I made a dummy e-mail account to see how big of a scam they really were. The only identifiable information they got was my name, address "So they can send me my free XXXX" and my phone number. First of all, they sell your e-mail address to anyone with a pulse, but that's to be expected. Second of all, you have to complete 3 "tiers" of offers. Often you cannot see the offers on the 2nd tier until you complete offers for the first, and offers for the 3rd until you complete offers for the 2nd. The first tier is generally simple free things. Trial memberships to sites or magazines. They're generally free, and generally to companies who also have absolutly no qualms about selling your e-mail address to anyone who's willing to buy it. (I hope you like porn ads from russian companies.) The 2nd tier is usually pretty innocuous as well, more trial memberships, more surveys, simple free or inexpensive offers. The third tier however is *always* full of absolutly insane offers. The offers generally cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, or require you to be accepted for credit cards, or require you to mortgage your house, change insurance companies, and other things not worth the cost of an Ipod. But wait! They're not done! Not only do you realize that the Ipod, Xbox, $500 gift certificate, Dinner for 2, or whatever so graciously offered to you for the simple task of picking out jlo's ass or shocking a monkey is out of reach, but you've now given them your phone number and address. What's the worst they can do with that? Sell you to telemarketers and junk mailers? Wrong. They sell your phone number to "survey companies" who skirt the National Do-Not-Call list by not "selling" you something as they call you 3 times/night to ask you to take a "survey" that amounts to a 20 minute commercial. They also sell your phone number to "billing clearing houses". These places "accidently" place a charge on your phone bill that you probably won't see. These charges will be for things like "voice mail" or "services" and will be hidden in the fine print between your local and long distance looking very official. Just trying to prove to my girlfriend that those things were indeed scams cost me $16/month for 6 months until I finally caught the charge on my phone bill (the charges were illegal and they had to refund my money when caught, but they're not always caught.)
Meh, I was going to vote, but after hurricane beat earthquake (yay another $0.10 crap rare) I lost all hope in the voting process. I figure, either the entire thing is staged, or most magic players are idiots, so my vote doesn't matter (kind of like in presidential elections.) If I was going to vote, I'd vote for the paladin, simply because if the champion doesn't make it, maybe just maybe soul warden will stay in =P
My guess is that it is the alternate win card of the set. I think it maybe something along the lines of Goblin Bomb, and turns into a creature of that size if you achieve an unlikely goal.
I think this guy is probably on to something. The safest way to make a 20/20 isn't to give it some obscene drawback because no matter how bad the drawback is there's some way around it. Either it will be flung, or stifled, or fed to a sutured ghoul, or snuck into play. (Look how many times they tried (and failed) to errata phyrexian dreadnought to make it unexploitable)
Ragnarok 1RR
Enchantment
Cumulative Upkeep: Sacrifice a Land.
At the end of any turn, if <cardname> has 5 or more age counters on it, sacrifice it. If you do put a 20/20 red Wolf Avatar token named Fenris into play.
I see this card going one of three ways.
A>
Ymmit, Avatar of Yawgmoth 3BB
Legendary Creature - Avatar
When Ymmit, Avatar of Yawgmoth comes into play, you lose the game.
20/20
B>
Collossus of Lim-Dul 8BBBBUUUU
Creature - Golem
If <cardname> would come into play, if it was played from your hand, put it into play, otherwise remove it from the game.
Trample
Collossus of Lim-Dul cannot be the target of spells or abilities your opponents control.
20/20
or C> (the most likely version imo.)
Ymmit, Collossus of Phyrexia 8BBBBUUUU
Legendary Creature - Golem
When <cardname> comes into play, you lose the game.
Works with any combination of 5 leylines, except 2+ singularity of course.
5 leylines start in play. Drop Sanctum, tap for 5, play opalescence, and attack. =P
1> Get lots of sleep, use sleeping pills if you need to. (Don't use them unless you have at least 8 hours until you have to get up. They're for getting rested before the tournament, not for making yourself fall asleep because you've stayed up til 4am playtesting.)
2> Shower before the tournament. If you are concerned about time, shower the night before.
3> Deoderant is your friend. I recommend bringing a stick/can with you. I've played in tournaments with 600+ people in an unairconditioned high school gymnasium... Your deoderant will stop working before the day is out.
4> Cologne is NOT a substitute for showering, or deoderant. Deoderant is not a substitute for showering. A lot of people are allergic to cologne.
5> Bring a bottle of water, refill it from the drinking fountains, or from the bathroom sinks. They love to gouge at tournaments.
6> Limit what you bring. Everything you bring should fit in a small backpack, or deck case. A couple of decks, a trade binder, and a bottle of water are all you really need.
7> Protect your stuff. put at least one leg of your chair through the straps of your backpack when you shove it under your chair. Buy a suitcase lock for it. They're easy to pick, but will keep anyone from surreptuously opening your pack while you play.
8> Eat a good breakfast. Not sugary cereal, not a McFatwich from McDonalds. If you have to eat out, go to IHOP or someplace. Complex carbs and protein are your friend. Watch the sugar.
9> Bring snacks. Healthy snacks. Nothing sugary, nothing messy. Chips are a bad idea. I recommend granola bars, or nutragrain bars.
10> Bring money. Lots of it. Do not store it all in one place. Vendors, and organizers can and will make you pay three times what anything is worth.
