The printer is whirring, stamping out the MapQuest directions to tomorrow’s PTQ. As the paper slides into the tray, you’re finalizing the arrangements on who’s driving and what time everyone’s supposed to be ready. You check the backpack next to the door: Tokens? Check. Pen and pad? Check. Enough cash to get you through the day? Check.
Now that everything’s in place, you’re ready to settle in for a good night’s sleep, set to play at the top levels tomorrow…
But before you hit the sack, you hit the net one last time to see if there’s anything you’ve missed. And there it is – a big article on a major website:
DON’T BOTHER SHOWING UP. YOU’VE LOST ALREADY.
Wow, that sucks.
So imagine my consternation when I saw Sean McKeown article on CCGPrime’s Writer War, in which he wrote me off in a single sentence:
“The second of these matches is the easier to predict, since it is between two Star City writers (or a writer and an editor, if you prefer), one of whom had the advantage of being better liked even before he had a successful article series on MagictheGathering.com.”
– Sean McKeown
I was sort of depressed for a day after reading that, because he was right. How could I, a measly underpaid editor who writes sporadically, beat the eternally-prolific Anthony Alongi?
Oh, sure – being his editor, I could torpedo Anthony’s dreams in a single day. All it would take is some subtle tweaking:
CASUAL FRIDAYS #127: Boy, Hitler Was Right, Wasn’t He?
CASUAL FRIDAYS #128: Chicks Can’t Play Magic, And Everyone Damn Well Knows It
CASUAL FRIDAYS #129:”I Twiddle Your Rack!” – The Polyamorous Guide To Multiplayer In Bed (And Why I Always Play Black)*
CASUAL FRIDAYS #130: Why Aaron Forsythe Ghostwrote That Outraged Editorial Claiming That I’m Not Writing Casual Fridays Anymore Over On Magicthegathering.com
But alas, I’d then lose Anthony as a writer, and he is – sadly – too good.
And then it hit me: What I needed was a hook – some sort of easily-remembered signature that people could remember me by! That way, I would be easily remembered by the public, who would then love and caress me and vote me past the evil Anthony”Nobody Can Pronounce It” Alongi in the Writer War!
And what better hook than the one that’s been shoved through my nipple?
So I’ve decided that all future Ferrett articles will be nipple-related. There are some logical reasons behind this:
1) In a casual survey of current Magic writers, there are surprisingly few nipple-related articles.
2) In an extensive survey of non-Magic sites, I found thousands upon thousands of exposed nipples. Apparently, they’re popular items – and people are willing to pay to see them! (Sure, if you shell out three bucks you can see pictures of Zvi Mowshowitz nipples over at Brainburst… But StarCity’s nipples will always be free.) Judging by this nipple obsession, showing off my nips should be a winning strategy.
3)”Nipple” is the naughtiest word I can get away with on StarCity, and I like saying it. Nipple. Nipple nipple nipple.
Therefore, from this day forward, all of my articles will mention my nipples. When you go to vote in the Writer War, remember The Ferrett – the guy with the nipple fetish.
And if that doesn’t get votes, what will?
(In a related note, I saw that Sean McKeown lost his battle to The Pojo’s”We cheerfully invite our readers to cheat” John Hornberg. I think that Sean needs his own hook… But what? What sort of angle could The Mighty McKeown have?
(Well, for a while there was a rash of jokes about Sean’s being gay – which he has fervently (and rightfully) denied. For the record, I don’t think Sean is gay. But considering that there are no other openly homosexual writers on the internet, if Sean suddenly were to turn gay it would be a bold, vibrant maneuver – fostering an air of tolerance and love across the Magic community! Pros would come bursting out of closets everywhere, encouraged by Sean’s courageous example! Men would hug at PTQs! The armies of GLAAD would storm upon CCGPrime, ready to vote in droves for their own writer – just like white trash everywhere votes for Rizzo!
