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Editor: Sharon Van Der Werk. Friday 25th March 2005.
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"The Little Deck That Couldn't" There I stood outside the Irish Club - cigarette in one hand, a tired look on my face. How could a deck go from potential format breaker to garbage in only 2 weeks? I looked back at how it all began.. Raging Fires On November 8th 2004 I decided to post a decklist for a quirky deck I had put together as a possibility for Extended season. My first build looked like this - 11 Forests Even with this basic build people seemed to like what they saw - a viable yet cheap to build alternative for Extended season. If I could add a little money to the deck and tweak it further it could prove to be a winner. For over three months I play tested, tweaked, play tested some more. I worked out the deck's weaker matchups and either tweaked or used my sideboard to strengthen against them. What I had was a fun to play deck that had solid matchups against just about everything it faced. Once I had developed a sideboard it had the stuff I needed to disrupt other decks and tip the scales in my favour. Two weeks before the Extended PTQ I decided to take Raging Fires to a practice tournament to see what it could do. I still wasn't happy with the deck as I thought it was missing something and I liked some of the other decks I was working on more. My whole intention was to take the deck to the practice tournament, get my butt kicked and put Raging Fires out of the picture once and for all. This is the build I took to the practice extended tournament - 8 Forests 4 Fires of Yavimaya 4 Ghitu Slinger 4 Damping Matrix 4 Threaten Here's how the deck went - Round 1 - Gro-A-Tog - 2-1 win Your deck finished 5-0 at a practice tourney. How do you cut a deck that has success like that? I immediately put all other decks aside and concentrated on getting Raging Fires even better. The week after I played Mono Blue Scepter Control at the last practice tournament as it was the other deck I liked. It fared miserably - validating that I should play Raging Fires even more. This is the decklist I decided on for the PTQ - 9 Forests 4 Fires of Yavimaya 4 Ghitu Slinger 3 Threaten And the wheels fall off! Philadelphia PTQ Extended has come to Adelaide. It was time to put Raging Fires to the ultimate test. Round One - The Rock (Park Hyun-Woo) I have never seen as many Ravenous Baloths as I saw in game one. I charged through with Blastoderms and Vandals only to have the dead Baloths return via Recurring Nightmare. I had pushed through for well over 20 damage but in the end Park was still on just under life and he dropped out a Kokusho to finish me off. Game 2 I kept a 5 land hand (Wooded Foothills, 2 Forest, 2 Wasteland) which also had 2 Blastoderms. I played a land and said go. Park cast Cabal Therapy naming Blastoderm. Ouch! My deck then proceeded to mana flood me as Park took me out with 2 Treetop Villages and a Ravenous Baloth. I made the comment to a friends that Park will make it to the final with a deck like that. He did and he won it! 0-2 Loss, 0-1 overall No big deal. I can still top 8 with 5-1 so no time to panic yet. I've had a harsh round one pairing so round 2 should be interesting.. Round Two - Gro-A-Tog (Jeremy Ninnes) I played against Jeremy's brother at the practice tournament and beaten the deck 2-1 so I knew it would be tough but not impossible. First game I was simply outsped by a Psychatog and a Quirion Dryad who became too big for me to handle. Second game Jeremy played a first turn Quirion Dryad using Mox Diamond and a land. My first turn was Forest, Wild Growth. My second turn was Forest, Wild Growth again. I had a handful of red cards so if I drew into a Mountain soon I'd be ok. Turn Three I dropped out a Damping Matrix. The mountain finally came on turn 5 via Wooded Foothills but it was too little too late. The gigantic Quirion Dryad backed up by a measley 1/2 Psychatog (due to matrix) managed to wear down my chump blockers and kill me. 0-2 Loss, 0-2 overall Woah