Subject: Tempest Prerelease Report (Pittsburgh) Date: 5 Oct 97 16:59:05 EDT From: tjest@vms.cis.pitt.edu Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy Hi, I need to make this report short and sweet. It was supposed to begin at 9, so that we could make out decks and start playing at 10. Anyway, the line for on site registration was out the door and down the road a ways, so I don't think we even started playing until 12:30-1. So, this is the deck I played, I won't get into analysis of why, but here it is. red, black and white rolling thunder, blood frenzy, lightning blast, searing touch, mogg raider, aftershock, opportunist, mogg conscripts, flowstone giant rats of rath, pit imp, marsh lurker, dregs of sorrow, dauthi mercenary, marsh lurker, dark ritual, dauthi slayer, gravedigger, disturbed burial, dark banishing soltari lancer, disenchant, soltari foot soldier, mounted archers, circle of protection red and cop: shadow puppet strings, lotus petal Basically, blue had some good flyers, 2 wind drakes, a flying first striker for UW, but they were all 2/2 and I thought I would get pummeled by bigger ground creatures/ pumpable shadow creatures. Green had this huge mana intensive Kraklin or whatever GGX X/X creature regenerator and only a few eleves and that was it. 1st round, against Harry, a guy who I play with down the student union at school I get crushed. He has this cursed scroll which I think is broken, not only in sealed but in real life. Look at what it does, and then imagine somebody sitting with one card in his hand. I die. In comes another disenchant 2nd game it was all about altar of dementia. You can a sac a creature to it to mill a person for its power. Long standoff, altar of dementia, sac all his creatures, to deck me. 2nd round against Patrick, who I don't know. He beats me after a long game, I think with a rootwalla. 2nd game I kill him with shadow creatures. 3rd game he gets mana screwed and I win. 3rd round (there were 9 rounds of swiss) Against this kid named Andy. He tells me that he is like #26 in the country in arena. I am thinking that if I lose again, I will be out (even though they give prizes to top 32), that I will just drop out and go home. Forget about booster draft. Anyway, I crush this kid 2 straight. I have the pumpable dauthi mercenary and he has no shadow creatures. I think I dark banished his wall of diffusion once. 4th round, Against Michael. Another win win, I kept drawing the answer for everything he did in the second game after a quick weenie rush in the 1st. 2nd game, 10 mana before the end of his turn, searing touch you twice with buyback. he could do nothing about it. 5th round against Steven. 1st game I start doing that sac a swamp to make the marsh lurker unblockable thing and hit him for 3 a turn until a lightning blast can finish him off. 2nd game I get mana screwed, and he gets the God draw and crushes me. Third game he gets a little screwed, but he gets the cursed scroll out, which I disenchant. After dregs of sorrowing 2 creatures, a 7 point rolling thunder is enough to kill him. Speaking of Dregs of Sorrow, I don't know that it is broken in sealed. It is really slow, and if you are on the run, and have to block and hope you can draw land to kill the one big creature, then it sucks. I was fortunate to get a dark ritual as well, so if I got the dregs first, I could wait for a ritual and a creature standoff. I didn't have any really huge creatures, so I didn't get into many standoffs. However, the times where you can kill three creatures and ancestral recall yourself make it all worthwhile. 6th round against this guy named Jean-Luc Park. He is nice and actually kinda formal like saying "You may go" at the end of his turn. He is playing heavy green, and has 2 rootbreaker wurms (6/6 trample). He rolls me the first game, and in the second, I have to dark banish one and weenie rush, block lightning blast the other wurm. I eventually kill him with sahdow creatures. How can so many people not be playing shadow? Third game he gets too much land and not enough stuff. I get a huge weenie horde so that by the time a wurm comes out, he is on the defensive. I kept disturbed burial buybacking my pit imp, which he kept trying to kill (low on flyers I guess) Anyway, when I notice he is out of cards in his hand, I rolling thunder him. Round 7 vs Jeff. He is playing red, but I have the answer to his 2/1 mountainwalkers and jackal pups by means of puppet strings/cop red. Again marsh lurker followed by blood frenzy and lightning blast makes him suck 11. 2nd game mana screw. Hold cop red the whole game while he hits me with 4/1 red lightning elemental. 3rd game, see first game. The dauthi mercenary is so strong in sealed if there are no blockers. round 8, vs Jason, a guy who also goes down the union. I have been seeing people abused by capsize the whole day, so I vow to side in stone rain to get rid of a blue. 1st game, I really can't even remember, the usual shadow beatdown as he is playing green blue with a splash of red. 2nd game, in comes stone rain, disenchant and serene offering to deal with broken fall (green gossamer chains),a very annoying card when every creature removal spell I have except for dark banishing says destroy and not bury. 2nd game he gets rootwalla and broken fall, and I decide to stone rain a green to keep him from pumping rootwalla and casting broken fall in the same turn. Eventually I kill rootwalla, I think with aftershock, and start hitting with dauthi mercenary and slayer. He has this 5/4 hulk, and I have a rats of rath, but I am at 6, so if he attacks, I can not block and kill him next turn. Meanwhile he is capsizing my mercenary every turn. I eventually kill him with the slayer and searing touch recursion. Stone raining the green was big, because otherwise he could have cast overrun and killed me. So now I am #3. I actually ran the gauntlet from a 1st round loss, all the way up to table #1 so I could intentional draw my way into the top 8. turns out that the top 8 have to get all new decks and play single elimination. I get in at #4, other people from the union