Not again.

Who mises whatever rogue SKYcaptain mirror match?

So I show up at Waterloo on Friday, and everyone is getting together to draft. We have nine to draft, but there is a small poker game going on too, so no one is really forced to do nothing at all. We sit down with two Mercadian foreign packs and one English Nemesis pack apiece and prepare to do battle. I crack open a pack with Cateran Overlord and Snuff Out and some random stuff, and choose the card with the big numbers. I second pick Spidersilk Armor, and happily settle into Black/Green, my favourite colour combination in Masques. I am forced to collect lots of good critters and eventually pick Sever Soul over Primeval Shambler around 6th pick (I have no idea how that made it to me) because I already have several fatties and no kill. I collect green spellshapers to round out the pack. Pack two I get another Sever and Vendetta as well as some useful green midsize critters and some really weak Mercenary action. Pack 3 I collect two Seals of Doom, Vicious Hunger, and a 5th pick Massacre! (Apparently Volrath the Fallen was picked over Massacre by the man to open the pack) I also grab two Blastoderms and a bunch of enchantment removal and a pair of Spineless Thugs to go with my Slaver and Brute.

I end up building this monstrosity:

1 Cateran Slaver
1 Silverglade Elemental
2 Blastoderm
1 Giant Caterpillar
1 Deepwood Drummer
2 Rushwood Herbalist
1 Deathgazer
1 Rushwood Dryad
1 Belbe's Percher
2 Horned Troll

1 Tiger Claws
1 Seal of Giant Growth
1 Spidersilk Armour

2 Seal of Doom
2 Sever Soul
1 Vicious Hunger
1 Massacre
1 Vendetta

Significant Board Options:

1 Tranquility
1 Refreshing Rain
2 Tranquility Clone from Nemesis
1 Snake Pit
1 Squall
1 Cateran Brute
2 Spineless Thug
2 Rampart Crawler

It doesn't get much better than this, ladies and gentlemen. Had I picked up a Rathi Intimidator or two, I would have tried to fit in the Mercenary machine, but given the quality of the cards in the deck, I just didn't think Thugs made the cut, and without them, Brute is pretty weak. I only went 5-2 with the deck in the round robin we had, which I feel was not indicative of the deck's strength. I felt I should have gone 6-1 with my loss to mana screw or somesuch as always happens but I threw away a game to Duncan and was slowly decimated by Overtaker over the course of about 8 turns. How the Overtaker survived, only my deck knows. I also lost to Adam when he got his Ancient Hydras and Flowstone Overseer much more often than I saw my Blastoderms. Oh well. I still think I came first, although I was probably tied with someone.

So I go to sleep after the draft at around five am, and get up and moving around five pm the next day. Tom Gannon and I have been talking about my deck, and he wants to play it as he is not experienced in the ways of Donate-Illusions. We get together and discover we own four Cursed Scrolls and we currently need around 12. Some bad. We construct a bit, and tweak the deck some. Some of Team Comf has given up on our PTQ road trip to Rochester, and we have five people going. Adam is going to play Dance Dance Donate Illusions as is Byung. Tom Gannon and I are running I Am Sky. Gwire is thinking about Pox, but we convince him to run Hate, a deck he has been playing forever and knows much better than Pox. Pox is also highly recommended by Blake "Food Chain" Manders, who is not to be trusted playing any deck that cannot be said to "go off" (If he does tell you he has a deck that goes off, though, watch out).

We hang around and test and collect cards, and try to work in Wastelands into my deck. Tom tries removing four basics for them, but I insist that the deck had a pristine mana base before we tried the Wastelands, and I would rather run no Wastelands than cut four real lands for them. We finally compromise on three, but I am still not happy as the deck really does need those extra coloured lands. We also hit on the Nemesis card of the tournament, Blastoderm! Man, that guy is an even bigger beating than Wumpus. With our bastardized mana, though, we decide to run two of each because of the GG in Blastoderm's casting cost. We tweak the sideboard and the one drops a bit, and are ready to roll.

I. A. S. (I Am Sky) Version 1.3

2 Hunted Wumpus
2 Blastoderm
4 Spike Feeder
2 Uktabi Orangutan
4 River Boa
4 Incinerate
2 Dwarven Miner
3 Skyshroud Elite
3 Mogg Fanatic
3 Shock
2 Elvish Lyrist
4 Cursed Scroll (MVP)

3 Wasteland
4 Taiga
3 Treetop Village
8 Forest
7 Mountain

Sideboard (Tom's maindeck was identical, his board is in brackets)

4 (3) Pyroblast
4 (3) Emerald Charm
2 (2) Dwarven Miner
2 (2) Uktabi Orangutan
1 (1) Hunted Wumpus
1 (1) Wasteland
1 (0) Pyrokinesis
0 (1) Bottle Gnome
0 (2) Price of Progress

We are planning to leave around five in the morning, and at around one we realize that we are short a bunch of Cursed Scrolls and other essentials. The owners of these cards are in the Math Building on campus playing poker and will not be going home until after we must leave. We manage to send emissaries to their place of residence, and acquire all but some commons, one Volcanic Island, and one Scroll.

