EDISON, NEW JERSEY CHICAGO PTQ TOURNAMENT REPORT Or It's All About the Chickens! By Alex Shvartsman cbrangel on IRC Here is yet another PTQ report for those smart enough to do their research on the Net before jumping into a PTQ. I went with a U/w deck designed by me and Marc Paschover. This deck is official "hype-free". It features none of the current U/w "hype" cards - Ophidian, Abeyance and Honorable Passage. You may disagree, but this version of the deck seems to do better in playtesting and my mind is pretty much set. Here is what the deck looked like: 3 Waterspout Djinn 4 Cloud Elemental 4 Man-o-War 4 Hazerider Drake 4 Pacifism 4 Impulse 4 Memory Lapse 4 Dissipate 4 Power Sink 1 Flooded Shoreline 4 Quicksand 4 Flood Plains 4 Plains 12 Islands Sideboard: 2 Freewing Falcon (pro: red chicken. Better then Passage) 3 Duskrider Falcon(pro:black chicken. MUCH better then Furnace! vs Ertai) 3 Mind Harness (awesome against monored burn, green anything) 2 Disenchant (vs Sands of Time decks) 1 Disrupt (great vs monored. Counter a burn spell and draw a card) 1 Snake Basket (vs U/w control) 1 Reparations (vs discard) 2 Dream Tides (vs green) Without further ado, here comes the report. Round 1 - Mike Ahern - Mono-green My first opponent was playing some big mono-green affair with lots of helpful enchantments like Call of The Wild and Preferred Selection. Although I could probably outrun him on speed, my opening hand and early draws had no creatures whatsoever! Luckily, I drew enough countermagic to stop the beatdown. I pacified a few things and was forced to counter Stampeding Wildbeests. I finally drew a Cloud Elemental and started administering beatdown. Eventually, he managed to cast Call of the Wild with 8 mana on the table and I felt I am in trouble. Luckily, Waterspout Djinn joined the Cloud Elemental on the table so I only needed a few more turns. Mike used Call of the Wild a couple of times but only got some small critter. Then he tapped out casting (gasp) a Crash of Rhinos. Still, I outran the fat and killed after two more turns. Sideboard - in go the Dream Tides and Mind Harness. I take out some countermagic expecting City of Solitude and generally preferring to steal their creatures instead of countering them. I do not remember what happened in this game, but I never drew the Harness and never needed one. I cast creatures on turns 3-6 and simply outran him on damage (with the help of a Man-o-War or two). Record: 1-0 matches, 2-0 games. Round 2 - Justin Gortner - Monored burn Although most decks either fear or are at least concerned about mono-red, U/w just has no worries. I dominated the first game, countering early creatures, QuickSanding Sandstalkers and beating him down with my pro-red fliers. Then I sideboarded in the Disrupt, Mind Harness and Chickens. In the second game, the Chicken hung out waiting to block his celerity creatures while 2 Hazeriders (thanks, Impulse!) brought him down. Record: 2-0 matches, 4-0 games. Round 3 - Cory Weiser - W/u/g Maro-Armor I was not particularly concerned about this deck, Man-o-Wars and all. Unfortunately, the match was actually a lot tougher then I expected. Cory was running River Boas, Karoo Meerkats, a buttload of Falcons and the armors. I pulled out the first game, but lost the second one to turn 2 Boa, turn 3 Armor and me without a Man-o-War or white mana for Disenchant or Pacifism. I pulled out the third game drawing the right combination of creatures and control. Since I never really expected to have any trouble with this deck, the only sideboard cards I had against it were Disenchants. Record: 3-0 matches, 6-1 games. Round 4 - Feming Chan - Mono-black weenie Ah, finally some top-notch competition. Feming is already qualified for PT Chicago and even though he has not played in a Mirage/Visions/Weatherlight constructed tourney before and says he is unhappy with the deck, I am not expecting an easy match. We are deckchecked before we can begin the round and Feming gets a warning for writing down 12 *mountains* instead of 12 swamps he is actually using. In a mono-color deck this is obviously a mistake, so there are no serious pentalties. We finally get down to playing. First game is a fierce race of damage dealing, countermagic and removal. Feming draws THREE Nekrataals and I can only counter one. He pays some life to deal damage faster with a Rat. Still, Waterspout/Cloud Elemental tag team are just a tad faster then his Rats and Fallen Askari. Down to 6 life, he is forced to rat and kill everything on the table. That does not help as I am holding yet another creature and a Power Sink. Sideboard, Duskrider Chickens go in replacing some Hazeriders or what-not. Second and third game are very much alike. I do draw the Chickens but they cannot stop Fallen Askari and this time Feming is a lot quicker on the damage. In game 2 he casts Agonizing Memories and sets me back two turns, capitalizing on an already poor draw. Third game he just draws 