This article describes the tournament I went to on Saturday in Richmond. For a States tournament, you must bring some ID that tells the tournament judge staff that you are a resident of the state. Otherwise it is an ordinary Standard Constructed tournament. If you're not interested in Magic, you probably won't enjoy this at all.

There were to be 8 rounds of Standard (the format where only the two most recent expansions and the most recent core set are legal to build and play with) for the day. States tournaments are almost always around the time the format has just changed over, so the tournament itself is a kind of rogue entity. Pros never attend States because the metagame is too wild and open, the tournament itself is too random.
Consequently, it is the perfect place for guys like me to go and shine. I love the random aspects of the game, and love to demonstrate individuality by playing with some deck that no one else would think to.

Of course, I didn't do all that splendidly. My final record was 2-3-1 drop, and some of the matches were laborious. Here's my decklist:

4 Flamekin Harbinger
4 Smokebraider
4 Incandescent Soulstoke
2 Dust Elemental
1 Mulldrifter
1 Shriekmaw
2 Greater Gargadon
1 Timbermare
1 Purity
1 Nova Chaser
1 Horde of Notions
1 Verdant Force
4 Momentary Blink
4 Incinerate
4 Rift Bolt
1 Crib Swap
2 Sudden Shock

1 Battlefield Forge
1 Keldon Megaliths
2 Shimmering Grotto
2 Flagstones of Trokair
4 Karplusan Forest
6 Mountain
6 Plains

The idea of the deck is to cheat. Three flamekin cards from Lorwyn allow me to cheat like a crazy man: the Harbinger, the Smokebraider, and the Soulstoke themselves form a trifecta of cheating that I want to see every game. Here's how it works.
Most people draw cards from the top of their deck at random. The Harbinger allows me to stack my deck, which also allowed me to put a bunch of singleton threats in the deck and toolbox quite a bit. The Harbinger can fetch me a Crib Swap or Shriekmaw if I need some creature to die, or any of my heavy hitters so I can try to end the game quickly, or even a Mulldrifter if I'm already in an attrition war and need to generate cards. Some draw from the top. I stack the deck.
Most people use lands to pay for spells and abilities. You may have noticed that 22 of my 60 cards are elementals (that's also 22/38 cards that I pay mana for). This means that the Smokebraider can give me mana of any colour for more than half of my spells. Thanks to my mana base having lands that can produce three colours on demand, having one 'braider out means that I can summon a Horde of Notions on turn three and start attacking. Tell me that's not cheating.
Most people summon their creatures. Thanks to the Soulstoke, I can cheat them into play, give them haste, and swing for the skies before sacrificing the dude in question to my Greater Gargadon. The best part about this is that it is an ability and not a spell, so when a counterspell theme crops up, I can decimate it with my cheating. Having them come down at instant speed doesn't hurt my feelings any, either. Two mana for 11 hasty damage? Don't mind if I do. Two mana to rescue three of my guys from Wrath? Sure thing! Cheating like there's no tomorrow. Bilk 'em Danno!
To top it all off, I used Momentary Blink to randomly save my dudes and re-use their comes-into-play abilities. The Harbinger in particular loves this trick, but it can also make a cool play into a huge one if I, say, sneak a gigantic elemental into play and attack with it, and then blink him so that he loses the sacrifice trigger. Same goes for my evoke guys, I can pay the cheaper cost, get the CIP, blink him, get a second CIP and I don't have to sacrifice him.

