From: Benjamin Seck Subject: NSW States Post Mortem (very long) Date: Thu, 19 Jun 97 10:37:00 PDT Hey Everyone, I'd suppose I should give my account of the NSW Regionals in Sydney, Australia that happened on the weekend of 14-15 June. The format was a two day tournament - MiVi Sealed on the first and then T2 Constructed on the second. Now The NSW Team - Top 8 After Swiss (These players receive a ticket to the Nationals courtesy of Major sponsor Games World) - 1st Wayne Lawson (Team KINGS) 2nd Darren Williams (Team KINGS) 3rd Lenny Collins (Team KINGS) 4th Michael Landers (Team Games World) 5th Rod Ho (Team KINGS) 6th Ben Seck (Team KINGS) 7th Steve Edney (1996 Eastwood Player Of The Year, Le Compet'iteur) :) 8th Phil (Johnson?) Nosurname 9th through 18th- 9th Andrew Corney 10th Rod Smith (from Newcastle) 11th Scott Hunstead 12th Mark Champion 13th Dan Turner 14th Howard Mak 15th Simon Leung (from Team Funger):) 16th Phil Gilson (from Newcastle) 17th Egidio De Gois 18th Kon Kabilafkas Alternates (19th and 20th) 19th Paul Merry 20th Kim Brebach Congratulations go to those that qualified for the team! Congratulations also to my teammates from KINGS, 5 of the top 8 was amazing! Kon K- who despite all our calculations still qualified :) Players from Newcastle - good show Rod & Phil! Simon Leung - who took a deck made in 10 minutes and turned it into a 5-2 showing in T2 Commiserations to: Kevin Cheng - The sixth member of KINGS who failed to qualify, the cards didn't come up for you... Andrew Corney - Who despite going fantastically and making the NSW Team, just missed out on the Top 8 Paul Merry - Who had a horrendous start to the weekend, who on the first day was at 1-4 after the fifth round... and consequently went undefeated til the end of the weekend. You just missed out :( Kim Brebach - who told me that his missing out could be attributed to one silly mistake on day 1. On with the show... Feeling good from winning two sanctioned sealed tournaments in a row before the States (Games World and a Rochester on Friday Night), I was feeling confident about my showing for the Sealed Mirage/Visions portion of the NSW Regional Championships. The deck I registered was very strong, so much so that I would be pleased to get it back :) Lucky for me I did :) Here's a rundown of the Sealed Deck Ben's Smooth Sealed (18 Land, 23 Spells - 41 cards) Land 1 Quicksand 6 Islands 6 Mountains 5 Plains Artifact 1 Basalt Golem Multicolour 1 Frenetic Efreet 1 Firestorm Hellkite Red 1 Goblin Tinkerer 1 Rock Slide 1 Spitting Earth 1 Spitting Drake 1 Fireblast 1 Suq'Ata Lancer White 1 Afterlife 1 Pacifisim 1 Noble Elephant 1 Ward of Lights 1 Sidar Jabari 1 Jamuraan Lion 1 Resistance Fighter 1 Ekundu Griffin Blue 1 Dissipate 1 Power Sink 1 Teferi's Drake 2 Cloud Elemental 1 Knight of the Mists Sideboard Cards of note - 1 Fireblast 1 Soar 1 Agility 1 Blistering Barrier 1 Polymorph 7 fliers, 5 creature removal, 2 Counters = STRONG. Card of the Sealed - Sidar Jabari : his special ability coupled with has flanking made blocking an even harder choice with my zillions of fliers. Single big flier or flying blocker posed little threat when the sidar was on the Table Overrated card - Fireblast : Many people have questioned my not putting the second Fireblast into the main deck. Fireblast is one of those cards I dislike in sealed deck - not because it is a bad card... It is an excellent card. It is because Fireblast is deceptively expensive... often a mistimed Fireblast can lose you a game, or possibly even the match. Things like Healing Salve and Remedy mean that your calculations can be off, and the loss of the mountains can be unrecoverrable. Two Fireblasts just makes this problem even worse :( I would side it in for deck with multiple big 4 toughness creatures, so I could effectively handle them. Card that won the most games : Firestorm Hellkite : This guy is just HUGE. And relatively cheap. Match 1 vs Chrys Murphy - Chrys played with trepidation because he was playing me. He later said that people thought highly of me as a player. Hmm, where can I find these people? :) Are they of this world? They don't call me the "worst of the best" for nothing :) Game 1 we went toe-to-toe with our creatures until I got out the Hellkite. He was just too big. Game two saw me mana crewed, stuck on two land. Game 3, I was colour-screwed with two fireblasts in hand. He was on eight, and I had 1 mountain :( 0-1-0 (1-2-0) 0 points Damn! Mana screwed with and excellent deck! Must recover :) Match 2 vs Jermy Silk - Game 1 opening hand - 3 Mountains 3 Island and a Firestorm Hellkite. Hmmm do I mulligan? Nah, we both have slow starts, placing a land each turn without incident. On the Sixth turn I get out the Hellkite, and 3 turns later the game is over. That was lucky :) The next two games are lost to mana screw :( Why me!! In 6 games, I am manascrewed a total of 4 times!!! This is nearly as bad as Adam Kemp! :) 0-2-0 (2-4-0) 0 points At this point my bid for the NSW State team is looking grim... two losses not only seals my points, but resistance for the sealed portion of the tournament. I get annoyed with myself, and prepare to get a 5-2 ranking for the day :) Match 3 vs Kerry Fung - Game 1 he is creature light, and my creatures on turns 2,3,4 and 5 rip him. Game 2 is a see-sawing match, with our creature heitting each other. He makes a final attack with his creatures. I block one, so that he doesn't kill me that turn. He places the creature in the graveyard, AND THEN casts Wicked Reward. But since he has already placed the creature in the graveyard, damage dealing has already occured, consequently the Wicked Reward happens after combat. Ah, the technicalities of Magic. Kerry wasn't to bitter about this fater, and we then played several friendly games after. 