Subject: Canadian Nationals Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 14:03:01 -0700 (PDT) From: Peter Radonjic To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com This report is long, but don't skim. You'll miss random funny jokes. Trust me. This is more like a story, instead of a report :) AND I insult the colour green later on. :) How cool is that? Me and Ryan Fuller, Thomas Girard, Terry Tsang, and the incomparable Jeff Fung fly to Toronto from our home base Vancouver. Blah, blah, blah, boring mandatory stories about travel to tournament, blah, blah, blah. The 1998 Canadian Nationals were played this past weekend at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (yes that's how we spell it in Canada) which is part of a complex that includes the CN tower (imagine a cool Space Needle) and the Skydome. Friday was the Canadian Open, where players competed with Type II decks to qualify for 16 spots in the Nationals. At midnight, another Open was held -- the number of spots depended on how many qualified players from regionals and ranking invites did not show up. Scheduled was four rounds of draft and four rounds of Type II. 104 players would participate. That meant that 6-1-1 was needed to make top 8. So you had to go undefeated in one of the two formats. I don't know about you, but I can't expect to go better than x-1 in any tournament. Ugh, I didn't think I could do it. Friday, as the Open is going, I talk to WoTC employee Chris Galvin, head judge Seyil Yoon, and tourney organizer Marvin Pagliurian (sp) and suggest that they add a round to each format and do two drafts. That way 4-1/4-1 will probably make top 8. They discuss it and decide that they can't change it because of logistical concerns. Damn. Anyway, the 104 players from around the country assembled into 13 pods of eight to run the Tempest-Stonghold-Exodus draft. Four rounds. The funniest part of Nationals was when Jeff Fung, who was on the bubble to make it into nationals, having played in the midnight Open, and operating on no sleep for two days, held hands with other hopefuls and led them in a loud prayer as the head judge read out the names of who got in. Unfortunately Jeff didn't. :( TESTEX Draft They seat us according to ranking, and I end up with Eric Tam to my left. At least he's not on my right. I get to feed him :) I secretly hope I open an Overrun, so I can send it to Tam. The chance that I am going to play green when the table is not full of good drafters is ZERO. I'm leaning towards Blue. Hey, I'm not discriminating against green, so don't flame me Wakefield :). Green is a solid colour when you are not fighting over it. Which is usually what happens at tables with good players. When you fight over green, look the hell out. I end up with a UR deck with two Shamus!! Kick ass!! in the words of one of those South Park dudes. Gabe Tsang comes over during deck construction. I show him my pride and joy, the two Shamus. He's not impressed. He shows me his two Shamus. WTF? Maybe other people will be impressed. Waiting in line for land, I show a guy my two Shamus. Yeah, baby, yeah! He's not impressed, either. He's points at his decklist -- 2 ephermerons!!! WTF again! I guess they went well with HIS WINDS OF RATH! So everyone was raining on my parade. Cool cards in deck: 2 shamus 2 wayward souls capsize 2 flunkies 3 hill giants tim and mage il-vec The draft went well. I've never cut a lighning elemental from a red deck before. :) That's what is known as a GOOD problem :) Round one: Have a really close match against Jeremy Elgar that went into injury time because it took a couple minutes for a judge to come over for a ruling. Why would a match against a fast WR weenie deck take full time you say? Oh, I don't know, maybe because of the EIGHTEEN DAMN life he gained game three from his Slow Warden. I mean Soul Warden. Ya shoulda seen his life total that game. 24, 25, 26, 22, 23, 19, 20, 17, 18, 15, 16, 14, 15, 16, 17, ....... not cool. Thank God I had those three flying hill giants on the table. :) 1-0-0 Round two: Play against the other guy playing RU. He got all the good spells, I got all the good creatures. Consequently, both games consisted of him burning spells to hold of my army. Creatures win those battles. Oh, hey, I just remembered. That damn Soul Warden hit me for two, also! 2-0-0 Round three: Opponent Eric Tam. Great. He's has a broken GB deck. Thing is I passed him 2/3's of it. He Overruns game one. Well, on to game two I say. It goes to three games, one of us mana stumbles each game. Fizzling a Dregs by removing both the targets may have won me game three. 3-0-0 Round four: John Hong, a potentially good player who is just one step down from being really good. He makes a couple of minor errors, like wrong mana tapping, that cost him the match. But hey, that's what happens at the top level. 