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US National Championships, A Players Perspective

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Henry A. Stern

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Jul 21, 1995, 3:00:00 AM7/21/95

First of all, please join me in congratulating Mark Justice of Salt Lake,
Utah on winning the U.S. National Championships last weekend at Origins.
Actualy, I'm the guy he beet in the finals :( Mark is not a 'net guy, but
if anyone in Utah reads this and knows Mark, please congratulate him for me
and tell him I'm looking foward to seeing him at Worlds and ... Go Jothul
Worm! :)

Origins Rept.

Howdy all, fortunately I had a bye into the semifinals because I was in the
DC top 25 (#23). Several of my friends from L.A. also had byes but about
four of them had to try and qualify at one of the eight qualification
rounds on Thursday and Friday. The qualification rounds were absolutely
brutal. Over 200 people per round competing for just 2 slots, ouch!
Basicaly you couldn't lose more than a single *game*. Because of the swiss
scoring system used, every game was worth 2 points and you played up to 2
games against each oponent. I think about 18 points (out of 20) was
needed. Fortunately, 3 out of my 4 friends were able to qualify (way to go
Mario, Mark, and Less).

In the meantime, those of us who were lucky enough to have prequalified (or
didn't care about type II) were screwing arround in the type I tournaments.
Suprisingly, they didn't hold *any* type II tournaments other than the
qualifying events. Anyways, on thursday I whipped up a goofy U/W/B juzam
deck that had lots of big critters (juzams, vamps, jugs, and clockworks),
some pestilence, and a couple of experimental IA stuff like dance of the
dead(cool), energy storm(better as a sideboard card), and spectral
shield(fairly lame, but cool against certain oponents). The funnest part
of the deck was the sideboard which was full of vices, land destruction and
nether void. My favorite game came against someone that was playing a land
destruction deck. He had out blood moon(I have no basic lands), city in a
bottle (no more djinns!) and nether void, but I still managed to win late
in the game with a dance of the deaded 8/5 clockwork. What was especialy
cool is that the dance of the dead allowed me to gain the counter and
*then* untap the beast. I actualy made it to the semifinals, before
succumbing to a blue white controll deck. Not bad considering there was
over 150 people in the tournament. That type I was one by Mark Justice who
was playing his ernham/serra/deflection deck. On Friday I played my friend
Mario's B/U/G/R quick critter direct dammage deck. Made it to the round of
8 before loosing to Mark (an omen of what lay ahead!). Mark also won that
type I. If anyone ever was ever "on" for a con it was Mark.

So.. on to Saturday and the U.S. Nationals. First some background, many of
us in the top 25 (and others) had been lobbying Steve Bishop (the head of
the DC) to eliminate the sealed deck portion of the tournament. Our
argument was that sealed deck, in its current format, has an extremely high
luck factor. i.e. if you don't get a good sealed deck, there is no way you
can qualify. Its kind of like if at Wimbledon, the participants had to pick
their rackets out of a barrel and some of the rackets were good but some of
them were crap. Anyways, although I feel that Steve was sympathetic to our
cause, ther was just too much inertia behind the sealed. Don't get me
wrong, I *love* playing sealed deck, I think it is the *best* test of one's
magic playing skills but there are better ways of running sealed then
handing out a bunch of boosters, letting people play, and watching what
happens. Yes, I know player skill is key as well, but given a bit of deck
building competancy, the best cards will win, or more specificaly, crappy
cards *will* loose. Anyways, at least they agreed to give us a few more
cards to work with: 1 4th starter, 2 Ice age boosters, 2 FE boosters, and
any four land of our choice. Thank god for the optional land rule, without
it I wouldn't have come close to qualifying. I was a little nervous after
opening my stuff and only seeing 2 little fliers (a bat and a zephyr) and
one creature of power >2 (treefolk). But, I did get some good creature
defence (2 dark banishings, a terror and a paralyze), some good evasion
cards (tawnos' wand and whalebone glider), a couple of life giving things
(living artifact and ivory tower), some blue trickery (deflection, ray of
command, spell blast) and the card that one me most of my games:
pestilence. I am going to post all of the cards I received and the deck I
built over on .strategy. Basicaly if my oponent wasn't playing black I had
an excelent shot (with all the terrors), if they were playing black with
alot of creatures, I was in trouble. The scoring system to be used was
swiss with 2 points per victory, 1 per tie (or unplayed game), 0 for a loss
with up to three games played per round, 4 rounds of play. After each
round, the people with similar scores were paired against each other.

