Well, I went like over a thousand others with a bunch of friends. There were 12 or so all together. I'm sure a couple might chime in.


I went in with this.

1 Crucible Of Worlds
2 Engineered Explosives
3 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Chrome Mox
1 Eternal Dragon
4 Counterbalance
1 Moat
2 Fact or Fiction
4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
4 Enlightened Tutor
4 Force Of Will
4 Swords To Plowshares
1 Humility
1 Wrath Of God
4 Island
1 Volcanic Island
3 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Polluted Delta
3 Tundra
3 Wasteland
1 Academy ruins
1 Elspeth


Sideboard:
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Seal Of Cleansing
3 Meddling Mage
1 Circle Of Protection: Green
1 Moat
1 Rule of Law
1 Threads of Disloyalty
1 Blood Moon
1 Hydroblast
1 Pithing Needle
1 Aura Of Silence

Obviously, I expected a bunch of the new Progenitis decks and when I had tested it, I had a hell of a time with it's boarding in of the pyroblasts and Krosan Grips. Hence the board of Meddling Mages and COP Green.

Anyway, I had a first round bye

Sorry for the lack of names, chime in if you like. I'm horrid with names.

2nd round: Bronson - Hit my worst match up overall. White Stax. Ouchy.
I had an opening hand of Enlightened Tutor, 2 Brainstorms and he goes first to drop a Chalice at 1. Yeah.... Followed by Trinisphere. Yeah....

Ok, game two!

Took forever, but I survived the onslaught and got out a Moat on him. He had me slowed down to hell with a Suppression Feild and eventually I get out of it and have Counter Top out, Moat, Elspeth, Mishra, and him at 2 life. I need one more turn and it's over. He has no cards in hand.

He draws Elspeth and me without a counter handy. Land on top, I already know. She dies. Ouch, time for plan B. I revive the Dragon from the yard, and say go.

He tops Armageddon. Yeah....Bout that.

1-1 Starting off with a bang here.

Goblins (incredibly nice guy, I wish I knew the name of)

His deck was not a premium build and had a ton of one CC stuff. Counter top just trumped it hard.

Both games were about the same. I felt kind of bad it's was such a lock out.

2-1

Round 3 - Great guy playing ANT (Dr something?) He's a sourcer at least :D

Game 1 - I manage an early Counterbalance and top and have a couple of counters. It's enough and I do my usual of taking forever to win. It's rough with only a couple of win conditions.

Game 2 - I have a silly hand of two Forces, Counterbalance, Tutor, Top, and some land. I draw another force. Yeah, that was the absolute best hand I could have had. Rule of Law and the counter top lock him out.

Got to meet Emelidin as he was sitting right next to me during that match. Didn't fit my picture of you of course, but people never do. Nice to meet you bud.

3-1

Round 4

Goblins (totally forgot the name sorry)

My favorite matchup. We get deck checked. Yay. I'm already jonesing for a cig. The judges had a laugh about my list since it's quite odd. He pointed out the Blood Moon when he handed it back and chuckled.

Game 1 - I take a fairly decent beating and he's locked out by Humility after I hit 7 life. Moat comes down and he has no out.

Game 2 - Goblins gets those amazing hands occasionally that don't matter what you are playing, you just lose. He had that. Vial, Vial, Lackey, Lackey, I waste the Taiga when I see it, not seeing the Ports the first game. Port comes down and locks me out of being able to hit the 4 mana. It happens.

Game 3 - I keep a great hand and kill a couple of Lackeys, Daze a couple of other things and it goes late game. Humility hits. Matron is slowly beating on me. I need a Moat. Ringleader joins the pingfest. I have on top 3 lands that I know about due to a top. I already have 3 in hand. Ouch. I draw 5 more. Yeah, it happens.

3-2

Round 5

Dredge - Another match I don't mind too much.

Game 1 - He has the nuts fairly early and swings with just enough time before I can play the moat. Damn.

Game 2 - I manage to get out the Moat, Humility, and swords his Akroma. I have no clue why he doesn't concede after I start Tormod's Crypting his grave and recurring it with a Academy Ruins. It takes me a while to get the peices in place to win and I ask if he really has a way out of this, but he doesn't give up. I crypt him every other turn and slowly dig for a win condition. He eventually gives in with like 4 cards left in his library. Entirely too much time took for that. 5 min left.

Game 3 - With 5 minutes left after that drug out game, we Draw. Crap.. I think I would have had that given the time. I had a great hand for it and had already got the Humility out.

I have to call it at that point, but I figure I'll go one more for laughs.

3-2-1

Round 6
Not sure exactly what kind of deck it was. It basically looked like Eva Green with Vindicates.

Game 1 - Triple Wasteland starts his fun. Ow. I manage to get back in, but my lands are hurting with mostly the colorless ones in play and I can't do much. I finally get a double white, drop the Moat and he follows up with a Tombstalker, and another, and another. Well...

Game - 2

I swords a couple of early hippies (must be board stuff), drop humility and moat and he quickly realizes that's game.

Game - 3

I get torn to peices by a lot of discard and LD. I die to two Tombstalkers again. Wow.

Ok, definitely time to call it.

Ended 3-3-1

Not the best by a longshot, but I did better than my old freind Pat (Chapin)

When I asked him how he was doing, he gave me the stare. lol Not good, so I knew it was bad. Poor Pat went loss, loss, loss, right off the bat with an odd version of Progenitis Thresh. He took out the werebears for Wall of Roots x4, Mongeese were replaced by an Empyrial, one of those Walls, and something else. I saw the deck before we started. It seemed like a good pick. Guess the hate was a little much or he had some crap draws. I don't think he was in the mood to talk about it.

