis player on the wall with extreme bootie action in evidence. If we didn't find a pool place right after that that only charged $2.50 an hour per person, it would have been the highlight of the trip. And let's not forget those $3 Stoli & Cranberries the size of friggin Nebraska that the pool place had. And no, I'm not going to tell you where it was, I don't want it flooded if I go back to Origins next year. Magic. I'm getting to it. The next day (Wed), we woke up at the crack of noon, hit the three thrift stores in the area (Yes, that's where I got the ensamble I wore that week), and arrived back at the convention place around 7. I'd never been to a "Con." There were a lot of people there. Like. A lot. We split up and did our respective things. I did a lot of trading, I got my playmat signed. When Midnight rolled around, I entered the first Open. So did Bad Player Flores. I win round one against this random Bye guy. BPF decides that he should throw away 20 smackers by losing in the first round to someone who, and follow with me, please: 1. Doesn't know what Abeyance does. 2. Doesn't know what Aura of Silence does. 3. Has to *read* Natural Balance. I scrub out next round to a Tradewind deck, of all things (who'd of thought? The environment was supposed to be beatdown!), but as usual, I stayed in longer than Flores. It wasn't even a decent Twind deck. MultiColor, no Living Death. I get really depressed to come all this way only to immediately lose to This Guy. Joe Cain appears and cheers me up. I ask people to hand me a deck for the next Open. A bunch of people do, but I decide to say "fuck it" and go with a Godzilla deck that Cain hands me. Godzilla. I don't recall the last time I've played with a creature of power greater than one. I've *never* played Godzilla. Luckily for me, Godzilla played itself. Even in the first round, when I play someone with this uber-control deck, that seemed to consist only of counterspells, Godzilla starts playing itself. All my stuff gets countered. I end up casting Shivan Dragon. Shivan Dragon breaths fire on my opponent. (whhhhhoooooooooooooooossssssssssshhhhhhhh!!!!!!) There goes my opponent. In the second round, I play against a decent White Weenie deck. I am lucky in that my opponent has a very high opinion of himself and his play skills. I love it when my opponents think that they are good, and they wouldn't know what good was if it came up and dropped a Cadaverous Bloom in thier lap. I didn't make the deck, but I did severly alter the sideboard. 4 Dread of Night in the sideboard is what my opponent thought of as "some bad." Hey, I'm feeling better already. Round three brings Some Guy with a Sligh deck. He's a decent player, but... well... it's Godzilla vs. Sligh. In game one, Verdant force gets angry at the heat and drops an air conditioner on my opponent for 20. Game 2... well, I drop a Verdant force, which he Incinerates & Fireblasts on his third turn. I decide to show him TWO Verdant Forces on my fifth turn. One being the one he killed before, of course. Wow, I'm feeling pretty good. Too bad I have to play against Lan D. Ho now. Who has a u/g Twind deck. Uh oh. Bounce bad. Godzilla likes to keep his feet on the ground. Game 1: I draw one land. The. Entire. Game. He has like 8 or so land on the board, walls, tradewinds, all this stuff, when I realize I should probably concede. Game 2: I show him "Are you done? Ok, firestorm you for one during the discard phase of your first turn. On my second turn, animate the Verdant Force I discarded." Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me? Game 3: Not a hot draw. I stay alive, but he has used around 0 counterspells when I say "Living Death?" He says "Counterspell" I say "Mana Leak?" He says "COUNTERspell!" I say "Pyroblast your counter?" He says "What do you have in your graveyard, anyway?" I say "a Verdant Force" He says "Ok" I say "hold on, I have instants, which include the best firestorm ever, used to firestorm you, your tradewind, and your wall of blossoms for three. Oh look. Before the Living Death resolves, I now have 2 Shivan Dragons and another Verdant Force to put in my graveyard." B. E. A. T. I. N. G. S. Round of 16: Some guy with Sligh. YES! Sligh = Bye! I will make it to round of 8 & get a box of product at the minimum. Or not. I lose. I am the worst magic player ever. Well. Except for Jankfield and Bad Player Flores, of course. One game, he gets the perfect BURNYOU draw. Next game, I