all your report are belong to us

Listen well my children, as now my tale shall begin.

At around 3:00 on Saturday, my friend and future roomate Freitag drops by my
place and picks me up. Somehow, I bribed him in to driving me all the way to
Torrington, CT -- The location of Rayamfishman's apartment. I arrive, and much
playtesting is performed.

I suffer some humiliating losses to Ray's Rector concoction, and so I'm making
the internal decision to play Dragon instead of Germbus at the tournament. Alas,
I realize I've not brought my dragon stuff with me, and Ray despite having like
every card ever doesn't have any spares kickin around. I consider just tossing
something interesting together but, thankfully, laziness prevails. I tweak my
'Bus sideboard, pwn some scrabble action, and crash on Ray's couch.

I get woken up at 8 for a pre-game warmup, and do some hygenic stuff before
heading out for chow with Scott Hughes while we wait for Ray to get ready to go.
We're running a couple minutes late at this point, so we fill out deck reg in
the car, and arrive ten minutes after twelve ready to rush in and play. Half an
hour after I turn in my deck reg, we get started. Mise.

This is what I handed the gentleman behind the counter as my deck. It was wicked
tight.


Germbus

4x Force of Will
4x Mana Drain
4x Brainstorm
3x Cunning Wish
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Time Walk
1x Fact or Fiction
1x Mystical Tutor

3x Skeletal Scrying
1x Yawgmoth's Will
1x Mind Twist
1x Demonic Tutor

3x Exalted Angel
2x Swords to Plowshares
1x Balance
1x Decree of Justice

2x Gorilla Shaman

1x Black Lotus
1x Sol Ring
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Ruby

1x Library of Alexandria
1x Strip Mine
4x Wasteland
4x Flooded Strand
3x Tundra
3x Underground Sea
2x Volcanic Island
2x City of Brass

SB: (This sideboard was money. I used everything in it at least once, and never
wished I had something that I didn't.)
3x Red Elemental Blast
2x Disenchant
2x Rack and Ruin
1x Blue Elemental Blast
1x Plagiarize*
1x Gush
1x Fire/Ice
1x Skeletal Scrying
1x Coffin Purge
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Swords to Plowshares

Plagiarize was an absolute house. But I'll get to that later. For now, suffice
to say it was Samite Healer tech that I borrowed and owned face with.

Ashok announces the pairings and.... we're off!


Round One: Dyannah (DyannahtheUntouchable) with Sui
I feel kinda bad beating up on Dyannah, but she was more than pleasant despite
that. Game one she opens with a Duress, taking my ancestral. I strip her swamp
and she has trouble ramping up to the multiple black mana she needs to cast
things. Then I mind twist said things away and draw a lot of cards with scrying,
removing my ancestral in the process for a Cunning Wish.
Game two she plays a lot of swamps and not a whole lot else. Without a lot of
pressure being put on, I'm able to just draw a bunch of cards and hardcast the
angel. My hand at the time of winning was Drain, Drain, Force, Force, Plow,
Plow, Balance.

2-0-0, 1-0-0

Round Two: Bob with GAT
This would be the first of a series of GAT matchups I'd have.
Game one I'm losing hard. I've got two cards in hand and he's got five, and he's
about to play a threat. Somehow, though, I manage to sneak an Exalted under the
radar via a Sol Ring and a Mox Pearl. On my next turn I unmorph it, and fight
over a Scrying for three. With his hand slightly depleted, he can't really find
enough gas to answer an Angel, and dies shortly after.
Game two he casts a Brainstorm, so I'm forced to respond with Plagiarize. I
resolve a scrying for 5 later, and I'm in such control by the end of the game
that my gorilla shaman is nearly enough for the win. As it was, he had to
berserk it to remove it, so I cycled Decree for six men and swung for the win.

4-0-0, 2-0-0

Round Three: Seth Levy with GAT
Game one I get active LoA early, and set up the Will-Ancestral-Walk-Othershit
combo on like turn three.
Game two he resolves Scrying for 5, but I have Balance and Will in hand, so I
figure one must resolve. Balance gets countered, but before I can Will he casts
one of his own.
Game three he's about to kill me when I tutor for Walk, hardcast Angel, walk,
attack, will, walk, ancestral, plow the dryad, attack.