(Of course, becoming a homosexual when you don’t actually like men is an inconvenience, but hey – if Sean’s not willing to make sacrifices for his art, then I can’t help the guy. I mean, he writes what, forty, fifty articles a week? Surely he can find the time to explore alternate venues.***)
In any case, I have a tourney report to write. Nipples!
PTQ: COLUMBUS FOR NICE, 3/24/02
So I drove down and I was late. Yeah, yeah. Burst in through the door just as they called for the last round of players, sat down, got my cards. Here is the tedious list of what I received:
White: 2x Sphere of Law, Second Thoughts, Mystic Zealot, Militant Monk, Hypochondria, Possessed Nomad, Angelic Wall, Divine Sacrament, Dedicated Martyr, Ray of Does, Anyone Trooper, Gallantry, Teroh’s Faithful
Red: 2x Kamahl’s Sledge, 2x Enslaved Dwarf, Battle Read, Dwarven Strike Force, These Blast, Flame Burst, Mad Dog, Flaming Gambit, Kamahl Pit Fighter, Pardic Swordsmith
Blue: Hydromorph Guardian, Aboshan’s Dumb, Dreamwinder, Balshan Griffin, Aquamoeba, Peek, Words of Wisdom, Psionic Lists, Aether Burst, Ghostly Wings, Obsessive Search, Stupefying Touch
Green: Moment’s Peace, Seton’s Desire, Springing Tiger, Twigwalker, Rites of Spring, Skyshooter, Basking Rootwalla, Krosan Restorer, Elephant Anyone, Nut Collector, Centaur Veteran, Cartographer, Who Mongrel
Black: 2x Crippling Fatigue, Psychotic Haze, Zombie Assassin, Morgue Theft, Patriarch’s Does, Shade’s Form, Gravedigger, Gloomdrifter, Dawn of the Dead, Please Imp, Unhinge, Zombie Trailblazer, Cabal Inquisitor, Coffin Purge, Decompose, OverEmail Apprentice, Strength of Lunacy, Dirty Wererat
Gold: Thaumatog
Lands: Bog Wreckage
…and tell me.
Anyway, upon looking at these lovely cards, I realized a couple of things:
Red had some nice removal – including the diggety-bomb of Kamahl – but no good creatures aside from the Strike Force, and its best creature wasn’t splashable. It took a solid two minutes of agonizing – any agony I had not felt since someone had driven a surgical-steel nail through my left nipple – but I decided to let it go.
Blue was unplayable. Only three good creatures, it might be worth splashing for Burst and some of the card drawing, but nothing there was particularly strong. I discarded it.
White was awfully nice, but I didn’t think it was quite worthy of a main color. I have grown to love Second Thoughts – since nobody plays white anymore, it’s practically unstoppable – and the Zealot and Teroh’s Faithful were awfully nice. Hypochondria was particularly nice, too. It was a consideration for a main color, but….
Black. Oh, the black. The minute I saw double Fatigue, I knew I had to go black – and strong, too, since Fatigue is nice but involves a real commitment to black mana. Patriarch’s Desire gave me three solid removal cards. The creatures were light but strong and renewable – Zombie Assassin’s a bit overcosted, but in Sealed that’s not nearly the inconvenience it is, and Dirty Wererat and Gravedigger can make for some sweet plays, and I have recently agreed to sign a prenup with Gloomdrifter.
That’s pre-nup, not pre-nip. For once I wasn’t discussing nipples, you sicko.
Green, however, sealed the deal. Wild Mongrel and Rites of Spring gave me three ways, combined with the Dirty Wererat, to discard cards – and I had Strength of Lunacy, Psychotic Haze, and Basking Rootwalla as fairly strong Madness cards. Not to mention that if I didn’t have the mana for a double-black Fatigue, I could discard it and pay three life. All in all, I thought the synergy lied here – especially since between the discard and the Flashback cards, I could control Threshold at will.
