Subject: Canadian Nationals Tournament Report Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 17:43:03 -0600 From: "S. Ryan Kirk" To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Hi Frank, Seeing as how it's Canada Day and I made the National Team, I figured today would be a good day to write a report about Nationals. I like the kind of reports that tend to babble a bit about whatever, so I'm including some babble in mine. I almost wasn't able to go to Nationals after qualifying in Central Canada. I work at a video store that has five employees and we have a three person shift on Saturday afternoons. Normally it wouldn't be a problem to get off except two other people had already booked the same weekend off. So I had to beg and plead to get the time off and the boss finally relented. (Props to him!). Going to Nationals this year were four members of Team Tubby: Ryan Rusaw, Adam Hein, Nick Bonokoski, and Myself. Adam and I both qualified in Winnipeg and Ryan qualified on rating, but Nick was going without an invitation, hoping to qualify in one of the two Opens. There were also some guys from Winnipeg and Vancouver going that we knew. So on Thursday morning we fly out, and already we're having interesting things happen. Our plane leaves at 12:10 pm and at 11:50am Nick still hasn't arrived at the airport. So I phone him and ask him what the hell is he doing, and he says he is just leaving. In a bigger city he would be screwed, but this is Regina and he makes the flight on time (in fact he wasn't even the last person on the plane). So we fly to Calgary, which is in the opposite direction of Toronto, and wait there for three hours. I pick up the new issue of Maxim, read that for a while, then put together a Humility deck that is really just a modified Donais deck. Our plane finally leaves for Toronto and we play test pretty much the whole way. It turns out that my Humility deck takes it like a slut from Sligh but does pretty well against most other decks. When we get to Toronto, our plane is forced into a holding pattern for about 45 minutes because of storms in the area. We finally land and we're about an hour late, only to find out that there is a limo driver strike in Toronto and we have to share a taxi with someone else. We also find out that it hit something like 35 degrees Celsius in Toronto that day, with some ungodly level of humidity that makes it pretty gross out. To make matters worse, the hotel/hostel/college residence we are staying at does not have air conditioning in the rooms. We hook up with Hein and Mike Bidyck from Saskatoon (they were in a holding pattern for 2 hours), Jason Simard, Christian Basarowitz (sp?), Mike Arenson, Jason The, and Jesse Hajer from Winnipeg, as well as Mike Gurney and Mike MacKinnon from Vancouver. We head over to 401 Convenience for a while, then come back to do some playtesting and drafting. I get about an hour of sleep that night because it is so friggen hot in out room. We get up the next day at around 9:00 am and a bunch of the guys have already left for the open (except for The and Christian who slept in). We walk from our hotel to the convention center which is about 45 minutes away, passing MuchMusic and the Zanzibar strip club which Adam and I designate as the place to go when we scrub out. When we get to the convention center we find out that Nick hasn't lost yet and Bidyck has. We draft in a practise draft with Gary Wise and friends and I don't come in last. BTW, I think Gary Wise is about the funniest Magic player in Canada. We later draft in a sanctioned side tourney that is single elim and I lose in the first round. By this time Nick is playing in his last match and is like 5-0-1 with his Sligh deck. I don't know what Bidyck was playing but he wasn't going to qualify. So Nick ends up beating a Counter Sliver deck to win the open. OK, cool, he's gonna get some cool prizes right? Nope, he gets nothing. He paid ten dollars to get in the door, then another thirty bucks to play in the Open, wins and all he gets is an invite. What the hell is that? There were over 120 people playing in the Open. We catch a cab back to the hotel and end up playing in a Foreign Booster Draft tourney and end up in bed at around 4am. It's not as hot so I get a lengthy three hours of sleep. We get up the next morning at head down for breakfast. We find out that Christian and Jason The ended up qualifying in the second open that had ended at 6:30 am. Mark Zagler(sp?) shows up and we take the subway with him to the convention center. Mark is sometimes funny, but is 17 going on 12 and is pretty fricken immature sometimes. I spent a lot of time watching him try and sac other people at the tourney WTF!?! When we register (which costs twenty bucks) we the butt ugliest shirts I have ever