Round 1, played Les Douglas, one of the people I came to Origins with from
L.A. I managed to get out pestilence and win all three games. Round 2,
played Mark Chalice, another guy I came to the con with! Mark had a
*realy* good deck vampire, nightmare, obscene golem, basilisk, lure, soul
kiss, basicaly some realy nasty stuff. Fortunately, he got somewhat mana
screwed in the 2 games I happened to get out a vice and I took 2/3. Next I
played Brian Sweeny from Seatle, he had my decks nightmare oponent fast
creatures, many of them black. I was lucky to tie one game. Actualy Brian
screwed up at the end of the one game we tied: durring his turn I had to
pestilence away his 5/4 amor thrulled foul familiar, which was the only
creature on the board. I was placing the pestilence in the graveyard when
he brought out another creature which kept the pestilence arround and
alowed me to pestilence us both away durring my turn. (Brian qualified
anyway). My final game was against a green red deck that I did very well
against. In fact I was one turn away from winning my third game when the
judges called time on the match. So, after the sealed portion I was in
decent shape, 16 out of a possible 24 points and the leader had 21. I
think there were less than 10 people with > 15 points; I figured as long as
my type II didn't crap out on me I should be able to qualify.

On to the type II portion. I was playing a version of what we in L.A. like
to call vice age. Green/Red with lots of quick direct damage, vices,
howling mines, stormbinds, and a couple other things (don't want to give
the entire deck away because I might play something like it at Worlds). My
first match was against a white weenie deck. My deck can sideboard very
effectively against white weenies (2 anarchy and 3 pyroclasms) so I figured
if I could win the first game I had a chance at three wins. Well I won the
first game but lost the second. In the third game I had to channel myself
down to zero in order to tie the game. *Not* a great start. In the second
match I played someone playing a Blue/White deck with lots of counters,
serras, and orders, with a few vaults to get the serras out quicker. Vice
age does very well against slow decks and I mannaged to win all three.
There's nothing more fun than playing a blue player, having out a vice,
doing nothing other than laying land and saying "go ahead", and watching
them squirm as you don't play anything they can counter:) So, at this
point I had 25 points with 2 rounds to go, I figured I would need 32 or 33
points to advance so I needed to take 2/3 from both of my next oponents.
Next I played Mark Justice, at this point he was playing a funky Black/Red
deck with foul familiars and uthden trolls and a little blue thrown in for
deflections. I managed to take 2/3. In the final game I played Dana
Rossi. Dana was playing an all black quick critter with a touch of denial.
I won the first, he won the second, and the last game came down to the
wire. I had out stormbind and two howling mines so I was feeling pretty
good but he had out a zuron orb that made my life difficult. It came down
to the last round before the judges called time. At the end of the type 2,
I had 33 points which was the exact ammount needed to move on!
Unfortunately, none of my friends from L.A. had qualified, but Mark Justice
was from the Southwest Regional and had hung arround with alot of the LA
crowd so we felt some sort of bond. My friends got me drunk that night as
we tried to figure out what I should play the next day.

The meta game - This became the key reason why Mark and I wound up playing
in the finals. As we sat arround Saturday night we thought about the other
players that had qualified: what had they been playing in the type 2(there
was *alot* of black), would they go with the same decks or would they
change (we figured they would probably go with what got them there), should
we change our decks to adjust? My conclusion was to play pretty much the
same deck I had played before with some radical alterations to the
sideboard. I could now play up to 4 whirling dervishes and 3 lifeforces,
although I kept two REB's and two Anarchies in my 'board just in case).
Mark whent even more radicaly anti-black than me, putting in many
anti-black cards into his deck, he had no anti blue or anti white cards at
all. Our gamble payed off, no one seemed to change there decks much except
us.

