From: Brick@ccmailer.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de (Daniel Brickwell)
Subject: Late insights from the Protourney
Date: 11 Mar 1996 14:14:51 GMT

Hi all,

I'm back from my vacation in New York!

Probably a lot has been already said about what happened at the
Protourney so I will keep my comments relatively short.

btw. Don't ask me how I did, let's just say I shouldn't have taken a
last minute new deck to the tourney.

1) Land Tax, Land Tax, Land Tax, Sylvan Libary

People who have not been there can't imagine how clear it was that
this card dominated a large number of games at the tourney. Countless
number of times I saw the dreaded game extending Taxing Standoff (both
players can't place a second land due to first round taxes, or even a 
first land because of Zuran Orbs.) The taxing stand-off clearly is
advantageous for blue-white, hence about 6 of the last 16 were B/W decks.
But combine Land Tax with Sylvan Libary and Armageddon and you have
the reason why White/Green is for now dominant in Type II.
I say dominant because I think Preston should have won the semi-finals
against Leconto (I hope I did not misspell this) and Lestree should have
also won the finals.

Why? Preston lost one of the five games due to a playing mistake and could
have won, Lestree beat Leconto in the prelimminary rounds and had him on
the ropes in the deciding game. Stp or die with a 90+ % chance of no Stp
forthcoming. 

Standard Configuration for W/G would be

3 Land Tax
2 Sylvan Libary
3 Armageddon

2) Necropotence, Necropotence, Necropotence

While 3 of the four finalists playing white and either green
or blue. One of the four was mono-black and loving it, due
to Necropotence, the black answer to Land Tax. (btw the Junior Finals
were won by a Necropotence deck against a White Weenie!!!)

Standard Configuration

3-4 Necropotence (hence the california decks don't really qualify)
7-8 Knights (pumpable)
3 Disks
4 Drain Life
1 Ivory Tower.

Key for the strength of the deck are the disks in the deck and
the drain life. The winning factor are the knights of which you
shouldn't play to many at one time. Let him wrath for one knight.
One knight can annoy enough due to his pumpability.

3) High on life.

Because of the restriction of the vise, longer games and creatureless 
decks have become a fad, 4 stp decks abound with no or few ways of doing
damage. But the times are changing. It is now dangerous to grant the
opponent endless amounts of life even for a millstone deck. There are
now three tournament cards which are very life dependent: Sylvan Libary,
Zur's Wierding and Necropotence. StP a ernham instead of controlling
him can cost the U/W player a card disadvantage from anywhere from one to
four cards now. Especially the U/W decks used to ignore the opponents life
total this is no longer the case.

In the first game of the final Lestree drew from 3-6 cards with his Sylvan
Libary because an first round Ivory Tower had brought him up to 60-80
life together with stps. These extra cards were instrumental for him
to turn the game around in a surprising last minute comeback, doing
40 points of damage (the opponent also had a first round ivory tower)
in an amazingly short time period. Winning with about 4 cards left
on his libary.

4) Mark Justice's Deck

It is too bad Preston beat Justice in the semi-finals because I would
have loved to see him go up against Lestree. Justice had a Vise Age deck
with one vise and almost no green anymore, except for stormbind.
It was a beauty to behold Winter Orbs, Bolts, Howling mines and Stp plus
Strombind made it immune against discarders (even Necropotence discarders).
Icy Manipulators and Winter Orbs helped immensely against Blue/White.
And the Winter Orb Icy Lock with Felwar Stones can lock down almost any
deck. It lost to Preston's deck due to a combination of divine offerings
and mana screw (!). The amazing thing with the mana screw in the deciding
second game was the Justices deck practically only needs two mana,
but in the deciding six to eight rounds after the armageddon Justice only drew
I think 3 Felwar Stones to the plains he had kept on hand.
I have to congratulate Preton though for his idea of dienchanting the howling
mines, instead of the winter orbs. It was risky, but it worked great
in that round. Each Divine Offerings was like a hymn which added two life.

Well that's it for now,

Friendly Greetings,

Daniel