But what to do? I liked white. The answer was to splash for the stronger cards.
My final deck was this:
Black:
Dirty Wererat
Gravedigger
Zombie Assassin
Strength of Lunacy
Psychotic Haze
Gloomdrifter
2x Crippling Fatigue
Patriarch’s Desire
Morgue Theft
Green
Wild Mongrel
Elephant Ambush
Krosan Restorer
Cartographer
Basking Rootwalla
Skyshooter
Rites of Spring
Twigwalker
Springing Tiger
Seton’s Desire
Moment’s Peace
White:
Mystic Zealot
Second Thoughts
Land:
Bog Wreckage
What Would I Have Changed?
Well, in retrospect I would have dropped the smaller, more useless green creatures (Skyshooter and Cartographer) and put in more white. Teroh’s Faithful was an automatic sideboard card in most situations, and no less a light than Mike Turian told me to put in Hypochondria. I definitely should have.
The synergy between my madness cards and my discardoriffic cards was phenomenal – many times I got some free critters with discarded stuff. You’re blocking my Mongrel? Oops; now it’s a 5/4 protected from white guy. Expecting that? Sorry. Is this the third turn? Ah, yes, Innocent Blood; too bad I have this handy Rootwalla.
So unfair.
Gary Wise rates Psychotic Haze as a fifteenth-pick and everyone says the same thing – it’s a more expensive Dry Spell! Yeah, yeah. With all of the Healers, Organ Grinders, Cabal Torturers, and every other x/1 out here, an instant-speed global damage is almost worth four mana in Limited. It’s certainly worth two in this deck, and I was never unhappy to see it.
The weakness of this deck is fairly apparently to anyone who knows Sealed, though, and I knew it going in; I had a lot of removal, but no evasion creatures. Look at that list again: The only thing that can go over anything is the Gloomdrifter and maybe, if I’m lucky, the Zealot at threshold. That left me to trying to annihilate the ground and smash through – leaving me in an uncomfortable beatdown position with relatively few creatures.
Wanna see how it went?
Okay.
Round 1: Tony
Tony was a rather intense-looking lad with a red shirt that said”Sting” on it. He played intensely, and I have to admit it; not having played in professional real-life tourney Magic for three months really hurt. He had his game on; I was in the back closet, wandering about aimlessly and shouting,”Honey, have you seen my game? What? The laundry? Crap.”
In other words, he had me at hello.
He was also the most serious player I met that day, who actually wrote down what he saw from my hand. (Yes, I know you’re supposed to, but you’d be surprised how few people actually do at the lower tables.)
Game one was a massacre. Third-turn Torturer? Okay. Fourth-turn Nantuko Disciple? Not happy, but hey – I’ll draw into one of my Fatigues or my Desires soon enough and take care of it.
Fifth-turn 8/8 trampling empty graveyard Gorilla Titan?
Crap.
So I recursed some Springing Tigers for awhile to stem the banana beatings, but I watched my life go down in increments of five as I couldn’t deal with it. Yowza.
I’d accuse him of cheating in the second game… But hey, I shuffled his deck quite thoroughly, so if anyone was cheating it was me. (And I’d hate to have to disqualify myself for making me lose.)
Once again, Torturer and Disciple came out to play on third and fourth turn, which is sort of bad when it comes to combat math. He also showed a Mesmeric Fiend that stole some Desire from me.
He also claimed he didn’t have a Syncopate, but he had leaned over earlier and I had seen it in his hand. Be warned, folks; I’m against cheating, but if you’re silly enough to tilt your hand in my direction I’ll take it.
I baited the Syncopate out of his hand with a Gloomdrifter, then Elephanted, giving me enough blockers. He disposed of the Elephant.
Now, here was the play that cost me and showed me – later in the day, of course – how badly I was sleeping. He had a Disciple, a Fiend, a Torturer, and some other reasonably-large dork that was killing me with the help of the Disciple. I had a measly three black (and five green) available, and I summoned my Wererat.