11> When in doubt. Don't go. $25 for a constructed tournament isn't really worth it unless you plan on winning =)
Merfolk are out of flavor because they're fish people, and fish people can't combat land dwelling people.
So they replaced them with Cephalids... octopus people.
Yeah....
My money is on merfolk. They're too popular to stay gone forever, and between cephalids, veldakens, wizards, and moonfolk Wotc has shown a complete inability to create a blue race that people actually like.
1. Last saturday at a t1.
opponent> "sac polluted delta...... grab underground sea.. I'm at 19"
me> "You have a life counter?"
opponent> "No, I can keep track in my head."
me> "Ok....."
me> "Oath in akroma, swing for 6."
opponant> "Ok, I'm at 14."
2> Years ago I was in a 2 player team tournament with random partners. I was playing a recur deck, it was right after saga was released and I was using Great Whale for an infinate combo. I didn't have a triskelion for the kill, so in desperation I bought a Rocket Launcher from the shop to use instead.
I got partnered up with a kid playing a B/U counter/discard deck, the perfect compliment to a combo deck. Our opponents were both playing 5c control decks.
I get the infinate combo, recur wall of blossoms to draw into rocket launcher, drop it, say, "shoot you for lots." Everyone scoops. One of my opponants picks up Rocket Launcher, reads it, and says "Hold on, put your cards down, the game is not over."
Rocket launcher... a non creature artifact with summoning sickness...
Judge rules the launcher is buried, I continue my turn with about 7 cards left in my library... and an "arbitrarily large" amount of mana in my pool. I recur spikes over and over again, putting 200 +1/+1 counters on 2 birds of paradise and a nekrataal, sink my excess mana into a spike, then recur all of my creatures out for a thrull surgeon to strip the removal from both players hands. I attack, kill one opponent, pass, opponent goes, partner goes, I untap and attack for the win.
One of my opponents stands up and screams "GOD D*** IT DAVE! YOU SCREWED UP THE COMBO AND YOU STILL WON" and throws his deck.
3> A year or so before that, right after stronghold was released, I was playing a G/R Lhurgoyf deck with Hermit Druids/Mulch to fuel the goyfs, and Earthquakes for removal. This was the heyday of capsize, and as a metagame decision, I ran Fling maindeck.
My opponant was also playing R/G with Manabarbs and non-land mana. I'm sitting at 2 life, and my opponent is going to kill me the next turn. He's got two mana barbs out, and my only non-land mana on the table is a wall of roots. I can't win the game. We're the only match that hasn't finished, and there are over 20 people watching us. I've got a 26/27 lhurgoyf on the table, but he's being held back by an army of chump blockers. My opponent passes his turn, I turn to my best friend who's watching over my shoulder and say "I can't win this game, but there's one card that can keep me from losing." My friend two fingers on top of my deck, and puts his other hand to his forehead and says "It's there! I can feel it." I untap, draw Fling, tap two land, dropping to -2 life, fling my Lhurgoyf to my opponent's dome, and we draw.
Well, it had to do with the niche AKs were filling. AKs shine after an oath, and because they can be intuitioned for, but I had to run 4 for them to be good. Deep analysis is actually *better* if I have to intuition for it, getting me 8 cards total instead of 3. It's also easier to "recover" from an oath. Against another deck packing countermagic (*cough* t1 *cough*) getting an oath into play is difficult, and once you do, you're in a very ackward position most if not all of your counters have been stripped from your hand. I needed some way to get some cards back into my hand, and deep analysis fit. I didn't expect anyone else playing AKs, and no one I saw was, and even if they were, chances are, my AKs would have benefitted them much more than theirs would have benefitted me, since I would have 8 ways of shoving my AKs into my graveyard, where as they'd have a deck full of just drawing them.
I didn't have much of a problem, but that was because of my pairings. There was FCG and Landstill there, both of them can cause problems for oath (especially after boarding), but they lost early to that WW/x player. Luck of the draw.
I burned once on mana drain, for 5 (drained a FoW), but only because I would win next turn easily, and didn't want to risk tapping blue sources with plenty of counters in hand. (would have to tap out down to less than UU available to spend the mana). In two of my matches my opponants never damaged me except by Spirit Tokens. Still feel jilted by the lack of a finals though. Though it was nice to not have to play against the people I was playtesting against the night before.
The 4cc player showed me what he sided in and out against me btw. And one of the cards he sided out was Gorilla Shaman.... why run shaman main deck if you're going to side it out against the only player there running full jewelry?
It's a competitive deck, but most of my opposition was casual, so I'm compromising, and posting this to the vanilla T1 forum.
Round 1 - MBC
Game 1: I keep a hand with no FoW, Misdirection, or Oath. A mistake, I know, but it ended up being a pretty good idea. I won the roll and chose to go 2nd. Opponant drops a swamp, Therapys me, naming Force of Will. Never have I been so happy to keep a sub par hand. I drop a Strand on my turn and pass. My opponant untaps, casts Demonic Tutor. I let it through. I untap, drop another strand. Opponant untaps, drops a third swamp, casts Necropotence. I sac my strands, grab a trop and an island, cast Mana Drain. I untap, drop a third land, and use my mana drain mana to Intuition for an Oath of Druids and drop it. A couple of turns later I draw into an orchard. Toss my opponant a token during his discard, oath in Spirit of the Night and attack. Opponant untaps, sacs his token to therapy me, then drops a waste and kills my Orchard. I never draw into another orchard, but SotN goes the distance.
