Greetings again my loyal legions.

You know, I keep thinking that I could develop a bigger fan base if I delved more into pornography. Think about that for a second. Phone sex lines can charge $4 a minute, and Starcity pays me five used bandaids per article. Perhaps if I could attract more readers, I could leap up the pay scale to abandoned Coke cans.

(Note: Blake "Trade Routes is a lot like Necro" Manders can tell you where a bottle of Coke was originally packaged based strictly on taste. Back off, ladies, he's taken.)

Eureka, I have it! I'll change my column name from Doesn't Actually have a Name to Live Hot Girls! That'll up to ole' hit counter.

(I can think of one good reason why this shouldn't happen. Don't those kinds of things normally require scantily clad picture to go with them? Sky in a thong... yuck. -Sky's Left Hand)

I have a real beef with one particular article which went up on the Dojo recently. It was written by Tom Guevin and was basically a collection of random beefs he had about just about everything.

The article is at http://www.thedojo.com/column2/col.000217tgu.shtml

If he wasn't so well known I wouldn't care so much, but I hate to have an article so full of wrong statements go uncontested when so many could read what he has to say and take it to heart.

Tom has some rather interesting complaints about the power of the Necro/Donate/Illusions decks out there, and they certainly are powerful. He has a point that Donate/Illusions is a two card combo that wins you the game, but the combo itself is not broken. I quote, "Necro is irrelevant." I just about fell over when I read this statement. Do you know what mulliganing technique is employed by Donate players? It is as simple as "Mulligan until you get Necro or a card that fetches Necro." The ability to give your opponent a permanent that will certainly kill them is good, no argument there, but more important is the ability to draw 30 cards to use to defend that combo. Simply put, Necro is the most broken thing remaining in Extended, and it is so good monoBlue combo decks are willing to splash it. Splash! A card that costs BBB is being splashed. I think that says it all right there.

Tom also has a lot of problems with Mercadian and Nemesis for draft. He thinks that the 'Rebel gambit' is causing the game to become one of pure luck. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Limited completely based on trying for a certain strategy that goes horribly wrong if too many others try it too? How about if that strategy just goes wrong? I speak of course of selecting a colour. Trying for rebels is no different than trying for a colour. Get the rebels, great. Get hardly any rebels, weak. Try for Black. Get stacks of removal, great. Get lots of Molting Harpies and Bog Witches, weak. The rebel and Howling Wolf gambits are no worse or better than the normal colour gambits, just different. I think that because of these gambits Limited will always have a fair luck component, but if anyone has heard of a way to play Limited that doesn't have that, I'd love to hear about it.

Tom really doesn't like Mike Long it seems. I don't actually know either of them, but I do know something about making tough choices when you are the one in charge. It is easy (and totally correct) for players who realize that Mike is a cheating punk to want to layeth the smacketh doweth on his candy @$$, but as a judge there are higher priorities. Like maintaining a tournament environment where everyone can play without fear that judges will DQ them because everyone else thinks they cheat, or because they shuffle in a strange manner. The judges know as well as anyone that Mike cheats, but they must maintain the standards of proof for their actions to have any credibility. You cannot convict someone on past actions, on popular opinion or on educated guesses. A founding principle of our civilization is that a person is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The judges obviously felt they could not find such proof, and made the only judgment they could. In society, there are lots of people who make their way through life ignoring the laws most of us hold sacred. All you can do is support those charged with the difficult job of protecting the populace from these deviants and make sure you can sleep at night yourself.

Stay with me, there are two more points I'd like to cover.

One, Tom suggests that there are lots of new sites that pay for garbage writing. I will state for the record that Tom writes for TopDeck magazine, gets paid to do so, and writes repetitive articles on how the game is dying. I do believe we have seen this before and will most certainly see it again.

Two, Tom trashes the winner of the latest Constructed PT, Bob Maher. Again, I don't know Bob personally but I am confused by Tom's attack. He seems angry that Bob would discuss the money involved in the Pro Tour when he could be discussing something else like the competition. What exactly would a discussion of competition mean to a non-Magic player, do you think? I am unconvinced that chucking around catch phrases like Free-Spell Necro and Hatred are at all useful to someone who doesn't play the game. We spend most of our lives slaving away at some job just to make money, so it seems a little unreasonable to assume that winning as much as we would make in weeks or months should be inconsequential when compared to the excitement of competition. Simply put, there is nothing wrong with getting excited over the prospect of winning some cash.

On to more pleasant things.

Team Comf had a great time the other day with a new draft format. It is called Pro Tour draft. We found the list of the final eight draft packs from the Pro Tour and sat down and recreated the draft. I sat in Kurt Burgner's seat and drafted a pretty cool deck. Originally Kurt drafted a first pick Volcanic Winds, as did I. He ended up with a B/G deck that did not splash the Winds, while I ended up with G/W. He had four Howling Wolves, while I drafted six! There was a seventh Howling Wolf that was counterdrafted right before it got to me or I would have had the whole seven of them that were in the final eight. I have been unable to locate a list of Kurt's deck, but here is mine:

1 Cho-Manno, Revolutionary
1 Cho-Arrin Bruiser
1 Ramosian Lieutenant
2 Ramosian Sergeant
1 Devout Witness
1 Thermal Glider
1 Nightwing Glider
1 Disenchant
1 Ballista Squad
1 Cho-Manno's Blessing

6 Howling Wolf
1 Snorting Gahr
1 Tiger Claws
1 Deepwood Drummer
1 Rushwood Herbalist
1 Rushwood Dryad

9 Forest
9 Plains

Notable Sideboard Cards:

1 Pious Warrior (I really don't need more 4 drops)
1 Ancestral Mask
1 Briar Patch
1 Volcanic Winds
1 Thunderclap
2 Flaming Sword
1 Hammer Mage

I played 18 lands because I really don't need to draw very many good cards to have all the plays I need. I absolutely must get to four mana on turn four, though, so I considered going to 19, but decided that there were no more cards deserving of the axe. Of course, I have zero removal besides the Ballista, and this is why the deck is really not so great.

The draft:

First pick Volcanic Winds. Some good! I pick around five or so white cards in a row and end up with a good collection of rebels. The packs are completely devoid of good cards in my colours at this point, so I counterdraft a whole bunch of passable green stuff including a couple Wolves. When the packs come the other way, I see more Wolves and decide to go for Awoooooooo. I draft lots of spellshapers to go with my Wolves and continue to collect green and a few more reasonable white cards. I also grab the Flaming Swords and Clap in pack two. Pack three basically gave me 2 Wolves, Ballista Squad, and some filler. I am still not sure whether or not I should have splashed red.

Really really short report

-Burgner faced a W/B deck first round played by Brian Selden. Burgner won, as did I, but I played Tom Gannon with R/U.

-Burgner lost round two to Trevor Blackwell, who was running W/R. I won against Byung who had a B/R/G deck with the ever so potent Magistrate's Sceptre.

-Round 3 I played against Jer, (aka Mike Long), who beat the tar out of me with Cateran Enforcer. I had an opportunity to counterdraft it pack two, but chose to give it to a person I could only face in the finals. Jer ran R/B, and even with sideboarded red, I lost all three games to the Enforcer. (He did have a Cateran Summons to fetch it, though). Oh well.

I go to PTQ Oshawa this weekend. Whether I will play Donate or 3 colour Forbidian, only time will tell. If it is Donate, though, I guarantee you will surprised at the decklist. :)

Stay rogue.

Sky Winslow Roy

swroy@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca

the rogue SKYcaptain