4-0-0 Wasn't I bitching about having to go undefeated in one of the format to make top 8? My English teacher says that's irony. Type II Me, and my teammate Ryan Fuller have this deck which is affectionately called the Turbo-Nothing deck. It looked like our best deck, but it never actually won a game in playtesting because you have to manually deck your opponent with blessings. The deck is GW. Turbo-Nothing -- humilities, scroll racks, geddon, wraths, sylvans, tithes, diamonds, orim's prayer, blessings, auras, walls of blossoms. The deck gets you what you want when you want it until you lock up the game by geddoning every turn. Geddon recursion is COOL. I chickened out playing it that night because I only had to go 2-1-1 to make it. Besides we had a really good mono-blue that didn't take 3 hours to win a game. I was concerned about time with Turbo-Nothing. You had to play really quickly with that deck, and I wanted a deck that was reasonably fast so I could take my time playing it. Me, Fuller, and another friend, Pete Grauer, each had versions of mono-blue, but I chose to play Grauer tech because, you know, the ten thousand games he played with it might mean his version is better than mine, which had 20 games under it. Grauer -- waterspout, ophids, man o wars, firewalkers, leaks, counterspells, dissipates, impulses, capsizes, mind stones. I figured his deck was really good because he ALWAYS play with whispers of the muse, even like in his winter orb decks, and there weren't any in this deck, so the design must be awesome. I, like any true magic player, tweaked the deck and board anyway. Round five: I play against Ryan Rusaw, who made quarters at 96 Nationals, and is a friend I don't see enough. When I discover on turn two that he's playing Godzilla the multiple man o wars in my hand look a lot better. :) My deck beats up on Godzilla as a pleasant side effect. 5-0-0 Round six: Paired up against a teammate, Thomas Girard, playing the same deck. We abuse the intentional draw rule, knowing we only have to win one of the next two to get in. 5-0-1 Round Seven: Matt Vienneau - PT Atlanta quarter finalist.. Oh boy. Okay, so I'm glad that I had a chance to read his report on nationals before I posted mine. So I get to reply to his statements about our match. :) I am going to take this part of the report seriously. (I promise that no other part of the report will be serious :) [Begin seriousness :)] Here are two direct quotes from his report: "Pete showed he has no restraint when it comes to class. He lets me shuffle my deck for a couple minutes, and then says that he wants to check whether the backs are marked as the sleeves are clear. He goes through the deck and finds seven cards he can readily identify. He's totally correct. I could identify them too.... These are all Maros, Birds of Paradise, and Undiscovereds." First of all, I don't know of anyone who sits down at the beginning of a round who doesn't let their opponent shuffle their own deck. I did not make a comment that I "want to check whether the backs are marked (because) the sleeves are clear" As most top level players do, after I "let" him shuffle his deck, I pile shuffled his deck. As I did, I noticed the seven cards. They were very played. They would have been fine if the rest of the deck were in similiar condition, but most of the rest of the deck were mint or near so. Therefore, they stood out. Now, I have no doubt in my mind, these were cards that have seen heavy play in many different decks (cuz you know, Matt REALLY likes green :) Oops, supposed to be serious!) and thus were in that condition. Also, a couple of cards were borrowed from a friend who apparently, according to Matt, doesn't keep his cards in too great a shape. So, everything's cool, I think, just get them proxied. I wasn't looking for him to recieve a game loss, and most definately was not accusing him of anything. I think I did everything properly according to the rules. Apparently, I was showing a lack of class instead. Huh? "Now Pete doesn't play with sleeves at all. But most of his cards are pretty worn.... (he had) 11 or so easily recognizable pre-mirage cards. And, surprisingly, they were all land. Now Pete claims they were all Korean, and I'm sure he had other basic land in his deck." "Doesn't play with sleeves. _BUT_ (emphasis added) most of his cards are pretty worn...." I don't think I need to point out the flaw in his logic here. The 11 cards he picked out were all islands. They were in fact a mix of Chinese and Japanese and a single Italian island. The other islands in my deck were Korean. I, along with most players, like foreign black border cards. All the basic land I use are a mix of foreign land. Now, this has never been a problem before, because in other decks, I've had black bordered foriegn cards like Drain Lifes that are lighter. Also, when I play with sleeves, they are indistinguishable. So, it's never been a problem. In playtesting, before Nationals, it didn't occur to me because I was testing out cards like portent (from Ice Age) and Force Spike (from Legends) which have the lighter black. Unfortunately, I