Subject: PTQ-LA Qualifier Report (Austin, TX) 11/29/97 Date: Mon, 1 Dec 1997 01:55:36 -0500 (EST) From: ZZanman@aol.com To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Under sunny skies and cool weather, scenic Austin, Texas was the site for a Pro Tour Qualifier for the Los Angeles Pro Tour being held in March, 1998. This qualifier took place on Saturday, November 29, 1997, at the Radisson Hotel in downtown Austin, overlooking the Brazos river. The facility was classy and well-prepared. Tim Weissman came up from Houston to run the event and serve as head judge of the qualifier, which included 130+ players. I'm Jeff Zandi, a member of the Texas Guildmages, and I won this qualifier by going against the most popular Extended decks, by working hard, and through a great deal of very good luck. All this aside, the best advice I could give anyone thinking about the Extended format is DON'T PLAY THIS DECK! A week ago, I built what I thought was the most simple, most consistent possible Extended deck, straight black. Knights, Necro, Lake of the Dead, etcetera. You know, just like everybody else in the world. Why? Because even though you hear about a really cool new deck whipping everybody somewhere, it's black decks that win the big tournaments. A pretty decent Magic player and author told me two years ago that straight black is what you play if you want to win big tournaments. Because simple and efficient decks win. Anyway, I thought I had a pretty good black deck. On Tuesday night, our team's practice night, Guildmage James Jenkins ("ya'll be kind to big Newt!") showed us an interesting green/red deck that used a lot direct damage, a standard assortment of Boas, Centaurs, Dervishes and Ernhams, and the new Tempest card Eladamri's Vineyard. The deck played quickly, and made good use of another good Tempest card, Cursed Scroll. The deck, admittedly unfinished, was iffy buy interesting. A day later, while practicing with the talented but obnoxious Justin Lenhart at a North Dallas game store, he completely befuddles my black deck with his solid green (okay, two Torches for red) Vineyard deck, using all kinds of green creatures and four Recycles and four Gaea's Blessing. The deck didn't beat everything, but it did pretty well against unsideboarded black. Two days of testing, and I had the unsettling feeling that my efficient, simple, powerful black deck could not beat Eladamri's Vineyard because, very simply, my deck was too lean and too efficient on mana-use to have any way to use two extra GREEN mana during my main phase, resulting in an uncomfortable amount of mana burn. ( like 6-10 points in an average game against a deck featuring four Vineyards) Two days later, I decided to build a fun green/red version of these two decks using four Eladamri's Vineyard. In the tournament, well-manned at 130+, Houston was well-represented by some of the usual faces, like Bryan "the telescope" Hubble (I hear he's affiliated with the Austin Knights now, but I think he still lives near Houston? who knows) Austin Knights were everywhere you looked. In fact, you couldn't fling a Tempest common without hitting an Austin Knight, believe me, I KNOW! Dallas was under-represented, with only two out of nine Texas Guildmages (me and Tim Stoltzfus), a couple of guys from the Arlington Upstarts (they call themselves Team Reaper) like Bil Payne, Richard Whipple and Jim Bailey, and from the burning wreckage of Team Dallas, the very swell Cary Darwin. (Cary is my favorite Team Dallas player, not including Stocky Guys With Excessive Body Hair). A lot of other talent is also in the room. A couple of all-blue decks are floating around, surprisingly little Buried Alive is found (my teammate Tim Stoltzfus is playing something like this) not too many straight-red decks, and A WHOLE LOT OF straight-black and black/red. Here's what the day looked like through Zanman's helmet-cam... ROUND ONE - Charles Smith, from Dripping Springs (near Austin), takes games two and three of this match, playing (yawn) nearly all-black, with just a little...anyone want to guess? That's right, class, it's a little RED in Charles' high-quality black deck. A tough loss, losing the exact deck that I'm supposed to be able to beat. It's cold comfort that I won the first game in four minutes. Remember how often you used to get a first turn Dark Ritual/Hypnotic Specter? That's how often my deck puts out an Ernham Djinn on the second turn. Difficult to deal with when it works. In games two and three, it didn't. The most basic reason is that the more optimized a black-red deck is, the less use it has for non-black or non-red mana. In short, my Vineyards hurt good black-red decks more than they hurt how shall we say it, less focused black-red