At around four, we realize several interesting facts:

We have no idea where the tournament in a foreign city and country is actually located.

The tournament organizer has no website where we can acquire this information.

We have no American money and no way to get any.

It's looking grim, folks. Unlike on TV, there was no dramatic scene where the person at fault for this disaster pays dearly for their crimes and everything works out eventually. Instead, we muddle through and somehow the day goes great. Weird. Note: www.mapquest.com is the most useful thing ever invented. Note: Americans do not like Canadian currency, but credit cards still work fine. Our tizzy decreases in strength very rapidly upon this realization.

So we do some creative phone tricks and somehow get all of our folks together at five in the morning with most of the stuff we need. Off we go! That we actually managed to get everyone going at this early hour should be no surprise as all but the driver have not slept at all. Why do we do this to ourselves?

Along the way we discuss various decks and manage to create a very strong Replenish/Saproling Burst/Pandemonium deck that is mostly immune to Trix hate and probably would have Q'd somebody. We did not, however, have the cards with us to build it and so we play the same decks we started with. After going the wrong way down a few highways and a quick illegal U-turn, we find the site without any problems. I would like to note for the record that the United States of America is evil! First of all, they have Whopper Juniors for $1.51. Now, you Americans out there might not be surprised at this, but in Canada they cost 99 cents, and Canadian money is only worth around 65 cents American. What drugs do they put in Juniors in the US that they can charge 240% of the Canadian price? GRRRRRR.

So we get to Millennium Games and Comics which is a really large store with a massive playing area. Definitely the best place for size I have ever been to. Folks are running around trying to get Hunted Wumpus, and I am torn between cheering for my tech spreading and crying because Wumpus wrecks my deck. I make a bad trade to get my fourth Scroll, but it is a French one, so all is not lost. I spend quite a while trying to pay the folks who are running this thing, but they don't like my strangely coloured money and I finally break out the plastic. We write our decklists on scrap pieces of yellow paper as they have no decklist sheets left.

Tournament Rochester, New York, USA 77 participants

The site was pretty cramped with all these people everywhere, but we made it work.

Round 1: Adam Hurd, Teammate, Dance Dance Donate Illusions Dammit!

Game 1: I keep a mediocre hand with no Wastelands and Adam is nice and gives me his most valued possession. I don't want his used stuff, but he insists.

Game 2: Adam thinks long and hard and keeps a hand with no Necro, but with good acceleration. He Firestorms my gang early, but I continue to press, and eventually get out another Dwarven Miner and River Boa. He is at the following situation: He draws and plays Necro while at 7 life. He also has four sources of mana on table, and no cards in hand. I also have no cards, but I am in possession of untapped green mana, River Boa, and Miner. I figured out later that there exists no combination of cards in his deck that he can draw to win because of his painlands, but he tries for five, I think, and loses.

Game 3: I keep a hand of Mountain, Mountain, Skyshroud Elite, Pyroblast, Emerald Charm, River Boa, Spike Feeder. I play two Mountains in a row on turns one and two, and he plays Necro. I play turn three Village (tapped of course) and he plays Illusions. I let it go, and draw Pyroblast. (grin). He draws fourteen cards, and trys to Donate next turn. I Pyro, he Forces, I Charm, he cries. I show him the extra Pyro and he just shakes his head. My opponent did 28 damage to himself this game just by using Necro and I still won without doing a single point myself. Some good.

1-0 2-1

Round 2: Monoblue with Back to Basics.

Game 1: I very carefully play around his Force Spikes and let him counter all the useless stuff. I finally get out a River Boa and Spike Feeder. He drops a Quicksand to deal with them but Feeder donates some fatness to the snake and a unblockable regenerating 4/3 is too much for the blue deck.

Game 2: I get a very slow start and we play back and forth with nobody getting anything much going. I eventually get down a 4/3 Boa again, but he has Masticore pounding away at me. On his second last turn to live, he plays a second Masticore with two mana up, and the monkey in my hand plus the Boa on board are enough to put him to one while he discards his last two cards and kills me on his turn.

