I didn’t just come out of nowhere to start up this little column.
The first thing I sent to StarCity was a T1 tournament report, and since Alex Shvartsman immediately linked to it from”Week In Review”, I was encouraged to keep writing. I further submitted a T2 report from FNM, and then my massive GP Detroit report was next (hilariously enough, it went up at the same time as Rizzo’s, and both broke the database before they were broken into parts).
At that point, I started writing for Meridian Magic.
Then I took a year off to play Asheron’s Call with a group of backstabbing, ungrateful @#$%heads, many of whom were from Vermont.
Yeah, one of them was”you-know-who.”
Don’t ask about it.
Anyhow, I returned, and got back into the groove, and when I started writing again I sent something in to a StarCity contest, and Ferrett remembered me! Another encouraging sign.
One thing led to another and here I am. Still, everything didn’t begin with that”Sometimes Red Just Wins” report (which was heavily inspired by a Mike Flores article,”The Redistribution Of Wealth”, in any case).
I’ve actually been writing tournament reports for a while. Check this stuff out.
T1 Necro (Sarnia, Ontario, August 29th, 1998)
This was my first ever tournament report, written at the tender age of 18 years. I’m playing some god-awful Necro deck that is still better than the rest of the field because it has Hymn to Tourach and Necropotence in it. It’s fairly obvious that I’m a mediocre player at this point, but the report isn’t half bad. Check out the guy (“Bruce”) who brought a deck with four Black Vises in it and got DQ’d!
Quotes:
“…3 Mindstab Thrull…”
–Geordie Tait, listing a build that he could tape to his windshield to take advantage of handicapped parking zones
“I kept my deck under tight wraps because I knew that these cheese-mongering nerds would hose me any chance they got (though they are all too dumb to sideboard effectively against discard)…”
–Geordie Tait, a young man of class and tact, showing his respect for the opposition circa 1998
“I drain an Erg Raiders for 3. He finally gets a second swamp, then an island. He Brainstorms (TYPE 1POWER BABY!!!) again, lays a Kjerldoran Dead with no creature to sac (he asks to takeback, I make him bury it) andsays go. I Hymn him, pulling a Vise and swamp. I look at the 2 Vises in his graveyard.”
“Toner looks drunk, stoned, or both. I decided that I should win without much trouble.”
-GT, sizing up his quarterfinal opponent
“It had 4 Ephemerons main…”
-Geordie talks about the tech-filled deck that he’d eventually face in the finals (Sadly enough, at the time I actually thought his deck was good and that Ephemeron was a savvy card to use as a finisher in a blue control deck… This was prior to the release of Morphling, so maybe it wasn’t so bad, though I’d prefer Rainbow Efreet.)
“…scrubs who take 10 turns before they even realize they are Stasis-locked (‘I’m gonna win for sure now- this guy’s giving me free turns!’)”
Here’s the full report:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010222161543/www.thedojo.com/t983/t1.980829pta.txt
T1 Necro (Sarnia, Ontario, November 25th, 1998)
This is my second report ever.
“I played Necro, but with Expunge”
-Geordie shares his new”tech” card (and if you thought that was bad, I tried Scent Of Nightshade when it came out in Destiny)
“He even had a mad weenie draw of Lumberjacks (IN MONO RED?) and that perennial tournament winner, Mountain Goat, but he didn’t attack, even when i had no creatures and was tapped out.”
-Geordie relates some of his experiences in the 0-1 bracket
“Game 2- I play ritual, Necro, set aside two cards. He plays Black Vise. I lose.”
-Old-school T1 Necro players out there…you guys know what this feels like. Remembering it now makes me want to pour one for my homies
“Near the end, he Fanning The Flames me for 1 and buys it back. I manage to restrain myself from yelling that the card blows…”
-More tales of high level competition…
Here’s the full report:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010223010137/www.thedojo.com/t984/t1.981129gta.txt
T1 Necro (Chatham, Ontario- June 6th, 1999)
The third Necro report. I’m settling into a nice rhythm now – I think I was really starting to enjoy the whole experience of writing a tournament report. I have no idea if anyone read these, but I know I read every report on the Dojo, many of them multiple times. Not as much humor in this report, but the match reporting was quite good, and if you want to read about some fun casual T1 matches, give this one a try.
Quotes:
“He made some WEIRD plays- eg. draws his only two cards, taps his only two land to play a Howling Mine with Hyppie on the table. I attack and get to see what his remaining card was…A PLOW? Finkeltron he ain’t.”
-Geordie faces a skillful control player in the later rounds and makes a now-dated but then-trendy John Finkel reference
Here’s the full report:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010223111827/www.thedojo.com/t991/t1.990610gta.shtml
T1 Necro (Chatham, Ontario- July 4th, 1999)
Another Necro report, this one coming a month after the last. My writing style continues to define itself. Of interest here is the sophomoric way I signed this report – not just as”GLyM” (goofy enough in and of itself), but as the”MTG Christ.”
Now there’s a pseudonym I’d like to forget.
GLyM was the name of a band I was in during my high school years, none of which I really enjoyed. The MtG Christ was a name I made up to try to get more attention. Going by a dumb name in your early years is like being caught slap-boxing the one-eyed champ; you never live it down.
Quotes:
“Round 3 vs. some guy with ‘Lower-My-Own-Life/Second Chance Control Deck'”
-Geordie offers a glimpse of the type of powerful rogue decks that dominated the Chatham, Ontario metagame
“What’s the best nation in the world? Ruination!”
-the incomparable Greg Gardner, Chatham’s most famous player back in the early days
Here’s the full report:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010228032915/www.thedojo.com/t991/t2.990712gly.shtml
Hope you guys enjoyed these. I had a lot of fun reading back through my stuff in preparation for this article.
Coming soon, I’ll link you to probably my best”lost” report… From Ontario Regionals 2000! It was published on Meridian Magic in two parts (prompting the Ferrett to lament my departure – a touching gesture when of course at the time I was oblivious to the fact that anyone cared where I wrote), but now it’s gone along with that fine site.
Also keep an eye out for the end of my Canadian Nationals report. It will either be published soon before this column or soon after it (when you write five articlesa week, you sometimes send in a big pile of stuff at once), but I assure you, gentle reader, that it will be published, possibly before your children have to wheel you off to New Bedlam.
Have a good one.