By Big Blue on Friday, May 25, 2001 - 05:50 pm: Since mono-U bores me I decided to play NetherVoid (this from a control player!).
First round - Pox
First game I play second turn Ritual, Ritual, Hymmn (2 swamps 
), NetherVoid und win soon. Second game we exchange some Duresses and Hymmns, he Poxes, I Keg his Scroll. Then he Duresses me but cannot take anything (1 Hyppie, 1 Negator). I topdeck a swamp and win in 3 turns. Lucky draws, indeed!
1-0-0
Second Round - Land Grant Sligh
He starts with 2 Cadets and a Miner, I duress 2 Bolts and on 6 I stop the rush with a Knight of Stromgald. After some land destruction I Vamp for NetherVoid and win in a few turns with a Negator.
Second game was A BIT odd: He starts with a Goblin Vandal and 3 Kird Apes(!!). I Vamp for Contagion on the Vandal (and an Ape) and Keg the rest afterwards. He plays a Pup, I Keg(!). He plays a Cadet, I Keg !!!(but I have got only 1 life left). I play a Hypno, he topdecks a Land and then a Land Grant. I attack, play a Hypno, he topdecks a Land Grant. I attack, play a Hypno (!), he topdecks a Land Grant (!!!).
Being on 6 and facing 3 Hyppies he topdecks a Phyrexian Furnace, sac's it, gets an Incinerate and kills me with it!
Third game I start first turn Ritual, Ritual, NetherVoid and win soon.
2-0-0
Third Round - Forbiddian
He wins the first game having played 1 Ancestral and 3 FoF (and in between a crucial Misdirection on a Sinkhole).
Second game I start the classic Dark Ritual, Hypnotic Spectre and win (who said, Morphling was better :p).
Third game I mulligan into a decent 6 card hand and manage to disrupt him a bit. A Negator resolves, but both of my Sinkholes are Misdirected. At 4 lifes he disks, and we are both in topdecking mode. He draws FoF before I can draw a creture, search or NetherVoid and wins soon.
2-1-0
Fourth Round - Matt's NeoAcademy
Oh my god! I should have won against Forbiddian with NetherVoid... I do not want to play against this deck without FoW... Well, I have a chance, of course. After all, mono-B CAN have nasty draws.
First game is short and impressing. He has an average hand and goes off on turn 3, despite my efforts with Duress, Wasteland, Necro and Negator.
Second game I start excellently with Land, Duress, Lotus, Negator. I took his Lotus and he did not recover in time (he had Braingeysir, Impulse, Lotus and some non-U mana artifacts).
Third game I mulligan into a disruptive hand with 2 Duress, Keg, Wasteland and manage to win (he is just 1 mana short of going off, though).
3-1-0
Fifth Round - Forbiddian
I am too bored to write about yet-another mono-U match. Well, for sake of completeness: First game he wins despite my Necro (but I could not get rid of a Thawing Glaciers for a couple of turns, so he was not mana screwed). Second game I win despite of his Glaciers (I wasted 1, but the second survived due to a Misdirected Sinkhole). Third
game I am again not able to Waste a Thawing Glaciers and after taking some Masticore damage (which I killed with a Vamp'ed Hymmn) we are both in topdecking mode. I draw Land, Lotus, Ritual, Wasteland. He draws an Ophidian and a Factory and eventually wins with the Snake. So much for mono-U is an auto-win for mono-B 
3-2-0
Some observations: I looked at the top 8 decks: 4 of them were mono-U (3 Forbiddian, 1 Accelerated) and 4 were mono-B (3 Pox and 1 NetherVoid)! That's kind of boring...
In view of this result I almost regret my choice of Knights of Stromgald over Negators, although against Zoo the Knights saved me. Moreover, I am thinking that probably 2 NetherVoid could be enough, but I am not sure about this. I definitely want to include 8 beasts next time (4 Hyppie, 2 Negators, 2 Knights or even 3 Negators, 1 Knight).
For reference, the deck I played (it is essentially Matt's deck, with the substitution of 2 Knights for 2 Negators):
4 Duress
4 Hymmn
4 Sinkhole
4 Ritual
4 Hypno
4 Ports
4 Kegs
3 NetherVoid
2 Knights
1 Negator
1 Necro
1 Y. Will
1 Demonic
1 Vampiric
1 Lotus
1 Mox
4 Waste
1 Strip
15 Swamp
SB:
4 Icequake
3 Dystopia
3 Contagion
3 Spinning Darkness
1 Engineered Plague
1 Negator
Suggestions are welcome, especially concerning the question whether 3 or 2 NetherVoid is better.
