From: hbmus017@huey.csun.edu (scott johns)

Subject: Meta-Weenie Dominates Phoenix!(regional report and deck)

Date: 27 May 97 20:38:34 GMT



	With the recent explosion of attention my G/r deck has recieved

recently, I decided it would be a good idea to go to the phoenix regional.

This was mostly influenced by the fact that Meta-Weenie has been doing

extremely well in L.A., and a lot of people seemed to be packing answers

and/or running it themselves. For those who don't know the deck, it is a

green horde of creatures that I chose for their meta-game abilities,

rather than combat value. The theory is that each creature should be able

to beat some deck on its own by potentially going "all the way". (Deon)

Hence the deck is made up of creatures like Meerkats, Dervishes, Gazbans,

Boas, etc, and has a noticable lack of more combat-impressive creatures

like archers and lancers. The deck has been called Meta-Weenie, the PCL

deck, and The Gazban Deck. The exact listing is at the end of the report. 



	Round 1: First game I drop out 6 creatures in a row, all of which

are countered, starting with a turn 1 Gazban which is Forced. Soon I drop

a Lhurgoyf, only to be terrored when the opponent drops a swamp on the

next turn. At this point I am pretty impressed at the overwhelming arsenal

of control my opponent is packing, and I ponder what he uses as a kill

method. I eventually run him out of defense, and I believe it was a

dervish that finished the job. Game 2 he gets mana screwed, and I get

guppy on his ass. I ask him how he kills, and he pulls out a hecatomb and

a snake basket. He has 1 of each in his deck. Hmmm...



1-0 matches, 2-0 games



	Round 2: My opponent is playing mono-blue, and falls rapidly to a

first turn ghazban, 2nd turn boa. (Its good to go first!) I sideboard in

the kitchen sink. (Dwarven Miners, Emerald Charms, extra meerkat, red

blasts, and Hall of Gemstones. [yes, city of sol. is better, but I only

had two spots, and this works wonders against stasis, bloom, and r/u {oh,

can't play that frenetic now? :) }]) I go second, play patient, and bait

counterspells with some centaurs. I pyroblast a boa onto the table, and

giant growth it past a quicksand next turn with the help of another blast.

Not muc hlater I finish the job by getting out a hall of gemstones, and

introducing him to my ant friend from yavimaya.



2-0 m, 4-0 g



	Round 3: This opponent is playin mono-red. He plays a mountain

first, and I respond with forest elf, electing to give my gazban some

rest. :) I drop out a centaur next, and then incinerate a stalker. Soon a

dervish gets out of hand with the help of a giant growth clump which

guides him past a spate of heat. Game two my opponent taps out to cast

Disintigrate for 6 on my 6/7 lhurgoyf, realizes his mistake, and must sac

his only two mountains to fireblast it for the remaining point, leaving

him with two bounce-lands. My friend from Yavimaya admonishes him for

tapping out, and a boa joins in to finish the jog.



3-0 m, 6-0 g



	Round 4: My opponent is playing u/r. I drop out a first turn

gazban, to which my opponent responds by playing a mountian. OK, change of

plans. I play another forest, attack with Gazzy, and then Giant Growth to

hit him for 5. (This maneuver tends to convince the ogre that he really is

better off playing on your team.) I use the other land to play a forest.

My opponent proceeds to do the red/blue thing, but my jump is to fast and

hard. He ends up tapping out to play a disk, which I break with a

orangutan.Gazzy and the boa (sounds like a bad tv cop show!) continue

their grim march, and a double-incinerate you at the end of your turn,

torch you on mine combo finishes the game.



	game two he is mana screwed, and I treat him like the guppy that

he is.



4-0 m, 8-0 game.



	Round 5: Things are going great, and my friend Gabe Higa is also

undeafeated, playing the same deck. At this point we start hoping

fervently that we will not face each other until later, since that

match-up is ludicrous. I play against another mono-blue, and beat him up

with a meerkat, boa, and guildmage. I have two orangutans in my hand the

whole game, so no worries. I do end up breaking one disk, and draw an ant

next game to put him away. Game two he draws a lot of quicksands, but not

many islands. Since I have a lot of heat in this draw, I proceed to send

meerkats and boas to their doom, as a kind of green stone rain. My

opponent does not draw enough land to make up for this, and a horde of

centaurs and guildmages beat him down. At one point he stems the tide by

dropping a man-o-war, but it gets killed by an ogre which gets first

strike from my guildmage off of the undiscovered paradise. My opponent was

not ready for this, and died soon there-after. (Gabe and I came up with

this trick the day before, so added an additioanl paradise. While I didn't

get to use it more than 3 or 4 times (once with an ant!) Gabe seemed to

get to use it more, as he got matched up against alot of g/r decks.)



