So what gives with the lack of coverage provided for Grand Prix Philadelphia? Can there possibly be an excuse as to why we had no feature matches, no updates on the web? Indeed, you would be hard pressed if you weren't actually in attendance to know who was playing what, who was doing well, and what did it all mean? Grand Prix Philly was made up of 592 people all vying for top eight honors and a trip to the New York Pro Tour. FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY-TWO! That is the single largest tournament ever sponsored by WOTC in the United States. And they covered almost zippo! A couple of Flores articles, one feature match between Finkel and Maher, and 5 minutes with the winner is all you got. Hmmmm, not very impressive now is it?

Say what you want about the Necro/Donate decks, they were fine, they were good, and they were both beatable and unstoppable all at the same time. I liked the deck I played, it was good vs. a very diverse field and had many cards that I like to play with involved with it. Most notably was Lobotomy. I'm fairly certain that Lobotomy is still one of the best cards ever made by R&D, it is balanced, it is correctly costed, it has a profound impact on the game in the hands of a competent player. Sort of a one turn Glasses of Urza, Hymn to Tourach and Jester's Cap all rolled into one. I felt that with bringing Lobotomy out of the sideboard vs. Donate decks I'd have 11 discard with which to interrupt their combo. For the record here is the deck I played:

4 Necropotence
4 Duress
4 Unmask
4 Drain Life
4 Corrupt
4 Dark Ritual
4 Demonic Consultation
4 Phyrexian Negator
4 Contagion
2 Spinning Darkness
4 Underground Sea
18 Swamp

Sideboard:
2 Nevinyrral's Disk
3 Lobotomy
2 Spinning Darkness
2 Dystopia
2 Powder Keg
2 Masticore
2 Infernal Darkness

Some thoughts about the sideboard: I wish to high heaven I'd have left the Infernal Darknesses at home. They seemed very good in theory due to the fact that Donate needs its blue in order to win, but with the metagame revolving around Negators coming out of the board of the Donate decks, I simply gave away time to Negator rather than interrupt the combo. These would be better as another Disk or two Glooms.

You'll notice the absence of Wastelands in the deck. The reason for this was two-fold, one - with the four Undergrounds my Corrupts would always deal maximum damage/life gaining, two, I never wanted to miss casting a necro on turn three for whatever reason. It turned out that there was even more synergy involved, I never cost myself a game Consulting for an early Wasteland in an attempt to hamper my opponent and my opponents Wastelands rarely, if ever, had a target vs. my deck.

The deck should be called Negator / removal, as it does not truly fall into the LOBOLOCO style of deck that I'm most known for. With eight pitch spells, Negators were at worst a card to get rid of to take a fire blast vs. red.

I'm not going to go into day one much except to explain how unlucky I was to not finish undefeated. It's game three vs. PT Junk deck (Hunted Wumpus, Duress, Plowshare deck) I have an untapped Disk , a Masticore, one card in hand (Swamp) and he has out a Wumpus, a Cursed Scroll and no cards in his hand. My life is at 10 his is at 12, at the end of his go I activate the Disk and regenerate my Masticore. My turn, I discard the Swamp draw a Duress and attack for four, bringing my opponent to eight. On his turn, he draws a card, oh looky there, what do you know it's a Duress, he duresSes' me takes my Duress and I lose the core. My turn I draw a Corrupt. I check the number of Swamps I have in play and the count is seven, meaning I'm a land short of killing him, I check my out of play pile and graveyard pile and realize that besides this Corrupt, I have exactly one Drain Life and one Masticore left in my deck by which to win this game with. He draws and says go. I draw…Necropotance, game over right? I Necro to for four cards to go to six and sure enough my last card is the Swamp I need for the win on my turn. He draws, looks at me, looks at the life pad, Incinerates me, Consults for Incinerate and there you have it. 2-1 with two byes and a now a loss.

Other people of note that I played that first day included Adrian Sullivan also playing PT Junk deck. And my last round match vs. Mike Pustilnik playing Secret Force. Also, at one point I Consulted away all four Drains and all four Corrupts going for a turn two Necro. It was vs. green and somehow I won with Spins, Contagions and Negators, for one round I did my best impression of suicide necro. I ended the day 7-1 but due to my early loss, I found myself with the absolute worst tie-breakers in my bracket, and in 22nd position. How do you finish 22nd after going 7-1? FIVE HUNDRED NINETY TWO people!

I'd been up all week in New York City for a training class the week before the tournament and was sick as a dog. Didn't stop me from going out every night, but unfortunately this left unable to attend the Primus concert with Brian Schneider and Rich Frangiosa and seeing Philly nightlife in general. On the whole I think that my good times in NYC the week before really helped to make Philly seem like a dung heap, but I might not be giving the place a fair shake. I used to have to travel to the Philadelphia Naval Yard (bet you didn't know they had one) from time to time at my last job and never once was it a bright sunny day in the city of brotherly love, aka we love to give you the bird.

