US Nationals Report - Conclusion * 10th*

**When I got back to the tournament hall for day two, I found that everyone had taken out Chimeric Idol from their Fires decks because they needed Yavimaya Barbarian now, and tapping all your lands every turn is not the way to beat Static Orb . Seeing this, I take the second Disenchant out of the sideboard for a second Rout and convince Scott to do the same when he arrives. This is better than I could have hoped, especially considering we've spent the better part of the past week with Scott desperate to get the fourth Dismantling Blow because of those Idols. This is what I've been waiting a very long time for. It's time to go crush some bad decks! This was the weapon:

Round 7: Leiher, Peter

There are some people that you just don't want to play. This is one of them. Most of the time, Magic is fun, but against some opponents a different mood prevails. There's the tight matchups, where you have to be on your toes and both sides are all business, but it's respectful and the two players can still joke around afterwards. I don't mind those too much, and later in the tournament more matches drift in this direction. Then there are the opponents who have no respect for the spirit of the game or the spirit of the rules. They'll take every opportunity to cheese you out. Next thing you know, you didn't block or didn't pay the kicker or announced something in the wrong phase or whatever. Then there's someone like Peter Leiher. I'm not accusing him of anything because I'm not a witness and he was fine in our match, but for this purpose it's the reputation that matters. If I THINK he's likely to be drawing extra cards or stacking his deck or getting me to mana burn or whatever the latest trick is, then I have to use the energy I normally spend on having fun on making sure he doesn't cheat, and probably more.

At any rate, he's playing Fires, so it looks like at least I get to win. Game one I can't find any counters in the early game, which is scary as hell. He gets Fires out, and I decide that I can't afford to keep my mana untapped but have to prey that he doesn't have Burst or can't follow it up. He has it. Luckily, he goes for Shivan Wurm so I can Last Breath the Bird, Dismantling Blow away the Burst and send the Wurm back to his hand for a while. I stop a few Blastoderms and he scoops before I can start looking at his deck. It turns out some of his sideboard cards have the wrong colored sleeves. I tell him to just fix it and not worry about time because he scooped and saved us a bunch of it. I watch what he's doing before game two, as I sideboard the standard way: In go 2 Rout , 4 Mahamoti Djinn and 1 Disenchant and out go 2 Story Circle , 3 Millstone and 2 Last Breath . As he shuffles his deck, I wonder if I should call a judge, because nothing much seems to be going on over there, but I've just taken game one and the matchup is favorable and frankly I don't feel up to doing my civic duty right about now and making a cold Judge call. Sorry about that. I just shuffle his deck, he shuffles mine, and I mulligan into a one land hand. I don't draw land and lose. Game three I stall on land again, and die with two Islands in play to Idols and Burst holding Disenchant and two Saproling Bursts. Give me a break. So that's my nationals, since my tiebreaks aren't going to be good enough. Time to go play for ninth. I also find that Wescoe has done it again, and has to work with a ten card sideboard because he can't seem to double check his deck registration sheet.

4-3

Round 8: Liszka, Robert

On his first turn he played Ramosian Sergeant , and I was worried. On his second turn he played Brushland , and I started feeling better. He used it to put out Steadfast Guard . On his third turn, he attacked for two and on my turn used his Rishadan Port . Changed his mind, I guess. Next turn he plays land number four and goes for the Falcon. On turn five, he attacks with the Sergeant and Guard and holds back the Falcon so he can use Rishadan Port . I had the Wrath the whole time, but at this rate I had no need to actually use it yet. I just kept playing lands. When it finally did look threatening I blew up the world, and I had more than enough counters/removal to stop him from getting the engine ever going again. Game two he doesn't even get his mana going properly, and Mageta the Lion walks in for twenty-one damage without ever actually getting used, or would have if he'd needed to finish the job.