include Aaron (undefeated), Jason, the guy I just beat, and Harry, who finished 7-2, and made the tiebreaker based on the fact that the first tiebreaker was opponent's match %, and since he beat me and I went 7-1-1, his score was higher than everybody elses. So, my new deck: I thought this deck was so strong, but I only had 7 mountains and 7 swamps (34% land) and that hurt. mogg fanatic x3, tahngarth's rage, fireslinger, aftershock, wall of diffusion, sandstone warrior, flowstone giant, wild wurm. bellowing fiend, dark banishing x2, dark ritual x2, knight of dusk x2, mindwhip sliver, corpse dance, blood pet, dauthi horror, dauthi marauder, diabolic edict metallic sliver, helm of possession, lotus petal, manakin. Before we started, when I was testing out my deck, I kept getting tons of mana, so I figured it was ok. In retrospect, I probably should have put like 3 plains in. So, I play Jim Radeshak, who if you look on the arena standings happens to be #1 in the country. He is playing red green, with a lot fo weenies and I use mogg fanatics like direct damage until I get a wild wurm out on the third try. He has a wild wurm and a weenie and I sacrificed something to take his armadon with my helm of possession. He attacks, I let the weenie through thinking he had elvish fury, but no he has rolling thunder and kills me. Second game, I sideboard in perish, but I get 1st and seond turn fanatics and he gets no creatures. I end up hitting him for lots and getting lucky with the wurm. By the time we gets lucky with his wurm, he is at 3, and I bring out another fanatic and sac them all at him. 3rd game, 3rd turn ritual bellowing fiend, he gets a wall of diffusion and a frog tongue. Our wurms kill one another and he manages to kill my bellowing fiend with a flailing drake and a fanatic and a searing touch. I get a flowstone giant, banish the wall and start smacking him. He draws a pincer beetle the turn before the giant would kill him, but I have beenm holding perish the whole game, kill the beetle, and kill him. semifinals, against Dan, who beat me in type 2 in that greetree marriot tournament in may. 1st match, I roll him. I get a sandstone warrior smacking him for like 5 every turn, then a wild wurm on the first try. 2nd game, mana screw, eventually I get a swamp, blood pet and lotus petal so I can sac two of them to dark banish something. 3rd game mana screw, he hits me for lots before I can banish his apes of rath, then he buysback eviticar's justice every turn to kill me, the whole time I am holding a flowstone giant and a sandstone warrior. I was so pissed off, because even though my deck was a little light, I think 41 cards, 14 land, a manakin, lotus petal, blood pet and 2 dark rituals should be enough. So, for my troubles, I got 1 starter, 2 boosters to enter, 1 starter and 2 boosters to be in the top 8, 3 boosters for doing one of the guys a favor before the tournament started, and a box of starters for coming in 4th. Considering I got up at 6:00, was there at 8 am, and left at 2:15 am, it hardly seems worth it. Aaron and Dan were in the finals when I left, so I don't know who won. Unlike other reports, I was not witness to any stalling or collusion or cheating. Although there were instances when I had to remind people to take damage, think it was accidental. My thoughts on tempest sealed deck: Buyback spells are huge, especially capsize, disturbed burial (on something like mogg raiders or fanatics), elvish fury (love the picture), and searing touch. In my opinion, don't waste one of them before you can buy it back in sealed unless you have to. Late game rolling thunder is a game breaker, and licids are very difficult to kill. Wait until one blocks, and becomes a creature enchantment, and then kill that creature in response while the licid is in limbo. If you wait, the licid can bounce back off. Shadow creatures like dauthi mercenary are weak to fireslinger or fanatics, but very strong if you can get an endless scream (which I didn't have) I never use the opportunist's ability all day. Puppet strings are very very good in sealed, even if you only tap attacking creatures with them. Aaron advanced undefeated largely on the strength of the maddening imp, master decoy combo (we checked with the judge and it does kill the creature. Any creature without summoning sickness is "able" to attack, even if it is tapped) The deck I registered for the top eight had 2 master decoys and apuppet strings. Fortunately, I didn't have to play against that one. Some people looked at soltari foot soldier funny, until it hit them for 8 or so, because they couldn't block it. mogg conscripts are excellent with disturbed burial to bring back a raider. buyback of course :) Lightning blast was good, and blood frenzy killed several creatures, mostly at the cost of one of my own. Mounted archers with blood frenzy and a searing touch took out a 3/3 and a 3/4 creature at the same time. I think cop:shadow and cop:red were both good main deck choices, and even if your opponent isn't playing red, you can still prevent the damage from aftershock, which itself was pretty good, but broken fall kills it. I didn't have it, but coercion is a great way to deal with buyback spells. So is mindwhip sliver if you are lucky or it is their only card. Phyrexian splicer is very versatile, and can kill a creature by swapping first strike. I saw the dauthi embrace/cop:shadow combo going, and if a person can buyback invulnerablity twice in the same turn, you are out of luck. My strategy with slivers was that I didn't want my opponent to have a regenerating creature by laying a clot sliver, so I put it in the side and put it in if I didn't see any or if my opponent was playing big non tramplers. I didn't use deadshot, because I didn't realize that you don't have to tap one of your own creatures, so in effect, you can tap one blocker to kill another and march right past. Still, kinda expensive. If you get a wild wurm, try to do everything else first. You always seem to lose the coin flip the first time, and that delays all your other stuff as well. Well, thats the story. -Tom