Game 2: I keep a Force/Misdirection/Manadrain hand. He opens with duress, taking my force. I top another force, drop a Strand and a Mox Sapphire, say done. He untaps, drops another swamp, casts hymn. The only thing dumber than casting a hymn when your opponant has a misdirection in hand is mana draining a hymn when you have a misdirection in hand. I mana drain the hymn. I untap, drop an orchard, intuition for an oath, make a token, and drop the oath. He untaps, drops swamp, #3, and tries to ritual out The Abyss. I call the judge and ask for the oracle wording. The judge doesn't have a copy of the oracle and says "It basicly says what it says on the card. It targets a player, not a creature." I knew this was bull, but.. you don't argue with the judge. I force the abyss. He ends his turn. I untap, oath in Spirit of the Night, and swing for 6. He edicts. I pass. He untaps. Duresses me, finds no countermagic. Rituals out yawgmoth's will. I start to sweat, turns out all he's trying to do is get the abyss back out. He duresses the rest of my hand away, drops the abyss, and says done. End of his turn, I give him a token. During my upkeep I stack oath, then abyss triggers, oath in akroma, swing for 6. Pass. He sacs his token, draws, lays a land and passes. At this point he has no hand, and I don't have much of one, but I recover cards with Deep Analysis since he's in no danger of racing me. This continues for about 10 turns. I give him a token, and oath. I get 2 creatures every 6 turns, and he manages to get another edict through at one point, but eventually he dies. He never dealt damage to me in either game other than with my tokens.
2-0-0 1-0-0
Round 2: R/W Control - Astroglide?
I mulligan my opening hand, chiding myself for keeping an opening hand with no force in it the first match. I mulligan into Force, Force, Mana Drain, Mana Drain, Deep Analysis, Mox Jet. I Keep. He won the roll and goes first, drops a cycle land, and passes.
I drop my jet, and pass.
He drops another land, and passes.
I draw, and pass.
This CONTINUES for like 4 turns until I finally draw into a strand and an oath. He has played no threats and, indeed done nothing but cycle cards, and play land. Not even manlands. Just mountains and plains. A few turns after oath hits, he drops Eternal Dragon. I realize that it can, more or less, turn Akroma into a Scryb Sprite, but he never capitalizes on it, he blocks her once, then brings it back, but just starts plainscycling it. He never activates oath, and by the time he starts trying to play threats my hand is literally 7 counters. Akroma goes the distance in 5 turns.
Game 2: I keep a hand with Force. That's all there really is to say.
He plays a plains, then a temple of the falsegod. I waste the temple. He recovers almost instantly, drawing another land, and begins plainscycling. I force an early astral slide and then a lightning rift. Then he seems content to just.. draw and play lands... My hand is Stifle, Stifle, Mana Drain, Mana Drain, Oath of Druids, Spirit of the Night, Misdirection. I've got an insane amount of mana on the board, like 9 or 10, with a lotus. It's unheard of for this deck, but I don't want to take the risk of dropping the oath since I know he basicly has a deck full of beef. He tries again to drop an astral slide. I mana drain it. Untap, hardcast Spirit of the Night with my Lotus and three moxen, leaving countermagic open. Forget to swing for 6 (doh!) and pass. He untaps, and tries to Akroma's Vengeance.... 6 mana threats really don't work vs control. I counter it. It's over in 4 turns.
4-0-0 2-0-0
Round 3 - 4cc
I had seen this guy playing down the table from me and saw some power, so I was a little worried going into the game. Mostly, what worried me was looking down the table and seeing a mox monkey.
I win the roll and let him go first. We play draw go for what seems like ages. I don't draw anything but counters, land, and card drawing. I end up Between fetches and deep anal, I drop to 10. Eventually I draw into an oath, but not until after he's mana drained one of my forces and skeletal scryed for 5.
It somehow manages to squeak in, he apparently didn't draw any counter magic in his scrying.
I untap, oath into akroma and start the beats. I'm sitting on a little counter magic, and I manage to sneak through and kill him. With all the damage he took from his Scrye and Sac lands, I only actually dealt 11 damage to him. He did the other 9 himself.
He starts bragging about how he was expecting oath, and tested against it. He did a lot of bragging in the match in fact. He starts sideboarding, making a big deal out of the fact that he's siding in 10 cards. I side in 7, but in reality I should have only sided 4.
I sided out my stifles and deep anals for 3 naturalize and 3 tormod's crypt (The crypts should have stayed in sideboard, but at this point, I hadn't seen a win condition yet. He had been bragging about how his deck was "basicly the strongest deck in t1 right now." I thought maybe there were atogs somewhere in there that I hadn't seen.)
I also sided out SotN for Pristine Angel.
Game 2 started out with more of the same. We traded counters for a while. He mana drains an intuition, untaps, and attacks with a spirit token. I take the damage. Then I mention that he would burn for 3, but since I'm not a dick, I'll let him go back. He denies attacking me. I tell him, it's cool, I don't care, he can go back. He still denies attacking me. It's weird, like he has some pathological need to save face. He spends his mana drain mana to try and put a card in face down. It's Exalted Angel, which I discover, after countering it. We continue trading counters for a while. The root of the problem with his deck I realized after the match was that, if I'd thought about it, he only had 2 or three must counter spells. I saw no recursion, and he had less than a full compliment of angels. I don't know what he planned to do against a deck with more countermagic than he had.
