(Begin Laura Mills intro)

According to Laura Mills, a tournament report should start on the day the writer started preparing for the tournament.

If you would like that to happen, click here.

(End Laura Mills intro)

(Begin Tournament Report)

I really don't know if I should bother with writing this down.

I mean, sure: I did promise in my"Preparing For The Onslaught" article that I would let you know how it went - but since no one read it, I'm not sure whether I should bother.

Now: I'm a human, With many, many human"qualities." I immediately set out to find someone to blame for my abysmal 0-2 drop.

So it's all The Ferrettt's fault.

Ah. Much better now.

First of all: Nobody read my Preparing For The Onslaught article.

No, don't even bother reading it now.

(Yes, I realize you didn't plan on bothering to read it, but it's still nice of you to pretend like you were.)

I posted it with the mindset that it would get posted near the time during which I sent it (a week and a half before the Prerelease), but the sweet Ferrettt decided to do a"Preparing for the Onslaught" special day on Friday. So, While my article was meant to be read a week before, it got posted on the same day as The Ferrettt's article, as blisterguy's article, and as Nate Heiss' article.

As much as my ego would like to say otherwise, I'm no match for these bastards.

(The annoying name I chose for it probably didn't help: Note that I actually learned my lesson on this one.)

(The name I chose for the article, not for my ego.)

(What you just witnessed was the ever-so-flawless human quality of setting aside such"trivial" things such as Lacking Style, Being Pointless, Being Incoherent, Lacking Playing Skill, and Being Shallow, all in order to focus on the only problem that it is not responsible for.. - Goblin's annoying inner voice, cleverly disguised as The Ferrett)

Anyway, I went 0-2 Drop.

I had a moderately broken deck, yet I still went with an 0-2 drop.

It was a B/W deck.

It had a Silent Specter, a Slate of Ancestry, and a Convalescent Care.

It had some removal - not as much as I'd like to, though - it had some good creatures, it had very nice card drawing for its colors.

You know why I lost?

Because I suck.

Ferrett, I'm sorry for blaming my trouble on you.

(Readers: I'm sorry for starting with such a headline, though you know that you won't have bothered reading this if it said"My Amazing 0-2 Drop - Onslaught Prerelease Report.")

(I also do realize that I can now write anything I want down because any reader, who actually made it to this point must have broken down by now.)

Where were we?

Oh yeah!

I suck.

(A crowd of people yell helpful"Noo","You own, dude!", and"GoblinKing 4L"-type shouts - but the viewer's keen eye might note that each of them has a pair of unfriendly-looking, um, Dwarves holding spears stationed behind its back.)

("Pathetic - Like I won't know a goblin painted up to look like a dwarf" - Suq'Ata Trader)

On Round One I saw a name I didn't recognize. Idan Falk. (Although his name kind of resembles Flak Cannon from Unreal Tournament.) Since there's a whole lot of scrubs at the prerelease, that was a good sign.

Then we set down to play.

The dude I was playing against was an Arena regular, who can bash my head in on a regular basis.

This might be a good point to remind myself that it took me some two years to remember the name of the arena manager - who I meet at every tournament, who's hooked to the tournaments that take place, who informed me of what"Type Two" means.

Anyway, I get killed.

In game one, I get him down to ten using Whipcorder and Glory Seeker beats until he dropped a pair of Pacifisms and cycled through his library like he's playing a bloody Compulsion deck using Undead Gladiator.

(Heh. Deck Tech: Undead Gladiator Compulsive Madness. Packs the winning condition with itself, but doesn't let you discard stuff outside your upkeep.)

Now that I recall, I took him down to thirteen, and three fetch lands took him down to ten.

Heh.

He opened three bloody fetch lands.

Oh well.

On the second game I started with Disciple of Grace and Glory Seeker beats, and once his fatties got down I used some fun Convalescent Care - mana burn tricks.

No, it wasn't enough.

In Round Two, I faced David Teller. I didn't recognize the first name, but Allen Teller is the Wizards' representative in Israel, or something like that.

David still needed help with the rules, yet I still handed him game one using his Exalted Angel. I got some Glory Seeker and Whipcorder beats, This time accompanied by a Silent Specter got me game two.

The only specific situation I really remember through the whole day was Game three, on the final five turns after time was called:

(Selective memory is such a wonderful thing. Imagine having to remember four weak games, instead of just one weak situation!)

On the second turn, I cast Death Pulse, while tapping - without really noticing it - my Daru Encampment.

Yes, I did have a Soldier ready to attack.

Yes, I did have a pair of plains open.

I left that that alone, and he took me down to four on his second turn.

On my final turn, I make pathetic miscalculations, and only made eight of the required nine damage.

He probably would've been nice enough to agree to let me take the attack back, but I was plain dumb, so when he validated whether I was"Really Sure," I recounted my creatures, and saw nine damage.

What I didn't see was a bloody insect token.

We used cubes to mark both tokens and life, so it was darned easy to confuse them.

Oh well.

What have I learned from this tournament?

Convalscent Care is broken. Even in Constructed.

Not in the Control Deck manner of broken; more like a White Weenie broken. Drawing two cards every turn is good, I hear, and a WW shouldn't care too much about its life total. The only problem using it might be because of the need to keep three mana open for mana burn.

Three mana each turn for an extra card might be too expensive for a WW deck. I'm not really sure, though. (I am, and it is - The Ferrett, truly interjecting)

Slate of Ancestry is broken in Limited. Outside Limited, I'm really not sure.

On the bright side of this tournament, I did get a Festering Goblin, Goblin Sky Raider, Brightstone Ritual, Skirk Commando, Goblin Burrows, and a Foil Commando Raid - which doesn't relate to goblins, but it has a goblin painting.

Yes, I understand that these are all commons that everyone got, but I do need some consolation.

(Begin Honorable Mention)

(Drum roll)

Orian.

I'm not sure of his last name, but he's the only Orian I know, so it's probably okay.

Orian's the Tel Aviv Wizards Representative. (Yes, I realize I've already mentioned Allen Teller is the Wizards Representative, and no, I'm not sure how they work together...) The situation was after being on the tournament site for two hours, and Orian told us that if we sit down and fill a table, we'll get to start Deck Registration.

Because Orian didn't want many cheaters, they decided to work with only a set number of tables at every point.

So we sit at our table. We were six people. Then, after about ten minutes of nobody handing as decks to register, I start bugging Orian.

Now here's the honorable part:

Although I bugged him five times during the next fifteen minutes, he didn't yell at me once.

I was so darn impressed I just stopped bugging him for the next five minutes, and then we got the decks.

It was cool.

(End Honorable Mention)

(End Tournament Report)

-Omer Tabach, GoblinKing
GoblinKing@Users.SourceForge.Net
GoblinKing on Bufu's Layer (www.Bufu.Tk)
GoblinKing on StarCity Boards
He who proudly uses the nickname"GoblinKing" five times in five rows in his signature.