Subject: [TOURNAMENT] Knoxville Exodus Pre-Release Date: Mon, 08 Jun 98 13:01:33 -0500 From: bcowley@gdys.com To: Well going in to the pre-release I had been on a complete high for a little over a week. I got married a week ago Saturday, an event that was the most perfect moment of my life, then went on a honeymoon to the Outer Banks for a week which ended with a speeding ticket, a dead bird, and driving by a tornado funnel as it was forming and as the warning was being broadcast over the radio complete with warnings to motorists to "get out of your car and find a ditch to lie in". Needless to say for about a week now Magic has been the furthest thing from my mind, but seeing as how Knoxville doesn't get large tournaments all that often (hell it is tough to even find a sanctioned tournament) I decided to take the 5 minute trip downtown for the pre-release. The turnout was far different than the last pre-release I had been to but all things considered not too bad, about 150 people showed up which is probably a lot less than other places but made for a much more relaxing tournament setting. I could go on and on about smelly rat-faced socially unacceptable deviants showing up but y'all have been there before. I was like a Wonder Twin without my better half but I kept tapping my wedding band all day long for good luck. It must have payed off. Not that you care what I registered but it did have a Living Death and every good blue flier there was. All I wanted out of the packs I got back was one broken Tempest card. Tap the ring and ... the deck I played. 1 Cursed Scroll 1 Phyrexian Hulk 1 Shield Mate (W, 1/1, sac mate give target critter +0/+4) 1 Master Decoy 1 Soltari Lancer 1 Soltari Trooper 1 Cloudchaser Eagle 1 Standing Troops (2W, 1/4, attack without tapping) 1 Reckless Ogre (3R, 3/2, if attacks solo gets +3/+0) 1 Fireslinger 1 Lightning Blast 1 Jackal Pup 2 Maniacal Rage (1R, ench critter, +2/+2 and can't block) 1 Searing Touch 1 Mage il-Vec (2R, tap:discard card, poke for 1) 1 Elvish Beserker (G, 1/1, rampage:1) 1 Crashing Boars (3GG, 4/4, 1 untapped critter must block it) 1 Heartwood Dryad 1 Jackalope Herd (3G, 4/5, bounce it when you cast a spell) 1 Rootwater Alligator (3G, 3/2, sac a forest: regen) 1 Spike Hatcher (6G, 6/6, spike 1, remove spike: regen) 1 Pygmy Troll (1G, 1/1, rampage:1, G:regen) 1 Canopy Spider 6 Mountains 5 Forest 4 Plains 1 Vec Townships Thoughts on the deck: -Pretty much I thought I was going to get mana-screwed by color. I usually like to run a 7-6-4 or 8-6-4 breakdown and play heavy 1 color with 2 supplementals, but here I just had a pretty even breakdown and couldn't find anything else to put in. The one good thing is that the Boars were the only card I had that cost double of a color. -Cards I didn't use: Seeker of Skybreak, Anoint, the WW1 enchantment killer white shadow... I should have played Seeker over the beserker but i wanted to have some first turn plays so I could giant strength -errr, I mean maniacal rage them 2nd turn. this guy was boarded out almost every game though for better stuff. I am horrible with names and remembering stuff here it is as best I can: Rd 1: Played a guy with rolling thunder, disturbed burial, lots of blue flyers and legacy's allure. Game 1 I kill with white shadow. Game 2 he gets allure out early and I just wait with a bunch of low casting cost crap on the table until I get white mana to cloudchaser the allure. Then I drop big creatures and get my combo going: cursed scroll and land. 1-0 Rd 2: Play some kid, looks like one of the Hanson brothers. Playing a speedy black-green-red deck. Game 1 I play this stupid artifact card and, well, he loses. Game 2 I paris mulligan into a 1 land hand but I had cop red in hand, cursed scroll, and other white stuff. About 3 turns into the game I am sitting at 1 land while he has a carnophag on the table and other assorted low casting cost beasts. This game does not last long. Game 3 he has to paris and then starts to discard. I don't draw a single mountain all game, I end the game with 5 red cards in hand, but lucky for me my turn 2 soltari trooper and other assorted monsters were enough to run over his mana-screw. 2-0 Rd 3: Play this guy, VJ, I beat him in the finals of the first tournament I played in after I moved down here to Knoxville back in October. Nice guy who kept talking about "keeping the MAN down"... All I remember is that I killed a plated rootwalla with a key lightning blast and at some point or other cursed scroll and Spike God showed up for shits and giggles. 3-0 Rd 4: This guy annoyed me but by the end he was OK. People who play me know that I am pretty lenient with the rules, in fact it has cost me many a game in PTQ's and whatnot because I have a soft spot for letting people take stuff back. I am even more so at Pre-Release because I know most people are there just for fun and cards. Well this guy was playing like he could give a shit. He had that card Onslaught out and would cast a creature, tap something, enter his attack phase, and then decide to tap something else. Also he had classic newbie-syndrome, I would attack first and immediately he would untap his lands and start drawing a card. I mean, who attacks and THEN casts stuff? The first 2 times he did this I politely reminded him that I was not done. The 3rd time in a row, I just told him flat out "LOOK, when I am done I will tell you." That seemed to irritate him but I was trying to deal with his sloppy play. Next turn of course he untaps his apes of rath which had just attacked last turn so I reached over and tapped it for him. "Gee Thanks" he says - at this point in time all I could do was roll my eyes and think to myself "Damn, this is how Finkel must feel like ALL the time". Even worse, the dude was mowing down the biggest whopper I have ever seen and I was hungry. So I beat him up pretty fast both games with soltari trooper with maniacal rage on it, then chump blocking his big huge green shit like plated rootwalla's and apes of rath. Game 2 he could have beat me but he never drew the 2nd red for his rolling thunder. On an annoying scale this game, Onslaught was right up there with fat chicks who wear spandex, John Stockton, and the use of the word "beatdown" in tournament reports. 