I managed eventually to resolve oath. He's smirking. He disenchants. I counter.
I untap, activate oath. He's still smirking. I reveal pristine Angel. His smirk fades. I pass. He draws swings with his token, and passes. I untap, oath into akroma, and swing for 10. He tries to swords akroma. I counter. Next turn is more of the same. He goes 20/19/9/-1. I know because the most notable thing about the whole match wasn't that he was a colossal prick, it wasn't that he was one of the few people there who was packing a lot of power, it wasn't that it was that he had a deck with a full rack of mana drains, and most of the power 9, and a loa, but had no life counter. He said "I can remember in my head." and I said "Thanks, I'll write it down."
6-0-0 3-0-0
Round 4 - WW/Parfaity... thing.. I say parfaity.. because he was running the scepters.. with the scepter tricks.. he just never managed to get it done against me.
In hindsight, this deck was strongly meta'd. He managed to beat Landstill round 1, and FCG round 3c. During my previous match, he was sitting beside me, and I watched his opponant get a first turn food chain lackey, and lose. My friends warned me, I asked "is he running seal of cleansing?" "no" "I'm not worried. Then in game 2, a first turn food chain, and lose. Didn't catch much of his deck beforehand, but I was warned. I kept a decent hand, it had misdirection, 2 mana drain, and intuition and 2 strands.
My opponent went first. Dropped plains, Bonesplitter. I dropped a strand. He dropped a soltari priest. I untapped, lay another strand, and passed. He untapped, equipted the bonesplitter, swung for 4. dropped to 16. He tried to cast another Priest (or monk?) I mana drained, dropping to 14. I untapped, dropped a land, intuitioned for Oath. He untapped, swung for 4, dropped me to 10 and tried to disenchant my oath, I countered it. I realized the cold hard truth at this point. He cound outrace it. I said I wouldn't be worried, but suddenly, I was sweating bullets. I had no orchard on the table and with a 10 life advantage, he'll win the race. I oath into akroma, and attack. He swords. I misdirect, killing his 4/1 priest. He drops another shadowguy, but he can no longer outrace me. I scoot through at 2 life.
I side out 3x Stifle, 1x Spirit of the Night, 1x Deep Analysis
I side in 3x Naturalize, 1x Ancestor's Chosen, 1x Pristine Angel.
I get the absolute godhand.
My hand is, as well as I can remember it.
Ancestor's Chosen.
Misdirection
<some blue card>
Forbidden Orchard
Mox
Oath of Druids
Naturalize
He drops a first turn soltari foot soldier.
I draw gaea's blessing, I drop orchard, mox, oath.
He untaps, drops a plains, plays isochron scepter, imprinting swords to plowshares. I untap, oath in Pristine Angel, draw a flooded strand, naturalize his scepter.
He untaps drops a plains drops a soltari monk , swings, passes. I oath in akroma leaving me with 4 cards left in my library, swing for 10. He tries to sword akroma, I misdirect to his soltari. He untaps, swings, passes double abeyences trying to draw into answers. I untap, draw.. time walk. swing for 10., time walk, swing for 10. I won by the time walk, he had worship in his hand.
8-0-0 4-0-0
The organizer, upset that he only had like 10 people show up because of the rescheduled prerelease decided not to hold finals since the top4 was a clean cut from the field, In reality he wanted to hold drafts to make more money, but 8 people didn't stay/
1st Place - Meandeck Oath (me)
2nd Place - Landstill
3rd Place - WW/Thing
4th Place - FCG
We recieved store credit, 2nd and 4th were on the same team as me, and we agreed to split our credit.. good thing too, because he had absolutly ****e. The last time we'd gone to a tournament of his he'd pressured us to come to this one and promised he'd have good cards, and packs for us to take as prizes. He had nothing. Worse than nothing. He didn't even have packs, which to me is like going to mcdonalds and finding out they're out of fries. It took us over an hour to spend $95 in store credit between us and the FCG player ended up giving up and buying sleeves. I managed to pick up two shining shoals, but that was the only saving grace. He gave us a spiel about how he "had good cards but they went early." but all he could come up with as "good" that went early were two plateaus and some cheap restricted stuff. His excuse for not having packs was that he had two cases that were supposed to arrive, but didn't, and he was two hours late getting htere because he was waiting on them but the UPS man never came. Aside from the fact that *cough* he didn't have any packs at the last tournament either, UPS doesn't deliver on saturdays.
Anyway, closing thoughts.
MVP: Misdirection. 99% of the time, they were 3 more force of wills.
Runner up: Deep Analysis. The last minute choice to run these over AKs was invaluable. They were integral for recovering after counter wars or dropping early oath, and gave me a much needed outlet for manadrain mana.
LVP: The organizer who broke his word, then tried to lie his way out of it, and pocketed our money and gave us credit when he knew he didn't have anything anyone would want.
Runner up: The judge who didn't know the oracle text on The Abyss and hadn't bothered to bring a copy of the oracle, oh, and *****ed about having to do swiss pairings by hand.
