Rome Pro-Tour Qualifier 
Boston, Sept. 19, 1998

Okay, let me say right up front that I don't have a lot of constructed
deck experience, so if you want to read about how the winners play, give
this tournament report a miss. But I did play against some interesting
decks and learned a few things, so if you're a scrub like me, you might
find something interesting here (if only by reading what my opponents
did). 

One of the reasons I've never gotten much into constructed deck play is
that I don't have a group to playtest with, and there's only so much you
can learn by reading the Dojo and playing against yourself. So my main
purpose in entering the PTQ was just to gain some playing experience
against real-world decks, and to see what was out there. As it turned
out, I got matched against a number of interesting and original decks,
and against players who were quite willing to talk a bit afterward and
give me some tips. 

This Boston Rome PTQ was a 1-slot qualifier with 71 entrants. I am not
yet a skilled deck builder, so I 'borrowed' the deck played by
Jean-Louis D'Hondt that finished in the top eight at a recent Grand Prix
in Lisbon. It was an all-blue Tradewind deck with a lot of
creature-stealing, some counterspells, a couple of flyers, Rootwater
Hunters, and Curiosity for card-drawing. Manakins and Wall of Tears
provided mana, weenie defense, and fodder for the Tradewind Riders and
the Helms of Possession. I made a couple of minor tweaks, mainly because
I thought the deck needed a little more land. (I'd done a lot of test
draws, and the original land configuration of 19 islands and 3 Stalking
Stones just seemed too unreliable, even with the aid of the Manakins.)

The deck I played:
21 Island
3 Stalking Stones 
4 Manakin
3 Wall of Tears
4 Rootwater Hunter
4 Tradewind Rider
2 Fighting Drake   
2 Mana Leak
4 Counterspell
2 Forbid
4 Legacy's Allure
3 Helm of Possession
2 Curiosity
2 Capsize 
Sideboard:
4 Propaganda
4 Jinxed Idol
2 Legerdemain 
2 Mana Leak
1 Capsize
1 Wall of Tears
1 Interdict

The deck performed reasonably well (I won one game out of every match,
at least), but the creature-stealing elements turned out to be virtually
useless, because nearly every deck I played against was just packed with
creatures that could be easily sacrificed for little or no mana, such as
Bottle Gnomes, Blood Pets, Mindless Automatons, and so forth. I don't
know if this is universally true, or if I just had the bad luck to get
matched up with the wrong decks.

First match was against Alex Buck, who was playing an all-black Grave
Pact/Oath of Ghouls deck with hordes of sacrificial creatures, including
Blood Pets, Thrull Surgeons, Rats of Rath, Morgue Thrulls, plus Diabolic
Edicts and an extra-special surprise Revenant (Flying, */*, where
*=number of creatures in your graveyard).

In the first game, he did some early damage to bring me to 12, then he
got out a Grave Pact, and we got into a huge long standoff. He was able
to kill everything I brought out, either with Diabolic Edict, or by
sacrificing a weenie to invoke the Grave Pact. On the other hand, he
couldn't play anything really threatening, because I'd built up some
monstrous Legacy's Allures. Not knowing about his Revenant, I wasted the
Allures to get rid of some pesky smaller creatures, and then he
surprised me with the Revenant when I couldn't counter. At this point he
had 13 creatures in his graveyard and I had 11. I still had a Helm of
Possession and a Wall of Tears to sack to it, so I thought I was all
right, but then I made a fatal error of timing.

He was attacking with the Revenant and a Rats of Rath. I should have
just used the Helm of Possession, sacking the Wall, to steal the
Revenant. But no, what do I do but block with the Wall, thinking that I
would sac it to the Helm after assigning blockers. But of course that
didn't work, since he had priority as the active player, so he could sac
the Rats first, and then the Grave Pact effect would kick in faster than
I could respond, and make me sac my Wall before I could use it as fodder
to the Helm.