decks like this one. ROUND TWO - Edward Uribe from Austin plays big-time land destruction in this -YAWN- black-red deck. Edward should win this match, but he forgets to retrieve his Hammer of Bogardan on his last turn to finish me off. I win the match two games to one on the next turn. This just in, Wastelands are GIGANTIC in Extended format. Everyone should play four of them in this format. (That's a hot sports opinion! Good mornin' to ya!) ROUND THREE - Steve Fraley, graduate from Texas A&M who still lives in College Station, is playing a control deck with some blue, some green, some red and some white. Both our games were fairly long, but eventually he ran out of answers for big creatures, and I win. ROUND FOUR - Kent Taylor, rock-star look-alike from Austin, is, uh, doing the red-green thing, and he enjoys the free green mana from my Vineyards a great deal. If his deck had been a little better constructed, he beats me easily. As it is, he doesn't have enough quality creatures and he wastes some big spells just to avoid mana burn from the Vineyards a couple of times. I win games one and three. ROUND FIVE - Shawn Fox, from College Station, is always at the big tournaments, making trouble for big-shots and wannabes alike! Today, he's turning the screws on me with blue-white control (no Outpost, though). Vineyard mana burn finally beats him in the first game. In the second game, Shawn is about to kill me with Propaganda in play, an untapped Icy Manipulator, and THREE Winter Orbs in play. I'm at two life with no land untapped during his turn. He's at three or four life and I have an Apes of Wrath in play. He does everything right EXCEPT that he taps out. On my turn, I have to be able to tap two mana to allow my Ape to attack, and I have no place to sink my Vineyard mana, so if I don't draw a spell that uses exactly one or two green mana, I die to either mana burn or his Mishra's Factory next turn (he has artifact mana, an Undiscovered Paradise that will be returning to his hand, and two Icys in play, one tapped and one currently untapped). I draw the one of the only cards that will let me out of the trap, an Emerald Charm that I sideboarded in. I shoot the Propaganda, mana burn for one damage down to one life, and attack with my Apes. The round ends a minute later. If Mr. Fox doesn't screw up and tap out, he wins the second game and our match is a draw. On the scoreboard (if we had a scoreboard) it looks like a 2-0 sweep, in reality, the match coulda-shoulda been a painful draw. ROUND SIX - Burt Jones from Austin, sort of an Austin Knight, I understand... (Is everyone in Austin that plays Magic an Austin Knight? Inquiring minds are mildly interested...) This is the wildest match of the day, against the best player that I've seen all day, who, by the way, is playing black with a little red. Game one takes less than four minutes. He doesn't get enough land. I cast an Ernham on turn two and Apes of Rath on turn three. I Creeping Mold two of his lands. He dies. Game two is my turn to get a bad draw, and the match is tied 1-1 after a total of ten minutes. In the third game, we play our only high-quality game. Eventually, though, he's still taking too much mana burn from the Vineyards, and my big creatures get through. My hot sports opinion, after many matches against black-red, is WHERE ARE THE CREATURE REMOVAL SPELLS? Did nobody anticipate fatties? I understand all the black players leaving out terrors and Nekrataals (Texas Guildmages don't remove the Nekrataals from their black decks). ROUND SEVEN - Vinnie Falcone, from parts unknown, offers me a draw in the last Swiss round, I take it happily because I'm not convinced enough that my deck can win, and I feel good enough about my tie-breakers with a final record 5-1-1. When the dust settles from the Swiss rounds, the final eight is composed of a 6-0-1 and seven 5-1-1. Number eight on the list? THAT WOULD BE ME, BUH-RUH-THER! Dallas-area Magic-scene veteran and part-time philosopher Vincent Johnson makes his first PTQ final eight appearance at number seven. Here's the final rounds, as I played them. ROUND OF EIGHT - Chris Huang, from Baton Rouge, is 6-0-1, and features the most carefully honed black-red deck you would ever be likely to see. I get an optimal draw and win the first game in just over four minutes. Chris plays mistake-free Magic and makes the second game a tight one, making my Cursed Scroll useless against his knights with the very cool use of Purelace. His tight play doesn't pay off, and I win 2-0 in about fifteen minutes. SEMI FINALS - Chris Herdeman of the Austin Knights (I didn't know this guy was an Austin Knight, either. Hint, if you're on a Magic team, help us fans out my wearing your team t-shirts