Seattle PTQ report, by Jeremy Fuller Hi. Since nobody else is writing a report for the Seattle PTQ on sunday, I guess I will. My little voyage started off with me, Will (from Toutle, WA) and Seven from Portland, OR going up to Seattle to make sure Seven qualifies. Both me and Will are already qualified from WA and OR qualifiers respectively, so on the way there we throw together fun scrubby decks while Seven is playing Alatar1.dec in hopes that he can qualify. For those of you who aren't aware of the Seattle tournament scene, it's the home of WotC, 3 two-slot PTQs (including 2 more two slotters within driving distance), of which none ever have much more than 100 people each. Anyway, Will gets a bunch of Spitting Slugs the night before and makes together an Erhnam/Maro/Slug/Geddon deck (G/W) while I don't plan anything, and try to throw together Will's monoblue medallion bouncy deck together in extended. I realize that will suck and wouldn't be very fun, so I put together an amazing monoblue MERFOLK deck with will's 4 blackbordered lord of atlantises. Since I have free tourneys at WotC anyway my plan is just to play in the PTQ to occupy myself until 2:00pm when a side tourney sealed starts and a draft at 7:00. When I get there, I notice most of the canadians are there.. while most of the PT players from Seattle aren't there (as they haven't been since about PT Chicago or earlier). The only established Seattle player there is Max Suver who won the first Seattle PTQ (me getting 2nd) and did really bad in the 2nd one (which I didn't go to). Anyway, here's the deck I used: 4 Lord of Atlantis \____The Extended 4 River Merfolk / Engine! 4 Ophidian 4 Man'o'war 2 Knight of Mists 1 Waterspout Djinn 4 Counterspell 4 Force of Will 2 Memory Lapse 1 Flooded Shoreline 4 Control Magic 4 Cursed Scroll 4 Wasteland 18 Island s/b: 2 Knight of Mists 4 Disrupt 4 Hydroblast 4 Winter Orb 1 Mind Harness Amazing! Anyway, what follows is the details of the worst PTQ in history and why it's true that Seattle is the scrubbiest Magic community in the world =oD. Round 1: Stompy. This is pretty decent for a first matchup. He's playing fairly decent Stompy (for stompy).. he almost kills me with Centaurs but I manage to Control his Bears or block with a mistknight.. I manage to kill him both games with his own Lhurgoyf or something. 1-0. - Round 2: Falcon/Armor This guy is from my old Olympia magic days, even before I went 4-3 in about ten PTQs in a row. While his deck doesn't look very impressive =\, he manages to beat me one game, and seems to know the rules pretty well (I control his armored something and he realizes that it's the cards in his hand and not mine so i end up attacking him with a 1/1 dude instead of a 7/7) 2-0 - Round 3: Stompy Practically the same thing as round 1, same results. 3-0 - Round 4: Ernham/something I only remember both of us getting manascrewed BAD, then me control magicking to win the third game. 4-0 - Round 5: Pox This is a dojo-pox deck, it beats me down pretty well.. how the merfolk deck seemed to work all day is throw out a bunch of merfolk which seem like they'll be threats (like the lord of atlantises, and also the other small critters) to get rid of removal, then get through with ophidians to lock the game, or, if that doesn't work, used cursed scroll and control magic backed up by counters. Unfortunately, this deck can deal easily with all the creature problems, draws countermagic like mad, and consistantly draws disenchants =( and he wins 2-0. 4-1 - Round 6: Sligh This is just about the only sligh deck I've seen all day. This is the guy's first big tourney but his deck is pretty good and he seems to know the rules very well (although he doesn't know what a lot of my foreign cards do). He also tends to bolt me more than my creatures when he could net more damage by getting rid of my defense (or ohpidians). I end up winning. 5-1 - Round 7: Will Hilts We both have good tiebreakers at 5-1 but there are 3 dudes guaranteed in and 9 5-1's and the top dude is 99% sure drawing, so only one of us will get in if we draw (probably) so we play, and I win (we're splitting anyway). 6-1 - Here's the final 8 (not exact of course): 1) Eric Thompson (dunno) 8) No Clue (dunno) 4) Brendon Herzog (something?) 5) Don't know (White Weenie w/4 mtenda herders, 4 soltari foot soldiers) 2) Alan Epley (W/U/? control w/1 serra) 7) Someone (w/G/r with Storm Seeker, Geddons, etc) 3) Jeremy Fuller (Merfolk) 6) Ivan ? (Monoblue Bouncy w/4 Meditate) - Eric Thompson beats No Clue White Weenie beats Brendon Herzog w/G/r beats Alan Epley Ivan beats Me - Eric Thompson beats White Weenie w/G/r beats Ivan - All the BC players ended up playing a really crappy =) w/u/g or something: a wisdom- recursion deck or something like that and they're all eliminated early, except pete grauer who is eliminated at 5-2 (i think) with counterhammer.. max suver goes something like 0-2 drop with red(??).. So wrapping it up, in one of the final PTQs anywhere, the field is all Marogeddon, Stompy and Vineyard (decks which have been played a lot but, to my knowledge, have won few or no qualifiers), with almost no bombardment or alatar.decs or pt janks anywhere. In final 8, there's a crappy Merfolk deck, in final 4 there's a soltari foot soldier/ mtenda herder deck, and qualifying is a Storm Seeker deck.. and that's not including the decks I don't know about.. I also find out 2 merfolk decks made top 8 at the last qualifier in seattle, making my merfolk top 8 less amazing =(. So, for all of you who weren't yet convinced, Seattle IS the most scrubby place in the US, and anyone who wants free DCI points and/or free PT invites come play side tourneys at worlds (hey, that's how i got to be 1950 in sealed!) -- Jeremy Fuller -- TheWurm on IRC #mtgpro #36 or something in Sealed #27 or something in Extended #1000 or something in T2