1-2-0 (4-4-0) 3 points Match 4 vs Andrew Swan - Game 1 was a creature rush game, decided on a Wind Shear. I attcked with enough creatures to kill him, but on subsequent turn he fogged, then Wind Sheared my creatures to eek out a victory. Game 2 Andrew was Mana screwed, and my weenies beat him down. In Game 3, I was able to get a Hellkite on the Table and smash through his life totals to a victory. Thus the comeback continues :) 2-2-0 (6-5-0) 6 points Match 5 vs Nic Hamilton - both Games were over relatively quickly, due to my superior creature control. The Hellkite is sooo FAT! 3-2-0 (8-5-0) 9 points Match 6 vs Oliver Stacey - Oliver was a nice guy, with a lot of creatures. Fortunately I had a lot of creature destruction. Pretty much the same affair as the last round, with the Hellkite being pretty big again. 4-2-0 (10-5-0) 12 points Match 7 vs Kenny Greber - Kenny's got a solid deck, that went 4-0 then slumped a little to 4-2. First game Kenny is mana screwed, and make the most of it. The second games is the reverse, with myself being desperately looking for red... The third game has a little more entertainment for us, getting sizeable creatures out. Unfortunately for him, I also get Sidar Jabari, who means that creature standoffs are broken in my favour. Gotta love the sidar :) 5-2-0 (12-6-0) 15 points Wow!! An undefeated recovery from 0-2. I was ecstatic, considering my awful start to the tournament. I then proceed to defend KINGS honour at the KINGS gauntlet, in which a player had to face 5 KINGS players with an unsideboarded T2 deck, and if they win all 5, they would win a box of foreign revised. This was to raise money for the State team to Brisbane. Luckily for us, the KINGS fortress is impregnable, with no-one winning the Gauntlet :) Congratulations to Gerard Fong, who made it to the final KINGS member Rod Ho, who just started playing Magic in the last few months. Being extremely exhausted after the first day, the Team went for dinner to discuss strategies for the next day, and then went home for a considerable rest. I went home and slept still without a deck for the Type II day :( All the decks I had been playtesting in previous week had been smashed by my KINGS teammates. True I had been trying some funky decks, to gain an element of surprise, but it had not worked. So the next morning I decided on a variation on a deck I played back at the begining of the year, a deck I call "Patriotic Browse". The cards and ratios were from a conglomeration of 8 different US regional reports, which I read in the morning. "Patriotic Browse" U/R/w (61 cards 25 land-36 spells) Blue (20 cards) 4 Air Elemental 2 Waterspout Djinn 4 Counterspell 2 Dissipate 4 Force of Will 2 Browse 2 Impulse Red (11 cards) 4 Incinerate 2 Fireball 3 Earthquake 2 Pyrokinesis White (2 cards) 1 Disenchant 1 Exile Artifact (2 cards) 2 Nevinyrral's Disk Land (25 cards) 4 Thawing Glaciers 3 Quicksands 11 Islands 4 Mountains 2 Plains 2 Cities of Brass Sideboard 4 Pyroblasts 2 Hydroblasts 2 Exiles 2 COP:Red 2 Disenchant 2 Poltical Trickery 1 Nevinyrral's Disk Match 1 vs Rod Smith - Rod is what I would consider Newcastle's best player - he was playing 5 colour green, a deck type that was rampant in the US regionals. Game 1 he swarms me with two Boas I cannot find an answer for. I attempt to retaliate with a Waterspout, but it was all over too quickly. In Game 2 he got a considerably slower start, helped by an early quake which swept the battlefield. I eventually got out an Air Elemental that he could not deal with. In the tird game Rod was colour screwed, when he only drew 3 forests but no off-coloured mana. A fast Elemental rocked his world. Rod had bad luck in this game. 1-0-0 (2-1-0) 3 points Match 2 vs Gerrad Fong - Gerrad has only been playing for a few months, but has played during this time only one deck... a fairly vicious mono-red burn deck. He actually went ver well with it in the KINGS Gauntlet the night before, reaching the final man... before losing narrowly. In Game 1 he got a quick start, but after taking a few early hits, my deck got into control mode... and finally got out a big fat Elemental with counter protection. In Game 2, I sided in my 2 COP red. Since Gerard didn't see my white in the first Game, he sided out all his disks, and had no answer to a second turn COP... With a little more experience Gerard will become a force to be reckoned with. 2-0-0 (4-1-0) 6 points Match 3 vs Adam Kemp - Adam is what I would call the unluckiest player in Magic... mana screw etc... hes had it all. But not against me. Adam played a Black weenie Necro that I should usually had the best of. The First game he kept churning out the knights, and I had no consistent answer to all his threats, and he swarmed me. In Game 2 I made a crucial mistake. My Opening hand only had one land... a Thawing Glacier. Deciding that my deck would turn a land up... I didn't mulligan... and as fate would have it, I drew no land for 5 turns. Woe is me :( 2-1-0 (4-3-0) 6 points Match 4 vs Kevin Cheng - Since Kev is a fellow Team KINGS Member, and we both have horrible countbacks, we decide to intentionally draw to give each other the best change of qualifying. Kev then plays me in a friendly and whoops my butt 2-0. :) Lucky for me I guess... 