Ewokslayer
09-06-2006, 11:55 AM
So Saturday about 7 Virginians crash at my house. I am still waffling between RGBSA and Solidarity. Anwar is still waffling about coming up. He starts talking about taking a 3 am train into Penn Station and having us drive him to Conn. He eventually decides not to come because he is a little bitch.
Sunday morning we head out to Conn for the tournament. It should take about 90 minutes. Plenty of time for me to choose my deck and write out my decklist. Quicksilver is driving and I am navigating with Deep6er and Urabahn in the back. I ask the people in the car what deck I should play and obviously Quicksilver goes with survival and Deep6er says Solidarity. Urabahn votes Solidarity, so Solidarity it will be.
One the way to the tournament we stop at a McDonalds to grab some breakfast. There is a huge line of people at the counter, so we wait in line for a little bit. Until, I go to clean my glasses and the fuckers break. Not, the lens popped out break, the damn metal snapped. This is not good. I inform the crew and ask if anyone remembers passing a CVS or something so I can buy some super glue. Luckily there was one further down the strip, so we go back out and decide to hit up the drive thru and then go to CVS. There are a couple of problems with this. The first is that this McDonalds doesn’t have a drive-thru, Crap. The second is that CVS is closed because they don’t have power, Double Crap. There was a grocery store nearby that was open and was running on emergency power so I finally got super glue and hoped for the best. We grabbed some food from a pastry shop and went back on the highway in search of a location with electricity so we could get gas. This entire time I am holding my glasses together hoping the glue holds when it dries. Finally, I test the glue and it holds. I put the glasses on and it works. Woot. Though I am getting some glue fumes into my eyes and nose. That could be bad.
We get to the site with plenty of time and I sign up. Time to kick some butt.
Rd1 Goblins
Game 1 doesn’t go very well. We both mulligan and before we even start game 1 the match next to me is done. I can’t combo off before his stupid horde kills me.
Game 2 hydroblast does its job. It kills the first turn lackey and later when going off it counters two BEBs. I pretty much wasn’t worried at all this game.
Game 3 I get to call the judge. Twice. The first time is him with a board of Vial (1 counter), Piledriver and two other goblins. At the end of my turn he activates Vial and attempts to put another piledriver into play. I inform him that he can’t and he says that vial should have two counters on it because in his last turn he said he was putting a second counter on it but he couldn’t find a piece of paper to put on it. So the judge comes over and counts the number of counters on vial (1) and the piledriver stays in his hand. (I don’t recall him saying anything about putting a second counter on vial but I do remember him drawing a card for his turn, smacking the table, and cursing. I just assumed that was because he forgot about Vial)
So he casts piledriver and then swings. I BEB a creature before the piledriver trigger resolves and he doesn’t believe me when I tell him that the Piledriver counts the goblins on resolution. So, judge call number 2. I am right, he isn’t.
The next turn I combo off and win.
1-0
Rd2 Krieger w/ Iggy Pop
Game 1 he pretty much has no hope as he is playing Iggy Pop. It doesn’t help that he has to mulligan to 5 and my hand was great. I don’t really do anything except play lands and optimize my hand before he scoops to go to Game 2.
Game 2 I know will be a lot harder as he boards a ton of cards. I know he brings in Xantid Swarm and I suspect Blessing as well. We both keep and he starts off with Xantid Swarm. Well crap that isn’t good. My only hope is that he keep a less than ideal hand on the strength of Xantid Swarm. Turn 3 he drops petal and cracks it to drop Leyline. Double Crap. The only reason to do that is if he can do a turn 4 IGG for the assrapping of my saucy hand. So in his turn 4 on three lands I have to try to combo off. I am not able to navigate around the blessings that I correctly predicted where in his deck and my only option of bouncing leyline won’t work because his lands now tap for 4 each, so I scoop.
Game 3 he starts with Leyline in play but I am able to counter all his relevant spells and get to 5-6 lands before comboing. I do some sick shit here. I start off with tide – impulse instead of meditate hoping to find 1 of the 4 twincasts in the deck. I hit one and then meditate-twincast. The copy gets me another twincast, which grabs me another twincast. So that one meditate became 4 meditates. Blessing isn’t a problem at all.
