FNM - results. first, a correction.

A correction indeed. Blacktown doesn't run FNM. It runs Magic on thursday night, and it's not FNM. They just run an event. So no whistles nor worries Magic/Wizards, they wasn't a single Glistener Elf promo to be seen. Shame really, I wanted another one.

No no no, indeed this set of Magic went down thusly:

Game 1 match 1 I'm against Brad. Clothing of choice for me is a "cool guy/intimidation" set of jacket, white converse and cool red shirt with an "I have issues" dogtag. Also the killer face and hair. I don't think it did much but make me look at nice dressed up for Magic, really.

Brad was playing green/white tokens and Galvony Township. I win game 1, but it's close for a while. My first mistake is using Oblivion Ring on his Birds of Paradise. He was playing a load of ramp, and I figured I could keep him off big numbers, OR wait and exile the threat, and I opted for the first. Birdies gets exiled, then Garruk the Flipper shows up. Oh well.

I get to cast a Consecrated Sphinx and begin drawing a lot, Phantasmal Image to get another and I'm drawing 5 per turn cycle. This is great because I can attack in the air unmolested, while he creates a nice big ground force. He gets really big when I drop a Wurmcoil Engine, me thinking it wont save me from the alpha strike. When it comes to the attack, I block here and there (Wurmcoil on Geist-Honored Monk, etc) and gain just enough to life, on two life.

It was at this point a great many things came together and worked beautifully. He was on 16 from a lone Sphinx bash, so I played the Phantasm and copied it. 2 swings of 8 would kill him. He can see this too, so I bash him to 8, drop Gideon Jura and DON'T screw up. Big tick for me. Everyone has to attack Gideon, it's enough to kill him, and presumably this allows me to fly over for the win. Otherwise I'm on two, so any removal and I die.

He plays a Birds of Paradise. I draw Think Twice, which draws Ponder, which finds Oblivion Ring for the exile and the game. I'd like to thank anyone who's ever said "Just hold on there and play to your outs." I knew my outs were blow up the world or exile the birdies, went searching for O Ring and found it. Good game.

Game 2 he gets a much better start, and my threats don't really do much, my blockers being Mirran Crusader against his green/white army. I get confused and lose the Crusader I block a white dork, but by this point I lose and we hadn't started shuffling for game 3 when time was called.

1-1 games
0-0-1 matches

Round 2 was against another blue white deck that had also drawn. Groan. We were going to have slow games, assuming we both played D. Game 1 I misplay and try to cast something (gasp) which he of course Mana Leaks. This means I'm tapped out on his turn, and he resolves a Geist of Saint Traft against me. This isn't immediately game over, as I continually get 2/2s to put in his way, ala Solemn Simulacrum, but the angel token eventually deals with me as the Saint Traft gets an Angelic Destiny of his own.

I bring in DoJ and Ratchet Bomb, seeing I can blow it for 0 or crank it to three before he even drops Saint Traft, but I keep a bad hand while his seems perfectly OK anyway. We get into one decent counter war, which I win, but it doesn't matter as Traft shows up once again and I have no answer, and DoJ gets countered.

0-2
0-1-1

Round 3

My opponent is a little kid, who's only just learnt to play Magic. He read a few cards that I played, so I explained a few things that I was doing as we were playing. One of the players up from me, a gentleman my friend Rony knows, whose name I forget (sorry man, what is your name?) was laughing at how well I was explaining what "I" was doing, neglecting to say "But you can stop all this if you just shock my Phantasmal Image now." I didn't know the kid had Shock eitherway, the point I think is interesting is once again how should you treat brand new/younger players.

I don't advocate playing their game for them, nor going super easy on them because they're new to it. I like to educate where I can, so I have a Hero of Bladehold for example I explain the battle steps and how he can shoot my stuff before I attack, which will mean no tokens and no +1/+0. At this point Rony laughs at how cruel I'm being, but I defend myself saying "What am I meant to do, concede because he's a kid?"

I'd stick by it again in the future. It's probably ruthless, as in I don't want to lose to a kid who doesn't know the game well, but I don't intend to leave them in the dark (compared to the seasoned players etc), so I'll educate after the game, or during it if they seem to be doing nothing. The most annoying for me when learning a game is having a hand of Stuff, and just not knowing what it could do. I ask a million questions when learning a game, so when I see someone new to a game I imagine they would do the same. If they don't, I'll ask the questions for them.

