There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.
—Victor Hugo
Billy Madison: Oh my God, Old Man Clemens hates shit.
Frank: Shh, here he comes.
Old Man Clemens: Who the hell is it? What do you want? Judas Priest, Barbara, it’s one of those flaming bags again.
Barbara: Don’t put it out with your boots, Ted.
Old Man Clemens: Don’t tell me my business, Devil Woman. Call the fire department, this one’s outta control.
[Old Man Clemens steps on the bag, then lifts up his boot and smells]
Old Man Clemens: Eck, poop again.
Billy Madison: He called the shit “poop”.
[Billy, Jack, and Frank laugh hysterically]
Frank: This is the best night of my life.
[They continue laughing]
Old Man Clemens: I’ll get you damn kids for this. You’re all gonna die.
—From 1995’s Billy Madison
Oh boy. All of these guys and a bunch more Twenty Siders showed up to the Montasy Comics run PTQ at the Hotel Pennsylvania Saturday morning.
Johnny (in the back), Kadar (aka KaDark Ritual), and Abe “Thrag” Lusk.
Look! Juni is visiting from Korea!
Dylan Heister!
Jon Sieber and Alex Owen.
I took a photo of Dylan, Monique, Tim, and Zac for our next business card. Dylan’s manaSHIFT t-shirt cracked me up.
Kadar played 1000 games with his Modern Junk Mid-Range deck against Dylan, Alex, and Hugh Kramer (or maybe not Hugh, I can’t remember). Liliana seemed like the best card he played. Alex shuffles maniacally and I have proof.
The computer wasn’t able to print seat pairings. The judges told us to find any seat below table 115. We did. We all sat with our friends. It was nice.
The Montasy people handed out draw string backpacks with the Montasy Ninja Pig logo on them. Inside was our six packs, a die (which they referred to as “dice” on the checklist despite there being only one), a life total pad with the Montasy Ninja Pig logo on it, and probably something else, I don’t remember. We were asked to open and register the pools and I was thankful that the one I was registering wasn’t going to be the one I built from. It was easily the worst pool I’ve ever opened.
There was not pass and verify portion of registration. We passed the pools around a few times and then we were good to go. Seems I’d been hasty with my “worst pool” assessment. The pool I was to build from is absolutely the worst I’ve seen. Here it is, MTGO’d, minus a couple of inconsequential cards I probably ripped up in rage.
What the actual FUCK am I supposed to do with this piece of shit?
I took out my rares and uncommons and looked to see if I had any bombs.
Yeah, great, I have one bomb, a fucking Ratchet Bomb. Super. Quite the stream of Staffs, too. I looked through the colors and took out all of the unplayables. Black wasn’t worth considering as it had one creature and mutliple copies of shitty removal spells and nothing else. White was the stinking pile it always is if you don’t get an Archangel of Thune and seven Serra Angels. Green wasn’t anywhere near what I wanted. Topping out at 2/4 creatures with reach isn’t much of a beatdown plan. Red had no removal, no burn (‘cept a Lava Axe but no one plays Lava Axe) and what seemed like the best creatures. My blue was shallow and had the best cards in totality.
M14 Sealed Deck—UR Timewaster
| Creatures (17) 2 Blur Sliver 1 Pitchburn Devils 2 Trained Condor 1 Archaeomancer 1 Nephalia Seakite 1 Battle Sliver 2 Striking Sliver 1 Marauding Maulhorn 2 Canyon Minotaur 1 Regathan Firecat 1 Goblin Shortcutter 1 Scroll Thief 1 Galerider Sliver Spells (6) 1 Disperse 2 Time Ebb 1 Clausterphobia 1 Wild Ricochet 1 Shiv’s Embrace | Lands (17) 10 Mountain 7 Island Sideboard Deck (24) 1 Rootwalla 2 Elvish Mystic 2 Advocate of the Beast 2 Giant Spider 1 Trollhide 1 Naturalize 1 Ranger’s Guile 1 Howl of the Night Pack 1 Briarpack Alpha 1 Plummet 1 Ratchet Bomb) 10 Forest |
My plan was to side into the not so good green deck if my opponents played tons of flyers, ditching the red cards. Longo said I should’ve played one less Blur Sliver (he doesn’t like them at all anyway) and put the Ratchet Bomb main. He looked at the rest of my pool and said something like “Oh, yeah, your pool sucks.” Duh!
I went with Jon Sieber to buy the dumbest and ugliest sleeves available at the venue and succeeded.
Total success.
Pairings were announced and I found my seat.
My opponent never showed. A judge said he was on the phone long distance with his girlfriend. Is long distance even a thing anymore? I had hoped to lose round one, drop, and get some painting done in my studio. I couldn’t drop after a round one bye.
I asked Thraglusk if he’d play a few quick games with me so I could go through my deck and see if it did anything. It lost. We played quite a few games and I didn’t win one, I didn’t even come close.
Round two I played this guy. He beat the shit out of me, as I expected would happen each match all day long. His deck was extremely anti-flyers, he had heaps of removal, and his dudes were better than the occasional mediocre 2/2 or 3/3 I was putting down. He said he was sorry about my mana flood game two but it didn’t fucking matter. What was I gonna draw? A removal spell? I had one of those and it was an enchantment. It wouldn’t have mattered against his 10,000 creatures anyway. Piece of shit deck.
I check off “drop” on my slip, signed my name, and walked to the elevators to leave. I ran into Monique along the way and she asked my I was leaving so early. I told her what I’ve just told you and she understood. We talked in the lobby and outside the hotel for a minute, caught up, and it was nice. Then I hauled ass back to my studio on my sweet sweet bike, and wrote this account of my day.
PTQ M14 NYC Pros/Cons list:
Pros – talking to my buds, laughing, making jokes, location location location, and the ability to get the fuck out of the venue and back to my studio in 2o minutes after I dropped.
Cons – my horribly shitty pool of cards.
I wish I could start the day over again from a different seat so maybe I’d have a chance at some sort of reasonable deck and some sort of reasonable games of Magic. That’s something I think about a lot. I want to test some line of action or thought and I’d like the ability to start over prior to trying out the action or thought if it goes badly. I’m probably going to get an apartment in a videogame world soon. Seems better.
So, I’m not super stoked for M14 to not be the format because I’m pretty used to it, could learn more and get better at it, and the thought of starting over with a new block has my bank account and brain reeling. Sometimes you get a really bad pool. Maybe the pool wasn’t that bad? Can you look at the cards and try to build a winning deck? I doubt it but I’d love to see you try!
Later,
Matt
MTGO: The_Obliterator
PS—I bought a $1 scratch off lottery ticket on my way to the studio figuring my luck was so terrible that morning it had to come around and be great by the afternoon. It didn’t matter to the lottery ticket and my dollar was wasted.