Regionals Redux
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
by Jeff Zandi

Regionals in Texas Saturday was for me a microcosm of the entire human
experience. But why wouldn't it be. Recorded human history has only lasted a
few thousand years. After twenty straight hours at this year's Regionals,
I'm not sure there is much of a difference. It was a historic tournament in
the history of Texas Magic, with a record 591 participants playing a record
eleven rounds of Swiss. In retrospect, the event was no less than a complete
success. During the long day, though, I ran through the complete gamut of
emotions. Now that the dust has settled on this event all across the United
States, I'd like to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly.

Me and my wife arrived at the tournament site just after seven in the
morning. She would be keeping score and running the computer for the main
event. I would be setting up card sales in the dealer room for Southern
tournament organizer and Magic entrepreneur supreme Mr. Edward Fox. I would
also be playing in Regionals, naturally, playing in the Big Event for the
ninth straight year.

IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES, IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES

If this part of the article looks a lot like a tournament report, you're not
wrong.

Although I had been working hard on a white control deck with just the
tiniest amount of blue in it, I decided almost a week before Regionals to
play Goblin Bidding. The list was finalized on the day before the tournament
with a very valuable personal visit from Brent Kaskel. Brent set up the
decklist and most of the sideboard choices for me thusly.

Guildmage Goblin Bidding
via Brent Kaskel
4 Siege Gang Commander
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Skirk Prospector
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Sharpshooter
4 Skullclamp
3 Goblin Sledder
3 Patriarch's Bidding
3 Electrostatic Bolt
2 Gempalm Incinerator
2 Sparksmith
13 Mountain
4 Swamp
3 City of Brass
3 Bloodstained Mire
SIDEBOARD:
1 Pulse of the Forge
1 Sparksmith
3 Molten Rain
1 Electrostatic Bolt
2 Terror
3 Detonate
4 Shatter

Brent would not let me lower the land to twenty-two. No special tech reason
for only playing three Bloodstained Mire. I had been playing all week with
three real Bloodstained Mire and one proxy, and I failed to get a
replacement for the proxy at the last minute, and was forced to replace the
fourth Mire with another Mountain. In the board, Kaskel liked at least one
Pulse of the Forge to help against combo decks. He didn't care for the
addition of Molten Rain in the board, and I think he was probably right
about Molten Rain and Pulse of the Forge.

ROUND ONE

Everyone has a sad story about how they lost a match that they should have
won. These stories are generally interesting to one person and one person
only, the person telling the story. That having been said, BEAT THIS ONE.

Pairings for round one, understandably in a tournament with such a gigantic
number of participants, went up later than usual. I think it was around
eleven in the morning. My wife calls me on my cell phone (there were only
four or five hundred people in between me, her and the posted pairings on
the wall!) and tells me that I have the bye in round one. Pretty amazing
luck in a tournament with 591 players, wouldn't you say? Minutes before, I'm
on the phone with a Magic friend of mine called Eric Knipp. Eric had planned
on playing in Regionals, had practiced hard with Ravager Affinity but was
planning to play mono white control until he learned the day before the
tournament that he would have to go to work for a little while on Saturday
morning, most probably ending his chance to play in Regionals. Around
10:30am on Saturday, Knipp phones me (I'm on my phone WAY too much. I'm like
a girl) and tells me he is about to get away from work, he would like to
know if there is a chance he could still squeeze into the tournament. I tell
him it may be possible, but that there is NO WAY the tournament organizer is
going to be able to wait for a late-arriving player, so he had better hustle
on over here. He does. Just as pairings go up, Eric Knipp arrives, packing
the only deck he has ready to go, Ravager Affinity. Well, if you've been to
a lot of big tournaments, you probably know what happens next. Unwilling to
re-pair the tournament, the staff does the easy, and perfectly acceptable
thing, they pair Eric Knipp with whoever has the bye. Namely, me. Yup. I
lose the opportunity to have a free first round win in order to play against
a player that I just spent time on the phone helping to get to the
tournament in time. Eric is a great guy, and the irony of the situation is
not at all lost on him. We both hate it, but what can you do? Eric plays
slowly and carefully, a little nervous even, and takes the match in three
games. 0-1

ROUND TWO

In round two I play a guy named Mike Snyder. It's a mirror match, Goblin
Bidding against Goblin Bidding. In game one, Mike forgets that you should
hardly ever play a Patriarch's Bidding in the mirror match, I win game one.
Game two is close but goes his way. Game three ends up a winner for him due
to a strange but ingenious sideboard choice of his.Oversold Cemetary. Nice.
0-2

DON'T EVER QUIT

Wow, 0-2 at Regionals, my worst performance ever. Fortunately, or
unfortunately, I don't know the meaning of the word 'quit'. Some friends and
a few of my next nine opponents think two losses, even in the early part of
the tournament, may not necessarily eliminate a player from top eight
contention. I know better. I may not know the meaning of the word 'quit' but
I do know the meaning of the words 'tie breaker'.

