Like the end of each month (or actually the beginning of each month), my local magicshop organizes a T1.5 tournament for approx. 20-40 people. Since all kinds of hilarious stuff happens all the time during such tournament, I figured it would be rather interesting to make a report about this.

First things first though.

I’m David, Dutch, 17 years old and a magicplayer for nearly 3 years now. I had many of my own dumb interpretations over the years, and I’d actually would not like to talk about it. But then again, I wouldn’t have a good prologue, would I ?

Okay here goes nothing. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned my first mistake I made on Yahoo! Auctions. It was one not to forget though since it’s actually very hilarious.
So I played for .. let’s see, a half year I think, when some bigger and older kid on my school figured out I played magic too. But he was quitting and trying to get rid of his (not very spectacular) cards. Since I hadn’t a clue what a card would cost, I was totally surprised he asked 2, 4 and 8 dollars (well—guilders anyway) for respectively Llanowar Elves (4th), Mirri Cat Warrior and Child of Gaea.
anyway I offered him to sell them on Yahoo! Auctions (I wasn’t quite interested in them myself) and he agreed. So I put them on the online auctions. I figured : ‘Well, if he asks 2 bucks for! a llanowar elf, it oughtta be rare!’ so I made this auction : “RARE LLANOWAR ELF!” and a few days later someone asked me via the auction how the hell the Llanowar elf could be a rare. So I made a new auction : “UNCOMMON LLANOWAR ELF!” and history repeated itself again :)

Okay, now take in mind that all the local tournament players were like that once. A stereotype of the local tournamentplayer (I know stereotypes are wrong but who cares :)) : at the age of 13, plays for approx. a year, thinks the foil AA rhox is the 2nd best thing in the world, is playing with decks without sleeves (Yikes! it has the same effect on me as scratching fingernails on a blackboard), and have the tendency to ask everything, which isn’t so strange since Magic-English can be confusing and complicated sometimes.

Here we go.

7PM was when we had to gather up for the tournament, and we’re playing best-out-of-three. Which, to my surprise, is for the first time here. Last time we played best-out-of-two (:rolleyes: ) and before that it was best-out-of-three which was mainly overruled by a 30-minute clock. So if clock runs off, it’s either whoever has a win, or it becomes a tie. About 20 people had 4 points and 2 had 6 points..

I played a deck “that’s practically a synonym for Annoying Blue”, according to some more experienced players. Lots of card-gaining, morphlings for a finishing touch. Gotta love it.

7:15 Kick off! My first opponent had my age, and was playing a deck that could’ve been a synonym for Annoying White. White shadow, mother of runes, crusades, glorious anthems, you get the idea. I don’t like it. At such moments you’re glad you’re playing a dominant “no-can-do” deck instead of a “Hulk, Smash!” stompdown, well at least I was.
he starts, plays (surprise, surprise) mother of runes. At this point a masticore should be somewhere topdeck, and fast.
I was holding something I’ve been playtesting for a while : Thran Turbine [CC (1), artifact, add (2) in your upkeep if you like, can not be used for spells, style of thing] and Cursed Scroll [shame on you if you don’t know wha! t it does :p]. My first dropper was the turbine.

7:19 I’ve been able to Curse his Mother of Runes, which was 2/2 due to crusades. And there’s no way I can zap those White Knights now.

7:21 while he was getting a more populated defense, I drew Maze of Ith. I play it, and in response he plays Orim’s Chant. I say “Ok” (although I was planning on playing a morphling, but then I realized I’d rather play impulse in his discard phase instead then) and he glanced at me expectantly, so I say “what? What is it?”

He says “what about your maze ?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong with it?”

“I played Orim’s Chant..”

Semi-confused as I was, I replied “ … your point? It’s a land, not a spell..”

“Oh.”

:rolleyes:

7:24 I drew my 2nd treachery, and stole one-by-one his defense. I was able to shoot the weaker defense with the scroll and give the final smack with a midgame Morphling.

His last ditch effort was to vengeful-dreams the attacking Morphling, hoping I was stupid enough to forget there’s an EnergyShield-button on it.

Best out of three, eh? One down … -sigh-

7:26 I had a bad feeling about this game. I drew too much draw-engines and too little mana.

I was beaten down quickly by his overwhelming shadow-people, crusades and my lack of nev. Disks, control magics or other “turn the tide” spells. And Cursed Scroll isn’t very useful when you’re holding 7 different cards :(.

7:33 it’s 1-1 now, and we’re starting the 3rd game. It’s at least better than the previous game, but still not very useful.

7:40 We suckered forward to 7:45, which is when we’re moving on to the 2nd round. I drew loads and loads of lands, my opponent drew mainly creature-paralyzers which hadn’t any use because I hadn’t any (with the exception of the morphling) so we both ended up yelling at our decks for killercards and fast.

7:44 my opponent secured himself with 2 crusades, 1 worship and 1 White Knight sitting pretty at the side of his table. I was in need to remove the knight so I could kill him, since he was on 1. I played 3 accumulated knowledges in a row, exclamating “there is no god, there is no god ..” (really! honest!) and I was only drawing more land and everything else except what I needed. The judge called it a tie due to overtime. I peeked at my topdeck; It would’ve taken at least another 6 turns until I got a treachery. 1-1 tie.

New round, new chances.

Opponent is actually one of the storekeepers who is occupying the seat of someone who didn’t show up. He plays red/black .. thingy.

7:47 Kick-off. I’m finally having a good hand. 1 island, 1 opt, 1 Impulse, 2 Morphling, 1 masticore, 1 maze of ith and an immense amount of trust. I started, played island and opted during the opponent’s turn; no island. Thank god I drew one in my drawphase.

