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This was one of the first tournament reports to appear on usenet, ever. The first one I know of at all was from Steven Liu, about his adventures winning an unsanctioned tourney with a Zak Dolan-like UWg Type I Control Deck.

Subject:      Tourney Report: 256-man Type II Tourney in Hamburg
From:         schach@chemie.fu-berlin.de (Frank Schacherer)
Date:         1996/02/05

This is a report an a type II tourney held in Hamburg, Germany.
There were 256 participants, the format was single elimination.

I hope you will enjoy and benefit from this report. I also want to strongly
encourage other readers of this newsgroup to post what they observed in
big tourneys they attended. By doing so, everyone will have a better
understanding of what works reliably an what doesnt.
This is a strategy newsgroup after all, and at least partially tourney play
and how to improve in it should be it's concern. I found there are few better
ways to improve your playing skill than to learn from other players, as a
single person will never be able to have all the experiences and all the ideas
that a whole group of persons will produce.

This not a call to "Go out and copy whatever you see winning in tourneys."
In fact I am very disappointed that the success of The Weissman Deck spawned
lots of exact copies of that deck, and a lot of peaple play just these at
tourneys.
I hope that, if some big tourney reports get posted and it turns out that all
af them were won by a discarder for example, we all will learn something
from these decks, just like everybody can learn something from the Weissman
deck. Maybe this will even start people to think on how to beat these decks
and end their rule, like it happens right now for The Deck, too. I hope that
there is enough guts between the readers of this group, that the net
result will not just be "Gee, got to build one of these for the next tourney,
too."

Well enough moralism, here's the report. I'll skip the early rounds and focus
on four of the top decks, all of which I was able too watch for several duels.

First Deck: Green Horde/Force/LD

A monogreen deck which featured only 18 Forests. In there were a lot of Elves
but not the full eight, i think 6. Also in there were 4 Ernhams, naturally.
Other creatures in the main deck included hungry Mists and multiple Forces of
Nature (3 at least). The deck had 4 Strip Mines, 4 Thermokarst to slow the
opponent down, and utilized Natures Lore (? The IA Sorcerie that lets you fish
for a forest) to speed up it's mana even more, but no wild growthes.
Games normally went that way: deck produces obscene amount of reusable G very
fast, while LD'ing opponent. In the Window of Mana difference deck pumps out
Ernham/Mist/Force and kills in few rounds together with Elves Damage.
Also in the deck were some crumble. Deck had not a single Flier and also no
hurricanes. There were 4 Howling mines, too.
The Sideboard containt Whirling Dervishes,
Tranquilities and Primal Order.
This deck was played by a quite pretty girl (not that you see too  many girls
playing magic anyways, and then she's even pretty..) who used a belly free top
and constant "Oh I really do not know how to play magic", "What is that?"
together with "This cards I hold in my hand are all useless!" and their ilk
to try to lure opponents into some kind of false feeling of security.

This one got very narrowly beaten by the deck that placed 3rd (see below).
It was one of the coolest games of magic i ever saw, so I'll describe what
happend: later on.

Second Deck: RGUw Bolt/Control/BargainCritter (Third Place)

A really multi-coloured deck. I was surprised that he didn't have mana problems
with doublecoloured spells of 2 colours in the deck. It used Cities of Brass,
Karplusan Forests, Adakar Wastes, Basic Lands, Birds of Paradise and even 2
Mishras. Llanowar Elves, too. Also had 2 Land Tax. Manacontent overall
(Tax included): 31 Cards.
The deck Featured Bolts, Incinerates, 2 Control Magic 2 Binding Grasp,
Disenchants, Spirit Links (NO StP), Balance, Fireballs, the Zuran
Orb, Ernhams, Autumn Willow (saw not a single game where it survived to the
second round if it wasn't countered), Stormbind, some Powersink.
In the Sideboard there were Energy Flux, CoP:R, 2 more Control Magic, the
fourth Disenchant of what I saw (the light was miserable and sleeves were
allowed, so you really could make out just the cards in play most of the time).
The Player was Gunnar Refsdal, No.3 in the German Nationals also, from Hamburg.

Now for the games:
In the first duel things went really quick. Both players pumped out elves and
birds, only Gunnar took Control of first an elf of the girl, then proceeded to
control her ernham, made a ernham of his own, binding grasped something else
and game over. She had played 3 Howlers, which naturally didn't help her much.

Second duel: The girl sideboards in Tranquilities and out Crumble and in
something else. Gunnar Sideboards in his other two control magics.
The game starts of as before: she plays an Elf, he plays City, Bird. She plays
Howling mine. She plays the land-sorcery,  Gunnar controls some Elves,
has 2 Nonbasic Lands out.
She plays Primal Order. Gunnar takes damage. Some turns later: Gunnar
controls an Elf an Ernham, has an Ernham of his own, but his damage lands
hurt him in casting and via order. She plays: Force of Nature.
Gunnar binding grasps it an his turn, but is down to 5. Attacks.
She has 6 Life left.
She plays another Force of Nature. Gunnars upkeep comes - he takes 2 from
Primal Order, is at 3. Upkeep for Grasp and Force would cost him another 2
Life, but then he could attack and 9 Damage minimum would get through.
Everybody starts discussing and mumbling. Gunnar doesn't attack - he's
afraid of a fog (a fog!). He counts her lands. He doesn't pay the upkeep
for binding grasp.
Has not to pay the upkeep for the Force, who goes back to the girl, untapped.
Gunnar ends his turn, and there comes the girls upkeep: she has 7 forests.
She doesn't even try to crumble her howling mine.
This was the first game i ever witnessed being won, because the winner did NOT
pay for binding grasp.