at the big tournaments. Otherwise, it's no visable team solidarity, no recognition, no soup for you!). Chris is playing black and red, which, I hear, is a fairly popular deck in the Extended format. Very maximized, very optimized, Mishra's Factories help him use the Vineyard mana, until they eventually get destroyed. I win the first game, thanks to another optimal draw, in three and a half minutes, and I win the match with the second game lasting not a whole lot longer. FINALS - In the finals I run into Jay Wise, who plays Magic like a riverboat gambler, and who serves as the spiritual leader of a small band of Magic players known as Team Fruity-Ass. Every Magic player in Texas doesn't necessarily like Jay, but most tournament players in Texas, and, for that matter, all over the South, know who he is. This Pro Tour veteran is playing what LOOKS like a black-red deck. I don't get a good look at his deck in the eight or nine turns that I need to win the first game, again with a really great draw. (By the way, one may to get really good draws in a Magic duel is to put really good cards in your deck, you heard it hear first!) In the second game, I learn that Jay is really playing a very serious mostly red deck using eight regenerating Trolls, with a little black and a little white. I'm a turn away from sweeping the entire final eight when Jay smiles crookedly and cooks me to death with not one, not two, but three Lightning Bolts at once! You want fries with that? Game three was a great one, with a lot of damage back and forth, I don't get a Vineyard right away, but I eventually get five land out and start hitting him with big creatures and with Stormbind. This matchup is very close, but it still appears that I have an advantage with an Ernham in play (tapped from attacking) and an untapped Fallow Wurm. All he has in play is a single Troll. I'm at seven life, he's at five or six life. He attacks, and I tell him that I block with the Fallow Wurm. He shakes his head, shows me the two Bolts that he was going to use to finish me if his Troll had gotten through. Jay then concedes the game, looking at the top card of his library, while receiving a mesage from a teammate to look at the playing field a bit more closely. Yup. His Troll should have gotten through and done three damage to me, lowering me to double-bolt range, because his Troll received forest-walk during my previous upkeep. Without conceding, Jay would easily win the match with the cards he had in his hand and with the mana he had in play. I missed it. He missed it. Our floor judge missed it. Head judge Tim Weissman was not at the table. Guess who is, understandibly, a little bitter? We're both unsatisfied with the turn of events. Jay has known me for a long time, and we both know how unlikely it is that I would have misled him intentionally about being able to block his creature. Pure mistake. This tournament awarded to seats for the Los Angeles '98 Pro Tour, so we're just playing for pride and $250 in WOTC money. Both of being unsatisfied with the outcome of game three, decide to play an informal game four, in which I squeak out a win one turn before he would have won. The game four was for the sanity, peace of mind, and possibly the future respect and friendship of Jay Wise and Jeff Zandi. Game three carried. Zandi wins! But I'll tell you one thing that I learned, besides the fact that Ernham Djinns give my opponent's creature forestwalk, is that NOBODY SHOULD PLAY THIS DECK! Here's the deck: (break it down for me, player!) DON'T PLAY THIS DECK! 4 Eladamri's Vineyard (deck very ordinary if you don't draw these!) 3 Creeping Mold (unbelievably great spell in this deck, should have started 4) 2 Stormbind (mana dump for the Vineyard, making it orb-proof damage!) 1 Sylvan Library (No Sylvan library in green deck? yeah, right!) 1 Elvish Fury (not all that important, but a potential mana dump) 2 Cursed Scroll (really good mana dump, but activation of three is slow) 4 Ernham Djinn (these guys have a toughness of five, Tim!) 4 Scragnoth (who hates blue? okay, you can put your hands down!) 3 Apes of Rath (besides being a portrait of the Texas Guildmages, it's BIG!) 3 Jolrael's Centaur (can't bolt 'em, can't block 'em with a knight!) 2 Fallow Wurm (land pitch requirement not too bad in this deck) 3 Lightning Bolt (WOTC requires Bolts in all Extended format decks) 2 Earthquake (kills the other guys creatures, leaves yours alone) 1 Kaervek's Torch (mana dump and game finisher) 4 Taiga 4 Karplusan Forest (more red sources than the deck really needs) 2 Undiscovered Paradise (not too important, helps against orb) 4 Mishra's Factory (mana dump supreme!) 2 Mountain (Hey, I coulda played a Fireblast!) 