Redmond Qualifier 9/20

Gavin is right, I should write a tournament report on this. For now, this will do.

Dan Hanson is the man and comes up with great decks. I told him hunter won't work, he asked why?, and I really didn't have a good answer for him. We tested, and Ice Trap was ridiculous, so I said I would play the deck. I'm not going to include an exact list for his sake. Luckily the deck was awesome and I did well despite never having cast a hunter spell, ever, never ever, before round one of the tournament.

Round 1: Alex - Aliance Fire Mage
This isn't the first time I had faced Alex round one.
Game one we gets me pretty well locked under a Voidfire Wand. I have an Orders from Lady Vash I can possibly get going to get out, until he plays a Weeble to activate both of my Sigil of Krasuses. (Krasi?) I manage to draw pressure that he can't deal with in the form of Ras'fari, and I Thrill of the Hunt the Weeble.

Game two he gets me on lockdown and I can't get out. Game three I get enough pressure, I think it was Quantum Blade this time, and I get enough damage through. Key play of the match was Alex playing a Scrapper and using The More the Scarier on his own guy to kill my two guys. Bravo. There was also an awesome turn somewhere in there where I played Flamebender Ta'jin and took his Invocation, but he Cipher of Damnationed into that 6CC scryer thing that sabotages abilities.

Round 2: Desecrator...can't remember name. O o o I think its Derek.
I don't remember a lot about game one. I know he used his Hero flip at an awkward time, just straight up killing a Tatulla, which let me use Thrill of the Hunt effectively on a different guy later. That MIGHT have been game two...anyway I won.

Ok speaking of game two here is an awesome situation: I have 8 resources in play, which include two Minions of the Shadow Council, each with 0 counters on them. I have a random dork like Tatulla in play. I am on the back foot, at 21 hp, to his close to zero. He plays his 9nth resource and plays Lady Vashj. He rolls his die and hits a 6. Best part of this whole situation is the fact that he rolled a 6 was worse for him than if he rolled a 1.

I untap and run my three creatures into three of his tokens. Tatula, Webster, and Doshura get in there. This fills up my minions. I flip a minions and luckily draw a Thrill of the Hunt I was looking for. I play a Marksman Glous, and use the remaining four to Thrill the Lady (as I am often known to do...I'm reusing this for my article), and untap all 9 of my resources. I then Brok a token, Brok another token, inspire my other Minions on his turn, and draw another three cards...GG! My board is huge now and he dies...maybe it would have been better had the lady vashj never hit play!

Round 3: Phosphus - James
We had a close match, and I can't remember every detail. I won game one by just attacking his face because he won the roll but chose to go first. Quantum blade came down on the 5th turn and hit him three times. Brok finished him off on like turn 8, and we were both surprised he went down so quickly.

Game two he stopped me pretty good, and I'm pretty sure I got locked out.

In game three I Ice Trapped his first Voidfire Wand attack. I used my Hero flip to hit the second attack. I beat him down with quantum blade. He got rid of it and I had him at 24 with nothing on the board, and he has a small hand with no quests. He has three open, and I have a quantum blade in my hand. I say go, hoping he will tap out enough so can get under a nether fracture, maybe the right play, maybe not. I draw a Ras'fari, and play the quantum blade. He nether fractures it. I draw another quantum blade (number 3 i'm pretty sure), play it and he has another nether fracture. Next turn I play the Ras'fari and he doesn't have another Nether Fracture, so I win! Luckily he couldn't get to a Doshura in time. I made a mistake by not playing the Ras'fari first, because having quantum blade is better if he has Doshura, but that didn't happen.

Round 4: Kevin - Alliance Holy Priest [Edit: Paladin, that is...and uh apparently I'm an idiot, has name is Matt]
Mm, a good ol' fashion aggro deck. These matchups make me love Doshura, Ice Trap, and Bloody Welcome.
Unfortunately I never drew a spell game one, I was all allies. I played Webster on turn three, and webbed his Glous. He attacked my Tyrenius with his Zandar, holy shocked to prevent the damage and kill the webster. What a beating, this matchup is entirely dependent on the number of Holy Shocks he draws, because that card is nuts. I lost the game on my fourth turn when I played Doshura and killed the Marksman Glous instead of the Xandar. I really didn't know xandar had elusive until I tried to attack him, so had I just killed the Xandar right there I would have taken roughly 8 less damage by the end of the game. Oh well, we learn.

I get Ice Trap on his Quantum Blade in game two, flip my hero to do it again, and win the game without taking a single point of damage.

Game three was a lot closer, but he didn't have Holy Shock on a pivotal early turn of the game. He fell a bit too far behind, instead of throwing me way behind had he had Holy Shock. I don't remember much else about this game.

Top Four: Kevin Lambert - Desecrator
Yuck, Kevin knows what the hell he is doing, more than me. Frown Town
I had a Quantum Blade, right on que, and one of my maindeck Ta'Jin Flamebenders on a Serpent form. I got enough beats going that Kevin was on the back foot, and the deck just kept the pressure up.

