i don't have a lot of time now, but out of 64, I finished 8 in the first pod at the Denver prerelease...ended up with 5 packs +2.5 others for pack rounds. 4-1-1 was my record...i can give more details later.
Good job! I was too broke to travel to Houston to play in Prerelease but I will be going to Invasion/Planeshift booster draft tourney on Sunday Feb. 4th.
our prelease had to turn people away!!! the room had over filled it's fire saftey numbers. in my pod of 100 i was still able to make it to the 5th round before dropping. i could/should have won the match though... i was hit with a 1 loss penality for being late but the kept spelling my name wrong... oh well i was able to enter drafts and get over half the set!
that sucks Vensula
ok i wont go into great detail...but i played B/R (so much for having to go with at least 3 colors with invasion, i could have splashed green, but i've played long enough to know to FOCUS)...anyway, i had more critter removal then you could shake a stick at (how bout that Terminate...BR and it destroys any critter and can't regen and it's COMMON)
anyway, i ran 7 swamps, 8 mounts and a meteor crater...10 critters, the rest removal and even 2 land destruction and 2 of those nice R1 enchantments R to pump, B to regen, G to trample...it was quite effective
my only loss (round 2) was to a woman...it was 1-1 and I got land hosed the 3rd game, so who knows...in round 4, my opponent was a no-show, so i got a free win...then in round 5, the first game lasted about 35 minutes...he won by the skin of his teeth, then I creamed him in game 2 in about 5 minutes...in game 3 we ran out of time with me at 2 life (though i had just staged a big turn around and may have gone onto win)...but still a tie isn't bad...so I was 4-1-1 like I mentioned and came away with 7.5 extra packs (we split the pack in that tie (i got the rare, but it was cheesy (can't remember the name, but during each players upkeep, they sac a nonbasic land)
I opened a deck with a grand total in all five colours of 5 removal -like effects, with only repulse and exclude being optimal.
I went 1-1-2 in the main tournament then dropped for a booster draft , where I won two rounds, then lost in the finals. The only real play error I made was trying to death bomb a card with sinister strength (forgot it became a black creat). The only round I lost featured one of the best games I had ever seen. I had a slow, mana screwed start, and at one point, I was at one life , with 1 creature out ( he had 3 ought). This was after I had cast an angel of mercy, blocked with her and repulsed her, and recast her.
I still had no black mana so I couldnt use my stormscape battlemage to make it 2-2 in creatures (with my creaures bigger). Then I remembered the white kicker, I gained another 3 life, played a constant stream of flyers, and started to serve. However , he got tahngart out , so I stalled with him at six life, and had to save my two pro blue guys for blocking. Eventually he got through. The second game was close too.
My draft deck was sickening (4 terminate, multiple battlemages), but by the time I could play the finals I was barely awake ( I only managed 4 hrs sleep the night before) and made some errors. The other guys deck was pretty powerful too though. ( I thought I'd finally get some use out of slingshot goblin, but his only 2 toughness blue creature was hunting drake, (which he would then gate back to his hand), so he essentially won by time walking me. It didnt help when I had to start recurring my nightscape battlemage to bounce his flyers (I didnt get an original draw for the rest of the game)
Lesson for the day: slingshot goblin is not as good against blue as blue is against goblin.
Lesson 2 for the day: don't put warped devotion maindeck when you have wings of hope and hobble in the sb (I forgot I had hobble, but there was no excuse for the wings, it went in almost every game 2). In one game, devotion DID save me from a gating creature, rats discard combo.
I got crushed in the third pod at Denver but I won my draft later in the day. The draft finals were rough. My opponent had two of the white enchantment that reduces damage to his creatures by one. I couldn't come close to killing anything. Game three I won with the power of Tahngarth. He came out on turn four thanks to one of my green familiars which were huge all throughout. I love those guys. Plus they bounce easy for those RG 3/4 guys, I had several and could have had many more. I was in a great mood at the end of the day and then got in a car accident on the way home. It was snowing and this guy in a truck smashed my front end pretty good. Those are the breaks I guess.
hi all. i went typical black/red/blue and finished third with a 6-1 record. pretty much rushing river won me game after game (my deck had 2) as well as bog down and that zombie that makes your red and blue spells 1 less. if i had that guy out, i could probe w/kicker on turn four, play tahngarth, or sea snidd, or whatever. long story short, rushing river is pretty broken in limited.