An Impulse showed me the 4th card was going to be the very next island, so I took it and was just one more island away to victory. My opponent didn’t play anything at all; mana-screwed and stuck with creature-removal. Useful.

7:55 Masticore won for me. Second game seemed to be a sure victory again, but I was awfully wrong and I clearly underestimated the improvisation abilities of my experienced opponent.

He reanimated a discarded Laquatus’ champion, and I let him to, because I was holding Treachery. That was exactly his plan; I was already at 12 due to the champion and a 1st turn raging goblin. Next turn I treacheried it. Then he played Backlash on the Champion, and hurt me for 6 points. Trying as I might I was unable to counter it, and a 2nd backlash made me kick the bucket before I could spell ‘Nebuchadnezzar’. I made a mental note never to be greedy again when cards seem to cry out “take me ! Take me!!”.

8:06 third game was a real lucker for me. I was digging through my library because of 2 Impulses, and finally found what I was looking for; the only masticore I have :) a thran turbine ensured I could deal 1 damage for free, which was often enough to destroy his defense. Result is 2-1.

Stay tuned! Best is yet to come!

3rd round.

Opponent is someone who fits well in the aforementioned stereotype, but he did play with sleeves though –phew-. His deck was something I’d describe agro-black with less-friendly “steal me!”-creatures like Nightmare :( however my philosophy is “if I can’t have it, you certainly can’t either.” So control magic becomes practically “destroy target Nightmare” (I mean the creature, not type).

8:10 However it didn’t come that far. I countered away, I saw chainers, nantuko shades and zombifies bite the dust, and hoped the worst was over since I was running out of counterspells.

8:16 he misread and ditto interpreted Morphling for the 4th time in 5 minutes. At first he thought everyone could use his abilities so he tried to make it 6/0, secondly he figured the morphling could only ward off 1 spell at a time, so tried to target it with 2 terrors. I explained how it really works and he was like :”I thought it was like that but I didn’t think a creature could be so indestructible! That’s the best creature ever –“ before I could agree with him he went on : “after Big Furry Monster!”

sigh.

8:23 whacked him over the head with stolen creatures. I was being greedy again ..

8:28 it was the 2nd game, and he played plaguespitter, then a faceless butcher (removing the only creature, plaguespitter) and then another faceless butcher, removing nothing this time.

I said “you’re supposed to remove another creature with it..”

He said “er, no, the only creature is the other Butcher and it says ‘remove a creature other than Faceless butcher’.”

How to prove someone wrong when you can’t ? right, yell for the judge. However there is no real ‘judge’ this time. This ‘judge’/storekeeper said the other kid was right. I lost my temper and gained skepticism in exchange, since this judge is famous for something else he claimed, and I quote : [quote]creatures acquire the color of local enchantments enchanting it, thus white creatures with black enchantments on them are immune for terrors and vice versa.[/quote] I know I was right, but I hate it to go into discussion with these people since they have their own interpretations of rules and refuse to accept otherwise.

I realized I could save a lot of trouble and time if I just countered it, but I didn’t see the use. The plaguespitter might’ve proven useful to me since Cursed Scroll would’ve been able to shoot creatures with toughness 3 again.

This was by far the wackiest game in minutes.

8:33 Next card was nevinyrral’s disk, and due to black’s lack of artifact-killers I was able to wipe the board and start all over again, in my advantage. Morphling finished off easily here.

8:45 the 4th and last round. On the previous rounds I managed to tie once and win the other 2. Win gives you 3 points and tie 1, therefore I had 7 points.

My last opponent played blue control. I’d like to call my deck Absolute Monarchy because when I play multiplayer, everyone picks on me and sometimes I still manage to beat everyone else. However there can be only one king, and confronting two dominant control decks with each other is like tying Madonna and Britney Spears back-to-back to each other. In Holland we have a proverb, that, when translated freely, says “to tie the cat on the bacon”.

I’d just like to call it Survival of the Fittest.

There was one thing that surprised me though; he was playing with ghost ships. Yes, that’s right; 2/4 flying for 4 mana with regenerate. A real bargain alright.

9:04 The counterspells flew left and right; until I ran short on them. I had -once again- Morphling in play, and plenty of mana. He uttered something like “oh rats, he’ll counter it anyway” but I was feeling lucky. Not as though I had nothing to lose, I revealed him my hand -force of will and an island-, he glanced at my untapped lands (4 islands) and made his decision: he tapped 8 mana for a 5 point dominate, targeting the morphling. I said “you know, you’re only the 4th player today who didn’t realize spells can fall off the morphling.”

“-insert explicit cussword here-! so that was the tricky part about morphling…”

he managed to cough up ghost ship, and greedy as I was I stole it..

9:15 it took a while until victory was near, since he still managed to evacuate my creatures all the time, only to counter the upcoming morphling. Since I was really short on counterspells, I had nothing to do but to respond on the counterspell with Impulse, but this last ditch effort came up with nothing that could save it.

9:18 2nd morphling presented itself and killed my opponent right on time.

I ended up with 10 points, so did the guy I played with the 1st round. I became sorta 2nd/3rd, since #1 had 13 points, 1st opponent and I got 10, and the following runner up had 8. I won 2 boosters and a blackshaded plastic deckbox :p

I hate to win like this.. it just seems my deck is waaaay to powerful for the casual tournament so I’m considering to make a Legends Only deck for the next t1.5 tournament. It will contain all 55 BB ENG Legends, all sorts of duallands, birds of paradise, and other managainers. It will be a giant deck, but hey, it’ll be more fun to whack or get whacked with.

And besides, I want to give my local newbe’s also a chance. I will force the guy who always ends up 1st to make an oxymoron deck :).