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 Title: Adventures of Mr. Teeth and the Mexican
Anticipating more control and doing a couple of hours of play testing I decided to change my RUBatog deck to just plain old dandy UB. This left room to put the Gushes back in for those extra, well needed, well overly used, 6 1/2 points of "surprise damage" and if that wasn’t enough a main deck Thwart for 4 1/2 more damage and some Cephalid Coliseums for some filtering and yet more damage just rocked the Hell of the phrase I heard often before people died "no blocks" as they squinted their eyes and watched me turn a 2 card hand and 8 cards in Graveyard into 20 damage.
Anyways after building this deck I wait around playing some Unreal Tournament with my bro on Xbox till 2:30AM comes around. Destan knocks on the door a few "buds" exchange and we are off to the meeting place, Casey’s. We meet up with the other gang: Chris, Zach, Adam, Andrew, Eric. And we make a couple of pit stops on the way to the interstate. The way there was filled with the usual command and conquer hat boy (Brian) mixed with a splash of Creator (Ian) imitations by Destan. My favorite one was " I can't Fucking roll anything above a 10 on a 6 sided die! 10 should be a minimum!" (You had to been there). Anyways, it was pretty much a fun, smooth ride all the way there. We get to Chicago and do some 30 minutes of searching for the Hyatt Regency but finally found it.
We finally get there with lots of time to spare. Time I needed to put some finishing touches to my deck and prepare and register. We were obviously at the basement of the regency which was huge and well set up. Endless number of tables and chairs - people constantly walking up to our table asking for specific crads. "You guys got Metalworkers?" "You guys got Underground Rivers?". Then, all the people started pouring in. I'd have to say that I got a bigger respect for magic internationally because I saw groups of Germans, Brazilians, Italians, Asians, actually traveling from there own countries to play in the qualifier. Fun parts from the start were taking pictures with the beloved Adrian Sulivan(Drool!) and look at some of the masters getting ready for there tourney. I saw Kai Budde and a ton of really good pros including the luscious Zvi Mowshowitz [Editor's Note: No Rudy, it wasn't spelled Zvi Mowstiiwits] It was really intimidating... but I was too tired to be intimidated. So, it begins:
Psychatog:
4 Psychatog
4 Brainstorm
2 Circular Logic
4 Counterspell
3 Cunning Wish
4 Force spike
3 Fact or Fiction
3 Mana Leak
3 Gush
1 Terror
2 Ghastly Demise
1 Chainers edict
2 Upheaval
1 Bloodstained Mire
11 Island
2 Mountain
1 Polluted Mire
2 Shivan Reef
2 Swamp
2 Cephilid Colloseum
2 Darkwater Catacombs
Note: I’m writing down Most of this by memory because I lost my notes somehow
Round 1
Luke Pliska was playing some wierd UGW deck with his only threats being a Nimble Mongoose each game. The Mongoose and a Bouncer got me down to 2 life but a Psychatog and a Thwart saved me. The second game, he got mana screwed.
2-0
Round 2
Curtis was playing Blue/Green Madness. First game it was a basic ownage by him - damn Arrogant Wurms. 2nd game I got early counters and only let him play Waterfront Bouncer, Fact or Fictions gave me elimination and a Tog for the gold. Third game was the same thing as the 2nd.
2-1
Round 3
Owen Lee RDW2k deck. This was my funest and hardest matchup. Sligh really pressed me for time and the first game I got really raped hard. After sideboard his deck was perfect against mine. Second turn Scald? Ouch! My non-Islands and Darkwater Catacombs really helped me here along with my Powder Kegs to buy enough time to get enough cards in my Graveyard and being at 3 life to kill him. The 3rd game was basically the same. And 2nd, how did I pull this off?
2-1
Round 4
Wohoo! Four games in a row and I’m in the top 10 pairings. I notice everyone around me are speaking different languages Then I look at my opponent…. Spanish! Emilio Lopez playing Psychatog. Immediately we start talking Spanish to each other getting acquainted. He thought I was from Spain like him but when I told him I was Mexican he gave me a dirty look. [Editor's Note: I can't blame him.] From there on there was tension. First game was Brutal, but I won all the counter wars and replenished my hand with FoF. I totally dominated his Tog. 2nd game we counter battled over and over but a Corpse Dance caught me off guard. Last game we didn’t have enough time really he kept trying to hurry me. But when the game was obviously in his advantage, I stalled his brown ass and took the draw.
1-1-1
Round 5
Woo I get to play Eric Richard Hoffman! He was also playing Psychatog. He didn’t expect me to have a Gush and a Fact or Fiction so he let my Tog trough. I worked my magic and barely had enough to kill him. His fetch lands did like 5 damage to him in the 2nd game which really helped my Tog get enough in with gush again.
2-0
Round 6
Huge German with a huge frontal lobe for a forehead. Andrea playing psychatog really owned me both games. I mean he really kicked my ass. I had no chance.
0-2
Round 7
Jeffrey Playing G/B control. This guys deck never stopped pumping out threats. First game was really slow. I contered about 15 different thing and couldn't draw my Togs. Genesis for him wasn’t any help at all and I had to Upheaval with no Togs twice. It came down to 2 cards in my library and I drew a Tog. Next turn I attack for barely enough. 2nd game was just as hard… Coffin Queen and Yavimaya Elder was a unexpected combo but Shadowrift proved its worth here.
2-0
Round 8
Played a blue green control deck with main deck feeders. It was a huge pain in the ass and I got raped both games hard.
0-2
Well I came out a whopping 5-2-1 that was a huge surprise considering I didn’t play test at all and didn’t have all the cards I needed. I ended up in 18th place out of like 200 people (I think) that’s not bad and I was really proud of myself. Tim Gruenich from Trademart ended up winning, even though I hate him, he’s a really good player. Eric and I were the only ones there when the tournament ended because the others went to look for the hotel and the parking time limit was till 7 p.m. Zach finds us and says “come on we got to go” I says “What’s the matter?” he says “Adam’s gotten into accident”. Cool! We couldn’t find Adam and the hotel for like an hour and we were really tired by then.
It turns out that Adam was turning on a one-way street and a cab sped up and dented his door. Stupid fucking Towel Head comes out and says, “you hit me” “you hit me”. Adam didn’t want to deal with it [Editor's Note: Actually, I'd lose my insurance coverage.] so he dished him $65 [close enough] to keep quiet. We get to the hotel, ate tons of food and slept for the next day.
The next PTQ was really bad for me. Basically, I lost first game and then I was called up to see the head judge. He told me I had a 14 card sideboard. I’m awarded a game loss and my sideboard didn’t exist for the rest of the round. That made me really weak against the tog player and lost the game because of it. 3rd round I lost Blue/green madness and dropped. I made a ton of changes to my deck and tried it without the Force Spikes. It seems like it was a bad choice.
The rest of the day was pretty fun… I played and Extended tournament and lost. Shuey ended up beating me and ended up in 2nd place. I saw Budde and Finkel go at it in the semi-finals of the Pro Tour, and I attended the awards ceremony.
In conclusion, the tournament was a great experience for me, but some of us had it bad like Adam with the accident and being sick. I strongly recommend going to the next PTQ in Chicago because you learn a lot there. Anyways I leave you guys some Recent quotes to quit this article.
“Well, since we are probably not going to be doing anything anyway, I'll just go home” -Eric Richard Hoffman the great
“ The next chaos I play. I'm just attacking you, only Rudy” - Destin Hoots before he got slaughtered by me in the next chaos we played.
“Ian is gay” -Mechwarrior player [Kyle].
“Do you want to battle?” -new player at Caseys
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