On Mon May 26 22:46:08 1997, David Low wrote: Hi all, After a bit of a sabbatical from playing since March (apart from Mark Thompson's visit to Kyoto in mid-April, and some Zen in Switzerland), I received an EMail from a mate who organises the local events with the soulful subject, "I miss you - please come back at the start of the next Untap phase" :-) Well, I'd be a right bastard to ignore that (and besides, I need a holiday from work to get over the Alpine Experience!), so noting that he'd mentioned Saturday was "Nationals Practice", I tossed the makings of three decks into the kit bag and trotted off for a day trip. Arrived at the venue, did my long-time-no-see ("sashiburi"?) penance, and mentioned I was looking forward to a fun day of testing out new decks. My mate, Shibata-san, gave a quizzical look, and suggested that since today was a sanctioned T2, I'd be better off picking just one because otherwise he'd have to disqualify me. Must have been some fault in my translation, or of the local meaning of "practise" :-) Ah, it's good I don't take this ratings business seriously, isn't it? :-) So with half an hour to the start (luckily, this is Japan - no deck registration required :-)), I stare at the makings I brought along: SuicideBaublePox, Merfolk, and 30-critter Green swarm. After some fast metagaming (aka, "wandering around the room seeing what everyone is practising with" :-)), I decide that SuicidePox is just that. Shibata-san wants me to play the Greenies, so in a fit of spite I decide that the Merfolk are the only choice - against a field of burn, black weenies, and white weenies :-) Deck list appended, don't giggle too hard - these are cards I had on me, OK?! I'm amazed I could put a legal sideboard together :-) Format: current T2 (5E, AL, MI, VI), 6 50-minute rounds of Swiss, scoring 3-0-1 (even if no one IDs in these events!) and no damn elimination finals (ah, I'm spreading it: Australia, Japan, ....!). About fifty-odd people had turned out, which was about capacity (officially it was 40 max, but a phonecall to DC-Japan got the OK for the rest to participate...it's a regulated environment here!). Round One: Black weenie, no surprises that I saw. Just what I wanted to see first up, honest :-/ Nothing remarkable, I managed to pull the third game out of the fire in a situation of him@3 with Black Knight and Nether Shadow , me@1 with Sea Scryer, when he cut to my one and only Ray of Command after I BaubleLanded in upkeep :-) Round Two: mono-Blue Tim/Firewalker/Man-o-War/Counter. He had a *lot* of counters - everything from Remove Soul to Desertion made cameo appearances. Naturally, Merfolk don't stack up that well to Tims, especially when your opponent is smart enough to know that against *my* Merfolk, killing the Lords of Atlantis *does* kill the deck :-) I managed to squeak out the second game by pure, unadulterated speed (deck drew perfectly - Merfolk and Lords early, then counters afterwards), and the third game was timed out in an interesting position (me with Taniwha, him with Breezekeeper which was sided in for some reason, him Timming away, me holding onto a Ray praying that I'd drawn more [usable] counters than him by the time it came time to use it...but the clock beat us). Round Three: Lucky me, get drawn to play the floater from the two-win bracket :-) This guy was playing what one might crudely refer to as MaroGeddon, with Bull Elephants and Scalebane's Elite. I'd have guessed at a loss to this deck before sideboarding, but a win afterwards thanks to counters and Ray/Harness. Well, things went to plan in game one (!), but in game two I was subjected to the mystical "Japanese Cut" (a slashing motion with the hand which cuts without cutting :-)). This meant that every time I BaubleLanded (and I had six opportunities in thirteen turns), more land rose to the top to replace it. Twenty cards drawn, sixteen of them land....sigh. And that's *with* shuffling near every turn :-) By the end of the second game (I berated him for taking that long to kill me), I was begging him to actually cut after I shuffled - he knew he was onto a good thing, and had evidently heard what happened to the guy in Round One (above), and grinningly refused :-) Round Four: