PTQ Geneva - Portland, Oregon October 21, 2006

Some days you're just better off staying in bed. Last Saturday was one of those days. It was possibly my worst tournament experience ever.

This is an off the cuff write up. I didn't take many notes because, frankly, I'd rather forget this tournament. But for you masochists out there and in the interests of posterity, here's how it went. I recommend turning off your iPods first if you're listening to The Smiths or The Cure.


Round 1 – Robbie Chan – WG

Once again it’s Rob Roy time. Robbie beat me twice at States and I didn’t provide any competition for him here. An early Herd Gnarr (a 2/2 for 3G which gets +2/+2 when you play another creature) enchanted with Griffin Guide swung for six several times and I was done. In game two I decided again to not draw any removal and instead drew land five or six turns in a row.

Games: 0-2

Matches: 0-1


Round 2 – James C.

Before the round started we got the deck check call. Usually I don’t worry about these but for some reason I was immediately nervous. My spidey-sense was accurate. I had made a last minute change to the deck but forgot to update the registration sheet. D’Oh. Also, I just plain forgot to register two cards in the deck. What the heck was I thinking? Game loss, started 0-1. The one game James and I played was close and I had him down to two or three life but he had too many fliers and one swampwalker and I couldn’t kill him in time.

Games: 0-4

Matches: 0-2


Round 3 – can’t remember

My opponent was a similarly-frustrated 0-2 starter who said he’d made a number of mistakes already. Mainly against me he forgot to put a counter on his storage land. In game two, for the only game of the day I actually found my one bomb (Jaya Ballard) and actually drew non land cards. My deck functioned much better that way. I never even drew, much less played, Jaya all day.

Games: 2-4

Matches: 1-2


Round 4 – Russ Jerkboy (ok, not his real last name, but an accurate description)

We rolled dice as usual. He rolled a standard six sided die and got a four. I rolled one of my black dice and got a five. He said “How about with this die?” motioning toward his. I went off. I forget exactly what I said but it was something like “Look, dude, you rolled a four and I rolled a five. You lost. It’s a die roll. Get over it. If you want to call a judge over to inspect my die, go ahead.” He declined to do so and instead just played a TON of removal and killed almost every creature I cast. How the heck was this guy only 1-2?

Games: 2-6

Matches: 1-3


At this point it should have been obvious it wasn’t my day, but a draft was starting up. I managed to get the last slot and started pack one with a decent amount of burn. Packs two and three weren’t that great and I found out one other guy across the table had also gone RG and two others were heavily green. Naturally I didn’t draw any of that burn and lost 0-2. In the second game I had him totally on the ropes, he had one creature and I had four. Then I drew nothing but land and he started to stabilize. I drew land so long that he was able to get more creatures out than me and play Tromp the Domain to stomp over me.

Let's never speak of PTQ Geneva again.