Vod’s Exodus Pre-Release Tournament Report – Houston, TX Well, WotC must have learned the error of its ways in regards to not giving Houston a Stronghold pre-release event, because not only did we get one day, we got two. My teammates and I went on Sunday to play in the main tournament. Things ran rather smoothly because the turnout was manageable from a quantity of people standpoint and because there was more than one computer (finally!) being employed by the organizers. Can’t speak to Saturday’s turnout or the organization of that day. Doesn’t mean the day wasn’t without its problems and controversies. One controversy was the tournament organizers’ fault (and WotC’s for their poor rulings and lax quality control) and another was a problem was inadvertently caused by moi. We’ll get to the problem later. Let’s talk about the patently bad decision made by Tim Weissman and Co. Now, Tim is a good guy and is getting better at organizing these events, but he needs to use good judgement when using a WotC ruling. Here’s the problem. Upon opening our Tempest decks, a few people throughout the day had “god” starters. 10 rares, 20 rares, no land, etc. This, of course, doesn’t work too well in limited format, especially if someone’s land slots are replaced by rares. Tim announced that they had occasion to call WotC regarding this problem and WotC responded “Oh well, play as is.” Uh, sorry, but that’s the most JANK response to a very simple problem. They could, I don’t know, JUST GIVE THE PLAYER A NEW STARTER. Say “congrats on the god starter, but put it out in the car and here’s a new deck.” How f**king difficult a decision is that? Tim’s decision was to pull three of the rares and some random land and give it to these people (one of them was a friend who had two Rathi Dragons in his starter). Except it wasn’t very random concerning the land according to that friend. Now, I have a hard time believing that passing out a new starter would be the wrong decision in this case. WotC makes crap rulings, this one wasn’t much better and I don’t think anyone was really happy with it. Are we too cheap to give new starters to 4 or 5 people throughout the day? Another thing…cutting down on cheating by randomizing is great. Making 2 out of 10 people switch decks with one another is lame. Go all the way or don’t randomize it at all. Besides, I wanted better cards than what I got, part of my complaint is driven by my own selfishness. Now, onto the good stuff. Vod’s Report I get my cards, look through ‘em and my initial response is “eh.” Some okay stuff, but not enough to make a killer deck. I’m loaded down with black, especially with shadow critters, so my decision to play black is simple. The only other color that offers me critters is green, so I go straight black-green. Land would have been a problem, but I have two depletion lands (Rootwater Depths and Vec Township), so it’s all good. I throw one plain in to give me 17 lands and some white sideboard possibilities. My deck list looks like this: 1 Dauthi Marauder 1 Spinal Graft 1 Cat Burglar 1 Dauthi Horror 1 Diabolic Edict 1 Death’s Duet 1 Dauthi Slayer 1 Vampire Hounds 1 Dauthi Jackal 1 Dauthi Cutthroat 1 Scare Tactics 1 Pygmy Troll 1 Spike Drone 1 Skyshroud Ranger 1 Elven Warhounds 1 Fugitive Druid 1 Broken Fall 1 Bayou Dragonfly 1 Jackalope Herd (funny flavor text!) 1 Radid Wolverines 1 Medicine Bag 1 Thumbscrews 1 Coiled Tinviper 1 Rootwater Depths 1 Vec Townships 7 Swamps 7 Forests 1 Plains Yes, no one needs to point it out to me, the Thumbscrews were a big mistake and almost always sided out after the first game for another black critter. My only thought was that since this deck is straight beatdown with very little to sustain it from mid to late game, some source of direct damage might be good to have. Of course, I always dumped my hand out onto the table, so the Thumbscrews was just stupid. Turns out that the deck was okay mid to late game. Stalls usually could be broken by a shadow creature, of which I had five. I could have played white for more shadows, but green offered me what white couldn’t: a couple fatties and a broken fall, which came up early and often and saved my butt numerous times. Broken Fall is probably my MVP for the day. Matches: Round 1 vs. Brian Range playing W/U with auxiliary red: Game 1: I get out critters and start the beat down, but he starts playing heavy control and by the end of the game almost everything I have in play has some creature enchantment that renders my critters useless. He has the control magic licid on one of my shadows and kills me with my own creature. Strong. Game 2: I sideboard in the buyback disenchant from Exodus, which becomes my MVP when I get my Vec Townships out. My critters are once again locked down, but I slowly regain control by disenchanting every other turn and attacking with shadows. I finally have more attackers than he can deal with and I win. Game 3: We’re running out of time. Brian is a very good player, but also very, very slow, so we’re heading towards a draw. I play as quickly as possible and have the fast beat down going, but time was called. I was looking like a win for me this game, but knowing Brian’s deck, he would have started controlling the board and given a tough fight. Very tough match and I’m happy to say that Bryan goes on to do really well in the tournament, probably making top 8 (I left before the final results were announced). Games: 1-1-1, Matches: 0-0-1 Round 2 vs. Daniel Jackson playing…I can’t remember. Game 1: I lose. That’s what my sheet says. Games 2 & 3: I win. That’s what my sheet says. Can you tell I can’t remember anything about this match? Games: 3-2-1 Matches 1-0-1 Round 3 vs. a no-show. I like winning, but winning because your opponent is a no-show is kinda lame. One tainted victory. Games: 5-2-1 Matches 2-0-1 Round 4 vs. Jon Masters playing W and some other colors (I’m getting old, my memory is going) Game 1: Broken Fall is out early and it wreaks havoc with Jon who makes several admitted mistakes throughout the game. He loses several creatures to broken fall and to Dauthi Jackal, which is a great sealed creature. I win by keeping better creatures in play. Game 2: I think this game was fairly quick with me taking the victory. Hey, that’s what