Eitherway, I win. Both games Hero of Bladehold comes down and that's it. One gets double Shock'd, so I played a second. On second thoughts, I probably didn't need that Consecrated Sphinx/Phantasmal Image combo. At the time I was thinking "mercy killing."

2-0
1-1-1

Round 4 karma caught up with as I'm paired against mono-red counter creatures burn. Stormblood Berserker, Chandra's Pheonix, red Shrine and Volt Charge all make very short work of me, and my creatures. I manage to buy a turn in game 1 when I'm at low life but resolve a Wurmcoil Engine. His Shrine is sitting on 8 counters while I'm sweating only 7 life, and he activates the Shrine targeting my Wurm. He has enough to finish me the next turn eitherway.

Game 2 goes similarly quick and bad, as my early dorks get cleared aside. He has double Pheonix, I Day of Judgment, he pings me and rebuys both Birds and continues bashing like nothing happened. O Ring doesn't show up, poor dear. I try the same trick when his Shrine is up to lethal and I've got a Wurmcoil to resolve, but he doesn't bite this time and kills me in his upkeep.

0-2
1-1-2.

I come 13th outta 22, which is rather a 2-2 style result. It's at this point that the integrity of how Blacktown runs it's Magic shows. Before I go on I will point out again that this wasn't FNM, and as such there was only points on the line, no FNM promos or otherwise. In fact I'll start with the good.

There is space. This is always great, because I hate small dungeons that cram all their players into a room. Second, there was food and drinks aplenty. Pizza for $8.50 when you sign up for Magic is great, and you can pick whatever you like. Plus a drinks fridge that I took a picture of, just because it was that great. The only fridge that looks better is one from new year, aka mine, that was filled with beer. Third, the man himself who ran the joint. After rounds, we stayed back and played until 1ish, when the store is reported to close at 10pm. He's a good fella and fun to chat to.

Now, the bad. Players are given the ability to report their wins, on the actual computer running Wizards Event Reporter (WER). This is crap. I don't care how well people know things, because they get it wrong. I know this because as we're sitting and chatting after rounds, my right-seated neighbour congratulates my opponent on his 4-0 performance. "So you won the whole thing," they say.

Let's check my results again, before the last round. 1-1-1, or 4 points. Against a guy who was obviously 3-0 or 9 points. I should have been no where near this crazy fine cat and his mono-red deck. I point out the error and we begin to hunt down the error. His round 1 opponent had put the match results in incorrectly, and as such he'd been placed down since round 2.

This is the kind of thing that I don't like at Magic events. Allowing the players the ease of entering their results when they finish sounds nice, but it allows for an entire event to be run incorrectly. If this were a high end event, it makes a great deal more difference than it does at this random event. It's a confusing sign of ownership, one of too much casualness, and not owning the event/score boarding properly.

For a quick comparison, Megagames in Penrith use paper slips for results and the TO always calls out the result before he puts it into the system. It may seem small, but it helps a lot.

Now having reported all that, how would I change my deck? Well I'd have to reconsider quite a lot. In point form:

+The Sun Titan's never really impressed when they showed up. Titan into Phantasm into O Ring never happened, and when I managed to chain Titan into Phantasm anyway the pair of 6/6s were largely useless because I got swarmed. I wanted DoJ much more often then I wanted Sun Titan.
+Where were you, Dissapate? Seriously, I got like 1 the entire tournament lol. No seriously, I needed to mulligan a lot more than I did this tournament. Note for tomorrow's FNM.
+I need to spend more time thinking like a boss ala Paulo/LSV, especially in the control mirror. Trying to play a threat first is akin to slipping up, because of course my round 2 opponent (James, right?) had the Mana Leak, and it just meant I was tapped out for his turn, allowing the threat that I couldn't unstick. So this leads straight to my next point.
+Vapor Snares wanted!! 3 with another in the SB, because God damn this deck just can't seem to deal with some things. It's cheap, buys time, has the added ping, and best of all resets a lot of cards. It allows Sun Titan to go again if needed, but removes the counters from a Stormkirk Noble, for example.

Those are quite big points. I'll stop there, please post comments, it takes one second to make an account.

Fox "Tomorrow will go better" Murdoch.