The theme of this tournament should have been Cheaters Never Prosper if my results are to be believed. I jotted down the matches so you could all enjoy.
Round 1. I was one of three players who got an Awarded Bye for this round. So my record went to 1-0-0 without my doing anything. Most players see this as a gift, but I was eager to start playing right away so I was a little let down. Also it meant that my first game would be against someone who had won, so in the abstract my first game would be harder than anyone else's. Meh. I just wanted to fight. I'm packing a deck full of hasty dudes and burn spells. Perhaps its shortsightedness rubbed off on me.
1-0-0

Round 2. He had a U/b Faerie Control build. He was more about the control than the fae, as he would routinely cast Cryptic Command as his first spell of the game. In the first game I tutored up a Dust Elemental because I smelled a Damnation coming. I had been attacking him with my early dudes and burning out his fae. Then I got an end of turn hardcast Dust Elemental, summoned my Harbinger next turn again to fix my draw, and started taking his remaining life chunks of seven at a time (he was a 7/7 thanks to the Soulstoke). He summoned a Cloud Sprite as his last card, thinking he could block the Dust Elemental. Curiously enough, though, Dusty also has fear, so the Cloud Sprite ran away in terror before I bashed my opponent's face in for game 1. Game 2 I suspended a Gargadon on turn one and started summoning the usual suspects and playing some land. I had an unusual amount of land that game, and on turn six I used it to hard-cast Purity because he had used his black removal and blue psi blasts to harry my starting dudes. With a Purity on the board and a suspended Gargadon, I ended up sacrificing five of my lands (I told you I got a lot of land that game) and summoning the hasty Gargadon, and smashing face for all of it.
2-0-0

Round 3. Here's where things went bad. My opponent was one of the dudes from the Lucky Frog around here. It was nice to see a familiar face, but that's about the only nice thing in the match. I had to mulligan an excellent freaking hand game 1. It was Harbinger, two Smokebraiders, two Soulstokes...and two plains. I had the possibility of having no plays until turn three, at which point I could summon my trifecta in reverse order, but I just couldn't take the hand and had to settle for six cards. This ruined me, and to this day I will never know if the next card would have been a mountain (making that the best hand ever). Anyway he was playing a G/u aggro deck which felt for all the world like a Gruul deck from back in the day (i.e. last year). He had blue for Venser, Psi Blast, and Familiar's Ruse. He dropped Garruck on turn three both games thanks to Llanowar Elves. It was game one where double Venser ruined me. The frustrating thing was that I certainly had the cards to beat this deck, and by the luck of the draw I didn't get them in time. Actually this would be a theme for the day. Did I mention his deck also had a Scryb Force theme alongside Tarmogoyf? It did, and I Crib Swapped a force more than once thanks to Horde of Notions (that is to say, the thing that wouldn't stick because of Venser). So close.
2-1-0

Round 4. I was playing G/W/B good stuff. It seemed like there were no popular decks around the tables, only popular cards. This guy must have had all of them. His deck featured both Garruck and Ajani. Tarmogoyf alongside Eyeblight's Ending, Wrath of God, Oblivion Ring, and little else. This is the kind of control deck you should expect to see in the coming standard, as counterspelling things is going to be less powerful in general (thanks to Ravnica having most of the excellent counterspells, and rotating out as of earlier this month).
Game 1. He got three Harmonizes in the game and ended up using all of them, seemingly to chain into themselves. This also meant he dropped a land every turn of the game. He had an early Tarmogoyf which I Sudden Shocked before it became a problem. Did you know that you can't ever Tarfire a Tarmogoyf? As part of the spell resolving, the card is put into its owner's graveyard, then State Based Effects are checked, and they see that the Tarmogoyf is a 2/3 with 2 damage on it thanks to the goblin instant you just cast. Good thing I used Sudden Shock! Mind your burn spells, though. While his drawing shenanigans were going on, I assembled the trifecta and tutored up a Dust Elemental while saving my Harbinger from a grizzly fate using a Momentary Blink. That left me with Dusty in hand and Smokebraider mana on the table to use on my Soulstoke in case my opponent had a sweep coming. My board also had a hardcast Nova Chaser championed over a harbinger. On his turn he cast Wrath and then watched me as I cheated in a Dust Elemental, used it to save my Smokebraider, Nova Chaser, and Soulstoke, and then as the champion trigger brought back my harbinger, he still watched as I fixed my next draw with a Horde of Notions in the wings. Then his Wrath killed my Harbinger and Dust Elemental, and he claimed I had just time-walked myself. I wonder, as this is as opposed to letting him 4-for-1 me, whether he thought I had a lapse in judgment setting up this elaborate play. Anyway, the next turn I turned the fireworks back on. He stuck an Ajani and started gaining life and again whittling away at my army with spot removal. He gets two turns worth of Ajani and unleashes an avatar token. Rather than killing the token, I go after his life total and bring the token into an acceptable power/toughness. He goes from 16 to 13 from a Rift Bolt, then to six from my sneaky hasty dudes, then 5 from his pain land. By this point I'm at 11 and staring at an avatar token, a beast token (goddam garruk) and all I have on the board is a Soulstoke on the board and a Sudden Shock in hand. There are about ten cards in my library that I could draw to kill him right then, and Purity came up and cinched it. By this point his friends are about and they watch him kill me second game with my early Gargadon making me sac all my dudes in the face of spot removal. He gets a Tarmogoyf to stick finally and gets me. At one point I had stuck Purity on the board and Incinerated myself to stay alive. I'm really hoping there's an X spell in Morningtide that's an Elemental. Meh.
Game 3. We were about to begin the game when they called time and five turns, so we decided to draw, as even with the perfect hand there's no way I could kill him on turn 3. And with the perfect hand he probably could not have killed me on turn 7, but whatever.
2-1-1

