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Welcome back to Ask Ken. Sorry about that little goof last week, but hey, we get to have fun too. Thanks to my fearless editor Ted Knutson for standing in with his own brand of parody of me. I wrote the first letter, the second was tended by Osyp Lebedowicz. Ted took a valiant stab at it, but now I get to read a little Reader Mail! Hey!
Today's letter comes to us from Travis Severance of Rochester, NY. T-Bone writes:
Dear Ken,
I was recently reading a match report for the GP in Columbus and came up with a question that I hope you can answer for me. The match between Jordan Berkowitz and Aaron Lipczynski really sparked my curiosity. I noticed that the match was decided by a hideous card called Fists of the Anvil. In your illustrious career of Limited format tournament play, can you think of a worse instance when a pro tour caliber player was knocked out a top eight by an unknown with a card so wretched? And question two, do you think the option to play this card was made due to the player being inexperienced, I mean he had to have a better card right. It seemed Jordan made all the right blocks, so how can an aspiring player prepare himself to prevent an anomaly like this from occurring? Thanks for your time as always.
T-Bone Rochester, NY
Well T-Bone, there are several things to consider. Both players in this feature match are extremely good friends of mine. I spoke to both players, and the actual card Fists of the Anvil was irrelevant. Aaron won on the power of his Tel-Jilad Chosen, Fangren Firstborn, Arc-Slogger draw.
It is also important to note that while Aaron hasn't established a name for himself yet, he is a very good player. The decision to add the card to his deck was not chosen lightly. It was down to that card and Battlegrowth. He felt that Fists of the Anvil was better for stealing wins, and I tend to agree with him.
That being said, there are probably few more embarrassing ways to be taken out of a tournament. You can't stop yourself from losing to bad cards, but I highly recommend after you do, that you start yelling at the top of your lungs how bad your opponent is and inform him that if you played one hundred games you'd win ninety-nine. Feel free to offer to put money on it. [The opinions of Mister Krouner are not necessarily those of StarCityGames.com, it's editor, or the owners of this here site here. Thank you. - Knut]
The source for spinning straw into gold,
KK
That's all we got for Monday's chapter. Tune in tomorrow when I clear up some important details about April 1st. G'night everybody!
