The Source 5th Annual Anniversary Tournament

This is a continuation from the post prior to "States 2009".

So, I got to the event at 10:30 AM after traveling for several hours from Manhattan upstate and signed in. I was playing Blue/Green Merfolk, perhaps my most favorite deck ever, due to my attraction to fish people and powerful cards and synergies (cmon, who WASN’T attracted to The Little Mermaid when they were ten? I’m not just looking at guys here either…I’ve heard stories…). I greeted my fellow players that I recognized, as not a lot of the Legacy players change from tournament to tournament-you usually see the same people over and over again. It’s nice-most Magic players are pretty nice kids. We kinda get stereotyped into being weird uncleanly freaks who lack social graces and tact. There are some people like that who play the game, but then again, those people exist everywhere-go do ANYTHING, and you’ll find someone like that. Why we get a bad rap, I don’t know-maybe Jocks and all the “cool kids” in high school are just more opinionated than us and have louder voices to spread their propaganda and after years of the same drawl and expectations, it just stuck. Go to any of these events and just talk to the people and you’ll be sorely mistaken.


So Round One starts up and I play against Jackie, a nice woman who’s running Faerie Stompy (artifacts, mana acceleration and distruption). It’s her first tournament so she isn’t completely sure of what she’s doing and I end up 2-0 against her. She didn’t really do much during the whole game and didn’t even damage me (I think she was getting use to the deck). We talked for a while, then played some games for fun-she was a good sport even in losing, the kind of player I like to see.


Round Two I played against a nice Canadian fellow playing Zoo, my second worst match up. Game one I barely stabilize at 6 life and proceed to take control of the game. Mitch gets me to 3 for two turns while I keep attacking. He doesn’t see the burn spell, and we’re off to game 2. Game two I’m on the back foot until I can keep a Tarmogoyf and Jitte on the table, and those take it away. It didn’t help Mitch that he had to mull to 5, but sometimes, that’s just Magic.


Round Three put me up against Sebastian, who I believe was from France. He was playing a deck I hadn’t really seen before-blue/red/black Tombstalker/Faeries. Game one I beat him without showing a merfolk (Tarmogoyf & Jitte are just SO good) and he boarded completely wrong for game two. Sadly, he didn’t show me a faerie in game one and I boarded wrong too-he played Bitterblossom on turn two and that was that. Game three I didn’t board in my Krosan Grips (I had relic for tombstalker game one then took it out for game three) and when I lost to Bitterblossom and Jitte in the third game, I realized my mistake.


Round Four, I was feeling kinda down-I had no idea how I was going to win the next five rounds, as I needed to in order to get to the top eight. I’d just have to keep on drudging on in order to get there. I played against George in round four, who was running W/G Stax (essentially Armageddon, Smokestack, Tangle Wire, and Ghostly Prison-really annoying stuff if you don’t have counterspells…but I do…). I destroyed him game one, as he didn’t get the spells he needed to keep me under control, while he destroyed me game two by blowing up all my lands then killing me with a Knight of the Reliquary. Game three, I blitz aggroed him out in order to seal the deal.


It was about at this point in the day my friend who was judging the event (it’s nice to have friends in high places) came up to me really excited.


“Hey, did you hear the news?”


“No, what’s going on?”


“There’s this new deck out, doing really well-something that Legacy’s never seen before.”


“What’s it running? You can tell me…we’re friends, right?”


“No, I can’t tell you, but get this-it’s running 65 cards, has no deck sleeves, and has no sideboard…”


That piqued my interest, so I went off to my friends in the event and started asking around.


“You guys hear about this rogue deck that’s been going around?”


“Yea, I saw it in action the other round-it got a turn four kill.”


“Turn four?? What was it running?”


“Well, the kid went turn one Nip Gwyillion, turn two Edge of Divinity, Edge of Divinity, turn four win.”


Yea. Nip freaking Gwyillion in legacy. I would later learn one week later from another judge at the event that this deck ended up going 5-3, a winning record. Some legacy decks cost upwards of $1000 dollars and still don’t win. This one probably cost $50. He didn’t get any prize, but then again, he wasn’t playing nearly with the optimal deck building strategy (you know, like, having a sideboard?). This just goes to prove a theory I’ve had about legacy for quite some time-if you go into a tournament as a skilled player with some cards legacy players have never seen before, you will blow their mind and win. The legacy players are so ingrained in seeing the same set of cards that when you throw in a new one they’ve never seen before, they crap themselves and just lose through bad playing.


For part two of the report, check on back at the next post…

by Anthony "Corta" Conta


J$ Notes:
Thanks, Conta, much appreciated. More stories will be upcoming. For those of you who were curious, I just wanted to say that our friend Brian ended up being eliminated in the first round of Top 8 at States, but being a Quarterfinalist ain't all that bad, especially since he hadn't extensively practiced with the deck he was playing.


Upcoming: The Source 5th Annual Anniversary Tournament, Part Deux


Check us out at: http://sites.google.com/site/teamdamageonthestack