my sheet says. Games: 7-2-1 Matches: 3-0-1 Round 5 vs. Bryan Hubble playing G/W/B FAT Uh oh, I’m doing well in a tournament so I come up against Bryan, who always has some good showings in sealed. Well, one does not become a better player by beating up on scrubs. Game 1: I come out early, but Bryan has a couple answers for my critters. When he gets out the Verdant Force, I groan. That card is just ugly in sealed. I lose. Game 2: I get out a 3/1 shadow. I give it +3/+3 with Spinal Graft. If Bryan targets it, it’s dead. Bryan doesn’t have an answer, so I win quickly. Game 3: My opening hand is weak, with a lot of land and some enchantments and maybe one or two creatures. Bryan loads up his side of the board quickly with land and I know what’s coming. Verdant Force. Next turn he gets out a Rootbreaker Wurm. I’m dead by fat creature beatdown. It was ugly, but Bryan had the fat and the land to get ‘em out against me. Games: 8-4-1 Matches: 3-1-1 Round 6 vs. David Leicht playing R/B Game 1: He gets a bit mana screwed and I overrun him. Game 2 & 3: He’s still a little light on the mana these games, but his deck runs well on 3 or 4 mana. He kills me outright one game and we race to kill each other another game. I made a mistake by attacking with 2 shadows and not holding anything back for his shadows. I should have known something was up. He uses Scare Tactics or some other similar card to kill me a turn before I would kill him. Games: 8-6-1 Matches: 3-2-1 Jen Screws Up the Tournament At this point I know I can’t make the top 8, so I decide to drop after the 6th round. Problem is, my friends aren’t going to drop. They all have two loses and know they can’t make the top 8 but want to play for experience. So, I go back up to the computer and say I want to reenter, cuz who wants to sit around and wait for my friends to play? They reenter me, but that somehow screws up the round 6 pairings. After about 15 minutes of scratching their heads at the computer, Tim and Co. rebuild the pairings. I feel like an ass, but even though my reentry caused the problem, I didn’t really do anything wrong. Memo to WotC: test your software. See, there are these people, they’re called “software testers” and you pay them money to, uh, test your software. So, I’ve made my mark on Magic by screwing up the pre-release pairings. No biggie, the seventh round begins and yes, I’m on the pairings list. Woo! Round 7 vs. Jeff Clark playing stuff. Jeff is a member of Team Houston and we’ve played each other just two weeks before in a sealed tournament at the Book Browser. He beat me down something fierce back then with quick fat. This is my chance for revenge. Games 1 & 2: I win both pretty easily to Jeff’s chagrin. Revenge is sweet! I’m pretty happy because his rating is up around 1800 or so in limited and I’m looking to improve my rating. Games: 10-6-1 Matches: 4-2-1 Vod’s Thoughts This is the best I’ve ever done in a sanctioned tournament (I actually broke into the top 8 after one of the rounds), so I was pretty happy. I’m glad I reentered even though it caused computer havoc because I got the chance to test myself one more time against Jeff, who is a pretty good player and a regular up at the Book Browser. My teammates all did fairly well, only losing two or three matches, but we take the bad with the good and play mostly for the experience and for a sneak peak at Exodus. Exodus I’m not too excited about, but I’ve grown complacent about Magic, so that’s not to say that Exodus isn’t a good bunch of cards. New sets mean new cards to learn, new things to try and memorize. I don’t have the time or brain power to do any of that (my dependence on the Dojo grows with each passing set). Exodus also brings us closer the Urza’s Saga and the unfortunate passing of the Mirage block. I haven’t seen all the cards yet, but there are a few standouts, notably the control magic Licid and Merfolk Looter, which Brian Range used in almost ever game against me and was such a strong card for him. The Keepers and Oaths are interesting; I’ll be eager to see how these work their way into tourney-worthy decks. I also believe that Cataclysm is going to be one of the best cards of the set. Bobby Coonce and I debated this a bit…he doesn’t like any card that gives his opponent a choice. Sorry Bobby, I still think it’s a great card and will be sought after by a lot of players. Vod’s Props and Slops Props: To Tim for running a pre-release that went fairly smooth and quick. To my opponents for all being pretty cool guys. To my Soup Nazi teammates for a good showing at the tourney. To Tim’s Japanese and Chinese boxes of Tempest…I spent a lot of $$$ but got a Pool, a Tradewind and some other cool foreign rares. Asian cards are the bomb! To Team Soup Nazis for having a good time and being a great bunch to hang out with. Props to Cal for his girly scream after opening a Chinese pack containing a Tradewind. Props to the guy in the side tournament who opened a god starter…had one Scroll and one Tradewind. To Aaron for letting me drive his brand-new turbo Eclipse. The redline is your friend, Aaron. Unclench. To Bryan Hubble for dropping the Verdant Force on me not just once, but twice. Ouch. To shadow creatures and Broken Fall, my champs on Sunday. Of course, to the Frank and the Dojo for being the #1 Magic resource. Stop yer whining, Dojo dissers, and welcome to the Information Age. Slops: To Tim for making a bad call regarding the god starters. To WotC for making a bad ruling regarding god packs/starters that Tim tried to follow. Very weak ruling. To WotC yet again for thinking Mind over Matter is broken with one less U. That card is just jank. To me for screwing up the tournament pairings…sorry Tim! Oh yeah, to WotC for not testing their tournament software. Stop hiring gamers and fresh-out-of-college-kids…hire people with experience! Half-assed is not a way to run a company. To Verdant Force beatdown. BAAAA---ROKEN! =) To Midnight Comics for no longer having sanctioned tournaments. Book Browser, here we come! To my sealed deck luck…no cool/good cards. I used up all my luck pulling a Pool last week. Thanks for reading! Jennifer Vodvarka http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/6712 vodkinator@hotmail.com Team Soup Nazis, Houston TX