He had two mana open, one blue. His Disciple was tapped.
What I should have done was risked it all – I was afraid he’d kill my Wererat, as it was my only blocker. But I should have ditched my Psychotic Haze to my Wererat in order to kill the Fiend and the Torturer before he untapped, at which point I could have taken a (possibly very significant) hit from his creatures and begun regenerating my Rat the next turn.
I chickened out, afraid of what those two mana could do. I then Hazed during combat – and of course he used the Nantuko to protect his Torturer. Gah.
It was all downhill from there.
Wake up, little Ferrett, wake up!
NIPPLE REFERENCE: He had a T-shirt that said”Sting” over his right nipple. I know about stinging nipples.
0-1.
In between rounds, I discovered that none other than my boss, Pete”I own both StarCity and your nipples” Hoefling, was also playing at this PTQ! We hugged and went out for cappuccino.
Round 2: Tony
Apparently, I was destined to play only against Tonies today. This Tony, however, was pleasant and bearded and wore a Half-Life T-shirt that I envied; he reminded me of an old boss I’d had who was cheerful and friendly right up until he went psycho on you.
This Tony was just cheerful, though, saying,”This’ll be the easiest win you have all day today.” His friend, who sat next to him, nodded, and Tony whispered,”I can’t show him my hand. He’ll laugh.”
His friend laughed.
Tony sat down and busted out a Spark Mage, then hit me with discard – which I was cheerful about taking, since I got the second-turn Mongrel and put Lunacy on it, then killed him in five rounds. Ouch. By the time he Mind Sludged me, clearing my hand, it was all over.
He seemed vaguely angry that his deck wasn’t performing, but he kept thumping the top of his deck with fervor, willing the cards to come.
Next time it was slightly slower; once again, he Sludged me, but by then I had a Wererat with a Seton’s Desire on it – and once again, he had discard but no creatures.
Win. And he was right, it would be the easiest I had all day today.
But it didn’t have to be. Tony got up to go for a cigarette, but I offered to play him again. I whupped him. Tony explained that he had played a lot of Magic in high school, but he went to college and hadn’t played seriously in six months. I offered to look through his deck.
Now keep in mind that he was red/black, and was packing Mortal Combat with fifteen creatures in the deck.
The cards that he was not playing included:
Gurzigost
Rabid Elephant
Elephant Ambush
Mystic Zealot
Teroh’s Faithful
I let out a small”eep” in the back of my throat. He could have killed me easily. So easily.
I redid his deck for him in a complex ballet of fudged lands – since we had no actual forests or plains to spare, I wrote down on a piece of paper”MOUNTAINS = PLAINS and SWAMPS = FORESTS” and then played with a really solid G/W deck.
It took awhile, since I had a lot of things, but eventually he crushed me just as the final round went off. I explained to him that he could pick up extra lands for sideboarding at the front – and that he had to play with his original B/R deck at the beginning of every round, but for the second and third games he could transform.
He liked this, I could tell… Even if he was kinda embarassed about how out of the loop he was. But I liked this Tony, so we yacked for a brief bit and then ran out.
1-1
NIPPLE REFERENCE: He wore a Half-Life T-shirt… And half of my nipples are pierced!
(A brief digression: Some people have asked me – why only one nipple?
(Honestly, there was a two-for-one special – I could have gotten both nipples stapled for fifty smackeroos. But for one thing – and this is something I guarantee you will hear no other big-time Magic writer admit, not even Anthony Alongi or Rizzo – I have very sensitive nipples. The wife loves ’em. And I really didn’t want to chance losing feeling there, for the strange I get is awfully good from my lovin’ wife.
(For another thing, I knew it would be painful for a bit, and I sleep on my side. If I got ’em both clamped at once, who was to say that I could sleep at all?