Round nine vs. Mike Emmert playing Donate

To make a long story short everyone else in the room was playing before Mike showed up. Apparently he thought the round started at 10am rather than 9am. I was going to try to make him feel better by telling him of my now famous 10$ ante match vs Tim McKenna, but he didn't seem to be in the mood. I cast turn one Unmask (take his Vamp Tutor) and Ritual out a Negator. Second turn I top deck a Duress and take his Illusions. He never recovered.

8-1

Round Ten Vs. Patrick Qian playing Sligh

The single biggest weakness I see in Necro players all over the world is their inability to handle a Sligh deck, which I consider to be a very favorable matchup. Obviously I'm not going to win with a Negator but Corrupts and Drains are sooo money vs. Sligh guy that with Spinning Darkness it seems almost unfair. That being said, Patrick mulligans to five to start the match. I cast turn one Necro. I Unmask, Duress, Drain and Corrupt him until I have like five cards left in my deck, somewhere I have come up a Swamp short in being able to corrupt Patrick for the game, somewhere along the line I missed a point of damage, probably on Draining a Jackal Pup, or Duressing before I cast a Drain…regardless I run out of actual win cards and eventually lose to a Cursed Scroll. Out go the Negators, in come the Masticores and Spins. Not a complicated sideboard process, but that's what makes the deck so good to play. My opening hand for game two is as follows:

Consultation x2, Unmask, Duress, Duress, Ritual, Corrupt

What do you do with such a hand, it is just BEGGING to be played, but you know you can't keep it because you have no land! NOT SO! I lean over to Dan O'Mahoney Schwartz, who is sitting next to me, and say, you remember LePine in Worlds, watch this.

I remove Corrupt from the game and unmask Mr. Qian. He shows me 2x Fireblast, 2x Incinerate, 1x Mogg Fanatic, 1 Mountain and 1 Wasteland. Seeya Mr. Fanatic, poor guy had no idea how good he was at the current time, that dude would have beat for like 8. I then tell Patrick I am done. He looks at me funny, shrugs and takes a card, lays a Mountain and says go. I draw…Drain Life…oh dear this could be bad. He draws lays a Wasteland and says go. I draw a SWAMP! I lay the swamp and Duress my man to see where he is at…he has now upped his Fireblasts to 3 and has 2 Incinerates, a Scroll and a Ball Lightning. He uses one Incinerate on me and I take the other. He goes and plays two Scrolls and is done. On my upkeep I consult for a Swamp, it is the seventh card, I draw a Dark Ritual, lay the Swamp cast a Ritual followed by a Ritual Consult for a Necro play the Necro and use the other Duress to take a Fireblast. I Necro for like 8, knowing that Contagion and better yet Spinning Darkness will all but seal this game if he top ropes a Ball Lightning… I get the Spin, another Duress, a Masticore, a Drain, some Swamps. His turn he lays a Mountain tries to Ball I Spin and he Fireblasts it. Heheh, my other Duress is now the NUTZ and two turns later I'm Corrupting him behind a wall of Masticore.

Game three is all about draw Masticore Consult for time Spin, Spin the Core to keep from dying, Corrupt, Corrupt, and Corrupt.

9-1

Round 11 vs. William“Baby” Huey Jensen Donate

I'd never played Baby Huey before, I was a bit taken aback when I Duress him turn one and saw a Firestorm... hmm what a GREAT card vs. a Negator, sigh. I take his Vamp Tutor, same turn I unmask his consult, I then say go. He has played a land and it is my turn. I draw Necropotence! Oh my but I know he has Force of Will in his hand so at best it will be a Hymn. For some reason he allows the Necro to hit the table, choosing to Consult for his own Necro instead. On my go I cast a Negator, he FoW's (having pitched his Firestorms to Necro) I Ritual out another. He takes a suboptimal turn and I've gotten more Unmasks and Duresses so I win game one. Game two I make a tremendous mistake. I KNOW that he is bringing in Negators, yet I still sideboard out my Contagions the thinking being that with an early Ritual I can sucker him into losing his permanents to a Drain Life. Negator backed by FOW is a beating stick and I lose game two quickly. WHY I DON'T BRING BACK THE CONTAGIONS IS BEYOND ME, but I don't opting for Powder Kegs instead…going first I Unmask Huey and take a Vamp Tutor, I note he has a Constult still and find myself having to use two more cards to Unmask this guy as well. Of the top comes another Consult for William and I find myself staring at turn two Necro vs. my four Swamps in hand…oops I was done in by Negator.

9-2

Round 12 vs. Pete Leiher. White Weenie

Inevitably you find yourself in that position where one loss takes you from top eight contention. Pete was 8-0 on day one and had what I thought was a great metagame deck in white weenie with Empirical Armour. We agreed to a split on the money side so that we wouldn't feel badly losing to a friend this close to the goal of the tourney. Of course I should have realized that WHENEVER I DO A SPLIT WITH SOME BESIDES TERRY TSANG I PAY OUT! Of course Pete wins the match, of course he finishes out of the money and I finish in the money, anything else would have made sense!