DSC + akroma is the same 3 turn clock as SotN + Akroma with the added bonus that Akroma and SotN have better evasion and haste. Despite being indestructable, DSC isn't really much less destructable than Akroma or SotN. In all the time I've been playing Oath (since novemberish) I've never had an Akroma/SotN die to anything that doesn't work on a DSC. They've only ever died to swords, and edicts slipping in under counter magic. DSC survives wrath... but.. this is a *counter* deck after all. And there are a lot more Welders than wraths.
Those are scams/nearly scams.
I made a dummy e-mail account to see how big of a scam they really were. The only identifiable information they got was my name, address "So they can send me my free XXXX" and my phone number. First of all, they sell your e-mail address to anyone with a pulse, but that's to be expected. Second of all, you have to complete 3 "tiers" of offers. Often you cannot see the offers on the 2nd tier until you complete offers for the first, and offers for the 3rd until you complete offers for the 2nd. The first tier is generally simple free things. Trial memberships to sites or magazines. They're generally free, and generally to companies who also have absolutly no qualms about selling your e-mail address to anyone who's willing to buy it. (I hope you like porn ads from russian companies.) The 2nd tier is usually pretty innocuous as well, more trial memberships, more surveys, simple free or inexpensive offers. The third tier however is *always* full of absolutly insane offers. The offers generally cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, or require you to be accepted for credit cards, or require you to mortgage your house, change insurance companies, and other things not worth the cost of an Ipod. But wait! They're not done! Not only do you realize that the Ipod, Xbox, $500 gift certificate, Dinner for 2, or whatever so graciously offered to you for the simple task of picking out jlo's ass or shocking a monkey is out of reach, but you've now given them your phone number and address. What's the worst they can do with that? Sell you to telemarketers and junk mailers? Wrong. They sell your phone number to "survey companies" who skirt the National Do-Not-Call list by not "selling" you something as they call you 3 times/night to ask you to take a "survey" that amounts to a 20 minute commercial. They also sell your phone number to "billing clearing houses". These places "accidently" place a charge on your phone bill that you probably won't see. These charges will be for things like "voice mail" or "services" and will be hidden in the fine print between your local and long distance looking very official. Just trying to prove to my girlfriend that those things were indeed scams cost me $16/month for 6 months until I finally caught the charge on my phone bill (the charges were illegal and they had to refund my money when caught, but they're not always caught.)
You never have a draw to skip because you have no draw step.
You can however activate words of war on when Psychic Possession triggers during your opponent's draw step.
I think this guy is probably on to something. The safest way to make a 20/20 isn't to give it some obscene drawback because no matter how bad the drawback is there's some way around it. Either it will be flung, or stifled, or fed to a sutured ghoul, or snuck into play. (Look how many times they tried (and failed) to errata phyrexian dreadnought to make it unexploitable)
Ragnarok 1RR
Enchantment
Cumulative Upkeep: Sacrifice a Land.
At the end of any turn, if <cardname> has 5 or more age counters on it, sacrifice it. If you do put a 20/20 red Wolf Avatar token named Fenris into play.
A>
Ymmit, Avatar of Yawgmoth 3BB
Legendary Creature - Avatar
When Ymmit, Avatar of Yawgmoth comes into play, you lose the game.
20/20
B>
Collossus of Lim-Dul 8BBBBUUUU
Creature - Golem
If <cardname> would come into play, if it was played from your hand, put it into play, otherwise remove it from the game.
Trample
Collossus of Lim-Dul cannot be the target of spells or abilities your opponents control.
20/20
or C> (the most likely version imo.)
Ymmit, Collossus of Phyrexia 8BBBBUUUU
Legendary Creature - Golem
When <cardname> comes into play, you lose the game.
20/20
Works with any combination of 5 leylines, except 2+ singularity of course.
5 leylines start in play. Drop Sanctum, tap for 5, play opalescence, and attack. =P
2> Shower before the tournament. If you are concerned about time, shower the night before.
3> Deoderant is your friend. I recommend bringing a stick/can with you. I've played in tournaments with 600+ people in an unairconditioned high school gymnasium... Your deoderant will stop working before the day is out.
4> Cologne is NOT a substitute for showering, or deoderant. Deoderant is not a substitute for showering. A lot of people are allergic to cologne.
5> Bring a bottle of water, refill it from the drinking fountains, or from the bathroom sinks. They love to gouge at tournaments.
6> Limit what you bring. Everything you bring should fit in a small backpack, or deck case. A couple of decks, a trade binder, and a bottle of water are all you really need.
7> Protect your stuff. put at least one leg of your chair through the straps of your backpack when you shove it under your chair. Buy a suitcase lock for it. They're easy to pick, but will keep anyone from surreptuously opening your pack while you play.
8> Eat a good breakfast. Not sugary cereal, not a McFatwich from McDonalds. If you have to eat out, go to IHOP or someplace. Complex carbs and protein are your friend. Watch the sugar.
9> Bring snacks. Healthy snacks. Nothing sugary, nothing messy. Chips are a bad idea. I recommend granola bars, or nutragrain bars.
10> Bring money. Lots of it. Do not store it all in one place. Vendors, and organizers can and will make you pay three times what anything is worth.
