The Ontario City Challenge Finals were held on August 22nd, 2004, at C'n'M Games in Thornhill, Ontario, just north of Toronto. In all, 35 of the qualified players from 11 stores made the trip up to compete for $1000 cash put up by the sponsoring stores and the judge foils that I put up as prizes.
The players began arriving shortly after 8 a.m., and at around 8:30 we realized that the store owners had already arrived and just hadn't raised their security barriers. The players swarmed into the store to put the finishing touches on their decks and fill out decklists. Several players were still looking for cards to complete their decks, and among other cards the store sold out of Pyroclasms very quickly. Just after 9 a.m., a seating was posted to let me verify which of the qualified players were and were not present. With those present verified, I gave a brief speech outlining the tournament format, then posted the round 1 pairings and the players were off. Gregory Darkeff, while not qualified, was present to do some feature match reporting, and I hope to see his coverage show up at MtgOntario soon. Some players were notable for their absence; Canadian National Champion Jingpeng Zhang (who had qualified for the OCC before Nationals) was not present - apparently he had problems getting time off work, with the OCC Finals being so close to Worlds, and I couldn't really blame him for making that his priority. The least-represented store was Skyfox Games, with only Cyril Crocker making the trip.
One of my plans for the tournament was to run more rounds of Swiss (before doing a cut to top 8) than would normally be done. At a normal 35-man tournament, we would run 6 rounds before doing the cut, and two losses would almost definitely eliminate a player from contention. At the OCC Finals, we were running eight rounds - two more than normal. This would give the players more of a chance to show off their skills, and reduce the effects of an unlucky loss. The first three of those rounds were Standard. Affinity was out in full force, with eleven players showing up with the current dominant deck type. Five players each chose to play Ponza (mono-red land destruction) and U/W control decks, three were running Goblin Bidding and two Tooth and Nail decks. No other deck archetype was run by more than one player. After the first three rounds, four players were left at 3-0: Greg Broe (from Untouchables) playing U/W Control; Jeffrey Snow (GamezClub) with Tooth and Nail; Ryan Trepanier (Top Games) with Affinity; and Adam Whitehead (Worlds Away) with a U/W Auriok Salvagers deck.
Next up were three rounds of Duplicate Sealed. I provided a number of card pools based on actual Mirrodin/Darksteel/Fifth Dawn sealed decks, with the rares removed and the card pools 'tweaked' in various ways. These tweaks were done in order to make the decks harder to build, so that (for example) if the cardpool was very weak, I would take steps to further weaken it, or if the cardpool featured a lot of equipment I would add more good equipment as well as cards that deal with equipment. I also tried to even out the colours in all the decks. This worked fairly well in most of the pools, but many of the players who had the 'A' cardpool complained that they were having problems breaking through creature stalls, leading to draws. I plan to put the four cardpools online at some point in the future so that you can see what the players had to build with.
The players were broken out into pods for the Duplicate Sealed, so that instead of everyone in the room building from the same cardpool we had the four that I mentioned above. This let me space out the seating of the players so that no player was sitting next to someone building from the same pool as them. Also, the pods were determined by the players' standing as of the end of round 3, so that players were in a pod with other people whose record was approximately the same as them. After playing three rounds in the pods, Robb Davis (Dueling Grounds), Kyle Smith (Dueling Grounds), Paul Russell (Deja Vu Games) and Steve Tomik (401 Convenience) came out of the four pods with 3-0 records. Robb, Kyle, and Paul were the three players with a record of 5-1 at this point, and were only topped in the standings by Greg Broe, who had added a 2-0-1 record in the sealed to his 3-0 in Standard. Steve's 3-0 unfortunately came after an 0-3 in Standard, leaving him out of the running.
With the top four players drawing amongst themselves to guarantee themselves top 8, the remaining slots were being hotly contested by the other players. The team competition was heating up, too. Dueling Grounds had a significant lead coming out of round 6 and maintained it in round 7, but Robb and Kyle's draws opened up the door for late charges by some of the other stores. Worlds Away had the best chance to move in, with John Michura and Adam Whitehead playing for top 8 in the last round - if they and their third teammate, Charles Richey, could win then they would pass Dueling Grounds, but neither John nor Adam pulled out wins, dropping Worlds Away out of contention. C'n'M's three top players - Ed O'Herlihy, Michael Isaacs, and Gennadi Razumenko - did manage to sweep their last round to threaten a tie with Dueling Grounds, but in the end the third DG team member - Daniel Pham - managed a draw to lift Dueling Grounds over the host store by a single point.
After the eight rounds of swiss, the top eight was set at:
Greg Broe (Untouchables)
James Vance (Top Games)
Cyril Crocker (Skyfox Games)
Robb Davis (Dueling Grounds)
Paul Russell (Deja Vu Games)
Kyle Smith (Dueling Grounds)
Ed O'Herlihy (C'n'M Games)
Ryan Trepanier (Top Games)
The 9-12th place prizes were awarded to Michael Isaacs (C'n'M Games), Marc Godmaire (Gemini Jetpack), Sacha Bakht (401 Convenience) and John Michura (Worlds Away). Additionally, we distributed the foils for the team prize at this time, with Robb taking a DCI foil Counterspell, Kyle taking a DCI foil Ball Lightning and Daniel a DCI foil Living Death. Since only three of the DG members were competing, the remaining DCI foils - Tradewind Rider, Hammer of Bogardan, and Argothian Enchantress - will be going to Dueling Grounds itself.
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