Alex took the time to explain this to me carefully, and offered to call
over a judge. After thinking it through, I realized he was right, but
Tony had noticed the discussion and had already wandered over to see
what was going on, so we explained it to him, just to be sure. This was
a game-losing error, since the Revenant was 13/13 and I was at 12.
Gah! Well, I said I wanted this to be a learning experience...

In game 2, my deck really clicked. I got out the Tradewind and a flyer,
and enough creatures to use the Tradewind, and a Curiosity to put on the
flyer. So I was drawing 2 cards a turn, enough to power a buyback Forbid
every turn, and bouncing stuff with the Tradewind every turn. I managed
to counter his sideboarded in Bottomless Pit, and even managed to draw
my one and only sideboarded Interdict to counter his Thrull Surgeon
sacrifice (which would have lost me my Forbid). It was great to get a
chance to see how the deck could go when everything went well.

On the last turn before the end, I accidently saw the next card of my
library when I drew. I admitted this to my opponent, and invited him to
call over a judge. Rob Dougherty responded, and asked who had noticed
the infraction. When I said that I had noticed it, he said that I would
only get a verbal warning this time, but if it happened again, I would
get a written warning and a game loss. That seemed fair to me. What
surprised me was that he didn't ask me to reshuffle my library. I was
perfectly willing to do so, since I certainly wasn't counting on the
card that I saw, but he said it wasn't necessary. 

Because we had taken so long with game 1, we only had about 10 minutes
for game 3, and I let myself feel rushed and made a few mistakes. He got
me down to 8 before I got enough blocking out and started to do damage
slowly with a single flyer. I got him down to 11 when time was called.
He felt that he had the edge because he had a Grave Pact in his hand and
was about to topdeck a Bottomless Pit, and I had run out of
counterspells, and he may have been right. But I was happy to get the
draw.

Match 2 was with George Carroll, who was playing a very interesting
deck, but I didn't get to see much of it in the first game. Once again,
I got the Tradewind lock going, and kept bouncing his Mox Diamond back
into his hand. He had an amazing amount of land, and was able to keep
discarding land to get the Mox Diamond back into play, but he was never
able to get enough other stuff out. Then I started attacking with a
Manakin enchanted with Curiosity to draw extra cards, and when I got
enough land to turn my Stalking Stones into a creature, he conceded the
game. About all I saw this game was a Wall of Blossoms and a Winter's
Grasp. I hadn't expected to see much land destruction, so I was glad I
had upped the land count in my deck.

Game 2 was odd. He got out an early Torture Chamber, so I didn't want to
bring out a creature of my own. Then I noticed that you can only use
Torture Chamber against another creature, and since there were no
creatures in play, the Torture Chamber was really doing damage to my
opponent every turn. (He admitted to me later that he had made a big
mistake here, by casting Torture Chamber when there were no creatures in
play and he had to way to get rid of it.) So, as George pointed out to
me later, I should've just done nothing and let the Torture Chamber do
its thing. But no, I had to get aggressive, and at the end of one of his
turns, I made a big mistake of my own by tapping out to make a Stalking
Stones a creature. So what does he do, but play Boil. Gosh, that was
dumb! All my islands were gone, and in a few more turns, he got the
Stalking Stones, also.

That was pretty much the game. I was never really able to get much going
after that For one thing, he put an Erratic Portal in play. So I
couldn't really play a creature without having a couple of extra mana
free to keep it in play. Plus, I was trying to keep mana free to counter
any further Boils. Plus, I knew he had land destruction, so I couldn't
just keep 2 islands untapped for a Counterspell, but would need an extra
in case of Winter's Grasp. Since I'd won the first game, there was no
advantage in conceding, so we played it out. But I never had a chance
after the Boil.