5-3

Round 9: Lynch, Patrick

I get to play my real Fires match here. It's closer than it should be. I stabilize quickly, but it takes me a while to get Millstone going in game one, after which I do double up pretty quickly, but he has a bunch of mana in play. Suddenly he has twelve of it and I'm looking at some uncounterable damage, but a Last Breath takes out the last bit of mana just long enough to millstone him to death. No more of that silliness, because it's time for good old Fat Moti! Game two goes according to plan as well, he barely touches me before I get the mana to start wiping the board every few turns. I get eight mana on the table and drop two of my Motis with counter backup. The turn before he's dead he knocks, finds the eighth mana and Obliterates. No sweat, that's been taken into consideration. I have three lands in my hand and two more of them Motis in the deck. He topdecks a bunch of land, but I'm still just digging up some more 5/6 flyers, and I find the third one and start attacking. He gets back to eight mana again and I start to worry because I don't have the mana left to recover from the second Obliterate , but he didn't have it so the Moti went in for the kill.

6-3

Round 10: Pistulnik, Michael (Feature Match)

He's playing some utility creature-based Fires-less version of Fires with a lot of black mana, which basically means that Blastoderm and Shivan Wurm are the only things capable of taking a real bite out of my life total and they have to give me a turn of warning. In short, it's Fires without all the random ways to lose, so I'm pretty confident. His sideboard for me is just Boil , which is also not particularly effective here. Game one he never gets anything that threatening out. Game two is only a contest because I forget he DOES have Shivan Wurm and I can't just tap out to get a Djinn, which meant that I had to throw it away in a Wrath and things fell back to even for a while. On top of that, every time I put out a Djinn I had to pay the kicker cost and sacrifice all Islands I controlled. (aka Boil) I still pulled it out, but I didn't feel like I deserved this one. We sit around afterwards and debate the finer points of a Fact or Fiction , where the one Mageta I'd put in for game two was up against Last Breath , two counters and a land. He put Mageta alone because it would have won the game by itself, but I argued that he should have at least thought a lot more about putting Last Breath with the Mageta: He had to represent that Mageta wasn't game. The problem is that if he put anything more with it I'd just take it anyway, but I felt that not representing Urza's Rage meant that I won with either pile.

7-3

Round 11: Malka, Sol

Sol's been having a bad day, and it's my turn to make it worse. Even though I probably won't make it, if Sol were to win his last two matches he'd virtually be a lock. I start out with some mana troubles when I keep a one land hand and he uses Duress to take away the Opt , but I get my lands off the top "like a professional" as Sol calls it, lay the Story Circles and win. His report says he "correctly takes the Opt over the Accumulated Knowledge ," which is kind of damn obvious when you think about it, but he did take it over the tougher Story Circle, which I still agree with. It's a common error to assume that because if the game is reset to the right moment it seems to be favorable that the match was close, but it's true that either game in this case could have gone the other way. Game two I misplay badly. Sticking with the Millstone plan, I play in fear of Obliterate when his deck is clearly running Urza's Rage . So by holding lands, I manage to take just enough damage to be vulnerable to double Rage, but I get lucky and he doesn't get the mana in time. On average he shouldn't, but it still feels like luck when he dies with eleven lands. The fact that he played Diamonds that I killed off helps, since a better version of the deck would have allowed him to win, but I still feel like I came perilously close to losing an unlosable game and maybe even match.

8-3

Round 12: Parker, Brock

I've played next to Brock so we both know what kind of match we're in for. I do the math for the top eight, and the two of us are in the same position. Six people are drawing in, and Huey's match will generate number seven on tiebreaks in all probability regardless of who wins. Jarvis has an extra point, so if he wins he's just straight in. Then Finkel has to win his match, and Leiher has to win his, and THEN the winner of our match has a pretty good chance of getting in. Otherwise it's a huge long shot. In other words, I'm not exactly loving my chances.

