Zvi's PT Chicago Report - Conclusion *Top 8*
**Continuing from [Part 1](http://magic.mindripper.com/Index.cfm?ArticleID=1124&SectionID=3&Show=All) ...
Round 8: Kesselman, Eric - Eye-Go
I've had another chance to play against this deck since the tournament, and have concluded that the matchup is hugely in my favor. Even with four Tsabo's Web in his deck, the Dust Bowls are still good. Basically, he doesn't have enough counterspells for my spells, has to win advantage from Dominate , Fact or Fiction and Accumulated Knowledge and has to kill with Evil Eye. Regardless of all that, what happened was I started casting spells, he managed to stay in game one, but then he cast an Evil Eye (which normally blocks everything in my deck) and I played Two-Headed Dragon , which he couldn't deal with. Then Perish carried one game. Third game Dust Bowl gave him mana problems, I correctly divided a few Fact or Fictions and he was forced to overpay too much for the mana he needed to win afterwards.
Round 9: Ronaldson, Ben - Rebels (Feature Match)
Game one I killed his first searcher, played out Fires of Yavimaya , then found Saproling Burst and attacked for the win. Having both basically just wins against rebels if they don't have Parallax Wave or Disenchant to stop it. As it turned out, Ben only drew two spells that game. I expected him to put in the enchantment removal so I pulled all 12 Disenchant targets. Game two he sandbagged the early game to use Wrath of God , which got Blastoderm and two Llanowar Elves , but a few 5/5s I drew forced him to Wrath a second time. As it turned out, I spent ages looking for an Earthquake for the outright win or a Flashfires for basically the same thing, but neither ever came. I concluded that against this setup I needed Bursts so I put the Fires and Bursts back in the deck, especially since he went back to his sideboard as well. Game three he played Meekstone out and suddenly I have a terrible time winning. He started searching and I thought I was toast. I put out Jade Leech and Two-Headed Dragon , but they were both sitting on D. I finally drew an Earthquake , much too late, and concluded that I had to somehow deal enough damage to kill him under the Meekstone . That meant that regardless of the fact that he was on the attack, I had to Earthquake for as much as possible and prey I drew what I needed. He had the option to save creatures with the Parallax Wave on the table, which was letting him start going in for the kill, but he chose not to, since he kept three Defiant Falcons. He then chose to let the Wave die a turn early to take out a Birds of Paradise . I had to topdeck Saproling Burst or the game was over with me at one life, and I had no hand so he knew it, and I did. I guess that threw him. He untapped, I got my Dragon, Leech and Bird back. I was at one life, so he went in with three Defiant Falcons. I was wondering what he had, but it wasn't like I had a choice. " Birds of Paradise blocks one, Two-Headed Dragon blocks the other two." He looks at Two-Headed Dragon , buries two Falcons, looks at the board, looks at his hand, and scoops! I couldn't believe I won that.
Round 10: Hamon, Yann
Blinding Angel comes in for one win, and his total lack of mana lets me come in for another. It comes down to game three. I'm holding Jade Leech , and attack him with Blastoderm down to under 5. At end of turn he casts Fact or Fiction and turns over Wrath of God , Story Circle , Fact or Fiction , Counterspell and Absorb . I have Rishadan Port to work with, and I quickly look at his mana. If he takes Wrath of God and he casts it, I tap a land, untap and force Jade Leech onto the table under any counter except Foil , which I'm pretty sure he doesn't play. He then has one turn to Wrath or Circle again, he clearly doesn't have one in hand, and Fact or Fiction is too much mana to help. If he takes Story Circle , that's pretty much game unless I topdeck. So I have to get him to take the Wrath pile instead of the Circle pile. That means bribing him into taking the Wrath without it looking like I'm bribing him into taking it. I decided that it was a well known fact that most people who play Fact or Fiction overvalue it. It's really really good, but not broken if the opponent knows how to divide the piles. So I put Wrath with Fact or Fiction , and the two counters with Story Circle . In addition to the overvaluation factor, he probably wanted to FoF into lands at that point so it was well worth two cards. Anyway, he takes the Wrath pile, untaps, Wraths, I drop Jade Leech, and he doesn't have an answer.
There's just one other thing from the match. At one point, I had a new Blastoderm (no Fires in sight) and untapped and drew without remembering to take off a fading counter. The instant I looked at the card, his hand shot up into the air and he called for a judge. The moment I saw him say 'judge' I looked at the table, saw the mistake and moved the counter off the Blastoderm and apologized. No question I goofed, but as they go this one was pretty harmless. It's not like I was going to attack with it and neither of us would notice it still had three counters. I ask him, "You're not seriously still going to call a judge, are you?" and he replies that "I caught you, you forgot to remove the counter." or something in the same tone (I might not have it quite exactly). But I do know the attitude was that "I have you, I found you making an error, I can give you a warning so I'm going to, and maybe you already have one and then I'll REALLY have you." It was clearly about winning any way he could within the rules, sportsmanship be damned. Anyway, the judge came up, he told him I'd forgotten the counter, I got a warning, and we got on with the game. Nothing illegal about it, but it left a really bad taste in my mouth.
Round 11: Finkel, Jon - Fires
Finkel is Finkel, but I practiced this matchup a lot. I was actually happy to play against him, since I knew my version would have the advantage. As it turned out, I just got flat out better draws and won in two games without trouble. His version does have one advantage, because he has Aura Mutation in the sideboard, but it doesn't make up for the other differences.