seen. They are yellow with Canadian Nationals in puke orange and Competitor in black. Whoever designed the shirts needs to be lynched. Canada's colors are red and white, not yellow and puke orange. I can't imagine that the American shirts will be anywhere near as ugly as ours. So we start drafting at around 12:00pm instead of 11:00am, no shock there. My draft pod consists of Boyd Hardie, Sebastien Sauve, Michael Croft, Michael MacKinnon, John Robertson, Herbert Chung, myself, and Shantam. Apparently the seating was done by ranking. Table one included the number 1 ranked player, the 14th ranked player, the 27th ranked player, and so on. At the tables, the seating was in the same order of ranking, which to me seems to give the player at Seat 1 a huge advantage because the 8th, 7th, and 6th ranked players at the table are sitting to his right feeding him cards. So anyway I'm at table two in the seventh seat because my Limited rating is like 1625 or something. I haven't drafted a lot, so my strategy includes taking the best cards in the first few picks and going from there. I think my first choice would have been to go R/W and my second choice was U/W. I open my first pack and I don't see a Rolling Thunder (I have never seen a Rolling Thunder in a draft pack) so I grab a Rootwater Hunter. I think I grabbed a Soltari Trooper in my second pack and a Gravedigger in the third. Then I see a Lightning Blast in the fourth pack! Red it is. I also draft a Sandstone Warrior, a Barbed Sliver, a Mounted Archers, and a Bandage. I think I opened a Convulsing Licid in my first pack and got passed a second turn Shock. Later I got 2 Flowstone Shamblers, a Seething Anger and a Conviction. I think I took a Soltari Visionary as my first pick, then got passed a Kor Chant in my second pack. Personally I think Kor Chant might be the strongest card in Exodus for draft. Then in the fourth pack I got passed a Cataclysm. I was more than a little surprised that the Cataclysm had made it that far around. Here's the deck I drafted and the sideboard: 9 Mountain 8 Plains 1 Seething Anger 1 Shock 1 Cinder Crawler 1 Lightning Blast 1 Mage il-Vec 1 Duct Crawler 2 Flowstone Shambler 1 Convulsing Licid 1 Sandstone Warrior 1 Barbed Sliver 1 Standing Troops 1 Soltari Visionary 1 Charging Paladin 1 Shield Mate 1 Treasure Hunter 1 Soltari Trooper 1 Soltari Foot Soldier 1 Mounted Archers 1 Conviction 1 Cataclysm 1 Kor Chant 1 Bandage Sideboard 1 Change of Heart (This should have been in my deck standard, I don't know what I was thinking. I had sided it in every game) 1 Honor Guard 2 Victual Sliver 2 Shattering Pulse 1 Pandemonium 1 Onslaught 2 Resuscitate 1 Leap 1 Sift 1 Mulch 1 Time Ebb 1 Rootwater Hunter 1 Gravedigger 1 Eladamri's Vineyard (I rare drafted this as my 14th pick in Tempest) 1 Frog Tongue 1 Bayou Dragonfly 1 COP:Green 1 Stone Rain 1 Tooth and Claw I wasn't actually expecting too much out of my deck because I felt a lot of the creatures were substandard. I was thinking 2-2. Round One Mike Croft DCI:1747 Milton, Ont First Game: I get out a Shield Mate that beats hime done for ONE the second turn! :) My Shield Mate turns out to be MVP this game as Mike can't attack with his Youthful Knights. He gets out a Warrior En-Kor and puts an Endless Scream for 4 on it which takes out a couple of my creatures cause I'm stupid. I then realize I have a licid in play and use that to hold the WEK off until he Cloudchaser Eagle kills it when I'm tapped out. I'm holding a Lightning Blast in my hand but I can't use it on the WEK when I top deck a Cataclysm. I chump block with creatures until I'm at 8 mana then I Cataclysm dumping 4 mana into my pool so I can LB the WEK. So he's has one land and no creatures in play, I have a Plains, a Mounted Archers with a Conviction on it. I win right? Nope. He draws 4 land in his next 5 cards and is able to play out his hand and kill me. Second Game: Again I get out the broken first turn Shiled Mate. I hit for two turns and then lay a Barbed Sliver. He's colored screwed and on the fourth turn I start Seething Anger buyback and he can't recover fast enough. Third Game: I lay a first turn Soltari Foot Soldier, a second turn Shield Mate (broken), and a third turn Barbed SLiver. He gets out a Serpent Warrior which gets killed by the Shield Mate (broken) with a bit of help from a Kor Chant. I get him down to four and cheese him out with a Lightning Blast. Matches: 1-0 Games: 2-1 I feel good after that match, my deck didn't suck like I thought it would. Oh and Mike was a good guy too, we talked enough during the match to relieve first round jitters. Round Two Sebastian Sauve DCI:1855 Montreal, Quebec Sebastian seems like a nice guy although he is kinda quiet. Game One: I lay a second turn Soltari Trooper, he lays a third turn Thalakos Scout. I lay