I explain all that to Brock and we get going. It's great to have plenty of space, which we get because everyone else in the area is over at the Feature Match area playing for top eight. He's playing a basically mono-blue Moti deck with just enough black for Tsabo's Decree . Game one I get fourth turn Millstone with a Counterspell as backup, and it resolves. Much milling later, he's ready for the big fight over a Djinn. He starts Memory Lapsing my Counterspells, so I let him win the war and refight again when I've had a chance to redraw them and win that time to lock the game. A judge comes over to watch (and we have to shush him because Brock was counting his library) and says "teach me something about Magic." I don't think he learned all that much. I keep in Last Breath in anticipation of Temporal Adept and bring in Mageta. He mulligans twice and can't find land, and by the time he gets mana he's already getting Milled. He gets an Adept out and starts using it to keep Mageta from going active, but it's a hopeless cause.

9-3

By this time, we're starting to get results. Jarvis lost and Finkel won, so it looks like it might well be up to Peter Leiher to pull it out against Brian Hegstad. There's a bunch of time left and Hegstad's matchup is amazing so it doesn't look good, but hey, it's Leiher. Maybe he can stall it out. David Price was in the same position, not sure what exactly to root for.

Slowly, the time starts winding down. I can't get close enough to see what's going on. Hegstad casts Fact or Fiction , and I think to myself "neat, that's five minutes right there!" Finally he does more than anyone's done not casting a Hull Breach , and manages to finish the match after everything at one life after five extra turns, about to die from a Mageta. Hegstad asks if he'd like to concede, Leiher turns down his generous offer. The slip is signed, but there's a big conference and the results aren't announced. What will they do about what according to reports is rather blatant stalling (although I didn't see it myself)? I volunteer that if it's my top eight on the line, and as far as we know it probably is, I'd rather protect the integrity of the tournament, and I certainly give Scott Johns a free hand to go report everything that he saw. In the end, the standings are announced, Hegstad is 7th and he gets a huge cheer. I'm a little upset about probably ending up ninth, and a little more upset when I drop back to eleventh. Turns out I never had a shot, and Finkel and Price both stole $200 of my money by passing me on tiebreaks. The bastards! :)

The next day, I walk in to watch the top eight and I find that Omeed still needs more coverage. I figure why not, and jump in to do a quarterfinal. I ask for McCarrel-Hegstad, because Hegstad is playing W/U and in general I consider it by far the most strategically interesting matchup. Indeed, at first it was well worth watching on that basis. Game one is hugely favorable to Hegstad because of dead cards, but as expected it takes a long, long time with a nailbiter at the end over defenses to a Djinn. They get warned to play faster, but they're playing pretty fast for a top eight match of this complexity and I say as much. You know, I really feel for it when they worry about having time for the JSS. At any rate, Hegstad loses one game to a long term land stall, and he starts wondering what all these clumps are doing in his deck. I, being the top notch reporter I am, manage to miss all the real action when McCarrel was actually shuffling Hegstad's deck, because I figure nothing important is going on and I can go get some water and catch up on the other matches. At any rate, I watch them reveal Hegstad's deck and it's stacked at the top exactly the way he claimed it was. I'm asked if it's possible to stack the deck in such a manner, I reply that it is and explain the principles a cheater would use to accomplish said stacking. They talk it over for a while, and Casey is DQed. As an added bonus, that moves me up to 10th and gets me another two hundred bucks! Still feels like a lousy payoff for going 9-3 and winning 79% of my games, but better luck next time and all that.

On the deck:

Would I play W/U again? Yes.

Would I change any cards? I would cut Junta Stakes given what I now know about the field, but I think it was correct at the time.

Did I play it because I expected a sea of Fires? That was one reason, although far from the only reason.

How do I SB in/out in (every conceivable matchup)? That would be another article, I may or may not write it, depending on interest.

Special Props (I don't give them often anymore) to Collin Jackson & Brian Hegstad: Good job, guys.

- Zvi Mowshowitz

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