reanimate his own BLightning three times in a row. In the third game. Oh, I don't want to talk about this. I have *13* fatties in my deck. I die on turn 10, 17 cards into my library. The 17th card, almost a third of the way through my deck, I draw the first fattie. So yes, Virginia, Godzilla apparently CAN lose to Sligh... Oh well. I go watch Flores just decide not to beat Adrian Sullivan in a Bloom vs. Cabal Oath matchup. Bad Player Flores draws his deck and drains Adrian for 20. Too bad Adrian was at 22 because of LifeSpike. Could BPFlores have done it right and won? Yes. Did he just choose not to? Yes. See the .sig file at the bottom of this for an appropriate comment from Eric Taylor. I sleep all day thursday. I wake up at like 4am Friday morning. Go downstairs, there are people trading. I trade. Glimmer of New York, but people do sleep somewhat. I stay awake for a while. I see Flores. He wants to play in the Saturday PTQ. He's been awake for like 9 days. I tell him not to. He does. He scrubs out. Listen to me next time. The Gauntlet. The Gauntlet is Friday evening. The Gauntlet is run by Rob Hahn, BPFlores, & Jean Luc Park. They ask me to Gunsling. I do. Gunslingers included: Dan O'Mahoney-Schwartz - Blitz & Bloom Al Tran - White Weenie BPFlores - Various decks Rob Hahn - His DonaisOath & my JoeBlue Bill "y the kid" Macey - another friggin' Oath.dec Me - My JoeBlue & Rob's DonaisOath Bob "The Bomber" Maher - Prospbloom Pat Johnson - Bloom Adrian Sullivan - CabalOath Brian Kibler - "Kibbles" Draw-Go Jean Luc Park - A Pop Tarts box with my paycheck I think someone might have even let Pikula in there somehow. Along with guy named CrackHead or something. Our Gauntlet was STRONG. Some random canadian blew through us at 4-0 before BPF, of all people, stopped him. In the last game of the last duel of the night, it's me vs. Brian Kowal, who is 4-0 at the time with a Stompy deck. No problem. I am playing freaking DonaisOath of all things. His deck is like only made of creatures. I drop an Oath, I win. I draw my opening hand. Gaea's Blessing. And six land. Would you mulligan? He'll be able to kill me in 5 turns with no sweat. I've got only two Wraths, 4 Impulse, and 4 Oath. If I draw an Oath, it's essentially an auto-win. I mulligan. Many people think it was the wrong move. Pat Johnson thinks it was the right move, though, and he is the mackety-mack. I think Altran had my back, too. What more do I need? Certainly not Bad Player Flores dancing about, spinning in a circle like a wobbly top, chanting at me not to lose the money. It's just money, BPF. SOMEONE needs to win. No one had won all night. Yes, I sort of hoped Brian would beat me. I was cheering him on, actually. Some people were not amused by that. :) My mulligan gives me a Wrath. I decide not to mulligan again, even though I really want that Oath. I have an impulse, after all. I die the turn before I draw a fourth mana for the wrath. It's *always* the next card. I almost think I should have mulliganed down to 5 cards, but that would probably have caused the Gauntlet members to vivisect me. Kowal is the only person to win the Gauntlet. With mono-green. With something like 70-80 people having player. Good job, Brian. Special Mention should be given to one of my all time favorite players, David Williams. Williams entered our Gauntlet with the pre-constructed Dominator deck. THREE times. And he managed to actually beat a Bloom deck, too. I was of the opinion he should get either a special prize or 3 more free entries. My greedy compatriots would not allow it. Went to sleep mid-morning Saturday after the Gauntlet ended, and after Rob Hahn bought everyone breakfast. If it is possible for a person to be a beating, Rob Hahn is that beating. He's just the coolest guy. And I'm not saying that just because he bought me breakfast and let me Gunsling at the WOTC booth the next day. We all earned $4 an hour doing the Gauntlet. I think some people were disappointed, but hey, it's just for fun. And I had a really fun time. Look for a Gauntlet at Chicago, in which I volunteer to do some of the administrative work this time, so Jean Luc can get to play. :) Flores goes to the Sat PTQ. I tell him again not to play, that he needs sleep. He ignores me. I say "It's your $25, BPF." You guess what happened. You're right. Woke up at 8pm saturday night. Watched Jeff Wu destroy people with an uber-combo in a side draft tournament. V.Stronghold/Spike/Triskellion. Over 40 