Mercadian Masques Sealed Deck PTQ Providence MA December 11-12, 1999 How could I possibly lose? That was the question of the day. How could I get THREE Power Matrixes in 2 days of PTQ competition and STILL not make it into the final 8 on either day? It's enough to make me wonder if I should give up Magic now, before things get any worse. I'm usually pretty philosophical about luck being a factor in limited play. I know that some days you get the cards and some days you don't. And some days you play at your best and some days you don't. But when you DO get the cards and DO play well (at least for one day), you should have a shot at winning, shouldn't you? Apparently not. Here's the whole sad story. We're talking about the back-to-back PTQs at Your Move Games in Providence, Rhode Island on Dec. 11-12. Providence is a 1-hour drive from my house in Watertown, Mass, but I felt I really should go. I'd been getting such lousy cards in the first few PTQs of this limited season that I just felt that the time was right for my luck to change. Little did I know. Day 1, I get a deck back that has the following note written inside the flap of the box: "Good luck in the Top 8!". Right at the top I see the two Power Matrixes (one foil!). Wow! This is going to be a good day, I think. The rest of the cards aren't bad either. My only worry is that all the creatures are small ones and I don't have any enchantment/artifact removal. Good points of the deck are that it's two-color (B/W), nothing needs more than 5 mana to cast, I have a lot of creature removal, some Rebel-fetching ability, and some really cool combos. And then there are those two Power Matrixes. The deck I played: 2 Power Matrix 1 Charm Peddler (a mistake - I should have started with 2 of these and always sideboarded in the second one. They were great with the Deathgazer, and helped protect the Undertakers and other key creatures from direct damage.) 2 Fresh Volunteers (I went with two of these over the Charm Peddlers because they were Rebels, but my Ramosian Captain almost always got killed before I could fetch them anyway.) 2 Undertaker 1 Cackling Witch (fantastic with Power Matrix because PM gives trample!) 1 Nightwind Glider 1 Thermal Glider 1 Task Force 1 Ramosian Captain (could fetch Glider, Fresh Volunteers, Task Force, and most usefully, Ballista Squad, in addition to being a nice 2/2 first-striker on its own) 1 Alabaster Wall 1 Ballista Squad (a great ability!) 1 Trap Runner 1 Highway Robber 1 Deathgazer 1 Ramosian Rally 1 Vendetta 1 Muzzle 1 Maggot Therapy 2 Sever Soul (!) 8 Plains 9 Swamp Match 1, Matty Evans Matty had a pretty good UG deck, with a Power Matrix as well. He played his PM first. Later I played my foil one, saying, as in poker, "I see your Power Matrix...". He immediately says, "Oh, you're the one!" Apparently the guy who registered my deck told everyone at his table about the deck with two Power Matrixes, one foil, so now everybody knows it exists. By round 3, everybody knows that I (the only female player in the room) am the one who has it. Sigh. He also had at least 2 Dehydrations which he used to good effect on my spellshapers and Ballista Squad, which I had no way to counteract. In both games he played an early Indentured Djinn, but the cards it let me draw gave me the removal to kill it right away, so it was a net loss for him. I won both games: the first was a little tricky, but in the second I got out both Power Matrixes, and drew so much removal that at one point he had a lonely Spidersilk Armor with no creatures in play. Match 2, Steve Hope I was sorry to have to play Steve, because he's a friend of mine, and a strong player. (He had finished second to Hammer in a PTQ here a few weeks ago.) Steve is playing URW, with some great cards including Two-Headed Dragon, Waterfront Bouncer, Blockade Runner, Cho-Manno's Blessing, and Dehydration. But my removal comes out in time for the really bad cards, and somehow I manage to win 2 games straight. We play a third fun game that Steve wins, I think by pinging me to death with a Kyren Sniper. Match 3, Danny Mandel Danny is a nice guy who works at Your Move Games in Somerville. Danny is also playing URW, and he says he's been warned about my deck. In the first game I don't get either Matrix, and he makes very effective use of Soothsaying, going deep into his deck to pull out just the right cards to beat me. Danny is incredibly noble, and even though he has heard about my Power Matrixes, since he did not see them in game 1, he chooses not to sideboard in his artifact removal for game 2. I don't think there are many people who would do that. (I'm not sure I would have done that!) In spite of another early Soothsaying, I manage to win the second game, possibly because Danny doesn't find a plains until late in the game. But we finish game 2 just before time runs out, so we