2-0
Rd 3 Kadilak w 5/3
Game 1 I crush him completely. He is swinging with warbeast and some other creatures when I rebuild. He has to sack a land. He is down to just two crystal veins. He sacks one and taps the other to play out the warbeast again. Next turn I reset floating one and then cunning wish for chain of vapor bouncing his warbeast and leaving him with no board. I think I win before he can find another land.
Game 2 I mulligan to a 5 card no land hand but it has some manipulation and a force.
He goes first turn Defense Grid, I force. I fail to find a land for the next 3 turns but he can get above three mana. I start finding land, I could win this. He starts finding land and that isn’t good for me. He drops Juggernauts, trini-spheres, tanglewires, etc. I rebuild at one point and chain the juggernaut at another. I almost have him dead to his own tomb (Psionic blast where are you when I need you). I am however overrun by factory and juggernaut and time is called.
Game 3 starts in five turns and it starts off with him dropping defense grid turn 2 and turn 3. So much for me going off turn 5. A draw, maybe I will get to play against rifter. J
2-0-1
Rd 4 Rodgon666, Reanimator.
Game 1 I keep a force, 3 reset, impulse, 2 land hand. He therapies blind naming reset (WTF!?!) I almost recover but only having 4 untap effects left in the deck isn’t good.
Game 2 he beats down with putrid imps for tons of turns under Defense Grid. As it approaches lethal I bounce the grids. And then combo off. I deck him and he doesn’t scoop so I echoing truth all three imps leaving him with no creatures and still no scooping so I wish for the stroke. I don’t understand what he was hoping to do after his creatures where bounced.
Game 3 he plays a choke at some point. I brainstorm in response and it is so saucy that instead of just using the reset in hand to ignore the choke I go off in response and one point remand the choke.
3-0-1
Rd 5 Nantuko Shady w/ Solidarity.
Yeah, I am going to be 4-0-1. I am nice and offer Nantuko the chance to just scoop to me so he won’t get a headache and a loss. He declines and pops some aspirin. I proceed to give him lessons in how the stack works.
Game 1 we build up lands, he casts flash for one in his turn tapping out but I am not able to capitalize on it because my hand can’t get around what I know is in his hand from peek. I do wish for twincast though. The flash found him his 4th land, oh well. We eventually start discarding cards, him still with a flash and me without. L He goes off in my turn, a turn before I was going to try to combo. He losses the stack war even with a flash as I have too many forces and twincasts.
Game 2 he gets stuck on two lands for practically ever. At one point he brainstorms and I remand it so he does it again and I remand it again. All I need to do is draw a damn High Tide and I could crush him, but that doesn’t happen until he starts getting out of his mana screw. With 4 lands in play he casts peek, I twincast it and then remand it. He casts it again and I let it resolve. He draws a fetch off of it and plays it. In my turn I finally draw high tide and cast it. He lets it resolve and then in response to meditate cracks the fetch. I never let that resolve and he is forced to find over turnabouts and what not with only 4 mana while I have 11 mana. He scoops before I can cast the 54 card Stroke of Genius on him with my meditate and his fetch still on the stack.
4-0-1.
Rd 6 Jeff w/ Goblins
So I am feeling pretty good about my chances to top 8. I am paired up against a 5-0 though, so he has to be a good player right. I apologize for not beating Kadilack and not allowing us to draw in. In retrospect, I think he could have scooped to me and we would both be able to draw in round 7, but I doubt he would have done it, as Solidarity isn’t a favorable matchup for goblins.
Game 1 He mulligans to 6 and I keep a hand of 4 lands, turnabout, force, impulse. I am on the play and I got a read on him that is telling me he has 1st turn lackey and that is it.
Sure enough he goes lackey and I force with the turnabout. For my turn I draw land, crap. He plays vial and I impulse into meditate, some lands, and I believe brain freeze. For my turn I draw land, double crap. He plays another vial and passes to me, I meditate at the end of his turn into 3 lands and force, triple crap. I eventually get a collection of resets and turnabouts. I have to waste the turnabouts to stale the kill as he eventually does play creatures. I force a siege gang at one point, he informs me that was in his opening hand (I am glad I countered lackey). I am not able to find another draw spell before I run out of turnabouts. I do however end the game with about 7 lands in play, so that must count for something.