counters were moved in one single game. Whoa. Sunday- I wander downstairs. I find Brian Kibler, Adrian Sullivan, Pat Chapin, and some other people playing Type Blah, which has now apparently been renamed "Mental Magic." Mental Magic. How dumb a name can you get? They are even playing by stupid "cantrip rules", which means that once a spell is played, no one else can play it again during that game, and that the format is extended of all things. Me, I'm a fan of Constructed Blah, with Type 1 rules. But I like to have fun. I still beat them up, even with their rules. Welcome to "mental magic" school, Kibler. Welcome, Sullivan. Face scrivner, face your doooooooom. Elven rited triskellion will give Adrian nightmares for the next year. Talk about a kill card (thanks, wu!) ESPECIALLY after browse/trove/tomex2 were cast by Adrian, and he had six cards to my one (with equal land & no permanents on either side) at one point in the game. Pat Chapin is awesome. Dojo Invitational There was some confusion, teamwise. Adrian booted me from Cabal Rogue, since he hadn't seen much of me so far. Apparently thought I wouldn't show. He gave Brian Kowal my spot, but said I could play Brian for the spot. I declined. Then I challenged Adrian for HIS spot. We played. I won 2-0. Because I am the nicest guy ever, and Adrian looked pretty unhappy at the prospect of not playing, I gave the slot back to him anyway. I'm such a nice guy. :) I make him play my Standard deck, he makes me play his extended deck. I go find Brian Kibler & Mike Bregoli and form Team Random Chumly. I play to a draw against some guy with a 5C? in the first round. I'm 4 turns from winning when time is called in game 1. No, I didn't know the rounds would only be 50 minutes long, and that games would be what counted, not matches. Next I play against Altran. I win game one, he wins game two. We run out of time in game three. With about 8 more minutes, he would have beaten me, though. Next up is the AustiKnights. I'm scheduled to play against Brian Hubble, but I give Bill Macey enough talk to make him switch spots with Hubble. I lose game one because I'm an idiot. Time runs out in game two, but the Baron was wreaking havoc. Final match has me against some guy with a u/g vineyard ernham/scroll deck. What a combo. Makes my Control Magics castable on turn 2. Which I do. I lose, then win (with his Djinn & mine), then die to Vineyard burn in game 3, as I can't draw a single control or whisper or anything. TDC gives me the Mirror Universe they win for getting second. Those guys are great. Pat Johnson, Mike Pilnick, and I scrounge for food. We don't find any. We end up at some nasty waffle house. I'll spare the details. We get back to the other hotel, and Dan is ready to leave. We do. ------------------------------- random commentary: -------------------------------- Mike Long: Cad. Bloom? Kids, you ain't seen NOTHING. Why, I recall back in the day when Swords to Plowshares would get cast with Revised Swamps, Yavimaya Ants only cost G3, Scaled Wurms were an entire coloreless mana cheaper, et cetra. Why, just a month or so before Origins, Propaganda didn't have to be paid, and depletion lands always untapped. Hell, just a couple of weeks before Origins, Natural Balance only costed three mana, a Lord of Atlantis & a 1/1 Merfolk only attacked for a total of two, and mana mysteriously was able to float in and out of the mana pool as needed. What, this is a surprise? I guess I just got used to it. Here, have a slap on the wrist & keep doing the same thing. The DCI & "Competative Magic" are jokes in light of stuff like this. Anyway, on to positive things: --------- Cabal Rogue - Wow. If I weren't on it already, I know I'd want to be. :) --------- People who are just plain cool: Pat Johnson - Best Bloom player on the East Coast, and all around cool guy. Altran - Hail to the King, baby. TDC, what more need be said? Jeff Wu - Another TDC guy, he makes his opponent Strip Mine his City of Brass in a draft game when his opponent KNOWS that Jeff has a V. Stronghold in his deck. Adrian Sullivan - Even cooler than I thought he would be. I like people who are able to assimilate information & change their minds if need be. Garyberry Fortenberry - He's like this big teddy bear. That you haven't ever put in the washing machine. Joe Cain & Friend - Joe is one of those people who is just cool, as well. Thanks for handing me a deck that took me to the final 16. Just think, if I had