(It turns out that this was the right decision, since a couple of people wrote in to tell me that having both done is more painful – apparently, after the first one gets lanced (and I quote),”all the blood rushes to your other nipple.” It is little facts like this that no one else will tell you.)
In between rounds, I discovered that Pete was in town to buy cards, had forgotten that I no longer lived in Alaska, and was in fact going up to Cleveland tomorrow to buy a set of cards. I offered to put him up for the night, and we agreed to hang.
Round 3: James, who was not Tony
James looked terribly stressed out, as if someone was beating him repeatedly on the back of the head with an invisible mallet. He was friendly enough, though, and used my favorite method of determining who goes first:”Is the number on this card odd or even?”
In the first game, I was winning decidedly. I had reduced him to a single Nantuko Mentor out and a Dreamwinder, while I had a Wererat (thresholded) and a Gloomdrifter with a Strength of Lunacy on it. I was at sixteen; he was at twelve, and due to be smacked for eight a turn.
Then he sacrificed an island, double-Sylvan Mighted his Dreamwinder, Nantukoed it to make it a 16/14 trampler, and attacked for the win.
Ow.
No, really, at least I saw my nipple piercing coming. This was like a surprise mugging that turns into a nipple piercing. I had the game firmly in place, and then I was smashed.
My next card? Moment’s Peace.
Very funny, God.
So for the second game, I played around his many creature pumpers, killing his Nantuko three times (he had Morgue Theft, too) before he finally gave up on it while whittling down at his life… And then he showed me his other bombay: Devastating Dreams.
Say what you will about random discard, when you have board superiority and a couple of fat creatures,”Devastate for three” is some bad news. His remaining Dreamwinder killed me in two turns, and I never drew an answer.
Say la vie.
NIPPLE REFERENCE: Look in the body of the article. It’s there.
1-2
A person next to me noted that hey, with a 6-2 record you might get in the finals! But that’s not why I stayed. I stayed because I had paid twenty-five samoleons for this stupid PTQ, and even if I was gonna leave early with Pete to go see the cinematic masterpiece that is Blade 2, I was gonna get my money’s worth.
Nipple.
Round 4: Larry
Larry had a sort of Marty Feldmanish look to him, but was one of the most cheerful opponents I played against all day. If I had to characterize Marty’s playstyle, I would have to say he was allergic to cardboard.
Why? Because he seemed terrified of keeping them in hand for any extensive period of time. If he drew a land, he played it. If he had a possible way to get rid of a card – and he made me truly loathe Junk Golem – he would do so at the first available opportunity, irregardless of whether it was advantageous to do so. He made the right moves with the cards that were on the board, but he just seemed to like the freedom of not holding onto anything.
“So when did you start playing?” he asked.
“The Dark,” said I.
“Antiquities,” he replied proudly, and I knew that we were soulmates.
I smashed him, though. In the first game, his Cloudchaser removed the Lunacy from my Mongrel, but I still managed to bash through for the win – and that includes the bonehead play of attacking, sans mana, with my Rootwalla into a Cloudchaser.
“Um… block?”
Right.
What the hell; it was the most casual professional game I’ve ever had. We just sort of threw cards around, and I won my 2-1 and then we played for fun until time was declared. God love the boy, he was great.
NIPPLE REFERENCE: If Marty was allergic to cardboard, several people are allergic to metal. They cannot pierce their bodies. I pity them.
In between rounds, I wandered about pathetically. Being from New England, I will talk your ear off should you actually say hello to me…. But I cannot, and I mean cannot, initiate a conversation without a kegful of beer and a handful of ludes. I try, and I freeze.
Case in point: I know Nate Heiss. I’ve met him before. In fact, I wanted to ask him about my deck and get his opinion on how badly I screwed it up, then discuss his site, which maybe he should think about updating or abandoning. (If I see”Suuuupa-bowl!” one more time, I think I’ll vomit.)
There he was. Doing nothing.
And yet I couldn’t even say hello.
Damn you, New England!