By Zylynth on Saturday, May 26, 2001 - 12:59 am: Keep it at 3. I've played at two and the Voids don't seem to come up nearly enough then. It's as close to a Victory card as the deck has (besides the ubiquitous 1st-turn hyppie).
Where I play, creatures are rampant and Negators seem to be too risky, so I run knights exclusively maindeck.
By Big Blue on Saturday, May 26, 2001 - 03:01 am: "creatures are rampant" - that's how I remember my metagame BEFORE this tourney - that's why I decided to compromise with 2 Knights and 1 Negator. But in view of the top 8 decks, Negator would have been better (it made a difference twice: Against zoo I would have lost 1 game with Negator instead of Knight and against mono-U I would have won 1 game which I have lost; since i went 2-0 vs. zoo, but 1-2 vs. Forbiddian this trade-offf would have paid).
By Matt D'Avanzo, the Sylvan Librarian (Matt) on Saturday, May 26, 2001 - 06:24 am: Well, glad you played Void and saw fit to write a report (one of my favorite decks ever). Wierd...the configuration you're using (basically my 2000 void deck) is super metagamed against control...and you managed to beat up all the aggro decks game one I think and lost to the control. Wierd...(yeah, Misdirection is a bitch).
No less than 3 Voids is defnitely right. You really want to see the card and don't want to burn a tutor for one every game (seeing as you have cool stuff like Will and Necro to tutor for). Also against control they are your anti-abyss card...you really want more than 2 since they will be countered at all costs. Also things like Seal of Cleansing...
I've altered my Void deck several times since the primer. I want to post it, but I'm not quite happy with it yet. I think Hymns, as good as they are, are going back to the sideboard and Pump Knights (to round out the 2cc slot) and more true landkill spells are coming back in. I think the deck needs more agression like the old Void decks. Not that this version isn't effective, but eventually I notice I was winning most games due to discard and Negators--not the landkill and ceretainly not the Voids....in which case I might as well play Suicide Black since that archetype is better designed to produce and take advantage of that scenario.
--Matt
By Big Blue on Saturday, May 26, 2001 - 01:00 pm: I actually like this version very much, because it is unpredictable in each match whether it will behave like Suicide Black or a controlish Landkill deck. And with Tutors and the order of Landkill/Discard you have the choice how to play it. Against aggro I played it very controlish (the draws helped a bit, too), against Combo and Control Suicide Black. In fact, I never ever had a NetherVoid in play except for the games in the first two rounds.
And yes, it is quite strange that I lost the two mono-U matches, but Misdirection and OPHIDIAN in conjunction with FoF's were too much. And that stupid Thawing Glaciers...
One match I probably lost due to an error. I'll describe the situation and ask what you would have done:
Me:
in play: 6 Swamps, 1 Port, 1 Necro
in hand: 2 Hymmn, 1 Sinkhole, 2 Hypno, 1 Negator
He:
in play: 7 Islands (1 tapped) (early Glaciers...)
in hand: 1 topdecked card
What would you play?
By Meridian (Meridian) on Saturday, May 26, 2001 - 01:13 pm: I would have played the either a hyppie or a negator in that situation, depending on how many counterspells he had already used. Hyppie if he still had a bunch in his deck, negator if not.
By Meridian (Meridian) on Saturday, May 26, 2001 - 01:15 pm: Oh wait, no you have 6 swamps? Hyppie to take his counterspell, and then Negator. I'm guessing you tried to hymn him and he misdirected it.
By Big Blue on Saturday, May 26, 2001 - 01:47 pm: Well... You are right, of course.
Point is, I wanted to Sinkhole him, and to "protect" myself against a Counter/Misdirection I Hymmned him (you know, after several frustrating rounds of Glaciers I REALLY wanted to destroy some lands)
The funny thing is, that he took the other Hymmn and the Sinkhole - so at first glance my error did make little difference - so I played Hypno, but he Kegs (I forgot to mention this card, sorry), I played Hypno and Negator, he topdecked FoF into Masticore/Morphling and next turn he kills Hypno with the 3 pile Masticore and afterwards Negator (I am stuck on 1 life at this point). I sac Necro, Negator and some land and topdeck a useless Sinkhole.