The PWP History: State Championships

I've decided to write about my State Championship experiences. States was always a special tournament for me, even though winning meant not much more than pride. Maybe I liked it so much because the events always fell near my birthday. The field of States were the players you'd see once a month or so at the PTQs in the area, but restricted to those from your state. The Louisiana players stayed in Louisiana, the Oklahoma players stayed in Oklahoma. There was no requirement to do this, but when playing for pride, you wanted it to count extra and rep your home state. 

States went through several iterations over the years, and it may even still exist in some spots. I've thought about trying to run my own version of States, or asking the people at the Hunter Burton Memorial Open to at least give out the State Championship "Title" to the winner. Maybe a Texas State Old School Championship could happen in the future? Who knows?

I don't know how States began, but when I started playing competitively in 2002 it was run by the regional Tournament Organizers (TOs). Event Horizons ran the events for Texas and Louisiana, and maybe some others? It didn't feed into anything nor pay out anything big, but the champion would receive free entry to PTQs for the year. In the mid-2000s, Wizards began promoting it more heavily and created two new titles: the Limited State Championship and the Two-Headed Giant State Championship. This only lasted for a couple of years, and they killed the program entirely by 2009. In 2009, SunMesa Events decided to organize a nationwide State and Provincial Championship series. They even offered free entry to their Grand Prix to the winners. This lasted until 2011 or 2012, when the regional TOs lost their monopoly on big events and PTQs and Prereleases were given to the stores. I think some other people have tried to run State Championships over the years since, but nothing that resonated the way those original ones did (you can't run two in a year, that doesn't make sense!). 

I played in nine State Championships over the years. I won three of them, and made the finals of one more. I have one additional top 8. My match win percentage is 77.4%! Below is a recap of the State Championships I played in, with as much detail as I can remember.

2003 Texas State Championships

My first state championships, but I was no stranger to competitive play at this point. I had started playing again after a two-year break about a year prior with the release of Onslaught and my entry into university. A year later, I had already won my first PTQ and was really excited to try to claim the state title. The tournament was at my home shop, Midnight Comics in Houston. I played Goblins in the tournament. The deck was mainly an Onslaught Block Constructed deck I had played a bunch in the PTQs over the summer, but it did have some new cards from Mirrodin. Those cards were Chrome Mox, Seething Song, and some Goblin Charbelcher in the sideboard. I don't remember how many of each I played, but I do remember trying the full 4x Seething Song and 4x Chrome Mox and the deck was too mana heavy. I remember my loss in round two or round six was a game where I had sided in Charbelcher and had my opponent down to 4 life, but I was unable to finish him off with the card over three activations and he was able to kill me in the meantime. 

I believe this was the tournament that Kevin Barrington won with Broodstar Affinity, or just Affinity as we called it at the time since we knew nothing yet of Arcbound Ravager. These decks pretty much built themselves with full copies of Broodstar, Thoughtcast, Thirst for Knowledge, Shrapnel Blast, Myr Enforcer, Frogmite, etc. He may have included Disciple of the Vault and Atog with Neurok Hoversail. The group I tested with had an Affinity deck with Megatog and Lightning Greaves that put Josh Calvert into the top 8. Transplanted two-time PT Finalist Tomi Walamies made top 4 with a mono-black control deck featuring Barter in Blood and Platinum Angel. 

2004 Texas State Championships

Champions of Kamigawa came out after a summer of Mirrodin Block Constructed that Ravager Affinity dominated, or Affinity as we called it then since Broodstar and other cards were completely unplayable. I didn't play many PTQs in Block Constructed at all, so I didn't want to play Affinity mirrors without the experience. I chose to play a Krark Clan Ironworks combo deck that loses to the same hate cards as Affinity without being nearly as good. I believe this event was in a hotel near the Galleria in Houston. I did manage to beat Tracey Steele round 1, who will likely be a recurring opponent in these blogposts. I always seem to run well against him, with multiple times I remember our game threes decided by his mulligans to five. 

I have no idea who won or what the top 8 was like, but it was probably Affinity. After I was eliminated I remember inventing a fun Texas Hold 'Em variant using a friends 60 card Affinity deck. Since just about every card was a 4-of, it played similarly to a standard playing card deck. The winner after two hole cards, three card flop and a turn and river was the person whose 7-card hand made the best possible starting hand. Pocket Seat of the Synods would win on a board of no lands, but Disciple Ravager would be the best on a board with a Vault of Whispers and any other land. It was surprisingly fun just to argue about which hand was better, and a good learning opportunity for what mulligan ranges should look like among the people who were playing.

2005 Texas State Championships

I've written a bit about this before, but really should give it its own blogpost. I played a RW Searing Meditation deck that I threw together with a bunch of Phu's cards before round one when the person who was supposed to bring me cards failed to show up. Keya bought me 4 Peace of Mind from the store to help me finish the deck, but didn't want repayment. I told him I would concede in the finals if he somehow made it there with his Battle of Wits deck and I manged to get there with my last minute build.