ever actually played it before, I would have still only made the round of 16. Damn my bad player skills. Pat Chapin - Where'd this guy come from? Excuse me, THIS GUY.. Rob Hahn - Another all-time-favorite of mine, I knew him back in the day, so THERE. Even if he does insist on playing Juzams in Type 1, I still like him. Kevin "quiet" McLaughlin - I sense the force is strong with this one, though he didn't really open up until Sunday. El Frank and his Dojo - Don't let a random chumley exterior fool you, my Magic Dojo shirt is the only MTG clothing that I'll actually wear. This guy has done more for the game and the players than anyone realizes. Tom Guevin - I get along rather well with people who don't agree with me, for some reason. Brian Weissman - For having a good sense of humor when I was making fun of him while playing Adrian right before the Dojo invitational. "What do you mean ask THAT guy? You're just going to ask some random guy off the street about control theory? Does this chumley look like he knows how to play control? Be SERIOUS, Adrian!" Dan Bridy - He really is Winona Matt Gustafson - because Mike Pilnick - Better than he thinks he is. If there is a Sliver King, it's him. Joel Priest - Am I the MEANest?.?.?... am I the BADDEST?!? Brian "undefeatable" Kibler - Who let me draw a weathered wooden sign on the opponent side of his play mat, with this inscribed upon the sign: "Abandon hope, all ye who duel here, for you face Brian Kibler, and a mighty mage is he." Mike Bregoli - He seemed pretty cool. Reminded me of Bridy, if Bridy were suddenly really good. Andrew Cuneo - Big deck Jankfield - You didn't show up. If you're not at Chicago, you will invoke my wrath. Artists - Q. Hoover was *very* cool for being confined in that room and having to sit there and sign cards all day long. If you ever meet him, be cool to him and bring him a present or something. D'Terlizzi - Wow. This guy was really laid back and fun. Foglios - He was.. less than I had hoped for. She was really quite cool. Only one really negative reference: The dealer who wouldn't sell me an UL Sedge Troll for $5. Lord knows that those UL Sedge Trolls are just an incredibly hot item these days. ---------------------------------- ---------------------------------- It's time to catch some shut-eye, folks. Oh, and just to answer the obvious ones: 1. JoeBlue is a deck I designed that looks a lot like Draw-Go if you don't know what you are looking at. It works like any other Whisper/Disk, with a few tricks. 2. No, you can't join Cabal Rogue. I'm sorry, we topped out our membership at 12 people, which is almost too heavy right there. About the only person we'd take at this point would be Eric Taylor, but then we'd have to bump off Bad Player Flores, and he already complains enough every time I see him. 3. Yes, it's worth dropping me a note at jshuler@gmu.edu if you enjoyed this and would like to see another one. 4. Yes, my spellbook includes powerful green spells. 5. No, Tom Guevin didn't splash a SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION or a Lightning Blast in his B/G draft deck at Nationals, even though he was playing with mana-converter elf. 6. Yes, Tom Guevin played Vampire Hounds on his turn during the same draft period, then said to his opponent during his opponent's turn: "Play Oath of Ghouls". And his opponent did. If only my opponents would obey my commands. 7. Yes, you Wakefieldites, Jamie and I kid around like that. Now take the poles out of your asses and complain about something else. 8. No, I didn't leave you out on purpose, I just forgot to include you in the report. Believe me, if you think you aren't in because I don't like you, it's not true. If I didn't like you, I would have put something bad in about you. bye, now. John Shuler jshuler@gmu.edu Cabal Roguey sorta guy Designs Bad Player Flores' WINNING decks -- John M. Shuler jshuler at gmu.edu Member of Cabal Rogue -------------------------------------------------------------------- I was in the finals again and my opponent was scared to death of me or perhaps just too nervous from being in the finals. It was 1 game to 1 game, the final game taking the prize. He made so many mistakes. He wasn't a bad player, it was just that he was giving me every chance to win, but I had to be like this: No. I am King Scrub. I will not let you lose. I will only accept 2nd place. - Eric Taylor --------------------------------------------------------------------