Third game, I got out a few things, but he drew an early Boil. I had
thought I was safe tapping out to cast a Rootwater Hunter when he had
out only two forests, but I'd forgotten that with a Mox Diamond, he
could get out two mana producers in one turn. Sure enough, the next turn
he played a Mox Diamond and a Mountain and Boiled. I still had land in
my hand, so was able to build up a bit more, but he Shocked the Hunter
and soon Boiled again. Once I was completely without any land, I tried
to concede, but Tony ruled that you couldn't concede the third game,
even if it was hopeless. So we played it through, and I got a chance to
see how the deck worked. It seemed to be based on land destruction and
Erratic Portal, with a selection of useful creatures that Erratic Portal
could be used to recast: Wall of Blossoms for card-drawing, Anarchist to
get back sorceries, Cartographer to get back land tossed into the
graveyard by Mox Diamond. He used the Mox Diamonds and Harrow to get the
right mana quickly, since he was playing with at least three colors.
There were Shattering Pulses for buyback artifact destruction, Shocks
and Dark Banishing for creature removal, and probably something for
enchantments also. I finally died to a Cartographer and a couple of
Anarchists.

(Actually, this deck showed me some good ideas for a land destruction
deck I had been working on. I've been playing around with red/blue land
destruction, with Anarchists and Scriveners, and with Ransack to prevent
drawing additional land and Evacuation to bounce creatures cast before
the land destruction kicked in. Erratic Portal would be an obvious good
addition.)

Third match was with Joe Brown, a good player I'd run into before at
Your Move Games. Joe was playing another interesting deck. It started
out looking like a simple red/black weenie rush deck, with a lot of
creatures and some burn. In the first game, we both got out creatures -
I had some flyers and he had a bunch of Fireslingers and Mogg Fanatics
that kept me from casting my Manakins and Rootwater Hunters. He tried to
cast a Seismic Assault, but I was able to counter it. We whittled each
other down in tandem, and at the end, I started casting Manakins and a
Rootwater Hunter, just to get him to use his Fireslingers to do damage
to himself. (And if he didn't, I'd at least have some chump blockers.) I
finally got him to 0 while I was still at 8. 

I sideboarded out some of the vulnerable creatures, and sided in the
extra wall and the Propagandas. Also the Interdict.

Second game started out similarly, but when Joe was at 18 and I was at
20, and there wasn't much on the board except my two Legacy's Allures
and his Seismic Assault (which I had been unable to counter), he cast a
Necrologia for 17! That was quite a bold move, but it was effective. He
filled his hand with cards, and if he'd gotten 10 lands, I'd've been
dead right there. As it was, he got 6 lands, which he threw at me for 2
points of damage each, plus a Shock, so I was down to 6. Of course, the
Necrologia had put him at 1, so I thought I might have a chance. But
once again, I had the problem that every creature he put out he could
sac, so my Legacy's Allure couldn't steal anything, and I couldn't seem
to topdeck an attacker of my own. Even though he had to discard a bunch
of cards at the end of the Necrologia turn, he still had filled his hand
with 7 choice cards, which gave him a big advantage. Plus, he was still
able to do 2 with the Seismic Assault for every land he drew. So he got
me down to 0 before I could manage to do even 1 point to him.

In the third game, he Necro'd early for 7, and got out a Mindless
Automaton that he was able to build up pretty quickly. I had a Helm of
Obedience, and two Propagandas, but no creature to sac or use to block,
so I couldn't do anything to stop the 5/5 Automaton from killing me in 4
turns. (Maybe it had been a mistake to take out those Hunters and
Manakins.)

So at that point, at 0-2-1, I decided to drop out. I was pleased that
I'd won at least one game per match, and my head was spinning with all
the details of strategy that I'd learned.

Props to Your Move Games for running a smooth tournament, as always, and
to all of my opponents, who played fairly, and who were all very willing
to talk a bit afterward and give me some advice. (And if anyone reading
this wants to give me more advice, please send me e-mail - I'd be happy
to hear it!)

Friendly grumbles to Darwin Kastle, who told George to put Boils in his
sideboard. ;-)

Slops to everyone who went right home after dropping out instead of
entering any of the side tournaments that were offered. It would have
been nice to play a bit for fun after all of that intense concentration.
Hey, the Pro Tour isn't _everything_, guys!