ROUND THREE

Chris Henson was my third round opponent, but he never managed to find the
table where we were supposed to play, so I ended up getting a free win. If
we had played, I know it would have been entertaining, Chris was running the
innovative insanity known as the Proteus Staff deck.
2-1.

ROUND FOUR

In round four, I play Confesor Davila. Confesor (yes, that's his real name)
was a top eight finisher in last year's Regionals but he admits that he
hasn't played much Magic lately. He's running Affinity, but it's like
December 2003 Affinity with Broodstar and no Skullclamp. Tough but fair.
After Confesor wins game one primarily through my surprise and confusion at
the contents of his deck, I go on to win games two and three. I would hardly
say that I was on a roll, however, as game three only fell my way after
Confesor was forced to mulligan down to a four card opening hand on the
play. 2-2. Now, through shear luck and near-chicanery, I'm even. My record
is now better than my pair of worst previous Regionals performances (1-2
finishes in 2001 and 2003). Why not just END IT and jump into some booster
draft action in the side events room? Oh yeah, I forgot, I don't know the
meaning of the word 'quit'.

ROUND FIVE

Brian Cox takes me on in round five, sporting the strangest sort of
green/black deck. Without Death Cloud, Brian does not have the kind of
wrecking ball that can take down Goblins very consistently. It's like Zvi
said about the Goblins/Death Cloud matchup (this matchup is similar) that
everything the Goblin deck does is just a nightmare for the green black
deck. Having said this, I lost game two due to his sideboarded Chalice of
the Void cards. Apparently, he lost game three because his own Chalice of
the Void prevented him from playing the cards he needed to win with. 3-2.
Three very lucky wins. People, get Zanman a dictionary and please teach him
the meaning of the word 'quit'.

ROUND SIX

Joshua Sroufe lost two straight games to me with his mono white control
deck. Joshua is a cool guy who plays in East Texas in little towns close to
my Henderson High School roots. His worst play was attacking with Exalted
Angel and Dawn Elemental with his life total at sixteen with only Goblin
Warchief and a Goblin Sharpshooter on my side of the board. The next turn, I
dropped a pair of Piledrivers and some other Goblin and attacked for
thirty-seven. 4-2.

ROUND SEVEN

Josh France is playing Ravager Affinity, but his draws were not very lucky.
He managed to get me down to twelve in game one and nine in game two. 5-2

ROUND EIGHT

Jerry Hansbro, who DOES NOT own Hasbro, won game one with his Ravager
Affinity deck. By now, I'm really happy with my nine card sideboard against
Affinity consisting of four Shatter, three Detonate, one Sparksmith and one
Electrostatic Bolt while leaving in all four Skullclamps. Games two and
three are pretty quick. 6-2

ROUND NINE

This was the quickest round of my entire day, including the no-show in round
three. Blake Giles has a Tooth and Nail deck that he's done well with all
day, until now. Game one was one of those classic turn four Goblin kills. In
game two, he Pyroclasms twice, each killing only a single Goblin Warchief
before the lucky draw of a THIRD Warchief puts me in the winners circle
again in two turns. Giles was a little bitter, understandably enough. He
might be the best player I played all day, but I got all the luck. 7-2

ROUND TEN

In round ten, my opponent Ryan Varner explains to me how I have no chance to
make the top eight while he can easily make it even though he has just lost
in rounds eight and nine. In retrospect, he was probably quite correct. He
doesn't get very lucky with his Ravager Affinity deck, mulliganing in game
one on the play. I win this one 2-0. 8-2

ROUND ELEVEN

In the last round of the longest single day tournament in Texas history, I
defeat Matthew Goodridge, who probably could have finished in the top eight
with a win in this match.
He plays his Ravager Affinity deck well enough, winning game one. I am so
comfortable with my sideboard against this deck that I seem to cruise
through the next two games. 9-2

YOU'RE A LOSER WHEN YOU LOSE, A GENIUS WHEN YOU WIN

The funny part is, when you're winning, you're a genius, when you're losing,
everyone wants to know "what are you doing wrong?" The fact is, you may not
be doing anything wrong when you lose. I know that sounds strange. What I
mean is, when Goblin Bidding plays against Ravager Affinity, the Goblin
Bidding deck CAN LOSE. When Goblin Bidding plays against another Goblin
Bidding deck, one of these two decks, no matter how well constructed and
shuffled, is going to lose. While getting two losses in the first two rounds
of this mammoth eleven round tournament was particularly sad, the fact is
only five players out of 591 managed to get through the event without losing
at least two times.