can't play a third game and the match is a draw. (Danny goes on to finish 2nd in the Swiss rounds.) I'm at 2-0-1. Match 4, Martin Lund Marty is playing a great red/green deck with a splash of black for 2 Snuff Outs. In the first game, I have no chance. I mulligan down to 6 with 2 lands, and then never draw another land (although I have a hand full of 3-casting-cost spells). Very frustrating. In the second game I get beaten fair and square by 2 Snorting Garrs, 2 Silverglade Elementals, a Deepwood Drummer, a Kris Mage, and a Kyren Sniper. It doesn't help that I draw none of my creature removal. I'm at 2-1-1. What I don't realize is that I've already played two of the best decks in the room. (Marty goes on to finish 3rd in the Swiss rounds.) Match 5, Peter Vabulas Peter is playing B/R/W. He's got some good stuff (Haunted Crossroads (with Shock Troops!) and Noble Purpose, but in both games he gets them out too late to do any good. I believe I win the second game with a flyer pumped up by Cackling Witch. An easy win, and I'm at 3-1-1. I've got to win the last round to get in the top 8, but I'm feeling pretty confident. My deck seems like it's really good (even when I don't draw the Matrixes), I have a 7-3 game record, and I can see that the only people who beat me are high in the standings. Match 6, Pablo Sierra This match was pretty much a blur to me. There were a lot of people watching, and later Helen (the keeper of the records for most of the Your Move Tournaments) told me that she and a lot of people were pulling for me, which was nice to hear. But I couldn't manage a win. My notes show that I won the first game with the help of Ballista Squad and some flyers aided by the Cackling Witch. Game 2 was a loss, with me getting him down to 8 when I was at 16, but then he came back to beat me down. For the life of me, I can't remember the details of how he did it. Game 3 was going my way. We had a big stalemate, but I clearly had the board advantage, and I still had the 2 Power Matrixes in my library. If I had been able to draw one of them, I'd've had the win, but it was not to be. We ran out of time with Pablo still at 14 life. I had not drawn either of my two Power Matrixes in any of those last 3 key games! My final score was 3-1-2, and I finished 12th. A very disappointing result. My tiebreakers were quite high, with my opponent's match win percentage at 63.7! I can't help thinking that with different matchups I might have been able to do better, but it was not to be. Second Day ---------- I drove back on Sunday, even though I knew that I couldn't expect lightening to strike twice. I thought I would just relax and have fun, but the day turned out to be more stressful than I'd anticipated. First I registered a deck with a Power Matrix in it! I just knew I was fated get it back and of course I did. So when a lot people jokingly asked me questions, I didn't know how to answer without giving it away. When someone said, "Did you get two Power Matrixes today?" I could honestly say no, but when Danny asked me how many Power Matrixes I got, I just smiled and tried not to answer. I really didn't want to be known as the person who got 3 Power Matrixes in one weekend and still didn't manage to qualify. This deck was a lot harder to build. I had some good stuff in black, but it had high black in the casting cost, so I really wanted to keep to 2 colors if possible. I finally ended up with a black/blue deck that had cool combos, but was just a little too slow to get moving and often lost to fast beatdown decks. It was kind of fun, though, once it got going. The other problem was that it took so long to get going, that even if I managed to survive the other guy's initial creature rush, the games would take too long and I'd often run out of time before I could win. It was a good lesson to me about what kind of decks not to build when the matches have a time limit of 50 minutes. Here's the deck: 1 Power Matrix 1 Cloud Sprite 1 Waterfront Bouncer 1 Overtaker 1 Indentured Djinn (yeah, I played with it, but I was careful how I used it. On the whole, I don't think I like this card much, but I was trying hard to keep to 2 colors) 2 Rishadan Airship 1 Drake Hatchling 1 Saprazzan Breaker 1 Undertaker 1 Misshapen Fiend 1 Alley Grifters 1 Deathgazer 1 Cateran Enforcer (fetches Grifters and Fiend) 1 Cateran Kidnappers (fetches Grifters and Fiend) 1 Cateran Overlord (fetches all the mercenaries. Also, his ability to sac a creature to regenerate was really a cool combo with the Overtaker - I could steal and kill one of my opponent's creatures each turn!) 1 Brainstorm 1 Counterspell 1 Soul Channeling (I don't usually play with this, but it was good on the Deathgazer, and could also be used on some of the other key cards like the Overtaker, or Enforcer) 1 Maggot Therapy 1 Sever Soul 1 War Tax 8 Island 9 Swamp 1 Peat Bog Match 