Gen Con 2001 Type I Tournament Report - Thursday

Just a preface – this report will be quite long-winded…you are warned.

Before I get into the actual tournament report, let me give a little background about me as a player and the situation I was in.

I started playing Magic between Beta and Unlimited (I was 15 in 1993) and have thus always had a preference for Type I. I remember the sad day dual lands went out of print, the Ice Age drought, and the black summer (Necro). Ever since graduating college (June ’99), I hadn’t had much time to play in tournaments – had a live-in girlfriend, owned part of a small consulting company, spent 9 months of my life getting Cisco certifications. So this tournament was the first Type I in a long time for me (actually, first of any type). Plus, all the online sites I used to go to for decks to playtest against were shutdown. (Luckily someone at Gen Con pointed me here). I remember the argument that brought about Type II – “Type I is so expensive and has hard-to-find cards!” The marketing people at WoTC must have fallen out of their chairs when they saw these discussions – lots of people clamoring for a tournament type consisting of only the newest cards (a.k.a. a hardcore base of customers who will ALWAYS want our newest product).

I grew up in Chicago and moved back there after college. In my last two years of type I playing, I had played control (Keeper) almost exclusively after Rudy Edwards introduced this deck to Chicago (with an odd tourney or two where I played Zoo, just for a change). Most of these tournaments were un-sanctioned, though still drew people and prizes. Not having played in awhile, I thought I would play the Zoo deck I’d tweaked. The major difference between my Zoo deck and others (at least the ones from awhile ago) was that I had replaced the savannah lions with skyshroud elite (1/1 for G, but if opponent controls any non-basic lands, gets +1/+2). In the metagame I was used to, there wasn’t mono-blue nor mono-black (the black decks would usually splash blue and/or red for the usual type I stuff in those colors: power blue, mox monkey, dwarven miner, lightening bolt, etc). So the Elite gave me an advantage against other Zoo decks using Lions or mishras (and Zoo was quite popular in Chicago).

Here’s the deck listing

4 Kird Ape
3 Skyshroud Elite
2 Mox Monkey
2 Serendib Efreet
1 Erhnam Djinn

4 Lightening Bolt
4 Incinerate
2 Psi-Blast

3 Power Blue
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Balance
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Regrowth
1 Black Vise

1 Stormbind

2 Disenchant
2 STP
2 counterspell

4 Mox (no Jet)
1 Lotus
1 sol Ring
1 Strip Mine
2 Wasteland
4 City of Brass
3 Taiga
2 Tropical
2 Savannah
4 Volcanic Island

The mana is tight – no room for a jet or for 2 more wastelands. If anything, I’d replace 1 counterspell with either Library, Tundra, or Plateau. I also considered Undiscovered Paradise (which would have helped).

My sideboard was weak – a scheduling mishap left me 15 minutes to register my deck and build a sideboard

SB
1 City of Solitude
3 Pyroblast
2 Hydroblast
1 Blue Elem blast
2 Honorable Passage
2 Disenchant
1 wildfire emissary
1 sacred ground
2 other cards I never used

Some might question the decision of Stormbind over Cursed Scroll, since Stormbind makes you discard the card. But cursed scroll rarely sits on the table long enough in the endgame to be of any use; there are too many ways to kill it (besides disenchant, there’s mox monkey and powder keg). Plus, if I can use card drawing spells/effects and not give up the ability to damage the opponent. 99% of the times I drew Stormbind, I was glad it wasn’t a cursed scroll.

Anyway, onto the tournament report (7 rounds Swiss, no top 8 playoff):

Round 1 – Mike Smith – Mono Blue.

One of the only cards I was scared of was Back to Basics – but in the metagame I was used to from 2 years ago, no one played mono in Type I except mono-red!

Game 1 – We play the usual starts for our decks: I drop a kird ape and skyshroud, he impulses and fact or fictions. Then turn 5 he drops the bomb- Back to Basics! Ugh, main deck Back to Basics. Game 1 is over pretty quickly after that.

Game 2 – I side in the pyros and City of Solitude, out with the counterspells and two skyshroud elite. He is slightly mana screwed – I strip his Island, regrow it and strip again. He dies with 1 island in play after like 10 turns. I didn’t get to see any of his sideboard (or if he even sided anything in).

Game 3 – Similar to the first game, Back to Basics killed me. I managed to disenchant one of them, but another hit soon after. At one point I had him down to where I could kill him with the cards in my hand and he only had 1 card in hand and not very many counters in the graveyard, so I decided to go for the kill. The one card was mana drain and that was it for me, since Back to Basics was out. I never saw any of my sideboard cards. It didn’t seem like he even sided anything in, other than another Back to Basics maybe.

Matches: 0-1

I was disappointed that I ran into this deck round 1, but my deck played him tough – without B2B I think I would have won game 3 and had a decent shot in game 1. Mike would end up going 7-0 and win the tournament.

Round 2 – Miles ? – Mono black Thrulls

You know how there’s always someone who just doesn’t quite realize what they’re getting into when they enter a Type I tournament? Well, this kid was it. About a 75-card deck loaded with thrulls. I won 2-0 in about 10 minutes total. He would end up going 0-3 and dropping (a constant theme among my opponents).

