Dallas Pro Tour Report
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Well it was a long weekend, but I made it back to work on Monday and have this
report for all you magic enthusiasts awaiting info:
Friday:
The type I tourney was held. Many players who were not on the top 128 list were
playing in the tourney, because of uncertainties in the ranking system. Rather
than leave them out, bascially any player in the top 128 in the last month
was allowed to play.
Necro decks were out in force using 4 hymms and 4 stupors. Brian Weisman was
there with his famous permission deck, with modifications to handle the field
of Necro. There were a lot of red decks there - many were heavy red, sporting
atogs, guerilla shamans and dwarven miners and some used kird apes. Some of the
red decks had serendib efreet and erhnams to beat other red decks. There were
a few nether void decks, because wizards affirmed the ruling that you can
dark ritual under a nether void for only one black...
After the dust settled in the swiss, I was the top seed with a 6-0-1 record,
with my serendib efreet, erhnam djinn, mana drain, direct damage deck. I had
beaten mostly necro decks to get. My deck went 8-0 against black decks and
4-2 against red atog/dwarven miner decks. I drew the last round because both
myself and opponent were in.
In the end Scott Johns won the even with his kird ape, savannah lion, guerilla
shaman, cycle deck. Johns used Mystic Tutor to get his wheel and twister and
used tons of direct damage and vises for the kill. Johns and I had a very close
match, with the deciding game being determined by me balancing on the first
turn, but him having 3 guerilla tactics in his opening hand. Go figure.
Cards of the tournament (Type 1): Guerilla Shaman, Dwarven Miner, Black Vise,
Necropotence, Mystic Tutor.
After the tournament there was a huge meal (which was overcrowed) and the buzz
started over what people were playing in Type 2. Rumors abounded, most of which
centered on people playing counterpost decks (outposts with permission). The
New York players were supposedly playing it, as well as PCL. One funny rumor we
heard was that George Baxter and Hammer were testing for like 6 hours and all
they were playing was counterpost vs. counterpost.
So our mini-team (me, my brother Pete Guevin, Adam Green, Mark Lepine, and
believe it or not Nate Clarke) began extensive testing in finding a deck to
beat counterpost decks. Our counterpost test decks started with 4 arrows and
4 wraths standard for the ultimate test. The deck we found to crush it was
a red/black necro with 14 protection from white creatures, with direct damage
to finish it off. I was a little uncertain about the deck as I played several
test decks against Adam and he didn't do that great. He lost to white/green
geddon and had trouble with my blue/white winter orb/icy serra deck.
I then played against Nate with my winter orb serra deck and locked his counter-
post right down after a powersink followed by a worb and icy. I suggested that
instead of the necro we play the winter orb, but Adam convinced me not to, based
on the fact that people were preparing for artifacts and most people had 5-6
anti-artifact starting and at least 3 more in the sideboard.
Saturday
The Type 2 started quickly and I was matched with Pete Leiher. He beat me
with his winter orb/howling mine deck. He and his team would parley a lot of
top 64 spots with similar decks.
There was another buzz after the first round. Many people was playing white/blue
but apart from a few people (like the Weisman team) it was not counterpost,
but instead prison style winter orb control decks. Most centered around
getting the lock and having tons of permission to back it up. They killed with
vice, feldon's cane, millstone and outpost. There were a lot of necro decks
also with the key card being of all things Lake of the Dead. This card long
spurned by top players, was instrumental in beating winter orb. There were
some non-necro creature decks, based around erhman, wildfire emissaries and the
like, but other than the PCL deck - they weren't in the hands of the top players
- it seemed like everyone was playing one form of lockdown or necro.
We had totally misplayed the meta game and Adam and I suffered repeated defeats
and we both withdrew early from the tournament.
Nate Clarke was playing a version of the prison that he bascially copied from
Hammer and Baxter. And Nate was crushing people in the junior division. He
locked down Aaron Kline (PT1 junior runner up) so bad, that at the end of the
game when Nate won (with one card left in his library) Aaron had NO permanents
in play. However at the start of the 4th round, Nate was literally seconds
late in sitting down to play his match. After finding out he would lose the
first game, Nate threw a shit fit calling the judges several profane names.
While everyone was entertained, Nate was removed from the tournament. Eventual
winner of the Juniors (Justin Schneider) said Nate had the best deck and would
have won the juniors if he had not been DQ'ed.
At the end of the day a strong final eight emerged:
mono-black big creature Necro - Paul McCabe
mono-black weenie Necro - Brian Hacker.
red-black Necro - Chris Pikula.
mono-black LD/painful memories - Robert Thornburg.
white weenie/blue - Peer Kroger.
white outpost/prison - George Baxter.
white/blue icy/orb - Jason Zila.
red/blue Hammer/permission - Olle Rade.
Well Necro decks took 3 out of the top 4 and McCabe ended up winning with Necro.
So without Hymms and Strips, Necro still won the tournament.
Let me say a few words about Paul McCabe. He is incredible - look at his record
- 2nd place at PT2 and PT3 (in juniors), good finishes at PT4 and the worlds,
and winning PT5. The guy is a great sport and a great competitor. Congrats.
Cards of the tournament (Type 2) - Winter Orb(!), Kjeldoran Outpost,
Necropotence (with Lake of the Dead), Hammer of Bogardan, Serrated Arrows.
Saturday night, though, Nate Clarke would prove himself. The OMS brothers
never came up with the $1000 for the ante match, so Nate only had Mark
Justice to play for big ante. The problem was that no one had cards at 2 in the
morning. Fortunately Mark Rosewater had some mirage packs and the playing
began. Mark challenged me to a fun match of duplicate mirage sealed deck.
I won both matches, but in his defense he was extermely tired after running
the tournament.
Finally Nate took on Justice in solomon draft. To Justice's dismay he pulled
both torches and Nate ended up getting both of them. And Nate won the series
3-1. Nate had a great deck, much better than Justices, but Justice did have a
Hellkite (but he never got it out). It was a pretty fun match to watch.
Well that's the report. It was a great weekend (though I would have liked to
done better), and the tour and magic are alive and well.
-Tom Guevin