Later on, Nate approached me and we talked for a bit and then the next round started… But man, I can not start a conversation on my own.
So if you see me at a tourney or on the street or hanging from a flagpole by nipple, come up and say”hi.” Really. I’ll be grateful that you’re talking to me. Gah.
Second-round Tony did come up and tell me he won a match with his new Gurzigost-sporting transformative deck. Good for him!
Round 5: Ian
Here’s where it started to get fun.
Ian reminded me of my brother-in-law Mike, and it turned out we were both in the same boat; ostensibly good players who’d screwed up a couple of times early on, and now sat here hoping for that desperate 6-2 chance. Hah!
But now my brain finally came alive, and for the first time we began to play. I had lost to stupid plays, and my deck had gone on autopilot and won for me… But now, something in me seemed to say,”Hello! Moron! You’re at a tournament!” and suddenly I began to do smart things.
Ian had a heavy black deck, and really worried me for awhile because he managed to Innocent Blood away a Mongrel early on and then got out an Organ Grinder to kill me. He managed to Grind me three times before he tapped out – at which point, I Morgue Thefted my Mongrel back after combat and Hazed everything with it, which totally wiped out a large portion of his offense. He never really recovered.
We both were grinning. For the first time today for both of us, we felt like we had played to the best of our ability, had not gotten manascrewed, and it came down to the luck of the draw and our skill. This is what Magic should be about, and we both were happy to be there. I was so happy to be playing well that it was a twenty-five minute game and I took no notes.
The second game was a double-mulligan for me – but what a mulligan! Second-turn Mongrel, third-turn Seton’s Desire.
Or rather, second-turn Mongrel, Ian’s second-turn Innocent Blood.
Dammit.
Ian then took control, casting a Shambling Swarm and a Barbarian Outcast… Which was a major mistake when I topdecked a Crippling Fatigue with just enough mana to cast it and then flash it back. I killed his Swarm, which immediately turned upon his only other creature and ate the Barbarian Outcast alive….
To his credit, Ian was amused.
The game then turned into a match of”destroy everything that hits the table.” Whatever I cast, he blew it up. Whatever he cast, I Desired it and Fatigued it and Hazed it. Eventually, it came down to Ian having an Ember Beast out, which had been useless since I kept killing the Beast’s support creatures, and I had a Seton’s Desired Teroh’s Faithful that was smashing face. He was down to two life, and he needed answers quickly.
He drew and triumphantly cast… Faceless Butcher, targeting my Faithful. A brief discussion with the judge confirmed what both of us were pretty sure of; the Desire fell off.
You could see it in Ian’s eyes; the game was starting to swing his way.
And then, at the end of his turn, I cast Elephant Ambush.
I attacked with the 3/3, giving him a nasty choice; he could block with the Butcher only, which would let the token survive and kill him next turn… Or he could block with both the Butcher and the Ember Beast, which would kill my token.
He blocked with both, hoping to live another turn. My elephant died, but my Faithful came back, giving me four more glorious life… And I Strength of Lunacied it. Game over.
Man, that was fun. We shook hands and grinned. This was what Magic was about.
NIPPLE REFERENCE: Faceless Butcher? They butchered my nipple!
Okay, I’m at 3-2. Pete’s looking at me, asking me what the plan is; he went 2-2 and dropped. I myself say,”Just one more game and we’ll leave,” because it was a two-hour drive back to Cleveland and we had to see Wesley Snipes in action.
So then I went on to….
Round 6: Amos
Amos was just a lot of fun. He knew who I was, which was a definite bonus – those of you who are regular readers would be surprised at how often I go totally unrecognized at any premier event – and Pete had played Amos earlier that day.
“He’s a beating,” Pete whispered.”He’s got a really fast deck.”
Yeah, well so do I, thought I. When it works.
