SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA REGIONALS REPORT By Kai Martin (quarterfinalist) A few months ago (after I moved from Chicago to central California) I started getting back into type 2, looking ahead to this year’s regionals. After much IRC and ICQ discussion and hours of reading posts on the Dojo I was pretty much set on just playing Sligh, since a reasonably built Sligh deck nearly always has a reasonable chance of winning versus any deck in the field. On the drive down to motel the night before the tournament I start thinking about a mono black deck (partly due to the influence from discussions I’d been having w/ Mike Nickoloff over IRC about how his playgroup’s version of mono black was performing, and partly due to a fear of the SoCal crowd showing up with a hearty percentage of white weenie decks). I get to the motel, put the deck together and test it for about three hours against the Sligh deck I was planning on playing before I started going mad with pre-tournament panic. After seeing both decks pretty much break even with each other, I decide to err on the side of caution and go with mono black. Here’s what I ended up playing: 4 sewer rats 4 black knight 4 dauthi slayer 4 dauthi horror 4 nekrataal 3 erg raiders 3 barrow ghoul 2 crypt rats 4 dark ritual 4 cursed scroll 4 bad moon 4 wasteland 16 swamp Sideboard: 4 forsaken wastes 4 nevinyrral’s disk 3 perish 2 crypt rats 2 torture chamber Deck Notes: The mono black decks I had been hearing about were more aggressive w/ less board control than I liked (I wasn’t too hip on using unholy strength and sarcomancy), but it’s very similar to most of the mono black decks that I had seen or heard about. As far as the sideboard goes I didn’t think it was all that great, but that’s what happens when you spend most of one’s time thinking about the main deck and giving the sideboard about fifteen minutes of thought right before the tournament… The rest I’ll try to keep fairly brief. Here’s how the eight rounds of swiss went: Round 1: vs ProsBloom get two slow starts, and yet one turn away from killing him both games 0-2, 0-1 Round 2: vs 3cB typical beatdown w/ Torture Chamber and Scrolls really hurting him 2-3, 1-1 Round 3: vs 5cB more typical beatdown and more abuse w/ Torture Chamber 4-3, 2-1 Round 4: vs 3cWW yet more typical beatdown and even more abuse w/ Torture Chamber (!) 6-3, 3-1 Round 5: vs Frozen Fish Bad Moon prevails over Legacy’s Allure in a close match 8-4, 4-1 Round 6: vs Sligh double Bad Moon goodness > double Mogg Manic not-so-goodness 10-4, 5-1 Round 7: vs Csliver beatdown while he appears to get his worst draws of the tourney 12-4, 6-1 Round 8: vs Sligh 3 Black Knights for me, 1 Mogg Fanatic for you = I win 14-5, 7-1 Whee, I made top 8 and am finally qualified for a major tournament since PT2. After the swiss was over, here’s what the top 8 looked like (in order of finish): 1. Ken Simpson Frozen/Cursed Fish 2. Brian Selden Godzilla/Reanimator 3. Kai Martin (me) Mono Black “not quite as suicidal” 4. Shane Cargillo 5cG 5. Ariel Sas Mono Black “suicide” 6. Bryce Currence Mono Black “suicide” 7. Larry Janiac Godzilla/Reanimator 8. Preston Poulter 3cWW (possibly more than 3 colors, but I only saw 3 from briefly looking at it) Quarterfinals: Simpson def. Poulter 2-1 Sas def. Cargillo ? Selden def. Janiac ? Currence def. Martin 2-0 (Ashes to Ashes comes up big for him while I’m stuck holding on to Barrow Ghoul first game. Second game, I draw one land, and he goes swamp, ritual, ritual, bad moon, dauthi slayer, unholy strength first turn…heh, oh well, I lose but I don’t really care much at this point). Semifinals: Sas def. Simpson 2-0 Currence def. Selden 2-1 Finals: Sas def. Currence 3-2 Congrats to Ariel Sas, Southern California Regional Champion ’98. Also, thanks to Dan Gray, Scott Larabee, and all of their staff for running another solid tournament. See you all at Nationals! -Kai Martin