11> When in doubt. Don't go. $25 for a constructed tournament isn't really worth it unless you plan on winning =)
So they replaced them with Cephalids... octopus people.
Yeah....
My money is on merfolk. They're too popular to stay gone forever, and between cephalids, veldakens, wizards, and moonfolk Wotc has shown a complete inability to create a blue race that people actually like.
opponent> "sac polluted delta...... grab underground sea.. I'm at 19"
me> "You have a life counter?"
opponent> "No, I can keep track in my head."
me> "Ok....."
me> "Oath in akroma, swing for 6."
opponant> "Ok, I'm at 14."
2> Years ago I was in a 2 player team tournament with random partners. I was playing a recur deck, it was right after saga was released and I was using Great Whale for an infinate combo. I didn't have a triskelion for the kill, so in desperation I bought a Rocket Launcher from the shop to use instead.
I got partnered up with a kid playing a B/U counter/discard deck, the perfect compliment to a combo deck. Our opponents were both playing 5c control decks.
I get the infinate combo, recur wall of blossoms to draw into rocket launcher, drop it, say, "shoot you for lots." Everyone scoops. One of my opponants picks up Rocket Launcher, reads it, and says "Hold on, put your cards down, the game is not over."
Rocket launcher... a non creature artifact with summoning sickness...
Judge rules the launcher is buried, I continue my turn with about 7 cards left in my library... and an "arbitrarily large" amount of mana in my pool. I recur spikes over and over again, putting 200 +1/+1 counters on 2 birds of paradise and a nekrataal, sink my excess mana into a spike, then recur all of my creatures out for a thrull surgeon to strip the removal from both players hands. I attack, kill one opponent, pass, opponent goes, partner goes, I untap and attack for the win.
One of my opponents stands up and screams "GOD D*** IT DAVE! YOU SCREWED UP THE COMBO AND YOU STILL WON" and throws his deck.
3> A year or so before that, right after stronghold was released, I was playing a G/R Lhurgoyf deck with Hermit Druids/Mulch to fuel the goyfs, and Earthquakes for removal. This was the heyday of capsize, and as a metagame decision, I ran Fling maindeck.
My opponant was also playing R/G with Manabarbs and non-land mana. I'm sitting at 2 life, and my opponent is going to kill me the next turn. He's got two mana barbs out, and my only non-land mana on the table is a wall of roots. I can't win the game. We're the only match that hasn't finished, and there are over 20 people watching us. I've got a 26/27 lhurgoyf on the table, but he's being held back by an army of chump blockers. My opponent passes his turn, I turn to my best friend who's watching over my shoulder and say "I can't win this game, but there's one card that can keep me from losing." My friend two fingers on top of my deck, and puts his other hand to his forehead and says "It's there! I can feel it." I untap, draw Fling, tap two land, dropping to -2 life, fling my Lhurgoyf to my opponent's dome, and we draw.
I burned once on mana drain, for 5 (drained a FoW), but only because I would win next turn easily, and didn't want to risk tapping blue sources with plenty of counters in hand. (would have to tap out down to less than UU available to spend the mana). In two of my matches my opponants never damaged me except by Spirit Tokens. Still feel jilted by the lack of a finals though. Though it was nice to not have to play against the people I was playtesting against the night before.
The 4cc player showed me what he sided in and out against me btw. And one of the cards he sided out was Gorilla Shaman.... why run shaman main deck if you're going to side it out against the only player there running full jewelry?
4x Mana Drain
3x Stifle Opted for main deck stifles over more hard counters. They were dead occasionally, but I never found myself having one, and needing a real counter. Helped quite a bit.
3x Misdirection
4x Brainstorm
4x Intuition
3x Deep Analysis <- Opted for these (and a third impulse) over AKs. Good choice. Were better for refilling my hand after an early oath, and I never saw an opponant play AK.
3x Impulse
1x Gaea's Blessing
1x Time Walk
1x Ancestral Recall
4x Oath of Druids
1x Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1x Spirit of the Night
4x Forbidden Orchard
4x Flooded Strand
2x Tropical Island Opted for 2, instead of 4 for fear of wastelands. Since every opponant I faced was running 4 wastes, it turned out to be a very good choice.
4x Island
1x Wasteland
1x Stripmine
1x Dust Bowl I couldn't dig up another waste in time, but wanted to be able to intuition for LD.
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Black Lotus
Sideboard
3xChalice of the Void
3xTsabo's Web
3xTormod's Crypt
3xNaturalize
1xPristine Angel
1xPlatinum Angel
1xAncestor's Chosen
It's a competitive deck, but most of my opposition was casual, so I'm compromising, and posting this to the vanilla T1 forum.
Round 1 - MBC
Game 1: I keep a hand with no FoW, Misdirection, or Oath. A mistake, I know, but it ended up being a pretty good idea. I won the roll and chose to go 2nd. Opponant drops a swamp, Therapys me, naming Force of Will. Never have I been so happy to keep a sub par hand. I drop a Strand on my turn and pass. My opponant untaps, casts Demonic Tutor. I let it through. I untap, drop another strand. Opponant untaps, drops a third swamp, casts Necropotence. I sac my strands, grab a trop and an island, cast Mana Drain. I untap, drop a third land, and use my mana drain mana to Intuition for an Oath of Druids and drop it. A couple of turns later I draw into an orchard. Toss my opponant a token during his discard, oath in Spirit of the Night and attack. Opponant untaps, sacs his token to therapy me, then drops a waste and kills my Orchard. I never draw into another orchard, but SotN goes the distance.