Game 3: I attack very quickly with critters under cover of Pyroblasts and Scrolls protected from Kegs by the monkeys. I just run him over as his board control is all vulnerable to the all powerful Uktabi.

2-0 4-2

Round 3: Pandemonium/Saproling Burst/Replenish

Game 1: I don't know what he is playing, so I drop a few quick Elites and hit for ten or so before an Oath hits. He asks me a few times if I know what he is playing, and my best guess is some variant of Sean McKeown's Comb-Oath deck. He Oaths into lots of Bursts and Pandemoniums and one Anarchist and one Replenish. I take 84 or so damage.

Game 2: I side in all kinds of things for pretty much all of my non sacrificable critters. I attack fast with Boas and get a few Wastelands and Pyro his Attunements. He cannot find a Replenish and dies on around turn 7. (Really fast for my deck).

Game 3: I get him down to eight, and am forced to try a 50/50 Scroll shot on one of my guys to keep him from Oathing for the game. I succeed, and hope to slowly Scroll him out. However, I cannot draw enchantment removal, and I draw too many creatures I cannot sack. I end up unable to play out my critters and Scroll them because I am not guaranteed to hit, and he eventually gets around to casting Attunement four times or so and finds what he needs. I take a large amount of damage again. Interestingly enough, he didn't need very much damage as he had beat me down for 14 or so before just by hardcasting the silly Bursts.

2-1 5-4

Round 4: Monoblue with Back to Basics (Again)

Game 1: He plays first turn Island, go, and I sigh, knowing that this will be a long match indeed. I mount a quick offense making sure to play around Force Spike and he successfully holds me off for a while, but cannot get above three mana and I eventually bust out multiple threats a turn. Again, a Spike Feeder + Boa combo makes a really nasty critter that even Masticore cannot deal with and it does him in.

Game 2: I get a great start, and we trade off permanents for a while. He has already lost two Kegs, so I feel safe in dropping both my remaining Scrolls with seven mana available to win the match comfortably. Of course, he topdecks his third Keg and blows them both away. He is at six life, but I am successful at drawing 5 land in a row and Nasticore gives me a quick boot to the head.

Game 3: Again, he Kegs the Scroll, Forces the Boa, and counters the random spells I tempt him with. I also Incinerate and Pyro the two Ophidians he plays. I bust out a Wumpus, and he drops Ophidian. He then Boomerangs ! Wumpus but cannot attack due to Dwarven Miner. I play Wumpus again, and he plays his fourth Ophidian for free! He says go, I hit and play Blastoderm. He drops Masticore, obviously desperate to find a turn or two to find an answer, but I have another monkey, and he has no Force. When the monkey jumps in to chow down in the purple donkey, my opponent concedes to my phat.

3-1 7-5

Round 5: Pooh Burn with Scalding Tongs

Game 1: I keep a hand with two Mountains, Scroll, three red cards, and an Elite. We Waste each other's lands, and we both get stuck at three Mountains gleefully Scrolling each other. He draws more burn, however, and I draw more and more varied green cards with no Forests in sight. Eventually I die to his Scroll with monkey in hand and no answers.

Game 2: I side in only around seven cards, which is a first, because in every other matchup today I have sided in at least ten. I love my sideboard. We kill each other's permanents and begin the Scroll staredown. This staredown favours me immensely because I have the power of monkey, but he surprises me by Pillaging my Scroll! Yikes! I promptly draw another and then monkey his Scroll, but he draws another as well. I continue to draw Feeders and Scrolls, though, and I win comfortably as we sit there Scrolling each other naming Fireblast and Pyrokinesis respectively.

Game 3: Again we destroy all the creatures that come out until I play Wumpus. He Shock/Fireblasts it. I draw another, and he Kindle/Fireblasts it. I draw my third, and the Wumpus goes all the way. I think I finished this game at 18 life or so.

4-1 9-6 Round 6: Tom Gannon, with I Am Sky
Not another teammate matchup! What did I do to deserve this?

Game 1: I keep a draw of Forest, Elite, Elite, Scroll, Incinerate, Shock, Miner. I get early offense, of course, but I do not draw another land until turn 5 and still almost squeak out a victory.

Game 2: We both side in Miners and Wumpus and monkeys. I get the DRAW this game as I draw exactly as many monkeys as he draws Scrolls but I draw one more Scroll than he draws monkeys. We kill each other's stuff and I Scroll him out.