The only one of ours to get past day 1 was my friend Jimmy who ended up 37th. Lost to the mirror with Merfolk. And Gabriel of course, who I had met that day no less. Gabe is Pat's roommate it seems. Really, really, nice guy. Don't know if he reads these boards, but it was a pleasure bud. We were so hoping Jimmy would end up playing Gabe. We had it all planned out for Jimmy to play an island then sit there stalling on purpose, moving the island back and forth waiting for Gabe to ask what he was doing. Then Jimmy was going to say, I'm arranging my Cursecatcher mana, then windmill the shit. lol We must have laughed about that for a good half hour that night before we went to bed.

Surprisingly, Merfolk seemed to be one of the better choices. Thresh had a good showing, but most of them were trashed in the first few rounds. Dredge was seen early and not much after that. I saw a Dragon Stompy in the top spots day 2, so take that naysayers! No Faerie Stompy at all that I saw, Sad face. Lot of White Stax. My freind Nick had brought that and he hit not one, but two mirrors! wow, what's the odds of that? Not as much Team America as I expected. Barely saw any. Lot of Goblins, but that was a gimme. I saw one Meathooks, a few Survivals, and even an Enchantress deck day 1.

From just our group alone we had brought Survival, White Stax, My deck, Progenitis Thresh, Eva Green, Dredge, Goblins, Merfolk, Dreadstill, TES, and Zoo. Heck of a lineup. If those shits had showed up to test more, it might not have been so sporatic.

One thing happened that was very cool. As everyone knows if you go to a major event you watch your shit. You take care and wrap straps around your ankles for your cards to keep them from being stolen.

Well, first day in on Friday, I had already heard about 3 backpacks being stolen. Wow, that was quick. I saw one of the poor guys going around to the vendors tables asking if they had gotten in any cards that were in his decks. Kudos to the vendors for making notes of what was in those decks so they could return them if found.

Second day in one guy walked past another playing and tried to swipe a backpack. Unfortunately for that retard, he didn't notice it was wrapped around the guy's leg. 3 Judges quickly. tackled the would-be thief. They asked him if he was going to cooperate and he said yes. Then he tried to run again. They slammed him to the ground and pinned his face to the concrete. I was right there. They escorted him out of there promtly before players got a hold of him and waited for the police.

Well, it's nice that they caught some ass trying to steal cards, but it gets better. Not only did I learn that he was the second to be caught in that manner, but when they went added up how much he had tried to steal in that pack, it was over $3000 worth of cards. 3 counts of grand larceny in Illinois is a life sentence. He ratted out his buddies and they found 6 more backpacks that had been stolen. 6 more were arrested. Nice! Bout time some of these guys were caught and what a haul that was. They announced for the people who had things stolen to come up and identify them. Very cool indeed.

All of us had fun and even Pat seemed in a better mood once he had a couple of girls hanging on him. I ended up having one hell of a trading session and brought home the last card for my beta set (fuck yeah) a beautiful Beta Underground Sea and an English Imperial Seal for my set of 3 Kingdoms I'm working on. No money out of pocket even. Woot. After it was all said and done, I came home ahead in money from trades and sales of extra extended stuff to vendors and a few foils of nice things I had been hunting. Great day for me.

So all in all, Kudos go to the Judges for slamming a few thieves into the concrete and returning cards to those poor guys who missed out on the gran prix to lost decks.

The vendors for a great job in helping the thief situation and being quite helpful and nice to everyone I knew.

The judges for excellent tackles and being quite polite in rulings and overall just freindly. (Which one was you Anusien?) I was hunting ya, but never found you.

Slops to the hotel for the utter lack of amenities. I stay in hotels a lot due to my job and that place was pretty and that was it. I've stayed at Super 8's better than that for convinience. No microwave, you had to pay for even local calls, No wireless internet and you paid if you connected to the line (paid a lot!), There was a bottle of distilled water for coffee, but if you broke the seal they charged you $4 for it. lol OMG silly.

The bar was kind of small and open. Not cozy at all. The restaurant was overpriced by quite a bit. $4 cups of coffee? Cmon, that's a little much. The least they could do is not use powdered eggs for the $20 breakfast.

To top it off, they weren't fond of these badly dressed magic players and were cutting off sections so they wouldn't bother the other guests. They even shut off the escalator so you had to walk the stairs over the lobby to get through. They herded the smokers to a part of the hotel that didn't even have the little cigarette disposal things and were getting mad when people tossed them on the ground. Heh, wha'd they expect?


Well, I'm not the best at making tourney reports and I wasn't really trying. I just wanted to let people know how it went and some of the minor details. It was a great event and if you missed it, well, you missed a lot of fun. Be there for the next one and maybe we'll break an even bigger record.

Little slops to me for being so cheesy and having a pile of goblin tokens next to my deck and running red sleeves no less. lol Sorry couldn't help it. Hey, one person did keep a hand of 4 swords against me, so it wasn't a horrid idea. I loved the look when I played an island.

Oh yeah, if you're wondering about that random Volcanic Island and Blood Moon. It was my bomb. For one, it allowed me to remove 3CC stuff with Explosives and the Blood Moon was to turn off Krosan Grip since no one seems to have a basic to do that with normally. It happens to lock out people on accident also. I have a slow deck anyway, I can wait for my basics if they aren't already out. :P Little tech trick I figured out.

Lastly, was it just me or was every damned woman in that hospital gathering entirely too hot? Made me wish I wasn't married. lol