I didn't have much going on in game two, we were pretty much bouncing off each other. I had Quantum Blade, but I ran out of a deck. he played that 8 mana 4/8 guy that can heal 14 or deal 4 damage, then followed that up with a Lady Ishana. Yuck! Can't win this one.

Turn two guy (i'm pretty sure), Turn 3 Webster, turn four Tatulla your Helm, Turn five Quantum Blade (because I leave them in my lap apparently) and turn six Flamebender his Serpent Form...all on a mulligan! Nice hand me. Nice hand. Interestingly I never drew an Ice Trap the whole match, but It probably only would have mattered in game two. Just interesting.

5-0 baby! We split in the finals, Kevin [edit: er...matt] with Paladin, and I'm going to Realms! Wish me luck.

P.S. I almost never drew Bloody Welcome all day. I can't remember a single guy I killed. However, it did straight up win me two games when I cast Bloody Welcome on my own Ras'Fari in two different matches. Synergy!

P.S.S. Sorry if I misreported a match. I hadn't thought about writing a report, so I didn't take notes or ever try to remember a game. Feel free to correct me.

Psh, I'm fairly sure round 4 was Matt Ilon with agro holy Pally (and in the finals). I have to defend those other Matts, you know.

I swear other people responded to this. I swear I went back and fixed the Paladin thing. Was it all a dream?

Yes!

And it was still the other (other) Matt, not Kevin

Ohhhh that's funny. I knew his name was the same as somebody else in the tournament...but it was Matt! Not Kevin! Ohhhhhhhh man....

Still slamming my head against a table for breaking my own voidfire lock that one game, argh! Oh well, that’s what happens when I play without sufficient sleep the night before.

And that's why I never concede to a Voidfire wand. Heck, there was that match at a regionals where my opponent Terrok's shadowstaffed me, so I gave him a Parvink. I knew he had Tatula from an Eye of Kilrogg, so there was no point saving my Banish to Nether for his Wand. I banished my own Parvink, and a few turns later he wand locked me. Completely locked down, no hand, no quests. He was so confused when I didn't concede, he played Tatula just to speed up his kill. I said "Tatulla targeting me?" He said "yes." I said "sacrifice my banish to nether, get parvink back, draw a card." He said ""

Anyway, didn't draw what I wanted, lost, but you have to try! The key to Voidfire Wand control, or any control deck really, is patience. Wafo-Tapa designs the best magic control decks and wins with them because he is willing to play as long as it takes. He plays at a fast speed, so the clock isn't a worry, and doesn't get in a hurry. (Rhyme!) The moment you get in a hurry you can give your opponent the tiny edge he was looking for.

That's one of the problems with control decks, you have to be on top of your game so you can play quickly. That's one thing I would recommend to you Alex is trying to play faster. I might just be saying this because its so easy to play against the voidfire wand decks, because you have so few cards, so my turns seem short in comparison, but I think you could speed up in general.

Also, Alex, try not to let the other guy get to you. I tend to be hard on you during a match, pushing you about time and play speed, asking "so what are you doing?" or something. Or sometimes I harp on you about takebacks, like making you stick to the resource drops that you make, or at least getting a little hard and saying "ok, that's the last time." While I honestly do care about the clock, and I honestly do care about you playing clean (because its so easy to be shifty with your resources, but I KNOW you're not cheating), I do it also because I know it will throw you off your game a bit, and I can get that edge like I got in game one.

Is this shifty of me? I guess what I'm trying to say is: play fast an clean and you don't have to worry about it, I won't have anything to push you about.

It’s cool, the way most people play doesn’t really bother or affect me much at all. I remember playing against way more pushy and impatient guys during my MTG days. The exception of course, is if someone is sincerely trying to be an asshole—not to gain an edge or psych someone out, but rather to insult/annoy/put other people down, as was the case of my last opponent in continentals day2 and the guy at PAX who blew a fuse over a lost game. There isn’t anyone I can think of that’s like this in our local playgroup. Anyway, I believe the most detrimental thing that affects my gameplay is myself, specifically the lack of sleep I enter many tournaments with…

That's one of the problems with control decks, you have to be on top of your game so you can play quickly. That's one thing I would recommend to you Alex is trying to play faster. I might just be saying this because its so easy to play against the voidfire wand decks, because you have so few cards, so my turns seem short in comparison, but I think you could speed up in general.

Bryant really needs to read this.

Solusek wrote:

That's one of the problems with control decks, you have to be on top of your game so you can play quickly. That's one thing I would recommend to you Alex is trying to play faster. I might just be saying this because its so easy to play against the voidfire wand decks, because you have so few cards, so my turns seem short in comparison, but I think you could speed up in general.

Bryant really needs to read this.

He needs to follow it, which is different than reading it

wrotesfortcgplayer wrote:I swear other people responded to this. I swear I went back and fixed the Paladin thing. Was it all a dream?

Yeah, my post disappeared...

???

Well, yours was deleted because we hate you.

Jokes!