Round 5. This is where I'm inclined to describe the matches in less detail. This guy drops a Crucible of Worlds and a Terramorphic Expanse, and I thought he was joking. On something like turn 4 I had lethal damage waiting for him in a suspended Rift Bolt, but he gets enough for Walk the Aeons with buyback, and his Crucible plus double Rites of Flourishing is enough to take as many turns as he wants. I could have conceded then, but I wanted to see every card in his deck, so I let him do it. Game 2, he Rune Snags two of my early dudes (including a turn three Horde of Notions...grrr), and Psi Blasts a Soulstoke. I'm curious as to how a deck like his could draw all the answers he needed just when he needed them, but anyway he did, and I drew a lot of land and didn't recover.
2-2-1

Round 6. I could still end with a good record if I won this next match, so I decided to continue on, even in the face of the three most recent and difficult matches. This guy was playing a W/u control deck with snow lands and Scrying Sheets. He gets a turn four Teferi's Moat and names red, preventing my whole army at the time from attacking him (including my turn 1 Gargadon). I fished up a non-red threat in Dust Elemental, which he foils by casting Wrath just before I have mana to save my dudes. Then he gets a Martyr of Sands, and he gains 18 life out of nowhere, which is funny as I later get him down to the 18 life that he gained. Bah. Ajani comes down as well as Triskelavus, and I have nothing left. Game 2, more of the same tricks. I draw into no gas and he drops Akroma, which I hold off for a turn with a combination of Purity and Soulstoke, but he kills the 'stoke and then me with the flying legend.
2-3-1

At this point I really can't finish with a good record, as a 4-3-1 doesn't get you much of anywhere. Granted I could have done better than break even, but there were side events calling to me and I had to go. I was similarly sick of hearing about how John was doing, as he seemed to be surprised when his turbofog deck stalled out again and again just as he was about to win and drew the match instead. I would have explained to him that he had to expect his matches to go this way, as his deck is designed to stall the game until it can win by decking the other guy. I knew it wouldn't stick though, because nothing sticks to his spirit. There were a number of things about the day that fed me up with him and his ways, and I was happy to be away from Richmond, where I found few people with any sense at all, and plenty of nasty smells at every turn.

Saturday. I had ended up crapping out in a draft as well. I feel done with Magic for now, and frustrated in general. This is the life I have chosen in place of other things, and I can't even make it good in that. I've not been this disappointed since the winter where I had a Magnivore deck that wasn't meant to be. From an outside perspective it feels like a lose-lose situation. When I take into account what I've sacrificed to be a gamer, the balance seems staggering.

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