2-1-1 (4-3-2) 7 points At this point I need 3 matches to get into the Top8 and probably only 2 for the Team... here goes... Match 5 vs Neil Crighton - Neil is an excellent player from Eastwood, and was playing a Necro Weenie Drain deck with Coercions Standard. Argghh Coercions suck :) In Game 1 Neil has an excellent start with knights and ghost flowing free. Early coercions get by quakes, but I somehow am able to stem the tide. Neil drops a Necro and goes down to 6 - and I luckily have a fireball to burn him to death :) Game 2 was pretty much a whitewash for me, with early coercion and a lack of blue mana rocking my world. Many, many knights pummel me to a liquid state. In Game 3 Neil is severely creature screwed, with no first, second or third turn creatures. He is forced to disk away 3 big fliers, because he had no Nekrataal. But I am able to get a Browse on the table and assume the position. Ahhh sweet card advantage :) 3-1-1 (6-4-2) 10 points Match 6 vs Eddy Lee - Eddy was playing a varient of 5cg with Sea Sprites and NO Giant Growths - and more Arcanes. The first game he swarms me early, but I am able to recover using my card advantage cards... Earthquake and Pyrokinesis. Eventually a Protected "Elemental d'air" hits the table and hits for 4. 4 turns later its all over bar the shouting. In the second game... Boas string me up. End of Story. Game 3 was excellent with the match see-sawing several times. Eventually an Exiled Llhurgoyf provided me with the extra life so that I could achieve an Earthquake victory. 4-1-1 (8-5-2) 13 points Match 7 vs Simon Leung - Simon was playing a extremely good Blue Winter Orb deck, replete with diamonds, fellwars and Dream Tides. It was based on a deck developed by Khoa Hoang, which he played at SAGA the week before. Simon in the morning without a deck, asks Khoa for a listing and proceeds to make it - 10 minutes before the close of registration. Simon was 5-1 with the deck, an impressive showing, because the deck had many intricasies which require a good Magic intutaion. There was a surprise that been added to the deck since I had last seen it - one armaggedon and one Kaerveks Torch - splashed with the help of Undiscovered Paradise. In Game one, he locked me up pretty good with his winter orb, and then used the surprise torch to kill me. But in Games 2 and 3 my anti control sideboard kicked in, and the disenchants and pyroblasts were sufficient enough for him not to get a full lock. Big Elementals have no fear of his creature control. To be fair though, Simon drew little land in the early game, and too much in the mid to late game, by which time I had effectively set up some defenses. 5-1-1 (10-6-2) 15 points!!! I made the Top 8!!! Ecstatic!!! I ran around a bit and then calmed down for the Prize Ceremony. The Top 8 turned out to be needing 30 points... my 31 points was a compfortable buffer. Finishing 6th, I end up playing Lenny Collins in the quarterfinals - a fellow Team KINGS member. Oh well. Quarterfinals vs Lenny Collins - Lenny was playing a similar deck to me... in fact many of the concepts and play style of the deck I learned from him. I had a little white in the main deck, while he had it in the sideboard. In the first game and huge counterwar over a browse ended up with Lenny with no counters, at which time a Fireball and Earthquaked him to death. Ahh burn :) In the second game, nothing was done for about 20 turns, with Lenny and I just Thawing land out and filling out hand. A few times we would attempt attempt to have a counter war over a disk, but this time he got out the first browse and was able to browse several times. He then got an elemental we considerable counter protection which beat me into submission. The Final game saw me manascrewed on 3 mana... while lenny got a first turn thaw. He had 12 land by the time I hit 4 and by then it was game over... Mana screw damn it!!! The final kept on going till 1 am... with it still undecided between Rod and Lenny. Come to Games World this Thursday to find out which KINGS member will be State Champion. I finally again would like to that those affiliated with the tournament - as well as our Team sponsors KINGS Comics - The Premier Shop for Cards, Comics and Merchandise! 228 Elizabeth St Sydney - Down the escalators for the most comprehensive range of cards, comics and merchandise in the Southern Hemisphere!!! Thanks for reading, Benjamin Seck Member of Team KINGS Just about dead last at PTNY '97 Member of NSW Team '97 "Say what AGAIN! I dare you!"