4-0 Rd 5: Played a chumly with a good deck. Red-black kill. How do I know he was a chumly? Well he has me down to 13 and on the table he has a carno-thingy, a reckless ogre, and some other little critters, plus an artifact that you can sacrifice to give all your creatures flying for a turn. At the very least he can sacrifice and send the ogre over for 6 unblocked. Instead he casts evincars justice without attacking with anything. This kills 4 creatures on his side and 3 on mine. Next turn I cast Crashing Boars which established a complete creature lock for me, because every creature he cast after that was killed by the Boars. Game 2 was more of the same beatdown. A nice, cordial player but someone who still needs some more time playing the game. 5-0 Rd 6: Before this round I had the pleasure of finally meeting Bob Kline, a guy who knows all of Team Deadguy and who I had been trying to meet ever since moving down to Knoxville. He is getting married in a little over a month so we had a lot to talk about. He was playing in a Type II with a pseudo Kastle Living Death deck and I had to leave just before he was forced to armageddon when his opponent had a nightmare on the table and THREE GRAVEPACTS. oops. Anyways there are now 4 undefeated players left and my opponent, Eric was his name I believe, started talking trash the moment I sat down. It was relatively good natured though and I took no offence. IT is wierd though, at 27 I feel like an old man sometimes. Hey, I grew up on Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and nowadays we have Mr Hankey, The Christmas Poo. Anyways the other undefeateds want me to win because this kid has been smack-talking all day long but game 1 does not go well, I have to paris mulligan and then I proceed to draw 4 spells and the rest land. He doesn't draw an island the entire game but beats me down with black and red creatures. Not a good start. Afterwards he starts asking me about my sealed ranking and telling me about the PTQ he won in atlanta. I merely tell him that my rating is not all that great and that i vaguely remembered him losing in a PTQ in high point. Game 2 goes my way, he doesn't draw red mana for a while and eventually I get cursed scroll on the table with the mage il-vec (hmm, discard a card, sure!) and SPIKE GOD. Bob Kline walks by and says "Bruce, you know why you have a cursed scroll? Because you are a GOOD PLAYER." I'm thinking: it's the RING baby. Game 3 I get an amazing draw and I think it is over. Turn 2 soltari trooper, turn 3 lancer. His turn 4 he lays a 4th land and does nothing. WOW. I attack and he casts Slaughter with buyback. Hmm, not so good anymore. He takes 6 but kills my lancer. Then his turn he casts rootwater hunter and dauthi horror. Shit. I have a lightning blast in hand and beef but he still has slaughter and he can cast it without buyback if need be. On my turn I attack with the trooper and he blocks. This is good. I start casting creatures but he gets out wall of diffusion and marsh lurker and goes on the offensive! THis guy! i am forced to blast the pinger then i draw a boil which wrecks his blue mana-base. Eventually I just out creature him. I cast the boars, he has to slaughter with buyback. He is down to 9. I cast Phyrexian Hulk, he slaughters with buyback, down to 5. finally he uses slaughter with no buyback on i think my cloudchaser eagle, then i drop the SPIKE GOD which i had been holding onto the entire game. Heh this guy, he's pretty good. Eric was cool though I had a good time playing and he talked the same trash whether he was winning or losing. 6-0 Rd 7: my opponent is Isaiah Ley, we are the last 2 undefeateds. we decide to split the prizes (which sucked by the way) - a box and 9 packs meant 25 to the winner, 20 to the loser. He had a good deck but both games I just had better stuff. Before game 1 he said he had misconstructed his deck with a couple sub-optimal cards in it. I had to laugh as I played my first turn elvish berserker - "speaking of bad cards"... A key lightning blast on his skyshroud vampire after he chucked a creature won me a game and the boars locked him down another. i 2-0 him and end up the lone 7-0 at the knoxville pre-release. good cards: spike hatcher this thing was incredible. cursed scroll, well duh. but most important: Maniacal Rage. a cheaper (colorless instead of red) giant strength with minimal drawback, this thing was House on all my sub-standard creatures. the pygmy troll was great as well, regeneration yeah that ain't too bad. afterwards i also went 3-0 in a side booster draft with a wicked fast black-red deck with a couple random carnophages, some shadow dudes, and more maniacal rages! turn 2 4/4 creatures are pretty good. 10-0 not bad... Good things: -Matt Guinn, you fucking crack me up but you are like a giant curse on me I have yet to do well in a tourney where you show up. So thanks for playing in some other pre-release! -Steve Cowley and Mike Katz, just for the hell of it -Bob Kline, Doug Hyatt, Bill Ericson, "Loser" Moats: for being good knoxville players Adios, Bruce Cowley