This was it, the big day. Timothy, David, and I had all qualified for Redemption Nationals and had gotten special permission from our parents and the youth pastor to skip church and play. If we won, we would earn $500 cash and the right to take home the Crown of Thorns trophy for a whole year.
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You find yourself in a modern-looking train station that, due to lack of windows, could be hundreds of feet below ground or directly under the foot of some Francophone Godzilla, and you would be none the wiser until your life ends in its footprint. You’d still be none the wiser after that happens, being dead.
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The previous few weeks or so, I had spent a large amount of time playtesting Standard vs Reid Duke on Magic Workstation (since Mirrodin Besieged wasn’t arriving onto Magic Online). Reid was pretty sold on UB but also said Valakut was a pretty good choice in his opinion. I couldn’t get any of my non-Valakut brews to beat Valakut often enough for my taste, so I just decided to run with it.
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I got this list from Charlie Grover, and it is apparently a list that he and some other English players were running in standard at Nats. The deck is a pretty simple hybridisation of the Sovereigns/Conscription package out of Mythic with the Fauna Shaman/Vengevine/Bloodbraid Elf interaction from Naya.
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The Brisbane qualifier for PT Paris was this past weekend, and it was the first PTQ in Brisbane in 6 months, so it felt like forever since I had a chance to get to the PT. Unless you count GP Sydney, but that was a hideous event for me. 0-6 in games in the main event, and 2-2 in the PTQ side event.
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No one has ever asked me how to win a PTQ, but if anyone ever did, I wouldn’t have a good answer anyway. While playing well is a big help, there are enough other obstacles that I’ve never found the blueprint. What is personally more important to me than the prospect of winning is the competition against similarly skilled players.
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I guess the biggest lesson I learned from this PTQ was that you’ve got to play in tournaments to win tournaments. Sounds stupid, but it is worth remembering.
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Hi there, boys and girls!
Welcome to my tourny report, in which I recount the details of my ptq failure. Hooray! Unable to run modo on my netbook, my prep has been limited to physical drafts, reading articles and… watching other people play modo. Feels good.
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The Plane of Grimneath 
