From: Brick@wiwiss.fu-berlin.de (Daniel Brickwell) Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy Subject: A late late Worldchampionship Report Date: Tue, 02 Sep 97 15:57:38 CET Hi all! I just returned to Berlin after a tour of the west coast after worlds so this report will be more of a summary than a fresh play by play kind of thing. Preperation: Let me say that I have increasingly more non-magic work ahead of me as my Ph.D. deadline rears closer, so that I was woefully underprepared for worlds. I basically lived of my old magic experience. I don''t know if this is a first step in a slow road out of magic or just a temporary lapse until I find a new balance. I guess I will find that out in Chicago as I qualified for it when I was still on ya almost fulltime magic scedule. Organisation: If I want to be honest I have to say that I was somewhat dissapointed with the game center. Perhaps my expectations were to high. I must say that PT Columbus was much more impressive than Worlds for instance. The tournament rooms were a bit too small somehow and everything was very dark. The best thing about the whole game center was the House of the Dead Machine in the Arcade room, where I and Oliver Krebs spent a lot of time and money between rounds. Shooting arms and legs off Zombies can be very satisfying after you have lost. The organisation itself was at a normal Pro Tour Level, again I had expected a little more at worlds but perhaps my expectations were just too high. Still I have to say that I will probably try to attend next years worlds too no matter if I qualify or not. The whole concept of meeting magic players from around the world is just too great! Day 1: Where I learned that I still suck at Limited Formats. I lost because of my own mistakes, because of a bad deck matchup, because I was torched to death twice and because my opponent top decked me in that order and went 0:4 with a pretty good if somewhat dilletantly crafted first draft. I scraped out a 2:1 victory with my second draft which took place at the last table, after I had drafted at the first table in the first draft. Auch! 2:5 on the first day. My Bucholtz was shot and my pride hurt. The rest of the team did much better Oliver Krebs finished 6:1 beating Mark Justice and Micheal Long along the way among others! David Liersch went 4:1:2 and Janosh Kuehn went 3:1:3. Losing just one match but drawing 3. Day 2: I decided to play my newest version of my Gabriel, my R/W deck which I used in the german nationals, partly because I knew it by heart partly because I didn't think that there was the metagame deck in Type II right now so that I was better off just playing a good deck which I could play. That amounted to Gabriel because of my lacking perperation time. Round 1: I played against a Counter Hammer deck. I crushed all CounterHammers I met at the German nationals and this was no different. The high point was a Geddon in the second game which had my opponent discarding 12 times... talk about card advantage... My opponent had started with Glacier which allowed me to smuggle a Cop Red by his counters. He proceded to puit down a Wildfire anyway and put out his glacier too. This was my fist time to geddon when my opponent had the Wildfire out and not me but it killed his Glacier and all the land he had drawn and proved to be the game winner. Round 2: I played against a Slight-Flight Imperial Armor Cop Deck. Even worse I lost to that Imperial Armor Slight Flight Cop Deck in what amounted to the worst draws I have seen in a long while while not being really manascrewed. This match proved to me that Constructed is more about luck than I had hoped it to be. In the first game I draw 7 of my 8 plains and no mountains or Glaciers. My opponent proceeds to play a Freewind Falcon and a Hazerider Drake which I Wrath then he plays another Freewind Falcon and another Hazerider Drake which I also Wrath. My Outpost is churning out tokens but my opponent sits behind a Cop Red and a Cop Green which he slighted to white! He then plays an Abbey Gargoyle which proceeds to kill me over several rounds as I draw not one of my 2 Icies or 4 Swords or the third Wrath. The second game is even worse. My oppinent draws one of his 2 Poltical Trickeries for my Outpost proceeds to put down his own outpost and instead of just killing me with Outpost Tokens proceeds to put down 2 White Knights and 2 Abbey Gargoyles. An Icy and a Wildfire proceed to hold this at bay for a long time which is use to Glacier. I am holding a Pyroblast and an Armageddon and have enough land out. I just need the Wrath. I even have enough land for all three but I need one of my 4 Wraths or atleast the disk I sideboarded in. I don't draw them in the next 12 cards (he Arcane Denials 2 of My spells and lose to that solitary Abbey Gargoyle which is getting through. This is the first and I hope the last time I ever get killed by Abbey Gargoyles. Round 3: I play against Rod Ho from Australia. I win the first game because he taps the wrong mana and can not return his Pheldagrif to his hand. I lose the second game to Political Trickery and we both decide to play a fast third game because we both don't want the draw. The third game is one of the best I had in a long time. the tide rages