a third turn Mage il-Vec. He Giant Strengths his Trooper and we start racing. I attack next turn for 7 after I Seething Anger my Mage. He stops my Trooper but I get a Soltari Foot Soldier and when he's at six I Shock then Lightning Blast him. Game Two: I get stuck at two land and my Soltari Trooper with Conviction can't outrace his Mogg Flunkies, Oppurtunist, Craven Giant and Rolling Thunder. Game Three: We have crazy licid wars, him with a Transmorgrifying one and I with a Convulsing, but I think he played a little too aggressively and didn't leave enough blockers and I swarmed him for the win. Matches: 2-0 Games: 4-2 Feeling even better after this round and I'm the only 2-0 in the pod because there have been 4 draws already. This really screws up my tiebreakers later. Round Three Herbert Chung DCI:???? Toronto, Ontario Herbert was sitting to my right and I knew he was playing Black but he was also playing Red! He told me later he took a Master Decoy over the Lightning Blast but then the white dried up and he had to switch to red. Game One: Herbert's on the Defence right away as I get out a Soltari Trooper, a Soltari Foot Soldier and a Conviction. He's forced to Aftershock the Trooper and then I lay a Mounted Archers and eventually Shock him out. I see a Mogg Cannon first game and I figure he has some kind of regenerating combo so I side in a Shattering Pulse. Game Two: He gets out a Vampire Hounds and I get a Treasure Hunter (that sounds fair). He hits me with the Hounds a couple times and a Serpent Warrior. He also gets a 3/3 Shifting Wall. I get out a Soltari Visionary, a Sandstone Warrior, and a Convulsing Licid to hold off his stuff. He then Aftershocks the Visionary and I'm able to use the Licid to get the Sandstone Warrior through for the kill. After the match Herbert told me that my deck was far better than his and I was feeling even better. Herbert was also a nice guy and great to play against. His record was 1-0-1 before we played, so it meant I got paired down for the first time in the day. Matches: 3-0 Games: 6-2 Round Four Shantam DCI:1589 Merickville, Ontario Game One: I get a first turn Soltari Foot Soldier and second turn Conviction. This gets him done to 14 when I am forced to move the Conviction to a non-Shadow creature to hold off his Clot Sliver, Cat Burglar and Lowland Giant which were threatning to crush me. I hit him for one the next turn with the Soldier. The I get to five land and I'm able to Seething Anger the Soldier with a Bandage in hand. He Flings his Clot Sliver at the Soldier in response to the Seething Anger and I Bandage it which is basically game. Game Two: I get the same first and second turn plays as the first game plus on the fourth or fifth turn I get a Soltari Visionary followed by Seething Anger. I'm able to deal with his 2 Dauthi Jackals and I ride the Soltari Foot Soldier and Soltari Visionary to victory. After the match I ask him about his unusual name which he says is Sanskrit for "peaceful something" (sorry can't remember). I tell him I find the name somewhat amusing considering the R/B beatdown deck he is playing. Shantam was 2-1 before the match meaning I got paired down again. Matches: 4-0 Games: 8-2 So I ended the first day with a perfect match record and two losses, one which was to mana screw. My deck wasn't as bad as I originally thought, and probably pretty good considering all the red that was drafted at the table. Because of my strange pod, my tiebreakers put me into 6th place. There ended up being 9 4-0s after the first day including my teammate Ryan Rusaw who finished third. My two other teammates were both 2-2. Adam was kind of disappointed going 2-2 with a good G/R deck with an Ogre Shaman (the Stormbind guy). He got manascrewed three or four times in the first two matches. I believe it was Elijah Pollock who won the plaque for first place in the booster portion of Nationals. A bunch of us go out to eat and we get back to the hotel at about 10pm. We watch some drafts for a bit, then we go up to our rooms to finish off our decks. I end up going with a modified version of the Underwood WW deck that I played at Nationals. I was going to play Nev-Tech but everyone told me that it was a bad idea (especially Rusaw and Gurney). So I head down to test the deck awhile. I play against Rusaw's sligh deck continually and win one maybe two games and I decide I hate the Underwood deck. Gurney, Rusaw and I then decide there are going to be a bunch of Sligh decks at the top because you only needed to go 2-0-2 or 2-1-1 to make top eight. So we decide that Godzilla would be a good meta-game choice. Me and Rusaw head up to our room again to put a couple Godzilla decks together but I realize I have nowhere near the cards I need to make the deck. By this time it's something like 3am