Game 2 I am put on the defensive by lackey. He vialed him out after leading with Piledriver which I hydroblasted, perhaps a mistake. At eventually kill the lackey and I have to wish for echoing truth to bounce double warchief and take only 1 from another piledriver. He however vials out matron for siege gang. Siege gang will be vialed out next turn and I can’t win without reset as my hand is poor. So I lose.
4-1-1
Rd 7 Friendly Phil Stolzes w/ 3c Angel Stompy
Both of us are 4-1-1 and could still make top 8 with a win.
Game 1, he gets turn 2 meddling mage naming high tide. I am not able to find cunning wish before the bear is joined by confidant and I am killed.
Game 2, he gets turn one Meddling Mage. I realize about halfway through the game I boarded wrong but I can still pull it out. He duresses out cunning wish then casts rule of law. I meditate in response to rule of law but don’t find a counter. I then take my turn and brainstorm looking for bounce. A spectator asks about the meditate turn and both phil and I realize that he didn’t in fact take a second turn. So we have to call a judge. The judge gives us both procedural errors major for being so damn stupid. At some point he drops confidant and angel. I have to turnabout his creatures to not die and so he geddons.
I wish him luck in making the Top 8 and apologize again for the stupid Meditate thing.
He unfortunately ends up 9th.
So after the tournament we go back to Brooklyn and my glasses promptly break again. At least the glue held for the tournament.
End Record 4-2-1
End Place 22nd
Props:
-Ray for being awesome. Super awesome in fact. I won three legion packs from one of the random raffles and when he gave me the prize he wished me luck in opening an Akroma. Sure enough in the last pack, Akroma.
-VA crew for coming up
-The Solidarity mirror
-Mr. Nightmare for tight play in the top 4
-Kird Apes for being awesome.
-Solidarity for being even more awesome.
Slops
-Glasses for breaking
-Quicksilver for splitting thinking he was playing against Iggy Pop.
-Mr. Nightmare for incredibly sloppy play in the top 2
-People that name Reset blindly off of Therapy.
-Anwar for being a little bitch.
-Me for apparantly missing a really hot mother walking around the tournament.
Sunday morning we head out to Conn for the tournament. It should take about 90 minutes. Plenty of time for me to choose my deck and write out my decklist. Quicksilver is driving and I am navigating with Deep6er and Urabahn in the back. I ask the people in the car what deck I should play and obviously Quicksilver goes with survival and Deep6er says Solidarity. Urabahn votes Solidarity, so Solidarity it will be.
One the way to the tournament we stop at a McDonalds to grab some breakfast. There is a huge line of people at the counter, so we wait in line for a little bit. Until, I go to clean my glasses and the fuckers break. Not, the lens popped out break, the damn metal snapped. This is not good. I inform the crew and ask if anyone remembers passing a CVS or something so I can buy some super glue. Luckily there was one further down the strip, so we go back out and decide to hit up the drive thru and then go to CVS. There are a couple of problems with this. The first is that this McDonalds doesn’t have a drive-thru, Crap. The second is that CVS is closed because they don’t have power, Double Crap. There was a grocery store nearby that was open and was running on emergency power so I finally got super glue and hoped for the best. We grabbed some food from a pastry shop and went back on the highway in search of a location with electricity so we could get gas. This entire time I am holding my glasses together hoping the glue holds when it dries. Finally, I test the glue and it holds. I put the glasses on and it works. Woot. Though I am getting some glue fumes into my eyes and nose. That could be bad.
We get to the site with plenty of time and I sign up. Time to kick some butt.
Rd1 Goblins
Game 1 doesn’t go very well. We both mulligan and before we even start game 1 the match next to me is done. I can’t combo off before his stupid horde kills me.
Game 2 hydroblast does its job. It kills the first turn lackey and later when going off it counters two BEBs. I pretty much wasn’t worried at all this game.