Game 3: Again, all our early plays get killed, and on turn four he plays Wumpus. I respond with Wumpus, he responds Wumpus, I respond Wumpus! He declines to respond, but I still cheer and make a fuss and get told to shut up by the judges. We trade Wumpuses and are left with relatively equal boards. Again I get out two Cursed Scrolls and get them active, but he draws another damned Wumpus! With some help from his Spike Feeder Tom quickly makes his Wumpus too big for my side to kill, and although I still almost stabilize with a Boa, he has the Incinerate for it and Wumpus does me in.

We agreed before the match to play because whoever won could draw in, and whoever lost could still have tiebreakers good enough to sneak in at 8th place at 5-2.

Tom is paired down this round against Trix, and loses. I am paired against Elfball, and before the game my opponent confesses he saw me playing earlier and is sure that he has no chance. His deck just loses to Cursed Scrolls, he says. (grin)

Round 7: Elfball

Game 1: He plays a few early elves, but I draw Fanatic and Shock and kill them and quickly get a Scroll active. I play very cautiously, killing every elf in sight, keeping his mana as low as possible because I know that he cannot win if I keep his elf count down. I Waste the Cradle and eventually get rid of all his little guys and Wumpus comes to town.

Game 2: Come on Pyrokinesis, you know I need it! I side out all my monkeys at first, and then remember about Coat of Arms. I didn't see it in the first game, but if he plays one, I totally lose if I have no monkey. I side out the Feeders, I think, and the Elite because they will power up his Priests. Again I draw two burn spells and Scroll to start, and his first turn is Forest, go. WTF? I get rolling again and get the Scroll down but again I am playing conservatively, keeping his side of the board absolutely clear to prevent any silliness. He runs out of Elves at some point, and I bring out Blastoderm to commence terminal beatdown. He just gets run over, and shows me his hand at the end. He had two monkeys for my Scrolls in hand, but never hit three mana during his main phase. Ouch. I look at the bottom card of my deck, and there it is: the Pyrokinesis.

We gather together to await final standings. It looks like Tom or I could get in just barely, but it turns out that we are the top two 5-2 players, Tom first, me second, and there are precisely eight players with more than fifteen points. Sigh. McGuire ended up pretty low, I think, with Adam at 4-2-1 and Byung at 4-3 I think. Adam tied with another Donate player when he Firestormed both of them out for 2 each! That takes skill, Mr. Hurd.

We collect what few packs we are due for our showing and pack up. There is still a Pokemon tournament going on, and some booster drafts, but we have a long drive ahead of us. I get a compliment from Tom Gannon that I will remember for a long time. He said to me, "Sky, thanks for giving me this deck. It's great." Given that Tom didn't make top eight, and has an unusual tendency to hate the attack phase, where one taps bad cards that have numbers on them or something, this means a lot. I am happy with my deck, as it posted a 18-6 record all told, and that is pretty solid for a last minute rogue metagame deck. It also came really close to Qing several folks as the top eight of the tourney here was mostly 3-Deuce, Hate, and Trix, and those are happy matchups for me. Had either Tom or I made top eight, we had a really good shot.

Can another Sky deck with fat and burn be a good metagame choice again? Just you wait till next Extended season, ladies and gremlins, and I'll find a way, I always do...

So on the drive home we all chat and I try to sleep. At some point I am mostly unconscious and Tom tries to find his "broken juice" which is somewhere below the seat. His hand bumps my shoe, which partially wakes me up, but he doesn't know it is my shoe, and reaches up further to figure out what it is he has bumped into. Of course, his hand grabbing firmly onto my calf jolts me quite awake, and I shout, "Quit feeling me up!" The van, thankfully, does not crash as Adam looks around to figure out what the hell is going on in his vehicle, and the whole car is filled with people alternately asking what happened and laughing their butts off. Good times.

I really wish that Necro had been banned. Man, I hate that card. What we really need is for Extended to shrink to include only Sixth Edition, not fifth, and to hack out the Ice Age Block. We would lose broken Consult, Broken Necro, Stupid Illusions, and Broken Glaciers. People would have to use fair drawing engines for once. I wonder what that would be like, hmm? Greed, anyone?

I get back to Waterloo and I find out something really funny. I ask people what they would play if they had gone to Rochester, and they all list my deck in the top four. They all put Donate on top, but I Am Sky makes it onto every list. This, after they all called my deck a flaming pile of monkey crap. Maybe they think I actually know how to play Magic. (I'm not going to claim to be good or anything) I'm getting all misty eyed here, thinking that my team actually isn't convinced I suck. I'd better sign off before I start blubbering. :)

PS Thanks to everyone for being cool. Team Comf, my opponents, and all those others who make the great trek trying for that most elusive of prizes. People make Magic what it is.

Top Ten sucks, life is good.

stay rogue,

Sky Winslow Roy
swroy@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca
the rogue SKYcaptain