3 Fallen Askari and pounds on me. No Quicksands show up. Feming drew the total of 7 Nekrataals in 3 games. I just can't compete with that. I take a loss as calmly as I can but vow to meet him in the final 8 :) Record: 3-1 matches, 6-3 games. Round 5 - Carl LiBassi - Red/Green burn Carl is a part of Al Newman's crew and is playing a Red/Green deck with River Boas, Wall of Roots and loads, loads, loads of direct damage. Our games are fairly close, but I maintain control of the board most of the time and win the game, countering his last burn spell. It is easier after sideboaring, as I Mind Harness his Lancer and Carl makes the mistake of trying to burn me out instead of dealing with the Lancer and a Cloud Elemental relentlessly dealing 4 per turn to him. He burns me down to 7 with 8 mana on the table. If he draws a Torch he wins. Otherwise, he loses to my creatures next turn. The law of probabilities is on my side and Carl draws a Mountain. Record: 4-1 matches, 8-3 games. Round 6 - Dorian Anders - U/w Maro-Armor This match determines which one of us makes top 8, as it is safe to draw in the last round with the 5/1 record according to my calculations. I've met Dorian multiple times before as she has judged at many Pro Tour side tourneys in the past and so have I. We never played before however. Game one starts horribly for me, as I draw 2 Quicksands as my only land. It is kind of funny, since the guy sitting right next to me is just as manahosed and also has only 2 QuickSands on the table. Fortunately, Dorian is unable to take full advantage of that right away (I guess she did not have an Armor) and he plucking me with Chickens for 2 per turn. I finally draw an Island and the game really begins, a couple of Clouds on the table racing against the mighty Chickens of death. I am holding on to a Man-o-War when Dorian finally casts an Armor with 4 cards in hand. I figure that I at an enough life and choose not to counter it even though I could. On my upkeep, she casts Abeyance. Doh! I counter the abeyance to prevent an extra point of damage and take the pain. Next upkeep, I am Abeyanced *again* and counter it again. I still cannot cast the ManoWar so I leave the Cloud behind to die for its master. Dorian casts an Armor on her *second* chicken and, as I can only stop one, beats me down. I side in Disenchants in favor of 2 Hazerider Drakes. Game two is rather ridiculous. Dorian gets an excellent start and manages to bring me down to 6. She then casts the Ray of Command (!!?) on my Cloud and gets me down to 1. Here her luck stops though. Both of her ManoWars are Pacified, I have 2 Cloud Elementals faced against her 2 Chickens and 2 cards in hand. Little does she know, I have no countermagic. My hand includes an Island and a Disenchant. After a few turns of a standoff, I drop a Waterspout and attack with a Cloud. Next turn she drops an Archer so I am forced to keep the Spout home. She proceeds to cast an Armor on the Archer and attack. I smile, Disenchant it, and block-kill the darn Archer. >From here on, I draw yet another Spout and administer some heavy beatdown, winning the game by coming back from 18-1 life score. Third game takes all of 1 minute. Dorian is totally mana-hosed and keeps discarding while I drop a few creatures and win in like 7 turns. She is extremely upset about losing to manascrew, even though I remind her that I lost game 1 similarly (though it was not QUITE as bad). Record: 5-1 matches, 10-4 games Round 7 - Michael Rand - Ertai deck There are two 6-0 and six 5-1 people at this point. The only other person capable of going 5-1-1 is Al Newman *if* he wins his match. Even so, his tiebreakers are rather bad as he lost round 1 and drew in round 2. Confident in making top 8, me and Mike draw. There is some time left, so me and Mike, both hungry and kind of tired, go to the hotel's restaurant and grab some lunch. Having eaten and relaxed for an hour, we are ready to do battle in the top 8! Top 8 Seed 1: Dave Bachmann, Ertai deck (Mike Donais' version) Seed 2: ???, Ertai Seed 3: Feming Chan, monoblack Seed 4: Alex Shvartsman, U/w beatdown Seed 5: Cory Weiser, U/w/g ArmorFalcon Seed 6: ???, Ertai Seed 7: ??? Seed 8: Michael Rand, Ertai (I was unable to watch the other matches, so if I got something wrong, apologies. This sounds about right though.) I am paired up with Cory and feel confident I can take the match. Even Cory at that point is kind of confident that I will take the match :) However, this is not to be. Cory gets amaaazing draws from hell (I am not just fuming, ask him and he will agree that's true!). I manage to pull out game 2, but lose games 1 and 3. I remember the details but they are too painful to talk about. So far I have participated in about 13-14 PTQs total and made top 8 at least 10 times but qualified through a PTQ just once! This is very frustrating. I am still confident I will qualify yet, so expect to see me in Chicago if you are going :) Alex Shvartsman