Magic Invitational Report: Tom van de Logt

Tom van de Logt

Hi,

First, let me introduce myself. My name is Tom van de Logt. I'm a 20 year old student in Logistics and Economics. I live in Groesbeek, a small town in the Netherlands. I have been playing Magic for about five or six years and I've been to several Pro Tours, with mixed results. I first made my first Pro Tour Top 8 at Worlds 2000 and I was able to draw in to the Top 8 of Worlds again this year. I never expected to win it all but when I did, I knew I was qualified for the Invitational and would get to visit the sunny continent of Africa.

I didn't have much time to prepare for the event. I built a 5-Color deck with my good friend Kamiel Cornelissen and I made sure I took a lot of Standard cards with me. I didn't have any Odyssey cards but Mark Rosewater would have a lot of the cards from Odyssey with him (I hoped).

At Schiphol Airport, I met Kamiel again and we boarded the plane that would take us to London Heathrow, were we would transfer to the plane that would take us to Cape Town. We had a pleasant flight, sitting in business class due to some clerical errors with our boarding passes or something. At the airport, transportation was arranged and we were picked up by Carl Crook. We met most of the Invitational players at our hotel in the Grand West Casino complex. The Grand West Casino is huge. Next to the casino and hotel there were numerous restaurants, shops and entertainment facilities. For the rest of the day I played some mini-golf, drafted once and played a little 5-Color.

On Thursday, we went on a sightseeing trip with all of the Invitational players and the staff. I didn't get my wake up call on time, so I rushed down. Most players were still eating breakfast, so I knew that I was just in time. The tour started at a winery. We did some wine tasting, but I generally don't like wine that much so I was more looking forward to the rest of the day. After getting some lunch (breakfast for me), we went to another winery... This one had a horrible woman just being very rude trying to explain something about her "very important" wines... yeah right. Luckily, they also had a park with some wild animals, namely Jaguars. This was quite interesting - you could see them from very close and you could even go in the same fenced area with them. We then hurried to a couple of boats that would take us Shark seeing. I don't know if you have ever been on a boat for four hours before, but I hadn't. I became sea-sick and, let me tell you, I wasn't the only one. We never saw a single shark; it was rainy that day and the sharks didn't seem to like it. I was exhausted when we finally reached the shore. The day wasn't over yet. We went to this great restaurant with very tasty African food and saw that Japanese Invitational players can dance to African beats.

On Friday, the tournament started. We all received an identical stack of cards, with some new ones. The theme was 1 casting cost cards this year. I decided to go with a white-black deck since it had the best creatures and ways to get rid of creatures and enchantments. This proved to be one of the right choices as I was able to go undefeated. I beat Tsuyoshi Fujita first, then Jon Finkel followed by Scott Richards. The second format was 5-Color with a twist. I decided to build a deck around the ante-card principle, deciding to not play any power cards or dual lands. I went 2-1 in this format, losing to Antoine Ruel, winning my match against Scott Johns with Blood Moon and the last match, against Dan Clegg, on some savage top-decking of Swords to Plowshares to prevent a Hatred kill, then Lightning Bolting my opponent to death a turn before I would die myself... Nice.

My goal for the Invitational had been not to finish in last place and 5-1 was a great start.

On Saturday, we started with the one format I had no ideas for. Being the leader in the standings, I had the right to choose my draft position and I elected to be in seat 8, getting the wheel all the time. I did some very bad drafting, not having a very solid plan and was rewarded a 0-3 result - I didn't even win a game.

Olivier Ruel had a very powerful u-g deck that crushed me, Brian Kibler's deck was too fast for my deck and Kai's deck was also way better then mine. For the Standard portion, I built a deck around Jon Finkel's card, Shadowmage Infiltrator. Using counters to protect my Finkels and Urza's Rage to burn opposing ones, I was determined to 3-0 this format. I got off to a good start against Dave Price who was playing a red-green beats deck. This is a horrible matchup most of the time, but two double Parises on Dave's side helped. I then got to play Kamiel Cornelissen who was also playing my deck and I lost in an unexciting mirror. In the last round, Chris Benafel got to crush me with his g-u recursion deck, so I finished the day 1-5, going 6-6 overall.

The Auction started on Friday. I decided that only one deck was really bad, the Wall deck, and most other decks were worth a shot, at the right price of course. I ended up with the Dragon deck, starting at 7 cards, 16 life. I went 0-3, winning a game in every match but the deck was just too expensive most of the time. I lost first to Gary Wise, beating him game two with a Covetous Dragon. I lost 2-1 to Chris Pikula who was playing Knights (Dragons historically don't beat knights) and I then got swarmed by Mike Pustilnik's Plague Rats. 6-9 was not exactly what I was hoping for, but I didn't finish last, finding two Brothers Ruel at places 15 and 16. I played some basketball with several Invitational players and Skaff Ellias and they showed me that the American continent's level of play is really high, with both Scott Richards and Jon Finkel being very good at it. My plane was scheduled to leave on Monday evening, so I went to see a very big shopping mall that day, unlike anything I had seen before, even bigger than the Grand West Casino complex. I had a great time in South Africa and I hope to see you all in New Orleans or some other event.