Subject: [TOURNAMENT] unsolicited tourney report Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 14:40:46 -0500 Sender: "Rick Fravel" To: My observations on the Virginia State Championship. This tournament was held at the VFW Hall in Mechanicsville, VA. Roughly eighty-six people showed up. I got trashed, but I thought I'd post this for people to see anyway. 2 & 4. I dropped in the 6th round. First off, I'd like to say that the judiciating at this tournament was horrible. I didn't once see the head judge make a ruling on his own. On top of that, there was a level 3 judge playing at the tournament. The head judge (supposedly also level 3, but how he qualified I'll never know) kept interrupting his games and having him make rulings. It was sickening. Not that the playing judge was helping either. He should've removed himself from the situation by simply saying "Hey. I'm a player here.". Anyway, enough of that rant. The metagame was full of Tolarian Blue. The number of these decks amazed me. They probably would've done real well had the people playing them known what they were doing, and had built the decks correctly. Save for a select few players, everyone embarrassed an otherwise powerful deck. Stupid mistakes ruined alot of Tolarian Blue decks. People at the VASC were not very careful with their decks either. Roughly 7 people failed random deck checks, which is one of the most dissappointing ways to receive a match loss IMHO. On to some matches. Aside from Tolarian Blue, heavy permission seemed to reign in the tournament. Big Blue decks were really kickin' ass. Skip Potter (playing a sweet blue-counter deck) wrecked two Academy decks by himself, while permission did really well all around. I was playing speed black. Yeah, its average, but I built it at 1:30 the previous morning and assumed there would not be a lot of it there. Man, was I wrong or what. Second only to T.B., suicide was everywhere. I had some really closed games with Sligh. I ended up losing the match, but it wasn't a sweep. I absolutely WRECKED an Oath of Avatar deck. a 20/20 Serra Avatar can't do jack when you have a Black Knight blocking it. The first game ended because my opponent (a really nice guy) decked himself. He only had one Feldon's Cane in the deck, and I just held off his Avatar's until he drew out. The second game was a win for me because the Speed Black beating was simply too fast for him. He was probably the nicest guy and most gracious loser I saw there. If I could only remember his name...... Anyway, I played one heavy permission deck. The first game was extremely close, with me ending up at 3 life. I barely pulled a Drain Life outta my ass to win it. The only reason I drew it was because he had a Howling Mine on the table. Otherwise I'd have been toast. The second game was just hurting for him. 1st turn: Ritual, Ritual, Carnophage, horror, horror. 2nd turn bad moon. It was downhill for him after that. I ended up losing my last match to a beautiful Worship/Sliver deck. Man, having a Worship and a Crystalline sliver on the table is a nasty combo, especially when combined with tradewinds and armageddons. He thouroughly schooled me that match. Kudos to David Bass. I dropped after that and he was even cool enough to give me some tips on how to improve my deck. Though Tolarian Blue won the tournament, I believe it would've been much more dominating had people played it right. The majority of TB decks there were either played wrong or built wrong. Aside from the horrible judging jobs and almost everyone embarrasing the Tolarian Blue decks, it was a pretty decent tournament. Computerized pairing, scorekeeping, and seating kept the chaos at a minimum. I look foward to doing it again next time. Peace. Rick