A note on game two (Pete won 2-0) I remember I posted one time as to the importance of learning the rules. Dammit if I heeded my own advice I'd have won game two. I consulted away all but six cards in my deck going for a Negator; this depressed me and tunneled my vision to the match at hand. Pete was mana screwed and after taking 5 points finally top decked a Tithe to get a defense going, he tapped out to cast the 2/2 first striking pro red/black dude, I knew he had Erase in hand from a Lobotomy I had used earlier to take his 2/1 pro black shadow guys. But I cast Dystopia and said done. He untaps and Erases the Dystopia, I'm like Yep! And we play on. There were 7-10 spectators of this game/moment and apparently only ONE of them knew that Dystopia goes on the stack and the knight dies regardless (therefore I win), Mr. Ken‘I have nothing more to do with frogs' Russell. What a stab in the back him not saying anything was. He was right he should not interrupt our match directly, but he SHOULD have called the judge, rather than try to be a smart ass afterwards and tell me how I should have won. It's not Ken's fault I lost, it is my own, I should know all my stack rules by now, my only defense is that Dystopia is a card that I was used to going away in that fashion back in the‘dinosaur' days.

9-3 (and getting depressed)

Round 13 vs. Mike Turian playing Secret Force

I don't really know how many of you are Jamie Wakefield fans out there. He's not really my favorite. And I think that it was more a testament to Turians play skill rather than the deck that he got as far as he did with it, but I don't think I could have asked for a more favorable match up. That being said I had to top deck a Consult of the top of my library to Corrupt Mike out in game three…MIZE!

10-3

Round 14 vs. Darwin Kastle playing Donate (surprised?)

I'm trying to think, but I believe that I've played Darwin three times previous to this match and not ONCE had I ever given him a good match. Not once caused him to have to think, not once gotten what amounted to even an ounce of respect from the guy. Gary Wise started this power rankings thing on The Sideboard On-line and I found myself utterly disgusted that I was rated 49th of 50 by my peers. Simply put I ALWAYS finish in the money, I am on the gravy train again after simply not going to two separate pro tour events (Worlds being he lastest) and I'm like 18th in the damn pro tour player of the year race. Let's see, that's exactly THRITY ONE SPOTS HIGHER THAN 49th. Anyways, I suck at popularity contests, because I say what I think.

But back to my Kastle dilemma, he beats me in worlds with an amazing turn 1 Bird backed with 3 Pyroblasts and no other red sources of damage vs. LOBOLOCO, he beats me in pt Chicago II with a green/black draft deck that absolutely wrecking balls my cap and gown deck (r/w seething anger) due to Evincars' Justice buy back. At the top table pre-top eight in London I make a play mistake and even get jedi mindtricked into taking life before completing the actions I had going on the table. So I was bound and determined to not let Darwin win this match.

He goes off turn 4 in game one. Ah hell, I took his Consult, took his Lim Dul's Vault, only to have him draw a Vamp Tutor to get his Necro working anyways that game. The beauty of the Donate decks is that as a two card combo it is so much easier to pack in more search cards for Necro than I can do with straight black. Having learned my lesson from playing two Donate decks earlier in no way shape or form are my Contagions coming out of the deck..well ok one did, but I kept 3 and sided in my Lobotomies and did NOT try to bring in Infernal Darkness this time. Game two Darwin consults for a Negator and loses all his Illusions in the process. My eyes sparkle and I Lobotomy his Force of Wills and realize that he is‘playing my game now.' The Donate deck makes for a poor traditional Necro deck and I easily take game two though time is winding down in the round. Basically if the Necro deck can survive the first few rounds without getting Donated out it stands a very good chance of winning this matchup. Darwin went for an early Negator victory but Contagion made that irrelevant. At any point I could have then drained the Negator for 4 and cost Darwin all his permanents but two land. However Darwin was very low on life from using Necro and even if I cost him his perms there would not be time for me to win the match. So I instead just kept my head above water and watched time run out on a match that I'm fairly certain I would have won given more time.

Final result 10-3-1 and 16th place

The best part of 16th place is that I won a box of Nemesis from StarCity!!! Omeed, Pete and that whole gang have an intrinsic love for the game of Magic. I have made fun of the big yellow star in the past, but a shirt is only a shirt and if it helps get the word out about my favorite magic website, so be it. I hope you folks enjoy StarCityCCG.com and are sure to let the folks who keep it going just how much you enjoy it.

I had a good time in Philly. Props must be given to Rich Frangiosa, Eric Turnquist (go top eight ptq boy), Skip Potter (much thanks for the ride home!), Brian Schneider (who always thinks similarly to me in decks even if he is loathe to admit it), Mike Turian (even though he stole my cheesesteak), BooBoo Maher, Eric Phillipps and Mike Lucerello (those two guys make for a funny cheering section)

No slops really..the things I've heard about Van Cleave don't make me like him much, but anyone who wins a tourney that big deserves some credit.

If I have a slop it is to my good friend Pete Leiher. WHO GOES 0-3 at 10-1!!!!!

That's all I have for now..hope you enjoyed the report.

Don Gallitz