I'll be meeting the bad decks now, won't I? Ah look, Sleight-Knight with flyers (Falcons, Gargoyles, ...). Hey, look, *flyers*! How the hell does this deck of mine deal with....hmmmm. Oops :-) Opponent rapidly showed why first strike, flanking, and flying are worth the half- to one-extra mana they cost in a weenie deck. Only funny bit was when I managed to get two hits in with Taniwha, only to have him Sleight something miniscule to Prot-Blue while all my land was bye-byes. Nice discussion with Judge Shibata-san about how Trample interacts with protection, and the Circle of Despair ruling, and how the autumn colours are so nice....but I didn't manage to blind-side him :-) Round Five: Hmmm, under 50%, not good. Make that "4/12", even worse. The gods smile upon me, and present me with an opponent who is playing RG with pretty much just land in the top half of his deck for our two games. Oh, and Walls of Roots :-) His deck gave him some Hordes, Centaurs, and Lancers in the second game, but the Mind Harnesses and Rays (and Hydroblasts and Sprites and ....) had found their way into mine in the meantime. Who says Balduvian Horde is bad? For one Blue, plus a little upkeep, I got a 5/5 and made him discard a card! Round Six: I need a win to get back over 50% (it's a goal, we've got to have goals in life....), and my opponent and I recognise each other: she was sitting beside me in the first round, so we have a pretty fair idea what the other one's playing :-) She has a rather fast (bloody fast) black-red, with Burn, Sandstalkers, Skulky, Lancers, plus Wildfire, Contagion, and *Necromancy* just for fun. This isn't what the Merfolk want to see, although I've got Big Plans(TM) for after sideboarding (although remember Round Three)...about an 11-card sideboarding :-) Game one I am toasted as expected, although I got enough early damage in to make it interesting (Taniwha made an early appearance, but Sandstalker beats Taniwha with no lands in play to counter it :-(). Game two I *don't* see the control/steal cards, but I get enough counters to be able to play Merfolk early and counter late (see Round Two), and win the damage race (counters are damage prevention spells....) thanks to a "I'm dead unless I draw an...Unstable Mutation! ". Game three the steal cards *do* show up, with enough counters to protect them and deny Sandstalkers. The eventual winner was my Round Three opponent, he of the Japanese Cut (I wonder if refusing to shuffle/cut your opponent's deck would work well in the US or not...! :-)). I was too busy playing friendlies to check out what the other top finishers were playing - gomen :-/ However, I played against a reasonable cross-section of the field: weenies were popular (white and black, mainly), as were the ubiquitous X-geddon types, and the speed Red-black. I noticed one "Big Blue", one ProsBloom, and one SqStasis, none of which won more than a couple of matches (there seemed to be some heavy anti-trick sideboarding going on as far as the latter two go; I don't know why Big Blue had trouble). There are a couple more "practises" before the Nationals, so I'll try and pay more attention at them. I might even play SuicidePox so as to finish my games fast (either way!) and look at the field a bit more. Nothing like handing out gifts of rating points to keep the spirit fresh (assuming they ever rate me, that is :-)). Regards, David. Merfolk Surprise (in that, I was surprised I played it in a tourney :-)) ---------------- Critters: Lord of Atlantis(4), Sea Scryer(4), Coral Fighters(4), Vodalian Soldiers(4), Taniwha(1) Spells: Counterspell(4), Force of Will(4), Unstable Mutation(4), Political Trickery(2), Ray of Command(1), Flood(1), Nevinyrral's Disk(1) Land: Island(14), Bad River(4), Flood Plain(4), Quicksand(4) Sideboard: Hydroblast(4), Sea Sprite(4), Mind Harness(3), Winter Orb(2), Ray of Command(1), Flood(1) -- { David J. Low | dlow@kurasc.kyoto-u.ac.jp } { JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow | http://www.kurasc.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~dlow } { Radio Atmospheric Science Center | "The words of the Prophets are } { Kyoto University, Uji, Kyoto 611 | written on the subway walls...." } ------------------------------