4-0 m, 8-0 g



Round 6: The inevitable happens, and Gabe and I are matched up against

each other. He wins the roll, drops out a guildmage, and I have no red

mana. He beats me down mercilessly. Game two I also am very slow on red

mana, but I pull two lhurgoyfs to his one at a clutch moment. game three

is the most imteresting, as we both have a lhurgoy and some minor minions.

The difference is that I have a miner on the table, and he has not

established red mana yet. This can be bad for the deck, because the red

sources are 3 fetch, 3 karplusan, 2 u. paradises (one of which is in his

hand) and 2 mountians. This means that gabe must pull one of the two

mountains to have a permanant red source. Interestingly, our lhurgoyfs

both go on the offensive. However, because neither of us can risk losing

it, we avoid having them in direct combat. Instead, we take turns

attacking with it, while the other blocks with an extra small creature.

Gabe runs out first, and is forced to stay on the defensive while my

lhurgoyf eats 3 of his creatures in a row. Things get very complex, and

time runs out just before I finish him. Things were tight though, as it

turns out that he had an ants and a giant growth, which could have nearly

finished me off. He was worried I had sideboarded in a charm or 2 to untap

the lhurgoyf. I had brought in 1. result is a draw on time.



	5-0-1 m, 11-1-1 g



	Round 7: My memory starts getting fuzzy here, becauseI was very

fatigued. Put shortly, my opponent was playing white-weenie that seemed to

have 4 scars of the veteran, 4 hon. passage, 4 outpost, 4 wrath, 4 geddon,

4 tithe, all the pro-red creatures and all the first strike creatures. In

game one, she dropped out a long bow, which I incinerated. She scars'd it,

and I could'nt deal with it. Game two I am very nervous, as I am convinced

that her deck should roll me. However, she seems a bit tentative and

inexperienced. Realizing her deck is a bit slower than standard weenie, I

treat her more like control, by playing only a creature or two at a time.

She is forced to wrath a number of times, and a hit from an ant combined

with a guildmage do the job. game three she has a low-creature draw, and I

stweadily beat her down with a boa and a guildmage. The guildmage gets her

down to three, at which point she wraths. I drop another granger out, and

she soon succumbs to it. 

	6-1-1 m, 12-2-1 g



	Round 8: I am the number 1 seed, and Gabe is the number 2 seed, so

we draw in. As bonus, our seeding guarantees that we would not have to

face each other until the finals, if we got that far. 

	

	Quarters: In a funny twist of fate, Gabe and I are facing two guys

who are playing identical r/u decks, against our identicalr/g decks. I

beat my guy in two. First game I overrun him, second game his mana is a

little slow and I pull alot of my sideboard cards. Most clutch is a miner

who removes a city to stop the hammer from coming back, and two q-sands

for the ants to get by. Gabe wins in three.



	Semis: I play a more controlling version of u/r. This guy has tons

of removal, like earthquake, hammer, etc. Also, he plays much more

carefully against me, making sure not to tap out, and trying his best to

make his spells as efficient as possible. This proves to be very good, as

he manages to live well into the late game before a lhurgoyf and torch

team up to kill him. Game two goes much the same way



, particularly since I draw 10 of my 11 forests early on. Knowing that his

deck is not very offensive, I play the patience game and only put out one

creature at a time. He puts up an excellent fight, but an ant finishes him

off under cover of hall of gemstones.



	Finals: Gabe has defeated the other r/g deck (which appeared to be

the net version of my deck, with some modifications) so we are in the

final. It is late, and we agree to split the prize and be co-champions,

ending our raid on Phoenix. Not counting our match against each other, I

have lost only one game all day, and I think Gabe only lost two or three

others also. Turns out that our meta-game decisions payed off,

particularly since we got the matchups we planned on. 



	Without further delay, here is the "real" G/r Meat-Weenie deck. 



4 gazban

4 boa

2 meerkat

3 guildmage

4 yavimaya ants

2 orangutans

2 Lhurgoyf

4 Lannowar Elves

3 Dervish

3 Centaurs

4 Incinerates

2 Torches

4 Giant Growths



11 forests

2 mountains

2 r/g fetch

3 karplusan

2 Undiscovered Paradise (for the guildmage's other ability as a surpise)



	Thanks for reeading the post, and as a final note I want to thank

the event organizers for a well run event. They were extremely competent

and friendly. Lastly, some jeers are in order for Wizards of the Coast for

their _dismal_ prize support for such a significant event. 



Scott Johns

Team PCL