I came out of the gates blazing with a second-turn Mongrel, third-turn Lunacy. He had some things to throw in the way, including a Skywing Aven, which I Crippling Fatigued twice to stop it from blocking the 5/5 Mongrel. He discarded cards at a frightful rate to get chump-blockers back.
We played at a really fun pace; serious, but we kept joking around.”Mongrel, ay?” said Amos.”Holy f**k, that’s a BIG Mongrel!”
I don’t think either of us blocked anything that game. We just kept smashing face back and forth – and the turn before I would have killed him, he dropped a rather large bomb: Ashen Firebeast. He used a Thresholded Krosan Restorer to untap enough land to ping away the Wererat that I had held back as a potential blocker, and hit me for the rest.
That’s what Magic is about, my friends.
Amos congratulated my deck, saying that it was really good. I was happy to hear that, since I could have won if I’d played it like the beatdown that it was.
The second game, we started off a bit slower, but I still managed to get the Dirty Wererat and Mongrel out. An early Violent Eruption hit my Mongrel early on during combat, and I had four cards in hand. I playfully thought about it:”Am I that crazy?” I asked out loud, fingering my cards.”Am I crazy enough to ditch my entire hand to save this doggie?“
Well, as it turns out, that hand consisted of a Fatigue and a Moment’s Peace, both of which could be played from the graveyard – so yes, I was that crazy.
The game dragged on for a bit as we both played back and forth – and my Psychotic Haze took out his Skywing Aven and his four Acorn tokens while it pumped my Mongrel, providing severe card advantage. Eventually, the game got to the point where he was down to nine life; I had, once again, four cards in hand, a Dirty Wererat, a Thresholded something with Seton’s Desire on it, and a Wild Mongrel.
He cast Kamahl, Pit Fighter.
Jeez, how many bombs can a guy have?
But I was not dismayed. I attacked straight into him, knowing that he had to block with his Pit Fighter or die to the damage. He blocked, as he had to, pinging the Wererat… And I ditched three cards to my Mongrel in response, making the Wererat a 4/5 as I achieved threshold, doing exactly enough damage to take him out.
He laughed. God bless him, Amos laughed.”That was so close,” he said.”And you played it perfectly.”
The third game was tough; I found my Mongrel and a Rootwalla, and he blew away all my other creatures. He kept blocking with a Skywing Aven, which he ditched cards to to bring it back to his hand even when he didn’t have to.
Evidently, he was going for threshold, but I didn’t know why.
I found out; he cast Seton’s Desire on a Krosan Restorer, hoping to overwhelm me with creatures.
His offense wasn’t very impressive, though, consisting of a three-power creature – so I attacked right past it, trying to smack him down quicker, only leaving back a freshly-cast Wererat to regenerate. I was at nine, he was at twelve, and I could achieve threshold on demand with the black mana I had.
Next turn, looking anxious, he cast Kamahl. He declared an attack with all three creatures – and since I had to block the Desired creature, that was nine points total for the win.
Afterwards, Amos said,”I knew you had Moment’s Peace, and I thought you might have a Psychotic Haze – either which would have ended the game for me. But I had to try it.”
That, my friends, is Magic – you play to win. I could have had those cards… But I didn’t, and he won with precisely enough damage to take me out.
Come to think of it, every game we played ended with the winner doing exactly the amount of damage necessary to win. I like that.
And so I left the PTQ with a 3-3 record – not brilliant, not what I would have liked, but respectable. And near the end, it got really good.
Pete and I left, spent thirty-five minutes waiting for food from a deserted Burger King, and then drove back to Cleveland just in time to see Blade 2 with some friends. Ah, camraderie. And Blade butt-kickin’. Who needs plot when you have people beating the living crap out of each other?
And so in conclusion, I leave you with this to think about:
Nipple.
Signing off,
The Ferrett
The Here Edits This Here Site Here Guy
[email protected]
* – Actually, this might win him more readers. Oops.
** – Except for Adam and Eve.
*** – Okay, how many letters of complaint am I gonna get on this one?
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