From: Sean McKeown Subject: Tournament Report-Tempest Prerelease, NYC Here is my tourney report on the Tempest prerelease tournament that took place in New York City on Oct. 4th, 1997. I get to the tournament at a little before 10:00, as the tourney was scheduled to begin at 10. Boy, was THAT ever a wrong estimate! I get there to learn that the tourney is not on the 4th floor, as the ad said, but the 2nd floor conference room. This is a BIG room, able to hold about 350 people. There are still people standing, when we FINALLY get to our seats at about 11:30...I learn later that the event drew !!382!! M:tG players. My minions, Adam Schepp and Kevin Wu, both meet me on the line, arriving just shortly after myself. I pass out the spoiler list I found at the last possible minute on a website in Sweden or Denmark or something (I forget) that was by my estimate about 80% complete. At this point Shep gets really annoying, and my non-Minion friend Campbell upgrades Shep from being my minion to being My Bitch. Woo-hoo...*I* just wish Shep would shut up. Before the sealed decks are passed out, it is announced that to save time, there would be no final round of 8..instead, we will play 8 rounds of Swiss, with every player with a record of at least 7-1-0 would get a prize, at least a half box of Tempest. Then, they pass out the starter and 2 boosters to all the participants, after telling the people still standing in the aisles to go to the back of the room and sit on the floor. I'm a table away from Shep, and nowhere near Kevin or Campbell. Oh, well...their loss, not mine :) Seated at the same table are a few people that I have played at PTQ's and seen at tournaments. So the table was generally talkative and friendly; the only person I'd never seen before was the woman who sat across from me. No complaints from me :) We open our boosters and starters, and I am a little confused the apparently cheaper paper quality of the cards, and the less-thorough packing of the starters... instead of their usual shrink-wrapped pack of cards is just the pack of cards and the "storybook". Looking at some of the cards with the added-on rules text a la Mirages, and the "storybook", I was surprised how quickly I was reminded of the failure of Portals. I guess this is supposed to be the transition set for all those Portal players to get into real M:tG. NEway, here's the list of cards I got in my starters and boosters. If you don't know what they do, go to http://www.thedojo.com or www.nground.com to see the spoilers list. If you want to trade any from me, LMK.... Squee's Toy Energizer Lotus Petal Coiled Tinviper Phyrexian Hulk Phyrexian Splicer Essence Bottle Skyshroud Condor 2x Dream Cache Capsize Winged Sliver Thalakos Sentry Volrath's Curse (!!) Rootwater Hunter Shadow Rift Spinal Graft Sadistic Glee Gravedigger 2x Pit Imp Darkling Stalker 2x Rats of Rath Living Death Anoint 2x Advanced Scout Staunch Defenders Armor Sliver Talon Sliver CoP: Black CoP: Green Cloudchaser Eagle Warmth Mounted Archers 2x Flowstone Giant 2x Mogg Raider Shatter (kept forgetting about it...) Havoc Ancient Runes No Quarter Goblin Bombardment (qoute: "One mogg to aim the catapult, One mogg to steer the rock") Kindle Sandstone Warrior Firefly 2x Lightning Elemental 2x Reality Anchor Tranquility Muscle Sliver Reap Recycle Pincher Beetles Canopy Spider Bayou Dragonfly Skyshroud Troll Heartwood Treefolk Crazed Armodon !!2!!x Elvish Fury 2x Skyshroud Ranger Ranger en-Vec 5x Swamps 4x Plains 4x Forest --Took 5 more. 4x Islands 5x Mountains Maze of Shadows The deck I constructed was: Coiled Tinviper Phyrexian Hulk Phyrexian Splicer (MVP!!!) Essence Bottle (Hon. Mention!!!) Thalakos Sentry Volrath's Curse (!!) Rootwater Hunter(There are some who call me...Tim!) Shadow Rift Kindle Sandstone Warrior Firefly 2x Lightning Elemental (Punishment!!) Pincher Beetles Canopy Spider Bayou Dragonfly Skyshroud Troll Heartwood Treefolk (Hon. Mention!!!) Crazed Armodon (Hon. Mention!!!) !!2!!x Elvish Fury (Hon. Mention!!!) 