Matches: 1-1

Round 3 - Brad Lewis – Zoo

Brad was a really cool guy who had come down from DC/Maryland with one of his buddies. His zoo was more traditional (sav lions, serendibs, a few forces, and Zuran Orb!).

Game 1 – We swap burn and creatures. Eventually I have him down to 2 life, he has the Zuran Orb out, but only a strip mine in play. I have a bolt in hand. Now, I’m used to playing at a shop with a large group of younger kids who aren’t very sharp with the rules, so I’m always playing mentor and helping them improve. That, combined with not playing in a tournament for two years cause me to loose this match in the following way: I cast my bolt, thinking he’ll sac his land and be at 1. Instead he picks up the strip and starts looking at my land like he’s going to strip one of them (for the beginner, if he does this, he can’t sac it to the zuran orb because he sac’s it to destroy one of my lands). So with me stuck in teacher mode, I blurt out his almost blunder to him.
Immediately after I said it, I am mentally kicking myself. In a nutshell, he comes back to win this game, leaving me pissed at myself.

Game 2 – I side in the honorable passages, out with the counters. I draw 1 mox in my opening hand, no land – mulligan. Draw zero mana sources. Mulligan again – 1 land, but I keep it since I’m at 5 cards and have a bunch of 1cc stuff, including Ancestral. My next 20 cards were not land nor moxes – I lose. I guess this is more punishment for my error in game 1. I really think I have the better deck and we play 6 more games for fun – I win 5 of them. After the tournament we played a bunch of games for fun and I won well more than half of them, probably 75%

Brad would end up going 6-1, placing 3rd.

Matches: 1-2

I’m pretty disappointed so far since I haven’t had two losses in a Type 1 tournament Swiss since I went 6-2 in a couple larger ones. But I’m convinced I climb back up to the top tables and end up 5-2, possibly making top 8 (which get prizes). But things aren’t looking good as I see a whole mess of mono-blue decks around the top/middle tables (luckily they weren’t all as tight as Mike’s deck)

At this point I’m really hungry, but it’s near the end of the round (which took forever due to a Stasis vs. mono-blue control matchup). At the end of the round, two of the judges are huddling up with one of the players and making him take his Time Walk out of the sleeve. This is the worst “actual” fake card I have ever seen (by “actual” I mean trying to pass it off as real and use it in a tournament, not just use it as a proxy). This leads to a 30-minute discussion before they DQ him…

Round 4 – Jonathan - Zoo

He has mishras and jackal pup, both of which make my skyshroud elite and kird apes look like they’re on steroids. My better creatures win this match 2-0. I don’t remember too many details here.

This loss out him at 1-3 and he then dropped. Man, my tiebreakers are going to suck (and they did).

Matches: 2-2

Round 5: ???? playing Zooish Deck
This guy was from the south side of Chicago, really cool, I’m sorry I can’t remember his name. He had cursed scrolls, mishras, mox monkeys, and serendibs. More black for Demonic Tutor and Yag. Will. Again, my better creatures pulled this match win out 2-1. No real interesting plays in this match.

The previous two Zoo decks both had force of will in them.
I should re-type the game text on my own serendibs to read:

Pay 2U – If you are casting this spell in the first two turns of a game, put this card in your graveyard. Opponent loses 1 life, places 1 Force of Will in graveyard, and removes 1 blue card from their hand from the game.

I cast the serendib maybe 10 times on the 1st or 2nd turn throughout the tournament and it was forced EVERY time.

Matches: 3-2

Round 6 - ???? playing mono-blue

Ugh, not this again; A less-tuned version of the 1st round deck. This kid was nice, but his mom kept hanging around. I usually don’t swear a lot, but it seems like every time she walked over was right as I was saying “s—t”.

Game 1 – I get a ridiculous draw: something like a lotus, 3 kird apes and a taiga, can’t remember exactly. Drew so much burn after that, I think he’s still pulling char out of his hair.

Game 2 – in goes the City of Solitude, pyroblasts, and disenchants (B2B). I actually get a City of Solitude to resolve, but he soon gets a disk and I have no disenchant. I get Stormbind out (which his powder kegs can’t touch!) and start grinding him down, but he gets Back to Basics (Damn I HATE that card!) I actually disenchant it (he must have drawn crap for the last 10 turns). I’m about to beat up on him with stormbind, but he strips my savannah and lays a disk. I’ve got the last disenchant in my deck in my hand, but no white mana. He disks away my stormbind and plays morphling. Next turn I draw city of brass, ugh, one turn too late. Morphling serves.

Game 3 – I know I need this game to save my type 1 dignity. In the end, I get out city of solitude and stormbind – the only way he can get rid of them is disk. I make sure to leave several white untapped. I blow away his disks and sol ring/stormbind my way to a win.

