From: Dirk Biesheuvel [alcazael@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2002 3:57 AM


Hi There,

Last week I played a peasant magic tournament in The
Hague, Holland organized by KVdeckmasters, my local
playing resort.
It was a actually a peasant magic TEST tournament, as
an extra for the clubs anniversary coming Januari, we
thought up a tournament format in which the decks
players use are redistributed after every round. After
the first match, all decks are collected and
redistributed among the players with winning decks
ending up among the losing players and vice versa.
Afer a couple of rounds, both the winning player(s)
and the winning deck(s) are awarded price. 
Besides the fact that you don't want the whole club to
handle your T1 mox-infested properous bloom deck, we
wanted all players to have a fair deck building
opportunity. Hence, we chose the peasant magic format.

Most high profile players usually prefer not to waste
any effort to play a format that won't be a Protour
format (at least not in the foreseeable future) so we
didn't expect a high number of players, but interest
was fair. About 24 players showed up, well enough for
some interesting competition.

When I heard about the restrictions of peasant magic,
my first thought had been: Hypnotic Specter & Sons,
resurrect the black maul that defined summer '96. But
without Necropotence, I would have to come up with
some adjustments.

This is what I built:

"The Grit-Sucker"

4 Hypnotic specters
4 Phyrexian ragers
4 Skittering horror
3 Crypt rats
3 Unearth
3 Corrupt
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Drain life
4 Diabolic edict
4 Dark ritual
1 Ishan's shade

22 Swamps

I built a sideboard, but in the end it was decided not
to use one, because a lot of people misunderstood the
tournament regulations and hadn't built one.

SB:

4 Duress (against counter)
1 Unearth (against burn)
3 Spinning darkness (against burn)
3 Nausea (White weenie)
4 Viscious hunger (against Black and Burn).

The tournament went fine, I lost 1 game and ended up
first, beating Red burn (They can't cope with the
drains and the corrupts; Ishan's Shade is big when you
have to waste a chump and two spells on him), Blue Tim
(Tims don't like Crypt rats, blue mages don't like
hymns and Hyppies fly over Stinging barriers), green
beats (Tight games, really needed SB, but managed to
do without - only game loss in the tournament) and a
mirror(esque) match, but this guy had Spins mainboard,
so I had an advantage. Also I drew my Hymn earlier
than he did (Although he did manage to wreck my hand
in the first game - he didn't play hyppies though). 

I pulled a Call of the Herd and the new threshold
Crusade so I was happy.

I think Peasant magic is a fine format, a bit narrow
on the strategies, but less prone to unfair (read:
rock, paper, scissors) match-ups. I'm looking forward
to more Peasant tech at your site (maybe some poor
dirthugger may invent the wheel someday).

Have a nice year,

Dirk Biesheuvel

=====

And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good-
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?