Submitted by Jeff Darran
So we had our first Sci-Fi Legacy tourney on Sunday. I decided to play the mono red burn deck I’ve been working on for a while, cause, well, to know me is to understand my relationship with mountains, lightning bolts, and generally setting things on fire. It’s “me.”
So I go rolling in with my deck (aptly titled Jeff Red – Legacy Edition) and proceed to get paired against Jeff Abbott (Crispy), the man responsible for me playing legacy. I started off in an interesting state of mind though, an omen of sorts, as I count my board and find only 14 cards…. What? There’s supposed to be 15. So I pile shuffle the main deck and discover 61 cards. Well pooh. I start looking thru, and discover that I have done something horribly wrong. With all the excitement from FNM, then states on Saturday, where I took and passed my L1 judge test (official L1 Magic judge now! Woot) I have somehow forgotten to actually prepare and make sure there were no proxies in my deck, and that it was ready to go. It wasn’t.
So the scramble begins. There are 61 cards main, what’s not supposed to be there. Shoot, the vortexes I bought aren’t with me. Shoot there are 4 Wasteland proxies in here. CRAP! So I steal the 4 wastelands from Daniel’s Fish deck (he wasn’t there to play it anyways), and then throw the 3 Blood Moon in the board into the main. Jeff Abbot gives me 4 pithing needles to fill in the blanks in my board and we are off to the races! Jeff and I have an awesome interactive match that goes all the way into our extension. It’s a close battle, but a game 3 pithing needle naming Sensei’s Divining Top manages to stifle his card advantage, and I burn out for the win. Woot. First Legacy Match Win Evar!
Round 2 finds me facing off against Bert, who’s running a Dredge Deck that has absolutely beaten the hell out of me in all the test games against him. He winds up mulling to 4 in game one, and succeeds in getting his dredge started, but I topdeck the burn in the right places, and pull him off his mana he does have to take game 1. Game 2 I bring in 3 cards for this match, and I keep a rocket of an opening hand. He manages to dissect it on his turn 1 leaving me in part shambles, but I topdeck the 2nd Tormod’s Crypt and keep him off of his yard. I take game 2.
Round 3 I find myself facing Phil’s Zoo Deck. It’s a solid deck and Phil is very good with it. His timing is incredible and he’s been playing it for well over 2 months now. The match actually scares me a bit because I’ve never swept him, he ALWAYS wins game 2. We shuffle up and he wins the die roll, going first. We fight and claw and fight and claw and I manage to pull ahead in the race and take game 1. Phew! So I open my deckbox and I see 3 cards in my sideboard that are supposed to be in my deck. I look at the rest of my board and determine that the 3 cards that they replaced are also in the board. This means I had presented a 57 card deck in game one. Crap. I look at Phil, knowing what I have to tell him. I say congrats, I’m not sure if we are going to game 2 or if its game 3, but "congrats on your win". He looks at me quizzically and I look at Mike, and say "judge". Mike looks over at me and goes what. I said I’m not sure what the appropriate penalty is for this, I gave my cheat-sheet to Bradshaw yesterday before I took my L1 test, and failed to get it back. I tell him what I managed to do, failing to put the deboarded cards back into the maindeck and that basically I have presented a 57 card deck (at this point I am silently living up to my nickname of Cap’n Cuss-a-lot, silently and under my breath). There’s more discussion and it’s finally determined that I won game 1. That can’t be gone back and undone. I have lost game 2, and we are now starting game 3. It’s very close and it does come down to the wire, but Phil pulls it out.
Yay, Tilt. It has arrived. I wind up getting paired up to play the leader in the tourney, and it’s useless. He has god-like draws, and I’m not doing anything really constructive. I hang around for a bit in game one, then he plays triple lightning helix, and it’s pretty much over at that point. Game 2 is a bloodbath and is over fairly quickly.
I love being on tilt, nothing good ever comes of it, though I’m pretty sure I’m going to count my board before every game now, no matter what! Lesson – always be prepared!
I’m sure some of you might ask, “Did the thought of just putting them back in and not saying anything cross your mind?” Honestly, yea, that thought made its appearance, however, my first thought was S**T, I just lost game 1 (it wound up being game 2, but minor details). There is no way I could cheat. No matter how badly I want to win, I want to win fair and square, not by cheating. Cheating is wrong, and if I’m judging an event and I catch you cheating, you’re getting DQ’d! If you can’t win fair and square, don’t play the game.
I’m going to go home tonight and watch “The Last Boyscout” now, see you all next time!
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