back and forth several times during the game, but it finally turns against me. Rod needs another 4-5 rounds to kill me when the 2 minute warning comes. We play fast and Rod does the deciding points just as time is called 5 rounds later. While I lost a point here I gained it back in self respect. Round 4: I am now at the last table well into that zone which several of us "unluckier" players jokingly called "The Jungle". The Jungle is filled with mono-green decks, some black and White Weenies and one or two CounterPosts. Ofcourse I get the counterpost. It is even a pretty good one with loads of cantrips to shrink the deck. he gets a double Glacier beginning and manages to kill me with 10 cards left in his Library. I win the second game because LD and Manascrew respectively. In the third game i have to mulligan twice and he starts out with a Glacier. I have one mountain. When he kills me like 16 rounds later I have no land in play because he Political Trickeried my mountain away past my Pyroblast with a pitched Force of Will! These 16 rounds were the most grueling I have played in a long time. First of all I don't like playing against Counter Post anyway, secondly try playing with no land and thirdly I was trying to save my ass into timeout all the way by taking my time deciding what to dicard. Which is something I hate and had decided not to do anymore but my anger at playing with no lands got the better of me. So I ended up going against my convictions, losing anyway and that against a deck I hate while being totally manascrewed. I was not in a good mood after that game. Infact I think If I have to point at a total low in my my magic career that game had to be it. I was now at 9 points after 11 rounds with just 10 rounds to go. I had just lost at the last table too. I was close to quiting the tournament perhaps magic altogether. What got me out of that funk? It was the thought of the team. If I quit I was not only letting myself down I was letting the whole team down. I owed it to them and to myself to go on and earn some points. So that's what I did and I was surprised to find that I could even laugh again after an hour or so. Well after I had decided to go on no matter what things somehow fell into place. Perhaps I was less nervous perhaps my bad luck had just run out maybe it was a combination of the two, but from now on I started to WIN. Round 5: Still in the Jungle I finally get a Sligh Deck, which is still a pretty bad matchup for Gabriel, but better than a Counter Post. Here playing a deck which strengths and weaknesses I know by heart paid off. I know Gabriel has problems with CounterPost and Burn Decks and that's why 10 cards in my sideboard work well against these two deck types especially. I even win the first game before sideboarding and a Honerable Passaged Ball Lightning wins me the deciding game (Passaging a Ball Lightning is even more gratyfying than just Passaging a Lavahound.) Round 6: I get a R/G Weenie Deck. Finally! He meets Mr. Orgg in two games. R/G has problems with Mr. Orgg, because Orgg knows all about surprise Giant Growths and Lightning Bolts. He won't Block a 3 Power Creature, no Sir, not this Orgg here. Add Armageddon to the mix and it is just ridiculous. Round 7: I finally leave the Jungle and meet a Marogeddon Deck. Marogeddon performed astoundingly below average at Worlds and I didn't hear of one of them going better than 4:3. (Oliver Krebs and David Liersch were playing Ernhamgeddon btw.) My opponent thinks that being at 35 Life will save him from dying to damage. Infact we have already started counting Libaries and he will get decked first in 12 cards or so. Then Mr. Outpost and Mr. Orgg convince him of something different. In the second game my oppoenent is slightly manascrewed, but then draws a glacier. I put out an Orgg, my opponent glaciers for the 4th land. I attack- abeyance during his upkeep. Attack - abeyance during his next upkeep and attack incinerate .... game. So I barely manage a 4:3 in Type II. Which is par for the course if you consider the luck I was having in rounds 2 and 4. Ofcourse a 5:2 or 6:1 record would have been nicer, but on some days you can just be glad to finish with a winning record. After the kind of dissapointing Type II day for the German Team (My 4:3 was our best score I think. Oliver went 2:5, David went 2:4:1 and Janosh again managed 3 draws again to go 3:1:3 again. Infact he would have won atleast 2 of the draws that went into timeout.) We go home and finetune our carefully crafted fully tested Extended Decks. Not! Infact we don't have any extended decks as our testing in the last days proved one thing our decks kinda sucked but what was even worse everyones extended decks kinda sucked, even those who were winning the side tournaments. They all looked like bad copies of old Type II decks. They had hordes of good cards some big creatures but mostly no synergy, no game plan, no finesse. So we sat down at a table at 10:30 in the evening and tested B/R suicide deck against CounterHammer only to find out that except Frank no one wanted to play these decks. Finally Janosh decided to build a better Extended version of his Type II deck. It also combined the best cards of U/W/R and it looked very strong. David and