The Detroit pre-release was poorly run. The main tournament started over an hour late, and they didn't even run booster drafts! They were running 32 player sealed tournaments called flights, instead. I really wasn't interested in more sealed tournaments, as what I wanted was more Planeshift product. What a drag...
Um ..... boltbait, prereleases always run flight tournaments. If you had checked, you would have noticed that these where exactly like the main prerelease (1 invasion ,3 planeshift, exceot with only 4 rounds and 32 players, and excellent prize quantities (in toronto they awarded varying mubers of packs to any record of 3-1 or better in the flights), so the flight tournamnets were probably the best way to acquire product (I believe you got another prerelease card too).
They had booster drafts on an as they fill basis where I was, and I entered them just for the sake of drafting, but the prize for winning the draft was only 5 packs, so the flights were actually a better idea. I did enjoy drafting planeshift though.
I know they always run flights. This is the first time they have run them to the exclusion of drafts, however. To be fair to PES, they ran out of space to hold events, but it seems like they could have held back on 1 flight and ran 3-4 drafts in its place. That would have allowed for 3 flights and 4 drafts plus the main event. That would be enough to keep everyone happy. It's my understanding that they started drafting later on that night, but that still didn't help me out very much.
As a format, I prefer drafting to sealed. It is generally more enjoyable and also seems to cut down on the luck factor, IMO. (Wow, you got 3 Terminates, a Crosis, and plenty of burn! I got 1 Shivan Emissary, 1 Tribal Flames, and my best creature is a Sea Snidd...) The entry fees are also a factor. I can draft twice and end up paying just a little over what I'd pay for 1 flight.
On a side note, has anyone seen the artwork on the Doomsday Specter? Why would they make a Specter look like a Merfolk with wings?! The Hypnotic's artwork puts the Blazing and Doomsday Specters to shame.
I had a great time at the prerelease- I went 4-2-1 in the main event, placing 22nd out of 132.
I lost once to a grave play error, once to a dice error. Now, losing to my own errors is understandable; Losing because a life-dice got bumped at some point during game three is just nasty. Needless to say, I am no longer willing to use dice during tournament play- Had this not occurred I would have placed 6th and won 18 boosters. Argh.
Anyway, the rest of the matches were enjoyable, my opponents were all good sports and the tourney was well run. Afterwards me and a bunch of the local addicts hung out, talking trash and playing mindless casual games. Great fun.
The set itself seems fairly balanced for draft/sealed. Standard is another matter- most of the cards seem underpowered or useless, while some are almost broken (Terminate) or truly broken (Orim's Chant). Such cards as Doomsday Specter and Phyrexian Scuta are good but overrated. Still, fun set. Magic is always fun. Magic is life! ^_^
And Blazing Specter's art, bad? It looks like a Nazgul! How tight is that?!
What is a Nazgul?
JoeTzu, we'll have to meet next time in Denver, speaking of which, Greel never did introduce himself if he was there...I want to say there were only 2 of us wearing the Serra Angel shirt, both in Pod 1...who knows, maybe he couldn't make it.
quick note on a kinda cool card at the tourney, that new black Initiates...people forget it's out there and/or what it does. They see all yer swamps tapped and think they can kill yer regenerateable critter..."well now, let me tap a mountain, run the mana through the dude, making it black and regen."
Boltbait: Read the Lord of the Ring, you'll know what a Nazgul is. Or just wait till Christmas.
And while on the subject, if you got nothing to do, go see the Teaser at www.lordoftherings.net
I played in the San Antonio pre-release. Went 3-1 and 3-1 again (two flights). 14 packs. I was stupid in first flight and went B/U/W/R. Two terminate, 2 strafe. Should have been B/R/G, I guess.
Second flight I went B/W/U with Urborg Drake, Stormscape Battlemage, Salt Flats, Stormscape Apprentice, 2 x Sunscape Familiar, Cavern Harpy (MVP), and Hunting Drake. The R/G was almost as strong, but not much removal, so I fugured the evasive flyers would be better. The one match I lost was to a player who drew mad removal and then got Nightscape Master. I couldn't draw an answer before I was bounced to death. Had an absolute blast. I'm finally getting the hang of Sealed, thank goodness.
Does any one know a good web site for prerelease torunament reports? It is hard to find one now that the dojo is gone.
this one