Randy robbed me. Sad but true. When Ted reminded me the third or fourth time to write this article, he told me that Randy wrote about PT New Orleans and EDT eating his own “words.” If there’s something like a violation of copyright when writing an article in this series, I’d have to sue Mr. Buehler. And Randy even mentioned the one real topdeck I had in that Top 8. No, not the Morphling vs. Tomi. I still refuse to let that go down as any sort of topdeck after going through a good amount of card drawing spells.
The real deal took place in the quarterfinals against Darwin Kastle. My friend Ben Ronaldson was doing coverage of that match for MTG.com and somehow that article was never posted. I don’t remember which game it was, but Darwin went first and animated Crosis on the second turn. I didn’t have the Force of Will or the Fire/Ice into Capsize. So I played a Sapphire Medallion, and his next attack purged my hand of all non-lands and got me to fourteen. I drew one of the two remaining copies of Illusions of Grandeur and played it. His attack put me at effectively eight. I paid for the cumulative upkeep on Illusions and drew a blank. His attack left me at 22. Now, if I paid the upkeep of four mana, I was left with no outs, unable to cast Donate and losing the game on my next upkeep when I had to let the Illusions of Grandeur go. So I had to put them in the can right then and hope to draw either Fire/Ice, Capsize, Merchant Scroll, or the fourth Illusions. The latter happened, and I went back up to 22. My next draw was one of the three Donates I had left, and Darwin didn’t have enough lands to pay the upkeep long enough to kill me with his Dragon. Drawing those two cards with only one Illusions left in exactly that order… let’s say someone on the other side of the table wasn’t happy.
While that game should’ve been a loss, I did quite well against YMG’s Reanimator as I beat Rob Dougherty in the Swiss, Darwin in the quarterfinals, and Dave Humphreys in the semis. The other match in that tournament that I remember quite well was a sort-of mirror against Brian Kibler. Only the difference was that his version of the deck had Arcane Denial over Counterspell, with no Pyroblasts in the sideboard and Ophidians instead of Morphlings. In the final game, we each had three creatures on the board – Brian with three Snakes and me with three Shapeshifters. Sadly the feature match wasn’t covered in English, but this quote from the Japanese coverage sums it up very well:
Kibler がオフェンシブサイドボードを決行。デッキの形態をがらりと変えてくる。《知恵の蛇/Ophidian》や《変異種/Morphling》などを入れて、クリーチャーモードにシフトしたのだ。
But let’s go back to YMG and especially Rob. At one Extended Pro Tour, Wizards of the Coast made a big misplay by posting all decklists on the coverage webpage after Day 1 ended. Whenever pairings were up, you saw people juggling prints while I had my laptop at the site. Knowing what your opponent plays is nice, but knowing what he can sideboard in Extended is just ridiculous. Now they didn’t merely make that mistake again, they even took it a step further. At a PT a few stops later in Venice – Onslaught Block Constructed where Joe Black won that one against crowd favorite Tomi Walamies in the finals – they didn’t allow any scouting at all. It was enforced that no one was allowed within spectating range of the ongoing matches.
I was chatting with someone, most likely complaining that I somehow lost to Jeff Cunningham. I mean, if you read his articles filled with throbbing melancholy about the misery that’s apparently his life, you certainly get the idea that the guy didn’t win a lot. He certainly didn’t against me, but that tournament was the one time he got some points out of me. It was a very sad affair, and I expected condolences (I seriously need to stop using this word; I have to Google it to make sure it’s not misspelled
every
time), but suddenly the guys standing in front of me started to laugh. One of them was almost choking. [It was, in fact, misspelled that time. – CardGame]
Alright, I did lose to Jeff. But laughing at me was a bit harsh. With a small hope that I had a shred of dignity left and that the laughter wasn’t actually about me, I turned around.
And I saw Rob Dougherty.
Standing on a chair.
With printed standings and a pen in his left hand.
And a pair of big binoculars in his other.
Oh man, that YMG crew was certainly a step ahead of everyone. If we were a bunch of normal people, I’d say that bringing binoculars to Venice wasn’t a big deal. There was lots of sightseeing to be done, right? But if you take the nerdiness of everyone in that room into account, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that this was planned ahead, and someone brought those just for this purpose. Brilliant, really. Not even the most savage Frenchies came up with that one. Although, in their defense, it’s not all that vital to know your opponent’s deck ahead of the match when they get an opportunity to shuffle it before game 1. Unfortunately, the judges didn’t like it, and the scene ended before someone took a good picture.
While we’re on the topic of shady stuff and pictures, there’s some pretty entertaining stuff that happened some years ago, and it’s still surprising Wizards didn’t put it on page one of their tournament coverage. This one was taken at a Grand Prix in Boston and doesn’t need much
explanation. Someone saw it, posted on the forums, someone called a judge on site, the head judge got to see the picture, and the tournament was over
for one player…
That one always cracks me up, even though I must’ve seen it a few dozen times by now. I’m sure Trey wasn’t the first guy to peek in a draft, and he won’t be the last one, but this picture will probably remain rather unique. A bit more savage was the following story that took place at Grand Prix Cape Town in 2001. There was a slight agitation during Sealed Deck swapping and supposedly a deck box went flying towards a judge shortly thereafter. But the really cute part happened later on.
Our villain had one card in hand, plus a land enchanted with Chamber of Manipulation in play and was behind on the board big time. He had to use his Chamber each turn just to stay alive. However if he used it pre-combat, his opponent simply wouldn‘t attack, and with just one card in hand, that means the bad guy was locked out of the game. Now almost all of us would just scoop it up at this point… but there are always outs, if you can do some creative thinking. In this case the solution was simply to explain his opponent how the combat step really works.