IT'S NOT WHETHER OR WIN OR LOSE, IT'S WHEN YOU LOSE THAT MATTERS

In a tournament with X number of rounds, imagine two players finishing the
tournament with exactly two losses. Player A loses matches one and two, but
wins the rest of his matches. Player B wins all of his matches except for
the last two matches of the tournament. Which player had the better
performance in this tournament? Ordinarily, there can be no question that it
is Player B, the player who lost his matches LATER in the tournament. The
statistical reason, for the purpose of creating standings for a Swiss rounds
tournament, is that the earlier in a tournament that a player loses, the
more lower ranked that player's next opponent will be. Therefore, over the
length of a tournament, players who lose matches later in the tournament
rather than earlier are forced to play against better players. Therefore, if
two players have the same number of wins and losses, the player who suffered
his losses later in the tournament probably had the better performance.

I believe you can virtually throw this theory out the window for Regionals.
This attendance of this tournament is so vast, I believe that there is no
particular correlation between when a player loses his matches and his
overall performance. Why? In a tournament with sixty-four players, requiring
seven rounds of Swiss play, the players who are undefeated inevitably play
against each other and, along the way, play against the better players in
the tournament who have a single loss. In an eleven round tournament with
six hundred players in it, a player could have a single loss, or even have
two losses, finish in the top eight and still not have played many of the
better players in the tournament. It's simply the law of big numbers
affecting the likelihood of the best players in a tournament running into
each other. By way of illustration, consider this: ten players finished the
eleven rounds of the South Regional with a 9-2 record, three of these
players managed tie breakers good enough to finish in the top eight. While
these three players certainly did not stink up their records with two losses
early in the tournament, it's kind of curious to see how differently these
three players' days went.

Nathan Zamora, finishing sixth, played an eventual top eight finisher in
round three, Jared Bosse. Defeating Bosse, Zamora was 3-0. Losing in the
next round to top eight'er David Solis, Zamora played no high finishers for
the next five rounds, all of which he won before losing his second match of
the day to top eight finisher Carl Hendrix.

Jared Bosse finished seventh losing in round three to Zamora and in round
ten to Chris Moore. These would be the only high finishers Bosse would play
against all day.

Trevor Tamplain finished eighth losing in rounds eight and nine, both to
players who finished in the top ten.

In my opinion, the ten players who finished 9-2 probably had extremely
similar performances. In a smaller tournament, I think there would be
greater separation between the performances of players with one or two
losses. It would be extremely interesting to look up the constructed rating
of each opponent for the top fifteen Regionals finishers just to see who
played against the best players. Unfortunately, even I, the original Stat
Geek, don't have the time to chase down these stats! I suspect that the top
fifteen or maybe even top twenty finishers had very similar performances in
this tournament.

WHAT DID EVERYBODY PLAY?

Across the eighteen Regionals events played in America last week, sixty-four
players qualified for Nationals playing Ravager Affinity. The next most
popular deck among those qualifying for Nationals last week was Goblins and
Goblin Bidding with a total of twenty-one. Eight players qualified with
Tooth and Nail and eight players qualified somewhere in America with white
control decks. Sixteen other slots went to players playing mono red control,
red/green, Death Cloud, green/white, Zombies or black clerics.

Here in the South Regionals, the top eight contained five Ravager Affinity
decks, including the top three finishers and the top four out of five
finishers. The South Regionals top eight also included two Goblin Bidding
decks and one Death Cloud deck.

THE WINNER, AND STILL CHAMPION.

The winner, and still champion, is the awesome Ravager Affinity deck. While
Arcbound Ravager is indeed an important part of the best Affinity decks, I
believe the incredible card advantage provided by Skullclamp is the real
reason Ravager Affinity is the most dangerous deck in America. While Wizards
of the Coast may have all but built the Affinity deck FOR US, Skullclamp
continues to seem like a mistake. Skullclamp makes aggressive decks with
lots of small creatures virtually the only deck that can win. This cannot
possibly foster the most competitive possible environment. Skullclamp is
broken, too powerful for the current format, at any rate. It would not
surprise me at all to see Skullclamp banned before the World Championships.

LIFE IS LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES

In the begninning, I was 0-2, the worst performance in nine years of
Regionals tournaments. A mere ten hours later, I was 9-2, finishing in
fifteenth place with what is probably my BEST Regionals performance. Life is
weird. It's important to know when to quit. And that would be NEVER.

As always, I'd love to hear what YOU think!

Jeff Zandi
Texas Guildmages
Level II DCI Judge
jeffzandi@thoughtcastle.com
Zanman on Magic Online

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