didn't use a couple my foriegn revised counterspells, which have the lighter back, to mix it up a little. Now I knew that eventually an opponent would be worried that I had marked cards because I didn't use sleeves. Cards do wear differently because they are in different zones of play. For example, a counterspell, which sits in your hand and enjoys your oily skin will wear differently that a permanent that taps every turn (like land). So, it can look like your cards are marked. I know I should use black sleeves, but it's just not as cool. Anyway, the cards were proxied and all was well. Or so I thought. Then I read Matt's report. I live in Vancouver, BC, a couple hours north of Seattle, and Matt lives in Toronto, ON, which is north of Buffalo. So, I don't see him much, but I've always considered him a friend. What I did, did not have any sort of malicous intent or hidden motive, I was just, to be blunt, covering my ass, in a major tournament, under the rules. We have a east-west rivalry, between Vancouver and Toronto magic players, but we're all friends, too. Or so I thought. But when he says that I "show no restraint when it comes to class" it makes me wonder what he thinks. But I digress. [End seriousness] Damn, this was supposed to be a short report. Now you are going to start skimming, if you haven't already. He's playing a version of Kastle's deck and Maro geddon's my ass game one, but I draw a land, play the one I had in my hand, and impulse for a third one. I capsize the Maro. Oh, yeah, I took 17 points of damage somewhere in there from that Maro guy. I legacy his bird and come back with a protected waterspout. I win game two, another close one. 6-0-1 Round eight: Ryan Kirk. I played him at 96 Nat's in the draft, and he wants to get revenge but we ID just cuz we don't want to bother playing. Might as well have a break before top 8. 6-0-2 Top Eight: Me, Elijah Pollock, multiple top eights at junior pro tours. Thomas Girard, teammate. Terry Tsang, teammate, multiple top 64's at PTs. Ryan Kirk Jackie Ng Nick Chen and Jordan Christensen, who gets DQ'ed for misregistering his deck. He wrote down tradewinds twice. When the Head Judge announced during deck reg that any mistakes would result in ejection, it made me really paranoid. So, number nine gets in. Oh, wait, he's left. So number 10 Ryan Fuller gets in. I jump up, look around. Fuller's not here! I remember as I was heading to the washroom earlier, seeing him and Tam leaving to go for food. We tell the judge we're going to get him. Me, Terry, Tsang, and Thomas run outside and split up. I remember seeing a McD's underneath Skydome when we were walking aroung the night before. I run in, Ryan's there! What a fluke! Quickly tell him what happened, he runs back, and squeezes into the top 8. But his fries ended up being cold :) Tam told me later that they wanted to go to Subway (which I have no clue where it is) but they couldn't find it, so settled on McD's. Quarters: I play Jackie. He's playing Tradewind Awakening. Legacy's are so good against that. I win game one. Game two take's an hour and a half. I locked up the board with legacy's. He can't play creatures except for walls and spike feeders (speeders). He decks me because my waterspouts wouldn't get the hell off the bench and into the game until the third period. He had a volrath's stronghold. Hmm, shouldn't have cut the two wastelands from the deck to add an isalnd and a quicksand to make the deck more consistent. I manage to win game three. 7-0-2 Ryan Fuller beats Elijah. Kirk beats Tsang. Chen beats Girard. Good thing it's modified double elim. Semi's: Play against Fuller. He wins game one. But gets a second warning for incorrect use of Sylvan library, the other happened against Elijah, and gets a game loss. I win, game three. We playtested this matchup and I should win anyway. 8-0-2 Other semi: Chen beats Kirk. Tsang beats Girard, eliminating him. Elijah beats Jackie, eliminating him. Kirk beats Elijah, eliminating him, and making the team. Tsang beats Fuller, eliminating him, and making the team. Finals: I play against Chen's white weenie, with scrolls, instead of geddons. It's a good matchup for me. The deck has trouble with scrolls game one, but null rods are in the board for those and other artifacts. Game one, he play much less agressive than he should have and firestorms at the wrong time, and I counter. I win with a protected waterspout. Game two, I hydroblast the firestorm that would wreck me, and win with TWO waterspouts. 9-0-2 Yeah! Going to Worlds again! It's the best tournament in Magic. After 21 rounds of swiss in three different formats, you'll find out how good you really are. Thanks for reading this excessively long report, Peter Radonjic Vancouver, B.C., Canada pradonji@sfu.ca P.S. Come out for the Vancouver Open the weekend before World's! Vancouver's only two hours north of Seattle, and some of the best players are coming to play, like Jon Finkel and Olle Rade! Let's see whatcha got!