Which is exactly how it turned out. Years later we played out the finals for real, and Keya was able to beat me legitimately.

My win in the top four was against the notorious Hunter Burton. I don't really remember how I won, he had a lot of the countermagic cards that were really good against me but I think my Journeyer's Kite and Sensei's Divining Top combo helped me win the war of attrition, eventually resolving a Searing Meditation. I'll try to write a more detailed recap later. This is still a top 5 tournament experience for me.

2006 South Carolina Two-Headed Giant State Championships

This is actually one of the oldest posts from this blog, well before I was actually blogging regularly. I don't think there is much to add 15 years later. I had been in South Carolina about nine months for Navy training at this point.

2007 Hawaii Two-Headed Giant State Championships

I had only been in Hawaii for three months. I hadn't played any Magic since moving there as I was extremely busy with my job in the Navy. I noticed I would have a Saturday off for this event and decided to show up to see if I could find a partner to play with. It was a very small event (as most Hawaii events are) and I was worried I might not get a partner. Someone was asking around for potential partners for his friend since they were a group of three. I said I was available and I joined up with this friend. His name was Paul, but I no longer remember his last name. He told me he didn't have much experience with tournament play, so I told him to just do what I say and we should be fine.

Our sealed decks were solid, we had the red Pestilence and some Grapeshots that were easy to control the board with. The top 4 draft was a lot of fun (I wish 2HG draft was still a thing) but I don't remember what we had besides the blue Serra Angel. I didn't actually expect to win the event, but we managed to do so. The one time he tried to tell me what to do I ignored him and then attacked my 4/4 into the opponents 4/1 First Strike in the Finals, but we still managed to win. 

Paul's friend Jacob Mori, who had introduced us earlier, was probably more excited about the win that Paul or myself. He told me later while we were celebrating at Dave and Busters that Paul was really happy to have won and would never have had the opportunity if I hadn't been there. 

This was my introduction to the Hawaii Magic scene and I got to meet a lot of people who I would later become good friends with. I didn't get to play much more that year, but by the time I left Hawaii four years later I felt like a part of the group. 

Edit: Adding a story about Jeff Zandi here. I remember posting on the Texas Magic forums (probably TML at the time, maybe TexasGamers? Definitely before TMZ) about my win (one good part about winning events is the bragging you get to do afterwards) and getting a bunch of comments about the relatively poor quality of the opponents I faced. Much like recent gatekeeping with PT Top 8, some people wanted to claim it wasn't a real state championship title. Zandi made a post that all I can do is beat the people in front of me, and it made me feel like it was still a legitimate title. 

2007 Texas Standard State Championship

This was at the hotel by George Bush Airport in Houston. I played RB Goblins with a lot of the cards from the new set Lorwyn. Phu played a similar deck, but opted for Greater Gargadon instead of Facevaulter. He ended up in top 8 while I finished one win short. Will Lowry played  a variant of his successful block deck Mono Green Gauntlet. He also made the top 8, but then physically stopped his opponent from conceding a game.Will had used Yavimaya Dryad to give his opponent a Forest to try to forestwalk past the army of morphs in the opponents Pickles deck. When the opponent tapped the Forest on his turn and cast a spell, he ended up with two extra mana floating from Will's Gauntlet of Power. The opponent had to mana burn, and thought he was dead, but he was actually at 3 life and would live. As the opponent tried to scoop, Will told him "your not dead" and physically stopped his scooping motion. A few turns and a few Cryptic Commands later, Will was the one who was dead.

I believe Carl Hendrix won this event with Elves. 

2009 Hawaii State Championship

I played a White Weenie deck a lot like the one Rob Dougherty had used at the recent World Championships. I remember it had 8 Plains and 8 Fetchlands as the only land in the deck. This was possible with Knight of the White Orchid and occasionally Path to Exile on your own creature. The main deck White Knights did a lot of work against the Jund decks of the format, and Brave the Elements and Honor of the Pure let you take games long and win out of nowhere. Edit: I found the list here.

I lost in the top 8 to the Mono Black Vampire deck despite having 4 White Knight and 4 Devout Lightcaster. I mulliganed a hand game three with five land and two spells on seven cards, but I probably should have kept with such a low land count in my deck. I ended up mulligan to four cards before I found a playable hand and then never drew a second land.

2010 Hawaii State Championship

I can barely tell you what I played. I think it had Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Vengevine, Trinket Mage, Memnite, Fauna Shaman, Cunning Sparkmage, Basilisk Collar, etc. I could not beat a Primeval Titan to save my life and had no chance at doing well in this event.

2011 Texas State Championship

I called my shot and finally won an individual state title, as well as finally winning in my home state of Texas. Read about it here. Also, I played 3 Primeval Titan and 24 land, so even at this point I was still not that great at building decks!

Conclusion

I loved the State Championships. I wish they would come back in some meaningful way. I'm very proud to have won three different times in three different states.