2x Skyshroud Ranger (!!) Maze of Shadows 4x Islands 5x Mountains 7x Forests Lotus Petal On to the rounds pairings...I am bad at remembering names anyway, even worse when I am underfed, overtired, and nearing mental exhaustion. So, no names. I hit the point where I was close to forgetting even MY name... Match One: I have no remembrance of what he was playing, or what I drew etc. but I do know I was able to pull out Volrath's Curse on him and turn back his Shadow beat-down thanx to my Splicer and Maze. Cool beans, I sweep him. Match record: 1-0 Match Two: Ditto on this one, the early rounds are like a blur to me. Pretty sure I got the recursive Curse on him, and my Landwalkers had fun because he had both Swamps and Forests. Again, I sweep...thanks to Elvish Fury. Match record: 2-0 At this point, Shep drops because he is 1-1, his deck sucks, and he wants to play in the 2:30 side event. I was amazed to find out it was 2:30 already :) Campbell has disappeared. No clue where he went...just GONE. Match Three: Interesting little fact I noticed here: I am playing the guy at table #1, because the NGround tourney organizer at the second table said, "Table 1, Sean"...not until after the match did I notice that my card actually said that I was supposed to be at table #16. Oh, well. My opponent is playing U/W/g, with lots of weenie Shadow creatures and *some* removal. I do some fancy Splicing, a bit of Kindling and Cursing, and get out the Maze. The Shadow guys are no problem, as I've offed half of them and I got my Essence Bottle out to effectively prevent the damage I'm taking. He's still trying to attack with everything that has Shadow, and I do some fancy Splicing on a Lightning Elemental to punish him for allowing me an opening, coupled with my Landwalking Treefolk and some good ole Elvish Fury. Match record: 3-0 Match Four: This guy had some decent Red, including a Lightning Blast and a Rolling-Broken-Thunder. I get stomped the first game when I fail to draw a second Forest...I already had the Maze, 3 Islands and 2 Mountains...to get my Armodon or Treefolk out, or even the Skyshroud Troll to stop the bleeding. Some Elvish Fury action as a combat manipulator helped, but not enough. I get slammed by some Rolling Thunder action killing all my critters and he rams through. Second game I get the God draw of one Island, 5 Green spells and a Kindle. I draw a Mountain around turn 4, allowing me to Kindle the Darkling Stalker he just played while he's still tapped out. Needless to say, I die horribly. Match record: 3-1....I hate losing to manascrew. Match Five: I nearly get a match loss because I was not at my seat when we were told to be. I was just outside of the room, trading and teaching my minion how he *should* have played his sealed deck. None of the NGround folks thought of announcing outside of the main room that the next round was beginning... . I end up playing another 3-1 player in a similar position though. Game one, I get a mana-high hand, 5 Lands and 2 spells. I play a 2nd-turn Essence Bottle and start to gain life while waiting for spells. I end up gaining between thirty and fifty life from this artifact over the course of this slow game, but I eventually kill him with a Bayou Dragonfly, Elvish Fury, and some solid Creatures + Splicing. He gets the 5/5 for 3GR that gets -1/-1 for being targeted..I Curse it twice, pull the Curse back, and Kindle it :). Ended the game at something like 28 Life. Game two, I get the Skyshroud Ranger, 3 Forests, the Petal, a Lightning Elemental and some more spells. I get to draw. I plant the Elf, and next turn I get a radical example of undeniable deck speed with a 2nd-turn Lightning Elemental. Now, if only I'd noticed that he'd played a creature... D'oh. I still won, because I drew creatures and that little Elf just got me started too damned fast to deal with. Plus I drew multiple Forests :) Match record: 4-1 Match Six: I'm a little late to my seat again, same reason as before. THIS time, my scheduled opponent was NOT an asshole, and I was not THAT late. He manages to cream me very slowly with a steady supply of Shadowers, some DD, and a little help in the 2nd game from an early manascrew, and only 1 Forest in the first game. He nearly shitted his pants when in game 2 I plant the Bottle (at 4 life) and am able to keep up with his creatures. Unfortunately I was 1 Land short of both keeping up AND using the Bottle...so he manages to tap out to Rolling-Broken-Thunder