Game 3 I get to call the judge. Twice. The first time is him with a board of Vial (1 counter), Piledriver and two other goblins. At the end of my turn he activates Vial and attempts to put another piledriver into play. I inform him that he can’t and he says that vial should have two counters on it because in his last turn he said he was putting a second counter on it but he couldn’t find a piece of paper to put on it. So the judge comes over and counts the number of counters on vial (1) and the piledriver stays in his hand. (I don’t recall him saying anything about putting a second counter on vial but I do remember him drawing a card for his turn, smacking the table, and cursing. I just assumed that was because he forgot about Vial)
So he casts piledriver and then swings. I BEB a creature before the piledriver trigger resolves and he doesn’t believe me when I tell him that the Piledriver counts the goblins on resolution. So, judge call number 2. I am right, he isn’t.
The next turn I combo off and win.
1-0
Rd2 Krieger w/ Iggy Pop
Game 1 he pretty much has no hope as he is playing Iggy Pop. It doesn’t help that he has to mulligan to 5 and my hand was great. I don’t really do anything except play lands and optimize my hand before he scoops to go to Game 2.
Game 2 I know will be a lot harder as he boards a ton of cards. I know he brings in Xantid Swarm and I suspect Blessing as well. We both keep and he starts off with Xantid Swarm. Well crap that isn’t good. My only hope is that he keep a less than ideal hand on the strength of Xantid Swarm. Turn 3 he drops petal and cracks it to drop Leyline. Double Crap. The only reason to do that is if he can do a turn 4 IGG for the assrapping of my saucy hand. So in his turn 4 on three lands I have to try to combo off. I am not able to navigate around the blessings that I correctly predicted where in his deck and my only option of bouncing leyline won’t work because his lands now tap for 4 each, so I scoop.
Game 3 he starts with Leyline in play but I am able to counter all his relevant spells and get to 5-6 lands before comboing. I do some sick shit here. I start off with tide – impulse instead of meditate hoping to find 1 of the 4 twincasts in the deck. I hit one and then meditate-twincast. The copy gets me another twincast, which grabs me another twincast. So that one meditate became 4 meditates. Blessing isn’t a problem at all.
2-0
Rd 3 Kadilak w 5/3
Game 1 I crush him completely. He is swinging with warbeast and some other creatures when I rebuild. He has to sack a land. He is down to just two crystal veins. He sacks one and taps the other to play out the warbeast again. Next turn I reset floating one and then cunning wish for chain of vapor bouncing his warbeast and leaving him with no board. I think I win before he can find another land.
Game 2 I mulligan to a 5 card no land hand but it has some manipulation and a force.
He goes first turn Defense Grid, I force. I fail to find a land for the next 3 turns but he can get above three mana. I start finding land, I could win this. He starts finding land and that isn’t good for me. He drops Juggernauts, trini-spheres, tanglewires, etc. I rebuild at one point and chain the juggernaut at another. I almost have him dead to his own tomb (Psionic blast where are you when I need you). I am however overrun by factory and juggernaut and time is called.
Game 3 starts in five turns and it starts off with him dropping defense grid turn 2 and turn 3. So much for me going off turn 5. A draw, maybe I will get to play against rifter. J
2-0-1
Rd 4 Rodgon666, Reanimator.
Game 1 I keep a force, 3 reset, impulse, 2 land hand. He therapies blind naming reset (WTF!?!) I almost recover but only having 4 untap effects left in the deck isn’t good.
Game 2 he beats down with putrid imps for tons of turns under Defense Grid. As it approaches lethal I bounce the grids. And then combo off. I deck him and he doesn’t scoop so I echoing truth all three imps leaving him with no creatures and still no scooping so I wish for the stroke. I don’t understand what he was hoping to do after his creatures where bounced.
Game 3 he plays a choke at some point. I brainstorm in response and it is so saucy that instead of just using the reset in hand to ignore the choke I go off in response and one point remand the choke.
3-0-1
Rd 5 Nantuko Shady w/ Solidarity.
Yeah, I am going to be 4-0-1. I am nice and offer Nantuko the chance to just scoop to me so he won’t get a headache and a loss. He declines and pops some aspirin. I proceed to give him lessons in how the stack works.