Game 2: I keep a Force/Misdirection/Manadrain hand. He opens with duress, taking my force. I top another force, drop a Strand and a Mox Sapphire, say done. He untaps, drops another swamp, casts hymn. The only thing dumber than casting a hymn when your opponant has a misdirection in hand is mana draining a hymn when you have a misdirection in hand. I mana drain the hymn. I untap, drop an orchard, intuition for an oath, make a token, and drop the oath. He untaps, drops swamp, #3, and tries to ritual out The Abyss. I call the judge and ask for the oracle wording. The judge doesn't have a copy of the oracle and says "It basicly says what it says on the card. It targets a player, not a creature." I knew this was bull, but.. you don't argue with the judge. I force the abyss. He ends his turn. I untap, oath in Spirit of the Night, and swing for 6. He edicts. I pass. He untaps. Duresses me, finds no countermagic. Rituals out yawgmoth's will. I start to sweat, turns out all he's trying to do is get the abyss back out. He duresses the rest of my hand away, drops the abyss, and says done. End of his turn, I give him a token. During my upkeep I stack oath, then abyss triggers, oath in akroma, swing for 6. Pass. He sacs his token, draws, lays a land and passes. At this point he has no hand, and I don't have much of one, but I recover cards with Deep Analysis since he's in no danger of racing me. This continues for about 10 turns. I give him a token, and oath. I get 2 creatures every 6 turns, and he manages to get another edict through at one point, but eventually he dies. He never dealt damage to me in either game other than with my tokens.
2-0-0 1-0-0
Round 2: R/W Control - Astroglide?
I mulligan my opening hand, chiding myself for keeping an opening hand with no force in it the first match. I mulligan into Force, Force, Mana Drain, Mana Drain, Deep Analysis, Mox Jet. I Keep. He won the roll and goes first, drops a cycle land, and passes.
I drop my jet, and pass.
He drops another land, and passes.
I draw, and pass.
This CONTINUES for like 4 turns until I finally draw into a strand and an oath. He has played no threats and, indeed done nothing but cycle cards, and play land. Not even manlands. Just mountains and plains. A few turns after oath hits, he drops Eternal Dragon. I realize that it can, more or less, turn Akroma into a Scryb Sprite, but he never capitalizes on it, he blocks her once, then brings it back, but just starts plainscycling it. He never activates oath, and by the time he starts trying to play threats my hand is literally 7 counters. Akroma goes the distance in 5 turns.
Game 2: I keep a hand with Force. That's all there really is to say.
He plays a plains, then a temple of the falsegod. I waste the temple. He recovers almost instantly, drawing another land, and begins plainscycling. I force an early astral slide and then a lightning rift. Then he seems content to just.. draw and play lands... My hand is Stifle, Stifle, Mana Drain, Mana Drain, Oath of Druids, Spirit of the Night, Misdirection. I've got an insane amount of mana on the board, like 9 or 10, with a lotus. It's unheard of for this deck, but I don't want to take the risk of dropping the oath since I know he basicly has a deck full of beef. He tries again to drop an astral slide. I mana drain it. Untap, hardcast Spirit of the Night with my Lotus and three moxen, leaving countermagic open. Forget to swing for 6 (doh!) and pass. He untaps, and tries to Akroma's Vengeance.... 6 mana threats really don't work vs control. I counter it. It's over in 4 turns.
4-0-0 2-0-0
Round 3 - 4cc
I had seen this guy playing down the table from me and saw some power, so I was a little worried going into the game. Mostly, what worried me was looking down the table and seeing a mox monkey.
I win the roll and let him go first. We play draw go for what seems like ages. I don't draw anything but counters, land, and card drawing. I end up Between fetches and deep anal, I drop to 10. Eventually I draw into an oath, but not until after he's mana drained one of my forces and skeletal scryed for 5.
It somehow manages to squeak in, he apparently didn't draw any counter magic in his scrying.
I untap, oath into akroma and start the beats. I'm sitting on a little counter magic, and I manage to sneak through and kill him. With all the damage he took from his Scrye and Sac lands, I only actually dealt 11 damage to him. He did the other 9 himself.
He starts bragging about how he was expecting oath, and tested against it. He did a lot of bragging in the match in fact. He starts sideboarding, making a big deal out of the fact that he's siding in 10 cards. I side in 7, but in reality I should have only sided 4.
I sided out my stifles and deep anals for 3 naturalize and 3 tormod's crypt (The crypts should have stayed in sideboard, but at this point, I hadn't seen a win condition yet. He had been bragging about how his deck was "basicly the strongest deck in t1 right now." I thought maybe there were atogs somewhere in there that I hadn't seen.)
I also sided out SotN for Pristine Angel.
Game 2 started out with more of the same. We traded counters for a while. He mana drains an intuition, untaps, and attacks with a spirit token. I take the damage. Then I mention that he would burn for 3, but since I'm not a dick, I'll let him go back. He denies attacking me. I tell him, it's cool, I don't care, he can go back. He still denies attacking me. It's weird, like he has some pathological need to save face. He spends his mana drain mana to try and put a card in face down. It's Exalted Angel, which I discover, after countering it. We continue trading counters for a while. The root of the problem with his deck I realized after the match was that, if I'd thought about it, he only had 2 or three must counter spells. I saw no recursion, and he had less than a full compliment of angels. I don't know what he planned to do against a deck with more countermagic than he had.