9 Forest (you need this if you want to be giving dudes Forestwalk!) SIDEBOARD 1 Creeping Mold (sideboarded it in every match!) 3 Emerald Charm (automatic against blue and black decks) 2 Whirling Dervish (sounded good, but wasn't effective against black with red) 3 Natural Spring (eight life for five, in this deck, is cheap. I hate sligh!) 2 Taste of Paradise (pictured chick looks like Demi Moore) 4 City of Solitude (seemed automatic for blue decks, but I never used them) I barely survived the Swiss rounds, and I dominated the final eight, but this deck is STILL BAD! Yes, it hurts highly optimized black or black-red decks, or big-time counterspell decks, but I took my share of mana burn from the Vineyards myself! Worse, when you're opponent is playing green or green-red, you're helping them a great deal. If you play some red-playing Magic slacker with twelve X spells, YOU DIE AND YOU DIE UGLY! It's not good. Also, sixteen creatures is ALMOST not enough, yet, commiting to more creatures means reducing this deck to a very short-sighted all-green deck that isn't going to beat very many people. Also, the best mana dumps in the deck are the Mishra's, which get destroyed with alarming regularity! I played well in this tournament, and I'm happy and satisfied with the way in which I won the event. But take a look at these stats (from the total of my ten matches) and you might see how I was able to win with this BAD deck: 1 Creatures destroyed by Sword to Plowshare 0 Creatures destroyed by either Terror, Nekrataal or DIABOLIC EDICT! 2 Nevinyrral's Disks destroyed by opponents' spells 8 Opponents' Nevinyrral's Disks destroyed by my Creeping Molds 0 Number of Elamdamri's Vineyards targetted by opponents' spells 0 Number of creatures targetting by creature-stealing spells 1 Number of creatures returned to my hand by Man-o-Wars 0 Number of Stormbinds destroyed by opponent's disenchants I simply don't know where the creature destruction was, or why people weren't getting rid of my key enchantments. With a good draw, a chimp (or a Microprose AI programmer) could win a game with this deck. With an inferior draw, winning with this deck is problematic. This just in, red damage isn't enough to destroy large numbers of larger creatures. HERE'S WHAT DOESN'T SUCK ABOUT THIS DECK: None of the sixteen creatures can be killed with a single Bolt. This deck can deal with enchantment heavy decks without destroying its own. Stormbind is a good finisher. Plays like a fast deck, but without running low on steam late in the game, since every late draw has a chance to be a big creature, or at the very least, two points of damage from either (or both) the Cursed Scroll or the Stormbind. PROPS AND SLOPS! PROPS to the following very special individuals. Tim Stoltzfus, for unbelievable teamwork, support, and big-time level-two Magic brains! To Big Newt, for first showing me Vineyard, and for Scot Martin, who thought Vineyard was so cool when he first heard of it that he almost thought about not playing blue for the first time in his life! To Justin Lenhart, who is a very good player, and who convinced me that Vineyard would beat good black decks, even if it never wins another tournament anywhere! Princess Willa is continually great to the team, and drives the Zan-Van when we go on trips so I can work on decks. To Stan Patterson, who functions as my Perry White in the square, non-Magic world, for freeing up my schedule for Germany this week! To the rest of the Texas Guildmages, David Williams, Cortney Cunningham, Minh Huynh, James Stroud, James Murphy and the late-great Jason Page, not to mention James Stroud's roomate Marcus Trevino, who goes WAY BACK in Magic and helps us practice, and who helps encourage original decks. Mike Eckrich for the great sponsorship from Games Galore in Arlington. (the best place for Magic in the DFW-area!) Thanks also to all the cool kids at Games Galore, including every last one of the Team Reaper squad! Finally, big-time thanks to the very classy Austin Knights, a great hometeam for a great city! SLOPS: Just one - trash talkin', cheating Magic players, where ever they may be found. For Magic to succeed and be the best Intellectual Sport ever created on Earth, Magic players have to be as respectable as the geeks playing chess. There's simply no room in this sport for cheating or for bad sportsmanship. If you don't know what good sportsmanship is, play me in a tournament and I'll show you. Better yet, beat me in a tournament, 516 people already have! Seeya! Email the beejeebers out of me: zzanman@aol.com p.s. The Texas Guildmages, in case you forget, have been "Building Our Own Decks Since 1994" p.p.s Wanna know how I do it? Got a goal, I persue it. Got the soul to get to it. You was told, so you knew it!