Everyone knows that when you announce combat, then there’s a step for effects, then you announce attackers, followed by another step for effects, and then you declare your blocks. But our hero spiced this up a bit and added a small step.
I call it the:
Shove-the-creatures-you-want-to-attack-with-a-bit-forward-step.
Now obviously you have to attack with the guys you moved forward this way and cannot attack with other creatures. Moving them forward doesn’t mean tapping them, and naturally there’s a fast-effect step in between the move-forward step and the actual declaration of attackers. And voilà, suddenly Chamber of Manipulation turned into Chamber of Ray of Command. Nice upgrade!
Here are a few more fun-facts for Grand Prix South Africa:
– 171 participants (Nope, that’s not a digit missing.)
– Three people with a 3-3 record made it into Day 2. That meant that the eleven guys with three byes were virtually a lock for Day 2, even if they lost every single game on Day 1.
– In the first draft of Day 2 at table one, multiple people had one common goal – to give Ryan Fuller the worst deck at the table. The people around him were jumping in his colors and taking cards from his deck whenever possible. Ryan went 1-2.
Along with the GP, there happened also to be an Invitational. Halfway through the event, it looked like it might get sabotaged. When it was clear how many people were going to participate in the GP, about half of the folks in the Invitational had a sudden urge to drop from the event. Mark Rosewater wouldn’t have any of that, and everyone was forced to play. The brothers Olivier and Antoine Ruel managed to finish in a very respectable 15th and 16th place.
I managed to not completely suck for once in an Invitational and ended up in the finals. The finals meant one match between first and second in all five of the formats we ran in the tourney, namely Rotisserie Draft (like Rochester, only that you draft from a whole set instead of from packs), Standard, 5-Color, Duplicate-Limited, and Auction-Decks (the decks of very varying power level were bid on by reducing your starting hand size and life points). Now the big issue here was the other finalist: Dan Clegg.
No, wait. That’s not his full name. It’s Dan “hooooolllllyyyyy ccraaaap hooooowwww caaannn sssssooommmeeeooonneee pppplllaaayyy aaaaaaaassss sssssssslooooooowwww aaaassss tttttthhhisssss gggguuuuyyyy” Clegg. Even that spelling doesn’t give him enough credit, really.
So yeah, five matches, best of three each – how long can that possibly take? Well, the answer is
seven and a half hours
. I don’t even remember what actually made it take that long. What I do remember is that it was 2-2 going into the last match. 5-Color. 250-card decks, everything allowed, including Contract from Below, and you play with ante.
I lost 1-2. And I got Voidmage Prodigy for my effort.
Now you might wonder how that happened. The card does seem like a harsh punishment just for losing a match, doesn’t it?
But the real deal was the
Scrye
magazine and its amazing trading/pricing guide. The 5-Color format had a little twist. You didn’t win by winning more games. You won by winning the more expensive cards in ante, and Randy Buehler was running around with said magazine and its price guide. It was 1-1, and I’d won something like a dual land from Dan while he had gotten something cheap and unimportant.
Going into the last game, Dan opened with a Land Grant and revealed a Shadow creature, double Dark Ritual and Hatred. And the card I had anted up was enough to him the match. My board was two lands and a Fellwar Stone.
I drew… Tinker.
Now I could probably Tinker up something impressive to stop the Hatred kill. Or I could be a d-bag and Tinker up a Jeweled Bird, which was worth fifty cents, exchange it for my anted card, lose the game, and win the Invitational.
Guilty as charged.
But talking about Voidmage Prodigy is not all that exciting. In fact, it’s still a little bit painful. Perhaps not as painful as having the likeness on my Invitational card replaced by a woman, but I try not to tempt fate.
Ritual + Hatred brings up another funny one though. It happened at the very same European Championship Tomi mentioned in his article (more on that later). For now, imagine you are Matthias Jorstedt. You’re playing another version of the Iridescent Drake–Abduction-Altar combo deck, and you’re sitting in the quarterfinals of the tournament. Your opponent is Raphael Levy, and he’s piloting a Hatred deck. You are desperate to win this match. Making the Top 4 qualifies you for the World Championship, which you really want to go to.
It’s game 5. Raphael is on the play and mulligans. And he mulligans again. You have a great hand with multiple Oaths of Druids and the Altar, which gives you a third-turn kill. Only Hatred can beat that draw, and Raphael is playing first and has five cards. His first turn is Swamp, Dark Ritual, and two black creatures, leaving him with one card in hand. He draws a second card, attacks you to sixteen, and you cast your Oath of Druids, mentally booking the flight for Worlds. Raph draws his third card, plays City of Traitors, a Dark Ritual, and casts Hatred for the game and match.
Autsch.
The game Tomi and I played wasn’t all that dramatic, as it happened in the loser’s bracket, and the winner would go into Day 2 at 4-3 or something unexciting like that. With double-Defense Grid in play and after casting one-sided Armageddons with Boils twice while using Scroll Rack and shuffling effects to assemble my two-card combo, Tomi calmly played some lands, cast a Morphling on turn 12 or 13 and attacked four times with that. I don’t think his blue permission deck got to cast a spell in my phase for the whole game. Mad props to me for not making Day 2 with one of the most degenerate and broken combo decks people could come up with for an event. The ‘engine’ was banned two weeks afterward.
The evening ended at a nice restaurant, where I used the table light to burn most of the cards in my deck. Losing that match and another one to a friendly guy from Israel, who explained to me at length after the match why his White Weenie deck boarded Defense Grid
against
my combo deck after beating me was just a little bit too much.