I managed eventually to resolve oath. He's smirking. He disenchants. I counter.
I untap, activate oath. He's still smirking. I reveal pristine Angel. His smirk fades. I pass. He draws swings with his token, and passes. I untap, oath into akroma, and swing for 10. He tries to swords akroma. I counter. Next turn is more of the same. He goes 20/19/9/-1. I know because the most notable thing about the whole match wasn't that he was a colossal prick, it wasn't that he was one of the few people there who was packing a lot of power, it wasn't that it was that he had a deck with a full rack of mana drains, and most of the power 9, and a loa, but had no life counter. He said "I can remember in my head." and I said "Thanks, I'll write it down."
6-0-0 3-0-0
Round 4 - WW/Parfaity... thing.. I say parfaity.. because he was running the scepters.. with the scepter tricks.. he just never managed to get it done against me.
In hindsight, this deck was strongly meta'd. He managed to beat Landstill round 1, and FCG round 3c. During my previous match, he was sitting beside me, and I watched his opponant get a first turn food chain lackey, and lose. My friends warned me, I asked "is he running seal of cleansing?" "no" "I'm not worried. Then in game 2, a first turn food chain, and lose. Didn't catch much of his deck beforehand, but I was warned. I kept a decent hand, it had misdirection, 2 mana drain, and intuition and 2 strands.
My opponent went first. Dropped plains, Bonesplitter. I dropped a strand. He dropped a soltari priest. I untapped, lay another strand, and passed. He untapped, equipted the bonesplitter, swung for 4. dropped to 16. He tried to cast another Priest (or monk?) I mana drained, dropping to 14. I untapped, dropped a land, intuitioned for Oath. He untapped, swung for 4, dropped me to 10 and tried to disenchant my oath, I countered it. I realized the cold hard truth at this point. He cound outrace it. I said I wouldn't be worried, but suddenly, I was sweating bullets. I had no orchard on the table and with a 10 life advantage, he'll win the race. I oath into akroma, and attack. He swords. I misdirect, killing his 4/1 priest. He drops another shadowguy, but he can no longer outrace me. I scoot through at 2 life.
I side out 3x Stifle, 1x Spirit of the Night, 1x Deep Analysis
I side in 3x Naturalize, 1x Ancestor's Chosen, 1x Pristine Angel.
I get the absolute godhand.
My hand is, as well as I can remember it.
Ancestor's Chosen.
Misdirection
<some blue card>
Forbidden Orchard
Mox
Oath of Druids
Naturalize
He drops a first turn soltari foot soldier.
I draw gaea's blessing, I drop orchard, mox, oath.
He untaps, drops a plains, plays isochron scepter, imprinting swords to plowshares. I untap, oath in Pristine Angel, draw a flooded strand, naturalize his scepter.
He untaps drops a plains drops a soltari monk , swings, passes. I oath in akroma leaving me with 4 cards left in my library, swing for 10. He tries to sword akroma, I misdirect to his soltari. He untaps, swings, passes double abeyences trying to draw into answers. I untap, draw.. time walk. swing for 10., time walk, swing for 10. I won by the time walk, he had worship in his hand.
8-0-0 4-0-0
The organizer, upset that he only had like 10 people show up because of the rescheduled prerelease decided not to hold finals since the top4 was a clean cut from the field, In reality he wanted to hold drafts to make more money, but 8 people didn't stay/
1st Place - Meandeck Oath (me)
2nd Place - Landstill
3rd Place - WW/Thing
4th Place - FCG
We recieved store credit, 2nd and 4th were on the same team as me, and we agreed to split our credit.. good thing too, because he had absolutly ****e. The last time we'd gone to a tournament of his he'd pressured us to come to this one and promised he'd have good cards, and packs for us to take as prizes. He had nothing. Worse than nothing. He didn't even have packs, which to me is like going to mcdonalds and finding out they're out of fries. It took us over an hour to spend $95 in store credit between us and the FCG player ended up giving up and buying sleeves. I managed to pick up two shining shoals, but that was the only saving grace. He gave us a spiel about how he "had good cards but they went early." but all he could come up with as "good" that went early were two plateaus and some cheap restricted stuff. His excuse for not having packs was that he had two cases that were supposed to arrive, but didn't, and he was two hours late getting htere because he was waiting on them but the UPS man never came. Aside from the fact that *cough* he didn't have any packs at the last tournament either, UPS doesn't deliver on saturdays.
Anyway, closing thoughts.
MVP: Misdirection. 99% of the time, they were 3 more force of wills.
Runner up: Deep Analysis. The last minute choice to run these over AKs was invaluable. They were integral for recovering after counter wars or dropping early oath, and gave me a much needed outlet for manadrain mana.
LVP: The organizer who broke his word, then tried to lie his way out of it, and pocketed our money and gave us credit when he knew he didn't have anything anyone would want.
Runner up: The judge who didn't know the oracle text on The Abyss and hadn't bothered to bring a copy of the oracle, oh, and *****ed about having to do swiss pairings by hand.