Round 12: Bell, Marcus - Nether-Go
His decklist appears to be missing from the set of Day 2 decklists, but it was basically pretty standard Nether-Go. I followed standard anti-Nether-Go procedure. I took game one, and in game two I attacked him down to three with a Blastoderm , then tried to cast Fires of Yavimaya with two mana open and a Kavu Chameleon in my hand. In response he cast Fact or Fiction , and turned over two lands, Nether Spirit , Power Sink and Undermine with two Islands and Salt Marsh untapped. Once again it was about getting him to take the wrong pile. Where he put the Nether Spirit almost certainly didn't matter; he could just cast it if it ended up in his hand. What mattered was whether he used Undermine on the Fires of Yavimaya . If he didn't, the Chameleon would come over for the kill right away. I decided this time that it wouldn't look suspicious to outright pay the maximum price. I put Undermine with just Nether Spirit , which he wants to avoid taking. He snapped up the Power Sink and the two lands to help make it work later on, Fires resolved, and he died on the next turn. At this point, I hoped to draw into the last day.
Round 13: Dougherty, Robert - Fires
I offer the draw, but Rob only has 28 points to my 30 so he can't draw yet. Dougherty's version was very close to the States versions of Fires, and with only 23 lands and no Dragons I had matchup advantage again. His only edge was three Tangles to my two, and that he had Rhystic Lightning which is great against me because of the Dragons. Rhystic Lightning is not a good choice overall, in my opinion worse than both Urza's Rage and Assault/Battery, but it works against Dragons. If they become popular it becomes interesting again. He caught my Dragon with a Rhystic game one, then drew fat while I drew land. Game two Rob didn't draw any big creatures, and Jade Leech came in for the kill after Tangle wore off. Game three was really frustrating. I drew nothing but land, but that land included four Rishadan Ports so I could use it to tie down Rob's mana. The real issue here is that if I play this game virtually any other way any of the turns I felt I had a judgement call, I win. I sacrifice Fires of Yavimaya so I don't die if I fail to topdeck, and I draw a Saproling Burst that would kill him if I'd kept Fires on the table. I hold a land to bluff, and he burns a Rhystic Lightning, then I choose to play around a second one and he has the land and the Burst he needs, as well as the two Tangles when he needed them to stay alive. Sigh. I guess I have to play for it in the last round.
Round 14: Shvartsman, Alex - The Best Deck Ever
He shoots, he scoops! Woo-hoo! Actually it was a little more complex than that. First I go to the judges and see if there's a legal way for me to set up a compensated scoop. Technically I think there was one, but it's totally against the spirit of the rules and I get shut down. Of course, that didn't stop other people from scooping for cash in less public matches (not naming names but it happened in Chicago and happens all the time) but I wasn't about to cheat. Clearly, however, I couldn't offer Alex anything. (He too had only 28 points and was out of top 8 contention). We're also both being very careful not to say anything in front of the other, because that might change the options we have. In the end, he asks the judges a few questions, and while waiting for the answers we're told to start. We get deckchecked. I'd heard it was coming, so I'd warned Alex and we both triple checked everything. Before the deck check is finished, he gets his answer, confirms that it's perfectly OK for him to just scoop, and he does. I'm in the top 8!
Quarterfinals: Kibler, Brian - The Red Zone
We'd playtested a little the night before, and I'd talked over my options with a few people. It clearly wasn't good. Game one I had a decent edge, but after sideboarding it wasn't pretty. Playing four games out of five sideboarded in the top eight made this a really bad matchup. We had a good, friendly match, but I knew I needed to get lucky. If I let things drift, Armadillo Cloak would come out and I'd die. I did make one error, which was that I decided he was unlikely to take out Ancient Hydra even though I would have. I also wouldn't have played four of them, so I thought that anyone who likes them enough to play four (and has been wrecking people with them all day) would keep them in. I was wrong; he correctly decided they were bad in this matchup and took them out. That meant I was probably a card or two off of where I should have been after sideboarding, since I had all four Earthquakes. That's a good idea when I'm the beatdown deck and he has River Boas, but I probably should have stopped at three to keep other cards instead. I was going to for game five, and almost did for game four, but we never got to game five. Instead, I lost game one because I drew one red source and couldn't cast Two-Headed Dragon , lost game two to Rith, won game three and then in game four Rith got Cloaked. There's a full feature match description of the match, and it covers it pretty well. The bluff in game two where I sent Jade Leech into Rith on the hopes he wouldn't block is the only play I made that I question. I calculated that I wasn't going to win if I held it back without topdecking at least twice in a row, and couldn't beat Armadillo Cloak at all. Jade Leech was costing me the ability to cast what I wanted to cast, so losing it was an acceptable risk. The problem was that Earthquake would win me the game if he takes the damage, so he didn't feel that he could let it through. That's something I hadn't thought of from his side, which I probably should have.
So I ended up 7th. I give myself and the team two failures on the deck. One is Failure to play Simoon . The other is Failure to play Kavu Chameleon in the maindeck, which the metagame clearly called for. I realized that during the players' meeting, but I didn't have replacement sideboard cards so it was too late. But overall, I think we did a really good job, especially with the Dragons. And it was a blast.
- Zvi Mowshowitz
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