New York Pro Tour Qualifier Boston, March 14, 1998 I had my best record ever in this PTQ, going 5-0 before starting to lose and then dropping out. Even more amazing, I did this without playing red! There were just over 128 people registered, which meant we had to play 8 rounds. (If you're just skimming this, be sure to read round 6, which had my most interesting game, by far.) I agonized a bit over deck-building. In red, I got two Aftershocks and a Searing Touch (which would have worked nicely with the Vhati il-Dal), but there wasn't much else. Blue had a Counterspell and Spell Blast, and a couple of shadow creatures, but that was about it. So I finally decided to go black, white, and minor green. A Pine Barrens helped with the land, and I had two nice gold creatures that fit this color scheme. The only other green spells I used were a Broken Fall and an Elvish Fury. My deck looked like this: 17 Land: 6 Swamp 6 Plains 4 Forest 1 Pine Barrens (black and green) 16 Creatures: 1 Vhati il-Dal 1 Ranger-en-Vec 1 Bottle Gnomes 1 Phyrexian Hulk 1 Clot Sliver 1 Dauthi Marauder 2 Dauthi Slayer 1 Marsh Lurker 1 Screeching Harpy 1 Advance Scout 1 Master Decoy 1 Mounted Archers 1 Soltari Crusader 1 Soltari Lancer 1 Staunch Defenders 8 Spells: 1 Squee's Toy 1 Dark Banishing 1 Disturbed Burial 1 Broken Fall 1 Elvish Fury 2 Pacifism 1 Repentence The deck was fairly fast, with most of the creatures having a casting cost of 3 or less. There were 5 shadow creatures, 2 creatures that gained life, and 3 regenerators (one of them a flyer), along with a Broken Fall. There were only 4 spells that required double colored mana, 3 of them in black (which had 7 mana sources), so the deck was pretty reliable. I thought the first strike ability from the Advance Scout might be particularly useful for the shadow creatures and for the flyer, and also with Vhati il-Dal's ability to give the other guy's creatures 1 toughness. There was creature removal of sorts, with Dark Banishing, 2 Pacifisms, and a Repentence (although the Pacifisms weren't so great, as they often got Disenchanted/Tranquilitied, and weren't useful for stopping creature abilities). And of course, Disturbed Burial and Elvish Fury are always strong. (I must have lost Disturbed Burial to Coercions about 4 times during the day, so although I did get to use it a couple of times, I never really got a chance to get the Disturbed Burial/Bottle Gnomes recursion going.) Match 1: Gayle Thompson Gayle was playing white and red - I forget the third color. Her deck was not very aggressive, with Anoint, Invulnerability, weenie creatures, and some direct damage. In my first draw, I got 4 white creatures and only swamps and forests for land, so I decided to mulligan (the tourney was using the Paris Mulligan rule). As it turned out, the mulligan was wasted, because Gayle's first creature out was a Shocker that milled my hand anyway. I was able to block it fairly soon and get out some shadow guys that Gayle didn't have an answer for. In the second game, we had a bit of a stalemate on the ground at first, since Gayle had Anoint and had quickly gotten to the point where she could cast it twice and protect two creatures in one attack. But eventually I got out a flyer and some shadow, and was able to win again. Matches: 1-0, Games: 2-0 Match 2: Andy Mitchell Andy was a good player with a good deck who just had some bad luck. I was able to beat him down fairly quickly in both games just by getting out more stuff quicker. We did play a third game for fun, and that time he beat me fairly decisively. Matches: 2-0, Games 4-0 Match 3: Jeremy Trager The first game was close, but I was able to pull out a win. So in the second game, Jeremy played a first turn Havoc! This was not good. On top of that, most of the useful stuff I drew in that game was white, and I had to cast it, so I did a lot of damage to myself via the Havoc. Jeremy won that game. The third game went much better for me. He played an early Havoc, and my sideboarded Tranquility did not appear, but I was lucky and drew mostly black creatures and spells. I beat him down with shadow and gained a creature advantage. When I got him down to 1, I was still at 17, so I cast two more white creatures, taking 8 damage from the Havocs, just to make absolutely sure to get him on the next turn. Matches: 3-0, Games 6-1 Match 4: Moses Liskov Moses is an excellent player and a certified judge, so he has a detailed knowledge of rules issues and timing. He was playing a red/green/black deck with some great combos. However, none of them came out in the first game and I beat him down to a win fairly quickly. In the second game, he got out a great combo of Fireslinger, Mogg Fanatic, and Opportunist, thus being able to kill just about anything I could cast. This slowed me down for a while as he steadily whittled me down to 13 with a Leeching Licid that did 1 damage on each