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Tournament Report Steven Cantrell Galactic Quest in Lawrenceville, Georgia Saturday, February 26, 2005 Five Dollar Entry Fee Fourteen Duelists Matches best 2 of 3; 5 Swiss Rounds I spent the past week testing and tweaking an interesting Light/Nature deck. It abuses the combination of Elf-X and Mist Rias, then sweeps the opponent all at once with Diamond Cutter. However, the deck (which still remains nameless) was far from ready for tournament play. So yes, I used the same old Murky Riptide as usual. My beloved Black/Blue control has been reliable and solid, and will remain my deck of choice far into the foreseeable future. Last week was not DCI at all, contrary to what I had thought. Today we had a smaller turnout than usual because some of the regular characters (Lee, Austin, Florio) were missing in action. Galactic Guest is such a great store though, that the owner decided to make up for the absentees by entering himself. Darkness [20] 4x Bloody Squito 4x Horrid Worm 4x Locomotiver 4x Death Smoke 4x Terror Pit Water [20] 4x Aqua Guard 4x Aqua Hulcus 4x Corile 2x Crystal Paladin 2x Crystal Lancer 4x Brain Serum Total: 40 Mana Curve: 3.8 Incase you haven’t read my other reports, the Murky Riptide is my favorite variant of Black/Blue control. Early blockers to hold off rush, hand control, draw power, and creature kill all in one! So I got to the store an hour early to practice, trade and such. Not much happened before the first round. Round One: Vs Kyle Puttkammer (Red/Blue/Green) Kyle is the aforementioned owner of Galactic Quest. I was unsure of what to expect coming into this match having only dueled him a handful of times before. In Kyle’s own words, his new deck was “inconsistent”. Unfortunately (for him) that proved to be true in our match. The first game started off very slowly due to my expensive opening hand. Kyle pulled off some nice draw power and mana gain, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Eventually he fell to a swarm of Horrid Worms. The second duel started well for him with Hulcus and multiple Terahorns. Later on he summoned Niofa (horned beast evo) but I held it off for a few turns with blockers. Nofia caused Kyle to become so absorbed in attacking my shields that he left his own open to MY beatstick. Lancer finished him up. Afterwards we spent a little time discussing his deck, and I’ll just say it was very “interesting”. Record: 2-0 Round Two: Vs Matt Gracek (Blue/Green with Triggers) I had to play this kid again?! Matt already lost to me last week, but this time he was using a different (and not much better) deck. My goal for this match was to win so I could pull away from him in the DCI standings. Right off the bat he let Barkwhip loose on my shields. If Matt knew anything about beating control, he wouldn’t have given me such a big hand to slaughter him with. I promptly Corile’d his Barkwhip to gain tempo. Then Locomotiver and Horrid Worm has fun trashing his hand to oblivion. The next duel went roughly the same way with me controlling his every move. But when I got greedy and tried to sweep his shields, I hit Holy Awe (of course). Next turn he summoned an evo to win duel two. After that Matt was in for a pounding. He only made my job easier by playing all 4 Holy Awes as mana, which gave me every reason to take all his shields at once. Record: 4-1 Round Three: Vs Tyler Smallwood (Blue/Red Cyberlords) This is the guy who Lee swore he would “personally reprimand” for cheating at the 5 Civs. Smallwood is strong as far as dueling goes and a good deckbuilder as well. I unfortunately have a poor track record against him in tournaments. This week Tyler built a strange deck, but effective nonetheless. Then again, all decks with the eternally br0k3n Illusionary Merfolk are effective. Our first duel started badly for me because he switched some shields around with Emeral before dropping the 3-draw bomb. Somehow I hung in there and battled back despite suffering the evils of Pokolul. When we came down to the closing turns, both of us were topdecking with no shields. I had out Horrid Worm to smack him on my next turn and Aqua Guard waiting to block his Rothus attack. So he pulls Crimson Hammer, kills my blocker, and cuts me off short. The next duel I got too uptight and tried to overthink everything. I don’t think anything I did would have mattered anyway because he used Merfolk about three times. Record: 4-3 Round Four: Justin Couch (Red/Green Rush) Justin (tournament organizer) is definitely one of the top players at Galactic Quest. He’s always experimenting with new decks concepts and this week was no different. Props to him for getting or metagame out of a rut. This match was over almost as soon as it started. Both duels went along these lines: Justin lost his own hand quickly and broke some shields to fuel mine. (Why do people keep doing that?) Bloody Squito was amazing on defense as well as being wave-proof. Then my control took over mid game to stop any comeback attempt. Horrid let me take out his shields carefully so his hand would not get big enough to dump multiple speed attackers. Justin got a bit frustrated but I would be too if I lost like that. Record: 6-3 Round Five: Ramsey Payne (Blue/Green with Awes) I dueled Ramsey at the Five Civs when we both used these same decks. He was the only person in the first five rounds to beat me, so I did not want a repeat performance. Duel one was mine easily. Barkwhip took a few shields early (see a trend?) before I took over the field with Corile, Horrid Worm, and the rest of the gang (see another trend?). You just can not win by drawing the same Torcon multiple times when your field is blank. For duel #2 refer to duel #2 versus Matt Gracek. I got a bit cocky and ran into another game altering Holy Awe. So we went to game three with me needing a win to secure any type of prize. To make this explanation simple, his deck fell apart and mine did what is was supposed to. Record: 8-4 The Aftermath: My record of winning 4 of 5 matches was good enough for 2nd place. I got two packs plus one for entering, but there wasn’t anything special in them. I pulled some good trades to get Doublagyser (need to playtest), 2 more JDC Chaos Worms, and a few other foils. Not a bad day overall. Sadly though, I won’t be able to play next week and possibly some time after that. Props: Second place finish Black/Blue for being the best deck out there Everyone I playtest against online Slops: Mist Rias deck not turning out right Lee was sick so he didn’t come Losing to Smallwood again in a key match AIM me at Smcman7 anytime if you want a friendly duel or PM Thrash-494 on the Realms to set a time. I hope you enjoyed my report and if you want to meet some of these great people, stop by Galactic Quest any Saturday at noon. Directions are on the website www.galacticquest.com . |
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