and I'm too fucking tired to find the cards. I also haven't played the deck much and Rusaw's instructions of get stuff in the graveyard and reanimate it wasn't going to be enough info. So I say "Fuck it!" and decide to play the Underwood. I throw in a few more anti-red cards and go to bed while Rusaw goes down to test some more. I get a whopping 4 hours of sleep to up my three day total to 8 hours! I feel crappy and a delicious Fruitopia doesn't help. Five of us head to the subway so we can get to the tourney center on time and it's locked up, WTF!?! We're not sure what we're going to do then I see a cab passing and my action of pointing to it is apparently the same as flagging it down. Luckily the guy lets all five of us in the cab and we get to the convention center at ten after eight. Inside there are maybe 15 people there and the Head Judge announces that the cutoff time for registration is 8:30 so we think there might be a lot of people ineligible for the second. The Judge later pushed the time back 1/2 hour but we still only started 10 minutes late. The deck I ended up playing: 4 Cursed Scroll 4 Mox Diamond 4 Tithe 4 Soltari Priest 4 White Knight 4 Warrior En-Kor 3 Soltari Monk 2 Sky Spirit 2 Freewind Falcon 2 Man-'O-War 3 Disenchant 2 Firestorm 1 Earthquake 4 Wasteland 2 Undiscovered Paradise 2 City of Brass 2 Gemstone Mine 11 Plains Sideboard 1 Armageddon 1 Disenchant 3 Ebony Charm 3 Warmth 4 Pyroblast 3 Sleight of Mind Round One: Jason Yorgason DCI:1839 Edmonton, Alberta I met a couple days before in a practise draft and Nick knows him from Edmonton PTQs and stuff and he's pretty cool and all. Game One: I had been worried about playing against Draw-Go and when Jason lays twp islands and a Wall of Tears I get a little worried. I draw like an ass and I find out he is actually playing mono blue bounce with Tradewinds, Man-'O-Wars, and Rainbow Efreets. I am able to Firestorm away the first lock but I can't put any pressure on him and he starts whispering and then starts Capsizing stuff at 12 land and I conceed with him at 10. I side in 1 Armageddon, 4 Pyroblasts, and 3 Sleight of Minds which wreck Mono Blue. Blue control decks can't handle pro-blue shadow creatures when you run 4 Wastelands. Game 2: He gets out a Wall of Tears, a Tradewind and a Rainbow Efreet up. I manage to get out two Cursed Scrolls with enought mana to power them and he makes a mistake by not returning one to my hand in response to me using the other. I'm able to kill all his creatures and he conceeds when I have a Sky Spirit and a pro-blue Freewind Falcon up. Game 3: I get a first turn Soltari Monk and Sleight it to pro-blue and he can't deal with it and then I get a Cursed Scroll in play and that's about game. Matches: 1-0 Games: 2-1 Round Two James Snook DCI: 1928 Toronto, Ontario Game 1: At first I think he's playing Suicide Black but it turns out to be 5CB. I get out a first turn Monk and a second turn Monk and we race a bit, then he kills my Scroll with a monkey and Firestorms away my Monks and kills me with his creatures. Game 2: I don't remember much about this game but it looks like we raced and killed each others creatures and I ended up winning at 4 life. After the first game I was expecting to lose this match but I push it to the third game. Game 3: This was a huge game. If I won I could ID twice into the top eight. James was 4-1 (I got paired down again) and couldn't do the same but it was also huge for him. He gets a quick jump with a Shadwo Guildmage and two Pump KNights. I get a Soltari Priest and a White Knight. He gets me down to 14 and then I firestorm his creatures away. I say go and he lays a Dread of Night. I'm tapped out and lose the Monk but I have a Sleight of Mind in hand. On my turn I sleight the dread to black and kill the Shadow Guildmage he had laid last turn. I hit him with the Knight a few times and he can't lay anything because of the Dread. Then at the end of one of my turns he casts Mind Bend on the Dread of Night. This is the biggest play of the tourney for me. He says, "I'll sleight that back to BLACK." A little confused (I was really tired), I ask, "Back to black?" He says yep and I let him take his turn. He casts a 2nd Dread of Night and I say OK. He points to my White Knight and I tell him it's still alive. Then he realizes what he done. He kinda asks to take it back, but as nice as I am this is my game so I don't let him go back. I end up winning the game because he can't lay anyof his creatures. Afterwards I feel kinda of bad but he says he's only upset with himself and shakes my hand which I feel was pretty classy. Matches: 2-0 (6-0) Games: 4-2 (12-4) If I face the other 6-0 I can draw and then I am in no matter what. Round Seven Elijah Pollock DCI: 1840 Toronto, Ontario Elijah is 6-0 and we ID. Actually