Third Deck: Monoblack Discarder
This one had: Hymns to Tourach, Hypnotic Specters, Mindstab Thrulls, Disrupting
Scepters, 4 Racks, 2 or 3 Drain Life. So far so standard. It also had 
4 Mishra's Factories, 3 Paralyze, a Royal Assasin (vs. his clone), Orders of 
the Ebon Hand. Nothing special there. The only thing that surprised me was he
had NO Dark Rituals, but more Land (may well have been 24 Swamp), and he had
multiple Jayaemdae Tomes and a Meekstone in the main deck. And a Xenic
Poltergeist! 
There may have been an Icy.
The Sideboard contained Dark Banishings, Terrors (vs. nonblack big critter), 
another paralyze and 2 weakness (vs. Black weenies), NO Gloom. 
This deck was played by a rather strange guy who "siezte" all his opponents. 
(In German for "You" you can say "Du", which is more casual and is normal
among magic players or you can say "Sie" (called "siezen"), which is more
standard for formal and business conversation.)
Although I think that rather Gunnar than he should have been in the finals
(Gunnar lost to the Tourney Winner in the Semis), there are some interesting 
points about his deck and sideboard:
He managed getting into the finals by beating Arne in the Quater-Finals, 
a local Shop Owner from around here (Berlin), who ran a WU Control Deck 
with 3 CoP:B in the main deck. (Which were in there because Arne knew a
black weenie deck built by a friend of mine, that just destroyed
UW decks). Although a lot of people on the net hold the opinion that
Racks are no good, this diversification (colorless damage) and the Mishras
(which are a boon vs. White Weeny also) made these games for him.
He said he wouldn't sideboard gloom in vs. BlueWhite, because all white
players used Sleights. He had no way to remove ore cripple the circles.
Also interesting was the Xenic, which could be used to make enemy Artifacts
prone to Drain Life/Banishing or just kill the Zorb, or make his Tomes
4/4 attackers. And who claims racks can't block?    

Fourth Deck: UWgrb OffensiveControl

This deck not only was the tourney winner, but it also was just beautiful
to behold. Like Gunnar's Deck, also a high Mana deck with multiple Cities of
Brass, 4 Birds of Paradise, at least 2 Felwar Stones, Adakar Wastes, Plains, 
Islands, Forests, at least 3 Strip Mines and 4 Mishra's factorys.
No Land Tax. I still can't figure out how he managed not to get mana screwed.
Business cards included: Disenchant (3-4), StP(dito), Wrath of God (2-3)
Balance, 4 Serras, 4 Counterspell, Zur's Weirding, Recall, Jester's Cap,
Sylvan Library, Elemental Augury, Stormbind, Zuran Orb.
No Icies, no Tome, no Szepter. I didn't see a cane or Ivory Tower. Saw
also no Contol Magic.
The Sideboard contained: 4 CoP:R, Reverse Damage, 2 Lifeforce, 1 CoP:Black,
2 Savannah Lions, some REB/BEB and something else I can't remember.
This deck was played by Christoph Bilshausen, who also is the reigning german
national champion.

Some observations on the deck being played: unlike the standard UW
Control Decks, Christoph played this thing fully offensive, attacking with
Mishras and pumping out Serras. With all his Speed Mana he was very fast.
And it was really hard to figure out what you where up against: since nearly
every permanent on the Table was Green or Golden (except for the Serras) or
an Artifact (but not too many of these either), and there wasn't much blue
at all except for a lonely counterspell once in a while (to save a mishra from 
bolt or something). So what would you sideboard against? You didn't see the
UW Deck which it really was.
Christoph lost only a single Duel in the whole Tourney: the second duel
against Gunnar, and went on to win the finals 2-0.

The Games vs. Gunnar were also interesting to watch:
First Duel, Christoph gets out his Zuran Orb, punishes Gunnar down to seven
hits, Wrathes a Willow and Elf with his Birds on the way, both Hands are quite
empty from the immense pressure of the game. No critters out, Christoph draws 
and plays Balance, sacrificing all his Land. He now is at 28 Life and Gunnar 
still at 7, and the game just started over. Gunnar drwas: Zuran Orb. Laughter.
3 turns or so later a City a Mishra a Bird a Felwar and some other Land produce
a Serra for Christoph. Gunnar dies with a Incinerate in his hand.
Ironically, in the second game, Gunnar draws of a Balance with LandTax/ZOrb
and Control Magiced Serra + Ernham out vs. Serra and Bird - sacrifice all
Lands, game over three turns later. He didn't even have to landtax. 
They talked about that this was like at the German Nationals (where Christoph
advanced into the finals after having channel-fireballed turn 4, being 
channel-fireballed turn 4, channel fireballing again turn 3), and like back
then, Christoph won the last duel, but without the Balance/Zorb combo.
 
I hope you all enjoyed the report.
 
"He who knows himself and who knows his opponent can never lose."

--
Frank

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