Well, I'm very happy with how I did. This was my first tournament that wasn't at my local store, and I came in 13th out of 125 in the main event, which at the time felt like a huge dissapointment. Oh, the irony. :-)

Theme Song Of The Day: Passing Through, Bruce Hornsby. You may or may not find out why later on in the report.

The story begins in the parking lot of my local store, where my wonderful mother(hi mom! *waves*) picked up Fril and Cactusbit and drove us to Colombus, getting lost in the process due to the amazing non-beating that is Mapquest.

I registered probably the best deck in the room- it had Kamahl, two Muscle Bursts, two Kindles, two other miscellaneous burn spells, amazing green creatures, and a second thoughts. I finish registering, and we switch decks with the person in front of us. I open up the deck, and a SECOND Kamahl stares me in the face, along with the white 2/2 legend who sacs to remove an attacker from the game. However, there were no good burn *spells* there, so red turned out to be a splash. I was forced to play 4 creature enchantments, which is a bad sign. The plan was to beat down hard before anything resembling a bomb came out of my opponent's deck. I have no idea how I did as well as I did. Here's what I played:

7 Forest
5 Plains
3 Mountain
1 Barbarian Ring
1 Ravaged Highlands

1 Diligent Farmhand
2 Mystic Zealot(These sucked all day. They beat for one turn, then sit there stupidly until you get Threshold. Don't play them.)
1 Auramancer(with all the creature enchantments, why not?)
1 Lieutenant Kirtar
1 Blessed Orator
1 Nantuko Disciple
2 Chainflinger
1 Springing Tiger
1 Mystic Zealot
1 Krosan Archer
1 Rabid Elephant
1 KAMAHL, PIT FIGHER

2 Seton's Desire
2 Kirtar's Desire
1 Embolden
1 Shelter
1 Second Thoughts
1 Deep Reconnaissance
1 Rites of Spring

Notable Sideboard:
1 Pilgrim of Virtue

I should have had
-1 Rites of Spring
-2 Mystic Visionary
and
+1 Chatter of the Squirrel
+1 Sungrass Egg
+1 Magma Vein(What kind of idiot misses Wrath of God? My kind of idiot, apparently.)

Kamahl is a beatstick. He is the only reason that I did as well as I did. The rest of the deck is horrible compared to the power level that was at the top tables.

Round One: Robert. He is a new player, and this is his first prerelease. Frown. His life totals from game one are
20
19
16
13
7
1
-8

I wonder what in my deck could do six damage at once? Hmmmmmm. He never even dealt me a point of damage that game. Game two was somewhat closer, but not much. I win.

1-0, 2-0

Round Two: Eric. He's a new player, *but* also a very very solid one. Not your scrubbish regular new player. I win though, becuase Kamal is a beating, and because he's playing some cool but suboptimal cards.

2-0, 4-0

Round Three: Dave. I remember nothing, except that I won.

3-0, 6-0

Round Four: Lona. Yes, she was female. Yes, she was an amazing player. I eke out a win becuase my deck gives me Kamahl both games and she never draws any of the copious burn spells she shows me after the match. She also made one crucial combat error that involved a Blessed Orator(all other creatures you control get +0/+1) and some Chainflingers. Better Lucky Than Good.

4-0, 8-0

Round Five: Brain. This guy had the most broken rares I've ever seen all in one sealed. He had Some Random Huge Green Creature(Ivy Elemental or the Basilisk guy, I don't remember), Vampiric Dragon, AND Amugaba. That's quality. Game one I win becuase he plays a two-color deck. Game two I lose becuase he plays a four-color deck that doesn't need mana fixers.

Game three I barely win- it was a really amazing game. We sit there for a while trading small creatures when he discards his Random Huge Green Creature and Vampiric Dragon to go get two Islands. Of course, that means he has the Amugaba in his hand. Two turn later, he plays it out. By that time, I have Kamahl enchanted with Seton's Desire. We trade blows for a bit. I used my two Kirtar's Desires to gain tempo, then the third time the Amugaba comes down, I trade Kamahl for it when he has no cards in hand and he dies if he doesn't. I am acting meanwhile like I have nothing else in hand good. After the trade, I drop my two Thresholded Mystic Visionairies which win the game in two turns.