of my upkeeps. I finally put out bait to get rid of the Mogg Fanatic, was able to Dark Banish the Fireslinger, and then was able to cast some creatures. But I got out mostly ground creatures which he was able to block with his leaping Licids, so I didn't really get anywhere with them. Then he started bringing back his Mogg Fanatic with Disturbed Burial each turn. Toward the end he started playing a trick with the Licid by moving it from one creature to another during my upkeep, thus doing 2 damage to me on each upkeep. I had gotten him down to 9 when I died. In the third game, I got a pretty good creature advantage with shadow and flyers. When he was almost dead, he got out a Phyrexian Splicer, which I thought would spell my doom, but I just had too many creatures for it to deal with. So I ended up just barely winning the third game. Matches: 4-0, Games 8-2 Match 5: Matthew Ranks For Match 5 I found myself at table 1, so I was really starting to get nervous. Matthew was playing green/black/white, and in the first game he got out an early Watchdog that really slowed down my attack. While I had some shadow out, they were doing only a couple of points per turn, and I couldn't get out anything big enough to kill the Watchdog. He slowed me down enough that eventually he was able to get out his Fevered Convulsions (!) and gradually wipe out all of my creatures. He won the first game. In the second game, I decided to speed up my deck and sideboarded in two Spinal Grafts, and a Tranquility for the Fevered Convulsions. The Tranquility ended up getting used instead on a Light of Day he cast in the first few turns. Then we had a beatdown race where he was attacking with his Cloudchaser Eagle, as I returned the attack with shadow guys. I was down to 6 by the time I killed him. In the third game, the Spinal Grafts paid off bigtime. On turn 2 I cast a Dauthi Slayer which was quickly Diabolic Edicted. On turn 3 I cast a Soltari Crusader that lived. On turn 4, Matthew got out his Fevered Convulsions, but without enough land to use it. On turn 5, I cast Spinal Graft on the Soltari Crusader and attacked for 6. On turn 6, I could pump it even more and attacked for 7, getting him down to 7 life. Next turn he killed the Soltari Crusader by targeting it with Fevered Convulsions, but I'd gotten some other stuff out and was able to kill him in the next 3 turns. That was fun, but it was to be the end of my winning streak. Matches: 5-0, Games 10-3. I am now one of 5 remaining unbeaten players. Match 6: Chad Ellis Chad is a nice guy who was very apologetic as he wiped me out. The first game I simply got mana screwed. I had 2 lands in my opening hand, so I didn't take a mulligan. After that, I just did not draw a land and couldn't cast anything but a Clot Sliver. Chad was playing red/green/black, and quickly put out a couple of fatties that wiped me out in about 4 turns. Second game was longer and a lot more interesting. I got out two early shadow creatures and had him down to 8 when he got his Rolling Thunder and killed both of them. Then he started getting out fatties and got me down to 13. I still had some hope - I had a Master Decoy in play and was hoping to draw a regenerator, Pacifism, Dark Banishing, etc. But then he cast an Overrun! Not only did he wipe out all my blockers and do 11 points of trample damage, but he then proceeded to sac his Overrun-fattened creatures to his Altar of Dementia to make me mill 24 cards from my 26-card library! Next turn I cast a bunch of creatures, but they never got to attack because he then proceeded to Corpse Dance a fattie and sac it again to mill the rest of my library, making me die on my next turn's draw phase. I couldn't be too upset about losing to such a masterful stroke, although I must point out that I would have won if it weren't for the cheesy use of Rolling Thunder earlier in the game :-) At least this match was fairly fast, and I finally got a chance to run out and get some food (it being around 8 pm by this point). Matches: 5-1, Games: 10-5 Match 7, Ben Halpren Unfortunately for me, and for my chances in these sorts of tournaments, I tend to get pretty tired as the day drags on. So in this match, I started to make stupid mistakes, and I also don't remember many of the details of the games. I seem to remember that Ben had a fairly balanced deck with good creatures, some direct damage, a Puppet Strings, and god knows what else. All I can remember is that he won a game, I won a game, and then he won a game. Matches: 5-2, Games: 11-6 At this point, although I had a theoretical chance of finishing in the top 8, it was pretty slim, and I was tired and knew I was no longer playing well. I also think that my deck, although decent, was not really a killer deck, and was pretty lucky to have come this far. So I decided to drop at this point, and feel good about the boost I'd given to my DCI rating.