6-1-0, 3-0-0

Round Four: Scott Limoges with GAT
Game one I take a big steaming dump on his manabase.
Game two I keep a shady hand and pay for it when Scott goes hyper aggressive
early.
Game three I keep a hand of awesome cards, but I can't for the life of me find a
second white or a first black source. I finally find a fetchland, and I grab a
tundra to unmorph my angel, but it's too late. I die waiting for a life gain
trigger.

7-3-0, 3-1-0

Round Five: Ray Robillard with Rector
Ray's build is weird. He built it as a joke, but Ray has a tendency to do well
even with bad cards. The bad card in question is Forbidden Crypt, which he gets
to abuse for himself a little, and then Donate to his opponent and Tormod's
them.
Game one however, he mulls to four. Two of them are force and a blue card. I
clean up quickly.
Game two I drain something (I didn't write down what, but it says four mana, so
I'm guessing that's a rector) and turn it in to a huge scrying. Ray can't really
get back in the game and he picks up his cards when I cast Will.

9-3-0, 4-1-0

Round Six: Andy Stokinger with GAT
We ID.

9-3-0, 4-1-1


Top Eight: Seth Levy again, still playing GAT
Game one he mulls to six, and I cast Ancestral Recall early. He expends pitch
counters on spells turns two and three, and his hand is a good six cards smaller
than mine. He can't come back.
Game two Germbus just functioned like it should. I saw plenty of mana, and
resolved Scrying three times over the course of the game. I resolved Angel
easily, Mind Twisted for a lot, and used basically every tool I had except
Balance, because it never showed up. Also, I Plagiarized his brainstorm.

11-3-0, 5-1-1

Top Four: Sean Brownlee with Workshop Slaver
Game one I poop on his manabase, and then resolve a Scrying for 9.
Game two I'm kicking the shit out of him, when he topdecks Windfall. I'm holding
four cards, and none of them say "counter target spell." I send a plow at my
monkey, and plow it again in response, then scrying for 0. I discard my
disenchant (not enough mana to use it) and the one card Windfall gives me Time
Walk. I cast it on my turn and swing for the 8 damage I needed to kill him.

13-3-0, 6-1-1

Finals: Steve with STAX
The intense amount of GAT here made Stax the best metagame call like ever. This
guy got paired up with 'the bye' several times and was surprised as anyone at
his high finish. He was also a savagely nice guy and fun to play against.
Originally I had offered him a split on my terms, but he didn't have enough
money, so at the relentless mocking of the Matrix, we shuffle up to play it out.
Game one I open with City of Brass, Sapphire. He goes workshop, Trinisphere. I
consider letting it resolve but I decide to drain in to Walk/Demonic/Shaman,
walking in to Waste. I waste a couple more workshops and Shaman eats his whole
board. I'm capable of eating a tangle wire when he finally resolves a spell that
isn't called Black Lotus. I offer to let him scoop and he says he wants to know
what I kill with for sideboarding reasons. I show him an angel and we move on to
game two.
I waste a ton of stuff, and eventually I'm sitting on five or six mana sources
while he struggles to find one. Eventually he gets his fourth workshop and uses
it to drop Trinisphere. I let it resolve and Rack and Ruin his trinisphere and
his mox. Then I apply angel beats, and swing my way to a new lotus.

On the day: 15-3-1, 7-1-1

We debate getting some chow but rides turn out to confuse things. I end up
riding in the Scott Limoges/Kerzner/Matrix car back to Connecticut, where I swap
to Matrix's car to drop off Kerz, and then begin the journey from Rhode Island
to western Mass. Holy 5 hours of driving batman.

Then I end my adventure by stumbling in to my place and crashing on the floor,
with Matrix on the guest bed. He leaves around 9:30, and then I start writing
this report.

Obligatory props and slops:

Props:
Scott, Kerz, and especially Matrix for putting up with my shit and getting me
home.
Ray, for giving me crashing space, and Scott Hughes, for getting me to the
tournament site from Ray's
Freitag, for getting me to Connecticut in the first place
All my opponents and the venue for the tournament, for rocking the hizzouse

Slops:
Scott Limoges, for being my only match loss
Wendy's, for closing at 1