boy! Definately not the start I needed but it still wasn't impossible. If luck was with me I could finish 4-2 and just scrape into Top 8 if my countback was good. Problem was luck wasn't going to be nice to me that day.. Round 3 - Bye We had a player drop after round 2 because he broke his glasses in round one and could barely see the cards. This left room for the bye and me being the bye magnet I usually am I got it. I hate getting byes! I would rather play and lose 0-2 than get a bye. Then again in my current situation a bye wasn't so bad as they are great for countback. Bye, 1-2 overall Round 4 - U/W Desire (Socrates Stavropoulos) This is it. If I lose this one there's no chance of top 8 and only mediocrity at best. First game Socrates went off on turn 5 for the win. Second game I heavily disrupted his resources and started beating. I was one turn away from victory when he was forced to try for the win desiring for 5. he pulled a land, 2 Intuitions, a Sapphire Medallion and a Mind's Desire! He Intuitioned land out of his deck and went again for 9. He pulled 2 more desires???????, Tendrils of Agony and a Brainfreeze to compliment the one in his hand. Death by Tendrils or Freeze... not a nice decision to make. 0-2 Loss, 1-3 overall Its official - I am not making top 8. I can still salvage some respectability however. Where most players would cut their losses and drop I decided to finish what I had started. I had gone 5-0 so surely the deck could finish 3-3! Round 5 - U/W Scepter Control (Brad Hansford) Brad is one of the new guys I have been playing Magic with recently. He offered to let me have the win so he didn't rip points off me and I declined. I told him I wanted to beat him fair and square or not at all. My deck behaved like it did two weeks previous as both games I laid down fast beats and destroyed Isochron Scepters turn three each game. Even Ghostly Prison didn't slow me down one game as I naturalized it the turn after it was played. 2-0 Win, 2-3 overall Respectability here I come. After the round I talked to a few of the guys I playtest with and found out that two had slight chances of making top 8 if they won, and another was on 2-3 too. We laughed about the possibility of us pairing up next round. It happened... Round 6 - Mono-White Control (Rob Crawley) I knew from playtesting that this was the sort of deck I had hoped to avoid. Through much trash talking and sailor talk on both our parts Rob handed my butt to me both games. 0-2 loss. 2-4 overall Disillusioned and shocked I went outside for a smoke to think about what had happened... Here are the results of the PTQ after round 6 - 1 - Park Hyun-Woo (The Rock) 2 - Gareth Dawson-Jones (Tog) 3 - Jarrod Scriven (Vial Goblins) 4 - Yi Fei Ruan (RDW) 5 - Tom Gartner (Vial Goblins) 6 - Andrew Eckermann (B/U Desire) 7 - Jackson McCall-Pearce (W/G Life) 8 - Ben Simmons (U/G Madness) 9 - Chris Ninnes (U/G Madness) 10 - Daniel Edwards (Goblin Welder) 11 - Eyad Hassan (Vial Goblins) 12 - Kristian Radford (Affinity) 13 - Scorates Stavropoulos (U/W Desire) 14 - Matt Nelson (UW Scepter Chant) 15 - Rob Crawley (Mono-White Control) 16 - Phil Cook (B/R Dragon Bidding) 17 - Lee Wilkins (R/G Land Destruction) 18 - John Reiman (265 card Battle of Wits) 19 - Jeremy Ninnes (Gro-A-Tog) 20 - Glenn Higgins (Discard/Shirei Reanimator) 21 - Tony Kipper (U/G Madness) 22 - Joe Tobin (Raging Fires) 23 - Vince Feleppa (Affinity) 24 - David Mariner (RDW) 25 - Brad Hansford (U/W Scepter Control) 26 - Alex Kay (G/W beats) 27 - Darius Cicolella (MBC/Reanimator) 28 - Martin Kay (Scepter Tog) 29 - Scott Jacob (R/G Land Destruction) Decks of people who dropped - Aluren (Barrie Collis) Goblins (Ricky Flynn) Wildfire (Hao Min) B/R Rogue - Final Punishment/Heartless Hidesugu (Hieu Pham) The Rock (Jason Diprose) Out of 34 starters 29 finished. Well what else can I say? At the practice tourney everything went my way and at the PTQ if it could go wrong it did. We all have bad days and that was one of mine. I can only try again next year... Joe Tobin (Aytakk2)
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