5-0, 10-1. I'm in third place at this point.

At this point, I have visions of Odyssey packs dancing through my head. Of course, now that I'm 5-0 with only 4 other people, I'm going to run into some viciously amazing decks that are way better than mine. Those decks also probably entail playing against viciously amazing players at the same time.

I am paired up with......

Round 6- Scott

This is one of the Egghead Games guys. Watching the match(and mocking me the whole time, natch... just because I sucked 3 years ago doesn't mean I *still* do :/) was one of his teamates(don't ask... we have a history), which really fucked up my brain to the point where I made a few idiotic errors. I obviously should have called a judge and asked for spectators to be removed. As I said, I'm new to this sort of thing.... However, I don't think I could have salvaged this match anyway- This deck was rediculous. It had, among other things, Caustic Tar, Beast Attack, Roar of the Wurm, and the black Patrarch guy.

By the way, if I sound kind of angry saying this, I do respect you if you're a better player than me, i.e. JP/Acolytec. However, I cannot respect you if you are a better player than me and don't mind letting me know that, and no, Scott was not the one who I felt was condescending.

Anyway.

5-1, 10-3 Down to fifth.

Round Seven: Karl Horn. I offer a draw or a prize split. If we draw, we both T8. If he wins, he thinks he has a chance at first. I'm almost sure he doesn't. His tiebreakers are the worst of the 5-1's, but there are few enough of us that drawing is safe. He still wants to play to try to get first and two boxes. It doesn't help that he plays at my local store and that he thinks I'm a bad player. Maybe I am, but you don't have to *tell* me that. :-P The look on his face after he saw who he was paired against *was* priceless, however. That alone was sufficient consolation. :-)

When he plays a first-turn Island, I know I'm in trouble. The only reason to play blue in this format is very good tricks and/or a broken rare. He turns out to have the tricks side of things. He has the Tapper, the instant Temporal Spring, Aether Burst, and Deluge. He also has some cool flyers. I die horribly first game to his superior ability to turn creatures sideways while all of mine are cowering in my hand or on the top of my deck or tapped in the fetal position. Second game, I have Kamahl and am all set to WIN TARGET GAME on turn six when he drops a Barbarian Lunatic and leaves the correct mana untapped. Frown. He then Peeks. Double Frown. It turns out that he didn't see Haste on Kamahl, so he taps out and I get to play him and blow up the Barbarian before it can blow up my guy. I think to myself "yay, I have a chance." I'm at 7 right now. Turns out, in his hand he has both Deluge, Aether Burst, and TemporalSpringAsAnInstant, so I lose to his 7 power worth of creatures as he attacks and then Deluges before declare blockers. He took a long time thinking about it though, so I had a judge watch us for slow play. He was not a happy camper. For all I knew, he was trying to stall his game win into a match win, so I felt I had no choice. Any comments?

5-2, 10-5

He ended up in second. Almost, but not quite.

On a side note, I think that Magic's transition from a game to an "intellectual sport" brought on some unwanted consequences. I was playing at the top tables in rounds 5-7, and everyone was just incredibly stoic, quiet, and often hostile. Has anyone else had this experience? It was very depressing. Brian from round five was very cool and talkative, but everyone else was either condescending or silent. Frown.

When standings come out, I'm in thirteenth. Cactusbit is in 15th. Fril went 3-3-drop. Honestly, if you had told me in the morning that I would do this well, I would have chuckled at you. Now, 13th was a huge dissapointment. I figured that I could probably turn my prize into an Ancestral on the spot along with the other random T2 rares that I've drafted, but no go.

Anyway. Other than my last two opponents, I had an incredible time. I'll definitely be going to more higher-level events. Hopefully they'll still be fun in a more competitive atmosphere- the last two rounds disillusioned me a small amount.