M14 Prerelease - Tournament Report

Well I'll cut right to the chase. If you have been reading this blog for any length of time you know that every tournament at Card Kingdom is 4 rounds. And that I always go 3-1. Well this was no different.

ROUND 1: My opponent was playing Red/Green. In game one she drew nothing but Forests and Red spells. I won easily.  Game two was a little more exciting. I got out some early dudes and removaled every creature she played. Then she dropped a Shivan Dragon,

 

Don't tell me the new art is better!

the score was something like 20-10. I Time Ebbed it and swung, 20-6. She played it again next turn and I had to sit back. The the Dragon attacked and I took the hit. I got in for 2 (she did some chumping) and it was 15-4. The Dragon came in again and I went to 9. I drew a second island freeing up my Claustrophobia and the match was mine. W 2-0 (1-0)

ROUND 2: This round was the single worst experience I have ever had playing magic. Game one was fine, my opponent kept a one land hand and I crushed him. Scratch that, the game was super shitty. Game two is where the crime occurred. I don't want to go through the specifics of the game up until the last turn because it is going to get convoluted. The point is my opponent was on two and had one flyer. I had a Trained Condor, Coral Merfolk, and a Serra Angel. He had a ratchet bomb with three counters. I asked to declare attackers, he said "ok". I said I attack with everyone. And then I touched my Coral Merfolk and said, "It gets flying". My opponent then uses his ratchet bomb and kills my Condor. We then move to blockers. He blocks the Angel with this flyer and attempts to block my Merfolk with his 1/1 non-flyer. I remind him that my creature has flying and he says "No it doesn't". I remind him of the flying trigger and he says "you never announced it".  I said, "we disagree let's call the judge".

If only

The judge arrives and my opponent tells his side of the story. The judge is completely confused (because my opponent is not good at explaining things). After my opponent is done I tell my story just as I told it above, with no objection from my opponent until I say that I gave the Merfolk flying. The judge says, "ok you disagree on the trigger. I believe there was miscommunication. In this instance we rewind the game back to when the trigger was on the stack". Rock solid judging in my opinion. This is where my opponents behavior goes from negligent to dishonest. He then says, ~"That's not possible because my intention was to use the bomb to prevent that ability from going on the stack". The judge explains that the trigger happens when I declare attackers and that he needed to use the Ratched Bomb before I declare attackers. My opponent then says, "My opponent never asked to declare attackers." [A savvy reader will note that when I told the judge what happened I mentioned explicitly that I asked to declare attackers and my opponent said ok]. At this point I am absolutely livid.

As an aside, normally I don't get upset. Especially at a prerelease. However this guy is the kind of douche who puts his top 8 buttons from PTQs on his playmat. So he can go fuck himself. He knew exactly what he was doing, just straight up lying to the judge to gain an advantage.

However for all outward appearances I am cool as a cucumber. The judge says, "ok then we go back to the end of your main phase". I object because my opponent did say I could declare attackers. In fact I even explicitly stated the request because I figured he would use his ratchet bomb. The judge thinks for a moment and says, "In the instance of a player disagreement we go back to the moment of disagreement. Please try to communicate more clearly from now on." I thank the judge and he leaves.

My opponent goes on to resolve a Garruuk the next turn as well as in the next game. I lose the match. I could not care less that I lost the match. In my mind I played well, my opponent made a mistake and I won the match. The reason why I am so mad is that I have never seen someone lie to a judge's face before. And then once the judge rules in my favor, I have never seen someone change their story and lie again. It was too much to handle. L 1-2 (1-1) I was very polite after the game and had some chit chat with my opponent, I believe I comported myself well. I also think the judge did the best with what he had.

ROUND 3:  My opponent was playing White/Green and got out to a nice aggressive start in game one. We were trading and the score was something like 13-8. Then my opponent played his last card, which was a creature aura giving him 3 life and his creature +1/+3, or some such. That enabled him to get in and the score was now 8-11. Fortunately I had three removal spells in my hand. I was able to two for one him and took care of everything else he played. Easy win. In game two he stumbled on mana. The fact that I Time Ebbed him on turns 4 and 5 when he was stuck on two lands did not help his cause. Easy win. W 2-0 (2-1)

ROUND 4: In both games I hit my opponent several times with the Scroll Thief, that felt dirty. In both games my opponent played a creature enchantment on turn four and I removed the creature on turn five. Neither game was close. W 2-0 (3-1)

~~~~~

Well the tournament went very well for me. I won every match 2-0. I'm choosing to move on from the lying in round two with the blog post. I have said my peace and it's in the past. The prerelease was a blast. I played a ton of magic and it was pretty good.

I also got to meet and duel Marshall Sutcliffe. I took some good notes on that game and have a full game report coming soon. I know I was a bit light on the details of my matches in this tournament, but honestly there was only one game that was even close and I went into excruciating detail on the end of that one. My opponents pretty much took themselves out of every game I played either by poor deck building, or poor mulling, or playing enchantments on their creatures against a blue deck.

A new thing I'm gonna try to do is report some basic stats.

Games Played: 8

Games won: 8

Mulligans by me: 1 (1-0)

Mulligans by my opponents: 5 (5-0)

Times I felt mana flooded: 4

Times I felt mana screwed: 0  (twice it took a while to get double of my second color but whatever).

Only one mulligan in 8 games? That feels lucky to me.