(Un)Plugged Gaming

So.... 5th place yesterday. Of the 8 contenders. Luckily I got to play the first round against my "nemesis", the annoying guy that doesn't know that basic lands are colorless, that mana burn exists and then starts to get angry at *you* for trying to teach him such things. Anyway, first round I had to take 2 mulligans, leaving me with 5 cards to begin with. Needless to say, he won. Second round went better, I had a good hand from the beginning and milled him to death. 1-1. The third round, I got a good hand and started milling him. He had 7 cards left, I had 2 Drowner Initiates and one Scalpelexis on the table. I casted a small Slippery Bogle, payed 2 extra and got him down to 3 cards. Then I attacked with Scalpelexis, removing the last cards. Instead of ending my turn, I used Jace Beleren's ability and everyone had to draw a card. I won. My goal was achieved.

Second match was played against Zyco (Yes, that is his actual name), a 11-12 year old of which I can't imagine him making his own decks. On top of that, he is the shopkeeper's pet. Anyway, we got playing, I had a good hand, played as usual. Until he started using Oblivion Ring on all of my good cards. Boomerang'ed it, then Cancel'ed it as soon as he tried to play it again. Only to have him trying again, but this time I didn't have any counterspells. While praying for a Boomerang, I drew a Fable of Wolf and Owl, which I played to get me a few blockers. Unfortunatly, he played a creature that removes a creature from play when attacking and the creature returns at the end of turn. In short, he managed to burn through my 1/1 Owl tokens faster than I could get them on the field. 0-1 for me.
Second round, I got off to a good start, managing to Boomerang and Cancel my way to turn 5, with a nice headstart on mana. In the end, I lost and he had 10 cards left.

Now our group, we were with 6 of our M:tG group, wasn't too happy with the smug little bastard winning. Luckily, Eliminator won from his own brother, placing him against Zyco in the finale. I had to play against Cold Hand, who has a better history of winning with his Elf deck than me. He managed to place second in the Shadowmoor release event at the store with a similar drafted deck. He also won last time's Gateway tournament. He burned through me twice in a row, as he has a very fast deck to begin with and in the later turns, his creatures just grow. The fact that he uses the oh so annoying Oblivion Ring too often ("How many do you have?" "Two. Oh, look, here is another one! I thought I only had 2 in there.") also works in his favor.

Once that was over, we went to see how Eliminator was doing against Zyco. After a very long battle, it turned out to be a draw, ending in 1-1. Eliminator won after the tie-breakers and we were happy, atleast it was someone from our own group. He took home 3 Eventide boosters and a M:tG jacket. We'll make him wear it everytime we come together to play, just like Eliminator with his cap.

Once Iron Man gets home, I'll have to make a vicious Treefolk deck with him (a bit of an oxymoron, isn't it?), but for now I'm waiting for my Sanity Grinding in the mail. Atleast they were impressed by my deck, it isn't worthless like the last decks.