Sundays matchups had the eight finalists playing double elimination to
determine who would be the on the U.S. team and who would be the new U.S.
national champion. In the first round I played Dana Rossi again. He still
had his all black deck and luckily hymmed away my lifeforce on the first
turn, he then got out some creatures and wailed on me in the first game.
In the second game, I got out a dervish on round 2 and 6 turns later the
game was over. Its a great feeling to bring out a dervish when you know
your oponent is playing all black :) In the third game he sideboarded in
some white for some swords to plowshares. Fortunately, I got out a couple
of dervi quick and did a bunch of damage before he drew a plain and sent
the devi's farming. I got out a stormbind later and mannaged to win even
though I made a mistake late in the game. In the next round I played Peter
Lieher. Pete was also playing an all black deck but he had a bit more
denial and also played with some aeleopiles (works well as an anti dervish
or anti black card). In the first game I got a miracle draw of two strip
mines and two vices. In the second game I got out a quick dervish that got
'piled and a quick shivan that got terrored (ouch!). He then overan me
with knights and denial. In the third game I got out a quick dervi again
but he didn't draw the 'pile and the dervi was quickly too big for him to
handle. I was very happy after winning that game. I was now on the team
and the rest of the tournament would be gravy (it would have been nice to
win 'tho ;) In the next round I played Mike Long and his nasty Land
destruction deck. In the first round I got out more howling mines and
vices than he could handle. He won the second game and the third game had
some beautifull endplay. He was at three life and I had 9 life, two
forests, a lumberjack, a zuron orb and a howling mine in play he had three
life two icies, a bunch of land, and two foul familiars (one tapped, one
not). He had been tapping my mine and one of my forests each turn. I drew
a stormbind; I could have played the stormbind by chopping down a tree but
I couldn't hit him with it untill next turn and even then I would only do 2
points to him, so.. I decided to atack with my lumberjack since the
familiar couldn't block putting him at 2 life, on his turn he attacked
with the two familiars bringing me to 3 life. On my turn he tapped my
forest and then asked me to tell him before I declare an attack (he didn't
tap my mine). I drew 2 cards (a land and another stormbind), as soon as I
played my land he tapped my orb. I figured something bad was coming so I
tapped both lands for mana, chopped down the other (for red) and fed both
to the orb (putting me at 7 life), I then played the stormbind and used it
to do 2 points of dammage. He had an incinerate in his hand, but it was
useless after I used the orb. I had won the winners bracket. now I just
had to wait for winner of the loosers bracket who whould have to beat me
twice in 3/5 matches. Unfortunately for me that person was Mark Justice.
You see, Mark's deck while similar in many ways, was more well suited
against me than I was against him. Of course he's also one hell of a
player. I wont go into to many details. He won the first two, I won the
next two, including a game in which I decked him (something that is not
that uncommon with my deck). In the final game he almost blew it by
playing a channel and the playing his fireball before he had used the zuron
orb to increase his life (you can't channel more life than you have and all
mana must be in your pool *before* you play the spell). But he was able to
channel 19 life into the fireball(plus 1 adition mana made it a 20 pointer)
and finnish me off and then eat with the orb. Actualy I could of gotten
uber-technical and claimed that he had to channel his life into mana
*before* anouncing the fireball, but I'm not sure that's the way I would
want to win. In the next match he quickly took three straight. I don't
know, it was like there was this strange karma in the air, and I just felt
somewhat hopeless. Oh well, at least I'm on the team and have a chance to
win the world title in a couple of weeks. The prices were fairly crappy,
considering the stakes. for coming in second I got a t-shirt, a trophy, an
advanced copy of scrye, a limmited eddition scrye life counter, 5 LG, 6 AQ,
1 DK, and 10 RV. Mark got all the same stuff I did and a cool jacket and
an Ansom Madocks original peice of art(very cool).

Thanks to Everyone from L.A. who was there to support me. Especialy Mark
Chalice who's deck inspired my version of vice age; Steve Bishop(and the
rest of the DC) for putting up with all of my crap over the weekend; Scott
Burke for letting Mark and me crash at his hotel Sunday night.

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