Subject: nj state championships report Date: Mon, 09 Nov 1998 16:34:04 PST From: "paul jordan" To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com On Saturday before the states I was fairly confident in the deck I was going to play. I had been preparing an ensnaring bridge/scroll deck w/ duress, lobotomy, and bottomless pit. It could beat academy, and that was what i thought we be most prominent. That night I went to a friend Eric Witzling's house to playtest some more with him, Skye Thomsen and Eric Freda. Skye proceeded to house me with his academy deck. Freda continued to thrash me with sligh. Witzling beat me up with his arcane lab/ertai/tradewind deck (btw, this deck is so damn annoying. I'm surprised nobody else uses the lab). my confidence is slowly getting shattered. witzling and freda go to sleep around 3. Skye and I, in our infinite wisdom decide that sleep isn't worth it and play street fighter vs. x-men the next few hours (the best video game. go get a saturn, foreign adapter cartridge and the game). around 7 am skye and I decide that since my deck is a pile, I should play sligh. Freda is upset b/c he was using my deck, and now he has to make another one (he has one, but forget his cards and lives an hour away). after some bitching, the deck is made and we're off to breakfast. we make our ritual stop at mcdonald's and make our drive through order. they get it wrong, surprise. we go inside expecting a fight, and they fold easily. we end up with 3 free egg sandwiches. at this point we knew it would be a good day. blah blah blah, we get to edison. i suppose i'll put the decklist up, not that anyone couldn't duplicate it in 5 min. it is sligh, you know. 4 balls 4 scrolls 4 ironclaw 4 pup 4 patrol 4 shock 4 kindle 4 incinerate 4 mogg 3 slinger 1 burst 4 waste 16 mountain (1 arabian) sb: 4 pyro 4 gnomes 3 meltdown 2 boil 2 spellshock round 1-Bill Walter suicide black sligh vs suicide. this is a good sign. to top it off, i draw the lucky arabian mountain. this card is incredible. you can't lose with it on the table. this is proven throughout the day. game 1 he has out 3 sarco's without any tokens. i win. game 2 he pulls the scroll before i do. i lose. game 3 ball lightnings prove themselves. i win. after the match, bill mentions that he should've had another scroll in his deck. he says he only has 2. i think 2 more should be in the deck. oh, he was adamant about being called "Joe Lamer". so, he's being called joe lamer. 1-0, 2-1 round 2-John Thorpe prop-orb this deck kept me guessing as to what it did for the longest time. first game he draws that incredible swamp, and that's it. game over soon. game two he lays black knight, shadow, skirge, followed by orb! i'm caught off guard, tapped out. scroll is meaningless, and shadow/flying comes through for the win. game 3, i see the first ever land that can produce blue in his deck, and am suddenly facing prob orb. not even seeing blue lands before, i had my pyro's nowhere in sight. i had him kind of low (8ish). i have a paralyzed ironclaw and a mogg out. i pay for the mogg to attack a few times. then out comes prop #2. i have him at 3. i lay a 2nd mogg. i spend 4 for a mogg to attack, sac both, win. 2-0, 4-2 round 3-Matt Calhoun counter-phoenix game 1 i draw decent. he draws better. i get raped. game 2, see game 1. matt thrashed me. i couldn't do a thing. i don't even remember details, it was just a methodical killing. i had him at 4 in the second game, that's as close as i came. 2-1, 4-4 round 4-Chris Roub white weenie i didn't expect to see white weenie this far into the tourny, and knew that this would be tough. red's specialty isn't beating pro red creatures. game 1 i lose. paladin shadow beating. throw in a geddon and even scroll is useless. game 2 he makes a big mistake. i have out 2 mountains, pup, mogg on turn 2. he plays crusade with a white knight in hand. i have the third mountain (the arabian one) in my hand, but no ball. i tell myself to topdeck ball. uptap, upkeep, draw, ball. beatings the rest of the game, i never even got damaged. game 3 he had out shadow, knight. i have 2 patrol, 2 mogg. i attack with all, he takes4, i lay orc. next turn, ball, attack. he takes 8. next turn, attack burn, game 3-1, 6-5 round 5- Peter Ryan sligh game 1, i go first, i win. game 2, he goes first, he wins. game 3, i go first, and draw gnomes, i win. arabian moutain was involved in games 1 and 3. 4-1, 8-5 round 6- Phil (I don't know his last name. sorry Phil, you're a great guy) academy. well, i had avoided academy this far, it couldn't last forever. game 1 he only draws 1 academy. my waste was already out. beatings. game 2, he goes off. surprise. i think it was 3rd turn. game 3, he draws 1 land. he topdecked a city of brass, only to die to wasteland. he did get out a chill with a petal, but it was too little. he only had a land. nothing could've stopped this one. Phil misses top 8 by 1, that blows because he's one of the nicest people i know. 5-1, 10-6 between rounds, i run to a phone to make sure that someone's taping the x-files premier. we all have priorities. quarterfinals- Skye Thomsen academy you may remember his name from the no sleep/play streetfighter portion of my report. that's right, in the quarterfinals i have to play against someone i drove here. oh well, c'est la vie. we both know exactly each other's decks. luckily for me, he doesn't know my sb perfectly, since it was thrown together. game 1, he has crap. only card drawing engine was windfall, even with a rack. oh, skye, don't tap out for a rack when your oppenent already has 2 mountains in play. he's gonna ball lightning you. we all know that isn't what you want to draw against sligh. i win. game 2, he's playing academy, so he chills and wins buy turn 4 (maybe 5). game 3, arabian moutain sees action. this kind of hurts b/c its actually his mountain. i pyro a chill, and commence the beatings. he's at 3, gonna die next turn. he tries to go off, and spirals (good topdecking, 1 turn too late). i draw into burn, and unleash on him. very poor play on my behalf. good thing he drew crap. i win. 6-1, 12-7 semifinals- Matt Calhoun counter-phoenix great, i make it this far and have to face the one guy that beat me today. game 1, i get an early waste on a pool, which slows him enough. i win. game 2, spellshock is hurting us both. i lose to 2 attacking phoenixes. i needed to topdeck burn 2 consecutive turns. didn't get it either turn. game 3, he hydros a pup. i boil. game. matt is a very good player, and i was incredibly surprised to beat him. my friend told me that he drew quite poorly the entire match though, so i guess it isn't much skill. 7-1, 14-8 finals- Craig (for some reason, i lost the sheet with his name, i hope this is right. sorry craig) counterphoenix. i have mixed feelings about this. i got abused by counterphoenix once, but then cruised by fairly easily. i didn't know what to think. first game i break out with typical sligh beatings. he disks. in response to the disk, i scroll him, naming scroll. he didn't like that. i win. second game, i draws double waste, pool. i waste his pool. i win. i felt bad, but it happens. craig was a great guy about it all. we actually had fun playing magic. 8-1, 16-8 so that's it, i won. i couldn't believe it. i mean, this is jersey, where are bachman, finkel, oms? whatever, i'll take it. props: arabian mountain, for being there when i needed it witzling and freda, for bringing food and dew during quarterfinals. skye, for making top 8. russel, another new world manga playa, for making top 8. that's 3 manga playa's in top 8! phil, for being cool. another manga playa, 4 in top 9! sligh, for being that damn good. skye, again, for the no sleep tech slops: all those pt players who didn't come. wtf? are you guys too good for state championships? the pizza man, for taking 4 hours to deliver on sat. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com