1, Mike Gilmore Mike had a deck that was just perfectly tailored to shut me down. He had pingers that kept me from playing all the spellshapers and most of my flyers, and he could beat me down before I could get to the larger mercenaries. But all the while he was beating up on me, he was telling me that I had a really great deck! Don't you hate it when people do that? Match 2, Manny Morales This was the guy who had registered my deck on the previous day and had written me the little note about finishing in the top 8. I teased him a little about how he'd told everybody about the deck so everybody I played knew what I had. We played a very interesting game that lasted the whole 50 minutes. We had a big creature standoff, which I thought might end in one of us being decked (probably me, because I'd been fetching Mercenaries), but finally I got out the unblockable Cateran Enforcer. Well, unblockable except by black and artifact creatures, and Manny had a Crenalated Wall. But then I got the Overtaker, and I had the Overlord in play, so I was able to start stealing and killing Manny's creatures by saccing them to regenerate the Overlord. I got rid of the Crenelated Wall first so I could start attacking with the Enforcer. Then Manny played a Sustenance just before time was called. He was down to 5, so I could kill him on the next turn. He spent a long time pondering the situation, and assured me that he wasn't trying to run me out of time, he would concede rather than forcing a draw, he was just trying to see if there was any way he could save the day. He finally concluded that his only chance was to attack with everything, which he did. If any one thing got through, he could sac all his land to the Sustenance and kill me. I had enough creatures to block with, especially since I could steal one of his creatures with the Overlord. I decided to steal and block with his Saber Ants, since then I would get the token creatures that were created. I assigned blockers to everything and still had my Deathgazer left over. Manny asked if I was done assigning blockers. I should have taken this is a signal to check once again, but I guess I was tired and just said yes. Then a bystander made a comment and Manny said "I don't want to win like that." I asked what he was talking about, and he said that I had blocked a non-flyer with a Cloud Spirit and that was an illegal block, so the creature wasn't actually blocked, and he could just pump it with his Sustenance and win. But he wouldn't do that because he didn't want to win that way. Okay, so here's where I lost it. I heard this as "I don't want to take advantage of a girl's dumb mistake", and so I bravely insisted that I had made the mistake and he had won fair and square, and I scooped up my cards in disgust. What was I thinking? What I should have done was to call a judge. Who (as I only found out later) would have ruled that it WAS an illegal block, but I would then have an opportunity to redeclare all of my blockers. Thus I could have legitimately corrected the mistake (since I still had another creature I could have blocked with), could have prevented all the damage, and would have won on the next turn. So I lost the game purely due to wanting to be more honorable than the situation required. Let that be a lesson to you. But it gets worse. Okay, I'm totally out of contention now, but I still think my deck has possibilities, so I'd like to play on and maybe improve my rating. For Match 3, I get assigned to a guy named Dan who I've played before and I believe I can beat. Game 1 is going very well when I go to draw and come up with a green card - Saber Ants. (Remember the Saber Ants that I stole from Manny with my Overtaker?) Oh shit! I have to call over a judge and admit to playing with an illegal deck, and of course I get a game loss, and poor Manny also gets a game loss in the match he's playing. And of course I lose the second game to Dan and lose the match. My one stupid blocking error has mushroomed into a complete fiasco. The only consolation is that it's quite clear that I had no chance to finish in the top 8 with the deck I was playing, so it really didn't make all that much difference except to my Limited rating. For some strange reason I didn't drop out at this point and played yet another match against a guy with a very fast deck who finished me off quickly in two games straight. At that point I decided to slink off with my tail between my legs. Lessons Learned: ---------------- When you get into a tight situation where a game is in the balance, CALL A JUDGE and abide by his ruling. Don't punish yourself when you don't really have to. Avoid slow decks in limited play. Always double-check your deck before starting a match. It is possible to lose even when you get 3 Power Matrixes in one weekend. You can sell a foil Power Matrix for $12.57 on eBay.