In preparation for my first real tournament, I went nuts. I posted on MOTL’s deckhelp forum (here's the link) and found a few positive comments, including the suggestion to check out www.bdominia.com. This is one of the few great places left on the net to talk about Type 1. I highly recommend it. As a side note, I learned that my deck would be considered “powerless” because it doesn’t have any of the power 9. While a neat phrase, this can lead to confusion when people think your deck isn’t any good.

After doing some research into my deck style, I learned what I thought was an original “rouge” deck was actually a Turboland variant. (If my version takes off, I want it named TurboSoup). I also was informed of a great common card that added tremendously to my deck: Gush. This totally changed my entire land base, as I substituted out Cities, Gemstones, Reflecting Pools, et al for duals, which counted as Islands. This lead to some trouble.

I had to find the cards I needed. This usually meant trades that I thought were in the other trader’s favor, just to get the cards for my deck. And trying to trade for mere commons was more trouble than I thought possible. Two confirmed trades for 4x Gush fell through, and I ended up at Origins missing three. I was very close to trading my 7th Birds for four Foil Gush, but I finally found someone willing to give me the commons I needed. (A big “Thanks” if that kind soul reads this.) Another trade problem I ran into was not getting cards in time for the tournament. Actually, as I write this, two weeks later, I’m still waiting for one trade to arrive.

Besides websites, the biggest thing I did to prepare was playtest. Besides my trip to Boston, I was playing my deck whenever I had a spare minute. I was looking for speed in getting out my combo, so even five minutes here and there ended up paying off. I spent many, many nights drawing seven cards and playing four imaginary rounds.

Of course, there were a few things that I did not prepare enough for. I had a sideboard made, but I didn’t really know how or when to use it. There were several cards in my sideboard that ended up staying in my main deck (Wrath and ReB x1), and there were also a couple sideboard cards that were never played at all (tinker, probably others). During all of my playtesting, I also failed to pay attention as to when my hand didn’t work at all, i.e. when I should take a Paris Mulligan. This ended up costing me later on.

Before entering a tournament of any sort, it’s very important to know all the rules. Not just the card restrictions for the tournament type, but also rules specific to that tournament. Let me relate to you a very humorous story: The first tournament was Thursday night. It was a Swiss tournament with 24 participants. I hadn’t a clue what “Swiss” meant, and I assumed it was single elimination because that was the only tournament style I was familiar with. I was destroyed in the first round by a control deck, and I got up and left. I didn’t realize until the next day at the beginning of the next tournament that I had officially “dropped out.” Oops. But my opponent ended up winning the entire tournament, so I can safely state that my only loss was to the First Place Winner.

My expectations were for a lot of control, sligh, discard, stompy, burn, and combo decks. I was right for the most part. A few of the memorable decks were an Underworld Dreams combo, one LD, one Sligh, frustrating Morphling/control decks, and a very cool Rouge deck. This rather odd one was the deck I faced Thursday night that ended up winning the tournament. It was a control based deck with mostly Gold creatures, including Phelergriff (sp?), Rubina Soulsinger, an IN dragon, a few Legends I hadn’t seen before, and I think it was Sissay. You laugh, as I once did. I also lost.

The second funniest thing I saw at the tournament was an IBC deck entered in the type 1. The funniest thing was that it won at least one round.

So how did I do without any power 9 and all that preparation? Well, I dropped the first one. I placed 8th out of 24 in the second, and 14 out of 33 for the third. The last tournament was filled with stupid mistakes and bad draws. I ran into the most problems with counterspells. I was running 3 Force of Will and 4 Counters, but I too often lost the counter war. And I must tell an entertaining story: First turn I drop exploration, second land, mana vault. I’m holding a Sol Ring and Mindtwist. I plan on destroying his entire hand second turn. He casts duress. Guess what he pulled? I lost that game, and I think I lost the match as well.

Some observations on the types of players: I was afraid I was going to run into some real jerks or people who would brag about their beta Lotus and laugh at my mana vault. I was glad to be mistaken. There were a few scrubs who didn’t really have much of a solid deck (I’d probably fit in this category). A veteran player who started with Alpha brought a deck composed of 60 cards he sort of threw together that morning (I beat him). But the three largest categories would probably be imitating smack talker/rules guru, the friendly competitive player, and the friendly “play for fun” player.

The smack talkers are annoying at best. These are the players that loudly inform you how they’re going to destroy you, how powerful and “broken” every card in their deck is, and in-between rounds they argue arbitrary rules. Luckily these players are rare. My favorite player type would have to be the friendly competitive. These players introduce themselves, don’t try to distract you while you play, start conversations during/between rounds, but still try very hard to kill you. They don’t pull punches—they entered to win. The friendly “play for fun” players are similar in attitude, but these players complain when you kill them in round three, or worse yet, condemn your deck for being “boring” or “not fun to play against.” Without going on too much of a rant, a combo deck that “goes off” is far superior in my opinion than draw-go or counter-anything in the “fun” category. Why enter a tournament if you only want to play for fun??

So what’s the point of all this? I had tremendous amounts of fun. I met cool people, including someone who might have a place for me to crash for GenCon. I learned to enjoy Type 1 without any power. I got two second-turn kills in the tournament, and one first round in a practice game. And I did well. Eighth out of 24 is respectable. So I encourage you to try that type 1 deck you keep thinking about. Enter a local tournament, or start one with your friends. Keep type 1 alive—it’s fun and more diverse than I first thought.

I still playtest my deck on my own. I’m more interested in the type 1 scene than I was before. I’m trying to come up with another cheap deck concept that would stand a chance in the current environment. And you can bet you’ll see me at least at next year’s Origins, if not at GenCon. And my deck will still be powerless.

The Soup

article is well-written too

keep up the good work

Not only is this my first article, but it's my first use of UBB code as well. Look how cool that link looks up there...

Oh yeah, made it to mainpage! Hey, does this count as being "published"?

See ya at GenCon

-DA king

Nice article.

Type one truly is the best format