|
| |
This a long, long report…..you have been warned!
After getting up at 4:30 in the morning and spending approx. 6
hours on the road in a crowded bus with other roleplayers [not all
very clean] I arrived in gaelcon in a BAD mood. All was improved
when Noel revealed why Paul was missing Gaelcon……he was
getting down on bended knee, flowers in paw begging, BEGGING
Jen to marry him! [She said yes! Poor Girl!] I logged a pretty good
deck which should have put paid to my chances for my real one
but Invasions is pretty good overall and it’s rare you get a deck that
gives you no chance so I wasn’t overly surprised to open up an
even better deck for my real one. Neil Crowley had logged it and he
informed me I would be g/w/u and go top 8 with it and so I checked
it out and it was indeed a good deck but the red was good enough
to let me go for a beatz deck which is a nice relaxing way to play
when you’ve had 3 hours sleep. 50 players, 6 Rounds.
Scorching Lava
Agonising Demise
Explosive Growth
Aggressive Urge
Harrow
Assault/Battery
Fires of Yavimaya
2 Ancient Kavu
2 Nomadic Elves
2 Climbing Kavu
Kavu Monarch
Yavimaya Barbarian
Pincer Spider
Riths Attendant
Verduran Emissary
Viashino Grappler
Voracious Cobra
Alloy Golem
Quirion Sentinal
1 Shivan Oasis
7 Forests
6 mountains
1 Red Sac Land
3 Swamps
I was very happy with the deck but I had made 2 errors….I had left
out a maniacal Rage and a hooded kavu which were bad
errors…..anyway, I got away with it, bringing them in instead of
Quirion Sentinal and a forest each time.
R1: Robert Flynn
Roberts Deck wasn’t really very fast and he made some creature
blocking errors…both games.
[1,0 – 2,0]
R2: Andrew Wynne
At this point I should say that by the time I sat down approx. 25
people had at least mildy pulled the piss out of me with something
original like [whiny voice]‘ he he Are ya gonna come second again
for the 4th time in a row Cormac? He he’. Not if I had to play any of
ye in the final, punks. This was quite amusing the first 2 or 3 times
but after a while I realised that if I didn’t win this I would never get a
chance to go to Hollywood and become a superstar and I was
doomed to a few months of being a ‘nearly’ man. Andrew informed
me that he knew how I felt as at the worlds this year he had been
the beaten finalist in a 250 man ptq there.
Game 1: I get a dream start and drop creatures every turn from turn
2 till turn 6 or 7 and run over him.
Game 2: Andrew keeps a hand of 6 that I can see that he is dodgy
about so I’m feeling good until turn 3 he has an armadillo cloaked
llanowar elite and he goes to 26 with beats, as you can tell from
my decklist however a 3/3 doesn’t threaten my deck that much so
a turn 4 Monarch followed by 3 kavus in a row allows me to recover
enough to take control.
[2,0 – 4,0]
R3: Jim Brophy
Game 1: A really great game against a really nice guy, his
regeneraters held me off until his broken cards came out hanna
with multiple artifact creatures and a zanam djinn.
Game 2: This was also close but my monarch hit the table and I
top decked 3 kavus in a row to wander through his regen creatures.
Game 3: turn 2 Yavimaya Barbarian, turn 3 maniacal rage…..5
turns later…..
[3,0 – 6,1]
R4: John Kearney
Game 1: John is a sound bloke so if I was going to get mana
screwed at least it was to him.
Game 2: At least this time I got land….just 3 spells though and
while they were all 3/3’s Johns deck was way too good.
[3,1,0 – 6,3]
R5: Eoin Brosnan
Game 1: I don’t really remember but I was on 20 at the end so it
was obviously fun.
Game 2: As I was 4th and Eoin was 3rd and JK and Dave Finucane
had I.D’d into top 8 [Team 5fu in every top 8 at ptqs in Ireland for
the last 2 years in a row I think – except Warpcon Jan ’99 as I
wasn’t a 5fu member yet] a lot of people were watching our game
so it was a great pleasure on Eoins turn 4 when he sac’d a land for
2 and played…frenzied tilling! You guessed it folks! Harrow! That’s
what I call card advantage! I ran over him again after that.
[4,1,0 – 8,3]
R6: David Gray
I.D.