Oliver were jsut deciding to probably play that when Terry Borer came by took one look at the deck as Janosh was building it and walked away. We all surmised that he was looking for new innovative lock decks and as our deck was an old school control deck that he wasn't intrested. His mistake... Then we all went to bed. Before going to sleep I tried myself at an old Ravid Prashnad kind of deck with Birds Control Magics Stormbind Ernhams etc., but It would habve needed a stable mana distribution and more testing than I could do at midnight the day before the tournament. So I just went to sleep. I woke up the next morning. Paniked. Grabbed some cards and headed to the breakfast table. Oliver and David were busy writing down Janoshes Deck. I didn't have the cards with me to copy that deck, so I just decided to play Necro. Everyone said I was crazy. "Necro will just lose." Everyone said. "But atleast I know how to play Necro and I have beaten a lot of old style Type Ii decks with my old Necro and the new decks don't look that differently!" I replied but everyone still thought I was crazy. Atleast I could write down a Necro deck in 15 minutes, which was very important. Atfirst I built it without Dark Rituals though, but Oliver set me straight and on the way to the tournament center I crossed out 4 cards and squeezed in 4 Dark Rituals. What happened thereafter could be just described as the Necro Test. "Is your deck good enough to beat Necro?" "But only a fool would play Necro!" "Is that a No?" I go 4:0 easily with the deck, crushing several big creature decks along the way. Infact two of my opponents killed themselves by casting Armageddon and me killing there Manasources with Contagion in response or with a Swamp Dark Ritual Dystopia in the next round. Here my experience with playing Geddon myself in Type II and with Necro in Old Type II paid off big time. In Round 5 I meet a Buried alive deck and I still say that Buried alive is just about the worst matchup for a Necro excepting for a White Weenie perhaps. I lose 0:2 partly because I misplay the first game though, having had little experience with Necro against Buried Alive. Round 6: Ernhamgeddon again. I have one knight which gets Forest Walk every round which I have marked with a Counter. Then I play 2 Hypnos in one round. My opponent draws his next card without reassigning forest walk. Then he attacks. I can kill him next round if nothing happens, if I don't block, on the other hand he can kill me next round if I counter attack and he does survive somehow. So I think about consultating for a Contagion. Decide its worth it tap the swamp, anbnounce the consultation and remeber that I put out the third contagion for a 4th Dark Ritual. Hmmh I check my Graveyard and see that I already have played a Contagion. I get cold feet and announce that I am consulting for a swamp. The second contagion is in the top 6 cards!!! Whew I almost decked myself. Now my opponent is nervous and checks my graveyard. He thinks I have a Drain Life (Why would I consult for a swamp otherwise?) and exiles his own Ernahm. Well that just wins me the game right there. Especially as his Wall of Root can't block my knight the next round as it still has the forest walk counter! In the second game a Hypno strips his hand down to zero before it gets bolted. But I still have a Mishra and 2 Hymns and he is at 6 life. He draws a card, its my turn. I Hymn the Disenchant away he drew, and attack. He draws another card. On my turn I hymn the Bolt away which now targets me and attack. In the last round he draws his 1/3 mana ratio which is good as I am now out of Hymns! 5:1 with my Necro. Everyone is surprised, but not quite as surprised as I am as I can now safely Intentional Draw my way into the Top 64 as I have no chance of making Top 32 with my Opp. Match from the first days. After a discouraging 9 points in the first 11 rounds I have just scored 25 points in the last 10 rounds. Plus I finally end a Pro Tour with a winning record! Plus I earn 500 Dollars I didn't expect anymore. Life is good especially as Jonoshes deck cruises through the Extended section. He went 6:0 12:0 with it and intentional drew himself in the top 8! Beating Terry Borer in Round 6 btw and thus keeping him out of the Top 8.... Oliver and David also do very well with the deck. Infact Oliver would have made the Top 16 if he hadn't died to a horrible mana screw and then mana flood combo in games 2 and 3 in the last round against Bob Maher. All of Team Germany is in the 64 infact and the Team is ranked third after 3 days of competition. Very good advertisemnt for Pro Tour Mainz. Ofcourse that is before the Team sealed competition. Infact I won't say anything about the Team competition except to quote Olle Rade. "Yeah they called you the Bye. 'Who are you playing against?' 'Ohh, we got the Bye.' 'Ahhh, you are playing against Germany.'" We end up 13th. Well atleast Janosh cruises through the Finals with his Type II deck which has no time limits this time to hamper it and ends up as World champion Finalist! A german is the second best player of the World! Atleast for the record and that's enough for me. Friendly Greetings Daniel PS: Meanwhile all of Team Germany has qualified for Chicago so see you there!