Magic tournament (first one since 2004 or 2005)

So last night I played in a Magic tournament for the first time in years. Nick, Jared, and I went down to Tacoma. Nick played a sort of MUD Stax deck that he designed. I played the latest incarnation of Burn (very different from when I last left it with Nick, as he's managed to get just about all the cards it needs to be optimal). Jared played a Counter-Top deck with Progenitus.

First round I played against Jared. I would have won the first game, but I wasn't paying attention and I let him get away with using Counterbalance on my Rift Bolts even though they cost three mana and not one mana. I realized it when he was finishing me off, but it was also true that he would have played differently had he known that he'd have taken 6 damage earlier. We agreed to scrap the game and start over. I had no luck the rest of that match and he won easily. I proceeded to have no luck in my next two matches, but the decks I was facing were so bad that I still pulled off wins. First was a deck relying on Scute Mob and getting out five basic lands (it worked once, because I drew 16 lands over the course of the game). And then a vampire deck that had been built for Standard (although Jared, who faced it before I did, pointed out that it was a bad deck even in that format).

In the last round, I got paired up against Nick, but I got lucky. Or rather, he got unlucky. I didn't have a really awesome opening hand throughout the tournament. But he easily beat me the first game, got incredibly unlucky the second game, and I won the third (if he'd ever gotten a Smokestack I wouldn't have). Nick lost to another Counter-Top deck (I forget how many there were, but it seemed to be the most popular archetype at the tournament) and easily smashed his other opponents. When he finishes his deck, it will be even better.

Overall, it was pretty fun. I thought I'd place well because I only lost to Jared, who ended up going undefeated. But the rating system they used was screwed up: because there were two other people who had also won three matches and lost one, but who defeated higher ranking opponents than I did, they took second and third, leaving me in fourth place. I got $5 in store credit, which I used to buy Silence because Nick told me to (it's for ANT, which I might be playing in tournaments soon). Still, I went 3-1 and only lost to a teammate. And all that with Burn. Pretty cool.