Matches: 4-2
At this point, my pyroblasts were tremendous at backing up my key removal spells – yet neither of the two mono-blue decks had cast a hydroblast/BEB yet….hmm…

Round 7 - ??? playing mono-blue.
I’d seen this guy play earlier rounds and his deck was janky (in a bad way) and slow. He was a slow, loose player to top it all off. (by loose I mean he missed a lot of things, did things in an incorrect order, etc…). His mono-blue had morphling, mishras, but also mahamoti djinn, faerie conclave, and the land where you spend 1, tap it, to tap target land – not a strong Type 1 choice IMHO.

Game 1 – I get a decent starting hand, but draw only moxes or land for the first 10 turns or so. It still takes him 25 minutes to beat me down.

Game 2 – in go the disenchants, pyros, and city of solitude. Around turn 6, I play city of solitude with 2 disenchants and a pyroblast in hand. He asks what the City does. I tell him it will win me this game – he reads it and agrees. It wins me this game.

Game 3 – We only have 11 minutes left in the round and a draw will not do either of us any good as it looks like there will be 1 undefeated player, 2 6-1 players, and a whole slew of 5-2 players. I get the City of Solitude out AGAIN (mainly due to backing it up with pyros and he wasn’t running hydros…) and beat on him for a while. Eventually he disks. We end up both low on life. I have a serendib, he has some combination of mishras and a faerie conclave. He has one card in hand, I have a pyroblast and a lightening bolt. I kill him one turn before he would have killed me and as the judge was calling time.

Matches: 5-2

Summary – as I figured, my tiebreakers were terrible due to three opponents that I beat going 0-3, 1-3, and 2-3 before dropping. Mike Smith went 7-0, Brad Lewis and one other player went 6-1, and then there were 8 of us (places 4-11) at 5-2. I came in 11th (last of all the 5-2’s). Top 4 got cash, 5-8 got packs. But I wasn’t playing for prizes, just to get back into the Type I swing. I was happy that I tightened my play up and finished respectably after starting 1-2.

If I had to build a sideboard again for this same environment and deck, it would have been:

3 honorable passage
3 city of solitude
5 pyro/REB
2 aura fracture
1 zuran orb – I’d probably put this main deck and swap out a counterspell
1 disenchant

or possibly include seal of cleansing. Someone had an interesting idea to put in Carpet of Flowers against Back to Basics…might be worth testing.

A note about the erhnam – a lot of people don’t like him, but every time he actually resolved (about 6 games), I won all 6 of those games and he was a major factor in that.

I was never unhappy to see the stormbind, sometimes I wished I had two – it’s also my favorite card in Magic.

Notes about the deck – I’m thinking of replacing the counterspells with any combination of zuran orb, library of Alexandria, undiscovered paradise, tundra, plateau, a second stormbind, possibly another serendib.

As a side note – the dealers this year were ridiculous – “I’ll give you $3 in trade for that Vampiric Tutor. Oh you want my Vampiric Tutor, $12.” One dealer was at least up front about the fact that this was his business and he needed to make money, so on cards that he’d sell for $12 he could only give $9 in trade credit and so on. But most of the dealers there were just ruthless and I pity the people who couldn’t say “No, that’s just not a good deal for me.” Remember kids, most players just want a fair trade, but dealers do this for a living and MUST get the better deal or they will go out of business.

I think with the current environment, this deck matches up really well against other zoo and aggressive decks, but is 50-50 or so against control decks AT BEST. After play testing it (PRE-sideboard) against an OSE deck, it (the zoo deck) won about 45% (9-11) of the games. The mana base seems to be a major weakness (similar to Keeper’s issues) as well as the fact that the white cards I so loved having two years ago (STP, disenchant) are less powerful now, especially with Morphling floating around everywhere.

Trying to radically change the deck is difficult as the cards that cause my creatures to be better than other similar decks (kird apes, skyshroud, and 1 erhnam) all rely on green/forests and/or opponents non-basic lands. Removing white removes ways to destroy B2B and masticore (STP) as well as easy ways to remove large creatures (STP). Mox monkeys, dwarven miners, and savannah lions as a group just won’t cut it as main creature attacks as they just aren’t beefy enough against other non-Keeper/OSE/BBS decks. Besides Kird Apes, mox monkeys and dwarven miners aren’t a good enough reason to keep red these days (although LB & Incinerate are, as is pyro/REB in the sideboard) due to the amount of mono-color decks around (mostly Blue or Black). I’ve toyed with the idea of putting Ankh of Mishra’s in, but never gotten anything into practice.

I was considering testing a UBW version w/ savannah lions, serendibs, the usual good spells of each color (balance, demonic, Yag will, diabolic edict, force of will, big blue, etc), but I need a few more good 1-2 casting cost creatures that are worth playing with. I would also lose a finisher (Strombind) that usually wins if it hits the table (or is a must counter). For reasons mentioned above, Cursed Scroll isn’t as good in this environment IMO, even if it is colorless.

I’m big fan of versatile decks – ones that can deal 20 damage in 4-5 turns or that can drop a threat or two w/ enough removal to pave the way for the threat. Obviously dropping Red takes away the first option, but provides more stability and mid-endgame power.

Any ideas on making Zoo-type decks more consistent and powerful, please post, I like fun yet competitive alternatives to control.

Dante