we ID after a nerve racking deck check becuase I didn't know you had to reset after the match, not before, so I didn't know if I did or not. I pass and don't have to cry. I go veg cause I'm so tired. Round Eight Peter Radonjic DCI:1870 Vancouver, B.C. Peter is 6-0-1 so I get to ID again after another fucking deck check! So I make Top Eight as third seed. Check Peter's report to see who else made the top eight because I forgot to write it down. First Round of Playoffs The playoffs are basically double elim with the winners bracket playing for Champ and the rest hoping to win 2 before they lose 2 to make the National Team Terry Tsang DCI:1777 Vancouver, B.C. Game One: Terry's playing ProsBloom. I get him down to 4 before he goes off. He finds the combo with one card left in his deck. Game Two: I get him done to 6 and he goes for it. He can't find a Cadaverous Bloom though and runs out of steam. Game Three: I get Terry down to 10 and he goes for the combo but again runs out of steam. He goes down to 3 and I attack him for 2 with a White Knight and the Scroll him. I think ProsBloom is a really good deck and Terry really knows how to play it, but sometimes it draws like an ass and it did for Terry all three games. I can now win one of the next two and make the team. Second Playoff Round Nick Chen DCI:???? Toronto, Ontario Game One: Nick is playing WW as well with less creatures and more creature kill. I get a shitty draw and he out creatures me to death. Game Two: Nick tells me he was expecting a lot of WW and Black Weenie and is prepared for it. Great, I prepared for Sligh and haven't seen any of it. I have to mulligan down to six when my opening hand is a Undiscovered Paradise and 2 Wastelands and crap. My second hand has a wasteland as it's only land so I mulligan again. My third hand is like the first but with an Undiscovered, a Wasteland, two White Knights and some useless spell. The hand sucks but I'm not going to paris again. I manage to topdeck a plains and cast some stuff but I overextend a bit and he casts Wrath of God (which is maindeck but I didn't see any the first game ... a dumb mistake). I can't recover from a 3-1 card advantage and a 5 card opening hand. I'm feeling kind of shitty for losing, plus I now have to wait for two consecutive matches to finish before I can play my last match. Third Round of Playoffs Elijah Pollock DCI:1840 Toronto, Ontario This match is for a spot on the Nationals team and I'm more than a little nervous. Game One: I think I had to Paris once and I let him go (which is a good play with this deck Elijah ... first turn Mox, Tithe is too strong). I get a first turn Priest followed by a second turn Priest followed by a third turn Priest. After I laid the third turn Priest he cast a Suq'Ata Firewalker which pinged a couple Priests, but it was too late and I firestormed him for two to set up the kill. In his defence he was screwed with only one green source and he had an awakening in his hand which would have wrecked me. I side in my Sleights and Pyros. Game Two: I get a pro-blue Priest, White Knight, and a Scroll into play in the first few turns. He kills my Scroll with a Monkey. He hasn't drawn any early walls but he did draw 3 Quicksands. I Man-'O-War the Monkey and hit him for four. He doesn't lay the Orangutan, waiting for another scroll. He counters a creature of mine and I force him to quicksand both the Man-'O-War and the White Knight. Next turn I wasteland the qucksand and attack with the Priest. I continue to cast creatures he has to counter and then get a Freewind Falcon through. I then draw a Pyroblast and hit him for three. I drop a second scroll. He 'tabis it and I scroll him for two in response. It hit for a few more then I topdeck a third scroll. I get him done to two and cast the third scroll. He dissipates it and I pyroblast his dissipate. I lay my Mox Diamond and scroll him with one card in hand for the game. So I made the Nationals Team in 3rd spot and picked up 1,000 US (minus whatever those IRS vultures take). No props or slops except props to all my teammates and the guys from Winnipeg and Vancouver. Oh wait ... huge slops to the tourney organizers. We weren't allowed to have our bags with us at the tables during the Booster Draft so we put them behind the Judges table. Christian Basarowitz's bag ended up being stolen and there were over $2000 in cards in it. All the judge's had to say was, "Try and borrow some cards so you can play tommorow." Fuck off, what the hell is that ... Sorry to end on a sour note ... Feel free to send me any comments or the like (for those of you who read this far) Ryan Kirk S. Ryan (Tubby) Kirk E-mail: kirk12@meena.cc.uregina.ca 4th Year Anthropology Major University of Regina Member of Team Tubby I like: Magic: the Gathering, U2, and food.