me for the last 4 points. Damn, another loss with aid from manascrew, but I don't think I'd have won anyway. Match record: 4-2 I have no chance of the prizes now. Damn, I hate manascrew. That's why I was playing a MERE 18 sources in a 41-card deck... Match Seven: (I don't drop, I want to try for more DCI points) He's got Puppet Strings going for him, nullifying my attackers once in a while. Phyrexian Splicer gives me the edge, taking Flying from his 3/3 Vampire and giving it to anything moderately large enough to make it worthwhile...As a fast effect to his using the Strings, of COURSE... I remember I had fun with my Thalakos Sentry, Phyrexian Splicer, and Maze of Shadows just to get back at him. He plays a 6/6 Trampler one turn, which I am able to nullify with that combo until he Banishes my Mistfolk. Ha, ha. I use Shadow Rift to prevent it the next turn, but I am still dead when I draw nothing useful to give me an edge in combat, like one of the Furies. I win the other two games, however, squeaking my biggies and weenies through thanx to Landwalking and some stolen Shadow via the Splicer, and beat down on him till he's real low... I try to get him to Strings my lone attacking Treefolk, giving me a null attack and allowing me to plant my Lightning Elemental and attack with everything for a Big Finish (TM) but he's off his game, he Strings one of his Mogg dudes as a sacrificial blocker. I kill him the turn before he would have OverRun my ass as he showed me when I did the last points. After he tapped all his creatures to attack me (to deal with my Bottle) so that he could OverRun me, I got the Lightning Elemental with Elvish Fury on his ass, as well as my Shadower and swampwalker. Punishment! He says, "I just lost, didn't I?" Oh, well..A cool guy, but I still want a Win. Match record: 5-2 Match Eight: (FINAL ROUND, FINALLY!!) At this point you could have told me I was Marilyn Monroe and I would have believed you. Sleep depravation, VERY little food...Breakfast cereal, 3 McNuggets I gimped from My Bitch, some Life Savers and M&M's. I find out it's 9:00 PM already. Some people were playing WITH Time Warps, I was playing IN one. But I can still play Magic, and that's a good thing because this is guaranteed to be the hardest opponent for me for the entire match. He was playing B/R/g, with Shadows, a Mountainwalker, and some tricks. Game 1, I'm able to Splice my way to victory, stealing Flying and Shadow for my creatures (AFTER his customary Puppet Strings, of course) followed up with an Elvish Fury for 5 a turn. Once I got rolling, I was a juggernaut, especially since I got the Curse action going after a long period of absence. I lose the Game 2 to a Shadow and the Mountainwalker, although I am able to Splice shadow to the 'Walker later on and turn it back with the Maze. He gets me with a Lightning Blast for the kill. Game 3 sees me with a 2nd-turn Lightning Elemental again, thanx to that broken little Elf. He takes his Punishment, but unfortunately he's able to Enfeeble it next turn. Then I get out my Dragonfly, Shadower, and some midrange creatures and get the Buyback Fury running for a modestly fast kill. He's able to keep up OK, but I got my Essence Bottle (after informing him of how I had gained 30-50 life (shoulda counted :) in a previous game...I win the race to the bottom. Cool beans. Final Match Record: 6-2. In the top 25 players in a field of 382. I lose my rightful prize to manascrews... so of course I feel a *little* shitty. Oh, well...I guess I have to buy & trade for it like everyone else. A 75% win ratio against HARD opponents just...didn't cut it somehow. On a lighter note...I got my Maze of Shadows, 2 Lightning Elementals, and Bayou Dragonfly autographed by the guest artists at the tourney, DiTerlizzi and D. Alexander Gregory. Cool! I got lots more signed too, like my Korean and Chinese Coercions, etc. Too bad I wasn't in Chicago, so I could get my Abeyances signed...... --Sean McKeown --Gandalf@BDominia.com "An extra-ordinary guy Can never have an ordinary day, He might live the long goodbye, but that is not for me to say... D'you dig my friends? D'you dig my shoes? I am like a child with nothing to lose but my mind.... My mind....." --Oasis, "Magic Pie"