[4,1,1 – 9,4]
Yeay! My 6th top 8 out of my last 7 tournaments! And GP
Manchester 52nd is cool too! I am really on a roll! Anyway going
into the draft I am player 3 so I get position 4!! Dave Finucane was
the no. 2 player in Swiss so Team 5fu had a big presence in
another top 8. Noel had failed to go through after receiving a
selection of cards that were a bit all over the place that forced him
to go 4 colours, and Neil Crowley had almost beaten Eoin Brosnan
in the final round. Feelin’ good! Neither of the 2 to my right went
blue which was nice and only 1 of them was splashing white! Left
was not as good but I was hurting them just by going blue/white
and forcing them to concentrate on black and red respectively.
After the draft I knew I was in great shape and this only threat was
likely to be JK who had drafted a GODLIKE b/r/u monster deck, but
mine wasn’t too bad either……
4 Benalish Trappers
3 Tower Drakes
2 Faerie Squadron
2 Shackles
Stormscape Appentice
Spite/Malice
Planar Portal
Fact or Fiction
Wayfairing Giant
Ruham Djinn
Angelic Shield
Samite Archer
Exclude
Tolarian Emissary
Slinking Serpent – my q-f and both my s-f opponents playing green.
Coastal Tower
Irrigation Ditch
Ancient Spring
Sulphur Marsh
3 swamps
6 Islands
5 plains
I was really happy with it and my only problem was I had no
acolytes for sideboard.
Q-F: Ed Fox
I can’t really remember much except that, according to the sheet
he did 9 points of damage to me in the 2 games. Oh and I had a bit
of a religious moment when I cast Fact or Fiction for the first time
in my life. No, Dustin I didn’t come. [Nearly though!]
[5,1,1 – 11,4]
S-F: David Gray
Game 1: He got land flooded and I floored him…..eventually!! on 18
life
Game 2: I was on 20 when he scooped.
[6,1,1 – 13,4]
F: Eoin Brosnan
Eoin is always scared of me because I always beat him……but I’ve
lost 3 ptqs in a row! Which prophecy will survive! Find out in the
Gaelconariad!
Game 1: Eoin goes down to 5 cards and I’m drawing after looking
at 7 great cards! He does well with early beats but I take no
chances and play shield t2 instead of the trappers which come out
t3 and 4 to shut the game down and allow me to gain
control…….allegedly when I played Fact or Fiction and revealed a
shackles and the other 2 trappers and 2 land, I heard someone
offer me £500 as a present for making it to the final, but I don’t
remember that and the judge didn’t hear anything……Anyway I
wrapped that up soon after with some flying beatz.
Game 2: Eoin goes to 6 cards and lays no land t1 as I look at
another godlike hand and for 10 minutes I have a warm feeling
inside as I know that the game is mine…… I worked out later I took
24 points of damage in my 6 games!
[7,1,1 – 15,4]
Wow! What a feeling! It is true…when you have worked very hard
for something or have suffered a lot for it and then it happens and
you fully deserve your prize, it feels great, it feels wonderful
because you have earned it. I just remember looking up at the
ceiling and staring a light and thinking….it doesn’t get any better
than this. The additional box of invasion and the foil stroke of
genius were nice too!
It was 01:30 at this point and I had been up for 21 hours on 3 hours
sleep [which would explain why I didn’t come every time I cast Fact
or Fiction!] but I still went out and got loaded. Got up 5 hours later
and went in, started drinking and hunted down everyone who had
teased me the day before to show them how big my ego can get! In
fairness Noel who had been one of the only people not to tease me
the day before came out all guns blazing on Sunday in a brave but
destined to fail attempt to get me to behave like a modest person!
Later on that night Neil Crowley [who had drafted a godlike b/r deck
that won a side event 3-0 including victories over Noel, Stewart
Shinkins and John Larkin!] and I had a game and he beat me 2-1 in
3 brilliant games. Up until then I had thought my deck was as good
a deck as you could draft, I was wrong. I still think that u/w are the
colours to go in draft though if all other things are equal and I would
recommend that to anyone who goes top 8 in a ptq next week. It
was really nice that most people were genuinely happy for me to
have qualified after all my near misses.
Thanks guys for all the support and hopefully I can meet a few
team members of 5fu in LA next February so I can put faces to all
email addresses! Whoo Hoo!
|