A mediocre magus remembers Regionals 2003

This was a long time ago, but one of my best gaming moments.  Well... not really one moment, because the event lasted, like, 14 hours.  (I only remember this because I told my non-gaming friends and family I spent 14 hours in the same room at the Bayside Expo Center in Boston, MA.)  There were 10 rounds!!  This event was one of my proudest moments.  A deck, all of my own creation, sparring at a big tournament.

The spring of 2003 was standard season for odyssey, onslaught and seventh ed.  Psychatog and UG Madness (I still hate that deck) were the veteran contenders, while (Mirari's) Wake was starting to come on scene.  Truly a fearsome field!

Lately, I'd gotten really interested in a janky TurboLand build for extended (I'd managed to acquire playsets of Exploration and Horn of Greed right before that deck took off) so I decided to try out a similar concept for standard.  I couldn't play extra land, but I certainly could go for the infinite-turn combo!  Gurzigost + Time Stretch gave me that combo, so I built a stalling deck around it.  The deck list included:  (This is from memory, though I may have it written down somewhere, in which case I'll update it.)

2 Gurzigost
3 Time Stretch
4 Far Wanderings
4 Moment's Peace
4 Compulsion
4 Circular Logic
2 Krosan Reclamation
2 Deep Analysis
1 Obsessive Search
4 Mental Note
4 Tranquil Thicket
4 Lonely Sandbar
12 Island
10 Forest

Yes, that's half land.  The deck fiercely needed to play land every turn. 

Game one of each round was very fun.  Spend each turn drawing as many cards as possible and getting in a time stretch if feasible.  Stall, stall, stall until the library was empty, all the while listening to the opponent saying "What does your deck do?"  Then, drop a Gurzigost and next turn put time stretch (and maybe obsessive search) as the bottom AND top of my library.  Repeat ad nauseum, with the gurzigost getting in for unblockable damage (madness the obsessive search to redraw the time stretch).  If the Gurzi dies, use the other Gurzi to get it back in the library.  I probably won around 6 of my 10 game ones this way.  I remember beating (nearly?) all psychatog opponents; they didn't realize the problem until it was too late.  I played lots of psychatog.

Game two was often much faster.  I had two or three phantom centaur in the sideboard and those won me as many games against black-playing opponents as anything else.  Psychatog players were usually able to get a swift game two victory.

Game three didn't usually finish, if we even got to it.  Game one went so long that I racked up 3 draws during the day in the 10 rounds; I think they were all against psychatog. 

In total I went 3-4-3.  I know I lost to UG Madness, though I only played it once (and Wake never).  I must have played lots of aggro creatures.  I wish I recalled how many times I won because game two never finished.  Maybe none...

I remember having a great time, though!