Two players from the south and close friends find themselves paired against each other in the Quarterfinals of the 2007 Nationals.

Chip Jamir was a finalist in the 2005 Nationals and has crawled his way up from the bottom of the day 2 standings to make it into the top 8. He is playing the Rakdos deck that first became popular in the Australian Nationals with slight modifications in the maindeck and sideboard.

Jason Ascalon, on the other hand, has finally made top 8 after a long time of playing magic. According to Butch, it’s a "breakthrough performance 12 years in the making." He’s piloting Angelfire with Boom/Bust and Rakdos breaking one-offs in the form of Crovax and Story Circle.

Jason wins the die roll and obviously chooses to go first. He looks at a one land and signet hand, decides it’s not worth the gamble and takes the mulligan. He comes up with a more acceptable 6 hander, with 2 lands, a signet, lightning helix and court hussar. Chip quickly keeps before I could peek at his hand.

Chip plays everybody’s favorite goblin and seal of fire, also known as the typical Rakdos start. Jason, however, has used his first few turns to find Story Circle with his hussar.

Chip doesn’t attempt to conceal his feelings regarding the early circle and empathically gives Jason a well deserved high five.

The game doesn’t take long after that with Chip trying to sneak in as much damage as he can while Jason just plays land to power the circle and occasionally wrath away Chip’s creatures. Lightning Angel and a suspended Aeon Chronicler earns the concession.

Jason – Chip: 1-0

Jason takes out fatties, a remand and molten disaster for bottle gnomes. Chip puts in terror, cryoclasm and rain of gore for his seals and fanatics. Both players stuck to their sb plans for the rest of the games.

Chip looks at a 2 terror, cryoclasm, solifuge, demonfire and 2 lands. A pretty good hand, if you were the control player in the matchup. Chip wisely sends it back and is rewarded with a better hand, and by better I mean it has Bob. Jason also keeps a good hand with helix for the bob, but no red source.

Chip opens with Bob, who survives because Jason doesn’t top deck a red source. He attacks with Bob and passes the turn, presumably sitting on Char.

Jason plays a boros signet, but has no third land to immediately fry the card advantage machine. Chip then uses the Rakdos side of Hit/Run to get rid of the potentially troublesome signet.

Chip then plays solifuge and puts Jason on a one-turn clock. Jason draws another boros signet, leaving him open to another attack and a char for the 5 turn win.

Jason immediately regrets taking the washroom break in between sideboarding…

Jason – Chip: 1-1

Jason keeps a hand with helix, remand, crovax and wrath while Chip keeps with Bob, rakdos guildmage, hit/run, solifuge and terror.

Chip opens with a drawn rakdos guildmage which is immediately killed by the helix, leaving an opening for Bob to actually draw a couple of cards for Chip.

The revealed cards turn out to be trouble for Chip as he takes 8 from hit/run and another 3 from cryoclasm, effectively putting himself in a race without any help from Jason.

Jason then decides that he wants to deal his own damage and casts Crovax, Angelfire Hero, killing Bob and putting Chip on a more stable damage clock.

Chip tries to stem the bleeding with a terror on Crovax, who is returned to Jason’s hand, only to be played again the same turn. Chip then destroys one of Jason’s lands and braces for a hit, hoping to draw into more burn before Crovax finishes him off.

Jason decides it’s time to end the game and casts the Armageddon part of boom/bust, leaving Chip with no outs.

Jason – Chip: 2-1

Both players keep land heavy hands with Bob and cryoclasm for Chip and helix and boom/bust for the Jason as the only spells.

Chip smells the helix in Jason’s opening hand and decides against playing Bob right away. Jason casts boom on his flagstones and Chip’s Blood Crypt. Thinking his instincts were wrong, Chip plays Bob. Jason flashes the OK sign without hesitation, leaving Chip to realize that he was right all along.

Jason casts hussar and compulsive on consecutive turns to give himself gas. Chip meanwhile was computing with his fingers whether he had enough damage to finish off Jason. Deciding that he didn’t have enough, he incinerates the hussar instead., which turns out to be the right play as Chip draws solifuge from the top.

Jason casts wrath then another hussar, revealing 2 boom/bust, one of which he takes and casts the next turn. He follows up with double lightning angels and Chip extends the hand.

Jason wins 3-1 and advances to the semifinals. He also gets to visit his mom in the States.