Game 1 we build up lands, he casts flash for one in his turn tapping out but I am not able to capitalize on it because my hand can’t get around what I know is in his hand from peek. I do wish for twincast though. The flash found him his 4th land, oh well. We eventually start discarding cards, him still with a flash and me without. L He goes off in my turn, a turn before I was going to try to combo. He losses the stack war even with a flash as I have too many forces and twincasts.
Game 2 he gets stuck on two lands for practically ever. At one point he brainstorms and I remand it so he does it again and I remand it again. All I need to do is draw a damn High Tide and I could crush him, but that doesn’t happen until he starts getting out of his mana screw. With 4 lands in play he casts peek, I twincast it and then remand it. He casts it again and I let it resolve. He draws a fetch off of it and plays it. In my turn I finally draw high tide and cast it. He lets it resolve and then in response to meditate cracks the fetch. I never let that resolve and he is forced to find over turnabouts and what not with only 4 mana while I have 11 mana. He scoops before I can cast the 54 card Stroke of Genius on him with my meditate and his fetch still on the stack.
4-0-1.
Rd 6 Jeff w/ Goblins
So I am feeling pretty good about my chances to top 8. I am paired up against a 5-0 though, so he has to be a good player right. I apologize for not beating Kadilack and not allowing us to draw in. In retrospect, I think he could have scooped to me and we would both be able to draw in round 7, but I doubt he would have done it, as Solidarity isn’t a favorable matchup for goblins.
Game 1 He mulligans to 6 and I keep a hand of 4 lands, turnabout, force, impulse. I am on the play and I got a read on him that is telling me he has 1st turn lackey and that is it.
Sure enough he goes lackey and I force with the turnabout. For my turn I draw land, crap. He plays vial and I impulse into meditate, some lands, and I believe brain freeze. For my turn I draw land, double crap. He plays another vial and passes to me, I meditate at the end of his turn into 3 lands and force, triple crap. I eventually get a collection of resets and turnabouts. I have to waste the turnabouts to stale the kill as he eventually does play creatures. I force a siege gang at one point, he informs me that was in his opening hand (I am glad I countered lackey). I am not able to find another draw spell before I run out of turnabouts. I do however end the game with about 7 lands in play, so that must count for something.
Game 2 I am put on the defensive by lackey. He vialed him out after leading with Piledriver which I hydroblasted, perhaps a mistake. At eventually kill the lackey and I have to wish for echoing truth to bounce double warchief and take only 1 from another piledriver. He however vials out matron for siege gang. Siege gang will be vialed out next turn and I can’t win without reset as my hand is poor. So I lose.
4-1-1
Rd 7 Friendly Phil Stolzes w/ 3c Angel Stompy
Both of us are 4-1-1 and could still make top 8 with a win.
Game 1, he gets turn 2 meddling mage naming high tide. I am not able to find cunning wish before the bear is joined by confidant and I am killed.
Game 2, he gets turn one Meddling Mage. I realize about halfway through the game I boarded wrong but I can still pull it out. He duresses out cunning wish then casts rule of law. I meditate in response to rule of law but don’t find a counter. I then take my turn and brainstorm looking for bounce. A spectator asks about the meditate turn and both phil and I realize that he didn’t in fact take a second turn. So we have to call a judge. The judge gives us both procedural errors major for being so damn stupid. At some point he drops confidant and angel. I have to turnabout his creatures to not die and so he geddons.
I wish him luck in making the Top 8 and apologize again for the stupid Meditate thing.
He unfortunately ends up 9th.
So after the tournament we go back to Brooklyn and my glasses promptly break again. At least the glue held for the tournament.
End Record 4-2-1
End Place 22nd
Props:
-Ray for being awesome. Super awesome in fact. I won three legion packs from one of the random raffles and when he gave me the prize he wished me luck in opening an Akroma. Sure enough in the last pack, Akroma.
-VA crew for coming up
-The Solidarity mirror
-Mr. Nightmare for tight play in the top 4
-Kird Apes for being awesome.
-Solidarity for being even more awesome.
Slops
-Glasses for breaking
-Quicksilver for splitting thinking he was playing against Iggy Pop.
-Mr. Nightmare for incredibly sloppy play in the top 2
-People that name Reset blindly off of Therapy.
-Anwar for being a little bitch.
-Me for apparantly missing a really hot mother walking around the tournament.